Mar 19th, 2024 – The nexus of Texas’ fight with the federal government over the border & Texas nationalism

[00:00:00] Intro: 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

[00:00:33] Jim: And welcome back to the second reading podcast i’m jim henson director of the texas politics project at the university of texas at austin happy to be joined today by josh blank research director of said texas politics project happy late morning happy late morning

[00:00:48] Josh: you know weather’s changing i was gonna say you know i was thinking for small town i was like it’s a beautiful day yeah a little crisp but very nice i like it though it’s in the right place yeah

[00:00:56] Jim: we’ll be yearning for days like this before too much longer very soon So, you know, we thought today, uh, we would look at the intersection of two stories with a Texas Nexus that are about the intersection of state and federal authority.

These are stories that seem like they just won’t go away. Not to foreshadow one, I think for pretty good reasons, right? Another maybe for L reasons, but less good reasons perhaps. But we’ll get to that and yeah. , these two stories are, I, I don’t know if you’re laughing, is that was restrained or, ’cause I couldn’t because I jumped the gun.

No, I’m just

[00:01:32] Josh: trying to ponder . I don’t know. Okay.

[00:01:35] Jim: So you know these two stories are the, you know, are, are linked the, the fight over uh, Texas Senate Bill four. Uh, from the special session, um, which was passed into the law, into law by the legislature last year. Uh, and also the uptick in attention to Texas nationalism, separatism, secession, choose your, your moniker, independence, uh, independence in, in recent months.

Um, and we can start with the news hook here. So late yesterday afternoon, um, Seemingly a couple of minutes late, but I don’t know, um, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, uh, issued an order that extended a previous order that blocked Texas from enforcing SB 4, the, the border security slash immigration enforcement bill.

We’ll talk about that in a minute. Unlike his last order, this order had no expiration date. Um, Uh, and so it’s now in place pending further action, uh, by Alito or by the court per the order. Now, some background, SB4 passed during, uh, the fourth special session, created two state crimes for migrants who cross into Texas illegally, um, illegal entry from a foreign country, a class B misdemeanor with a jail term of up to six months and a 2, 000 fine.

fine and illegal reentry into the state from a foreign country. Also a class a misdemeanor with up to one year in jail and a 4, 000 fine for repeat offenders. Now, the penalty for both could escalate to felonies for migrants who had previously been convicted of certain crimes, including a felony or two misdemeanor drug convictions.

Um, the law also allowed state judges to issue deportation orders. And that should be kind of underlined. for migrants if they agree to return to the foreign nation from which they entered texas which could hard to imagine is not going to be mexico in this case now the bill was originally scheduled to take a effect on march 5th but its implementation was temporarily blocked by a u.

s district court judge um david ezra then on february 29th ezra ruled that the law was likely unconstitutional for reasons that For a lot of people were pretty obvious. That is that the federal government has jurisdiction over immigration matters. Uh, very quickly Texas appealed. The fifth U. S. court of appeals gave Texas permission to enforce SB 4 while it considered a review of the lower court ruling.

This of course was also appealed in very short

[00:04:14] Josh: order. Well, and also notably when they did that, they put a stay on their own Ruling of, I think it was 14 days, which basically said, okay, in 14 days, this law, the enforcement of this law can go back into effect while the litigation takes place. Now, what that did was, I mean, in a lot of ways, it put pressure on the Supreme

[00:04:29] Jim: Court, right?

And so Texas appealed and then, so then that happened. Then the Biden administration and civil rights groups asked the Supreme Court to halt enforcement of the law until its constitutionality could be determined. This led to this, you know, this, now this order, the series of orders from Alito, who was the judge for this region, um, including this Monday order that, that paused the law again.

And as I said a minute ago, this time indefinitely. So. What about the politics of all this? And of course the public opinion context, cause that’s what we do. Um, you know, politically, I think it’s safe to say, and that the bill was really the centerpiece of the governor’s border security agenda when the legislature was in session.

You know, I mean, there was also, you know, the, The increased money that they passed during the regular for wall construction to further fuel to further fund Operation Lone Star, but you know, I think the thing to notice about the kind of politics of this right? Is that and this is you know, very evident in the legislative debate about it This was destined to be challenged on constitutional grounds.

And so here we are Yeah,

[00:05:38] Josh: you know I was thinking you just going back a bit when you said about the centerpiece and it’s interesting like I you know I don’t I don’t disagree Gree, although I think, you know, the centerpiece in a lot of ways to my mind was the continuation of Operation Lone Star through the beefing up of state border security.

In some ways, this was kind of necessary, like it was a necessary. I mean, I think in a lot of ways, a necessary under piece of it, which is to say, if we start expending tons and tons of state resources on border security Enforcement, which expands beyond the border into sort of immigration enforcement.

Well, ultimately you need to provide those officers with some kind of like law enforcement power. Well, yeah, well, yeah, well, yeah, it’s a fancier way to put it.

[00:06:16] Jim: Well, well, and, and like, you know, and, and, and not, and not make this a matter of, you know, us cooperating with the federal government and still let them, them, you know, retaining sole

[00:06:26] Josh: authority.

Yeah. And there’s a little piece of backstory to the, the, the, the, the trajectory of this, which was, remember the state was recently. trying to convict basically migrants on trespassing charges on private property, right? So a lot of the, a lot of the, you know, so the way that, you know, Operation Lone Star turned into enforcement outside, you know, beyond the Texas Mexico border was to say, if we catch, you know, basically migrants on someone’s property, we’re going to charge them with trespassing.

Now, ultimately, that’s not a great fit, But what they did was they made sort of a broader, you know, law against trespassing, but now in the state legally entering from Mexico, it becomes now you’re trespassing in the sort of broader sense, which is why it’s also a misdemeanor, all these things. But this basically gave them the teeth actually enforce, you know, I think it’s always to really make all the money they’re spending on like security and enforcement is like actual give someone, as you said, an enforcement

[00:07:14] Jim: mechanism.

Yeah, well, and not to be, you know, too abstract about it, but it also enabled them to do this. Not as agents of the federal government, but but with the imprimatur of state authority. And I think, you know, that’s something we can pick up on later. But I do think that that was, uh, you know, that was at work here.

Well, yeah,

[00:07:31] Josh: and I think that was at work. I mean, what you can see, especially in in the district judges ruling against Texas originally, you know, one of the arguments he took on You know, head on was the state’s argument that it was being invaded and therefore that it had special additional powers, which the district judge said, essentially, you’ve done nothing, you know, to meet any sort of threshold or burden of proof that that’s actually what’s going on here.

And I don’t even know where we would start. That was

[00:07:54] Jim: an interesting argument. It’s a good point to raise because, you know, there was this sense of wanting to assume state authority, but not not completely abandoned the fact that. You know, within the scheme of federalism in the constitution, there was some, however, thin rationale and authorization for this.

Right. And that, of course, dovetailed as we go to the politics of this with the critique of the Biden administration and the argument that, you know, that that has become the talking point nationally and at the state level, that the Biden administration is abdicated responsibility is, you know, has open, you know, has established open borders, etc.

[00:08:33] Josh: Right. And so ultimately, you know, when the. Sort of when this law was being considered and this argument was, you know, the arguments about whether, you know, sort of. About, you know, I was gonna say whether it was constitutional or not, but rather, you know, how unconstitutional it might be, right? I mean, a lot of ways this feels pretty familiar.

I mean, we see this, we’ve seen this in a lot of different policy domains. Sometimes, you know, I think historically, though not recently, the legislature has been reticent to go down the road of something that’s going to solely lead to expensive legal challenges, but they become a lot more comfortable with it over time.

You know, we’d say around abortion, certainly, right, is one you see something voting is another. And here’s another space where, you know, again, it’s almost. It’s almost surprising it’s taken this long. Well, this isn’t the first instance of this, where, you know, the politics of this play out pretty well. You have a policy that’s overwhelmingly popular among especially Republican voters.

We asked in February of this year, do you support or oppose the state of Texas making it a state crime for an undocumented immigrant to be in Texas in most circumstances? This is our, you know, sort of abstraction, but simplification of what the law would essentially do. Overall, 60 percent of Texas voters supported this, 33 percent opposed.

