GOV310 – In The News:: A look at national politics through the eyes of Texas, July 3, 2018

[0:00:00 Speaker 1] in the news.

[0:00:07 Speaker 0] Hi there. I’m Professor Shaw.

[0:00:09 Speaker 3] Professor McDaniel. Welcome to in the news for American Texas government

[0:00:13 Speaker 0] number five. Number five, number five. So this to be our last in the news segment. So we’ve got that going for us, which is nice. Other than that, she’s not much in the news this week, right? Just kind of a sleepy summer weight going on. I guess we’ll lead with, uh, with the Supreme Court. So, President Dan, what happened last week?

[0:00:32 Speaker 3] So Supreme Court made a number of, uh, key decisions, and we’re not gonna really go to those Utkan read those mirrored numerous decisions. We could spend hours talking about them, but really, the big thing is that a justice is retiring, And so that is Justice Stephen Breyer, Anthony Kennedy, and you can get him all mixed up.

[0:00:54 Speaker 0] We’re just waiting. Yeah, vultures are circling for a

[0:00:56 Speaker 3] few hours. Are Anthony Kennedy and Kennedy is important. Security was always seen as a swing vote in many ways. So if you think about the way in which Supreme Court is set up, you have nine justices. And really, it’s that fifth justice. The median justice is the one who kind of sway sting certain ways. Ah, and Kennedy is known really for his support for gay rights issues. And that’s really want things where he’s really stood out are compared others now. He was appointed under George George H. W. Bush. So in, um, in the one set in the late eighties, early nineties. And so

[0:01:33 Speaker 5] what? Candy was

[0:01:34 Speaker 0] a Reagan appointee. I think he might even go back that

[0:01:36 Speaker 3] I’m OK, so go

[0:01:37 Speaker 0] back that far. So going back to Reagan, I think

[0:01:40 Speaker 3] there’s a Republican appointee. However, he has been on the liberal side on a number of issues, specifically dealing with dealing with game rights. Now he has also been on the server side deal with other issues. But this is really a big thing, because he was the swing vote. So you’re not getting somebody at the tail end on. So with the death of just Scalia and the appointment of Justice Gorsuch, you, uh, it was basically trading conservative for conservative. Here you have somebody who might consider be conservative one certain dimensions liberal over dimensions, but was kind of right there in the middle. And because of this, there’s this concern that if this may shift the way the court is going to look. And so there have been a lot of things studies have been done a second. What will the court look like now? With this new appointee coming and giving, the names have been put forward. What will the court look like? What should we expect in terms? Some of the decisions again, these 54 decisions as profession shots pointed out on the lectures most of the decisions made by the Supreme Court or either 907 to like their overwhelming decisions, there are 54 decision and those. The ones we focus on these are rare, but these also wants that a little bit. Mawr was more conflict around those, and so it’s going to be interesting to see how the court takes shape regarding these issues.

[0:03:04 Speaker 0] Yeah, we’ve got a visual aid to kind of demonstrate when professor began and I talk about the ideological bent of the court. Now, this is something that’s in your lecture slides, so this should be familiar. We just came off of, you know, the modules where we’re focusing on the institutions of American government. The Supreme Court is one of the big three right Congress, the presidency in the court. By the way, we have to apologize where we try to keep all of our lectures really, really fresh. But my God, American politics moves quickly, so you’ll notice in the in the Supreme Court slides. We haven’t even updated with Gorsuch into the mix, let alone, you know, anticipated Kennedy’s retirement. So let’s

