June 9th, 2020 – Second Reading Podcast

[0:00:00 Speaker 0] 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

[0:00:12 Speaker 1] 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?

[0:00:32 Speaker 0] Hello, and welcome to the second reading podcast for the second week of June. 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 of the Texas Politics Project. Josh, how are we this week

[0:00:50 Speaker 1] doing better than last week? I guess.

[0:00:54 Speaker 0] Yeah, last week was tough. Yeah, so that’s good, I think. I think hopefully most everybody is well for today. Attention in the nation and the state continues to be focused on the protests that were triggered by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Now, two weeks ago, more than two weeks ago, his funeral was held this week in Houston his hometown. Um attention, for better or worse, is turning to the political response as the protests had continued but become more consistently peaceful. I think the system has at, you know, as it should to some degree turn to the took to the political on the policy response and to try toe, come up with some kind of answer, maybe answers. The wrong word to what’s been happening in the last two weeks is complicated, to say the least, because we’re talking about multiple discussions, a lot going on on. And so you know, when you’re trying to come up a zone elected official with what I were calling answers. But you don’t really know exactly what the question to focus on is.

[0:02:07 Speaker 1] I don’t know if answers there. Maybe, maybe response. Maybe.

[0:02:10 Speaker 0] Yeah, I think I’d said response, and I didn’t want to use it again. But you know, some kind of response is really what we’re talking about. I mean, we thought today we do is talk about two of the major themes that were going on here and again. This is there’s a lot at play here, both in the national conversation, and it actually even looks different in different places, depending on what the response is, the protests look like and what’s been going on at the local and state level. But today we want to talk about what’s playing out both nationally in Texas and talk about race and talk about policing. I mean, this initially arose, of course, because of the killing of George Floyd by Minister of Police. But the police response to those protests in many parts of the country, perhaps most prominently in the last week in the nation’s capital in Washington, D. C. Has further fuelled this discussion. Um, the discussion has been rooted in race and in the history of police practices in communities of color, especially black communities. And these air problems with deep historical roots that go back, relating the end of the Civil War on the efforts of local governments in most parts of the country to segregate and control formerly enslaved people through the Arab Jim Crow laws in the South to the civil rights movement that peaked in the mid 19 sixties through the mass incarcerations, then the war on drugs to hit black communities hard starting in the 19 eighties and really running into the present. Oh, and we could look at lots of details within each other. That’s a very broad constitution of the arc here, you know? So I thought we’d start with, uh, with policing. That seems like the first most immediate topic now at the intersection of race in the criminal justice system. The discussion right now looks like, you know, it’s turning into the most fundamental confrontation with how policing is practiced that we’ve seen in a very long time in this country, certainly since the last wave of professionalizing crime fighting in the mid 20th century. Now we’ve seen a recurring discussions of police brutality. But you know, seems to me we’re having now a much more detailed broad public policy discussion about how policing should happen and to some extent, what the police should even be.

[0:04:45 Speaker 1] Yeah, I mean, I think you’re right. One of the I think one of the interesting things is to the extent that we’ve had discussions about police policy, you know, really, I mean, in the recent history, so thinking about the last 40 or 50 years, it’s really been mostly focused on how toe make sure that police are supported enough. And that includes both, You know, payment pensions, benefits, but also weapons, right and resource is. And so most of the discussions around, especially the political discussions air police have been about how to provide them with more resource is to combat, you know, increasingly terrifying, you know, threats and different types of crime, whether it be drugs or otherwise, but usually drugs. I mean, you’ve already highlighted that the war on drugs is a big impetus for this. I mean, this is a very, very different discussion, and what’s interesting about it is. And I think it’s partially the fact that, you know, you do have all these politicians searching for a response to this, and they’re searching for different responses, depending on kind of their orientations toward these questions. But it is ranging from, you know, things that were, you know, I would say is quote unquote, a simple as banning chokeholds, for example, just some literally how police conduct their job, but all the way back to, you know, really thinking. And you kind of mentioned this about how are police oriented in society. And I think other people appointed that many times. But for many citizens of society, the police or your primary interaction point with the government. I mean, this is this is this is basically, you know, you know, you’re not really usually talking to a city council member, you know, if anything, you talk to police officers, this is kind of and the question becomes, you know, what is the role of police in society and what people are saying when they’re talking about that? Is there talking about, you know, should be? Should police be our frontline mental health responders? Should they be the people who are dealing with homelessness? Should they be the people who are the primary, You know, off, You know, it’s a state resource and dealing with domestic abuse and in some case, child abuse and drug addiction and all these sorts of societal ills. And I think right now what you know, what’s interesting is again the range of this discussion can can go all the way from Well, you know, we need to make sure that there’s better hiring practices for police officers or police officers shouldn’t be allowed to use chokeholds all the way to you know what are we even asking police to do right now. And that’s a That’s a big discussion, right?

