August 10th, 2021 – Second Reading Podcast

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. 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. Raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room.

The second reading podcast for the week of August 9th, 2021. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas politics project at the university of Texas at Austin. And happy to be joined again today by Josh blank research and polling director for the Texas politics project located here in Austin. But I in a different location.

Correct. Oh, that’s true. Yes. But very close, but very close. Yes. You know, in a, in a bunker from Austin, is that yes, we are in our respective bunkers, uh, banished by the resurgent Delta. Very. And actually, I don’t think we ever really loved the bunkers very much during the pleasant. Yeah. I suck. I stuck my head out, but it was full of COVID out there and now I’m back, yanked it back in.

So Josh, we spent the podcast last week talking about the resurgence of the Corona viruses as the Delta variant, the Delta variant, uh, spread. And in the end, the conversation, you know, it was very much about how shot through with politics. The response was, and, you know, we ultimately wanted to put off discussion to legislature to this week, but I think ultimately the, the situation with the Delta Varian has continued.

You know, to, to worsen and, and to become, you know, more, even more intensely political, you know, which is saying something given how much we dwelled last week on the politics of the situation. Right. I mean, a lot’s happened since last week though, right? Yeah. I mean, yes. That’s, that’s correct. You know, I mean, I think the one thing that at least here where we are, as you already brought up, you know, we’re in Austin, Austin and Travis county, Texas, and it doesn’t really matter right now.

For the most part, what county you’re in, you know, the COVID is resurgent, but at least, you know, here over the weekend, you know, we got warnings, you know, in no uncertain terms from Travis county, that the situation here is quote, unquote die. That was the word that they used, you know, and basically asking people to, you know, really make, make a lot more efforts to sort of avoid spreading the virus, whether by, you know, wearing masks, not going places, not having gatherings.

I mean, essentially, you know, the message from the county. And I think this is true in a lot of places in Texas is that, you know, this is basically as bad as it’s ever been. And I think you’re the sort of something that’s shooting through this that I feel like, you know, I mean, it’s kind of obvious, but we kind of forget it was, you know, I mean, you know, as, as you said, you know, this discussion has become so political, there’s just a brass tax factual thing about this, that we’ve kind of sort of set aside, it’s coming back to Vogue here, which is like our hospitals only have so much capacity.

Yeah. And that was the thing at the beginning of the virus people were talking about is the virus is, is going to kill people. How many people is going to kill him? You know, a lot of, I think smart people raised their hand and said, Hey, look, if I not kill a lot of people, it may, it may not depends on what we do.

But a lot of our smart people said, but like our hospital system can’t handle this inflow of people. And that’s kind of been what the focus is sort of turned to. I think in the last, maybe like five to seven days is about, you know, watching hospital capacity shrink and shrink and shrink. And that’s something I think is, you know, yeah.

And not, and not to be crass. Well, you know, but you know, whether people are dying or they’re just very sick and requiring care hospital capacities and important, tripwires. Yeah. Well, I think the thing is what’s happening is that, you know, we talk about the politics. I mean, the politics are abstract, right?

I mean, we’re talking about applying principles of freedom and Liberty and stuff to sort of individual, you know, behaviors that in America feel very individual in our own. Right. And that’s all fine when we’re, you know, and again, when people are taking vaccines and it’s hot back summer, and it’s like, is it safe to do this or not?

You know, it’s another thing when, you know, Your father is putting off his surgery now because we’re not having elective surgeries. Right. Or, you know, we’re talking about the fact that there are no ICU beds available in this many hospitals in your region. Right. Or, and I think the other thing that’s going to come in and we’ll talk about spraying a little bit, or that we’re about to send kids back to school and, you know, we really, we don’t have a handle on this.

And so I think that sort of makes it a little bit more. You know, just, I think all of that makes it significantly more salient for people not to mention just the general thing was even if you are just thinking about like, what is it safe or unsafe to do? And I mean, you and I have talked about this.

There’s a certain disappointment at this point that, you know, we had this brief window to start imagining a better future. Now it feels like we’re backsliding. And I think that’s causing a lot of consternation out there for a lot of these. Yeah. And you know, I mean, I, I don’t want to slide too immediately into the frustration with the level of public discourse about this, because we’ll get to it inevitably.