[0:03:42 Speaker 5] go to

[0:03:42 Speaker 0] that site. We’ve got this on a tablet. I want to show you guys this. This is something from Monkey Cage, which is a political kind of a quantitative empirical blawg run by the Washington Post and kind the overseer, or is a former colleague of Professor McDaniel, NYSE, John Sides Jones. A great guy, really good political scientist. So right now you can see the current configuration of the court. Now, this is these aren’t just made up. These Ah, these point estimates here are derived from the voting patterns of the justices. Professor McDaniel pointed out. I think this is this is something that you really want to keep in mind that Kennedy is. You see there, you’ve got on the right. The conservative wing you’ve got Thomas is the furthest right Alito, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and then Roberts. Little bit distance between Roberts and the others. Then you’ve got Kennedy. Then you go to the left. You’ve got Kegan, Brier, Sotomayor and Ginsburg kind of in that order. So you see Kennedy and you can see visually why so many people are really interested in this retirement and the subsequent appointment because you got four liberal justices, four conservative justices and Kennedy out there as kind of a swing vote. Now, Professor McDaniel is that we’re talking about this and he said, Look, Kennedy is he ends up scoring kind of in the middle, but that reflects two different tendencies. He tends to vote with the conservatives on most issues, especially especially those involving kind of constructionism and liberty, sort of a libertarian view about limiting the government’s role in society and the economy. But on social issues, he’s tended to vote with the liberals or at least been very amenable to the liberal position. And so, if you’re interested like, why are the Democrats so fired up about this? The thinking is, is that the LGBT community, the the pro choice community, think that Kennedy prevented the conservative wing of the court, pushing the country’s decision making processes on these important cases further to the right, so they would prefer to see some. But will they prefer a liberal? But they certainly don’t want to see Kennedy appointed by somebody they think that will put have sort of a conservative orientation towards some of these social issues and, of course, the big winner. They talks about his Roe v. Wade, the abortion case. I want to make a quick sort of nod to people or a quick sort of comment on Roe v. Wade, one of the things you’ve got to recognize about Roe v. Wade. Let’s just say Donald Trump nominates Ah, very conservative justice and that Justice joins a block of five that vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. Now, by the way, I think all of those things are speculative at best. Is Trump really in a position to nominate a very conservative justice with a narrow majority in the Senate? Right with that conservative justice actually vote conservatively on these issues. You know, that’s not that’s not a given, you know. Kennedy was nominated by Ronald Reagan, ended up being a swing vote. John Roberts was nominated by George W. Bush, and he’s been a little less than reliable for the conservatives on some important cases, so I’m not sure that’s going to happen. But if it does, um, you know, you need to remember that the Roe v. Wade simply asserted that there was a constitutional right to choose that it was part of this penumbra of rights under an assumption of privacy and therefore that states could not pass any laws that infringed upon a woman’s right to choose. Okay, so that s so there’s a fundamental right there. If the

[0:07:20 Speaker 5] court were

[0:07:20 Speaker 0] to overturn Roe v. Wade, um, that would simply mean that those states would be in a position or the federal government could pass. Congress could pass a statute protecting rights to choose the You have a constitutional amendment protecting that that states would be so. So for those of you, I’m not saying it’s not something that you all ought to be concerned about. I’m just saying that there are a lot of steps between here and there. And even if Roe v Wade were overturned, certainly state like California and New York, other states would immediately step in and passed laws protecting a woman’s right to choose. I think even states like Texas would. They were simply define it. So So let’s, you know, bear that in mind that all of this is part of a process. That’s a process Professor McDaniel I’ve been emphasizing throughout the semester. These court cases are important, but sometimes the court on the case, Roe v. Wade with the court came in, came and did an Roe v. Wade was say, This right is in the Constitution. You know the government can’t touch it, right? It’s not subject to Democratic deliberations and legislation and stuff like that. If you take away that protection, it doesn’t necessarily mean that abortion is going to be illegal. It simply means that states and the federal would have to step in and define public policy in that area. Right? So, um, so you know, again, consequential. But that’s five or six steps down the road. Let’s see what happens in the interim. Now there is an interesting question. We want to spend too much time on this, but what we think President Trump’s gonna do with this nominee, and does he have the votes, You know, kind of quoting Hamilton. Right? Do you have the votes on this? Uh, what you think looking there, Professor McDonnell Crystal ball. Who were the key senators that you’re gonna be watching?

[0:09:01 Speaker 3] Uh, well, I mean, you have a number of senators. I think Senator Collins from Maine, She’s looking

[0:09:09 Speaker 0] for main, right?

[0:09:10 Speaker 3] She’s got made it clear what she wants in terms of a, uh, Supreme Court justice. And yeah, I was anti Roe v. Wade. She’s gonna oppose,

[0:09:22 Speaker 0] right? She said she would could not support somebody who opposed Roe v. Wade, which I thought was interesting

[0:09:26 Speaker 3] and so

[0:09:27 Speaker 0] right. So if we go to this, let’s see if we get this up on the, um on the camera here. Uh, this is that same graph. And if you think of Senator Collins who, Professor, there’s no prompting here. He just said, Senator Collins, But we happen to have a graph here. This is imposing Senator Collins. Voting record on the same ideological spectrum is the justices. And you can see the Collins is actually to the left of Kennedy. She sees a Republican senator from Maine, but she’s too left. You can be so you know, if we were game theorists, we’d say she she might oppose anybody. Um, you know, to the right of her position. And she said Roe v. Wade as a litmus test. Uh, who else? We have Murkowski from

[0:10:11 Speaker 3] Alaska because? Because those, I mean, these are choice Republicans. Yeah. These air to critical. I mean, get to women in the GOP in the Senate who have played a key role in terms of the repeal of the A c A. A number of things where they have actually broken with party ranks, uh, with record file the party because they didn’t like the way things were going down. And so it’s gonna be interesting. See how they play out in this, Because again, it’s a fresh start point out, it is very slim majority. Um, and you put somebody there that they don’t like it doesn’t go through. And so you see this really becoming, um, very, very dicey. And also, with the midterms coming up, it gets even dicier than that.