[0:07:08 Speaker 0] Yeah, I think so. I mean, I you know, I mean, I think the last kind of uptick that we saw in this waas you know, very much lately, you know, really, In the in the middle late nineties when we saw the emergence of what was called community policing disseminate throughout throughout the two police departments throughout the country. And, you know, whenever you get these big ideas kind of emerging like that and the, you know, the community policing model was about trying to engage more ties to the community. Police departments in some ways embraced it because it was accompanied by, ah, push for more hiring and in a lot of places, making police forces bigger.

[0:07:56 Speaker 1] And I think I said it wasn’t that discussion on the heels of basically a huge increase in the number of cops. And he wasn’t that.

[0:08:01 Speaker 0] Yeah. I mean, I mean, and I think it’s important, particularly given the partisan environment that that was pushed at the national level by a Democratic president. It was Bill Clinton who made it a centerpiece of his campaign. And then, you know, his policy position in this area to continually go before Congress and push the phrase you know, we’re gonna put 100,000 new cops in the street. And if you look at some of the recent collections of clips that are being put together by, you know, virtually everybody that’s now reviewing this history, it was something that was in the State of the Union speech 45 times. And in the end, he wound up getting more than that. As part of this model of, you know, that was kind of Ah, in a way, a kinder, gentler were marketed as a kinder, gentler police even is. It was also accompanied by the war on drugs and crime legislation that was extremely punitive of people for drug possession. You know, many things that were now at the national level and and in the States kind of reviewing and tryingto unwind to some degree, particularly the heavy sentences for drug possession which were themselves criticized for being racially discriminatory.

[0:09:21 Speaker 1] Why, I think you know that that in and of itself really is a great encapsulated. It’s been 30 years, so it’s not like this is an immediate chef, right? But it’s a great yesterday to me. Well, that there was five years ago, but, I mean, it’s one of those things where I mean, that actually encapsulates how far this discussion has has come, even in such a short period of time. Because if you think about that, what we’re saying here is you know, right now, it may seem as though you know, Democrats, progressives, and sort of, you know, there are allies air pushing for some of the bigger, large scale reforms. You know, I think Republicans have been much more open to some of these more narrowly focused reforms and policing. But the point here is you know, you go back to the nineties, you know, which we’re talking about here, When when Bill Clinton was served spearheaded a big increase in the number of police officers the size of police departments, you know, and again, a continue trajectory of the war on drugs. You know what that shows you is that you know, the idea of being tough on crime and supporting police officers, you know, it was ah was an unquestioned, tentative politics at that period. And it really has been Honestly, I would say up until the last, you know, 5 to 7 years. And when I say that, I don’t mean accepted by everybody is the data clearly shows but accepted by majorities in both parties that you know you can’t be a politician who appears to be, You know, there’s a you can’t appear to be quote unquote soft on crime. So ultimately, the fact that we’re even beginning to have these discussions and affect their mainstream politicians and parties who were pushing for, you know, potentially saying, Hey, maybe these police forces air getting too big. That’s a That’s a big shift in the policy space.

[0:10:54 Speaker 0] Yeah, it is, I mean, and I think you know you. It’s one of the reasons I raise Clinton your right to notice it. That became a kind of it became a way for for Democrats, frankly, toe look less liberal.

