August 9th, 2016 – Second Reading Podcast

[0:00:00 Introduction] Welcome to the second reading podcast from the University of Texas at Austin. The Republicans were in the Democratic Party because there was only one party chart. Tell people on a regular basis there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the Constitution. They have become the norm. At what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room on

[0:00:33 Jim] It’s second reading podcast for Monday, the eighth of August. Today we’ll talk about some more action on the Texas voter I D Law, more maneuvering on the abortion front in Texas and another Texas blip in the 2016 presidential race. So let’s start with a voter ID. Josh. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project. I’m here with Josh Blank, who I prematurely introduced. How’s your weekend, Josh?

[0:01:02 Josh] Wonderful, wonderfully relaxing.

[0:01:04 Jim] Well, I like the sound of that. My mind was sort of like that, but then, not so much. So let’s let’s start with voter I d. One of one of the at least for the 21st century, shall we say, perennial issues in Texas politics and with some with some national connections. And and last month we had more legal action on the voter I d front. So let’s go back and talk about where this voter I D Law came from.

[0:01:30 Josh] Right? In 2011 the Texas Legislature passed Ah, Texas voter I. D. Law, which was sort of instantly dubbed the strictest in the country. And the reason it was the strictest was because of the limited list of identification that people could presented. The polls included a driver’s license, basically a military I d. A concealed carry license. Uh, I think like a passport, I believe. And there was one other I think, like, I think, a citizenship certificate. If it had your photo on it right, however, does not include, you know, ah university I ds Ah, And the other issue is basically, you know, the question is, you know, the distribution of I d holding in this state was quickly became the big issue is it does everywhere with voter I d laws,

[0:02:14 Jim] right? As well as and and then I think subsidiary to that. But it still came up in the proceedings. Was you know, Once again, Texas’s size kind of mattered because the cost and inconvenience of traveling for some people in areas that were distant from places where they could legitimately get one of these i ds, um, what was an issue? One of the big things we heard that was the exclusion of student I ds from this really made it look a lot like it was purposefully designed to not enable, you know, it’s not Make it easier for students to vote.

[0:02:48 Josh] Yeah, and Democratic leaning groups more generally, right. So college students, and to be a little bit more democratic leaning. But to the extent that you know, you think about individuals who are who don’t have a driver’s license or a state I D card. Yeah, they tend to disproportionately be made up of minorities, right? Some older individuals Ah, you know, newcomers to the country. You know, that sort of thing is So, um, for those reasons, you know, these of these laws have become, you know, partisan in nature, but they didn’t actually start that way, which is kind of interesting, just in terms of some of

[0:03:23 Jim] at least in the view of the public

[0:03:24 Josh] and the view of the public. I

[0:03:26 Jim] mean, they were they were part of it. I mean, it was hard not to view them as partisan in nature. Given that to my recollection, every stay in these air laws that are passed at the state level right, because elections are a matter of state jurisdiction. Uh, every state that passes did have a Republican Legislature, and I think a Republican governor,

[0:03:44 Josh] right. That’s true. I

[0:03:45 Jim] said they were dominated by Republicans. And so from the beginning, it had for people watching the process. Ah, kind of unavoidable political tent to it. But I think your point about public opinion is is really important, because when we pulled on this in Texas in there and I think there were some indications of this another statewide polling there seemed to be kind of relatively broad bipartisan support for this,

[0:04:12 Josh] right? I mean, these laws really only started in the mid to late. Ah, early aughts. I guess they say in the aughts eso 2006. I think you ate. It is terrible. Yeah. No, it’s true. I’ve been reading a book recently. Work. He’s referring to the odds, and it always just clangs and you’re here anyway, when this started. This is sort of this is the sort of law that you know, people are generally, you know, if they don’t know anything about they don’t know about sort of the fact that the partisan background of it, the distribution of I d. Holding and that kind of thing people to say, like, Yeah, yeah, I don’t I already present an idea at the polls, and that’s what most people actually thought. And when you pull, most people thought they had to present for the

[0:04:46 Jim] first time we pulled on this. We asked about people opposing or supporting the voter. I D Law got a decent majority. A large majority, 71% something like this in favor of it. Democrats Republicans remember that because a Republican, Troy Fraser, I think there’s a before you were on the text politics project, actually quoted the pole in favor of voter I. D. From the floor of the Senate. Great, Not exactly what we had in mind. It’s OK that the Trumpian School of all put with no publicity is bad publicity. We took it.

