GOV310 – In The News: A look at national politics through the eyes of Texas, June 1, 2017

[0:00:01 Speaker 0] in the news.

[0:00:08 Speaker 2] Well, then, in true professor saw an impressive Daniel. Welcome to in the news. All right, so this is our Week one segment, as we’ve explained in the syllabus and in the introductory video, we’re gonna spend a lot of time this semester taking what’s in the news. Hence the name of the segment. Ah, and connecting it to the ideas, the theories, you know, the sort of general information that we’re presenting, in particular in the modules that we’ve released in this case, the first set of modules which deal with the Constitution, the founding of the Republic, federalism, the interplay between states and localities and the federal government. There’s a lot of fodder out there for us to make those sorts of connections. And so this will be the first of these and you get a flavor for it. Kind of refine it a little bit over this semester. But we got a number of topics that we wanted to cover today. Professor Dan and I were discussing before class and he

[0:00:57 Speaker 3] wants to

[0:00:57 Speaker 2] talk about Russia. What? Oh, it’s Russia got to do with United States. I’m perplexed.

[0:01:03 Speaker 3] Begin. There’s so much discussion about Russia right now that Russia influenced the election was a trump campaign. Working with rockin with Russia are sitting up back channels,

[0:01:14 Speaker 5] all kinds of other stuff.

[0:01:16 Speaker 3] And so there’s really a lot going on and this is kind of the thing that will never die. And so were there a lot of questions being left about? What exactly is going on with the Trump administration and its connections with Russia begin because Putin was not seen Azaz, an ally of the US there. People are very suspicious. Putin. Furthermore, people are suspicious of what Putin is trying do in Europe. Eso again with is trying to move westward. And so there are a lot of nations associate with NATO that are concerned about Is Russia trying to expand its power base? And so because of all these things going on, there’s this old were all international concern about Russia, what and what Russia is doing. But then the fact that it’s attached to uh, the US election, specifically the winner of the presidential election, President Trump on many of his colleagues there are concerns about is there some type of foreign influence or undo for influence or illegal activity that is going on again. Again, The idea of speaking with foreign nations makes perfect sense. You have to get on a regular basis called international politics, but there’s concern about how it’s being done. And if certain things are being done, that may actually be counter to the interests

[0:02:36 Speaker 2] of the nation. All right, so what do we got? We’ve you know, we’re talking about this week and certainly in a set of modules about the establishment of the Republic framing of the Constitution. We’re talking about federalism. All right, So how does Russia and how does this controversy surrounding Russia tie into these sorts of concepts? Well, you know, as you’ll recall, hopefully from the last election cycle. Um, you know, the Russians were you know, hacking is the wrong word. I hate it when people use the frame hacking. They don’t know what they’re talking about. The notion that the Russians hacked into the election systems the nice is that not what we’re talking about. The Russians engage in a lot of computer espionage, and they do it not only with respect to the United States with a lot of other countries, and so one of the things that was going on was that the Russians were obtaining electronic information, tried to break into the Republican National Committee but did successfully break into the Democratic National Committee. Obtained a lot of emails and they leak those emails out over the course of the campaign. And you may or may not been following this. I actually found the emails. You know, what the emails basically showed was that the Democratic National Committee was more sympathetic to Hillary Clinton than they were to Bernie Sanders. Will anybody who had a pulse and warm blood was aware of this over the course of the campaign, Not a lot going on there. But in addition to sort of electronic surveillance, there were high level communications, evidently between members of the Trump campaign and then later on, after Trump won the election, members of the transition team associated with President elect Trump and the Russians. That’s basically what we know. A. To this point, there’s not a lot of concrete information beyond that. And so if you’re out there in, you know, just kind of monitoring this stuff casually is most Americans are, you know, it may be a little perplexity. What what is going on? Well, the fundamental question for Professor McDaniel myself in an American government class is okay. I’ll actually say this. This is a little bit of contradictory to the conventional wisdom. The conventional wisdom you always get when something like this happens in government is, well, it’s the cover up. That’s the real problem. It’s not the crime, it’s the cover up. It’s lying. I actually think in this case we know

