June 11th, 2019 – 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?

[0:00:35 Jim] And welcome to second reading podcast for the week of June 10th Jim Henson back again director of the Texas Politics Project here at the University of Texas at Austin, where we are recording this in the liberal arts development studio with the crack team of studio technicians. I’m happy to be joined again today by Josh Blank, research director for the Texas Politics Project. Also here,

[0:00:58 Josh] Good morning or afternoon or evening, I guess depending on your listen to this,

[0:01:01 Jim] it’s morning for us, so we’ll stick with morning For now. Um, much of last week’s podcast was about how elected officials were interpreting the 2018 election as they went into the legislative session and we talked a little about pointing towards 2020. Well, since we’re together talking last week, elected officials in the state have been, you know, out there and and talking about things and transitioning to how the session gets framed for the 2020 election season, which is, for all intents and purposes under way.

[0:01:35 Josh] Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, starting honestly, starting at the bottom up because we’ll be talking mostly about the governor here, I think. But I think early, I think. Early last week, at some point last week, the speaker of the Texas House, Dennis Bonnin, came out and basically said to all of the members of the Legislature of Early’s of the House that if they campaigned against any incumbents, that means, you know, if you’re a Democratic, you know, statehouse member, and you go and help someone running against incumbent Republican Statehouse member or vice versa. If you’re a Republican State House member and you run in campaign against ah, Democrat again, it another an incumbent Democrat. He was going to punish you in no uncertain terms if he was the speaker. If he is the speaker in the next session and you come back and you campaigned against an incumbent, it would be constantly would be consequences. And he made that very clear, which was, you know, an interesting sort of. I mean, it’s an interesting statement, right to kind of set the gap that said, set it down right there at the beginning, even of the campaign season.

[0:02:33 Jim] Yeah, I think this race is probably two questions if you’re if you don’t follow this super closely. Um, you know, one How unusual is this? And why Why do this and then to what are these consequences? And so, you know, the unusual part is, you know, this is one of those things that for people that that followed the Legislature and work there, there was a real feeling that the bonding speakership was kind of a return to an old school model of how the house and the Legislature, but particularly the house used to work in which there was a lot of in group solidarity, shall we say, And even if there were party differences, that you muted those party differences in campaign season so that everybody could get along and do things even if there were differences during the session and So I think there is a certain amount of it. Doesn’t mean that nobody didn’t sneak around or, you know, that there weren’t some personal things that happen. But by and large is a real reassertion here. I think of a particular kind of role, and it’s ah, as a public stance. It’s interesting because it resonates with way that bought in projected he was going to run the session. And it also projects publicly on air of kind of agreement, comedy, willingness to get things done, but with kind of, ah, you know, ah, punch behind it And then that’s comes down to what the consequences are is the speaker. You know, I would guess that if you ignored this advice and you were a Democrat or a Republican, give got involved in primaries, and I think, frankly, it’s probably more potent toward Republic toward Democrats in a certain kind of way. It’s beyond words everybody. But remember, the speaker makes makes committee assignments. And in the Legislature, your committee assignments really have a big impact on your reelection chances, your ability to serve the district. I mean, if you’re if you live in an urban or suburban district you don’t want to get stuck on the Agriculture Committee to make a simple example.

[0:04:41 Josh] So I mean, not to be sceptical or even cynical. What are you saying? That there is no politics at play in this pronouncement by the speaker?

[0:04:50 Jim] No, I mean, I I suppose that’s what I’m implying. Is that the politics of this work for him as well as the tradition. I mean, if you’re a speaker of the house and your telling all the members to stand down in combating other members, but you’re in the majority and a slim one in an election, you’re expecting that to be some competition, you’re making it a little easier for everybody. But if this is a better break for Republicans and it is for Democrats, just

[0:05:18 Josh] want to make sure

[0:05:19 Jim] No, I make sure I was, you know, cynicism is ah, cynicism is ah, hard edged word for this.

[0:05:25 Josh] Why? I said, maybe, maybe cynical.

[0:05:27 Jim] I think that’s fair. Um, okay, so So so bonding comes out earlier in the week and then you know, not to be undone or not to be out done. Governor Abbott then sits down with Jonathan Tile over the Austin American statesman. I think he did some other things, but Jonathan got the got the main. Jonathan’s a friend of the podcast and maybe even well, hopefully we’ll get him in here before this is over. Hopefully saying, um, Governor Abbott sat down with Jonathan Tyler and Jonathan tied Tyler actually for him a little bit short, long for the average person, but only one jump in the newspaper, Um, interview with with Governor Abbott that was, you know, headlined basically something like, I thought I had a printed here, but I don’t, um, Governor Abbott seeks to, you know, defying Texas Republicans in 2020 or something.

[0:06:16 Josh] Yeah, like is the party of getting things done or whatever or something like that?

[0:06:21 Jim] Yeah, And what it really underlined was that one of the things that Texas Republicans are doing, which is not new, is trying to distinguish the Texas Republican brand going into an election in which the governor and other statewide are not going to be on the ballot. And there, national leader Donald Trump is because it will be a presidential election year. And so they want Republicans to vote up and down the ballot for Republicans And he wants to remind, you know, Independence and probably this small band of anti trump Republicans that Texas Republicans still do their own thing and again to be somewhat political about this. But that’s what we’re talking about, an election year that Texas Republicans can be distinguished from national Republicans if necessary.

[0:07:12 Josh] Right? And I think you know, they’re looking at 2020 and it’s sort of, you know, I would say this, you know, we’re we’re Technically, I’m putting them using the quote fingers are now we’re technically experts in this, and it’s it’s hard to really handicap what the 2020 elections in Texas are going to look like from, you know, like from, ah, competitiveness standpoint, right, I think. On the one hand, yeah, the outcome of 2018 election, right where Democrats picked up two congressional seats to state Senate seats and 12 statehouse seats and you’d say, Wow, that’s a pretty impressive gain for Democrats, especially in a midterm election. Usually, midterm elections are a relatively low turnout, especially compared to presidential elections, and usually even if Democrats were to make gains in a presidential election, you you’d expect to see some of those gains clawed back by the majority party in the midterms. That wasn’t the case in 2018 when she saw was actually sort of a trend continuing where, you know, if you think of 2010 is maybe the real low point for Democrats and then you know, 2012 and 2014 sort of part of that. But then it starts a shift going that we sort of are seeing take shape, at least where we probably are witnessing a more competitive electoral system that started a little bit in 2016 definitely picked up in 2018. And the question is, are those blips or is that the beginning of a trend that we’re gonna see more of? In 2020? We expect there to be higher turnout. But again, Republicans have a difficult job here because on the one hand is the electric gets bigger. You bring in MAWR. Infrequent voters, which tend to be younger voters, tend to be more likely to be. You know, it’s a more likely be voters of color and more likely because of those characteristics to lean towards Democratic Party. So on the one hand, Republicans are looking at this election 2020 thinking, you know, we’re expecting to see a bigger electorate than we saw, even in 2018 and that probably doesn’t bode well for us. On the other hand, you’ve got President Trump at the top of the ticket, wildly Republican, popular with Republican voters but also wildly unpredictable right in terms of what he’s gonna do from one moment, you know, to the next how that’s gonna affect the electoral environment here. And so what we’re seeing is Republicans and that sort of thing. What’s going on here? This broader picture tryingto distinguish the Republican Party of Texas for many of these external factors Now, whether they can actually do this or not is really kind of an open question, and they’ve they’ve approaches differently, but this is not a new thing. As you said,

[0:09:33 Jim] I mean, Trump does make it more complicated for reasons you talked about. Now it’s good, I think, underlying and there’s some other material that we talked about on this, that this is not new running. Texas Republicans have a history as they have, even in their days in the wilderness, back in the seventies eighties, and certainly ah is part of the 21st century. They’ve got a history of trying to distinguish themselves from the national

[0:10:02 Josh] party. Supporters say this is not about Trump allowed.

[0:10:05 Jim] Just Trump, right? I mean, you know, pre Trump. Um, we saw this a lot, particularly during the Obama presidency, when Texas Republicans made a point of contrasting themselves with a vastly unpopular Congress and federal government in Washington, D. C. Now one might think back and say, Well, sure if there’s a Democrat in the White House. Obama. President Obama was in office from basically 2009 through 2017. You’re pretty obviously going to contrast yourself with a Democratic president. But Republicans had control of Congress, one House or the other for some periods vote during that presidency. And there was a lot of contrasting going on between what was going on and watched in D. C and what the Texas Republican brand was about. And I think you know, that was really clear in the way that the Tea Party wave sort of helped provide a contrast for that and Exhibit one. And that was Ted Cruz, who ran in 2012 and ran not only against Obama but against congressional Republicans. And then when he got their eyes on my you know as ah, as a Republican and a Democratic majority Senate said about fighting with his colleagues, including a lot of the Republicans,

[0:11:25 Josh] Yeah, I mean to bring the public opinion into this, You. Even with Republicans in control of Congress, Republican voters in Texas still overwhelmingly view Congress negatively. Now this week we’ve seen this change hand in the UT Texas Tribune polling, where have Democrats and either partial or full control of Congress. We moved to Republicans in control of Congress. It doesn’t make it makes a difference in Republican evaluations of Congress. But it’s the difference between, like in 11% approval rating among Republicans or less, and a 20 to 30% approval rating among Republicans, or even less than that. And so I mean, that’s a sort of the piece here That’s kind of key to understand, which is that you know, Texas Republicans air often trying to say, Hey, all the problems that you see in Washington that are, you know, the responsibility, mostly Democrats, but also of some Republicans. That’s not what’s going on here. We are dealing with the serious issues, and you should consider that when you go in the voting booth and

[0:12:18 Jim] we saw that use the foil in the Legislature, we’re going to see it used selectively as a foil in the election. And in fact, even, you know, Greg Abbott used that to some extent when he ran for re election in 2018 and distinguished himself from the Senate. Race did much better. Much of Abbott’s campaign messaging certainly the the broad public messaging in his TV ads, emphasised the Texas economy, doing things for Texas that, you know, the Texas was doing great because of the Texas Republican style of government and really didn’t reference the national environment very much.

[0:12:56 Josh] One of in a good example of how you know sort of of that dynamic in the way that, you know, the president intersects with this came up last week with the tariffs, right? So there was. I call it a tariff scare. Does that work?

[0:13:07 Jim] You know? Yes.

[0:13:09 Josh] For Texas. Okay, So is, you know, you probably heard something about, or maybe not, right. The President Trump threatened placing a tariff on Mexican goods coming into the United States at 5% 1st and then for each month would increase by 5%. Assuming that that Mexico didn’t basically, substantially or completely stop illegal immigration into the U. S. Is

[0:13:34 Jim] characteristically vague about what that threshold was actually gonna be.

[0:13:37 Josh] We don’t know what that would mean or whether that was really, you know, anyway. But the point is that Mexico had to do more, and this was supposed to be a way to create leverage toe lead them to do more to stop illegal immigration. This is it. This is a tricky area for Republicans in general, but Texas Republicans in particular you know, Texas is. You may or may not know this, but I mean, Texas is Economy is heavily interconnected, with trade with Mexico and with trade with Mexico, both in terms of the things we produce in the supply chains were good passed back and forth between, you know, basically Texas and Mexico. It’s part of the production cycle, but also in terms of, you know, various things that we import toe Texas from Mexico. But also we export a lot of things to directly to Mexican consumers.

[0:14:19 Jim] Mexico’s is Texas is number one international trading partner. Now on one hand. That’s not shocking. We do share a no long border, and there’s a lot of Trey Laredo’s one of the biggest ports of entry, I think in the country. And so, you know, I think just to spin that out, this puts Texas Republicans in an awkward position because this is a policy that as soon as it was threatened and you never really know when the president is gonna follow through on threats that don’t seem to make policy sense or not, Texas Republicans are hearing from important constituencies in their state, particularly in the business community, but also in the border areas. So as soon as this was announced and it was and it began to be taken seriously, Texas Republicans were in kind of a a jam here because public opinion has been very foggy and shady, particularly among Republicans on trade issues. I mean, Republicans used to be very pro. What we call free trade and free trade is the principal in which she should have minimal tariffs and really encourage trade across international trade is being good for the for the country.

[0:15:36 Josh] Hey, what’s a tariff?

[0:15:37 Jim] A tariff is a tax on an imported Good. Thank you. So the tariff of 5% you can you can look at that. And when you say that the tariff is gonna be on absolutely everything, it’s pretty easy to start make calculations of economic costs than its on everything from, you know, employment to the value of trade to consumer prices. And so the negative repercussions of this in Texas were going to be pretty substantial. Texas was gonna be one of those states that was hearted our hardest hit. And the media coverage was on this pretty fast.

[0:16:13 Josh] Yeah, And this is why where you see sort of Republican elected officials trying to toe walk a fine line here because on the one hand, you have a set of voters who either don’t really understand the importance of trade to the Texas economy or increasingly view free trade and trade between basically the U. S. And Mexico and Canada and the deals that have facilitated that extremely negatively. At the same time, you have a very popular president again amongst Republican voters proposing something that is meant to combat legal immigration, which is the number one priority issue for Republican voters on the other side of something as you laid out that would clearly have a large negative impact on the Texas economy. And so what you saw was Republican elected officials trying to sort of walk a fine line between not necessarily pushing back against the president on the one hand, because they don’t know again, they don’t want to be seen in opposition to him. But on the other hand, recognizing the reality, the fact that this could wreck the economy, you know,

[0:17:14 Jim] I mean, you know, I think maybe the little missing piece here that helps make this a little more clear is that even though we’re sitting here treating it as an accepted fact that the tariff would be bad for the economy in Texas, awareness of that among the public is, to put it mildly, probably pretty uneven when we’ve asked about whether, for example, NAFTA and trade agreements more more broadly are good or bad for the economy. Public opinion is pretty divided, with a lot of people actually saying they just don’t know.

[0:17:49 Josh] Yeah, about 40% plus

[0:17:51 Jim] right. And so the rial, I mean, the nub of the danger here. If you’re an elected officials, you could get hit, coming and going. You could come out opposed to this, and then they had they done that, had they done the tariff, and then there had been an economic backlash. People might have changed their minds and then ask you why you didn’t do anything about it.

[0:18:13 Josh] Yeah, you may be sitting here thinking, Why are we talking about this thing That ultimately did not happen? But this is the point, right? The point is, this is why it’s so ah, why it’s so important. At least seemingly important among Republican elected officials in Texas to separate the GOP brand here, the Republican Party brand from anything that’s going on and what is a relentlessly national political news environment that focuses on everything that the president’s do is doing the Democrats in Congress are doing, I mean, honestly in the various other potential scandals that the media might uncover between now and Election Day. So this is the beginning of the process whereby Republican elected officials try to insulate the Republican brand in Texas from anything else now, whether they could be successful at that, I mean it’s a pretty tall order,

[0:19:01 Jim] or whether they need to be

[0:19:02 Josh] or whether they need to.

[0:19:03 Jim] They may not need to be a Maybe. These Democrats don’t run very many. You know, a good, strong candidates. Top Republicans do come out to vote. And the Republican Party Republican candidates in the Republican Party are able to use their bring their advantages to the table in Texas one more time. Yeah, and have a pretty good election cycle by and large.

[0:19:22 Josh] Yeah, let me just, you know, real quick. I mean, we’re gonna talk about this, but I think it’s worthwhile in this. You know, some of the advantages that the Republicans have here in Texas. They’re worth Mentioner, you know, one, they do hold all of the statewide offices. So the fact is that Greg Abbott can go out and do a news interview with any reporter at any time and talk about what he wants to talk about, and that’s a huge advantage the Democrats don’t really have. And this is true, the lieutenant governor to some degree, but also true to a lesser extent of the Attorney General. But the fact is that they have a broader access to the media landscape. They also, you know, rely on more reliable voters. That kind of alluded to this, you know before. But Republican voters tend to be older and whiter than the state’s population as a whole, and even as the registered voter pool is a whole but those voters arm or likely to turn out and vote than younger, nonwhite voters historically, and so that’s something that they can lean on. Additionally, because of all their success, they have a strong party organization, right? And so they have extensive voter lists. They know who’s voted when, who’s reliable, who’s let rest less reliable. And they even have, you know, examples of where and how they might contact these people and increase their probability voting. They also have a lot more. Additionally, to the side of the party organization resource. They’ll have a lot more financial resource. Is Greg Abbott being in the governor’s office having the power that he has has been a prolific fundraiser? And even though he’s not on the ballot, he is definitely going to be spending some of that money to maintain Republican majorities in both the Texas House, the Texas Senate and maybe even, you know, try to get into well, probably can’t get involved in the congressional races. I guess because of the way that money is, he probably could, though, but probably get involved in some of those congressional races as well. So all these air advantages that you know Republicans have here. That might mean that even if it’s a big year for Democrats and even if the Democrats elected president, it might not make a difference in Texas, given this well of advantages that they already

[0:21:09 Jim] hold. And so that’s that’s really framing how Republicans are trying to communicate to the media right now, and that’s and so that gives you a sense as you read the news of something to read into it. I think you know one mawr structural advantage that Republicans have is that Texas is a state in which the election process and the voting rules, by and large make it a little bit harder to vote here than it is in a lot of other states. Things like, uh, the voter I d. Live and that’s been trimmed back. Extensive voter registration requirements. Ah, no same you know, which includes no same day registration. Um, there’s early voting here, but the early voting stops you know there’s concern is considered a relatively narrow win now. So so ultimately, Republicans have also been able to manage the electoral process. The the election process through their control of state government and the Legislature, Um, toe put significant barriers in the way of voting. And it’s not, we say, significant. That’s comparative. But if you think about the fact that you know there’s some states now where you can register to vote online, their states with same day registration ah, their states with mail in voting, it’s comparatively harder to boat in Texas. And that is a policy decision, even though it’s usually not frame that way that Republicans make. And we’ve seen that come up recently to in terms of, um, Republican efforts that kind of blew up a little bit in their face in the last few months to try to purge and and try to purge the voter registration process. Talk a little bit about the background of the secretary, the former secretary of state David Whitley,

[0:23:01 Josh] right, And it’s also just to connect us to the other piece. I mean this. This is also something that Democrats are really focused on. Republicans are trying to insulate the Republican brand from sort of the national discussion. Democrats in Texas, I think, are trying to figure out what they should point to about that Republican brand here to motivate their voters. And at least one of the candidates. One of the big candidates involves Ah David Whitley, who was nominated by Greg Abbott to be the secretary of state in December of 2018.

[0:23:32 Jim] So it so he became and he big. So he becomes acting secretary of state, awaiting ratification or, ah, the ratification of his nominee. Confirmation of his nomination by the Texas Senate by the Constitution.

[0:23:43 Josh] So before that, Willy had been working for added since 2004 had basically grown up with the governing. A lot of ways he goes to be becomes nominated secretary of state in December. In January of 2019 his office identifies 95,000 voters who they claimed were non citizens is part of what they described as sort of a routine cleaning of the voter rolls. And they said, Well, not only that, we think about 50,000 of these people have non citizens that have voted in Texas elections,

[0:24:13 Jim] which would be illegal,

[0:24:14 Josh] which would be illegal, right? And this is sort something that you know in this sort of this long running debate war, whatever you call it over, you know, voting and election rules. The idea that there are a lot. There’s a lot of illegal voting going on to something that’s claimed a lot but very rarely found in practice or really at all very rarely, right. It’s usually a couple people here and there, but it’s never something so systematic. So the idea that he had, you know, that they had uncovered 50,000 noncitizens voting illegally was a big deal. They I had a splashy press release about it. They took the data. They referred it to the counties where the counties were then supposed to send letters to all these voters basically saying, Prove your citizenship status within 30 days or we’re taking you off the voter rolls.

[0:24:55 Jim] The attorney general said he would investigate illegal,

[0:24:57 Josh] and they referred it to the to the attorney general. Current Attorney General Ken Paxton looked for any criminal prosecutions. The president tweeted about it as an example of the illegal voting that’s going on well pretty quickly after that mean within days. First thing that happened was the county’s basically started, say, especially smaller counties where they actually know. A lot of the people said, Hey, there’s a bunch of people here who shouldn’t be on this list, You know? I know, I know Mary and she was naturalized four years ago and then, actually, civil rights groups pointed out that the data was likely to be flawed because they were using Department of Public Safety data, basically driver’s license data. So the ideas people come in to get their driver’s license when they get the driver’s license, they should check whether they have to check whether there are citizen or not. The thing that happens is that then those people go and later may have registered to vote. But at no point in time do they have to update the Department of Public Safety as to whether they became citizens or not. So there’s a lag in that data, and it turns out, you know, Texas is a big state. We naturalized a lot of people every year, and so it’s actually you know, there are a lot of people who you know, could look like they were non citizens based on the data they had because they indicated to the DPS that they weren’t but were registered to vote, who in between those two points in time may have become citizens. And basically the main thrust of legal arguments against us was this is a flawed process that is specifically targeting naturalized U. S. Citizens, which based basically it waas. That’s what it turned out to be. So, you know, this was found it really quickly. Willie had, you know, pretty contentious hearings where I would actually say, you know, state

[0:26:29 Jim] didn’t help himself. He did

[0:26:30 Josh] not help himself. I mean, state senators gave him a lot of chances to take responsibility for what happened or to say that a mistake was made and he really was unwilling to do that. Ah, you know, basically, he belong with Abbott than pointed fingers at the DPS department public safety, saying this was bad data and that was the problem, you know. But at no point did he take responsibility for it or, you know, for the responsibility for referring, you know, for criminal to the Attorney General’s Office for criminal referrals. What’s based on flawed data,

[0:26:59 Jim] you know, kind of wind it up a little bit. I mean, they evidence came out strongly suggesting that there was not due diligence done with the data that this was. There was a partisan tinge to the motivation here, given the speed with which other political actors in particular, the attorney general picked this up. Um,

[0:27:24 Josh] and recently it came to light that it seemed like the governor’s office was mawr involved in this, at least the initiation of this of this cleaning of the voter rolls that had been made made clear to anyone and, you know, until very recently,

[0:27:38 Jim] been clarified. I don’t want to say admitted, although that may be close. Um, and so what? You know, Willie want up not being confirmed? Um, you know, it was one of the sort of things that in the in the wind down of the session, and as you were saying, this was something that unified Democrats in the Legislature. There was no talking the Democrats out of it. The governor tried, Lieutenant Governor tried, and none of the Democrats would budge. And so his nomination essentially died in the Senate. Once the Legislature went out of session, two things to point out about this one. We used it. His transition control over the electoral system is inherently. You know, the election rules are inherently political. I mean, this is one of those things where people think about elections. Is this neutral process in which we make rules that maximize people’s access to the system and that, you know, there’s a lot of, you know, happy talking about how we want everybody to vote and be be good citizen. That’s not always the case. Um, and the justification for this, which is a reasonable one on the surface, is that you want to make sure that the that the election system is valid and clean and secure and that everybody who can vote is registered and should vote in the nobody that is not qualified to vote doesn’t but the boundaries here in terms of how you pursue that much more inherently political. So by transition, there’s that. And then the second point here is that first point relates to the Republican advantage. Second point, the election process is inherently political,

[0:29:20 Josh] right? I was saying this and going to the the overarching point in this discussion, I mean, you’d expect Democrats to potentially use this as a way to start to frame the next selection. Ah, you know, it’s I think it’s been pretty reasonably demonstrated in other states that, you know, when one party tries to mess with the rules and it seems to impact the voting rights of a particular other group and in this case, the people who would most likely who would have been impacted by this. You know, potential voter purge would’ve been again naturalized citizens, most likely foreign born, not necessarily likely trump voters, right, right

[0:29:54 Jim] under current circumstances, current

[0:29:56 Josh] circumstances. And so you know, you could see this being an issue, that the Democrats will continue to talk about it as a way to try to mobilize Democratic voters going into the 2020 election, especially because the outcome of that election is going to determine. You know, it’s a control the legislative chambers, which is going to affect the redistricting process here in Texas, which means after the census there’s a reapportionment of congressional seats, but also we need to redraw the lines around statehouse and state Senate seats that they represent relatively equal size populations. Like all the other things, we were talking about. That, too, is a political process, which makes the stakes for Democrats so high. But also reason why you’d expect to see this issue brought up again and again to remind especially there less frequent voters about the fact that, you know, in their mind the majority party is not looking out for their interests.

[0:30:45 Jim] Right. So this is, ah, again in strict political terms, a pretty good bundle of election, the election process and is a pretty good bundle of issues for Democrats right now. Okay, I think we’re just about out of time. I wanted to flag a couple more things will save them for next week. Ah, have a good week and we’ll be back. Second Reading Podcast is a production of Texas Politics Project and the Project 2021 Development Studio at the University of Texas at Austin.