[0:10:57 Speaker 0] Yeah, so let’s just quickly, we’ll see a few things and get out of the first is, you know, the president has the right to nominate has the obligation, Constitution obligation to nominate justices to the Supreme Court. The Senate has the right to confirm those nominees. That’s the checks and balances we talked about throughout the semester. You’ll probably recall a couple years ago in 2016 when, uh, when Justice Scalia passed away actually out in Marfa, Um, on a hunting trip. Uh, this was in, I think May. Maybe June and the Republicans President Obama nominated somebody to the Supreme Court. The Republicans, who had a majority in the Senate, refused to give that sent that nominee Garland Merrick, American girl. I always forget it. Merrick Garland. And it’s sort of a shame that could have been a chief. It could have been a justice on the Supreme Court. Now we don’t even remember which was his first and second name. They refused to give him hearing they Mitch McConnell in the Senate. The Republican leadership sent rolled the dice. They said, six months till the election, we should wait for the presidential election before we do this and I say, rolled the dice in the sense that Hillary Clinton was winning in all the polls. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote if Clinton had won, Clinton would have been in a position of either renominating Obama’s choice or saying no. I want my own and substituting somebody who could have been much more liberal. Um, you know, Garland was seen as being kind of a moderate on Obama thought that it was kind of important not to nominate a very liberal justice and and sort of cheese off the Republicans. It turned out it didn’t matter, but that might have been the best, the Republicans who could have gotten under the circumstances. But they refused to go along, and they ended up winning the presidential election and getting Neil Gorsuch, his replacement. So the strategy paid off. But Democrats are still very angry over that. They think that was a stolen seat now. On the other hand, it was replacing a conservative with conservatives. So it’s I’m not saying it was right or anything. I actually think it was, Ah, very dubious move. Now Democrats are saying like, Well, there’s another election, not a presidential election. But there’s a midterm election, you know, the president’s under investigations, so, you know, maybe we should just wait on what their hope is of course is that if the Democrats win two seats and take back the Senate, then they’ll have a slim majority, and they can exert significantly mawr influence over who Trump nominates for that position. I don’t think there’s a single chance in the world the Republicans, Republicans still control the Senate and the presidency. You can’t The rules have been changed in the Senate, so this isn’t something you can filibuster anymore. You could filibuster fears, which meant that the majority had to have 60 votes to quote to vote of closure to end a filibuster. The Democrats, when they had the Senate and Republicans were blocking Obama’s federal Judicial Court nominees, changed the rules when they lost the Senate. This is the trouble when you change the rules. If you lose the majority, all of a sudden, the other side inherits those rules. So the Republicans no longer require ah super majority in order to get their judicial nominees. They don’t all they need is a majority, but they barely got a majority. John McCain is is ill battling. Cancer hasn’t been voting right, so that’s one per seps lost vote you got to Murkowski and Collins, both pro choice Republicans, who face kind of maverick electorates in Maine and Alaska that aren’t you know, they’re conservative, but they’re kind of libertarian type conservatives. You may see Trump reach across the aisle for Democratic support. Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat from West Virginia. Heitkamp, a conservative senator facing reelection. Democratic Centre, facing reelection in North Dakota of and uh, also Joe Donnelly, uh, Democratic senator from Indiana, in a tough re election fight. My senses is that if you can’t get the Republicans, you’re probably not going to get the Democrats, but those Air five senators that you’ll wanna watch as this process unfolds. Trump has said he’ll make his pick within a week. So next week at this time, I guess we’ll have. We’ll have the pick and we’ll know how the politics maybe is stacking up. But right,

[0:15:13 Speaker 3] yes, we know what LeBron’s going Now. We’re going to my Lakers. That’s right

[0:15:18 Speaker 0] in my Lakers like is be relevant again. Finally,

[0:15:22 Speaker 3] eso. But one thing that is important about this and I think there’s something we need to remember is these fights over the justices in many ways may hurt the court, and so whoever they appoint because this could be the appointment so highly politicized is gonna university how they behave wants to get once they get on the court, because if they see any of the decisions being highly political, that means the court may lose its legitimacy. Because again, when we talk about the Supreme Court is really is able to do things because people see it was legitimate and they respect the opinions. And so you may see a change in terms of terms of the behavior, some of the members of the court in order for to come off to look nonpartisan. And so again, anybody that’s appointed, it’s the expectation that will behave this way. However, where you stand depends on where you sit, where you’re sitting, pens away stand. Sorry about that. And so when they’re on the court, that may be focused on maintaining the legitimacy of the court. And so because of that, that may make decisions that may be contrary to what people expect because they want to maintain legitimacy and the idea of fairness within the body. And so again, the more politicized it becomes, the more you may see the court either reject certain cases or in many ways take stances that are very, very finely detailed, not making broad decisions because they did not want to seem partisan.