[0:04:48 Speaker 4] a lot about

[0:04:49 Speaker 2] the cover up. We don’t know about the actual crime. In other words, what’s been leaked is that it was the case that members of the Trump campaign, you know, in the Trump Transition team had contacts with the Russians. That seems to be the case. That’s sort of the cover up. But we don’t know why. We don’t know what the substance waas we’re not quite sure wasn’t the case. They were basically contacting the Russians and saying, you know, Hey, we’re gonna take a softer line, you know, on you guys than the Obama administration has. You know, Was it setting up negotiations after Trump wins the presidency? Or was it something a little more nefarious? Was it the case that the Trump admitted that the Trump campaign, for instance, was encouraging the Russians to release Elektronik eavesdropping information during the course of the campaign. That’s a little more substantive. So when I say I actually care more about the crime than the cover up, that’s what I mean. We don’t have a lot of information about what was the substance of these contacts. What is it that the Trump people were actually talking to the Russians about right now? You know, how does this kind of connect with the American government? Well, it’s an open question, you know, a duly kind of nominated candidate of a political party. What exactly is appropriate conversations for them to have? I mean, I should they be negotiating potential deals with a foreign government in advance of an election, or even this is maybe a little less controversial. But, you know, should they even be talking to them after they’ve been elected but have not yet been sworn in? Is that undermining the president of the United States prior to the president actually leaving office? So, you know, these are all open questions If there’s something more substantive, if there was actually meddling in the election. Well, then, we’ve got a real issue. Now. It connects up to the broader question of checks and balances. That is to say, Congress is investigating this activity, which is Congress’s role, as is an oversight agency. Visa Vee, the executive, the presidency. The courts could potentially get involved. There’s also questions within the executive branch. So right now, you know, Trump runs his own Justice Department. The Justice Department is within the executive branch of government. There is an attorney general appointed by the president. United States. They would normally be in charge of overseeing kind of occasions like this. Except there’s a potential conflict of interest, right? It’s not just that, you know, it’s the Trump Administration’s executive agency. It’s the Jeff Sessions was tangentially involved. Jeff Sessions, being our attorney general, former senator from Alabama, was involved in some of these allegations and potential conversations. So Sessions has recused himself. The Justice Department has basically OK. It’s not special prosecutor special counsel. A special counsel has been appointed in. The special counsel is going to attempt to find out what’s going on, and Trump bowed to pressure after firing Comey, the director of the FBI and the FBI is also within the executive branch. Trump is entitled to fire the director of the FBI. But is it appropriate to fire the director of the FBI when the FBI director of the FBI has said he is essentially overseeing an investigation of what the Trump campaign was doing with Russian? So all these questions, if you’re a little confused, it’s confusing. It is confusing the time in which these contacts took place. Candidate Trump versus president elect versus president. You know, the players who are involved, the Justice Department vs the FBI, the appointment of a special counsel who has particular powers to investigate this. All of this stuff is going on right now. Now what’s the end game? If they turn up anything that ends up meeting the House of Representives criteria for high crimes and misdemeanors, you could see something up to and including an impeachment proceeding against the president. Since it’s a Republican Congress right now, that’s unlikely. But there’s been a lot of stuff that’s unlikely. That’s happened in the last couple of months and years. So you know, I’m out of the prediction business there, but that’s you know we’re trying. The Russia stuff is so much in the news, it is confusing, but what we would ask you to keep your eyes on here is this sort of relationship, like Trump’s relationship with other elements of the executive branch trying to control these elements, like in the Justice Department and the FBI that are part of Trump’s executive branch but have independent powers and have their own kind of charges right there. In fact, when you take the oath to be, ah, the the attorney general, you take oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, not the president, but the Constitution, Right? So this is interesting as well as the checks and balances these other branches of government overseeing Trump and the administration. Some of them not so much the Congress, but certainly elements of the Congress and the judiciary of her hostile to the president. And would you might like to see him face problems? So all of that’s going on right now? Hopefully, some of the modules to give you better context for understanding some of these relationships but were fascinated investment and I were talking in advance of class about how those of you who like Trump and, you know, support his presidency. You know, you’re probably frustrated by, you know, the trouble he’s having taming the bureaucracy within the executive branch as well as the checks and balances. Those of you who are upset by Trump’s election, you’re probably experiencing something that I told my daughter my daughter was devastated when Trump won the election and I said, Just wait and see how the American government kind of works with this because it’s hard to get anything done in the United States. And one of things you’re seeing right now is that Trump is having trouble with his own executive branch, let alone dealing with Congress, let alone dealing with the judiciary, a lot of whom was appointed by President Obama

[0:10:37 Speaker 5] and Obama still trying to close down Guantanamo Bay. So that tells you how difficult it

[0:10:42 Speaker 3] is to get to get certain things done.