But the objective counts such as we have right now are all still pretty negative. I mean, a week ago we were talking about, you know, the steep slope of increases in the seven day average of new cases, both new confirmed cases, new probable cases, the two measures we get from the state and those who continue to rise to my eye.

Pretty unabated through yesterday, allowing for, you know, we talked about seven day averages because money, you know, there’s, there’s always a lull and a kind of a lag in reporting over weekends. Um, that’s just more accurate. I mean, averages are better than measures. Social science tip of the day. And frankly, when we talked last time, the number of deaths had not started to rise.

And in fact, and there’s, again, there’s a lag in reporting of deaths. Um, that two started to rise and the increase now, you know, also, I guess in the interim, you know, local authorities have begun to find, uh, you know, the, the, the orders from governor rabbit that we talked about a lot last week that prohibited local political authorities, like cities, counties, school boards, From instituting mask requirements.

And a lot of a lot has happened here. 24 hours the last day in which, you know, two of the larger school districts in the state, Austin and Dallas ISD have both effectively denied, you know, uh, defied the governor’s orders and, and voted to Institute some degree of mask requirements for students in public schools.

And it looks like Harris county is probably going to do so I think, yeah, the general expectation is that Harris county will follow. And then there have been lawsuits by. Non-profits and as of this morning, San Antonio independent school district, looking for relief in a way, this is getting ahead of, I think the, uh, an attempt by the governor to strike back in some way with Florida looming out there, which we can talk about in a minute, um, suing, you know, filing in court for relief, from any, any retaliation from the governor and, and, you know, defending their own position.

You know, and, and I, you know, just to say, you know what I mentioned, you know, I think, I think some of the defensiveness there is that there are school districts that were doing this. And beginning to implement this in, in Florida, in re in defiance of a very similar order by the governor, by the Republican governor there, Ron DeSantis and the governor has pushed back in all kinds of ways, threatening to find superintendents.

You know, providing money for, you know, kids in districts that do this to go to other, to go get vouchers, to go to private schools, which is like perhaps the most unlikely return of the voucher idea. You know, it’s, it’s a very minor note given the scale of things going on, but I want to flag that, oh, so you know, the return of vouchers, you know who to bank it, you know, and all this is happening as Texas has become very prominent in national coverage of the COVID, sir.

Right. I think I saw that, you know, Texas and Florida basically account for about a third of all the new COVID cases that we’ve been recording over this, you know, over this most recent survey. Right. Yeah, but you know, part of that is going to be population, but it’s certainly, but also certainly suggested that well, and you say it’s part of this population, it’s still a lot of people.

Well, and it’s still bigger than there. They do not constitute a third of the population, the United States. Right. But you know, to be, you know, to be at least nominally fair there. Um, but you know, and, and I think the national coverage of this, you know, unfortunately, Inevitably gets us back to the politics.

But firstly, you know, we are talking about the schools, you know, you have, you know, somebody, you know, you’re, you’re a father. I’m wondering what your, what you have to share about like how this unfolded in Austin ISD. Well, I mean, I mean, I have to say, you know, Austin ISD is probably not a representative school district of the state as a whole, as you can imagine, you know, uh, although I’m sure it’s a lot more like, you know, Dallas ISD and probably like, uh, I think it’s Houston ISD actually, right.

HRSD Southeast Harris county. But, you know, I mean, you can kind of see, I mean, I think what I’ve been super focused on generally around a lot of this is the nature of the various political communications. I mean, again, you know, you and I work at UT, I’ve got a child in AISD and watching these different organizations try to try to manage the uncertainty of this situation has been, you know, it’s been hard to watch and it’s not even, you know, I, again, I’m a very, you know, I look at this and I think.

This is hard. I mean, you know, you look at these sorts of emails and I always think, what is the thing that you would bold in this communicative emails? So people know this is the thing. If you read nothing else, and it’s hard not to look at the communications that you’re getting these. And I think a lot of people are getting communications like this, where their parents, employers, whatever, from employers, whoever, and you’re like, boy, you could bold about seven things.