[0:16:46 Speaker 0] I think that’s really interesting point. I mean, this is sort of a personal prediction. If if there is a very conservative justice nominated and voted for confirmed by the Senate, I think John Roberts is going to slide to the left. Yes, I do. John Roberts has consistently shown he’s interested in kind of protecting the prestige and the credibility and making sure the court is seen as non political just for you guys. Edification. If you’re interested in kind of exploring this further, there’s a interesting article on reforming the Supreme Court. By BOB Bauer Bob Bauer is, ah, Democratic lawyer, attorney, kind of real power broker in Washington. Very smart guy was close to President Obama. Bauer wrote this interesting piece, talking about reforming the Supreme Court, and he basically starts with the premise that the opposition, the way the Senate has evolved the Senate, has become very political in its in its consideration of these nominees, he goes, it’s

[0:17:40 Speaker 5] because the court has a lot of political

[0:17:41 Speaker 0] power. You know what, why deny it. Why pretend that the opposition to justices is based on some sort of interpretation of their judicial credentials? He goes, That’s that’s nonsense. We know it’s nonsense. He says. We should go. And as a couple proposals, one was interesting. He proposed in 18 year term to a Supreme Court justice, Justice and and he said This life long term, he said, is probably something that’s outlived its usefulness. So let’s let’s move to a term limited court not a short term, a very long term, but but so that they’re replaced so that you kind of know this cycle there on on and can anticipate that it’s got a couple of interesting ideas like that. So if you’re fired up about Supreme Courts and politics, Bob Bauer has a couple of interesting points on that. So

[0:18:25 Speaker 3] there’s an article on box which talks about the idea of a swing voter and how that changes given, um, the new appointments, things like that. I’ll try to post that to the bottle.

[0:18:36 Speaker 0] Okay, cool. That’s obviously the dominant issue in the news. We got a couple of other things we want. Oh, just address real briefly. We keep talking about immigration because immigration keeps dominating the headlines. If it if it weren’t for the Supreme Court, immigration would have, you know, been kind of the headline and every in the new session we’ve done this time around. Eso We want to talk a little about immigration little bit about the election in Mexico. Just have a couple things to say about that and then a couple local issues. So let’s talk about immigration. I want Teoh to roll a Ah, a little clip from CBS News Talking about, um, you know how this issue and how the executive order that the president issued has has evolved. And then what seems to be sort of increasingly intense Democratic response to the situation on the border and separation of families in this kind of thing? So if we could roll that clip from CBS, it set us up.

[0:19:26 Speaker 5] The debate over immigration continues, with a growing number of Democrats calling to abolish immigration and customs enforcement in a tweet Sunday, the president wrote, quote the liberal left, also known as the Democrats, want to get rid of ice who do a fantastic job and want open borders. Crime would be rampant and uncontrollable this after protesters held rallies coast to coast Saturday against the Trump administration’s zero tolerance immigration policy. Here’s what the president had to say about Democrats in a new interview aired Sunday on Fox News

[0:20:01 Speaker 1] between Maxine Waters and Nancy Pelosi and getting rid of ice and having open borders. And the biggest thing you have open borders, all it’s going to do is lead to massive, massive crime that’s gonna be there platform, open borders, which equals crime. I think they’ll never win another election, so I’m actually quite happy that

[0:20:23 Speaker 5] it’s worth noting. Sunday’s interview is one of more than two dozen the president has given to Fox News since taking office. In comparison, no other news outlet has been allowed to interview the president more than half a dozen times over the same period. And have