[0:10:43 Speaker 2] That’s right, that’s right there. Partisan problems and there are institutional problems, and you know, both people on the other side want to stop you people in other branches, even if they kind of like in partisan terms, they may want to stop you because they’re protecting their turf. Judges have turf. Congressman, Congressman Have turf, you know. So it’s It is a system designed to prevent strong, concerted action. And I think the president’s most presidents find this out. Trump seems to be finding out quicker than most.

[0:11:13 Speaker 3] Yeah, I mean, against the move on, we talk about a presidency and really the difficulties of the presidency and the bureaucracy. The principal agent

[0:11:20 Speaker 5] problem. Later on in

[0:11:21 Speaker 3] the class, you will see something being these things coming about now moving on from the discussion of the Russia investigation. There’s some really interesting things that happened with the Supreme Court over the past few weeks specifically in regards to property rights. So one of things we think about with why government exists people point to property rights protecting property rights by having a someone there to ensure that there are proper transactions between between individuals. And Sprint Quarters has made two key rulings in regards to property rights. Eso won. The first was in regards to what happens after something is sold. Do you still have patent rights on that? And this is a case of Impression Products versus Lexmark. In this case, Lexmark was airport. They they sell printers they also sell their own ink cartridges. And without that happens, is so you run out, you have to go back and buy Encarta from them every 20 minutes. Yes, and but some people said, Look, given to us, we’ll just refill him, refurbish homes that people have been able to buy cheaper eat cartridges. Lexmark sued, saying, This is a, uh, this is an infringement on our patent, and this company is eyes behaving improperly. Supreme Court didn’t buy that argument. So particularly, Chief Justice John Roberts made made the following statement using an analogy. So take a shot that restores and sells use cars. The business works because the shop can rest assure that so long as those bringing in the cars owned them, the shop is free repair and resell those vehicles. That smooth flow of commerce with sputter of companies that make the thousands of parts that going to vehicle could keep their patent rights in the after the first sale. And so this is really an issue up. You’re slowing down commerce By doing this Now, the Supreme Court did rule that Lexmark could sue under other under other terms. For instance, Lexmark has set up A. They set up an agreement with certain customers that you’ll buy our cartridges and then when they’re empty, you’ll send them back to us and buy a new car to the cheaper price on. So the Supreme Court did say, Look, you could go after these customers who decided to sell off his cartridges to these people were going to refurbish them after they’ve agreed to send them back to you. But this is a major blow to this idea. Basically, How long is your patent last May saying that after use, you sell it, your patents, your pads gone. Now a second case and this was a couple weeks before this dealt with what people refer to as patent trolls and patent trolls are individuals who will create a patent for a certain product but never really try to really try to carry out the product testing or do anything like that. And so there’s basic come up with a bunch of patents, no, really follow up on it, and a lot of times the company will come out with something new, and they’ll just automatically sue this A. This is this is a patent infringement and What the hope is is that the company that they’re suing will just settle saying Okay, you know what, really don’t want to take this to court. Fine, Just give you some money, so you leave us alone. But if the company does taking the court because of your costly, however, the patent trolls have been able to pick the ding you in which the case was heard. And the Eastern District of Texas is where a lot of these cases being heard specifically because they side with the plaintiff not to defend it. And so the Supreme Court ruled that the plaintiff no longer gets to choose the court, the the district which is hurt, or the court in which the case is heard that the case will be heard in the court in which the defendant is incorporated in. And so this dealt with TC Heartland versus Kraft Foods, Kraft Foods suit TC Heartland for patent infringement. Now I get the decision about about this. Whether it was planned, infringement or not has not been made. But the decision on where it will be heard has been made, and so this is very important because it’s made it a little more difficult for those who are suing over patent rights to dictate which court hears it. Because they’re I mean, there are there’s venue shopping where you know certain courts and more friendly to certain things and others. So you think of the ninth Circuit Court as basically being the court that keeps knocking down all of President Trump’s immigration rulings? You think the fifth Circuit Court, which is noticed much more conservative, That’s where you see again idea venue shopping, that certain courts or more friendly to certain interest in others. And this is the Supreme Court stepping in and trying to cut that back. And both these cases really cases dealing with property rights and in regards to patents and how long his property rights exist. Furthermore, how can you fight over thes fight over these property rights? And so when we talk about why government exists when the key things is property rights protecting property rights, and so it’s important to make sure you keep you stay aware of some of these cases that are coming along,

[0:16:25 Speaker 6] huh?

