GOV310 – In The News: A look at national politics through the eyes of Texas, July 16, 2019

[0:00:00 Speaker 0] in the news, Professor Shaw and up first McDaniel. Welcome to in the news for American in Texas politics.

[0:00:13 Speaker 1] Well, you lucky devils. You’re with us for the second summer session, and today we’re gonna do our first in the news segment. Um, you hopefully have Fred the syllabus at this point and have a sense of what the in the new segments are. What we’re trying to do here is to talk about, you know, some range of events that have occurred in the last couple days or so on and relate them to core concepts that you’re going to be experiencing to the lecture modules and the Web, text readings and things like that. In other words, we’re not interested in just doing current events. But we’re interested in trying to give you something mawr than you know. Here’s what’s on the, you know, on the headline ticker on CNN or Headline News or something like that, Right. So hopefully one of the pieces of the value points that we can add to your experience here at University of Texas is not just kind of acquaint you with basic concepts of government, but but try to help you draw connections between those concepts, whether it’s federalism or checks and balances or party dynamics to draw connections between those those concepts and what you’re seeing in the news. Right? So this is our explicit attempt to do that, right? So we’ll talk a little more about some of the logistics which you are already on your syllabus, everything. But we’ll reiterate those at the end of our segment today, and the segments will run between 20 minutes and 40 minutes, depending upon how much energy we have. How much is in the news? Sometimes in the summer. It’s kind of slow not so much these days. So we’re gonna hit five topics today. Uh, not quite lightning round. We’re never quite lightning round material here, but to national topics. We won’t talk about party politics and the sort of squad as it’s being referred to by the media, the four progressive freshman Congress women in the House of Representatives and how they’re kind of shaking up Washington Second national topic. Immigration policies and the ice raids from this last weekend and then three Texas politics topics real quickly. Third parties in the state of Texas ah, movement to end judicial elections, which seems to be picking up steam. And then come interesting piece by Ross Ramsey in The Texas Tribune about what to actually watch for in the 2020 elections in the state of Texas. And here’s a spoiler alert. It’s not the presidential it’s actually the Statehouse races. So with that, let’s let’s start at the top. Would start national and kind of work our way down this last weekend, actually, late last week and then across the course of the weekend, there’s a lot of conversation in Washington about the four Democratic female freshmen, all women of color who have been tracked in a lot of attention pursuit, kind of aggressively using social media to promote a progressive liberal agenda. So I’m talking here about, uh, Ocasio Cortez from New York, Omar from Minnesota, Presley from Massachusetts and Taib from Michigan. So these are the four women, all of whom have, you know, Ah, Kozo Cortez, obviously Hispanic or Latina. Um, Omar is, ah, Somali background. First generation Presley Ah, woman of color from Massachusetts and then play, I think, what slaves? Background. I can’t even recall whether she’s she’s second generation. She’s not born outside the United States, but Lebanese, I think. I think Lebanese. Right? So you know what we’re talking about with respect, Teoh controversy Well, they got into a little bit of the dust up with their own party last week. One of the there was a compromise bill emergency funding for the facilities down on the border. And Nancy Pelosi and the other Democrats had cobbled together a piece of legislation. They’ve gotten fairly significant support across the board, some Republicans. But almost all the Democrats voted for this appropriations bill that was going to increase funding emergency funding for facilities down on the border because of the crisis there in terms of accommodations. And these four Democrats voted against the bill and Pelo, you know, they had tweeted out that, you know, this isn’t gonna do anything. This is a bad bill, just helps Trump and, you know, these facilities, air concentration camps and a lot of the rhetoric they’ve been using on. Pelosi was asked about their votes and their posture towards the legislation, and she said, You know, basically as you might expect someone of her generation to say said, Ah, this social media tweeting, I don’t care about that. Bottom line is they got four votes, and that’s all I care about. Um, the squad, as thes four women have been kind of dubbed by the media, responded on Twitter, saying, You know, well, she doesn’t understand this, in fact, kind of implying that in fact, the chief of staff of one of them I can remember which one. But the chief of staff basically accused Pelosi of being an old, out of touch racist A Z. You might imagine Nancy Pelosi was the speaker of the House wasn’t terribly thrilled by this assertion. And so Pelosi had a closed door meeting where, according to accounts, she basically told not just the force. He told everybody in the Democratic caucus, Hey, you got a problem. Come to me. Don’t go on Twitter. Don’t take it to the media. So it’s interesting. There’s some people who are arguing that the problem that Pelosi is having with the progressive wing of her party is like the problem that John Boehner and Paul Ryan, the Republicans who were speakers prior to Pelosi, had with right wing of the Republican Party. And that was basically he couldn’t. Those two couldn’t manage the conservative Republicans. Interesting question now is, can Pelosi manage the liberal or progressive wing of the Democratic Party? That’s the big picture. But there’s an interesting, smaller picture, which is How do you treat you know, people who are traditionally disadvantaged traditional discriminate against who rise to power, what sort of language is appropriate as you’re addressing them and trying to make them do what you want to do in party terms. And all of that came out layered. On top of that was two days ago. Donald Trump, responding to some tweets that he thought were derogatory towards the United States by the squad, basically said, You all need to go back where you came from and fix your own countries before you come to United States. That didn’t go over well with pretty much anybody. So, Professor Daniel, as a person of color, your reaction to this and