[0:20:38 Speaker 0] I love that little shot? They get in on CBS News saying it is worth noting. I don’t know if it’s worth noting. It’s worth noting if you’re CBS, Yes, but the little shot about the president sort of favoring Fox News aside, interesting development, You know that you all know from previous conversations that we’ve had discussions we’ve had about the situation on the boards. Separation of families. There’s a interesting development now on, and I think it is going to play out in the election. That is, that Democratic opposition to the president’s policy and um, kind of fervor over immigration generally has led to fairly strong calls here. So, Isis, for those of you who you know, let’s make sure the world clear on the terms is the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ice immigration, Customs Enforcement. It is an agency is an agency under the Department of Homeland Security. So the development of ice or the kind of bureaucratic institutionalization of ice, uh, occurred when after 9 11 when the developed, when homeland security was instituted by the Bush administration and a lot of different government functions were kind of brought under homeland security. Now what’s what’s kind of interesting? So what they’re calling for with a lot of, um, people calling for now is the abolition of ice. Now this to me, is little curious, right? Because ice is an enforcement agency, it strikes me. This is I’m sorry, little bit of an editorial comment that I think the problem that people have is probably more properly directed at law itself and or the enforcement kind of entity. So So ices is an instrument that reflects the legislative mandate, right? We have immigration laws Isis supposed to enforce them and to the extent that there is flexibility or discretion with respect to enforcement that comes from Homeland Security and the executive. So I I find this kind of curious and as someone who grew up in California, Southern California, it’s interesting. I’ve been reading this stuff from people who are talking about ice, and there’s sort of this longing for the days of the I N s the Immigration Naturalization Service, which is what used to do what iced does now. So prior 2000 to 2003 the I. N s enforced immigration policies. And there’s all this stuff about how remember the days in the I N s and that was I n s was hated Back in the day I grew up, I grew up in San Diego and went to school U C l A. And I remember Cheech and Chong, this comedy team, you know, doing all these routines about I N s agents and the entire film born in East L. A, which I wouldn’t necessarily recommend, But it is an absolute shot satire of the I N s. So I find this nostalgia for the I N s, especially on the part of left, kind of curious, But be that as it may, you know, there’ve been a couple of electoral stunners in last few weeks. The number four ranking Democrat on the House lost a primary to a 28 year old who never run for Paul. It never political office before, but but her platform, the winning candidates platform, was essentially abolish ice. Kamala Harris have a long shot Democratic presidential potential candidate from California’s called for abolishing ice. So this is This is something that progressives have clung have sort of grabbed onto his way to differentiate them from the establishment Democrats who arm or kind of cautious. And I think this thing has some real potential to be an issue within the Democratic Party. Both parties, by the way, have enormous conflicts and sort of coalitional tension. So I don’t mean toe suggest that either side is a bunch of happy campers. But this one, I think, is yet to play out fully on the Democratic side.

[0:24:26 Speaker 3] Yeah, it’s It’s in many ways which you people talk about. The rise of the tea party and the rise. President Trump is reactionary conservatism. You could argue that the rise of Bernie Sanders and many of the others is reactionary liberalism where they’re not pragmatic. They’re doing it out of frustration and anger and taking positions that they the normal wouldn’t take. But they’re just trying. They’re just extreme because they’re upset about the way things are things happening. One of things, it’s important note is this story about us immigration is much more complex in the way in the way we’re putting it for Ah, lot of people have argued. But the changes in the immigration laws have actually made the undocumented problem worse, because there used to be the bracero program used to be ways to allow individuals to kind of cross the borders, work and go back and four with greater ease and with the closing of the borders. Now these individuals were basically came over and they couldn’t go back, and so this is kind of created the problem, so it’s it’s not as black and white as we try to make it out to be this very complex deals with the nature of the economy. And there are a number of things that we need to account for in doing this. And so I don’t really think this idea of open borders as President Trump talked about is what the Democrats want. But you could argue is they want a, I guess more, more of a sieve, a supposed to eso, as opposed to everything being open as opposed or you have oh, everything open. You have the wall. They probably wants more of a city where, you know, you certainly will come back and forth for certain people cannot, and this becomes a bit more complex. And I think one of I think one of the greatest travesties that we’ve done is that our discussion of immigration policy and how immigration works has been so overly simplified that we fail to understand the nuance of these of it, and we immediately linked immigration a crime. Or that this immigration problems, something brand new as opposed, understand how the laws in the system may have contributed the problem

[0:26:30 Speaker 0] that we see right now. Yeah, President Trump has repeatedly called on Congress to fix our This is his quote, fix our broken immigration laws and whatever you think about you know, President Trump. I think there actually is a consensus that the immigration laws are fairly significant need of reform. And so a lot of this is, is we’re talking about immigration throughout this this summer. You know, a lot of it reflects the fact that Congress can’t seem to get together to do anything. You know there’s agreement that there is a problem, but there’s no real consensus on solution. The Republican majority in the House. Actually, Republicans are a majority in the House. But it wasn’t the majority that put this up. There is a Republican immigration reform bill that came up last week and it was trounced. It lost like 390 votes toe 140. It wasn’t even close. So Congress seems to be, ah, to be in a position where they’re not fixing the problems. We’re addressing them. And presidents Obama and Trump have basically used their discretion in interpreting laws to try to shape and foreign policy. There’s an argument that those efforts are not constitutional, actually think that’s probably correct in a strict sense. But Obama said, You know well, if Congress won’t act, I will. Trump is basically you. After saying he didn’t have the right to issue an executive order, issued an executive order, you know, preventing the separation of it. So you know all of this is it’s interesting that the issue itself is fascinating and complex and important, but it’s it’s It’s a really interesting illustration of some of the problems we’ve got in our system and fist McDaniel. I we, you know, we like country were advocates of the Constitution and the institutions that rise into the Constitution. But, you know, sometimes they just seem ill equipped to deal with some of the problems. Or maybe maybe it’s the parties of the individuals their ill equipped to deal with the problems that we face now. Speaking of, you know, right wing populism in the from President Trump. We had elections in Mexico this last week, and a left wing populist won the election in Mexico. So Mexico now has a new president over a door. We sworn in and we have ah clip kind of talking a little bit about the election and over doors background that would like to show you and have a brief conversation about that.