[0:05:14 Josh] The pole is a public service,

[0:05:15 Jim] but in that same poll. We had a smaller but still sizable majority thought that it was actually already the law.

[0:05:22 Josh] Yeah, in national polls that have looked at those basically find that most people at the time that the law start to be implemented, just assumed that you presented your driver’s license at the polls.

[0:05:31 Jim] And in Texas, I think the, you know, that comes from the just people’s physical experience. You get the little card in the mail that says that you registered to vote that hopefully all of you have, um And then you put it on a magnet on the fridge or you put it in the mail pile or you put it in a special place, and then election day comes and you can’t find it right and you go to the polling place in the previous regime and they say, Hey, do you have your voter registration card? You say no. Did you have your vote right? You have, ah, photo idea of driver’s license and you go Yep, And you showing your driver’s license, they match your driver’s license to the voter i d list on. They let U boat

[0:06:09 Josh] now. I’m originally from New York and you in New York. And they literally just have these old ledger books and you show up and they’re like, That’s May and they say, Okay, and you just vote So it’s a little bit means different everywhere. Is that his

[0:06:20 Jim] New York values?

[0:06:21 Josh] This is New York values

[0:06:23 Jim] Ted Cruz, who called New York values were

[0:06:25 Josh] pro democracy. We let anyone vote as many times as they want. Um, anyway, so what happened? Though this is the main thing. Let’s get back to this. Right? So basically, ah, the law was ruled, uh, unconstitutional. The district level, basically a little while back State appealed it to the federal appeals court and federal appeals court. Agreed. Basically, um, and said, You know, But you need to come up with something to fix this for the election

[0:06:54 Jim] didn’t throw it out entirely,

[0:06:56 Josh] but they send it back down and said Come up with an agreement. And what the news from last week was that the Texas Attorney General’s Office and the Department of Justice theist Department of Justice recent

[0:07:05 Jim] attorney generals in charge of this kind of these kind of this kind of litigation. When the state gets suit, it’s up to the attorney general there the lawyer for the state, among other things.

[0:07:13 Josh] Right. So the agreement that they reach was basically anyone can go and vote without a photo. I d Now, you still would be better to have a photo. I d. So you still if you show with photo I d That’s a good it’ll make it easier for you. But if you don’t have a photo idea, you can sign an affidavit, which is just a legal document. Ah, that you’re saying is true. That certifies er set of citizenship. And you just need to provide some form of a proof of residence, a paycheck, the utility bill, a bank statement, something that matches your address up with the address they have on file for you

[0:07:43 Jim] and your of course, your name

[0:07:44 Josh] and your name. That’s that’s it. Now, this still needs to be approved by the U. S. District judge who heard the original case. They most likely will because the casualties have agreed. Right now, this isn’t gonna be what we have going forward. This is just for this election. The other big issue here is that the District judge still has to decide whether lawmakers intentionally discriminated against certain groups in passing this law, and that’s a big deal.

[0:08:08 Jim] So this was This was essentially a short term agreement because the election is coming up and they needed to have something in place to decide how the law would apply for the election. And that’s kind of the technical thing here. But it’s it’s happened over and over again, right through. This law has been in court since, you know, the minute after it passed

[0:08:29 Josh] right. We’ve had two statewide elections under this law,

[0:08:32 Jim] and in fact, it’s It’s materially impacting election that the litigation over this has has mattered in various kinds of ways, so they’ll be in agreement in place

[0:08:43 Josh] right now what know what happened with the big deal? That also is that if the district judge determines that lawmakers actually intentionally distribute discriminated against certain groups, especially minority groups, then Texas goes back onto a pre clearance list with the Department of Justice, which means the Department of Justice would have to approve any changes that Texas makes to their election laws in the future, which until very recently was actually the state that Texas was it until you know, I guess a recent Supreme Court decision that throughout that provision of the Voting Rights Act, this is all really technical. But the point is, is that, you know, Texas just escaped from being under the Justice Department super supervision for its election laws. If you know the Supreme Court decision, that sort of throughout that sort of pre clearance of Texas is what allowed this law to go forward and then actually be used in these elections. This would actually if the judge district has decided that Texas describing would actually back under preclearance

[0:09:39 Jim] under a different provision in the one that was

[0:09:41 Josh] right and we’d actually be, I think we’d be probably first state back under a pre clearance.

