June 1st, 2021 – Second Reading Podcast

[0:00:00 Speaker 1] 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 senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room and welcome back to the second reading podcast for the first week of june 2021. I’m Jim Henson, director of the texas politics project at the University of texas at Austin. I’m joined again today by josh blank Research director for the same texas politics project. Good afternoon, josh! Thank

[0:00:53 Speaker 0] you. Good afternoon to you.

[0:00:54 Speaker 1] Are you are you ready for the posts? I need. I reality,

[0:00:57 Speaker 0] I don’t know. That’s a funny question. But I think if I even given post the post session any thought other than to think about where I could leave and go

[0:01:07 Speaker 1] to. Yeah, I think there’s a lot, well, there’s a lot of that going on. You’re not alone in that. So as anybody listening to this will know, the texas, legislature adjourned, sine die monday. You know, after a flurry of drama over the weekend, at least as these things go, you know, the main point of conflict, or at least the surface point of conflict after the, the Senate passed an omnibus election bill SB seven that emerged from the conference committee with extra features that required extra legislative maneuvering. And then they passed that bill in the wee hours of the morning, I guess, saturday night, sunday morning democrats. Then the bill came up in the House on sunday amidst much anticipation facing a midnight deadline and democrats ultimately stage the Coram break in the run up to that deadline to pass the bill, effectively depriving the chamber of enough votes of of enough members present and voting to act. And that effectively killed this bill that had been on the governor’s lists of priorities and had been pretty clearly one of the major priorities, or so it seemed anyway, of the leadership in both chambers. So, you know, this episode ended a fairly chaotic and eventful session in a way that really the last few days are always tense, josh, right? I mean, no matter what, it’s always fuses are short nerves are raw, you know, choose your metaphor. You know, everybody’s kind of at the end of their rope, but this just really did seem to bring a lot of, you know, to bring to the surface a lot of tensions and conflicts that had been brewing all sessions long between the governor and the legislature, between the House and the Senate and their leaders, I think, probably less visible between factions in both the Democratic and the Republican caucuses, particularly in the House, and particularly among the republicans. You know, is everybody kind of looked around for, you know, on the Democratic side looked to take credit, and on the Republican side looked for people to blame. And there was a lot of there’s a lot of both to go around, but since it’s a failure, particularly a lot of blame and and notably the governor on monday, you know, raised a lot of eyebrows with a tweet, you know, basically saying that since the Legislature hadn’t done their job, he was planning on using his ability to to veto particular items in the budget, to veto the entire the entire article that funds the texas legislature, since they quote unquote, weren’t doing their jobs or hadn’t been showing up for work now. You know, this is a, I would say two things about this one. I think the chances of this, we should just say right now and I don’t want to make it a challenge to anybody. Think the chances of this actually happening are rather small

[0:03:59 Speaker 0] gaming

[0:04:01 Speaker 1] this out. It doesn’t seem

[0:04:02 Speaker 0] like something that you really want to

[0:04:03 Speaker 1] do. It seems like it might have been a impulse, somewhat impulsive gesture on the part of the governor or whoever was working with the governor on his twitter account. Well bracket that for the moment. But one should also, I mean there’s just also the basic logical problem that the budget that he would be vetoing is for the next two years. So he’s not actually depriving the people of for the performance. He would be then, you know, just if we allow this kind of, you know, this moment in the multi if we play this moment in the multiverse out for just a moment, it would mean that the budget that he would be vetoing legislative funding for would take place essentially as he was calling the legislature back for the scheduling redistricting session in october. So you’re basically defunding the legislature just as you need them to leverage a better, you know, uh advantage for rip artisan advantage for republicans. And remember you’re not, the legislative article does not fund just the members of the legislature, This is staff, this is legislative reference library, This is L. B. B. It’s basically the funding for the entire legislative infrastructure and bureaucracy that would be that supports the functioning of the of the legislature. So, but as an example of the raw feelings and ill will and general sense of, you know, but her tennis going on to use the political science term political science term uh in in Austin and in the capital on monday, that that was a pretty big example of that.