[0:16:28 Speaker 3] Treating Yeah, I mean, I mean this is releasing this really big in the tech industry, where people constant being sued over some type of software. So we had a patent for that. What hunt and just basically come up with patents every five seconds. Now moving it from the federal level moved on to the state. Because again, this is

[0:16:46 Speaker 2] about both these cases. The Supreme Court’s wrapping up its you know, its Z term. The Supreme Court runs basically from October till June. In now you’re seeing the end of term decisions. A lot of these decisions were probably decided with the new Supreme Court Justice on board for these things. So it’s kind of interesting to watch the court work through some of these particular decisions, and a lot of them is, Professor McDaniel pointed out. You have to deal with, you know, the rights of companies. You know, the sort of constitutional protections of companies as opposed to the rights and protections of individuals or even more distantly, government. So we’ll talk more about the Supreme Court later, but it’s kind of interesting in that regard.

[0:17:26 Speaker 3] Yeah, what I think it’s also important to note is that many of these decisions are unanimous decisions or again if he don’t account for the cases in which Justice Gorsuch did not Here, you know a lot of them either 6 to 80 And so this idea of a corporate highly contentious, they seem to be on the same page in several of these cases. And so it was a poor to be aware of this, as aware that I should go along on that. There are some big cases with 1/4 split, but by large for the most part of the court makes a decision. It’s a clear majority. You got some Texas stuff for us are after moving on to Texas and so on to big things that people paying into payments due in Texas is really all saying this in other states, as well as the relation between the state and Anna localities and saying it’s really into key cases. One Sanctuary cities with Sanctuary cities Bill passed where, um, that local officials will be charged with a misdemeanor if they knowingly refused to hand over illegal immigrants. So turn over legal immigrants, the federal authorities and then also you have the right sharing issue. So many of you from San Antonio Houston Austin area dealt with really this big thing about trying to control how uber and lift care their business practices. So part of it is, you know, where can they pick people up? Where can I drop people off? But also who they hire, who they can’t hire but also compensation to the individuals who who are to the workers. And so there’s all about how they care of this out. Uber lift lost the local levels they lost in Austin. They lost in Houston, the man. They spent millions of dollars on ad campaigns and lost. However, when they moved the battle up to this state level, they were actually able to win. And the way they framed it was that right now the policy is kind of a patchwork of things. You know, if I live in Austin, I get uber, but I don’t get uber. But if I’m rude, best follows certain rules. But if I’m in Maynor, Uber files different rules, and so we want, like one set regulation. So they framed it as idea of getting some uniformity, but getting uniformity. All the things the city’s wanted, such as fingerprinting, uncertain protections of the workers went away. And so it’s you kind of see this going on uber loss of the city level but was able to a win at the state level. And a lot of the sanctuary cities as well as the uber on lift situation and ride sharing situation really brings up questions about the relation between states and cities. And how much can a state imposed themselves upon localities? While we know of the concepts and clearly states about the relationship, the federal government and state governments, one thing that people forget is that the pile of localities in regards to this state is established by the state Constitution. So not the U. S Constitution, but the state Constitution. And so this gives the state a great deal of power to do things, but also gives individuals ability, ability for venue shopping, where they realize that can’t win at the local level. That may be able to win at the state level. And it also presents issues of what happens when you have a very liberal city with a conservative state legislature or the opposite can that basically undercut something things the city wants to accomplish.

[0:20:46 Speaker 2] It’s a really interesting set of questions. I mean, I think I have a couple things and we’ll get you guys out of here for the week. You on the question of sanctuary cities It’s a fascinating question, right? You’ve got federal law. Immigration law is everybody I think would acknowledge that the federal government is really the only kind of entity that ought to be passing laws with respect to immigration because talking about the sanctity of the border and the conditions under which people are about to cross the border. So we all get that. So you get a city like Austin that says, Well, you know, we we think, however, that it’s a bad idea to respond to the federal initiatives with respect to immigration. Federal laws sort of cart launch and turned people over toe ice. Two immigration agents at the at the insistence of ice because, you know, we’re afraid you would have a chilling effect on the local community. That is, that people who are beaten or women who are abused people are subject to any kind of criminal activity whose immigration status is in doubt, don’t want to report something, because at that point they put themselves in a position of being identified and and deported potentially. So you know, places like Austin and Los Angeles and Boston have passed these sanctuary city laws, so it’s an interesting debate. Now. On the one hand is Professor McCann you mentioned this is fairly clear in the sense that the federal government and

[0:22:10 Speaker 4] federal laws supersede local loss. That’s

[0:22:14 Speaker 2] a fact of constitutional life. You know, the supremacy clause embedded within the Constitution makes that clear. It makes it perfectly clear that when federal on state law conflict, the federal law reigns unless it is unconstitutional, Same with respect to the

[0:22:28 Speaker 4] federal law and local laws.