[0:09:45 Jim] So So the you know and the technicality here goes back. And coincidentally, this weekend was the anniversary of the Voting Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act was a piece of legislation from 1965 that basically provided for super, for federal supervision of elections in states with a history of discrimination for states and localities. Some of these were even cities and and, you know, this has been now been in effect for over 50 years. It’s been eroded and modified by by Congress and eroded by the courts, broadly speaking, but it’s still in effect. That is, a federal mechanism for supervising elections at the state level, which otherwise are really under the previews of the purview of states and localities.

[0:10:34 Josh] Yeah, E. I mean, they may not say I don’t know if we do it. Voter ideas like this, actually incredibly interesting area on a couple on a lot of different levels. Um, you know, I think you if you want to learn more about, you know, the prevalence of voter fraud and sort of the different types of voter fraud on what? How laws you can or cannot combat those. There’s a lot out there that you could read that it’s actually really interesting, but I think there are two things I think we should. We should focus on the third before you go. The next topic, right? One is, you know, sort of public opinion around voter I D, which we contact about a little bit. But it’s sort of an interesting example, and the other is about, you know, laws around voting in general and sort of misconceptions that people have about. So why don’t we just do the what you want You first.

[0:11:15 Jim] So firstly, look, we’ll do it in the order in since we started public opinion and really wrap it up. So in terms of in terms of public opinion, what we saw an interesting was Texas. I mean, this really intersex active politics, as we were saying earlier, you know, it’s it’s so fascinating because you don’t see it that much. That public opinion changed on this. Essentially, as we said it started, everybody kind of thought commonsensical. Ee Oh, yes, sure voter I d people should have to have ah, photo I d Democrats started.

[0:11:45 Josh] I need I need to pick a prescription drugs, right? So

[0:11:47 Jim] be ready for everything. Get on a plane.

[0:11:49 Josh] So why not?

[0:11:50 Jim] So Democrats actually made a political issue out of this. Put forth the arguments that were in the data that we suggested that you know this discrimination. Oh, this discriminated against this had a discriminatory effect on minorities. In some cases, the elderly with they thought their people younger people and it turned democratic public opinion, you know, and I suspect, actually might have even pushed Republican opinion mawr in favor of it.

[0:12:18 Josh] Yeah, and the bigger I mean, the big group And we see this in our data is the starkest is, You know, when we first started polling on this, you know, African Americans were, you know, ah, on average in favor of voter i D. And when the real shift came during the 2012 election, when Barack Obama was running for re election and they made a national issue out of this in states like North Carolina and some other swing states where Republican legislatures have passed these laws to say, Hey, these are basically, you know, some version of 21st century poll taxes or these air laws meant to discriminate against blacks democratically, your opinion just shift shifted him, can’t win completely against it and with the Democratic opinion shifted when completing its and now it’s kind of has that sort of polarized Ah, you know, the polarization that you come to expect in a lot of issues. So I mean, even in the most recent polling we did on this which is actually back in 2014 78% of Republicans had a very favorable opinion of the state’s voter i D Law Ah, and only 23% of Democrats. That gives you a pretty good sense that it’s also sense why the state kind of, you know, in a lot of ways continues pushing forward with us. There’s not a lot to lose for Republican statewide elected officials in pushing this voter I d law on continuing to fight it because fight for it because their constituents wanted. And the fact is, you know, Democrats may not like it, but they’re not a majority in the state. Right? So that’s the one thing.

