In the September 20 episode, Republican U.S. Representative Chip Roy explains why he thinks government must take a “human first” approach to regulating AI, and why he disagrees with President Trump calling AI safety fears a “hoax.” And Democrat Clayton Tucker tells us why he’s so focused on data centers in his race for Texas Agriculture Commissioner, and why one of the first things he’d do in office is conduct an agriculture impact study.
00:00:02.480 — 00:00:33.840
Straight ahead less than one month to early voting. Candidates are flooding the airwaves with millions in new ads. But with six weeks to go. How much can the races still change? Bo French backlash party leaders distancing themselves from the railroad commission nominee Karl Rove says he won't even vote for French.
So how much damage could French's comments about UT students do to Republicans in November? Jeff Leach and John Rosenthal weigh in.
00:00:35.000 — 00:01:05.269
Wesley Hunt lost his Senate bid, but he is now in line for a big job in the Trump administration. Plus, the president called it a hoax. Are the concerns around AI overblown? Two Texans in Congress with different takes. Nate Moran and Chip Roy from DC with us. And could Clayton Tucker give Democrats a real statewide Opportunity.
He's the Democratic nominee for agriculture commissioner and takes our questions.
00:01:08.230 — 00:02:44.380
Inside Texas Politics with Jason Whitely. Starts now. Thank you for being here. A lot to get to. But let's begin with the headlines. As always, early voting one month away and the ad spending so far is staggering. In Texas, more than a half billion dollar spent in this state since January. That's according to ad impact.
Republicans have spent twice as much as Democrats. A lot of that back from the primary. But with six weeks to go before Election Day, expect that number to climb. Former state Rep Lon Burnham in Tarrant County is suing the Tarrant County judge, Tim O'Hair. Last month, a judge had deputies removed Burnham from commissioners court after he refused to leave Burnham as a Democrat who served 18 years in the legislature.
He was at that meeting to protest the closure of voting locations, Burnham now suing to have O'Hair removed from office for misconduct. O'Hair calls the lawsuit a sad political stunt, and Congressman Wesley Hunt is in line for a big job with the Trump administration when he leaves D.C. at the end of the year.
The Houston Republican lost his bid for the U.S. Senate earlier this year. Now, President Trump has nominated hunt to be ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Hunt is a West Point grad, a retired Army captain who served in Saudi as a diplomatic liaison officer. His nomination now goes to the Senate for confirmation.
Let's begin right now, though, with AI and all the concern this past week, developers warned that it could end humanity. The president calls that a hoax. And then the central question in all of this, does Congress need to add some guardrails and why hasn't it already? Here's what Congressman Nate Moran, a Republican from East Texas, told us.
00:02:45.420 — 00:03:35.780
There is this emotional push and there's hyperbole about the potential end of the world. Listen, everybody just needs to take a breath. This is not the first time we've dealt with a matter of serious concern. And this is this could create matters of serious concern. No question about it. But we are a serious nation with serious answers.
And we can. We can address this through the private sector for now, and then we can make sure everybody gets up to speed. Bridge that gap between technology leaders and policy leaders, and make sure that we have a good game plan going forward for the 120th session of Congress. So what will the next session of Congress do?
Create new guidelines, regulations and AI kill switch? Perhaps, but who would be liable if AI created some harm? Our first guest is Congressman Chip Roy, a Republican from Austin who has raised concerns about AI for more than a year now.
00:03:36.860 — 00:07:32.350
Congressman, let me ask you about the headlines that are out there. We've all seen here, one researcher has put it at a greater than 10% chance that AI could end civilization. We just heard from Congressman Nate Moran a little earlier, a Republican from East Texas. You know, he says, listen, there's a lot of hyperbole out there on this issue.
What should Texans believe? Well, I go back to the greatest advancements that humankind have known, have come when we've freed people up to do the best with their God given, you know, skills. But the difference with this one, I think, is that it's moving so quickly that people don't know where it's going.