[0:28:49 Speaker 7] They’re selling what many are calling a revolution for this country. You see people pouring into the square to get me to celebrate an event they never thought. What took place. The election of leftist populist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. He’s been running for president now for over a decade. This is’s third attempt at the office. Previous attempts, he said, capped him from gaining office because of corruption. Not right now, though, he has more than defeated the opposition. That’s because more of Mexican societies mainly appear feel over the years the nation’s pours. But this election, he bends, reach out. So many people were struck by his anti corruption message. He’s message against the violence, this rack in this country. Now the hard questions will begin to emerge. How will he govern how we, for example, confront Donald Trump of the issues that are so unpopular like wall like the trade war? So those questions still remain, but Mexicans around right now celebrating is very unlikely victory. CNN Mexico City.

[0:29:58 Speaker 0] Okay, so you see what’s going on in Mexico So brief bit of context here. Mexico had was a one party state for about 80 or 90 years. It was dominated by the pre the PR I the Partido devolution audio don’t know international industrial. I’m not sure the p. R I and so they had one political party. They had elections, but the PRI won every election That changed, you know, in about 15 20 years ago when ah, Challenger party was kind of allowed to emerge the pond, the P a n Partido Access Acciona National at the pot. So there was the pre the kind of existing, you know, bureaucratic party on, and then the pond, which was, you know,

[0:30:45 Speaker 1] kind of

[0:30:45 Speaker 0] various forms. There was sort of a free market element to the pond, kind of civil libertarian element to the pond on, and almost a kind of a social conservatism to the pond. But it’s sort of hard to describe and kind of left right terms. There was the pre in the pond. Obrador comes from outside. So for several elections, you had something like two party competition in Mexico. Will Obrador comes from outside those two traditional parties. And, as they mentioned, he ran in 2006 and there’s a fairly consider amount of evidence that his vote was basically suppressed. And then it wasn’t really a free and fair election. There’s not. I don’t I’m not an expert on Mexican elections. We say Professor Ken Green is and some others here. I don’t know if there’s a sense that open door really won that election, but there clearly is a sense. Is a lot of corruption and vote suppression going on there. So But he became mayor of Mexico City over a door, and actually, even though his rhetoric is and we say left wing populist, what we mean is he’s challenging corruption, and the existing part is sort of a Bernie Sanders type challenge. And he says that the entrenched interests are buying and selling the parties and the political system. It wants to open it up for more popular input to redistribute the wealth in the little more equitable fashion. Not much redistribution of wealth in Mexico right now, so so in that sense, he looks a little more like Bernie Sanders than he does Donald Trump. But like Donald Trump, his appeal is to the sort of nationalist instinct that sort of power of the people in the Mexican population. And you know, everything that’s part of the establishment is part of the problem. The United States is sort of a convenient punching bag, and Trump has certainly lent himself to that cost. So Obrador has used the United States and Trump and the Wall as a rallying point for kind of the nationalism and the self respect of the Mexican people, and that basically carried the day. So then the question becomes, and there’s an irony here, right? You’ve got NAFTA trade agreed between the Canadians, the Americans and the Mexicans. And you’ve got a left wing populist in Mexico, a right wing populist in the United States and then kind of a centre left prime minister in in Canada. So what do we dio and Trump tweeted out as he does basically sort of congratulating over door, saying, I hope we can work together. I again I’m not an expert on over a door, but I get the sense that he’s he’s a little more practical and maybe more of a realist than you might think, given some of his campaign rhetoric. Also, if he really wants to have a lot of spending programs and to redistribute the wealth in Mexico, he needs the United States to sign on and to sort of be involved in some of these infrastructure projects. So my sense is there may be more of a working relationship here than we would have thought. But I’ve sort of exhausted my expertise on Mexican elections. I don’t know. What do you know?