[0:11:06 Speaker 1] Yeah, I thought

[0:11:07 Speaker 0] this was an area where centrist Democrats, particularly centrist white Democrats, but also other, you know, Democrats of other races. Frankly, we’re able to say, you know, we’re not just, you know, quote unquote soft liberals. You know, we think that we need to have a police in the community but it’s how we’re going to do this. That has to change. But we’re not. As you say, we’re not soft on crime, and that’s been, you know, under some re evaluation in the last several years. But this is certainly the events of the last two weeks have certainly accelerated that. And there are a bunch of, you know, kind of significant policy questions then that have been opened up That, you know, are typically, you know, have been bubbling under and are always going on in a lot of ways at local, you know, at the local level, which is where all of this police enforcement and all the administration and institutionalization of policing happens. And that’s an important piece of this, that it’s a national conversation that has thousands of local versions and in which a lot of the power and decision making and influencing is going to unfold with local level.

[0:12:14 Speaker 1] I think people you know who are following this for the first time might be surprised, you know, even in a federal system, how dis aggregated the management of police forces are across this country. I mean, I think you know the idea you could see this on both sides. But, I mean, the idea that you know, either the, you know, the president himself can order local police forces to do something or, you know, not really true. The idea that you know Congress could pass legislation that would immediately impact every police force in the country. Not really. I mean, they can try to compel them to, but not so much. And I think, you know, I think you know, here locally in Austin, I think some people would be surprised to find out is the fact that, you know, the City Council has no control over who the police chief is. There’s a lot of discussion right now about the police chief in Austin whether or not he should resign or not, based on you know how the departments responded to the protests, but also previous controversies. The reality is the Austin City Council, the mayor. The elected officials wasn’t actually have no control over who the police chief is here. It’s up to the city manager, and in fact, it would actually be a violation of some of the charter if they were to even press too hard on an employment decision like that and something like that may be surprising to people, but this is actually kind of more of the state of play than not, which is why, in some ways I would say, I’m just thinking about this now. But the public opinion pressure is so important in this because this isn’t necessarily about, you know, politicians looking to, you know, capitalize on discontent to reforming police department. This is about, you know, mass protests that have been going on for weeks now, and how not only our elected officials going to respond to that, but also, you know, largely autonomous police forces, you know, who rely on public support to some degree to maintain their legitimacy. I mean, just to be fair about it,

[0:13:59 Speaker 0] Yeah, and I and I think this this, you know, we don’t want to get too far in the weeds here, But if you look back at kind of the history of police seen and thinking about policing and what these models should be, you know there’s just recurring discussion of how police departments can retain legitimacy from within people that air current trying to be thought leaders in that intellectual and professional community. But you know a lot of these, a lot of these issues air just very put it this way until atmospheres get heated like it is now, or incidents really draw people’s attention to it. You know, these are very kind of mundane government, it, you know, and administrative issues. What kind of oversight should be exercised over police departments, Which is, you say have a lot of autonomy,

[0:14:48 Speaker 1] right? It is it Is it internal is an external, Is it elected officials is a citizen’s counts. I mean, these are all in. It depends.

[0:14:55 Speaker 0] Yeah. Our police trained, you know where to the norms and guidelines for training come from. How should police be equipped? Um, you know, which really goes to this discussion is has informed us recent discussion of militarization of police has been a lot of attention. You know, the the public profile police in the protests, the equipment they have, the equipment they use, and, as always, in politics, the quantity of the resource is that go to police, and for what purposes and how they are allocated and how much control you can have over them. And so we’re going to see this convert these conversations in these issues that you know, if you follow local in city politics at all, me and these air always kind of bubbling under every budget year. There’s a discussion of, you know, the chunk of the budget that goes to the police, that these personnel issues like You’re talking as you’re talking about. There’s the role of police unions, and these are all things that Congress doesn’t really have much to do with. And so all of that you have to take, I think, is the backdrop in this for where the conversation is now and thinking about two developments in the last couple weeks. One is the emergence of the slogan Defund the police, which has become kind of the the umbrella concept of, you know, be much very mundane about it that is now coming out of these protests movements. It’s coming out of, you know, to some degree black lives matter, but also just the general kind of wave of protests that’s going on. So that’s one thing is a step on the police, and I want to come back in a second. But then the other thing is that there has been national political action in the Congress. This week, the Democrats in the House unveiled a police reform bill on the word is that the Republicans and the senator working on it. But let’s talk a little bit about the fund, the police first. I mean, you know, it’s a vague term, and I think it’s lent itself almost immediately to become, ah, kind of, ah, political war shock tests for how you look at this in terms of how literally you take that term, I frankly think it’s an unfortunate are active choosing that language. But

[0:17:07 Speaker 1] it is going to say the problem is it’s not a vague. It’s a vague description of a general bucket of policies that is still being defined as a term. It’s actually almost too familiar. Maybe not big enough, all right, because ultimately I mean people. If you say, Do you think we should defund the police department? Whether you know what that refers to? Not first of all, doesn’t mean anything specific right now in terms of the people who are pushing for defunding the police per se, and it depends again on every again, just as this conversation is should make clear It really depends on the locality in terms of what that might actually mean. But for people who don’t know what it means, it means taking basically. What if we didn’t have a police force? Now that’s not what anybody’s proposing. Ah, but the idea here is and we already kind of discusses a little bit is I mean, when it generally means a reallocation of responsibilities and resource is towards issues like mental health, homelessness, drug addiction, domestic violence, basically, from police agencies to social welfare agencies. Either address these causes as you know, these issues as they happen, or to direct some more of those. Resource is to the Rick Ause is of those problems. And so that’s, you know, what people are talking about is basically a shift from police, you know, basically funding. You know what people broadly call public safety budgets to basically social welfare budgets to deal with things you know, again, if he talked to please, you know, I’ve very since I’ve done I’ve talked to the, you know, the head of the police union here in Austin. They know their positions. They don’t want to be dealing with mental health issues. They don’t want to be first responded to. This goes back to the fact that you know we’re kind. Discussing training all across the country is very different For police officers, there’s no standard training. How much they’re trained, actually deal with mental health, homelessness, domestic violence is it’s gonna be limited no matter what. And it’s not necessarily something that the police departments even want to be doing. But this is a complicated discussion. Where is saying to fund the police is not And it doesn’t really actually, you know, hides. Ah, lot of the complexity in this issue. You know, one thing I just want to jump back to before we keep going on that, you know, you mentioned something I think is interesting here, which is, you know, one of the things I think makes you know Texas a particularly interesting case around this, these ideas in terms of defending the least the fact that because Texas is a traditionally conservative state, um, you know what? You tend to have a small, basically small government, and what that means is, you know, low taxes Low services is the model we talk about here, but one of the essential services that all Texas government provides, whether at the state level or local levels is public safety services. And so one of the things that I think you know interesting about this is that, you know, I read yesterday that when they talk about De funding the New York City police budget, for instance, you know they’re talking about 6% of the city’s budget in a place like Austin public safety, including fiery M s and police in the majority of this is police is about a little more than 50 to 60% of the actual city budget. And so that’s a reflection of different political priorities. New York City, very liberal in a more liberal states. Gonna have a lot more social programs they’re already putting money towards in a place like Austin in a in a tackiness state like Texas, which get it expects a lot less from government. Generally, it turns out that public safety is a much bigger share of our budget. The political interest section of this is interesting in that you’ve got these Democratic cities in a Republican state who, you know, having limited resource is themselves might actually be a open to shifting their budgets from, you know, public safety to social welfare programs and that sort of something that’s kind of underlying the surface here, which, actually, you know, in Texas is it might make it even more important in some ways, orm or pressing of an issue. I’m not sure we’ll see

[0:20:39 Speaker 0] well, in public opinion in Texas is ah is an interesting template for this, right? So, you know, we pulled on that last year. You know, most recently we’ve done it a couple times where we have people assess. You know how favorably they view different institutions, and the police actually don’t do very bad overall. But there’s a lot of internal differences among depending on your racial group,

[0:21:02 Speaker 1] right? So I mean overall in Texas, we found that 58% of Texas voters in 2019 said they had a favorable view of the police. But that among but, you know, that hides a lot of differences. So 58% of people overall had a favorite view of the police, but that was 70% of Republicans and 39% of Democrats. More pressing to the point here, 67% of white Texas voters had a favorable view of the police, compared to only 32% of African American Texas voters, and the police was actually relatively highly rated. In terms of institutions, the military was slightly high, was raised slightly higher. You know, Texas State government, local government was less was rated. More was lower than that. The criminal justice system overall was reading, possibly by only 35% of Texas. And that actually shows you something. I mean, I think you know, it’s interesting, given that these air related right the way police on the one hand and the criminal justice system on the other. What you see the criminal justice system is you see the ratings of, ah, you know, get an institutional part of society. But it’s one that we’ve been having a discussion about now for at least 10 or 15 years with respect to reforms, to the criminal justice system to make it more fair. And people are aware of that. And so it’s not as though the criminal justice system is super highly rated, given the fact that we’ve had a lot of discussions about the inequities in the system and there have been ongoing for a long time. But the police thing is that, you know, police are generally well rated by most Texans, if not necessarily by African Americans.

[0:22:24 Speaker 0] Yeah, and I think when we look at those numbers, it it tells us something about where this debate may go. I suspect. And we’re already beginning to see this, that, you know, there is, you know, partisanship and the way that and the demographics of the two political parties in the country are going to shape this discussion. We’re seeing it already. I think, you know, people will see this. Have probably seen it among themselves among the in their families, in which people are viewing how this is unfolding now, very differently. And it has a lot to do with your predispositions in this area.

[0:23:07 Speaker 1] That’s right. But also, I mean, I think what’s interesting. And I think, you know, we were sort of having a conversation before this about, you know, is this is this a watershed moment is this is the time we look back on and say, Hey, this is this is when things changed and, you know, I think in general, but especially for young people it is disappointing how rarely That’s the case. You know, most often something seems like it’s going to be a big change. And then, you know, either inattention or, you know, the sort of the slow gears of government grind to a halt, and then nothing happens. I think the thing you know, and I think that’s an open question to see where we go from here. But I think what is interesting is, and you know, as you start to look at some of the national public opinion polls, uh, you know, I think one of the differences that we’re seeing now is that there’s Maura agreement on the underlying problem, not total agreement. Let’s be clear, there’s not total agreement on the other line problem. But, you know, even if you look at public opinion from even just a few years ago, uh, to today, you know the share of Americans white, black, Hispanic, otherwise, who say that you know, basically, police officers discriminate against, you know, black people are treat black people differently than white people has gone up significantly now. Often, that can just be the result of the shock. Right. So right now you’re seeing it on the news every day. People are aware of it. Um, but the thing is, is that we’ve had incidents like this before. We’ve had police, you know, kill African Americans in their custody before on video before we’ve had protests in response to that before. The difference now is that, uh, you know, having seen seems like multiple of these incidents over a number of the last five or 10 years with, you know, the prevalence of cell phone videos. But then also, I think how sustained these protests have been. I mean, there’s a question with a certain Is this gonna go on for one day? There’s gonna be this weekend. Is it going to peter out? But it just keeps going, requiring some kind of response. And it seems like Americans as a whole are coming around to the fact that you know, African Americans are not being treated fairly by police officers. And that’s something that’s different, because ultimately people did not agree with that. What is on the whole, especially white Americans, for example, when Eric Garner was killed in much the same way is George Floyd?

[0:25:22 Speaker 0] Yeah, I mean, I think it’s an interesting question. Whether thistles going to sustain or not, and and we, you know, we’ve seen this a lot in the last few years is politics have become both polarized and volatile, and the and the parties it’s assorted. And this feel this does feel like a different moment in terms of, you know, that the push for change seems to be not just put it this way. A lot of a lot of these conversations in the last few years and I would have to say guns is the comparison I would make in gun policy. There seems to be a very you know, there’s a sustained attention at the national level. You know, things happen sporadically in different parts of the country, but there’s just not the kind of follow through. I mean, there’s not been major gun legislation, you know, we’ve just not seen a lot of things happen that people thought might happen over the last decade after a series of mass shootings. It feels like this is seeping down into politics throughout the country, I think in large part because of, as you say, because of race and everywhere you look there, this is this is conversation is happening and it’s happening not just in the national media, but at the local level and at the state level. And it’s it’s it seems like the, You know, the propagation of the discussion has happened in a way that we haven’t seen with another political issue in a while. I mean, and it’s taking a bunch of different forms, and that’s why it is about both. You know, it’s both the intersection of of race and policing is really I mean, you know, as we recorded this podcast this morning, I was watching a AH commissioners court meeting in Caldwell County here outside of outside of Austin, over Confederate monuments. And it was a It’s an extensive, heartfelt discussion that it’s hard for me to watch that in, you know, basically rural Caldwell County and think that this was just something that’s gonna come up in the commissioner’s court. And remember, Commissioners Court is sort of like the the analogous thing. It’s not a court. Let’s not a court of law. It’s a governing body for the county. Um, you know, this is not going to go away. This is not just somebody showing up for a council meeting, speaking their piece about a pet cause. And then it’s going to go away. You know, there’s heat there is accepted and they had and they got the attention of the court, you know, and we’re seeing that all over the place. I mean, there’s already, you know, there’s already proposals in Austin. You know about this, as we mentioned before at the national level, even though they don’t have much impact at the local level. Congressional Democrats And probably as in response, Senate Republicans, I admit Romney, will party be involved in this bill, are going to call for shifts in federal policy that will can only affect directly federal law enforcement practices but are calling for some of the similar things. And in a way, it’s It’s a way of signaling of modeling behavior, I think, and sending signals to the local level. So I it does feel like there is something more sustained going on how fast that can happen. You know how much finally comes out of it. I think, as we’ve been saying remains to be seen,

[0:28:48 Speaker 1] Yeah, I mean, I think you know the thing that really strikes at all this that is so you know, I mean, just despite the heartbreaking nature of everything that we’re talking about here and the complexity of ill I mean, in the present moment, I think the thing that’s just so amazing about this is just the role that, uh, that media has played all so I don’t necessarily mean, you know, the mainstream media. I just mean the idea of media people taking videos, people showing what it’s like to produce That makes a difference. I mean, I think ultimately, you know, this conversation was very different. Five years ago, there were videos of police off police officers, you know, killing unarmed black men that we’ve we’ve seen. We’ve seen these videos before, and they’re heartbreaking and tragic. But the response, you know, even again four years ago was Hey, that’s one bad apple. The rest of you know, police air. Good. And we can’t judge all police by this one bad apple. The problem then becomes well, you know first. Well, how many bad apples are you willing to accept? But, you know, I think what you’ve seen in the last few weeks, as you’ve seen, you know, numerous videos emerge in a in a similar span of time, showing either police officers or just armed white civilians in some case, uh, killing African American men. But then, additionally, when people have pro tested, this basically police violence and it’s being met by in some cases not all cases, but in a lot of cases, by unrestrained police violence that is in videotaped by people. It becomes really, really difficult for anyone, no matter what their predispositions, no matter how they’re oriented towards police, to say this is okay and that’s kind of where we are now. But again, follow through is a lot harder and, you know, again, a political system both in Texas and elsewhere. That’s not necessarily made to move quickly and certainly isn’t made. Teoh, you know, move in extreme directions quickly.

[0:30:37 Speaker 0] Yeah, and I think is we wind down. I mean for me either. So there’s there’s an interesting combination of, you know, two elements that we think of in politics all the time. You know that are, you know, kind of ah, intention and also just very different when it comes to people that don’t normally pay attention to politics all of a sudden, paying attention to politics. You know, on one hand, I just think there’s no way right now that you can ignore the importance of sustained protest in this. And, you know, I think you know, you raise a really important point that part of the thing about that protest is not only it’s a duration. I mean, we’ve had two weeks and counting of protests, you know, with more violent in a much more kind of chaotic feel in the earlier period. Now, settling Maurin toe a more peaceful, organized, sustained, um, kind of, you know, with the big marches that are still continuing in the system. But with the overlay of all of the meat, all of the micro level media and personally produced media, they’re really kind of adding, Ah, layer to this that I think is both giving us and giving the public a different view of it, but also sustaining it in some ways, I think, And on the other hand, you’ve got you know, the very mundane institutional dynamic going on in which, you know, this is going to be a, you know, sustained Siris of teachable moments, not just in social protests, but in decentralized institutional response. And what I mean by that is you know, we are going to see federalism in the United States in the way that federalism shapes, policy and politics in the United States really play out here for the next. You know, months, if not years on this issues as the different levels of the political system, the national you know, the national government, state governments and then all of these thousands of local governments try to respond to this without any institutional riel. Anybody institutionally in the driver’s seat, there are people that can be thought leaders. There are people that can model behavior there, people that can try to drive the discussion. But no one’s going to be in charge of this, and no one’s gonna have the final say because of of the federal arrangements in the country. So I think with that, we’re going to try to keep this in the window. Thanks, Josh, thanks to our sound crew and everybody have a safe and healthy week, and we’ll be back next week with another edition of second reading. Second Reading Podcast is a production of Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.