So, like my colleague, I hear it. It can be viewed as hyperbolic. And in many ways it is. Take, take for a second and step back. Do you think that the guys who are now sounding the alarm. Right, these are the biggest companies in the world, right? Anthropic. And you've got Elon talking about it. And others say, wait a second, you just pop up.
All of a sudden one weekend, you start sounding the alarm bells and say, government needs to step in and work with us to solve it. Do you think maybe they might want a little monopoly, a little cartel, to be able to sort of figure out how they're going to be the ones that work with government to come up with all the solutions?
I don't want to do that at the detriment of the free enterprise and garage innovators figuring out how to solve complex problems. And as this stuff grows, there's no limits to what the power can be unless we as human beings remember that God gave us sovereignty over the world, and we have to make sure we remember that it's a tool for us and not the other way around.
And, Congressman, you said that government might demand some certain level of escape valve. Define that in plain English for us. Are you talking about a kill switch on all AI or something less than that? Well, I would just say just in most things in the world that we use a tool that we have. You can turn it off.
You can somehow walk away from whatever that tool is. And chainsaw is not working properly. Your car is not working properly. You shut it down. If you're, you know, TV starts smoking, you unplug it or whatever. So I think at some point we have to take a step back and go, all right, if we have this tool, what are our safeguards?
I do want to think about possible safety valves, what you can do to, you know, pause it, stop it, slow it. I think these things matter because you have a safety valve to say, look, I'm okay, I'll use that technology. But if it doesn't work, I'm fine. I think that's part of the issues we've got to balance. President Trump says warnings that AI could take over the world or destroy humanity, or are just a hoax.
Do you agree with that? So I think the president's instincts have sort of challenging this latest revelation by the tech leaders that suddenly there's a crisis. It's like guys we've known for a long time, there's issues here, and now you guys just come to the table and say, hey, government, come work with us.
I think the president's instincts to push back there are good ones. I do not think that we should be relegating the concern to hoax status. I think what we've got here are very real concerns about whether or not you can contain what is happening with AI in some meaningful way to preserve, uh, our control of it as a tool for humanity.
We've got to make sure we're having those conversations in our form of government. You're leaving Congress at the end of the year here. What's what do you plan to do January 1st? Well, first of all, I'm going to be happily in Texas. I'm going to be happily with my family. And I've had a strong eight year run in Congress, or I will have by the end of December.
And it's been an honor. And I got to know a lot of people across the state running for attorney general. Um, and look, I'm not done. I've got a lot of service, uh, interest left in me, and I've got a lot of things on my mind. Uh, talking to people in the media. Talking to some people in consulting land. Uh, I'm not going anywhere.
We got a lot of problems to solve, and, and, uh, and I'm going to just follow God's plan to go try to serve the people of Texas further. Do you have aspirations for elected office again? Yeah. We'll see. I've always viewed that and that God opens those doors. But, uh, look, uh, I've I've enjoyed my time in service, and I think, uh, I think that there'll be some future opportunities to serve in elected office and otherwise.
Congressman, always good to see you. Thank you for the time. Appreciate it.
00:07:33.470 — 00:09:27.570
All right. Let's bring in the roundtable to talk about the politics of this. But Kennedy is here from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Gabby Birnbaum is the Washington correspondent for the Texas Tribune and Ashley Goudeau, political director at Kvue in Austin. But let's start with you. AI runs on data centers.
Here are data centers going to present a problem for Republicans that always rely on rural Texas to put them over the top. You know, I think it was the president during his campaigns who, you know, fomented distrust of education, of authority, of big institutions. And, you know, AI and data centers are part of those big institutions.
You see, the people pushing back are are people like Bernie Sanders on the left, Chip Roy on the right, who are more populist oriented, who are saying, you know, we need to rein in these big companies. Gabby, a lot of talk this week that Congress is falling behind on AI. Of course, the election is coming up.