[0:33:36 Speaker 3] Well, one of things I remember about populism is that populism can take a variety of forms, and a key aspect of populism is that there is this kind of noble masses and a corrupt elite. And so populism really splits the nation to between the noble, which you’ve seen is the masses and the corporately to Could you take a liberal? Or it could take a conservative bent to it. And so if you think of Bernie Sanders, he was more of the liberal populism. Think of Donald Trump or conservative populism, but I think what also is important was with Professor Sharp Point about this nationalist aspect of it. One of things that we see is if you compare the US to other Western industrialized nations such as France, Germany, Great Britain, that are the United Kingdom that the US much mawr nationalistic, much more like to believe that people more like, say, they’re willing to die for the for the U. S. Then people want to say their diet will die for the other nations, a sense of superiority since this is the best place to live. And what’s interesting is if you compare the U. S. To Mexico that the US is really the Mexicans have this same level of national pride that that Americans express and so tapping into nationalism works in the U. S. But also works in Mexico and this idea of building the wall Okay, I think it also helps of this build this, but also this appeal and nationalism is something we’re seeing happen really throughout the world. And so you’re seeing this the rise of nationalist parties and we talk about nationalist parties or parties that really want to focus on really our nation becomes number one. Everybody else, uh, is an invader and and there somehow going to taint the country. So we want to retain our purity, and we’re seeing this happen all throughout Europe. We’re seeing this happen in Mexico, say it happened in the US and much

[0:35:37 Speaker 5] of

[0:35:37 Speaker 3] this is a response to what we’re seeing in terms of globalization with the change in the global economy. And it’s gonna be very interesting to see how this rise of nationalism take shape and how this affects politics. But then also, how did FX trading things that with other nations specifically, if this nationalism leads to another global recession, do we all of a sudden see that die out and really a new rise of globalization?

[0:36:02 Speaker 0] Okay, we’re gonna go local now. Uh, actually, local and state first, McDaniel dug up a story Thought was kind of interesting. You wanna

[0:36:10 Speaker 3] all right,

[0:36:10 Speaker 0] Let us know what’s going on with the bags. So

[0:36:13 Speaker 5] those of you

[0:36:13 Speaker 3] are sick of paying 25 cents because you forgot to bring you back to H E. B. Well, you may no longer have to do that. The Texas Supreme Court ruled that the these plastic band bags are unconstitutional in Mexico video, which talks about that a little bit more

[0:36:30 Speaker 8] after five years without plastic bags in Austin, changes could be coming Friday. The Texas Supreme Court ruled local government could not restrict the sale of containers or packages if not authorized by state law, meaning single use plastic bags could come back to Austin.

[0:36:47 Speaker 6] This is, in fact,

[0:36:48 Speaker 8] ah broad based bipartisan issue. Environmental advocates are disappointed. They fought to ban the plastic bags for nearly a decade.

[0:36:56 Speaker 6] We campus on it. We spoke to tens of thousands of Austin residents. We were regenerated thousands of letters to the City Council on this.

[0:37:03 Speaker 8] Although the decision does not have an immediate impact, he worries the reversal will be detrimental to the environment and wildlife in the area.

[0:37:11 Speaker 6] The when was the last time you saw the white plastic bag floating down the street in the city of Austin doesn’t happen here. You go to Dallas, you gotta Houston and you see it again. You’re like, That’s right. That’s something that we got rid of.

[0:37:21 Speaker 8] But not everyone is unhappy about the ruling.

[0:37:23 Speaker 0] That’s a cost that that company has to bear just for that particular jurisdiction.

[0:37:28 Speaker 8] The Texas Retailers Association attempted to sue the city of Austin in 2013 but eventually dropped the suit. George Kelemen says this decision is a victory for retailers across the state.

[0:37:39 Speaker 0] This creates a level playing field sort of, ah, one size fits all kind of proposal for the state as it relates to the regulation

[0:37:48 Speaker 1] of packaging, not just simply

[0:37:49 Speaker 6] plastic back packaging in general,

[0:37:51 Speaker 8] for both ends of the spectrum. The impact of Friday’s decision

[0:37:55 Speaker 6] will certainly start to see over the next weeks and months. How this is going to develop

[0:37:58 Speaker 8] likely won’t be understood right away. Chelsea Trey Hand Spectrum news

[0:38:05 Speaker 3] And this really talks about a battle that pitted between environmentalists and business. So what grade do we protect? The environment at the cost of business? What do you to protect business? The cost of the environment. Now one of things about it is, the gentleman said. That was the last time you seen a plastic bag. Uh, and so there’s this argument that there are fewer plastic bags, the waterways, things of that nature. Austin Aziz basically said, We believe that’s the case because they don’t keep track of these things. And so one of the problems we have is has this band really work the way we wanted to. And so we said, we’ve talked of a bunch of people while talking too much people is helpful, but you re actually, the good objective measure of this and that does not exist. And so we really don’t know if this is effective as we way we believe it is, and it is interesting to see what will take shape. Aziz goes forward and they get. The attorney general’s already sent a letter to Austin and several other cities that have these bag ban saying, Look, you could know Margaret Force this, given the Supreme Court’s ruling now the city may try to fight this a little bit longer, but it looks like thes bag bands really will not may have a bear short shelf life, so to speak,