[0:06:35 Speaker 0] as I speak for all people of color,

[0:06:37 Speaker 1] that’s exactly right. I think I speak for all old white guys constituency near and dear to all of words,

[0:06:43 Speaker 0] I guess also has a scholar racial politics. We should not be surprised by this. There’s what you’re seeing out of a group called The Squad is rumblings you’ve seen within the Democratic Party for long periods of time, where the establishment is calling for kind of incremental change, where these other groups that look, we represent groups that have been disadvantaged and marginalized. So if you think about them too mean to represent, they’re disadvantaged racially, their disadvantage because of their gender but also of disadvantage because of the because of the religion. And so what you have here is a group of people who want, uh, who don’t see incrementalism is helping them at all. Eso in many ways I think of King’s letter from the Birmingham jail, where he talks about people thought about Oh, no, wait, Give it time, Give it time is like No, we can’t wait anymore. And so for them, there’s a very strong sense of urgency. I’m not try to compare them Toe Maar with the King anything like that. But if you can think about the language he used is a strong sense of urgency. But there’s also been this belief, specifically amongst people of color split amongst blacks in the Democratic Party is that you know blacks have been used really as the cannon fodder of the Democratic Party where the Democratic Party uses, will use blacks for their votes but then will kind of forget about them as things move on. And I think allow this coming forward with the what we’re seeing happen with Joe Biden, where people are basically bring up a lot of things that he did in the past, which undercut black interest but busing, being an example, the crime bill being another example but then trying to appeal to black voters like, Hey, you need means. And so you have this this argument about you know, what you see as incrementalism we see as continued oppression on. So this this becomes problematic. But another part of this is again. If you think of the sixties were protests were a way of making things public. You’re saying these things happen now with Twitter and again? I’m not trying to say there like King of the new Civil Rights one, but you could see some of the similar tactics, but one the problems we’re going public is that it creates it creates all kinds of problems in the sense that you will make statements that are to try to get people’s attention that you may not want to make on what you see coming on with Speaker Pelosi is she’s making very strong. Look, we’re gonna handle this in house. If you have a problem, come to me, talk to me now. It could be an argument where they feel like she’s ignoring them. And because you’re ignoring us, we have to go public on. You know, I do believe that they are tapping into something that you see with a lot of given the way the Democratic Party is set up. Given the nature of the leadership of the Democratic Party, which is, for the most part, been white male now, now more white female but still upper class whites, you’re feeling this sense of like, No, we have to, uh, we have to make sure this party is responsive to our needs. So you can think of individual like Donna Brazile, a number on a bunch of others who made this kind of demand against the Democratic Party. Don’t take us seriously, and so that’s part of but the way which they’re doing it, they’re going public. Be truthful. That’s kind of how they got got to where they are. They used social media to try to get the word out, to get people to pay attention to them. I think as time goes on, I really think as time goes on and they gained a little bit more power in the house, that’s gonna calm down because right now they’re on the outside Bengal the door to get get power within their party on This is the way of doing it. I think once they get in, you might see them calm down a bit. The red Epson calm down a bit because now they’re part of the establishment. Now, right now they’re freshmen. They don’t have much going on, they’re coming in. They’re making the demanding change. But I think once they actually get a little bit of power, you will see that language curtail. But But in the last thing that’s important note is that given the racial context that we have with us right now is that things are very, very heated and very passionate, and so they are playing. So I think part of us, they’re they’re feeling it, but also playing into it. And in many cases, the fear is that a lot of what they’re doing is reactionary, not fully thought out so much as we people criticize the Tea Party’s being reactionary toe Obama, you could argue if they’re being reactionary to President Trump. I think a lot of this needs to needs to be worked on. But what it’s really demonstrating is something that’s been going brewing with the Democratic Party for a long time. This is not something new. It’s been brewing for a long period of time, where you find that marginalized communities which the Democratic Party says, Oh, we represent you are feeling like, No, we feel like we’re being uses your cannon fodder. You’re using us to get votes, but you’re not being responsive to us. Whereas the squad you could argue is calling the party outs and know you will be responsible. You will do right by these people. Incrementalism Incrementalism is great for people who are in power and in the status quo. It’s horrible for the marginalized, and so again that’s part of it. But then also part of us is again using social media. It’s the tactics that are being used. So the argument you have the argument But then you also have the tactics, and it’s the combination of these two, which can lead to large over the problems. However, with President Trump’s response, that’s actually in some ways maybe galvanized them a little bit because President Trump went out. It was very strong attack that he put towards them. And so now there’s we need we need to protect them. Uh, and in many ways, some have argued that President Trump may be attacking them on purpose so they could rise and power to make the Democratic Party look even more radical than it actually is. I’m not sure if he’s dad strategic. I think he’s known for basically just lashing out at anybody who critiques him. But I think what he’s done is he maybe solidifying their roles as and helping them gain power through these types of attacks because the Democratic Party now has to protect their own, even though they may not be hacked with whether doing things they have to, they now have to protect them. And so I really think, you know, as time goes on, you get about one or two more terms. A lot of that language will calm down, especially as they gain power. But we’re going to see how this plays out. But again, it’s were also discussed, plays out in the primaries because I think the primaries were going to really see a lot of these concerns come Ford Where again, the history, the Democratic Party in terms of ignoring the interests of the marginalized. I think Joe Biden is gonna be the target of all of that because he represents the old school Democratic Party on. So he will be the target of off those criticisms.