[0:05:50 Speaker 0] Yeah, I mean, you know, I will bring you just to bring an ounce of of, you know, less, you know, equally well known political science into this. You know, we usually think of the parties as being, you know, the party and government sort of elected members, the party organization, the people who are working, you know, for the party and then sort of part of the electorate and the idea of, you know, the governor going and ostensibly trying to directly confront and hurt both, you know, the party and government and large shares of the party organization going into an election year. It’s a little, you know, I would say unwise, you know, the other thing, I think, I mean, go to your point, the idea that, you know, you have a special session for redistricting, but before they could even address that, you would probably have to have the legislators have an open and debate about nothing other than paying themselves. I mean, it’s not a it’s not really something you want to be doing if the goal overall is to have like, you know, a unified Republican front going too. Well, that’s the thing. You know, we like all.

[0:06:45 Speaker 1] Yeah, I mean, if you look at the, you know, I mean, we talked about different axes of conflict. This this turns this into a pretty blunt force, executive versus legislative branch fight when those branches are both predominate, you know, dominated by one party. Yeah, so it’s, you know, it’s a, it’s a it’s an oddly, you know, uh, nuclear response in which you’re, you know, you’re definitely killing the village to save it, destroying the village to save it.

[0:07:13 Speaker 0] Yeah, I mean, it also, I mean, you know, we don’t want to give this any more attention than it deserves because I don’t think it’s going to happen. But just just two more observations is one, you know, the legislative branch is the branch that carries the purse. So the idea that the governor would then go in and basically, I’m going to defund the branch that actually like is the one who’s supposed to do discern, determine where all the money goes. I think there’s a constitutional problem with that, like in the end of the way the government is set up, etcetera. I also think, you know, there’s another piece of which is like, you know, who gave the Governor of the line item veto. I mean, let’s, you know, there are solutions should the governor want to push this, you know further. And I don’t think that they, you know, work out that well in the long run, but that’s just, you know, some some loose observation, some hot takes on that.

[0:07:53 Speaker 1] Yeah. All right. So, you know, the point being here, you know, this ended with a lot of, you know, with a lot of fighting and a lot of, you know, a lot of ill will and as we said, a lot of people trying to blame each other. Um you know, let’s I guess, you know, before we start with, well, let’s let’s go back to the beginning. So if we’re gonna do, you know, sort of take a quick hot take on the session, let’s start where we always start, you know, in the uT texas, tribune poll back in february, you know, just as the session was getting underway in any meaningful way, you know, we asked people what they thought it was important for the legislature to address,

[0:08:29 Speaker 0] right. And, you know, not surprisingly to be in the session, Covid was rose to the top, but it wasn’t like anything really was overwhelmingly leading the pack. I think 22% of texas voters said that they should deal with Covid, you know, three times the share of democrats as republicans said that, uh, you know, the next biggest item was immigration and border security, which is 14% 24 times the share of republicans and democrats said that, and then it was economy and jobs and some other stuff. We actually asked again a little bit later in the session, just as a check in to see what they should do. And what happened at that point was immigration and border security really rose mostly because about 61% of republicans said this is the issue of the legislature should be addressing. And so we we I would call that a return to normal in some ways.

[0:09:15 Speaker 1] Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, it is one of the interesting kind of stories of of the session. Just, you know, I mean, it didn’t go away completely, but the degree to which the issues around the pandemic and some of the separation of powers and and authority issues that emerged during the pandemic. Some some of the policy issues the pandemic seemed like it might have raised really, ultimately never got an enormous amount of oxygen in this session.