[0:39:21 Speaker 0] just a couple quick comments. The first is it plays into this issue that Professor McDaniel I will highlight when we talk about sort of Texas in reforming Texas government. That is the limited ordinance power that the localities that the city and county governments have in the state of Texas. Um, this is something that a lot of people think there ought to be More of that is that local communities auto, have more power. You shouldn’t have to have state legislation to do certain things, but ah, and I haven’t seen the brief that the court considered here. It’s not surprising to me, and it may not even be tortured reading of the Texas Constitution to have ruled this way. Um, that the states and localities actually don’t have a lot of power to do this kind of thing. And my guess is, is what the court said is that you do not have the ordinance power to do this. This requires state legislation. That’s my guess as to

[0:40:12 Speaker 3] what they there is a lot of books, and so the law on the books is pretty clear, but the lo community not have the powder knew this. So the only way to do this change the law

[0:40:19 Speaker 0] of state level right? It’s is so, you know, irrespective what you think about the bag live, I think the court tends to rule on you know, these sorts of narrow but important grounds. Um, you know the other. The other thing is that I think this is true with a lot of these environment business issues is that it’s become kind of a calling card. If you’re doing business in Austin, um, you know, and you make you emphasize that we don’t do plastic bags or, you know we provide you know, cloth or other sorts of bags to help the environment that when it becomes cost incentive for businesses to do this, they tend to do these things. So this isn’t to say we shouldn’t have environmental regulations or laws and that the market is self regulating. But there is a market for this, sort of, You know, the guy was talking a presentation or packaging. There’s a market for that, and in Austin, it’s fairly acute. My guess is, is that, um, you know, you will see plastic bags if this kind of moves forward. But I’m out in Westlake and in Westlake Village, and at this point they ask you, if you want plastic bag, do you want a plastic bag? And they don’t

[0:41:22 Speaker 5] have a golfer

[0:41:22 Speaker 0] paper anymore. But people, all sorts of people come in with their cloth bags, and there’s, like, you know, cowboy bags and longhorn bags and stuff like that. So, you know, So it reminds me a little bit of the Kyoto treaty that the United States withdrew from the United States. Withdrawing from international treaty on the environment doesn’t mean the United States is then going to, you know, get out the coal factories again and start polluting. I think we’ve kind of moved. Proponents would like to have formal regulation or bands in place to ensure that this happens, but I think there’s a sense that we’re moving in a particular direction. The question is, what’s the role of the state in kind of regulating and setting those standards? So one last thing before we let you guys go today’s the July 3rd. Tomorrow is July 4th. By the time this drops, hopefully, you guys will see it on the third, maybe on the fourth. But we wanted Teoh to go to the History Channel, one of our favorite sources, for information on this to give you just a little bit of ah primer on the Fourth of July to get you in the mood. So if we could roll that

[0:42:20 Speaker 2] every summer, Americans celebrate the anniversary of our nation’s birth on July 4th, 17 76. That’s when the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, the revolutionary document in which the 13 American colonies announced they were free from British rule, but that you didn’t know some people think we should actually celebrate on July 2nd, not the fourth. That was the day the delegates actually voted on the declaration. They just didn’t have the written document completed and printed until the fourth, ready for some more Fourth of July facts. Well, for starters, Philadelphia’s famous Liberty Bell was not wrong on July 4th, 17 76. It’s big moment came four days later, on July 8 to honor the first public reading of the declaration. No fewer than three presidents, all of them among the nation’s founding fathers, died on independent state. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died hours apart from each other on July 4th, 18 26 50 years after the nation declared its independence from Britain. James Monroe also died on July 4th. In 18 31 from the beginning, Americans marked the birth of independence with parades, speeches, music and public readings of the declaration. Artillery salutes, a key feature of the earliest Independence Day celebrations, went out of fashion as cannons fell out of use by the late 19th century. But there’s one early tradition that hasn’t gone out of style. Fireworks. Congress first authorized pyrotechnics as part of Fourth of July celebrations way back in 17 77 today. More than 14,000 fireworks displays go off across the nation every July 4th. The largest of these is the Macy’s Fourth of July spectacular in New York City, some £75,000 of fireworks go off during the roughly half hour show, which is attended by two million people. And since 1941 most Americans have gotten to enjoy a little relaxation with their fireworks. Congress made Independence Day a federal legal holiday that year, and we bet you didn’t know. It’s one of only four federal holidays, along with New Year’s Day, veteran State and Christmas. That air celebrated on the same calendar date each year.

[0:44:38 Speaker 0] All right, so have a happy and safe fourth and hopefully keep it under £75,000 of fireworks. Do Your Best

[0:44:54 Speaker 9] Government 3 10 and The news podcast is hosted by doctors Darren Shaw and Eric McDonough and is produced by the liberal Arts TS Development Studio and the Department of Government in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin