In the Texas Senate, the bar for bringing a bill up was lowered twice under Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick (R), the second time by exactly the eighteen votes the new bar now asks for; this episode follows that rule to the voucher bill, which came up with twenty votes when the old rule asked for twenty-one, then to the library bill SB 13, which cleared even the old bar and which Rep. Vikki Goodwin (D) voted against twice.
Vikki Goodwin, Democrat, state representative from Austin since 2019, running for Lieutenant Governor of Texas against Dan Patrick: every attack on her -- including the AI-generated ads his campaign pulled -- checked against her votes, her bills and the record. What she actually did in the Texas House, and whether the attacks describe it.
Vikki Goodwin, Democrat, state representative from Austin since 2019, running for Lieutenant Governor of Texas against Dan Patrick: every attack on her -- including the AI-generated ads his campaign pulled -- checked against her votes, her bills and the record. What she actually did in the Texas House, and whether the attacks describe it.
Vikki Goodwin, Democrat, state representative from Austin since 2019, running for Lieutenant Governor of Texas against Dan Patrick: every attack on her -- including the AI-generated ads his campaign pulled -- checked against her votes, her bills and the record. What she actually did in the Texas House, and whether the attacks describe it.
Dan Patrick's campaign posted AI-generated videos of his opponent, and she has filed a police complaint under a 2019 deepfake law his Senate passed 31 to 0; the episode checks what that law covers, when it applies, and who has actually been charged under that section of the Election Code.
Dan Patrick spent a decade lowering the bar to bring bills to the Senate floor, and his own 'law and order' priorities still died.
The DandyDon signal · est. 2024
A weekly newsletter + show that takes the narrative being pushed by power, names the framing, and walks you through what's actually there. Politics. Markets. Culture. Math, not hot takes.
This week's deep read
Cable says "the wind is shifting." The RCP average says something quieter. We pulled 14 weeks of polling, 3 forecasters, and a Monte Carlo at 10,000 runs. Here's what holds up — and what doesn't.
What 14 weeks of polling actually show — without the cable framing. Three numbers that matter, and the one everyone keeps getting wrong.
Read →A walk through the actual Iranian protest data, casualty counts, and diaspora reporting — and why the "the Shah again" framing flattens what's really happening on the ground.
Watch →
Why the special-election-to-November relationship is the single most predictive tool we have, and the three caveats nobody mentions.
Read →A 1957 movie about a "thinking machine" coming for knowledge workers. Spoiler: the part they got right isn't the part we talk about.
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The quote that spreads isn't the cleanest one. It's the one with the most receipts under it. Field notes from 6 months of testing.
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Bankrate, the Fed, and a real estate industry that wants a 7-handle to feel inevitable. We pull the actual MBS data.
Read →Why this exists
Most political content is a mood applied to a headline. We do the other thing: pull the underlying document, run the number, walk you through it, and let you check. If a claim doesn't survive the check, it doesn't ship. If it does, you'll see exactly why.
This is also a show about building — the technology, the people, the receipts behind a one-person media operation that wants to matter. If you've ever wanted to start a newsletter, a YouTube channel, or a podcast that doesn't suck, you'll find the how-we-built-it pieces here too.
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