A lot of lawmakers are looking at that. But what's the feeling on Capitol Hill about AI right now? Is there concern at all? Yeah, I mean, I think there's absolutely concern particularly about superintelligence, right. This AI that is capable of, you know, having national security implications and sort of acts on its own.
On the other hand, Congress is sort of a notoriously slow body, right? And maybe never more so than in recent Congresses. It's very hard for them to come to consensus and for things that are fast moving, like technology. And we saw this, you know, in prior generations, and we saw this with social media, you know, 15 years ago.
Um, they have not been very quick to act, let alone to understand sort of the capabilities of the technologies in front of them. Um, you know, some fellow Capitol Hill reporters have been asking members, do you use AI? And there's a real range of responses. I think it's clear a lot of members don't necessarily even know what they're talking about or how the technology works, let alone what the right approach is to regulate it.
Wow. Actually, it seems like something serious is going to have to happen with AI to get the public's attention here. And like Chip Roy said, there's no putting the genie back in the bottle at this point, though.
00:09:29.690 — 00:10:14.160
Yeah, but I don't think that it's something big that has to happen to get the public's attention. The public is already paying attention, right? They're already seeing what's happening where you have the AI company saying, okay, the companies themselves admitting AI is problematic, but oh, but we can't pump the brakes.
We know there's like too much money and too much investment in it. So people know and they want their lawmakers to do something about it, whether it's something like the data centers or whether it's something like actually regulating the industry. And I think that people are going to speak in November about how they feel, especially if Congress is slow to act and slow to take action on something like this.
That's important to a lot of people. And like Gabby said, we'll have to wait and see how fast Congress catches up to this too. Guys, thanks so much. Back to you in just a moment. A lot more ahead here, including this.
00:10:17.480 — 00:10:37.120
When we come back, Jeff Leach and John Rosenthal on what Beau French had to say about UT students. Plus, Clayton Tucker and the big issue that he says will give Democrats a shot at winning rural Texas and agriculture commissioner. Inside Texas politics. Back in a moment.
00:10:38.720 — 00:11:44.870
Welcome back to Inside Texas Politics. Now to a question some are asking this weekend. Is Beau French making it more challenging for Texas Republicans to get elected this November? French's post on ex last weekend drew bipartisan backlash with this image of UT students cheering the Longhorns comeback win.
French wrote that he heard UT graduation looked like this and said the problem is, quote, far worse than anyone imagined. Republicans face political headwinds in November. They moved quickly to this past week to distance themselves from French calling the comments racist. Both U.S. senators from Texas denounced him, along with House Speaker Dustin Burrows and a number of other lawmakers, including state Rep Jeff Leach.
The words are what they are. This is not the first time that Mr. French has has expressed, um, thoughts and, um, feelings like this. And look, Republicans, this is not what we stand for. There are people who would look at you and say, can you vote for French? So what would you say to people? Are you going to sit the race out or are you going to vote for his opponent?
Or are you going to vote for Beau French? Have you made up your mind?
00:11:46.510 — 00:13:41.340
Well, I'm not voting for John Rosenthal, the Democrat in the race, I can guarantee you that. And Republicans shouldn't consider doing that. I know John Rosenthal and his views are extreme. They're progressive, they're radical, and I think they're dangerous for the state of Texas, I really do. And so that is that is not an option for me.
And that that shouldn't be an option for Republican voters. What I'm hoping is between now and November, Mr. French will make this right. Um, he should apologize. He shouldn't double down on it. State Rep John Rosenthal expressed surprise at what his colleague Jeff Leach had to say about him. Leach knows me better than that.
That's BS. So we may. I have admiration and respect for Jeff Leach, for sure. Um, this is about the energy infrastructure in our state. This is about protecting communities, defending our environment, and lowering energy costs while we promote. And all of the above approach to energy production in Texas.