[0:09:43 Speaker 0] Yeah, I mean, I think in retrospect it’s kind of I mean, like most things, it’s easy to see in retrospect why that might be the case, right? I mean, I think on the one hand it was easy, it’s it’s been easy enough to to look at the pandemic as a one off, you know, I mean, even though it’s not a one, you know, I mean, I don’t think public health experts would say this is a one off and obviously there’s lots of people predicting pandemics before this pandemic came, but to the extent that this was like, you know, an extraordinary event, as we would call it, an exogenous shock on the system. Uh I think it’s easy for people to say, you know, we can’t, you know, it would be easy for people to be concerned about over legislating to the specific event, you know? And then the flip side of it I would say is, you know, most of the things that people were talking about with respect to Covid that could have come up, we’re either things that, you know, we’re kind of hard hard asked in texas like expanding Medicaid on the one hand or related to set that honestly just doesn’t pique people’s interests, you know? And I say people, I mean the public’s interest in terms of like this relationship of government power is what the government can and can’t do around a pandemic. I mean, I think people had more attitudes towards that then I think you would normally expect. But I think that’s only because the pandemic lasted for so long. It was so ever present people’s lives. And even then, I think this idea of like, well, should the governor have, you know, be able to just keep calling, you know, unlimited, you know, emergency declarations like that’s not something that your average Texan has any view on at all.

[0:11:02 Speaker 1] Well, and then in the intervening, you know, period between this, you know, this february poll or, you know, I guess when we were in the field, this was just happening, I suppose. But you know, then you have the weather event and the power outages and that really, you know, for the first, you know, in the immediate weeks, right after the outages for, I guess obvious kinds of reasons, which is, you know, we know that the in polling we did with UTI Energy Institute and then some follow up work, we did tribune. A lot of people reported having trouble during the outage. In other words, the savage was a widely immediately experienced problem in the state and it really did, you know, preoccupied just in terms of the experience of the thing and then there was the billing and cost issue and damage.

[0:11:50 Speaker 0] You know, you just end. I mean, we started this, we started this week where the session ended and we’re going back to begin, but where the session ended was a lot of finger pointing and really right, when the session started and this happened, you know, weeks, we’re eating up with a lot of finger pointing,

[0:12:02 Speaker 1] Right? And so, you know, that I think that also probably, you know, became something much more immediate and much more immediate because of the particular actors involved in the Legislature. I mean, you know, once the Legislature decided they were going to have to look at this and and and felt that there was pressure to do something. This involved, the utilities and the power industry and, you know, oil and gas, and so, you know, there was so you’re seeing

[0:12:30 Speaker 0] the bit players,

[0:12:31 Speaker 1] there were a lot of, you know, you know, there are a lot of, you know, in the in the in the in the neutral words, you know, of, like talking about the legislature for, you know, intro classes of stakeholders, Yeah, stakeholders, you know, but stakeholders with very large stakes. Um and so I think that, you know, that that had an impact on this and that actually, you know, ebbed and flowed during the session, but came up in in the final moments of of the Senate being, you know, in session, and and certainly in the final moments of their legislative activity on on sunday after the SB seven got railroaded. And I guess, even even into monday, you know, the lieutenant governor had a lot to say about after, you know, just pillorying the House and trying to put pressure on the, on the governor, lieutenant governor. And let’s say about the way that the that the, you know, the the outage bills were, you know, worked out and and really took a pretty strong position. Return to a position he had taken early on that the legislature had not done its job. If there wasn’t some money flowing directly into the hands of ratepayers

[0:13:43 Speaker 0] somehow. Some way.

[0:13:44 Speaker 1] Yeah, and, you know, and there were concrete ideas out there on the table. I mean, that were that were being discussed, some of it was about just taking money out of the rainy day fund and, you know, given it to people that had been hurt by this, you know, and it was an interesting position for the lieutenant governor to be in. And I think we have no reason at this point, did not think that he it was a sincere position. I mean, you know, it’s it’s something he stood by for a long time. And again, it kind of came up and didn’t as the negotiations were going on, but he seemed pretty definite and pretty clear about, you know, the fact that he thought that was important. He thought it was a real shortcoming at the very, you know, in the in the final minutes of the session,

[0:14:27 Speaker 0] not to take this in a different direction. And I’m not trying to and I hope we don’t, but it does make me think about the $5000 teacher raises. You know, I mean, just, I mean, I said, it’s not that it’s not a sincerely held belief, but at some point there is a politics to some of this, which is to say, you know, there is a solution to the problem or at least, you know, something that everybody will understand whether it’s effective or not. And the answer is, you know, strangely enough from the lieutenant governor throw some money at the people, which

[0:14:52 Speaker 1] is the curious

[0:14:52 Speaker 0] thing again, to see it once you say, okay, you know, that’s interesting, and you see the second time as well.