[0:13:39 Jim] So the other thing was about just the nature of election,

[0:13:41 Josh] right? I mean, I think that a lot of people look at these sorts of these sorts of fights and say, You know why? You know? I mean, what’s this? They accept the fact that this is political, right, which the truth is, it probably is. You know? I mean, just to be fair here. Ah, you know, the fact is, the people who um are most likely to be affected by these laws vote democratic over whelming Lee. They’ve only been passed by Republican legislatures and signed by Republican governors. Is this some sort travesty on the, you know, the system of voting and democracy writ large. Not really, because the fact is, you know, a little bit of history, says one. We’ve only expanded the right to vote over time, and the fact is, it’s not like the country started off. It was like, Hey, everybody, let’s should vote Elections

[0:14:30 Jim] and the franchise have always been contested political terrain,

[0:14:33 Josh] right? And then the other side of it is that uses Ah, Dr Henson said earlier. You know, Ah, running elections is left up to the States and by left up to the states in most states that mean left up to elected officials in the states. The fact is, the people who make the laws are politicians running in those elections so that the exercise of making those laws is necessarily a political exercise. Determining who votes and who who doesn’t is something that’s been going on forever, and it always has politics as part of it. So this is no different. It’s not like a fundamental threat to our democracy. In fact, you know more people convention, democracy at work. It’s true and unattractive. Anything more people can vote now than ever cut. And that’s sort of something that we’ve been, you know, that long, sort of.

[0:15:18 Jim] It is one of projects. Things that I think we forget is that, you know, part of democracy is fighting over the rules themselves, you know, presumably within some basic, you know, large, principled guidelines. And that’s what the courts were sorting out here is you know, you can fight. You can fight over these rules, fight over how this is executed. But there are basic rules like you can’t try to exclude people, right? Basically right. Okay, so let’s move on to something a little cheerier.

[0:15:45 Josh] Yeah, that’s good.

[0:15:46 Jim] OK, so we talked in, and when we talked about voter I D. We talked about public opinion shifting and how interesting that is. Tow us. One of the reasons it’s it’s interesting to us is because there are some areas where public opinion hardly shifts at all. It’s rock, like in one of those areas is abortion politics and last week, um, really, in the it was really only in the state level in local news, but there was, ah, bureaucratic hearing last week on a proposed new rule. Um, that would require hospitals and clinics, particularly abortion providers. It is important here Teoh either inter or cremate any fetal remains, whether from an abortion or from a miscarriage. And this was a rule that was proposed relatively quietly by Governor Abbott a few months ago, Um

[0:16:41 Josh] otherwise proposed at his at

[0:16:44 Jim] his not directions at his direction. A

[0:16:47 Josh] zit head of the executive branch.

[0:16:49 Jim] Exactly. Um, but it came to light in kind of very political way,

[0:16:54 Josh] right? I think it’s, you know, it’s really easy Teoh to be, you know, skeptical and assume everything is political, especially from these chairs Una and I think it’s it’s healthy to try to not think of things being political sort of is your starting point to sort of take people at their face, you know, at their word and face value that they’re trying to do something. This was a little bit different, though, because no one really you know, it wasn’t something. It wasn’t a proposal that was very obvious, except for the fact that we all found out about it through a fundraising email from the governor. So that kind of tells you from the outset. Oh, maybe this is something political, right,

[0:17:29 Jim] Right. So we had a mid week last week. There was a hearing at HHS and this kind of, ah, typical open government thing where there’s gonna be some change in directive. In an executive agency, you have a public hearing on the exchanges.

[0:17:42 Josh] Usually, there’s a public comment period

[0:17:44 Jim] of public comment. Period was about to close when people discovered this, I think, or the deadline was getting close. And so what you had was, you know, as many of these abortion related hearings are, ah, very emotional a day, a long day of very emotional testimony. Um, and the idea here is that you heard from hospitals from, you know, funeral homes about the costs involved here,

[0:18:10 Josh] which apparently not minor. Yeah, right there. They’re low thousands of dollars. It sounds like,

[0:18:15 Jim] right. I mean, I mean, typically, if you’ve been in, you know, if you’ve had the misfortune or, you know, the human experience of having a family member or somebody close to you, Diamond involved in funeral expenses, which are essentially talking about, is some degree of funeral services for the result of a failed, failed A terminated pregnancy.

[0:18:34 Josh] Right. And this and this is regardless of the age of gestation.

