GOV310 – In The News: A look at national politics through the eyes of Texas, June 11, 2019

[0:00:01 Speaker 0] in the news. Howdy. I’m Professor Shaw

[0:00:12 Speaker 1] now. Professor McDaniel. Welcome to in the news for introduction to American Government.

[0:00:16 Speaker 0] We were experimenting with the brand new split screen format. Professor McDaniels, in an undisclosed location for his own protection, not yours. So bear with this is we, uh we Skype in for half of this session where it’s gonna flip roles. Next week, I’m gonna be in a none disclosed location. High in the mountains. I have many enemies. But this week I’m here in the studio in Austin, Professor McDaniels away. But we’re gonna handle the second in the news segment. A couple things I want to mention before we get to topics in the news this week. The first is as you know, you’re following along in your syllabus and following the schedule assiduously. Of course, we have an exam next week. Not this week, but next I believe it’s Thursday. Please pay attention to the syllabus for details with respect to the timing and the logistics and all the important details associated with that examination. Okay. If you have questions beyond the syllabus, please feel free to contact us. Otherwise, you know I’m OK sometimes with an occasional email asking me about information that’s clearly in the syllabus. But I really would kind of prefer it if you check the soul of this before you. You know, ping me with an email. I think that’s a matter of convenience that sometimes a little over used by students. It’s not just students. I do it too. Sometimes being my chair about something I could easily look up. But, uh, you know, make sure check with syllabus because, frankly, the syllabus is kind of the Bible. It’s the, you know, the the authority of record for the class. And so it’s in your interest to make sure you’re adhering to what’s in the syllabus. Another point I want to make real briefly before we get to the in the news segment this week is, Ah, a couple students who asked me about the in the news segments and assignments. I take what a couple of students wrote interesting responses to the first in the news question, emphasizing count their personal views on In the case of the first news in the new segment, it was a couple of items on abortion, started wrote about their opinion on abortion Now look, we love you. We appreciate and respect your opinion, but you’re better off responding to course materials and trying to integrate course concepts and theories, as opposed to telling us what your opinion is on the topic. So when we talk about immigration or Democratic nomination politics or, you know, affirmative action, whatever Professor McDaniel I happen to be talking about your task in the in the news assignments is to relate the specific events that are unfolding today in real time, with broader concepts that were introducing in lecture and in the readings. Right? That’s the point of those. You don’t need much, you know, a couple students asked me, Is there up a suggested word count? Well, the quick version. No, there’s not, um, you know, But you ought to be able to do a decent paragraph or 1/2 page. That’s that’s certainly adequate to demonstrate that you’re connecting the dots that you’re taking the materials that you’re reading and hearing about and applying them to what’s going on in the news. And that’s what we want. Right? When you guys go, you know, back for summer vacation, talk to your parents and they ask you about something. You know, if your government major, or even if you just taken this course, you should be able to come talk about it at a level that’s that’s a little beyond kind of someone who’s just a an informed news reader. That’s what really hoping for in this class. Okay, now, towards that end, got a couple topics we wanted to cover today. Professor McDaniel, from his undisclosed location, wants to talk a little bit about Texas politics and the opioid crisis. So Ah, you all know, uh, the Texas Legislature just concluded its session. They meet in odd years. Not odd is an adjective but odd numbered years. They just closed the session, Got a lot of business conducted, first began. You want talk about some of the the bills that were considered that maybe that I guess that were assigned and or or vetoed by Governor Abbott?