And I'm sorry if Chairman Leach can't get behind that message and will hold his nose and support a bold bigot and racist who not only is has these abhorrent views about our fellow Texans, he doesn't have any experience in this industry and and no positive policy positions on the subject matter. Both declined our request for an interview on this, but he was on the program with us back in July, defending other controversial comments he has made in the past about Muslims and Jews and anti-gay slurs.
French told us then he has no regrets about anything he has said. Now to another statewide race. Texas Democrats tell me they think the Texas agriculture commissioner might be one of their best statewide pickup opportunities in November. The Republican in the race is Nate Sheets. He's on the program here with us next week.
First up, though, Clayton Tucker, the Democrat in this race who he reached at his family farm in Lampasas.
00:13:42.420 — 00:16:27.800
Clayton, welcome to the program here. We appreciate you joining us. Rural Texas faces a lot right now from water to tariffs to to diesel prices and data centers. What issue is it do you think is going to decide this race? I mean, fundamentally, all the issues are about taking our our resources, taking our water, taking our private property, whether it's the data centers, the 765 lines and does everything else going on here in Texas, life has become an unaffordable and making matters, you know, adding insult to injury, we have all these big tech folks, these data centers come in to take everything else.
The Texas Agriculture Commissioner job, as you know, it oversees farmland, crops, agriculture, school nutrition, a lot of different things here. Um, why are data centers such a big issue in this race? Um, not like to say that this position really should be called the Commissioner of Food, Land and Water, because that's what is fundamentally about, particularly that last bit.
That water bit is like a couple of years ago. You know, I'm based in Lampasas. We have a family ranch here, and we had a really bad drought to the point where we had to sell off a lot of our cattle herd. Because water is life. Agua is vida. We could have perfect policies literally everywhere else. It could be sunshine and rainbows everywhere.
But if we get the water issue wrong, none of it matters. The incumbent Republican Agriculture Commissioner, Sid Miller, has been out making an appearance with you speaking against data centers. Miller said he didn't go there to be bipartisan, but he said he thinks you are right on this issue and right on other issues as well.
Do you think that endorsement or at least appearance with you will carry weight with with Republicans who might be skeptical of voting for a Democrat? Look, you know, Commissioner Miller said something at that event that I think is absolutely true, that this isn't about red versus blue. It's about the red, white and blue.
This is about us Texans coming together to protect our resources. There's look, there's a fundamental truth. And it's the story of our country that only organized people can beat organized money. Every single. Right. Liberty and freedom any of us have is because of organized people. This isn't about what your favorite political sports team is.
This is about protecting our homes, protecting our communities. And that starts by protecting our water. If we get the water issue wrong and right now the data centers are getting the water issue wrong. It could be very, very detrimental to Texas. It could destroy a lot of our communities. Clayton, what's your one sentence case to a conservative Texan who might agree with you on data centers, but still is not sure that he or she is ever going to vote for a Democrat.
What's your one sentence case to that person?
00:16:29.160 — 00:17:26.270
Look, at the end of the day, all Texans want the same thing. We want healthy food, healthy water, land and clean water. And look, we have all these. I call them the thieving elite that are trying to take our resources. They're trying to take our private property. They're trying to take our water. They're jacking up our food prices.
They're jacking up our diesel prices. They're just making everything so expensive. And then they're trying to get us to fight each other for it. You know, they want us looking at each other. So we're fighting each other and not fighting them, that people actually regain the system. And my, you know, I am the blueberry in the strawberry pie of my family.
A completely like to me. Whatever your political, your favorite political sports team is, that's entirely on you. You know, that is your freedom to choose. And you have every right to choose that. I'm here to fight those, even elites, to stop them from taking our resources. Clayton, good luck to you. Thank you for the time.
Thank you so much.
00:17:27.350 — 00:17:52.660
Our podcast this week is an eye opener. The Pentagon spent a half billion dollars on an artillery factory in Mesquite, just outside of Dallas, and that factory did not produce a single usable shell. The investigative reporter from Pope Publica lays this out in this week's episode of politics. The episode ready to download right now wherever you get your podcasts.