Yeah. Cause there’s, it’s just so unclear. And so AISD went from basically saying, Hey, you know, they did, they did a pulse survey and they sort of said, you know, are you planning to wear masks? And I think 80% district-wide of parents that they were going to send their children to school with masks. Uh, and then basically, you know, sent out kind of an email over the weekend saying, Hey, look, we know this is looking bad, we’re doing our best.

We’ve got some restrictions. And then rumbling started happening around Monday that went. Maybe we’re just going to do this. And I think what probably gave the school districts a little bit of a push, I think was actually some of the actions of like, you know, like, like in, in Harris county when Sylvester Turner was going to require employees to wear masks.

When you start to start, I think, see that pushback from some of the big counties and various parts that I think that gave a little bit more courage to some of the school districts to say, you know, Is the governor really going to go out and basically die on a hill where he says, no, I’m going to force kids to go to school as they are required to do.

And I’m going to force them to do so without allowing the schools to keep them safe. Ultimately like, and to me, that’s kind of, I mean, like again, that’s sort of a stylized version, but it is a reflection of the fact that this conversation is really politically kind of getting away from the gun. Oh, I would like to say a little bit, but I kind of, I really mean a lot.

Well, yeah. I want to get to that. I mean, I, you know, and I think, you know, this is a good place to insert that, you know, there is an emergency, you know, I mean, you know, governor Abbott’s prohibition on the local authorities from having the option of requiring masks, you know, it was based on. You know, the power that he derives from, you know, the, the emergency powers provisions in the, in the, in statute and the emerging counter argument that we’ve heard from a few places.

I mean, I think most publicly anyway, from a. State rep, but not running for reelection. John Turner from the north Texas area is that the governor simply overstepped the statute on emergency powers and his executive order that that executive order is about a response to an emergency, not about limiting the response.

Of local entities to emergencies and, you know, uh, representative Turner, we both know is, you know, smart guy and, and gets in front of, you know, the counter argument in that piece in the Dallas morning news. Yes. His powers have been upheld previously in response to challenges to the emergency powers that frankly came from the right is I regret, but this is not really a response.

This is limiting the response of other political entities. It’s it, you know, so it’s at least arguing. Well, I mean, it’s arguable, but it’s very hard to argue. I mean, I mean, the, the logic that he then is laid out is pretty clear, which is, you know, the disaster declaration act of 1975, I think is what it’s called.

Right. Basically says it gives the governor the power to declare a disaster and then therefore suspend local laws. If that is what he needs to do. So as to address the disaster, the idea, then that he would declare disaster to then prohibit local entities from addressing the disaster is. I didn’t even want, I wouldn’t even say tortured logic.

It’s it’s yeah, it doesn’t, it doesn’t really, yeah, it doesn’t pass a very logic ends means kind of tasks. And my, and my guess is, is that, you know, most of the, the legal counsel for the city’s legal counsel for the ISD are probably kind of coming to similar conclusions here, because I think, you know, and look, you know, with the, with the superintendent of the Austin independent school districts that it’s like, look, I can’t have one kid die because I didn’t do what I should think I should do.

Yeah. And again, setting aside statute, everything else. That’s that’s kind of where this political argument is going. If the governor really wants to keep pushing this idea that, you know, we’re just basically going to keep living life as if this isn’t happening. And you mentioned the, you know, the politics of this being abstract.

I, you know, you’ve said that a couple of times in conversation and there’s something that, you know, and the thing is, you know, some of the politics are very abstract, right? Well, you know, the justification, you know, personal Liberty in that it is pretty abstract. Well, that’s the thing, the politics that he’s relying on here, you know, again, we’ll come back to this.

So the basically, because of where the criticism is coming from, which is the criticism that Abbott’s receiving, and I’ll just put this out here as a bracket, absent, a democratic challenger for governor is coming mostly from the rights. And the argument is that Abbott has gone too far in suspending Texans liberties.

And, you know, he’s made very clear that he’s not gonna do that again. Now look, I mean, one thing that we talk about on this podcast and, you know, I’ll mention again, is, you know, when you talk about public opinion on any issue that you bring children into it, it’s two different issues. It’s not the same thing.

And so the sort of abstract idea of, you know, my freedom not to wear a mask, you know, or not to be forced to wear a mask somewhere is all well and good, except for the fact that it really doesn’t hold up. When you talk about the practicality of, you know, basically kids who are compulsed to go to school, Many of whom are ineligible to be vaccinated, right.

And are already required actually to be vaccinated for multiple things. It can be told what to wear and not to wear basically all for the safety and educational environment of the children. So this is like a place in which we accept the fact that kids don’t have these rights. Right. And while there may not be up to, you know, uh, you know, and while, you know, a drug that doesn’t have final FDA approval, you know, is, is almost certainly a bridge too far.

It really is hard to make the argument that wearing a mask is somehow materially different from, you know, not being able to wear a t-shirt with obscenity or, you know, dress skirt length, or, you know, whatever, all these things or whatever, or a hairstyle that they used to have that happened in schools all the time.

So well, and it just, just real quick, I mean, on that, I mean, And we have, uh, questions we’ve asked throughout the pandemic for the last, over a year about people’s adherence to social distancing measures. And for the most part at the height of the pandemic, you know, I would say when we were in a stage five situation, like for example, like we are now, we were seeing upwards of 80% of Republicans saying that they were worried a mask when they left their house.

And it was more about 90 to 95% of Democrats. But ultimately this idea that there is. You know, in unwillingness, even amongst, you know, some partisans, you know, to not wear a mask is, is frankly stupid. And then further, you know, we don’t ha you know, there, there are a lot of partisan differences. It’s their biological.

We all have noses. We all have mouths. Nobody likes wearing a mask. Ultimately it’s not as though somebody is like, you know, it’s not as, so some group of people it’s just naturally worse than for other people. Nobody likes this, but we’ve clearly accepted that. It is okay. We both work that’s. That is true.

But anyway, this is just to say, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s taking this abstract principle and it’s leading to policy that, you know, again, it’s like, you know, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. And again, I wouldn’t want to be in a position where I was trying to argue that this is somehow good for children.

Yeah. And I, and I think that this is another area where the kind of the ambient media coverage is not helping. You know, the, the, the folks, you know, team Abbott, frankly, it’s just call it that, you know, when the news is full of, you know, children’s hospitals also reaching capacity, increased rates among children, you can talk about what the chances are that the numbers are relatively small, but it’s, you know, we were talking about this earlier, when you’re, you know, what you’re really doing is banking on the trade offs here, you know, at the end of the day, you know, You know, those who are, you know, willing to really, you know, go to the wall on saying you shouldn’t have to wear a mask and you shouldn’t have to engage in public health measures if you don’t want to.

Which is really what the end, the argument ultimately is, are trading off, you know, from a, from an authority perspective and saying, rather than provide a public health example, I’m going to take that path and I’m willing to accept the fact. There’s going to be an increase in public harm and there’s going to be a public health cost for this, but that cost gets higher when you’re talking about kids.

And that’s a very bloodless way of thinking about it, but I, you know, well, and the thing is, I would say I almost, you know, I almost wish it were that bloodless, right? Because in some ways, if you were to just say, Hey, look, you know, they’re straight off to these things. And so be it, you know, that would be one thing, but I mean, to some extent that the pandering too.

Uh, you know, the minority of people who one don’t think COVID is a serious problem, despite the fact that our hospitals are almost at capacity, you know, and we’ve had, you know, more than 50,000 people in Texas die, right. And that, you know, the idea that, you know, having to basically, you know, be slightly uncomfortable sometimes for the, you know, basically, so as to keep our health system from collapsing and more texts and from dying is somehow, you know, You know, it’s like, and the idea of pandering to this is that there’s a, this is a perfectly justifiable or rational point of view, given where we are, you know, it, it emboldens people, you know, and it, you know, I said, I mean, there are very few Democrats right now who are sort of going to the left to say, you know, Hey, you guys who are totally locked up in your house and you aren’t going anywhere and never planned to, again, Good move.

Yeah. You know, that’s right. I mean, it’s almost the equivalent that there are more people on the right who are sort of in this space of, you know, trying to weigh personal Liberty against public health. And I mean, you know, it’s just, this gets us into, again, something that’s abstract, but has a very, you know, I mean Liberty to, for what Liberty to not be uncomfortable.

Yeah. I mean, that’s pretty to make other people. And, and, and because of that to make other people pay for your principal position, I mean, it, you know, we’ve really lost sight of something here and we’ll, you know, it makes me sound like an old guy, but I mean, track thing is actually the scariest, which is that because of our inability to just simply do some basic social distancing measures and, you know, vaccinated, higher rates that we’re giving the, the virus.

The the time and the space to potentially a mutated again, in a way that we’re really going to regret in a terrible way. Right. And look, it doesn’t mean it’s going to happen, but we’re providing it multiple opportunities to, and. You know, and this isn’t like, I mean, this isn’t climate change. This isn’t some abs I mean, talking about abstract things.

I mean, I think of climate change is like the ultimate kind of abstract issue because it’s this, you know, science and it’s worldwide and we all have to, you know, blah, blah, blah, this isn’t nearly as abstract. You can look at the numbers in your community. You can look at what the hospital numbers are, you know, wherever you live.

Right. And it’s right there. If we had enough listeners to get mail, we get mail on that. But I do want a flag. There was also other news this week in a week of very bad news about climate change, which is suggesting that has gotten much more immediate and much less abstract. But I think, but I think the point is well-taken.

So, you know, in terms of the politics of this in a, in an awkward transition to the legislation last few minutes, you know, if you take the re you know, the resurgence of the pandemic, And the way that, that is crowding a lot of things out on the public agenda right now. And you combine that with, you know, what is, you know, an ugly and intractable position, you know, situation right now, seemingly in the legislature, in which, you know, since the last time we met.

For the podcast, Greg Abbott called the legislature back into special session for a second time. So they gaveled out the first special session on Friday convene for the, for the second special session on Saturday, though, there was some speculation that the agenda might get reduced. This wasn’t the case.

And in fact, in the governor’s call for the special session for the second special session, he actually expanded the kitchen. Added another, you know, there were some sub-points there, you know, you could quibble, but you know, somewhere between six and nine new items, depending on you account them, everybody was saying seven.

And, you know, I think that was just the top bullet point. The Senate, you know, again is moving legislation as of Tuesday, the house had yet to. Achieve the necessary two thirds quorum, mainly as a result of still not attending Democrats though, some Democrats have come back. So, yeah. And if you have a public it’s worth there too, just to a few Republicans weren’t around, including at least one, who’s been quarantined for Kobe to miss the first day, but came back and that’s not to be coy that state rep Travis Clardy.

He was a guest on the, on the podcast a month or so ago. Um, Doing fine health wise, you know, but if you think then about these two things being really front and center on the political agenda in the state, these are not the issues that . Signals the governor and Republican candidates really wanted to be talking about is they pivoted from the regular legislative session into the 2022 campaign session.

Like a lot of like a lot of national Republicans, but with a decidedly. Twist, you know, the governor leaned hardened immigration and border security in the immediate aftermath of the session with this announcement, the Texas, that he would be directing the construction of a new wall in Texas. I mean like, like many of us who direct things, he was gonna hire a project manager.

He’s gonna hire a project manager and you know, more attention to policing and law and order, uh, discussion of both the Texas economy and, and. You know, even while pointing to the Biden administration as being spendthrift and socialist and wrecking the national economy. I mean, you know, the direction that the, that the Republican political class in the state led by the governor wanted to move, couldn’t have been much more clear.

Um, and that is not what’s going on right now, given the pandemic, but also given, you know, the, the. The mess in the legislature where, you know, we’ve got a game of chicken in which while the Republican majority and the Republican governing collaborate and sort of governing party seems to have gone in this was substantial.

Strategic and tactical advantages. It seems like they’ve wound up in a fairly, in a very intractable confrontation with Democrats. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, there were a lot of people asking you at the beginning of the, of the democratic Exodus. Like, you know, what’s the end game. What’s the point? Am I am my kind of thing has been well, yeah.

Regardless of whether they can achieve anything or whether we end up, you know, where the, where the Republican party wants at the end of this, regardless of what they do, they achieve direct the direction of the discussion. And so at least for a brief period, you know, at least by Democrats being in Washington, the discussion became about voting rights and you can see it.

In the state of Maine, you know, I’ve been saying multiple efforts from my, from my, my view of things have made multiple efforts to try to shift the conversation in a different direction, whether that’s on the voting legislation in particular, and trying to cast it as a bill that would expand voting access, as opposed to what Democrats have said about it.

Or, you know, again, even shift the conversation, you know, towards immigration or other issues where they feel comfortable on the problem is, you know, for them at least. One they’ve been unsuccessful really at shifting the discussion around the voting rights legislation. And part of that is, you know, state media, national media.

And I think the Democrats still not being here to COVID, you know, the, the COVID resurgence, you know, it’s just, I mean, it’s, it brings up the quality of government services. So directly and governance in a state in which one party undisputed undisputably owns governance. And it’s the other piece of this.

So, and this is the thing that you and I were talking about, which is, you know, in a state, in which one party indisputably owns governance, you know, there’s sort of a question that comes up, which is, you know, with every special session that gets called on these other issues that have nothing to do with, with COVID, uh, in particular, I would say, you know, does it just start to look like you’re ineffective?

And to everybody, I mean, one of the things, I mean, I’d say definitely, you know, I mean, you know, there’s a, there was a recursive feature to this, which is that, you know, part of you were saying that primary politics has been driving. A lot of this, we’ve been talking about, you know, Republican, Republican primary politics.

And to the extent that, you know, Dissident, you know, leaders on the right who claim to speak for, you know, activated partisans have been criticizing the governor and legislative leaders for not being able to achieve a hundred percent of their aims. Well, then we get a special session and they still can’t achieve a hundred percent of their aims.

Does it really matter that it’s because Democrats aren’t. Yeah, I don’t really think it does to the dissidence because of, you know, their ultimate goal is to make gain power and make control, having their own control of the agenda. I mean, that’s really the point here. Um, but I would also say more generally at some point, you know, doesn’t it just start to look ineffective and ineffectual.

Yeah. And I think that, you know, I mean, I think the, you know, the politics of this are very complicated because I think. It’s probably still an okay, short term strategy going into the primaries, depending on how long, how much longer this lasts. Not, not an, not an important consideration, but not irrelevant.

And certainly, you know, I think changes the calculation that was shaping Republican’s orientation up until, you know, up to this point really, which was that they really didn’t have to worry about the general election very much. Now they may still not have to given that they’re still only democratic gubernatorial candidate.

It’s still a midterm election with a Democrat in the white house. Zip, the whole terrain has shifted, but it’s introduced a lot more uncertainty into this environment. I think that speaking of uncertainty, to be fair, that, you know, there’ve been some interesting things going on on the democratic side since the dump sense.

The second session was called and. You know, some fraction. I mean, it sounds like, you know, I mean, I’ve seen different numbers. About half of Democrats are no longer, or that were the MDC or not unaccounted for 20 something there and all this noise about a couple that, you know, went through a lot of planned vacation to Europe.

Apparently I’ll, you know, all these things. But I think the thing I really noticed was something that. Remarkably like the national Democrats. When, you know, you had a few Democrats show up on the house floor on Monday, and you had other Democrats from the progressive wing of the party showing up on Twitter and name checking and criticizing them is showing up to essentially.

And I think this is a paraphrase, but you know, To more or less quote, unquote, help Republicans carry out their voter suppression agenda unquote. And that is, you know, while we’ve seen grumbling and, and from the very beginning, we expected there to be some tension among Democrats after all, it’s a collective action problem to keep everybody on the same page on the forum break and leaving town and all this, but it was an outbreak of real open criticism.

And have some Democrats that are not unpopular in the case caucus, uh, you know, Joe Moody, who had been protests, Mary Gonzalez from El Paso. You know, these are both Democrats who are perhaps, you know, closer to the Republican speaker and to the Republican leadership in the house, then say, you know, the farther, you know, the more progressive Democrats who were issuing.

Some of this criticism, uh, including Gina and HOSA from Austin. I can’t remember the, honestly, the other person I saw, but then this morning is we were getting ready to, to record this. We had a, a coalition of progressive groups in Texas, including planned parenthood, progress, Texas, a few others that are active players in democratic politics.

Also come out and, and essentially issued the same kind of criticism and, and, and urge Democrats to keep up the quorum break in order, you know, to not only stop the, the, you know, the election legislation that triggered this sensibly, but also the other items that, you know, are, are very anathema to Progressive’s that are on the governor’s agenda, like, uh, you know, restricting, uh, you know, uh, Transgender athletes and in their participation in sports, further abortion legislation or abortion legislation, um, it looks like it looks like sort of, uh, an attempt to limit pain under the words, critical race theory, but the, you know, curriculum basically curriculum limiting curriculum on racism in public schools.

So it’s a, it’s an interesting development that I think, you know, kind of raises the temperature on something or the temperature. Was already pretty high. Yeah. I mean, you know, if you take, if you strip the labels for a second and just sort of thinking about Democrats and Republicans and just sort of thinking about, you know, aligning members, you know, along some sort of a spectrum in terms of, you know, who, who has, you know, play in cache and cash in the process and who doesn’t, you know, some of that is obviously going to be, I mean, a lot of that’s going to be directed by partisanship.

Ultimately, most Republicans are going to have more say than most. But not all Republicans are going to have more play in the, in the process that all Democrats. Right. And so ultimately, you know, when you kind of look at that and you think about, you know, Democrats in Texas and, you know, again, Republican control of the process, you know, there are Democrats who have done a good job representing their districts by having close ties with Republican legislators and being.

You know, be given in some cases, you know, positions of power and authority that honestly the progressive Democrats who are, you know, throwing the stones in this case have not had, and never will in a context in which, you know, if you’re thinking about, you know, I always close, you know, it’s a very social, a repeated game, right?

Each session is a game, so this is one game, but it’s going to happen again. So when you play a repeated game, you have to think about how you play this time. Cause it affects next time. And if you think about the people, you know, who, who might be making their way back, I mean, part of it is, you know, these are people who maybe have more to lose.

Going into next time, then the people who may look at this last session and say, what more could I do? Yeah, I think that’s, I think that’s a reasonable, I think that’s a reasonable, you know, top level read of that. Yeah. The other piece of this too is again, I mean, nobody wants to live in a hotel for two months and especially nobody wants to live in a hotel in Washington, DC in the summer for two months and every Democrat who leaves.

Basically puts more pressure on the Democrats who are there not to be the next one, not to be the one who goes back and then provides a quorum. And so, yeah. And the, and the, yeah. You know, and that’s been a, that’s been a, a fact of this from the beginning. I mean, we talked about this link when this started, that, you know, it was a very human dimension to this in terms of figuring out like people’s behavior.

So I think the last thing I want to point out here before we sign off is, you know, This is continuing to radiate throughout the political process. As you know, you saw this fight inside the legislature, you know, the governor got involved in an explicitly, you know, war between the branches piece, with his defunding of the ledge, with his vetoing of the funding article, which effectively threatened to defund the legislature over the next biennium.

You know, and now the courts are getting involved as both. Members of the legislative and the executive branch are going into the state courts and suing for relief. And now, you know, different levels. Of course, there were some early six Democrats that early success in stain warrants against the quorum busting members.

Uh, the civil warrants that have been issued by the speaker. Uh, I think as of this morning or last night, uh, the Texas Supreme court in weighed in and put issue to stay on that lower court. So, I mean, just as we, as we exit for today, I do want to point out this is now this, this Spire has now spread across all three branches of the, of the executive of the, of Texas government.

Even as the fight over COVID is a fight between state government in many ways. And increasingly. A fight between state and local government. It’s been that from the beginning, but that is really reaching a critical point. So what we’ve seen, what we’re seeing now is the Texas political system that is just incredibly conflict written at this moment.

Um, not just between Democrats and Republicans, but that bite taking place across virtually the entire spectrum of Texas government from, you know, across the branches and from the state level down to school districts, cities, counties. With that. I want to thank Josh for being here. Uh, we will thank our crew in the liberal arts development studio and the college of liberal arts at the university of Texas at Austin, which I know is working hard right now and missed a lot of uncertainty at the university.

Once again by the Delta variant and thanks to you for listening and we’ll be back next week with another second reading podcast.

the second reading podcast is a production of the Texas politics project at the university of Texas at Austin.