[0:04:04 Speaker 1] Yes. So Governor Abbott has and so really follows day to veto these bills that he doesn’t be knowing they could go into effect on September 1st. So this is really the way here to see which bills and signs and which bills he vetoes. Eso parliament, find one building is beat up, but today he will be signing Bill and formulate Elementary regarding school funding. S o I get trying increase school funding. Nothing supported. Note All of you worried about this? He has legalized eliminate stands for Children. There is an attempt on the part of homeowners association. Try to ban them. No, he’s legalized. Eliminate stands. But you’re not alcoholic beverages again. The kids helping are still in box mixers. Things like that not legal eliminated stands. They are well, I think schools. But he’s also died. Raised the age for smoking. 21 eso It was 18 hours now 21 except military personnel. So military personnel were 18 who are under 21 or over 18 and in under 21 appeared they can purchase cigarettes, phasing out red light cameras. Also a lot of work to regarding human trafficking trying todo with the backlog of rape kits but also trying to expand things for sexual assault victims but also facing out red. Like so, these things that have been put in that have been side Some get for not signed by or veto by Father’s Day. They go into effect on September 1st 1 bill has been beat up, and this is a bill related to domestic violence that the bill would have required that images of survivors of domestic violence would know when their attacker was put on parole or probation. O r. Autumn bonds They would know the process of doing this on prosecuting switches. Very popular Bill one of, Well, um, it members of the House added an amendment which lower basically fees regarding radioactive waste. And so, basically mistaking that ad radioactive did not increase the peace for radioactive waste. In this regard, it did you really go over well with the governor. And so because of the bills bills, you know, specifically because of this commitment that was added to it, this is not uncommon to see a minutes being added to think special. It’s really popular that you want to get something through. You add something. You know that, you know, benefit your group with the whole being that. Okay, well, this so we don’t like we won’t kill it over this also, you see things added so a few years back, the national parks system band um, basic quit selling bottles. Bottle. What? Because it was just waste everywhere. And so they banned that. But a re funding bill. Lobbyists, part of the water companies, were able to kind of put something in which restricted them from banning the sale of bottled water you have. It’s a bear classic example. People kind of putting a mid mentor, adding something onto a bill. Special ability is popular that what they have is unpopular with the overall bills popular with whole being popular. The bill. We’ll cover up what they’re what they’re trying to do it. So it’s very interested. Look, of these bills. Look at these little things that are added on, which may be tangentially related or not related at all, which can sometimes kill Bill from advancing. Yeah,

[0:07:46 Speaker 0] you know, it’s very interesting. You know, I I came to Texas in 1994 from the state of California. California has what we call a professional legislature that is a legislature that is in session year round every year where the legislators were paid a professional salary. That is, they don’t go back home and have another job. I mean, they might, but that’s they are first and foremost employed as legislators of the state of California and I came to Texas in Texas has what we call an unprofessional or that’s not a nonprofessional. Unprofessional is probably a pejorative term, a nonprofessional Legislature. They only meet once every two years. The governor can extend the session by calling for a special session, but that hasn’t happened this time around. So you know, ASST. Professor McDaniel suggested they pretty much wrapped up business. They passed some budgets. It’s always interesting to see what the Texas Legislature tackles every two years. You know, a couple last cycle they handled or considered at least bathroom bills. The A couple sessions. Before that, they did voter I D in the bathroom bill session. They also handled very restrictive abortion. Ah, changing the abortion law where the funds that are provided to abortion clinics operating in the state of Texas. So you know it’s interesting. A lot of us may not consider some of these things essential issues confronting the state, especially when the state legislature only meets every two years. But they come up for political reasons. Some of them are pet projects for specific legislators. Some of them reflect coalitional interests of the Democratic or Republican parties, and so it’s kind of fascinating to see the way the session unfolds, Professor McDaniel mentioned. You know, you have a thana legislation that comes through the pipeline in a given session, and a lot of times they don’t have a distinct bill associated with a particular ask. They’ll put an amendment on another bill that already exists and seek of these odd combinations. As Professor McDaniel mentioned, You know, just, ah, you know, some sort of odd funding request within the context of a broad budget bill or something like that. So a rate, Hopefully they give you a little bit of a particular insight that kind of suggest a larger process at work here. Now, another substantive issue. Press from Daniel. For those of you don’t know, there’s a lot on health care and health care policy as well as race and ethnicity in the black church. But we were talking beforehand about drug companies, and the opioid crisis Texas has is kind of in the middle of the scale. When it comes to all the different states with respect to the opioid crisis. I think that’s a fair characterization. The opioid crisis here isn’t executed as it is in a state like New Hampshire or Vermont, perhaps, but I think we feel a little mawr than some of the Rocky Mountain states, for instance. So we’re kind of in the middle. You hear about the opioid crisis and addiction to painkillers and heroin and heroin substitutes and that thing not quite as much as you do in the Northeast, but maybe more in the Rocky Mountain states. But you do hear about it here. And the drug companies that have been kind of involved in dealing with the opioid crisis of you know, the interaction between the crisis itself, the drug companies has become an interesting public policy, I guess. Area or debate or case study. And first with Dan, you’ve been following this fairly closely. What’s your take on the opioid crisis and what’s in the news today with respect to the drug companies?