[0:18:37 Jim] Right? And the rationale for this was too full to be, you know, even handed about this. That is, it was supposed to be about women’s health, but also about from ah ah, more philosophical, ideological position. You know, it was really aimed at underlining the degree to which the results, any results of a pregnancy should be afforded the status of human life. Right? So this drove a lot of the testimony. On one hand, you had ah, lot of very emotional testimony from women, including circumstances about in which, you know, having gone through some kind of a miscarriage or an abortion. Just how awful it would be to have together is particularly really at any point in the pregnancy. On the other hand, you had testimony about the risks of this of the current means of disposing of fetal tissues. And,

[0:19:31 Josh] uh, I mean, the main thing was, you know, I mean, I think the most you sort of there’s a certain set of usual suspects around.

[0:19:37 Jim] I think the

[0:19:38 Josh] abortion abortion laws proposed or otherwise, when they happen, the state and you sort of the regular Ah, you know pro life groups. You also have a lot of the pro choice groups. And then, of course, you know, the abortion clinics. But I think that what was notable was a lot of through the hospitals and the and the funeral home saying, So who’s gonna pay for this?

[0:19:56 Jim] Right? And that really then gets us toe some of the legal context of this. So, um, this year there was a big Supreme Court case that throughout ah, on abortion law that had been passed in Texas

[0:20:09 Josh] HB two in 2013 inches. Omnibus abortion legislation. This is very recent you probably heard about. This is the, you know doctors had to have admitting privileges with at a hospital within 30 miles. Ah, abortion or facilities of performing abortions. Even nonsurgical ones had to meet, meet the standards of ambulatory surgical centers. Many

[0:20:28 Jim] things like wider hallways.

[0:20:29 Josh] Why always where gurneys could fit and, you know, piping for anesthesia and all kinds of things. Ah, you know, I think the ah, the 20 week ban was in there so you can’t have an abortion after 20 weeks of gestation. That was part of that bill. So there’s a lot is a lot of stuff that went on and that and that, Ah, that law was just deemed unconstitutional. And actually, I mean, you know, So there’s a Texas specific component of that in a national component to that which is, other states sort of saw Texas’s approach to this, and it was sort of the big. It was one of the big pushes and sort of abortion restricting legislation kind of came out of Texas with this law, and we made it notable, and you saw a lot of states following suit in the subsequent years, at least until the Supreme Court just struck those down and basically saying, We’re doing this for women’s health. We’re doing this for women’s safety, so that’s OK, right? And there’s a lot thought that this was gonna be the next front on sort of the abortion battle. And the Supreme Court said, Now this is you know, you need to actually really severely impact women’s health in a you know, I mean, women’s health is a fine arguments, but you have to actually show it. You can’t just say it, and they basically

[0:21:34 Jim] always very little evidence

[0:21:35 Josh] that there is very little evidence that abortion was actually dangerous. Under the current standards, this was actually gonna limit access. Already had a bunch of abortion clinics. It closed. So it was hard to say that it didn’t increase the burden on women trying to get an abortion while not actually providing health benefit with this. What sort of interesting is that? It’s so you know, they have mentioned in sort of this proposal that this is for women’s health. How exactly is hard to make that connection, and it’s hard not to read this as political. Part of it is the fact that Texas lost this case. The state this case on a over HB two also recently. And this is sort of where this kind of this kind of weird crossover is. There was sort of the issue earlier this year about Planned Parenthood and what they did with fetal tissue that resulted from a terminated pregnancy. Ah, and

[0:22:22 Jim] they were accused of essentially black marketing fetal remains and and selling them in ways that violated the law, at the very least, was immoral or kind of crass, and all of that really kind of went away. Planned Parenthood been the subject of a sting by these activist groups that had been involved in these kind of video stings. All that kind of fell through

[0:22:45 Josh] well and should should say there is no evidence that Planned Parenthood was doing any of that just to just to be.

[0:22:50 Jim] That was essentially falling through. There were investigations, nobody fantasy,

[0:22:54 Josh] right? And in fact, here in Texas, a grand jury impaneled in Houston to look into it actually let Planned Parenthood walk these. There is no evidence and actually indicted. The videographer who tried to capture

[0:23:06 Jim] those indictments we should mention were also talked in the last week,

[0:23:09 Josh] and those were dropped in the last week to. But if you’re Texas and your Texas lawmaker and you consider yourself pro life and you consider that to be part of your political persona and part of you know something is important to your constituents, it’s been a tough couple of weeks for Texas on the abortion front. So in some ways, it’s hard not to look at. This is a way for Greg Abbott to kind of come out and say,

[0:23:32 Jim] I’m doing something.