[0:14:57 Speaker 1] Well, I mean, you know, look, I think this points to, you know, something we’ve been talking about throughout the session, and then for the last really, honestly, in the wake of of once again, the trump inflection on the Republican Party is, you know, what is it, what is it that defines the intersection of of republican and Conservative politics right now, and there’s definitely something that is a little bit more populist in in the reflexes here, and what, clearly what some leaders c is acceptable and within that the rubric of that identity brand, you know, and what they want to deliver to their coalition. Right? So, yeah, it’s interesting in that sense, and, you know, I think the teacher raised thing was a good example. Um so, you know, stepping back then and this kind of gets us into that, like, so what’s, you know, as we sit here, you know, with the session expired less than 24 hours and conscious that the sabbath thing is still playing out and we’re still not entirely seeing what the governor is signing and not signing and you know what he’s gonna do, you know, do in the budget. What’s the kind of what’s the kind of hot, take your thinking about the non political people come to you and say, yeah, so I hear the session ended like what happened?

[0:16:12 Speaker 0] Yeah, I mean, you know, I think the thing that kind of strikes me having watched, you know, I would say a reasonable number of sessions now, you know, was the volume of really difficult topics that they try to seriously advance. And I use all those words, you know, carefully, you know, that they seriously try to make there’s always a huge volume of difficult topics. I think what’s surprising is that a lot of the times, you know, many of those issues with those policy areas don’t make it as far as they did this time, let alone get past. And, you know, my understanding, you know, how it was explained, taught to me by, you know, others, I would say, you know, particularly in explaining, sort of, the Strauss era was, you know, legislators don’t want to be taking a million votes on a million divisive issues for a number of reasons. And this was sort of some of the criticism of stress and say, yeah, this bill came to the floor, it would pass with the majority, you know, with all republicans voting for it. The issue is that, you know, there were some republicans who just, you know, don’t want to vote on, let’s say constitutional carry, you know, because it’s complicated with police officers or don’t want to vote on outright ban on abortion, because, you know, honestly, there’s not a lot of public support for an outright ban on abortion, right, but they would have a difficult time not voting for it. And it was always sort of understood as the leadership. My understanding was that was the leadership shop to sort of manage the flow of that kind of stuff, not just to protect members. I think that was part of it, but also to protect the process in the sense that, you know, I think, you know, the way I’ve talked about you recently, it’s like, you know, you’re always kind of keeping your eye on, you know, that one or two, there’s one or two bills that are just going to burn the house down, you know, they’re gonna come up, it’s gonna be ugly, you know, it’s gonna be one of the things after they debate that bill, you know, there’s gonna be a lot less deference being thrown around, there’s gonna be a lot more chugging, there’s gonna be a lot more people willing to kill bills that they want to see

[0:17:58 Speaker 1] move forward to kill collegial and cooperative.

[0:18:01 Speaker 0] Yeah, and it just seemed like the whole session was filled with this kind of stuff. And so, you know, on the one hand, there’s sort of, you know, there’s that how much of that flow made it through. And then on the other hand, there’s deserve an aspect, which is like how is this managed so poorly, I mean, you know, and I think, you know, you pointed me to it, but Jeff Blaylock had a really good rundown of sort of SB seven and sort of how many stages in the process, it kind of just sat and to think that, you know, you’ve got this bill that, you know, everyone on the, you know, on the republican side of the aisle, the governor, you know, says is super important. The Governor’s made an emergency item, you know, your voters, you know, want to see you move on. And the fact that it could get that far down the process to be even vulnerable is, you know, just kind of surprising. But maybe maybe it feeds back into some of these conflicts that you’re talking about, Some other theories about, you know, sort of some of the wise behind some of the difficulties that they had. But it does speak to the whole, you know, thinking Abbotts already kind of highlighted this his you know, not in his warning of his special session call, that he expects them. You know, basically the House and Senate to have worked these things out before he calls them back.

[0:19:10 Speaker 1] Yeah, well, that was, I mean, you know, I took that, I thought that phrase was really important for two reasons. One the jab at, you know, you guys are not doing this the way it’s supposed to be done. But also I think that was also like a trial balloon, if not, I was gonna say a leading indicator, but I think, you know, with Abbott, with the governor and the way that they are careful about these things. That was a trial balloon of kind of saying you need time to work this out. So I am not calling a special session right away. Right? But, you know, then. But then that that whole idea gets complicated by the fact that he’s talking about this veto and you know, and if he vetoes that provision or, you know, theoretically vetoes the whole budget and makes them come back. Because, look, the bottom line is, as you were saying, if you game it out, you know, this thing doesn’t really make any sense. It only makes sense if he’s going to veto the whole thing and give that as the reason and then they have to come back and do the budget again. And if they do that, they have to do that before the next biennium.

[0:20:21 Speaker 0] Even even

[0:20:22 Speaker 1] that, I don’t think he’s going to do that. But I mean, I think that’s

[0:20:25 Speaker 0] but I think even that to maybe you get to a point where you say like, okay, so we’ve got republicans in charge of every statewide office and majorities of both legislatures. We have 50,000 dead texas due to covid 100 and 55 died in the storm. And now the state can’t even pass a budget.

[0:20:39 Speaker 1] Yeah, no, I’m not saying it’s I mean, that’s why this is still, but I mean, but that’s, you know, to my mind, you know, that’s the only practical way that if he’s going to deliver on this thread, I mean, you know, my expectation is they’re going to find a way to forget about it, or not deliver on it. Or, you know, there’ll be some kind of summit where he, you know, everybody talks, you know, whatever will be some kind of hand waving that goes on to make this go away in that. Yeah, it’s it’s

[0:21:08 Speaker 0] the announcement of the billion dollars at the border. You know, I mean, you can talk about other things in the budget besides legislative pay, which nobody really cares about

[0:21:16 Speaker 1] besides the legend. Well, you know, you you you you you bring up the billion dollars at the budget. So, I mean, I think let’s talk about the politics of this a little bit and you know, I mean, we’ve been talking writing certainly thinking a lot about, you know, what we’re referring to and I guess we did this imprint at some point, you know, this kind of right turn that the legislature seemed to take as a result of all the issues that you were talking about. You know, and I think that, you know, the billion dollars in the, you know, in border security funding, which you know, it hasn’t been discussed a whole lot, but was prominently featured in the little graphics that that members were tweeting out about the budget after they passed. The very

[0:21:57 Speaker 0] prominently was a

[0:21:58 Speaker 1] black bar at the bottom that you can’t miss as a billion dollars for border security. And as we talked, I mean, I think it’s you know, it’s pretty, you know, interesting what a difference a few years can make sense, you know, in 2017 during the session when DPS came to the legislature and said, yeah, this border thing continues to be bad. We gotta do border security and we need a billion dollars. Everybody, Whoa,

[0:22:25 Speaker 0] hey,

[0:22:26 Speaker 1] whoa, you know, I mean, so, so basically the 800 million, 800 to 900 million depending on special allocations that we’ve been giving you isn’t enough. And can you even show us what’s going on and, you know, the whole thing kind of they ratcheted that back now four years later with the Democratic President in the White House. Billion dollars is, you know, and you know, as far as the coalition politics in the in the Republican Party is we’ve talked on this podcast about before, you know, you were just making reference to the fact that there are these issues that came up that are divisive votes that members don’t want to take, um because of the different segmentation in public opinion on these different issues like abortion guns. Think of a few other things that doesn’t exist among republicans on immigration and border on border security writ large

[0:23:20 Speaker 0] and on multiple. And in all the dimensions. I mean, we could ask about spending, we could ask about specific policies. It does not matter. There’s not, you know, you’re not dealing with a lot of tension in the Republican Party when you’re talking about spending money on border security or creating laws that would penalize legal immigration further.

[0:23:38 Speaker 1] And I think it’s a good, you know, I think, noting that is a good reminder of the kind of proximity bias you have, like watching the session unfold really closely and then thinking about it in this moment, right after, you know, something dramatic has happened at the end. And, you know, endings are, you know, it seems like, you know, a little less than half, but the final days often to have some drama.

[0:24:03 Speaker 0] Yeah,

[0:24:03 Speaker 1] this is a big dose of it, but it’s not unprecedented. And, um, you know, as we watch this unfold and you step back, Republican candidates are are going to have gotten a lot of what they wanted from this session in practical terms, in terms of their ability to go back and defend their positions in republican primaries. And that doesn’t mean that the stuff we’re talking about doesn’t have consequences. I think it does like, you know, the big takeaway at this point, you know, the voting thing might be something of an embarrassment because they’ve raised expectations, and after Jenning Republican primary voters up on the voting stuff to not deliver, it looks pretty bad. But I mean, they come back in october and they put election security slash election, are they? The governor puts election security, election integrity on the call? The same call is redistricting. You know, it becomes the triumphal Republican, you know, demonstration of strength in both elections and their willingness to to run redistricting in their interests. And I don’t I don’t see how that’s a huge problem for them.

[0:25:14 Speaker 0] Yeah, I mean, I think it depends on, you know, your view of the overarching narrative over time, right? I mean, I think, you know, what you’re pointing out is important here, which is that, you know, if anything, a lot of what we saw, if not maybe necessarily in style, but an overall effect was a return to some normalcy in the sense that, you know, I would say save for the last session after republicans felt like, you know, they took a pretty close haircut. The focus has always been on republican primaries. That’s what we’ve seen, you know, I think is the main driving kind of explanation for a lot of, you know, legislative politics over the last decade. And, you know, this session was was a return to that. Now, the question, I think, you know, we can’t know the answer to until we have some more cycles is, you know, is the story that we’re watching right now, one in which, you know, republicans are, you know, re consolidating, you know, their strength in the state through a session that really focuses on their voters and and the things that their voters care about. Or, you know, I would say the flip side of this is, you know, you go out a few months and all of a sudden republicans are, you know, according to national press, and a lot of local statewide press, you know, working on their voter suppression bill will gerrymandering the state, and, you know, there’s a counter mobilizing aspect of that, and whether you’re, you know, more worried about getting, you know, primary, you know, in the Republican primary, or, you know, you think that there are, you know, series, you know, there’s there’s the possibility of enough democratic votes to show you a real challenge in the general. You know, it sort of depends on how you look at that. I mean, you know, I don’t have an answer, I should just say right now, I don’t know what it is, which story we’re talking about. You know, the trend of closer and closer elections in texas or the trend of, you know, republican dominance statewide and legislative level for two decades plus.

[0:26:52 Speaker 1] Well, you know, and I guess to my mind, I mean, I think, you know, which way I’m leaning on this, I mean, I, you know, if you’re asking me, well, this counter mobilization happened within the rubric of what the, within the organizational and resource rubric, you know, that the, that the texas democrats can drawn. I, you know, I’d have a hard time betting on that. Yeah, I wouldn’t, I

[0:27:16 Speaker 0] know you are well, and I would I would even add to that. I mean, the other, the other difficulty I would add is, you know, and I go back to something I think I mentioned before and I mentioned piece of it before this, you know, in this podcast, which was, you know, when we asked that open ended question, uh, 61% of republicans said the legislature should be dealing with border security and immigration. It took the democrats, I think five issues their top five issues to get to 61%. And so ultimately, for democrats, you know, one I think they’ve learned of late, you know, you can’t just run against republicans unless it’s donald trump. It’s not that easy. They need to have, you know, an issue agenda that’s attractive and so on the one hand, you know, they have it, but it’s very broad and it’s, you know, it’s uneven. So, I mean, I think that’s a difficult part. It’s also parts of it have been, you know, characterized politically successfully characterized politically by the Republican Party, in a way that has just made it, you know, too hot to touch. But also they can’t avoid it. For example, criminal justice reform, how we deal with police. You know, that that’s something that democrats have to address as a Democratic candidate, but it’s something that is very difficult to do in a way that’s not going to turn off some reasonably important share of general election voters. And then the other piece of this that I keep bringing, you know, bring up is even if some of these things that republicans have pursued are not overwhelmingly popular, like the border security stuff, but actually have some some friction within the party, even if you have a third of, you know, republicans, or even, let’s say, you know, a plurality of Republican women who don’t want permit. Let’s carry. It doesn’t mean that all of a sudden they trust democrats to be writing gun laws.

[0:28:46 Speaker 1] Yeah. Right. And that’s sort

[0:28:47 Speaker 0] of the difficulty there.

[0:28:49 Speaker 1] Well, and I think that, you know, so I so I think, you know, to be fair to the democrats, I mean, I think part of the play here was intersected to some degree with national politics. I think in the sense that if you look at some of chris Turner’s comments and comments of several the leading democrat since then, you know, chris Turner said shortly afterwards, you know, they immediately channeled President biden’s characterization of the texas law after the Senate passed it, um, which is obviously highly critical. And I think they, you know, they sort of channeled that and also really wanted to press the issue, you know, implicitly, because they can’t they can’t admit defeat in their moment of temporary victory,

[0:29:34 Speaker 0] you

[0:29:35 Speaker 1] know, but they did want to flag but that, you know, hey, you guys have this big bill sitting in the U. S. Congress, like in the Senate where you’re arguing over the filibuster, where if you were to pass a version of that bill, it might very well solve a lot of these problems for us. And I think we can, you know, and but I think that’s kind of the best card they have to play again as you gain this out. You know, the governor is going to call the legislature back, they are going to put this on a special session sooner or later, um, and they’re going to pass it.

[0:30:10 Speaker 0] Well, you know, you raise something that I don’t even think, you know, this is probably obvious, I just hadn’t thought about it this way, but, you know, the asymmetry in the impact that the nationalization of politics has on both parties. I mean, ultimately, the nationalization of politics is really, I think, you know, helped reinforce republicans here in a lot of ways, in a way that I think has made it much more difficult for democrats,

[0:30:30 Speaker 1] I think that’s right. And so, you know, I mean, I think, you know, just to kind of wind this up, we’ve been going about a half hour, I think, but, you know, there’s a lot that will will follow up on this. I mean, I as you were talking earlier about, I think it is a big topic in the internal world of texas government right in politics right now, about the thing you put your finger on, like, how come all these, you know, the volume of all this controversial stuff that we normally would not see, and that was not limited to the big issues that we tend to talk about. You know, there was a lot of legislation, particularly in the House that, you know, got out of committee on divided votes and then got out of the calendar’s committee and made it to the floor that a lot of people think that is a failure of the process, that, you know, they are looking at a lot of the Speaker of the House, first and foremost, um and how he performed in his first shot at this, and I think that there is going to be a lot of talk about that and it’s going to be an issue moving forward now. I think, I’m not saying that, I think, you know, we’re going to see another 11 term speakership, but I think, you know, there’s a general sense that adjustments will be needed, that, you know, the way the committees operated was not getting, you know, the elections committee is is both an outlier in just how bad it was in the house, but but also is going to become kind of the poster child, but it’s not the only one by far. And if you talk to people in the process, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of questions about, you know, and it’s ironic in that, you know, the governor is kind of channeling that inside criticism in his shot about the election, about election reform and saying, hey, you guys got to get your act together. However much people may resent the governor and a kind of in the legislature and the kind of, you know, branch versus branch fight. You’re going to have a lot of people also going, well, you know. Yeah, well there is that.

[0:32:33 Speaker 0] Yeah, I mean, Yeah. Yes,

[0:32:36 Speaker 1] yeah, yeah, okay. You know, so I think that that is out there and the bad session uses, but you know, a very pregnant question moving forward.

[0:32:47 Speaker 0] Yeah, I mean, I said no one could look at this, the process that went through. I mean, you know, I was, I would just add to what you said there. I mean, in terms of like, you know, indicators, I mean the first hand accounts of just the breakdown into court, I mean whether you’re watching it on the livestream and or hearing what members are saying, it’s a like on the floor at the end of the session and again, it’s not to say that like, you know, it’s not, doesn’t get nasty at the end of the session. Look, everybody’s sick of each other, get that, but I mean it’s been kind of, it sounds like it’s been kind of nasty like for weeks now.

[0:33:15 Speaker 1] Yeah, well I think it’s been nasty and it’s been chaotic.

[0:33:18 Speaker 0] Chaos is the

[0:33:19 Speaker 1] and the chaos is what people and you know, the thing is that those two things tend to become mutually reinforcing over time, when that when that dynamic happens. And so I think that, I mean if I was going to sort of leave with my my last kind of hot global take on this, is that, look, I mean on one hand, one doesn’t want to overplay the degree to which the texas legislature has ever been a particularly smooth running machine or you know, kind of a paragon of of of of legislating. On the other hand, it was a I think the general sense that things are not well inside the texas legislature right now, and it’s a topic of another podcast to say exactly what is going on here. And I think, you know, it’s probably a lot of different ways, but I mean, I think, you know, when you have a house that seemed to be sort of poorly organized and not operating, you know, very efficiently and chaotic and chaotically on one side and on the other side, a texas senate in which the party in control and particularly the members of the body in the in the majority party, but even including some of the democrats, have basically just seated authority to, you know, a lieutenant governor who as presiding officer seems ready, willing and eager to take as much power as he possibly can at the expense of the body. You know, you’ve got you’ve got the texas legislature that is not, not, not in very good shape right now.

[0:34:55 Speaker 0] Yeah, and, you know, just, you know, we’re not gonna have this conversation today, but just to preview loosely, you know, my thoughts or part of the thoughts on that, which is, you know, to my mind, you know, that’s not all, I mean, you know, you agree with this, I’m sure, but, like, you know, it’s not all about what’s going on in the body. I mean, part of this is, you know, texas is an interesting point, you know, I think in terms of its overall history and political history that’s producing a lot of friction in a lot of different places, in ways that I think are kind of manifesting themselves now and in ways that they haven’t before, and maybe that was due to the political actors, you know, who were who were involved in the process at that point in time. You know, again, maybe, you know, less maybe less ambitious actors in some of these positions, you know, at various points in time. But, I mean, you know, I just I’ll give one example of it, which is I just think, you know, what is another state like texas being run by Republican legislature and governor. I mean I I point this out to a lot of people recently, but you know, look at the new U. S. Census numbers, texas has you know, five of the 15 largest cities in the country. And generally speaking, we talk about urban, rural and this kind of thing, you know? And part of it is because texas is both a large urban state and a large rural state. The adult population, we’re about to have plurality, hispanic population. So the white, you know, plurality is is about to recede into becoming a minority group in the state. There’s a lot going on here and you know, I think the ability to manage that is is a challenge obviously.

[0:36:19 Speaker 1] Yeah. Yeah. There’s a lot of, you know, I mean, and this is where, you know, you really kind of step back and it’s probably even a little too soon given from the Legislature, but you take the traditional pieces of the puzzle or the traditional variables, you know, where there’s strength and weakness in civil society and the party system right now. The luck of the draw on leadership and, you know, institutional adaptability. Yeah. You know, I mean, I mean, I think, you know, the way I would sort of, you know, in terms of like what you’re saying, like, yeah, there’s a lot going on and then, you know, so how adaptable are these institutions that we’ve kind of stubbornly maintained as functioning as as purposefully ineffectually as possible. It’s kind of a hard way to run a state of 30 million people,

[0:37:07 Speaker 0] 11th biggest economy in the country

[0:37:09 Speaker 1] in the world rather. So, I think on that we’ll see what the next week brings. Thanks to josh for being here. Thanks to our crew in the liberal arts development studio, in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of texas at Austin. Thanks to you all for listening as always, data resources, writing things we’ve made reference to here at texas politics dot utexas dot e d u again. Thanks for listening. And we’ll be back next week. The second reading podcast is a production of the texas politics project at the University of texas at Austin