[0:22:31 Speaker 2] The federal versus the state law versus local law, though, is an interesting proposition. So in this case, in the case of Austin, you have Austin’s law is basically saying, We don’t really want to do what the federal government wants us to do. The federal government has some things they can do. But one problem is that what Donald Trump attempted to do or has is attempting to do is to deny federal dollars to localities that refuse to abide by the federal law. All right, this is the trump attempt to influence, to get these localities to stop being sanctuary cities. Well, there’s a checks and balances problem there, which is that money. Federal money is appropriated by the Congress, and the president does not have the discretion to deny, said the City of Austin funds that have been appropriated by the Congress. So there’s It’s an interesting kind of layering. You got checks and balances at the one end, and then you’ve got federalism at the other. So because Trump’s hands have been a little bit tied here, by the way, the court has held that the president’s executive order denying federal funds to sanctuary cities is unconstitutional, held up in the courts right now. So the state of OSS, the state of Austin state of Texas, has gotten involved and basically said, you know, impose sanctions on sanctuary cities, and that’s not a federal. That’s not a question of whether the president has the right. That’s a question of state law, and we’ll see how that gets adjudicated. It’s not clear exactly whether that’s constitutional federally. It’s not clear that’s consistent with the Texas State Constitution, are influenced by the way our best guess with respective state law is it probably is consistent with the Texas Constitution, one thing we’ll talk about later on this semester. It’s a small point. It’s worth noting. The statutory authority of this state in Texas is pretty pretty significant. The localities don’t have a lot of ordinance power in the state of Texas, compared to California or New York or other states. They don’t really have a lot of discretion to pass

[0:24:25 Speaker 4] small laws

[0:24:25 Speaker 2] that govern municipalities, other states they do in Texas, they really don’t. So the in relative, in a relative sense, the localities in Texas don’t have a whole lot of power compared to the state government, the state government has fairly significant powers. And so my guess is, is that what the States doing here is probably consistent with state law? But there might be some federal questions involved, so it right?

[0:24:48 Speaker 3] Yeah. I mean, it’s an intense debate over this. I mean, the fact that there’s a shoving match on the house floor, especially. It’s the last day. It’s basically last day of school. I see all later on. No, they actually got into kind of pushing shoving match. I think one person called ice on protesters. It just got it kind of got ridiculous.

[0:25:08 Speaker 2] Protest ing Sanctuary cities laws. There was a Republican lawmaker who said, I’m gonna call ice on them and apparently also said some other fairly profane things which prompted some Hispanic Democratic lawmakers to go at him on the floor of the House Ways, Senator House, house, House, House. So, you know, for those of you who like Well, WWF

[0:25:32 Speaker 3] look longer is nobody’s taking a cane and beating somebody upon the head on the house floor as what actually happened in the U. S. Congress. I think we’re think that was the Senate. It was like that matters, But yeah, So again, we’re doing better than them. However again, we were not Florida s O. The key thing about this is make sure you pay attention, kind these local things because it’s really the local and state things that really have the biggest impact on your life. Ah, lot of these federal policies, they may not affect you until later on, but local and state and state policies effected immediately, and I believe the sanctuary cities locks. It goes in effect on September 1st, so they may be able to do it for a little bit. 1 September first hits, if being localities are not in line with this. The officials could be arrested and charged with a misdemeanor. Yeah, we want

[0:26:22 Speaker 2] to emphasize throughout the semester’s. Is these things sanctuary cities ride, sharing all this kind of stuff? It has a constitutional context. It has a governing context. And if nothing else, you know, we’d like you to appreciate sort of the nature and scope of those different conflicts of these questions aren’t easy. I mean, you may have very strong views on them. Those views may be right. But, you know, our job is to try toe, inform your understanding of these things and how they connect with both constitutional law, both the sorts of federal arrangements that exist in the United States, as well as how they play locally. So with that, I think we’re done for our Week one in the news. All right, I’m Professor saw,

[0:26:57 Speaker 3] Professor Daniel. We’ll see you next week.

[0:27:08 Speaker 0] Government 3 10 and 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 in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin