April 13, 2021 – Second Reading Podcast

[0:00:00 Speaker 0] Welcome to the 2nd Reading Podcast from the University of Texas at Austin. The republicans were in the Democratic Party because there was only one party. So I 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? Yeah. And welcome back to the second reading podcast for the week of april 12th 2021. I’m Jim Henson, director of the texas politics project at U. T. Austin, joined again today by josh blank Research director for the texas politics project. Good afternoon, josh, Good afternoon, sir. So after some discussion of the many things going on in the world right now and and lots of activity at the legislature, we kind of decided to go a little, a little bit macro or a little bit uh higher level today in some ways, although it certainly engages what’s going on in the legislature and talk a little bit about some of the high profile corporate push back to voting legislation that is making its way through the texas legislature um after some selected but kind of high profile push back to voting legislation passed earlier this year in Georgia, including most recently and probably most severely, I think Major League Baseball pulling the All Star game and moving it to. Denver of all places, texas is now shifted into the media spotlight as the raft of voting legislation that we’ve talked about in recent weeks um continues to move through the process. So the texas Senate has passed SB seven and sent it to the House, and SB seven is the the omnibus bill in the House, although there’s all kinds of other voting bills, uh several of which were were heard in committee this week. The House Omnibus Bill HB six has moved out of committee um, but hasn’t yet been put on the calendar. Um, So we’ve got, you know, big bills moving and lots of other things still churning through both elections committees in texas. Three corporations, american airlines del homegrown texas company we should say in prudential have issued statements critical of this legislation that really echoes the kind of response the corporate response to legislation in Georgia. And I think it’s you know, it’s that kind of movement and the fact that Georgia has kind of gone now farther in the process. That’s really, I think given texas a lot of attention. There’s a big article in the Washington post over the weekend about this times had covered it recently. Then over the weekend there was a, a zoom, you know, a zoom meeting among 100 corporate executives. That was organized by a Yale management professor who apparently puts these con fabs together. Uh But this meeting was you know, focused on uh discussing potential ways that corporate leaders could oppose such voting legislation. I think tellingly there was no consensus, no action taken, but the meeting got a ton of coverage. I mean it was covered by several of the major networks was all over cable was all over the major newspapers. Now the corporate action has gotten you know, not a small amount of pushback from Republican political leaders from mitch McConnell at the national level two in texas, lieutenant governor who was particularly vitriolic about this last week. You know, and of course the the usual, you know, nasty, self satisfied tweets, you are going to accompany this on any other side and that’s a bipartisan activity as as we we know particularly well. Um so I think, you know, the corporate push back and you know can tell us, I think some things about the state and nature of the GOP or at least raise some questions, you know, I mean it seems to me to be you know, to point to a lot of different things. Yeah, I mean before getting there I think it is, you know, this is something that’s really motivated a lot of interest and some of it is sort of breathless and not really very well thought out, you know, is sort of some corporate leaders discuss, you know, let’s say withholding contributions or making these statements. I think you know there’s some simplistic responses that kind of say well GOP is done, yeah, you know, and I think some of that is clearly wishful thinking, you know, on the part of some people saying it, but it does, you know, I mean. But I think, you know, if you take just a little bit of time, it’s hard to think about this. I mean, it’s sort of obvious that there are a lot of cross currency. It’s not even necessarily obvious to me that the cross currents that we’re talking about or even the same cross currents for everybody, Right? I mean, what, what the politicians are reacting to this and what the corporate leaders are reacting to this, It’s not necessarily even the same thing and what the public sees and what the public sees and how the media is covering it. So, it is a really kind of an interesting meta piece, you know, it’s taking as a departure point this idea that the Republican Party has traditionally been considered the party of, you know, quote unquote corporate interests, which is a pretty broad brush, Yeah. Which is, yeah. Which which is definitely oversimplifies the degree, you know, to which there is partisan structure among corporate interests and firms. And, you know, the dynamic, I mean, a lot of this was focused on campaign contributions in the early phase. I mean, the, you know, the most recent discussion in a lot of ways, you know, of of kind of corporate citizenship and and corporate, you know, quote unquote corporate political activism really kind of came up, you know, most recently when, You know, several major corporations suggested that they were announced that they would suspend political contributions in the wake of January January six events at the Capitol. And, you know, that’s kind of petered out frankly, near as I can tell in a lot of ways, but there’s continuity between that discussion and this one and I think, you know, I mean, as we talked to various people about this, I mean, you know, I mean, one of the basic kind of question to ask is, you know, what does dr corporations or ceos in the name of their corporate Yeah, they’re corporations to do this. You know, there’s multiple inputs. I mean, you know, I think the thing that, you know, that a lot of people think about and that that’s certainly a lot of the opposition is focused on our, you know, consumers and the threat of consumer boycotts. So, you know, one of the things that, you know, a lot of the Republican pushback has been saying is that, you know, you know, these corporations that have long been our friends should should not be blackmailed or coerced or bullied into making statements or engaging in political activity by, you know, consumer boycotts on the left or leftist bullies. But if they do, but yeah, but if they do, we boycotts might be okay. So, you know, consumer, you know, so, I mean, there is a, you know, there’s a sense in which consumers are, you know, are are a piece of this, I think a little less, you know, I mean, something that, you know, it’s all kind of more reviewed now. I think in the in the early phases, what was a little less apparent was the degree to which, you know, management and and corporate corporate leadership get pressure from employees and and think about potential employees and, you know, particularly in a type, you know, competitive hiring market, particularly if you’re a firm that has to require, you know, has to hire specialized labor. It’s competitive out there and, you know, this these kinds of things, whether it’s your corporate profile or where you do where you are based and where you are trying to attract employees to come and live or go and live in terms of, you know, these big corporations and in multiple places, that’s a factor. And then there’s also been, you know, a rise in recent years and in shareholder pressure. And what people talk about is shareholder, you know, political activism. And so all of these are kind of, all these converge and they converge in a kind of brand pressure to some degree. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think, you know what I mean? I think the thing that you got to kind of take away from this is that, you know, for any given company, none of you know, getting engaged in these topics is never a slam dunk. This is not, this is not something that I think business leaders want to be doing or dealing with. But I mean, I think the point you make is is key here, which is, you know, yeah, there’s this idea about boycotts and counter boycotts and whatever, but ultimately, I think most, you know, most companies know enough about their consumer market to know, you know, to to least weigh the costs and benefits in a broad sense and something like that. But I mean, the other stuff I think is interesting, even more so to the extent that, you know, we have the service economy and really what we’re talking about a lot of cases is, you know, some higher end employers concerned about their competitiveness and hiring. But then the shareholder thing is also interesting to me, which is, you know, there’s been an ongoing discussion over the last few years about whether basically maximizing shareholder value is the be all and end all of corporate activity. And, you know, I would say if you would ask that question five years ago, it would be yes, 10 years ago, definitely. Yes right now. I mean, this is, I think, you know, you go search this, you’ll find a bunch of heads about this, you know, were written in the last six months. This is really an open question for people. And it is kind of, I think, following in some ways, you know, public perceptions about what they’re expecting corporations to do. Right? And again, I think it’s easy to get out, you know, over the edge of your skis on this, as you were saying yesterday. I mean, I’m I’m struck by, you know, how some, you know, some media outlets I read or some writers that you read, you know, really make a lot about this about this as an institutional factor. I mean, axios comes to mind and you know, a lot of people love to hate axios. You know, the you know, the smart brevity thing rubs a lot of people the wrong way. You know, I can do smart brevity and long reads, you know, I think we should all just, I’m impressed by smart brevity because I can’t do it be a little cooler. There you go, that’s fun. You know, this idea that you know, corporate, you know, the corporations and corporate leaders are feeling a the will to act because other institutions are failing and I, you know, you know, do some people feel that way? Some individuals almost certainly is that, you know, and I’m kind of, you know, hitting on what you were saying, you know, baked under what the real incentives are at the broadest level and at the end of the day, what what a corporation does, you know, how integrated is this in the fundamental reason for being of a corporation, which is to, you know, be a market actor that is profitable, you know, I mean, I think obviously, you know, to get, you know, when we’re gonna go, I mean, I want to go there because you know, if you think about why corporations get involved in legislative politics, you know, I mean, it’s, you know, it’s part, you know, it’s it’s closely related to the bottom line. I mean, you know, people are not, you know, corporations are not getting involved. You know, don’t hire huge lobby teams to go out and talk about philosophical issues. They hire huge lobby teams to go out and make sure that, you know, the laws that are passed, the regulations that are, that are implemented, you know, are in their interests and don’t hurt their interests and contribute to their bottom line and these things can coexist. But I think unpacking all that is pretty is pretty important and not not losing sight of that, I think is pretty important. Well, you know, and the other thing I think is sort of kind of key here to understand too, is the fact that, you know, I think there’s a little bit of a lag in our understanding to all this. So if we look, you know, sort of it at this, uh, you know, we’re talking about a sort of a an uptick in corporate activism if you want to call it that, and I’m not even sure if I would want to call it that, but, you know, sort of corporate statements on social issues and movements that has really picked up dramatically. I would say in the last four years, I was just going back to look at sea, when did Colin Kaepernick kneel during the national anthem is kind of a starting point that happened the last four years? You think about the Me Too movement and even then, I mean corporations weren’t necessarily outfront sort of standing with women, but they were certainly setting, you know, saying, hey, we’re, you know, we’re making sure that our policies are up to date and they were acting appropriately in this space and again in a much more sort of comfortable space for them in terms of, you know, hR policies hiring practices, you know, mia culpas if necessary. And then you fast forward to last summer during the protests over George Floyd’s death. And you know, you saw a lot of companies coming out and, you know, standing with the protesters, but I think they were also being very careful not to be against police officers. Well, you know, I mean, it’s hard, so it’s hard not to, you know, again, not to be overly cynical, but you know, they’re standing with their consumers, well, right there, standing with their employees and their, you know, with, you know, I mean, the kind of corporate activism thing, I mean, you know, and I don’t want to get too far ahead. I don’t know, I don’t know this history as well as if one could certainly as well as I shouldn’t even be talking about it too much further. But you know, it does seem like there is something, you know, a bit more philosophical in the nature of these interventions that is a little different than, you know, much earlier instances of corporate activism or corporate, you know, politics that were that we saw corporations get involved in, that were a little more narrowly defined tailored to their behavior and things like this. Yeah, well, and I said that’s that’s an even earlier instance. But I think, I mean, the point, the point here is, you know, In the summer of 2020, you know, standing up for people, unarmed people, not getting shot by the police is hard stand to make in the face of, you know, the capital insurrection on January six, I think, you know, sort of a similar thing here, which is that, you know, it was it was even similar is a little bit different, I would say. Which is it was clearly a political moment that they had to decide whether act on or not. But you can see the polling about whether people wanted corporate action than it was much higher. And part of it is, you know, I think that’s where the void argument comes in is that, you know, watching our institutions fall apart, you know, in terms of the peaceful transfer of power. You know, there was, you know, I mean, I think there is more acceptance of uh more other types of institutional actors to come out and say, hey, wait a minute, this is not what this is supposed to look like. But you but you know, you’re in for, you know, in for a penny in for a pound and you kind of go ahead to where we are now, right? And I think the question being asked corporations by a lot of activists on the ground as well, you’re standing with us, you know, during George Floyd, why aren’t you standing with us when people are trying to take away our right to void vote? And a lot of corporations are saying, well, I guess you’re right or or you know, they’re, you know, they’re, yeah, they’re marketing firms and their consultants are telling them, you know, look, you know, the people who are in charge of strategy or figuring out there, I I think maybe figuring out they have to have an answer to that, but I think, you know, the flip side of that is kind of, you know, is how does this articulate within Politics as we know it now in 2021 and it was already, you know, look, we saw this if you think back, you know, it was just occurring to me, you know, we pulled on the on NFL favorability, you know, in the wake of of Colin Kaepernick and the some of the activism and trump talking about it and, you know, the NFL took a hit among, you know, along partisan lines on that. And so, I mean, I think that, you know, thinking about how, you know, it may well be that polarization is is kind of a factor here, right? You know, in terms of, you know, this may be even harder, you know, they may find, you know, I think the question is, do corporations do this and then find out, wow, you know, that pushback was harder than we thought it was going to be from a broader base of the public because it, you know, drops into a kind of partisan rise vortex. And yeah, you know, there’s like two reactions I have to that and you know, one of them involves taylor Swift and then one of them is a little bit more thoughtful. Taylor swift, one was, you know, the taylor Swift movie at some point, you know, she’s having a conversation with her manager and her father about whether she should get involved in the election, whether she should make her views known basically. Her business associates are all saying no, you definitely should not do that. You know, do you do you really want to basically drive away half of your audience is the argument now, The thing is for Taylor Swift, that’s probably true, you know, it’s probably least half of her audience and it probably is the case that, you know, I don’t, you know, at least before this, I’m not sure that Taylor Swift had a partisan tilt in her, you know, uh, in her, in her audience here, but most businesses don’t. I mean, you know, if you really think about, I mean, the nature of a lot of the business, we’re talking, some, you know, are big and they, you know, they serve everybody whatever, But, you know, there’s a lot more businesses, I think that they’re just in existence now that serve far narrower slices of the population in a way that, you know, these are not necessarily as, uh, risky moves for them as it is for some of these big institutional players. The problem for the big institutional players that Dell’s the american airlines, whatever you say, they do have big, you know, consumer basis is, well, once all these, all these smaller companies are going out and saying, hey, we’re standing with, you know, we’re standing with, you know, african americans who want to vote or were standing with women. It’s kind of hard for you to say, yeah, we’re not into that. You know, we don’t do that, that’s not our thing. And especially in a broader context, there’s some interesting polling from Morning consult, there was sort of asking people about, you know, what do companies have a responsibility to do? And the thing is, the vast majority of people think that, you know, Companies have responsible to take care of their employees and treat them well. You know, set an example for their industry become sustainable. You know, set an example through their supply chains, taking care of the communities they operated on and on and on down the list. You get to 50 say fight and address racism and social or economic discrimination, which is pretty much about as close as we could get to kind of a partisan split point in the electorate. I’m sure if we look at the results of this poll bipartisanship, you’d see most democrats say they should be doing this lot of republicans saying they shouldn’t. But this is the thing is sort of interesting about this is it’s probably the thing they least want to be dealing with in terms of the sort of corporate responsibility matrix of things they could be dealing with in society. This is probably the least popular, right? And then, and then, you know, these other data from that same poll, I think, you know, show that there’s also a generational thing, all things being equal. Younger people are a bit more or, you know, you know, the younger you are, all things being equal. You’re probably more interested in seeing this and a little politicized on this front. So let’s talk a little bit, then let’s say, you know, narrow back down to texas and think about, so, you know, at a basic level, it’s going to make a difference. What’s the impact, you know, what’s the state of play on this now? This is not, you know, as we started, you know, you and I’ve been talking about this and I talked to a few people about it in the last few days. I’ve been thinking about this, you know, even in recent times, you know, we’ve seen instances where, you know, large businesses and particularly during a legislative session, have, you know, engaged in a kind of strategy that involves poking their head out, you know, up over the hedge on issues, but it’s, you know, there’s not enough instances of this for it to make a, you know, for us to really see any big patterns, but it’s still, I think, interesting to look at some of the major instances. So if you go back to 2011,, you know, those old enough, um, you know, h e B and and very surprisingly, at the time, one of the biggest housing housing construction firms in the state bob perry Homes, pushed back on legislative efforts The first round. And of course they eventually passed it, which is also interesting to pass anti sanctuary city legislation. This was 2011, you know, session um you know, height of the Tea Party, Republican Party enjoyed a huge majorities in both houses. Um it was kind of the the after the Obama midterm election. Um and there was a lot of pressure from the Tea Party and from the far right to to pass anti sanctuary city legislation. And in fact, rick Perry had, You know, in campaigning in 2010 and and, you know, many other republicans had had sort of made this thing out of sanctuary cities as a way of uh you know, sort of sheltering immigrants. Now when Perry and hb wound up standing up against this, you know, they were relatively successful in the sense that now there was a lot of context there, you know, but this was part of a broader conversation in which, you know, speaker that the speaker of the House at the time joe straus was urging the business community to get involved and to weigh in as a counterweight, You know? And then we saw this again, I think in 2017 with the bathroom bill, you know, the bathroom bill comes up, doesn’t make it in in the regular session, gets put on the spot on the on the call for the special session. And that, I think, and this is an interesting tactical point. That’s when we saw a much broader sort of push back on anti LGBTQ legislation from some of the major corporate actors that are active in the Legislature, but, you know, it’s telling much much broader than during the regular session. Well, say it’s telling to me that they waited until their business was done um in the regular session before they really spoke out, you know, quite vocally. And that’s been a conversation going on right now, right. Which is that, you know, we’ve got these three corporations that have made statements, nobody’s really started withholding campaign funds. You know, we’re in the realm of the statements, but there are a lot of the major corporations at the Legislature right now. You know, there’s a lot of significant legislation. You look at the broadband bill. You look at all of the response, you know, that’s being processed to the blackout that involves, you know, major energy and utility companies, liability protection for Covid, you know, the liability protection for Covid, there’s a lot of things that are very important to business right now. And so I’m wondering if anybody is considering the strategy of can we hold this off in the regular session? Everybody knows there’s gonna be, there’s gonna be a special session this time. Mhm. Um and so, you know, anything that doesn’t, you know, anything that’s not the budget that doesn’t get through the regular session is going to be fair game for the governor, for political reasons, for substantive reasons to put on the inevitable special session that’s coming for redistricting at least. So, you know, I, you know, these election bills are moving pretty quickly, but it’s also, you know, they’re not through. You know, nothing has gone to the nothing has gone to the governor’s desk and I think, you know, obviously, particularly in the house, you know, the democrats were laying in wait, if, you know, if Representative Martinez Fischer is not already compiling points of order in tactical plays, you know, on this, you know, if he doesn’t have binders full already, I’m a monkey’s uncle. But I mean, but the point you’re making here as I think sort of, you know, an important one that I think people sort of failed to consider, which is, you know, number one, you know, all of these businesses, all of these industries have legislation often pending before the legislature that is far more directly tied to their business functioning than any of the stuff that we’re talking about publicly. It’s the sort of stuff that we never talk about publicly because it only matters to people in the industries usually, right. Um, and so, you know, on the one hand, this idea of, you know what our corporation is going to do, it’s like, well, you know, they’re going to say some stuff, you know, they might withhold some campaign funds, but probably not, you know, and really, you know, I mean, if you think about the, if you think about the two sides of this conversation so far right, the first is there’s all these diffuse, you know, societal things going on in this idea of like talent acquisition and shareholder expectation and brand identity and all this kind of stuff and like how does that fit? And then there’s like, you know, hey, the legislature is about to reclassify how, you know, someone in your industry, you know, can, you know, can or can’t work. It’s like, well, you know, Yeah, I mean, if you’re a T and T or google, are you going to sacrifice your stake in the broadband bill to go to the map during the regular session to oppose the voting legislation? Well, I would say so far, evidently not. Well, but, you know, I would actually ask another question the other side of that, which is, you know, how far a republican, elected officials in the state willing to go to punish. Let me just this way, corporations who are individuals to from expressing their political views on certain topics. I mean, I think, you know, there’s, I mean, you know, again, I’m just just shooting from them. I mean, they’re sort of like a kind of a more obvious like status quo, where, yeah, maybe these corporations continue to, you know, speak out on certain stuff, but they’re still going to give donations and they’re still going to work behind the scenes to advance their interests on most of the stuff that they really care about. Um, but you know, I mean, the question to my mind, is that good enough for republicans? I mean, I think the interesting thing is some of this is the fact that, you know, dan Patrick’s response to this was, was so vitriolic, was kind of, and it’s not surprising for dan Patrick per se, but it’s a surprising tack, I think, you know, if that’s the tact that republicans as a whole end up taking towards these businesses, because ultimately, you know, it doesn’t really serve them any good to be enemies well. And I think what this does is it it does bring us then to, you know, in some ways, you know, that the political brass tacks of this, which is the coalitional politics underlying, you know, like within the Republican Party, because, you know, look, all things being equal, republicans don’t want these corporations publicly telling them what to do, per se, even though, well, you know, in other ways, they privately tell them what to do all the time without being overly blunt about it, or get their way all the time. Not publicly, but right, That’s right. But the issue here is that there’s a big public commitment here, and, you know, not just a big public commitment that Republican leaders have made in 2021 to this voting legislation, but the way that they have been talking about the underlying priorities of this voting legislation and investing it, you know, not with, you know, there are partisan goals, which we know are there, but with this big, all this philosophical, you know, philosophical talk about, you know, protecting democracy by shrinking the electorate and or that that’s not their phrase, that’s mine, but, um, and so the trade off here is a little, you know, I mean, you know, there’s, you know, there’s a public facing piece of this that really brings out the fact that, you know, the corporations, you know, the corporate actors here with the interest that we’re talking about, which is particularly, you know, with somebody like Dell, their interests in, in employee recruitment, shareholders. And then you’ve got the other faction of the Republican Party to whom this voting legislation has been marketed as important to is one the political class for their political goals. But what we’re now calling for, lack of a better word, the populist grassroots of the Republican Party, who have now been told for, you know, pick your number of years, you know, depending on, you know, which part they’ve been told for, you know, a decade, but certainly in no uncertain terms for the last five years that the election system is broken and the democrats are cheating and the republicans are going to fix that so that they’re not cheated out of their vote by all of this non existent, we should say, voting fraud, that people are convinced is going on really ineffective voting fraud too, by the way. Yes, for example. So in terms of Yes, it results. So, you know, I mean, there’s a part of this where, you know, it’s, you know, the history that we were, you know, the coalitional history here. You know, this is not the first time we’ve seen this conflict and this conflict is as old as the republican rise in republican hegemony in the state. The coalition that republicans bill, Yes, going back as far as, you know, the disillusion and the, you know, the migration out of the Democratic Party of both voters and elite and business interests that began, You know, you, you know, you can pick your spot, I would say in, you know, in real terms, and, you know, as late as the late sixties, early seventies, certainly the early in mid seventies, um republicans success has always hinged on managing that, on managing the conflict. That is now very much in the open in this fight over the voting over voting rules, You know, and that’s why I think the, you know, the 2011 immigration H E B, you know, perry Homes versus the Tea Party is an interesting kind of, to some degree smaller scale dress rehearsal for this. Because if you think about where, you know, these two big corporate retail groceries and home construction, I mean, these are pretty directly interested parties right in the immigration legislation. This is much broader and bigger. And I think a little more explosive in terms of what the terms of the conflict are between the now very, very conservative Republican base for whom this voting issue has become salient, or at least this view of it has become salient and corporate actors who are for their own set of reasons, feeling like they have to engage this. Yeah, there’s, I mean, there’s a little bit of, uh, oh, you’re playing a little bit of chicken here, right? I because I think because, I mean, on the one hand, you know, if you’re a corporation, the question is, how far are you willing to go, you know, in pursuing, you know, this position, Right? Uh, you know, the same thing is true of Republican elected officials. I mean, you know, it’s funny the way that you kind of constructed that is sort of, you know, this idea of sort of, let’s say the, I don’t love the term because complicated, like the populist grassroots, on the one hand versus course, bracketed it when I used to, but I’m bracketing it again versus sort of these corporate interests. You right now, the Republican Party is traditionally, you know, sort of, you could, you know, the Democratic Party should marvel at the extent to which the Republican Party has been able to To manage these tow coalitions together. I think Perry was governor for 14 years because of his ability to do that. And that was, you know, so, you know, in part, no. And I remember, you know, I started I started in Texas in 2009, and I remember, you know, in particular, becoming more acquainted with rick Perry’s, I’ll just say his style in particular, but the extent to which he could shift styles between when he is, you know, the guy who’s running the enterprise fund on the one hand, and then the guy talking at CPAC on the other, right? You know, the thing I was also thinking about with this is, you know, it’s interesting that this is, I mean, you know, in some ways that this is the issue. I mean I think it’s maybe you know, sort of an obvious post hoc explanation, right? Which is well this is fundamental because democracy, you know. But I mean I also think if you think about the sort of things we’re talking about here and in the moment in time we’re in, you know, I’m kind of I’m kind of I’m not going to say why is this not that, But a little bit like it’s interesting that it’s this, but it’s not like, you know, we talked about it a little bit, but the trigger bill that would ban abortion in the state of the U. S. Supreme Court kicks abortion legislation basically rules back to the states. You know, it seems to me that there’s a lot of the same things that we’d be talking about. You talk about, you know, you know, recruiting talent, you’re talking about the rights of people, you know, and I mean, I guess what I wonder is going back to the, you know, why is that issue? Not something that necessarily, you know, motivates businesses in the same way is kind of interesting, interesting question I think. But the other piece of this is, you know, going back to when does the rubber meet the road here is already these businesses going to leave texas. Because I mean that’s the fundamental issue in terms of managing this, is that republicans have long been able to say, hey, look, you know, are model works. You know, we’re one of the best places to do business. You know, we regularly were growing constant in terms of people, in terms of business or economy is getting bigger, you know, I mean, in multiple points throughout the last 10 year period, they pointed to texas, the strength relative to the rest of the country, you know, especially economically, um, you know, before this dust up, you know, I think most of the news about business in texas was about businesses moving their headquarters to texas. And so, you know, I mean, to my mind, you know, these corporations can kind of say all this stuff, but if they’re not going to leave the state, I’m not sure it really matters if you’re a Republican. I mean, I don’t know. Yeah, you’re gonna have to you’re gonna have to have more skin in the game there, it’s gonna have to be more aggressive. The question is, you know, can their opposition have an impact on, you know, the broader unfolding of this, You know, I mean, we were talking about the democrats earlier, you know, the democrats don’t have a lot of cards to play, you know, and this is at least you know, moderately helpful to them, you know, in the sense that at least it it gives them something else to draw attention to this, to try to, you know, affect the discourse, but it also, you know, gives them, you know, I mean, it gives them possibly a path if they can stop it during the regular session. I, you know, I mean, I think the speculation inside the building right now, you know, is, you know, is that this falls into sort of everything else right now, which is what’s going on in the house, we know what the Senate is going to do because, you know, there is a general and an army for the most part and the army is marching where the general tells them to go, they can they can even march back in time, right, for example, and the question is through either, you know, unknown, you know, different sets of preferences or um, a lack of consolidation of leadership or effective opposition or some combination of those things, you know, what are the chances that we see the house, you know, become a very contentious? You know, I don’t, you know, somebody recently with me, you know, use the term that works in that that works in the chamber, use the term meltdown. Now. I don’t this is an interested party and I don’t know that meltdown is quite what I would predict, but I think, you know, there’s there’s still some, you know, there’s some instability in some disruption out there in the house and that is going to play into this. And so does this, you know, does this corporate fight and does, you know, the, you know, corporations injecting themselves to some degree in this, you know, add to that in some, in some way. That is certainly less than, you know, the corporation, you know, the corporate actors going full bore into this. Um, but as you know, but it’s more than your actual, you know, writing a letter and then kind of shrinking into the background and I don’t, you know, I, I don’t know that we know where that’s gonna be, where that’s gonna go. But, you know, we might even know more about this by next week. So I’m gonna call it were, you know, about a half hour. Um, I think we’re going to talk about this again, that might be the one prediction I will absolutely make is that if this is, you know, I think you mentioning the trigger bill and some of the other things floating around out there, I don’t I don’t think we’re done talking one more observation before. We’re please please, brevity is not my strong suit. But you know, it’s listening to, you know, you talk about this and thinking about this more and more. You know, it’s funny because I think most of the framing on this right now is really focused on the effect this is going to have on elected officials or the extent of it, or if it’s going to have an effect. But mostly, you know, the idea that this is somehow kind of a seismic thing. And on the one hand, I would say, I don’t really think that’s the case because it’s not as though these corporations are saying, you know, well, we’re going to stop donating to republicans were gonna start donating to democrats. They’re just saying we’re going to stop donating. We’re not going to put our hands on this, not like they’re saying, we’re going to start funding a bunch of people who are pushing for progressive or social reforms. And so in and of itself, it’s not like we’re talking about some huge shift in resources, right? It’s sort of it might be a change. But the other thing I was thinking about this is, you know, when I look at the two sets of actors here, the politicians were put, you know, who are pushing these bills on the one hand and then the pressure their face from the corporations, I can’t help but feel like, you know, we didn’t really get to the polling day that much, but the corporations are in a much tougher spot. I mean, if I’m a Republican political actor here, I know what my voters think about voting. I know what they think about the system. I know what they think about voter fraud and all these things and I have very clear marching orders. The thing that strikes me, I was kind of starting at the beginning about the ark of all this, is that, you know, when corporations got more involved after the death of George Floyd, you know, I think the thing that kind of comes out of that in some way as well, you know, we started a discussion that about systemic racism, not the discussion had already been ongoing. But then the question becomes, if, you know, if you’re standing with, you know, african americans, because they’re getting shot by police officers. And the question, well, do you think that those are isolated incidents or do you think that’s part of a broader system of problems? The question we talked about in our polling a lot and, you know, especially for progressive boards, progressive shareholders really even, you know, sort of socially conscious consumers and otherwise, you know, there’s a lot of places to see racism in american society and for corporations. The question because what are you going to speak out everywhere? You see it or in some places? And I think, you know, again, there’s a sort of this idea, I would say, you know, there’s definitely a fair thing to be said that democracy itself, the functioning of the whole thing. The whole government system is maybe somehow elevated relative to other considerations. But there’s tons of racism in education and policing and housing and all these other areas and corporations are moving in those spaces to, but once it intersects with politics, you know, I don’t know what their endgame is, whereas I do know what the end game is for republicans and I think they do too. And it’s not a conflict for them minus the fat unless they really are concerned about these businesses, which, Well, I mean, I think that’s, you know, I mean, it’s particularly problematic. I mean, you know, there are, you know, it’s almost as if the corporate actors getting involved at this stage of the game, you know, in the legislative process there, you know, there is, you know, you don’t say this that much about corporations, but there, you know, there is something of a disadvantage because of all the factors were talking about earlier and maybe that this is not this is not the best arena, that the timing is not optimal on this, you know, but it also then plays in the longer run. I mean, it does go back to the coalition, coalition politics where, you know, if your state legislator, you know, in a highly gerrymandered state, in a polarized political system, your voters are pretty powerful counterweight to what the corporations are saying. And so, you know, I mean, that does sort of come back to the balance of power in these coalitions. But whether, you know, in the longer run, does this presage movement or not, you know, and I don’t, you know, I mean, I I kind of suspect not in the long run, but I still am, you know, I I still wonder if it’s going to it’s going, you know, we have seen it move things. I mean, if we go back to our initial example of, you know, sanctuary City bills, you know, the Sanctuary city builds, you know, past five years later, six years later. And, you know, there was there wasn’t much push back at that time for various kinds of reasons. So, all right with that. We will get back two more on this in the near future. Thanks to josh, thank you to our staff in the Liberal arts Development Studio and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. I’m Jim Henson. We’ll talk to you next week. The second reading podcast is a production of the texas politics project at the University of Texas at Austin.