[0:11:03 Speaker 1] So one thing is important. Note is that looks like we’ll be so smoking and cigarettes. About two years ago, when people started going out with cigarette companies for lung cancer and basic faulty advertising, you’re seeing this going on with the opioid companies. Specifically that they were there was false advertising. In many cases, they were trying to push doctors. You may be to prescribe these spreaders medications when they weren’t really needed. And one of things that’s in the news now is instance in insists. So I am s what s is actually pop of bankruptcy. So they settled with federal government regarding its A legal marking off. Then no, no, I’m sorry, but no. And because they had to pay out, they are now have a pop of bankruptcy because that as basically taking out the money that they’ve been able to earn, you also have a Purdue pharma maker. OxyContin recently settled the state of Oklahoma for 270 million for its for its activities. And in fact, the families behind Purdue Pharma’s kind of become assigned rattled. A lot of people have been known being great patrons of the arts. Now people don’t want accept anything associated with them because more and more evidence is coming out. But they have been heavily pushing thes pan kills, and that the one of the major problems for the increased the opioid epidemic is the pharmaceutical companies kept pushing. It were paying off doctors to prescribe it in some cases were funneling illegal market. And so we’re seeing much like we saw 2030 years ago in regards to smoking, went out with several companies. Now see states and the federal government go after the pharmaceutical companies with regards to the prescription of painkillers. And so the opioid epidemic has really been sent as really caused fully caused by them. But at the pharmacy, pharmaceutical companies kept pushing them, specifically arguing they were not addict. I think that’s the same thing you see coming up a cigarette Companies is they knew was addictive. The new was powerful but covered up that data with pharmaceutical companies. They know this is addictive, but try to play it off as if it was not addicted and kept pushing on individuals. So it’s gonna be important to see how this takes shape because we’re seeing action being taken part of the federal level at the state level, but also with local, where you see a lot of suits coming into play and it’s gonna be interesting. See how all this plays out in terms up what is left of the pharmaceutical companies after this, in terms off what baking how they could sell the products, but also how it wants to be used for treatment of the opioid crisis.