88 percent of Republicans supported this 68 percent strongly, so two thirds strongly supported making a straight basically a state crime, uh, basically illegal border crossing, um, you know, and so on the one hand, you know, the law in and of itself slam dunk, right? I mean, you know, 60 percent support, you know, uh, Almost 90 percent of Republicans, a third of Democrats said they supported this.

Hispanics were split 45 47, which is actually an interesting result in and of itself. Um, but, you know, as we’ve talked about before here, the dynamics are, okay, so this law gets passed when local judge blocks, you know, knocks it down because of its sort of clear constitutional problems. Fifth Circuit was a bit of a toss up as to what they were going to do.

They took a very political route, I think, and just said, no, this is fine, but the Supreme Court has to weigh in. They have 14 days. Supreme Court that said, well, probably not fine, or at the very least, we’re going to put this on hold until everything plays out, which is sort of the more regular way to do this.

But in the meantime, what is the Biden administration do? What are Democrats doing? They’re arguing against state enforcement of. You know, basically immigration laws state enforcement or or state efforts. Let’s say to deal with the migrant crisis However, you want to frame it You’re putting this conflict up and again in a way that I think you know republicans here are very comfortable with well To

[00:10:54] Jim: telescope out while at the same time with the other hand, you know trying to get congress to act and and ceding ground in congress You know on on, you know, at least on the narrow level of in the in the narrow scope of Migrants that are here seeking asylum.

And even as we speak now, there is, there’s appears to be a deal made in Congress with increased enforcement, uh, money for DHS. Yeah. And apparently that, that, that deal was cut last night. Um, you know, and I, you know, and so I think it does make sense that. You know, all of this, you know, falls, you know, under the broader umbrella that has really been stimulated by, by Operation Lone Star as you’re, as you’re sort of laying out, you know, and it, and it kind of, you know, I mean, it’s colliding with, you know, today, widely accepted understandings of the division of, of authority on the border.

But it’s now tapping into, you know, some of these other, you know, some of these other elements and it’s gotten a lot of attention. I mean, when we ask people, you know, I mean, some of the, you know, when we ask these batteries on the, on the survey, you know, we go round and round about these batteries behind the scene about, you know, the science.

How much have you heard? How much have you heard in the news about different stories? You know, I think it’s hard for us to not pre, I mean, and look, we do sometimes we presuppose where we’re going to get variants. Yeah, sure. Right. Yeah. And so some things, you know, we, you know, we include, and a lot of that is the comparison between what, you know, how much More people are paying attention to national politics than to state politics

[00:12:37] Josh: or sometimes how much more?

Partisans of you know, Republicans or should our Democrats or vice

[00:12:42] Jim: versa, but in this I mean when we looked at you know When we asked in our February poll about how much people had heard about this most everybody had

[00:12:50] Josh: heard about it Yeah, and to be clear when we say this what we’re not talking about migration of the southern border, which again is also very very very Specifically, we asked how much they had heard about conflicts between Texas and the federal government over immigration enforcement at the southern border.

And I will say this, you know, I mean, we’ve been doing this for a while now. And, you know, if we were talking about, you know, a similar situation, let’s say, you know, 10 years ago, even, I honestly think the salience would be a lot lower. You know, I think I think we could probably, you know, we could look around some data, maybe see if we could pinpoint that.

I mean, we definitely noticed in the last poll a huge uptick in attention to the border, a huge uptick in democratic concerns around border issues. And I think a set of attitudes that were a little bit more varied than maybe people would have expected just with some sloppy thinking is how I’m going to put it these days.

Um, but at the same time, you know, I think it was easy in some ways for a lot of People, especially a lot of Democrats and even just sort of, you know, I think even national kind of coverage of it to sort of dismiss a lot of this dismiss sort of, you know, like, oh, you know, the governor’s having an event in, you know, in Brownsville and Bracketville and McAllen Eagle Pass, right?

Well, you know, and that’s sort of, and it’s like, where is that being telecast to? Well, it’s being telecast to Midland and Plano and like in these sorts of places and that politics work, but it felt very localized and targeted. It’s kind of out of the jar now, right? I mean, now it’s sort of, it’s really permeating.