[0:13:40 Speaker 1] Yeah, now this is, you know, Professor McDaniels does a lot of work on race and politics and public policy. We also does some electoral politics. You know, I do very limited work on race and ethnicity, a little bit of work on coalitional politics. But for me, let’s let’s do a couple things. Real briefing. Let’s move on. I want to make three points. First, let’s for everybody out there to make sure we’re explicit. When we’re talking about the squad, we’re talking about four Democratic Congress women. Each room was elected in 2018 Ocasio Cortez from New York, Omar from Minnesota, Presley from Massachusetts and slide slide. T L A. I be from Michigan. That’s the squad. The three points I want to make. First of all, referent to what we’re gonna be doing in the first couple weeks. The first module of the course. It’s really interesting. They represent District’s smallish. Just all districts were smallish. I’m not comparing them. They’re all the same size, but they represent a narrow slice of the world. And so when Ocado, Cortes or Omar takes a very strong progressive position, your first reaction might be Wow, that seems kind of extreme will not given where they’re representing. So Kozo Cortez, for instance, representing a constituency in in Brooklyn, Brooklyn, the Bronx, I think Brooke Rocks Bronx, Bronx. It’s heavily racial, ethnic minority, very progressive in their attitudes. So when she takes a strong position on questions of race, she’s not. It’s not an extreme position, given the constituency she is representing, and that’s a feature of having 435 District’s. Some of them are gonna be diehard conservatives. Some of their gonna be ultra liberal, and the people who represent those districts have an interest in adjusting their public policy positions to most effectively represent that district. So these four individuals don’t particularly care about taking positions. They’re out of step with the National Democratic Party. Did someone they don’t care about the National Democratic Party right there representing their constituents? Second point, coalitional tensions. Having said that, they don’t really care about of the national party, I overstated that little bit. They do want to push the party further left. And as freshman congresswoman, you know, you know, days gone by, you didn’t have much of an opportunity that the national media wasn’t going to cover you. If you’re a freshman from the Bronx, unless you’ve got 10 million Twitter followers and that as Professor McDaniel, I think aptly pointed out, that’s the difference these days, right? And by the way, I would argue this of the same piece of Donald Trump. Donald Trump was a reality TV star. Why did we pay so much attention to him in 2015 2016? Because network television decided he was really good for ratings. He was entertaining, right? And so they covered him disproportionately compared to his experience and obvious, you know, kind of qualifications for the position of the presidency that’s clearly going on on the left, right? I mean, why should we be paying more attention to a cosy Oh Cortez than we should? Nancy Pelosi? Well, the realities we shouldn’t accept focus your criticism much more interesting and entertaining. The Nancy Pelosi is so the first potential MK damage of going public. Twitter gives thes kind of lower level representatives an opportunity to speak to a much broader audience, and they would have been able to access 10 or 12 years ago with the media in those days served as a gatekeeper. And you know they wouldn’t put your step on the front page of The New York Times. Well, now the squad doesn’t have to worry about what reporters at the New York Times think is newsworthy. They create their own following and in The New York Times comes along because The New York Times wants to plug into that audience. So it’s a different dynamic. So that’s it. So constituents and districts coalitional tension. Plus, you know, an attempt to represent a kind of a new vision for the Democratic Party, plus social media is my second point. Third point is, I find this interesting terms the role of parties in Congress, given the 1st 2 dynamics, a bunch of free agents representing constituents with their own idea where the party should go. How does Nancy Pelosi or any leader in Congress herd the cats and what kind of sticks and carrots to use the metaphor? Does Nancy Pelosi have to induce collective behavior to get legislation through? That’s tough. She can chide them. She can try to give them or not give them committee assignments. Sheikhoun Try to, you know, influence if she really doesn’t like them people to run against them in primaries. But there’s a limited array of tools, especially when you’re dealing with constituent. We’re dealing with members who are basically in very safe Democratic districts. What do you do? How do you threaten them? How does Pelosi get you know Ocado Cortez to go along with legislation that picazio Cortez doesn’t really like? Limited tools? All right, so anyway, those are the three big points I want to mention, Let’s move. Having spent 20 minutes on one topic, let’s move the immigration, politics and ice rates, and I’ll kick this off by saying, I don’t have a lot to see here. I want to make two points. One serious, one facetious. Serious point is, I would just like you all to look at the immigration crisis as a very interesting exercise in federalism. That is to say, the state of Texas has a role, obviously, in border enforcement. But so does the federal government and Ice Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Agency. They’re charged with protecting the border. That’s a federal organization, and one of the things you guys have probably heard about if you’re listening to this, are watching this story play out is a lot of places. Austin, for instance, other cities, our sanctuary cities, that is, they’re not gonna quit. They’ve said they’re not going to cooperate fully with ice. And this represents I mentioned federalism in the case of Sanctuary sees it’s a city versus federal tension. But you also see City versus state tension state versus federal government tension. Immigration is where a lot of those issues and if you’re scratching your head at home thinking I don’t quite understand who’s in charge of what welcome to the club. It’s not clear who is in charge of what, and that’s kind of one of the things that Professor McDaniel I want to emphasize. That’s my serious point. My facetious point is, why

[0:19:49 Speaker 0] do they keep

[0:19:49 Speaker 1] announcing these raids? You know, if if the rage, by the way, if you weren’t paying attention last week and the Trump administration said that we are going to go after people who we know are in the country illegally, and you know where we have a good sense of where they are, we’re going to go out. These air people have ignored orders to leave or orders to report to deportation hearings and things like that. You know, we know where they are. We’re going to go after them Sunday at 6 a.m. I just don’t understand why you announced that It strikes me that, you know, if I’m at home and I’m you know, I’ve missed my deportation hearings, and I know they’re coming at sixth, and I’m either not there or I’m certainly not answering the door. Anyway, I’m not a public policy guy. So Professor McDaniel you to educate me on this.

[0:20:35 Speaker 0] I think one of things about making these announcements is getting the base riled up. He’s gonna take action on this Another trump

[0:20:45 Speaker 1] appealing to the Republican base and conservative. Yeah, I think this

[0:20:48 Speaker 0] on. So I I think another aspect of it, maybe eso it may be more symbolic in the sense that you’re not going to do it. But you want to make it look like it’s like you’re going to do something about this, Uh, from the other standpoint, one of the concerns that people have specifically those who again, let’s make let’s make it very clear. I don’t think they’re very few people who are actually in favor of open Borders. They do believe that people, if they enter the U. S. Should enter the U. S. Legally that there are some standards that must be met on then and then. If it’s time to go, it’s time for you to go. I think they’re very few people, so I’ll just leave it open for everybody. Now I know there’s been some discussion of decriminalizing on that’s a little bit different. Decriminalizing isn’t making it legal. It’s basically saying farmers not gonna punish with this just like decriminalizing marijuana, meaning that it’s not legal to sell it. Um, it’s not. We’re not saying it’s legal smoking, but if you catch what it was not gonna prosecute you on it. Uh, I think one of the concerns you have from a lot of individuals who are who do want to immigrate immigration reform, but want to make sure that there is some level of, um I guess justice in this is there is the fear is that what you’re doing is creating communities which will automatically feel a sense of fear, of dealing, working with the government and so that if a crisis does come about, they’re not. They will be too scared to work with the government, but their their understanding of the government will be that this is an oppressive system and will not want to work with the government on what we know is these individuals, even if they are U S citizens will be less likely to vote less likely to seek help from the government. And so many ways will shut themselves off. You see, this community shut themselves off, and so that is one of the concerns on the other side. But again, there is this broader concern of what do we do about controlling who is in the US specifically those who are undocumented? Three Obama administration was did a large number of deportations. And, you know, one of the criticisms of the Obama administration is that, you know, he was seen this kind of the DePorter in chief, but his but he didn’t. It wasn’t. Has announced it wasn’t his public, but is also concerned about They said about 2 to 3% of people who reporter actually U S citizens. And so if you’re doing, you know, several 100,000 deportations a year, you know, that’s several 1000 you know, Americans who are being deported even though they shouldn’t have been deported on another concern has been that with that, given the status of undocumented immigrants in terms of residency, things that they may have been told they need to show up for something but never received it. Uh, or they’ve been told to show up because they don’t trust the government. They don’t. They don’t show up. It’s all kinds of confusion here. Uh, I’m not really sure what what All substantively will be accomplished by doing this, but it’s something want to see going forward because symbolically it looks great. Energized the base. Substantively, I’m not sure how this will actually play out on what the true outcome of this will be a all right. So let’s go to