Up next, here on this program, the roundtable is ready when we come back.
00:17:54.140 — 00:19:45.770
All right. Back now with the roundtable. But Gabby and Ashley all back with us. Gabby, let's start with you. The beau French controversy. Clearly creating some distractions and division among Republicans at a time when they really can't afford that. Karl Rove saying he's not going to vote for French.
And the same with John Cornyn. Is this going to give other, more moderate Republicans license to skip that race or other races in November? I think, you know, what precedes here is enormously important, not just for the railroad commissioner race, but also for the Senate race. Right. And other races, um, 900,000, over 900,000 people voted for John Cornyn, right, in the first round of voting in March in the primary.
The vast majority of those voters, I think we expect to come home and vote for the GOP. But do they skip a race here and there? And you know who skips a race? Is it, for example, given the controversy with Beau French? Is it, you know, the Indian community and the Indian-American community in Collin County where Republicans have made significant inroads?
Right. But is this a step back for them? And so I think it becomes a question of, you know, where do these potential moderate Republicans decide to skip races? And how does that matter? Not just for the statewide, but for some of these down ballot races in competitive areas. And, Bud, Republicans are putting, what, $100 million so far into Texas to, you know, to to reframe some of these issues here.
Is that going to to work for them or is too much still riding against them, like the economy, inflation, prices, etc.? They're they're having to plunge all this money in. And by the way, it's money that they're not able to spend in other states because they have these close races. The problem with the Republicans right now is that the trend line is not going their way.
I don't think they're winning anywhere. I don't think Democrats are winning any races yet. I think Talarico is a dead heat, but it keeps slipping. Another point every time you have a poll, this is the time of the campaign where everything changes. If somebody says something stupid last week, both French and Ashley, I mean, at this point, do you expect as more money goes into it as these polls continue to come out week by week, do you expect these races to really change that much.
00:19:47.890 — 00:21:38.760
I mean, you know, the polling is just it's so finicky. Right. I'm someone who I love a good poll, but when you look at it, I mean, it's a snapshot in time. It doesn't tell us how voters are actually going to react. Um, you know, come November. And I don't even think a lot of polling entities are even asking people about the railroad commissioners race.
Um, so I think we're going to continue to see very tight races in the polls. But again, we all know the only poll that matters is the one that happens on November 3rd. And that is indeed the one that matters. Gabby, though, you know, as I mentioned to Budd, MAGA is dumping money into this, especially the Paxton Talarico race, trying to get that turnout at the top of the ticket there.
But the very early polling numbers really haven't shifted that much. Yeah. I mean, I think we're going to see how it proceeds, right? Rest of September and into October. But I think the goal here, because a lot of these ads have been negative, hammering Talarico, particularly on taxes and on culture war issues.
I think you could see part of the goal here as getting some of these hesitant Republicans, maybe Cornyn Republicans, right to turn out and vote. We've seen in polls that Talarico has consolidated the Democratic base more strongly than Paxton, has consolidated the Republican base. So he has room to grow there.
And I think these voters that we're talking about, right. You know, Republicans who are wondering, should I skip the Senate race? Should I skip the railroad commission race? Should I just not turn out? I think that's who these ads are trying to move. And we'll see, you know, if polls shift in the next few weeks here.
And but about 30s left here to Donald Trump's pack is buying a lot of TV time in those House races, especially in South Texas here. It makes you wonder whether redistricting is really going to work or whether it might backfire on the. That's what I wanted to bring up, Jason, because the all the turnout is going to be in those House races on the Valley and the Valley.
Democrats look like they're going to keep 2 or 3 of those seats after all, maybe win a couple others. The Democratic vote in the Valley will drive a Tallarico or Hinojosa if they win. South Texas likely to decide. Guys, thanks so much. We appreciate it. As always. Thank you for watching as well. We're back next Sunday to take you inside Texas politics.
We hope to see you then. Take care.