[0:13:48 Speaker 0] Yeah, I I’ve been following this from a public opinion perspective, and it’s ah, in public opinion polling. We tend to ask a question, and most of the standard service will ask this in state surveys as well as national surveys. What’s the most important problem facing the country? And typically you get unemployment, the economy, immigration, border security, terrorism, healthcare. The last two or three years, drugs in the opioid crisis have have been mentioned by many people as a critical issue facing their state or facing the nation. And it’s something that I think is caught lawmakers. It’s caught public policy officials a little bit off guard. It sort of happened and is happening at a level that that we did not anticipate. And it’s something very if you ask people. Do you know somebody who personally has been addicted to painkillers or had a problem with opioid abuse? Um, about 40 to 50% of people say they know somebody who’s had that sort of issue, so it’s a it’s a very real situation. So we talked a bit about Texas and legislative session a little bit about the opioid crisis and the drug company connection with the opioid crisis. One hit two other topics before we let you all go for the week. One is immigration. Um, and I say immigration, although actually, ah, the issue of immigration in the context in which I’m going to talk about today is the intersection of immigration, border security, economics, tariffs of and really the kind of conflict between state and national governments and between the Congress and the presidency. So let me unpack that real briefly. The most recent sort of issue that we have is President Trump has. Apparently the Trump administration has reached a trade agreement with Mexico. Trump had threatened to impose significant tariffs on Mexican imports, which are largely agricultural, not exclusively but largely agricultural, unless Mexico agreed to step up its efforts to curb the flow of migrants from Mexico or through Mexico to the United States. So right, so Trump has talked continually present Trump’s company truck continually about using tariffs and economic sanctions as a tool for your better relations, better deals with other countries. And on Friday, Trump announced that a deal had been struck. There has been some blowback on from the media and from critics of Trump saying that, well, Mexico actually had already agreed to do many of the things that Trump has Harold. In other words, Trump said, I got a deal. The Mexican government’s going to agree to try toe, you know, step up their processing of these claims of people going through Mexico to provide help for way stations at the border, etcetera, etcetera. But critics have said, well, they’d already agreed to do that, and Trump has responded by saying, Well, no, they hadn’t actually, they sort of suggested they would, and now they’ve agreed to it on accelerated timeframe. So it’s a typical for those year out there. Watching politics is these days. This is a typical example of it’s hard to figure out what’s actually going on. One side says this. The other side says that it’s a little difficult to impact. I would like to point out a couple things about this particular situation. The first is, um, you’re still in what we what President Trump characterized, in fact, officially declared as an emergency a couple of months ago on, and that’s critical for the course. Professor McDaniel and I are teaching because, um, the president can declare an emergency with respective situation and then that allows him to use powers that he does not ordinarily have. And this goes back to presidential declarations in the late 19 sixties and early 19 seventies, which will talk about when we get to our presidency lectures. But Trump has invoked a national emergency, and he’s argued that he is allowed to do certain things with respect to immigration enforcement that normally would have to go through Congress. But because he’s declared an emergency, he’s asserted some powers it typically developed to the Legislature. Right now, the Legislature in this gets legislatures, of course, Congress. Congress has the right, according to several acts that they passed in the 19 seventies to and that emergency period, or to force Trump to seek congressional authorization to extend that emergency period. But they have not yet done so. They’ve denied that he actually has the power to declare an emergency in this situation. So there’s a bit of AH fight going on between the executive and the Legislature over whether Trump’s actions on the border are in fact legal and constitutional. Again, Trump has invoked this notion of an emergency and asserted executive powers, because there’s an emergency. Congress has basically said that there is not an emergency and the president is not authorized to do that. That’s something that will be adjudicated by the courts. And by the way, this isn’t just a trump Congress or President Congress thinking very contemporary context. We’ve had Democratic presidents and Republican Congresses who have had this fight in the past and previous Republican presidents and Democratic Congress is This is an institutional fight, and when you ought to be aware of in the context of balance checks and balances and separation of powers, then of course, there’s the federalism question, which is states like Texas have an obligation to secure the border in conjunction with federal authorities. So one persistent question is what rights to the states have here. And what role did the states have to play if the national government says the states need to do certain things, but they don’t provide money? Is that what we call an unfunded mandate? Is that something that is legal to require Texas to do something that Texas doesn’t necessarily have the funds to do so. This is another interesting question. So once again, as with last week, we had a couple of instances in which there were conflicts at the federal level between and amongst the branches. Then you’ve got I’d consider a sort of horizontal conflict. Congress, President, courts. There’s also vertical conflict. You know, the federal government Visa vee the states, and that’s not even considering sanctuary cities. So you’ve got federal, state and local governments sanctuary cities. As you probably know, these air cities that have basically said they’re not going to abide by federal mandates or requirements when it comes to turning over information with respect to, uh, undocumented people that they have detained for violations of city ordinances or things like that. Right? So the City of Austin, for those of you interested, has declared itself a sanctuary city, so they are not necessarily going to cooperate with immigrations and customs. And that is the legality of that. Um, the sort of propriety of that is something that we really haven’t dealt with much of the country. But again, it’s an example of the sort of layered cake or marble cake of power that exists in the United States, so I don’t have anything really. To say about the immigration tariff thing beyond that, I just want to point out, is another example. He’s interesting conflict first, McDaniel got me particularly side on immigration or

[0:20:43 Speaker 1] no, I mean, it’s an interesting point that the President Trump’s put for that look. We put working stairs to get in Mexico to step up, but people said well, next door agree to it. It’s one of the things that will need to be resolved in regards to how we handle immigration. It’s been a fight has been going on traditions with over a little closer to decades now on really no clear resolution. And as we see things get worse in Latin America, in certain in certain nations, we expect immigration to increase. In addition, as we have kind of unclear immigration laws, our immigration laws that are kind of out of date, which is going to see more problems. But I think this is going to continue to go on until Congress and the president can actually make a clear decision about how to handle this. Then I think we may be able to have some level of stability within this conversation. But again, this is going This is going off or gets close to two decades, and I started during the Bush. The Bush administration, I continue during the Obama administration, has been and has been a key part of Trump administration.