[0:23:54 Speaker 1] some states stuff. We’re gonna hit third parties, Judicial elections in 2020. All right, so and all due credit to the Texas Tribune festering Daniel. Our kind of scoping out topics for today’s in the new segment and some really interesting stuff on the Texas Tribune and UT has ah, relationship with the Texas Tribune. We help help out with a polling project with them. Andi have some really terrific reporters over there. In fact, the trip has kind of become a model for news media coverage of state politics in across the country. There are other kind of copycats for the Texas Tribune, but a couple articles we thought were interested the first was third parties sue to get on the ballot in Texas at night. I just want to make sure I got this correct because currently, first, McDaniel I were kind of wondering, We want to make sure we got the current law correct. So you may if you guys haven’t voted. Please, You know, in this next cycle, make sure you go out and vote, but you’ll notice. I think it’s always curious. Why does the State of Texas have to pay for, you know, primary election ballots? And how is it that the political parties get to dominate ballot access the way they do? And I had a professor when I was an undergraduate at U. C. L. A. Used the following analogy, he said. Parties air like public utilities, the Democrats and Republicans agree to some regulations and some limits on what they do in exchange for the state. Basically kind of keeping other parties down a little bit, right? So campaign finance regulation, election regulations that Republicans and Democrats agree to a lot of that stuff because in exchange, state agrees to give them primacy on the ballot instead of the Libertarians or the Green Party. So So this suit that the Texas Tribune talks about was filed jointly by the Libertarian Party, which is basically ah, born of an ideology that says, I don’t want the government doing much economically. I don’t want them regulating and taking a lot of my tax dollars also don’t want the government doing a lot socially. I don’t want them regulating my sexual behavior, you know, morals or things like that so libertarian is kind of out of my bedroom and out of my pocketbook, right? The Green Party is, as you might, you know, kind of glean from the name very, very focused on on environmental issues on what we call post materialist issues, issues of women’s rights, issues of progressive policy, politics and things like that. So they’re kind of strange bedfellows in that sense. But they both agree that the Republicans and Democrats are kind of working, colluding against them. All right, so what is the current law? In the lawsuit filed Thursday in Austin, plaintiffs argued that the current state law would give non major political parties in 2020. So that’s the libertarians in the Greens. Just 75 days to obtain over 80,000 valid signatures in order to obtain ballot access. And they estimated the cost of meeting this threshold would be about $600,000 in order to organize and to actually get this kind of process going successfully. Now, what is it that we do in textual in Texas? What we do is we wait, we say you you don’t qualify for the ballot unless you receive 5% in the previous election cycle. So if you’re a libertarian candidate, you got 5% in the governor’s race, then your candidate in 20 in the next election cycle in this case would be 2022 would qualify. But if you didn’t get 5% you have to meet these ballot thresholds, right? So you need to collect again. Looks like 80,000 valid signatures. Now the 80,000 valid signatures have to be registered voters, and they had to be registered voters who did not participate in the Republican or Democratic primary. All right, that’s kind of a sore loser law. What they want to do, as they say, We can’t you know you can’t have people who vote in the Republican Democratic primary who are mad. And then they turned to get their Green party or Libertarian candidate on the ballot. So it’s It’s sort of an effort to prevent sore losers. All right, if you follow me on that, but it presents an enormous burden, right? You’re basically saying anybody vote in the primaries can’t sign one of these petitions, but you still have to be a registered voter. All right, so it’s registered kind of non primary participants. You need 80,000 of them, and there are estimates that it’s ah, it’s burdensome beyond what is acceptable now. Professor McDaniel. I were asking before class like What exactly is the legal claim, though I mean, it’s hard is not a legal claim, right? It’s unfair is not a legal claim something we would encourage you to remember when with respect to grades in this class, what’s the actual constitutional claim? Well, we found, they said, that the plaintiffs argued that the election code violates their First Amendment, presumably free speech against free speech and 14th Amendment rights. Now, the 14th Amendment is one of the Civil War amendments that talks about due process under law on equal protection. Ah, and they said it did so by is the quote by imposing discriminatory and severely burdensome requirements on independent candidates and minor political parties that seek access to Texas. Is general election ballot unquote Okay, Um, I’m not sure I really get the specifics of that constitutional claim, but that’s the claim anyway. All right, so lawsuit out there now, one thing that is interesting is Professor Daniel. I were looking about that at this one thing That’s gonna kick in. There’s already a law that was passed in the last cycle that’s gonna kick in in 2020 that a za mentioned to qualify for the about. They said if you currently the losses you had to have gotten 5% the previous election toe automatically get a space on the ballot. Next time around a za party, they’re gonna lower that to 2%. So from 5% to 2% and in any one of the last five general election. So if your candidates if your party got 2% in that race in any the last five elections, you’re automatically on the ballot. So in some ways, I’m not quite sure what this lawsuits about it. Sounds like they’ve already passed a law. Kind of gets him a long way there any right, So we want you to be aware of that. Um, you got nothing on that pressman damage. We moved to judicial elections.

[0:30:02 Speaker 0] Uh, I think we’ll see a lot of becoming better contacts when we get to the next module, where we talk about parties and particularly discussion of third parties and the problems third parties have with state ballot access and how the laws are set up to undercut third party a success. But, you know, maybe this is an interesting issue, and I think it’ll become even clear when we talk about parties,

[0:30:22 Speaker 1] right? I mean, for the first module, the only thing I point to is he’s interesting, claims the First Amendment, the 14th Amendment claim about you know that they think is the basis by which you would rule Texas’s election law unconstitutional. That’s a uh yes. I’m not prejudiced a sense that I have a dog in this hunt, but I don’t know that I really understand that claim fully with that logic, that that’s a tricky one. Okay, so speaking of the judiciary, another kind of interesting development here and again, I’m going to the trip here. After a punishing election for Republican judges, state leaders are set to take a long look at Texas is off criticized judicial selection system. Now this again, this is something will cover and one later modules, and we do institutions. But it’s something we might as well preview this right now. Ah, partisan election structure. The Texas Supreme Court chief Justice Nathan Hecht, has described as quote amongst the very worst methods of judicial selection. So this is a theme will talk about a lot this semester. Texas does things in different ways, and, you know, with respect to the structure of the executive branch, with respect to the way the Legislature is structured, eso you know, we only meet every every other year for a limited amount of time. Legislators don’t get very much money, but judicial elections is certainly a target amongst or for those who want to reform the Texas system. What’s interesting here is that Republicans really began. Their period of ascendancy in 1994 is kind of the key date here when Republicans have not lost a statewide election in Texas since 1994. Wright. That’s a long time now, and they began their ascendancy by winning judicial elections. Texas has historically been a very democratic state, but Republicans began winning judicial elections in the eighties and into the nineties. What’s interesting now is that Democrats have begun winning some of these leads judicial elections, especially in Harris County and in Dallas County. And there’s some thought like, for instance, of another sort of money paragraph here, it says, Uh, let’s see after a punishing election for Republican judges. Eso dot dot, dot This summer, Greg Abbott signed the law creating a commission to study the issue, signaling that the GOP led Legislature, GOP’s grand old Party, the Republican Party, could overhaul the system as soon as 2021. That move comes after Democrats killed a sweeping proposal for reform proposal that Abbott had quietly backed. So it’s interesting in partisan terms, Democrats, you know what we’re talking about here is judicial appointments rather than judicial elections. Republicans were fine with elections when they were winning all the elections. Perhaps now there’s a partisan incentive for Republicans to prefer state what you know. Statewide officials appoint judges as opposed to elections, because the Democrats are beginning to winning in some places, especially in the metro areas. Politics. I can’t believe

[0:33:21 Speaker 0] it, of course, but I also think one of things that this ties into is when you read about the text constitution and what led to the creation of the text constitution that were under is that the many cases? This is a reaction to reconstruction and they really wanted a A lot of people have a lot of control over the government. And this is why I, pretty much every office is a partisan, is elected as a partisan open election. And so we have, like the judges, you know, you think of the variety of aspects of the executive branch that are elected. In many cases, this is a reflection of the Texas Constitution and its reaction to reconstruction. So Texas has been much maligned because of its of its process in terms of electing judges in partisan elections on and this has been a critique and a lot of people of argument. No. We need to go to some type of merit selection process to maybe go for re election, and this may be what we see take shape. But it’s interesting that this reform is not based upon. Nothing seems to be based upon the idea that you want competent individuals, uh, in in office but mawr, that you don’t want to lose your partisan, your partisan influence. And one of the again one of major critiques about the Texas system is to what degree can you actually measure competency for someone to have a judicial appointment? Uh, and again people were a Zilong is your party was winning. You don’t care about competency. But now that we not your party loses like Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We gotta make sure we have competent people there. Yeah, so it zig great thing about democracy.

[0:35:02 Speaker 1] Yeah, and again to kind of loop it back to some of the points were talking about in the first module you notice in Texas that they’re sharing of powers, That is the judiciary. The Legislature and the executive branch is share powers in the state. But unlike the federal governing structure, the explicit checks and balances that exists at the federal level are less present in Texas. Right. So, you know, instead of having you know, the executive, appoint the judiciary, the judiciary is independently elected instead of the governor appointing sub officials within the executive there independently elected. And I think it speaks to remember, the Texas Constitution comes about little under 100 years after the American Constitution. And, you know, Texas traditionally or suspicious of government of you know, they want the people to be able to determine these things rather than, you know, elected, you know, elected officials sort of checking each other. So it’s it’s kind of a time honored tradition in Texas. Most people nationally think it’s weird to have judges elected. And there’s something I think even in Texas, we think is a little unseemly about judges running for office and having to raise money to contest elections. So that’s always been something that reformers have been irritated with. But partisans have been less irritated about that, especially if they’re winning elections. So it’s funny how, when you start to slip in power a little bit, you become a good government advocate.

[0:36:31 Speaker 0] Changed the rules when things are going your way.

[0:36:32 Speaker 1] Yeah, all right, last topic quickly. I just want to point out there was a nice article again in The Tribune by Ross Ramsey saying that, You know, there’s a lot of focus with with Honey on Castro with Beto O Rourke, with obviously President Trump about the presidential election and Texas, we’re gonna have a primary in early March that a lot of the Democratic candidates are targeting is an important election for them. But Ramsey argues that the most interesting election in Texas is not gonna be the presidential. It’s not gonna be the Cornyn versus M. J. Hager or whoever ends up being the Democratic nominee for U. S Senate is actually going to be the Texas State House and Chris McDaniel. I was just looking at the numbers, and we’re reminded that both the Texas House and Senate, especially the Texas House, they’re not that Republican anymore. UM, 150 members of the House, currently 83 Republicans, 67 Democrats now, with 150 members not too hard to figure out. You need 76 for a flat out majority. 76 for a flat out majority. The Democrats are at 67 so they need to pick up nine seats, nine seats in order to get where they were. They need to go. Um, there are a lot of changes in Texas, a lot of districts that are trending purple, maybe even blew. So Ramsey’s point is that this could be really critical, especially with redistricting of the state of Texas looming after the 2020 cents is right that the Legislature that is elected in 2020 is going to be in charge of drawing the lines for representation in Congress, in the State House and in the State Senate subsequently, so the Democrats. Air really, really focused on trying to claw their way to 76 out of 100 50 seats, and that’s all I really had to say about that. But I thought it was interesting.

[0:38:22 Speaker 0] I mean, it’s it’s clear, Um, I doubt that they’ll get those nine wins. It might make it three, which means it may have a little bit more influence within this. Within the state Senate, it’s been 19 Republicans trump Democrats for a long time. And so I don’t I don’t see that changing.

[0:38:41 Speaker 1] You have 31 state senators right now, 19 and 12 19 Republicans, 12 rapes. And the state Senate districts are much larger, obviously, So it’s It’s a little harder to win districts in the Senate, Republicans, airlines that it is in the House.

[0:38:55 Speaker 0] It’s also important. Remember that not too far ago the Republicans had a super majority where they were over, they made up 2/3 of the house, but that’s gone away very quickly. And so it would be interesting to see how much progress the Democrats able to make it even more important to know what degree they will be able to work together as a coalition either as the minority party or the majority party. I remember having one state rep talking one state rep and asking. Well, what exactly are the plans of the parties like? Well, you know, one of things we realized is that we need to work together is like, Oh, you just realize that s o to me. Uh, I think that is really what’s gonna be It’s gonna be core there, and I think I think they can pick up some seats. They have been making progress, but as far as getting the majority not so much, but getting very close to it. I think it’s enough to where If there is any crack or fissures within within the Republicans, they may be able to take advantage of it if they, uh, thinks they focus together. But as far as the Senate, I don’t see any changes with Senate, but they may be able to change the way things are operating in the house.

[0:40:09 Speaker 1] Okay, so, again, that will wrap up our first in the new segment. A couple logistical things. We want to emphasize hope you guys are all still with us on this, so pay attention all of the in the news assignments are due at five o’clock on Monday. So next Monday, five oclock central daylight time. Five PM Central daylight time. You’d be surprised how creative students are saying, Well, you didn’t say daylight time or non daylight time. So I don’t care if you’re in Brussels or Shanghai or whatever they’re do. Five oclock central daylight time. So this is a great thing. You could take the class anywhere. You can take the exams anywhere. But when it comes to submissions, you know, don’t tell us that. Well, it’s two AM where I am. Well, you know, if you’re in Fiji, you know, in some sort of bungalow out overlooking the water. Professor McDaniel and I aren’t really sympathetic to what’s 1 a.m. When I have to submit my just submitted. That’s part of the beauty of the courses. You could do this anywhere, so make sure you hit your submission deadlines piece of advice. Don’t wait until 4 55 to turn it in, because if you’ve got some sort of connective ity issue any kind of glitch, then it will be a problem and then you will be emailing us with a long winded excuse, which we would prefer not to get at this stage of the summer. Um, follow the instructions and check your submissions that we cannot emphasize this enough people, um, canvas will tell you when you have successfully submitted. All right, so again, do it a little early, Give yourself a little bit of leeway and make sure you check and follow up. Now there’s a big green button that says, Submit. It’s not rocket science, but, you know, you still need to follow up, check and make sure, All right, so that is on your that is your burden to this semester is to make sure that on the technical side that you’re meeting our specs and that you’re doing things correctly. You know, we’ll have people from time to time say, like, Oh, there’s something wrong with the software or your system. You know, I had a professor again when I was at U. C. L. A. And I used to write these computer statistical programs, and I go and say, you know, there’s something wrong with the computing system. It’s just not doing this. And he’d say, Look, 99 times out of 100. It’s your fault. And I said, Yeah, you’re wrong. And it almost always was all right, So it’s it could be, But the default, almost certain explanation is you did something wrong. So follow the instructions and protect Protect yourself. All right. If you’re a student to ah has ah accommodation or needs an accommodation, their SST please let us know as soon as possible so we can make sure that you get that accommodation for the exams and the assignments. OK, So if you have an SSD situation, please notify Professor McDaniel and myself as soon as possible. Um, let’s see. So the due dates, submissions SST. I want to get

[0:43:02 Speaker 0] one last thing. Oh, yeah. In writing. You’re doing your You’re in the news assignments. Remember? We’re not asking you to take a stance of whether or not something is good or bad. Right or wrong. We’re asking you, given what we’ve covered in class, how does this relate? So right now you’re going to the first module. You have the discussion of shots. Snyder, you have discussion off the early the early parts of the U. S. The U. S. Constitution, the Texas Constitution, civil liberties and civil rights. How do these various things play into these topics? So we don’t want a piece about whether you like the squad, your dislike, the squad, how you feel about President Trump or how you feel about third parties, but more? What does this mean, given what we’ve talked about? And so in some ways, we’re kind of desensitizing this because you want to talk about this in relation to what does this mean in terms of the rules or how government works as opposed to what’s right or what’s wrong? It’s more of OK, well, how does this work within a larger framework of how the government actually operates? And this is critical to what we want you to get out of this class is that you can watch the news and get opinion. What’s right? What’s wrong? You get an idea of who the players are, but we want you to understand what the rules of the game are and understand how the how these processes work and how they’re couching a lot of things that they’re doing within these processes, and by better understanding these processes, you can better understand how government works. I think many people can name key figures but have no idea what they what they do, what they could actually do, what their powers are. We want you to understand, OK, who is this individual? What is their role? Given the role, here’s what they can and cannot do Give this issue. Here’s what can and cannot be done. And by better understanding the machine that is American government. You can better understand what outputs you you should expect to get. But furthermore, you could be much more engaged. Understanding. Well, how can I get the output that I want? How can I get the policy that I want by better understanding how the government works? You can accomplish

[0:45:12 Speaker 1] that. Yeah. I was just thinking that, uh, Professor McDaniels point you know, if if if I’m if I’m going through the civil rights lectures that we offer in the first module and you know, we talk about different strategies with civil rights movement and I was thinking about, you know, the squad, these four freshman congresswoman who clearly adopted Ah, you know, political action strategy, right? You know, they are not doing nonviolent direct action. They’re not doing a legal strategy. They ran for office in an attempt to get power to influence the system. I mean, you know, how’s that working out for them? Right? These are the kinds of connections we want you to make to talk about federalism, structure of government, constitutional claims, you know, parties and coalitional tensions. These things will make more sense. Is you kind of build your knowledge throughout the semester. But, you know, Professor Daniel, I talked about this. Classes, classes like the ultimate safe space, but not the way it’s traditionally portrayed. Right. Safe space. Like where you go and feel warm and comfortable and not feel threatened. No, we actually, when we say safe space, we mean, we want you to come in, really think about politics, Right. But to go beyond the arguments that you have with your neighbors read toe actually use kind of deeper theoretical understands what it means to have a democracy, to inform and to give structure and substance to the events of the day. And so, to the extent you could do that in the in the news like, Hey, this made me think about this. I think you know, that’s what we’re looking for you gotta be quick. You don’t You know, we’re not looking for essays, but, you know, to sort of in and out observations, things you thought were interesting and you could relate back from the events of the day to interesting and important concepts. That’s what we’re looking for. So with that, first one’s in the bag. We look forward to our next in the news segment next week. Welcome to the class and come to office hours. When you get a chance to contact us. We’re happy to talk to you guys and we’ll see you next week. See next week.

[0:47:13 Speaker 2] Government 3 10 in the news podcast is hosted by doctors Darren Shaw and Eric McDaniel and is produced by the liberal Arts TS Development Studio and the Department of Government and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of

[0:47:26 Speaker 0] Texas at Austin