[0:23:33 Josh] I’m doing something now again. I think the chances of this surviving any sort of legal challenger, probably slim to none. Given what just happened with Texas is on invested abortion legislation, which is much the arguments for women’s health. There are much clearer where is in this case. What’s going to come up is you know who’s gonna pay for this. If women are gonna have to be forced to pay for this, it’s gonna be a burden that has no connection to health, and the court will throw it out.

[0:23:57 Jim] So we’ll wind up seeing what the what the Department of Health and Human Services does with this. They now heard the public testimony and and they’ll issues some kind of a response to this, either directives or non directives. Um, almost no matter what they do right, we can expect to see this, I think, as part of the abortion agenda on both sides come the 2017 legislative session. Right? So all right, One last quick political note. Pure politics on, and this is over. The weekend, The Texas Tribune It ran a story that was built on a recording that somebody made of ah, campaign or party meeting, essentially a party organization Media Victory Fund,

[0:24:41 Josh] Texas Victory for fun is the Texas like victory. I don’t remember it. Some Texas victory. That’s basically the

[0:24:47 Jim] common pain. We’re going

[0:24:48 Josh] camping. Organization for Republicans and tax

[0:24:51 Jim] raising Campaign Fundraising organization for Republicans in Texas The chair of this is George P. Bush, who is the land commissioner and the sun of Jeb Bush and the nephew of former governor and President George W. Bush. George P. Bush is seen as kind of a guiding light or ah, rising star in the Republican Party in Texas by many. Ah, he ran and won this land commissioner election in 2014 virtually non contested, very, very popular with, Ah, the Bush family fund raising doesn’t with mainstream Republicans, I think, in Texas in the party, anyway. And at this breakfast, George P. Bush said that, you know, essentially Republicans we’re gonna have toe, you know, swell. I mean, it was it was a halfhearted endorsement in somewhere, but he basically said, We need to get behind the Republican ticket, even though many of us, in particular my family, have doubts about Donald Trump,

[0:25:48 Josh] and he had any need withheld endorsing Donald Trump for a lot of obvious reasons, I mean, is that had a pretty rough ah, primary campaign against him. He wasn’t expected Teoh to, you know, running endorsed Trump after, although, you know, it’s funny. I’m recalling the last

[0:26:04 Jim] remember, he actually held out on endorsing is that

[0:26:07 Josh] s so I mean, he certainly takes his time to discuss. You had earlier just reminded me. Yeah, Yeah, last Tribune festival, he was asked if he was in for endorsing his father and he sort of demure, which is unison.

[0:26:17 Jim] And that would have been in basically the fall of 2015 going into the heart of the, you know, the teeth of the primary section.

[0:26:24 Josh] Right? So if nothing else, we know that he likes toe wait to endorse, but he likes he likes to hold off, but that we were talking about this this morning. There’s a sort of question of, you know, what are the politics of this for him? Is this really meaningful? And it’s sort of it’s a very inside every conversation. I mean, my quick take away from the morning was it doesn’t affect him in any way. Ah, in the sense that you know the sort of moderate big donors, Republican donors who he’s got connections to because of his father and his uncle and his grandfather. You know, they’re not going to turn away from him for this for 1/2 hearted endorsements. Um, And then, you know, to the extent that there are some, you know here in Texas, who would, you know, sort of be dissuaded by this, you know, I just don’t think it’s gonna affect them.

[0:27:13 Jim] Yeah, you know, I think one you know, as you did you think back and you think about him not endorsing his own father. I still think there’s a little piece of this that makes him look a little flaky. Now it’s That’s a small piece. And I think the dividends for this and really the take away if you’re looking at this and trying to understand this terms of how politics works is that here’s a guy who has been is part of his elevation and part of people trying to scaffold his political career and is an acknowledgement of his ties to the donor community. They put him in charge of this fundraising group, and he is now gonna be a party guy by coming out and saying, we’ve got to get behind the ticket. You know, at a time when there are interesting cross currents in the party, you’ve got ostensibly in some ways major figures in two of them or, you know, diverse swing. You know, the two different kind of opposed wings of the party, neither of whom have endorsed Trump full throated Lee or at all, really, for their own reasons. On one hand, Speaker of the House Joe Straus, who was seen as you know, at least insider, is kind of the the bulwark of the centre right kind of establishment wing of the party. On the other hand, you’ve got Ted Cruz, who ran against Trump and, as we discussed in here before, has very pronounced Italy chosen not to endorse Trump after a again, a very bruising campaign. So I think the main thing here is not I mean, we could go back and forth And is this good for George P. Bush? Is that not good? But it gives us a little sense about how parties work and have the party in this state of Texas is positioned in an interesting way in the presidential race.

[0:28:56 Josh] Yeah, I mean, you know, I think you mentioned the complexity of sort of this of this piece, and I think it’s it’s useful. We talked about this last week and I’ll use That’s a good way to say Windows. We talked about Paul Ryan, and a lot of you know he’s endorsed Trump. But he’s also criticized

[0:29:09 Jim] speaker of speaker of the House in the Congress.

[0:29:11 Josh] Right, If you don’t know, uh, you know he’s endorsed Trump, but he’s also criticized him in recent weeks, and there’s been some push among Republican elites for him to disavow him. And you sort of say, What’s what’s Paul Ryan’s calculus and something that you know the way to look at is Paul Ryan as speaker of the House he’s actually voted for, You know, in terms of getting into the Congress among, you know, a congressional district like everybody else, that he’s very likely to win again. That’s part of why he’s speaker of the house, cause you know he’s not gonna get defeated in his own district Number one. It’s part of the air of a necessary condition for being in a leadership position in the Congress at all. But he’s also then elected by Republicans in the House to lead them. And so, to the extent that he’s making a decision whether to endorse Trump or walk away from Trump, he’s really looking at what’s good for his members in the House. And right now, you know, it’s pretty easy to say, showing disunity between the Republicans and the Congress and the presidential nominee, he thinks would probably be more harmful to the Republican Party overall in his House members, then just, you know, sort of company a very reluctantly giving Trump his endorsement and just pushing ahead.

[0:30:13 Jim] So you’re saying that George P. Is being Ryan esque?

[0:30:16 Josh] I think everybody is being Ryan esque, right? Which is, I think, for other officials. Right now, the question becomes You can Republican. Let’s say Donald Trump loses by a significant, you know, port margin, which is, if you’re gonna bet that’s what you would bet right now and again. This will change, but that’s that’s a pretty good bet right now. The real question for Republicans is whether they maintain control in the Senate, and what every elected official is kind of doing is saying what you know besides here of my own personal conditions on the ground. If let’s say we set those aside and for George P. Bush, he has no problems. He’s not gonna is likely not unlikely, is unlikely not to get challenged by anybody. Seriously. Primary Next time around. He’s unlikely he’s not gonna lose in a general election in Texas, that’s for sure. So basically, where you kind of come down with a lot of people is, is what I’m going to do with respect to Trump, more likely to help Republicans in the Senate or hurt Republicans in the Senate. If it has any effect at all on and then how National? And then how will that position a fact, you know, sort of my political calculus down the road,

[0:31:14 Jim] right? And so, at the state level, that means George P. Is thinking, you know, does it? Is it better? Or is it better for me to just get on board with, you know, some amount of you know, caveat ing? Yeah, that is, you know, sort of qualification than it is to join the crowd of resistance or even remain to silent. We’ve got to help raise money. He’s probably fighting the good fight for the party here. You know with sense that you know, Aziz, we were talking about it. It may just be that it should trump lose large, given the fact that supporting opposition to trump to some degree cut across the usual factionalism in Texas that we may just see a case of mass amnesia and forgetting in this state. When it comes to what happened with the Trump campaign, should it turn out to be a disaster Now, we don’t know. For all we know, you know, the people that oppose now, President Trump, uh, you know, we’ll be in trouble. I doubt that’s gonna happen. But, you know, we could be looking at that. So with that, I think we will. And what is the last second session for those of you that are in government? 3 12 Good luck with the final, thanks to our engineer will today, um, I’m gonna have to go get a breakfast taco, and he’s gonna have to do some editing. Thanks, Josh. And you’ll enjoy the rest of the summer. Second reading Podcast is a production of Texas Politics Project and the Project 2021 Development Studio at the University of Texas at Austin.