[0:21:52 Speaker 0] All right, so let’s hit our fourth and final topic. This was more of a fund Z, and it is something of a preview. Professor McDaniels have restrained ourselves from talking about the presidential election process. Least. I’ve restrained myself from talking much about it, but we’re not gonna talk about who’s up and who’s down. So much is just Teoh kind of as a public service. Notification just let you all know that over the course of the summer, they’re going to be a Siri’s. At least two, probably more, of Democratic presidential candidate debates. The 1st 1 is coming up at the end of June. Remember whether it’s the 29th or 30th but it’s at the end of June. It’s gonna be in Miami, and for those of you who are interested and even those of you who are not, there are 24 I believe, 23 or 24 current declared candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination. So one thing that Professor Daniel I wanted to point out to you all first of all, is that the debate process becomes very important. It used to be the political parties screened candidates, right? That is, you had to go through the elite leadership in order to become a viable candidate for president. Right? You had to have the backing of the state parties, and then you went to the national convention and there was a big fight there. And you you lined people up, cut deals, etcetera. That process really effectively ended in the 19 fifties or so, and now it’s It’s sort of a free for all. Anybody who wants to be a candidate can be a candidate, and the only thing you need to do is mobilize voters in primaries and caucuses in order to make a viable run for the for the nomination. So one of the important processes with this, I guess it’s sub process within that broader process, our debates. These are opportunities for candidates to get well known to distinguish themselves to introduce themselves to the electorate, especially the democratic electorate. So two major debates coming up the first in assists in Miami at the end of June, the second in July in Detroit. And I would just point out these air gonna be, you know, bring your popcorn for these, right? They’re gonna be two nights of debates and they’re going to my understanding. CNN is going to randomly assign the 24 candidates to debate one night, one and night, too. So it’s not going to based on how you’re doing in the polls or how much money you’ve raised. It’s just gonna be like a lottery. So you could have Pete Buddha Church and, uh, Kamala Harris and Joe Biden in one and Beto O. Rourke and Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren on night to we don’t know who’s in night one who’s in night to they claim it’s gonna be randomly assigned. Now, I conspiracy theorists. And so you know, I’m looking for, like the you know, the rig nb a lottery where the Knicks of the Lakers always seem to get the number one pick. Uh, I’m not quite sure how you would rig it, but I’m looking for some sort of intrigue on that front. I think they’re going to run an hour and 1/2 maybe two hours. I haven’t checked the time specs for CNN. It will be very interesting because even with 12 candidates on each night, there’s gonna be a real fight to get time and attention and to break through the clutter. I realize that we’re still a year and 1/2 out from the 2020 election, but it looks like President Trump is going to be the Republican nominee. Barring some sort of very bizarre occurrence, the Democrats have yet to sort things out, and the debate process is gonna be an important element of that. All right, so I just wanted to clue you all in on that, Um, I think we might be having some technical difficulties with Professor McDaniel. We don’t really care too much about what he thinks about Democratic primary politics anyway. So with that, I think we’re done for week two of in the News. Remember to, ah, pick one of the topics we’ve talked about, whether it’s the Texas legislative session and the vetoes of go on non vetoes by Governor Abbott, the drug companies an opioid crisis immigration the tariff deal with Mexico and in the upcoming Democratic debates and just, you know, kind of let us know what you’re thinking connected to some of the broader concepts that we talked about in lecture again. We got a midterm coming up next week. Look for announcements and e mails and follow your syllabus. And with that, this is Professor Shaw for Professor McDaniel were signing off for Week two