I think it’s permeating both parties. It’s not simply, you know, I think, and I don’t want to say simply, but I mean, it’s not, let me say, it’s not primarily a campaign message at the state level. Yeah. It’s not primarily for political. That’s thank you. It’s not primarily for political leverage at the state level anymore.

It is part of this much, much broader discussion. And as it’s become part of a much broader discussion itself has invited in a A lot more, I think, you know, players and a lot more perspectives and a lot more just, you know, noise, right,

[00:14:36] Jim: you know, you know, I don’t know if you could, you know, in my view that that that comes from, you know, that’s got multiple sources that make it tricky to kind of explain.

I mean, not tricky, but tricky to be comprehensive and explaining, you know, because I think we find ourselves on here and in writing and in talking to people about it. You always have to say, look, there is a measurable goal. increase in the scale of the problem. Right. Absolutely. Right. And so that’s, you know, part of it, but I mean, there is also, you know, the degree to which, you know, to which border security and immigration, and as we always, you know, then we, and identity related issues, shall we say, um, are all feeding into this.

And it’s, it’s interesting. I mean, cause like it really, in some ways it underlines the position of a lot of. Texas media figures and, you know, I don’t really want to call it the intelligentsia because that’s not what I’m, it’s not what I’m sort of implying here. But, you know, the idea that, you know, if it’s a problem in Texas, eventually, you know, it, the rest of the world will notice because Texas is such a leader.

Right. But in this case, there has been an interesting kind of, you know, circularity to the fact that, you know, This is a nationalization of this issue. And there’s an interesting kind of feedback loop that’s going back and forth between Texas and national politics now over the last, you know, you know, I really, I mean, I, I, it’s hard not to identify, you know, say that, you know, Donald Trump has played a big role in this, right.

In terms of his elevation of the issue. And now that there is actually an objective. You know, problem that is, you know, very hard for anybody to ignore or downplay or say that this is being exaggerated. Doesn’t mean that everybody that ever saying something about it is telling the truth. But the flow is, is bigger.

And so we’re seeing this kind of manifestation of this. Yeah. And it’s, and it’s just, you know, I mean, it’s like the, the, you know, the, it’s, it’s the story. And this is.

But yeah, the story’s really ripened politically in a way that’s very interesting if you follow it over

[00:16:56] Josh: time. Right, and I think, you know, the way, just the thing, the one thing I would add, a piece I would add to that is to say, you know, you talk about sort of this feedback loop that used to be very, you know, contained in some ways within the city.

I mean, yes, there’s sort of lobbying bombs of the federal government of Democrats are in office and that kind of thing, but it was still, you know, primarily the goal of serving kind of state level politics. And in some ways has, I mean, there’s sort of a loss of control over that at this point, right?

Because once you, because once the national environment, you know, so once it becomes sort of a nationalized issue and you’ve got, you know, mayors from cities. cities far away responding to it. And you’ve got the president making a mess about it. You’ve got the former president, you’ve got former president talking about it.

You’ve got, you know, a democ, you know, basically the democratic nominee for us said it, you know, admonishing his own party’s president about all of them. Ultimately you’re talking to something very different. And the reason I think it matters to us again, we say we’re, we’re, we’re most comfortable in the realm of public opinion.

We talk about this a lot. It’s like, what does this do? at the elite level when we think about elite level communications and the kind of messages voters are receiving. Now, Republicans are receiving, you know, many of the same messages. It’s just been, you know, ramped up and the attention has been expanded even further.

So there are more players getting involved in the space, which we’ll get to among Democrats. You know, a lot of them are kind of coming to the issue now and they are looking for it. For leadership, right? They are trying to figure out, okay, what is the, you know, what is the position that’s sort of, as I’ll put it as a quote, my quote fingers, a good Democrat.

What is a good Democrat look like on these issues? And that’s actually being, you know, I think what’s interesting is having a beer conversation with a friend of mine happens is a, I can say Republican, clearly Republican. We’re talking about this issue. And I was sort of saying, you know, a lot of, you know, the way that people think about Democrats on this is sort of due to, I think, in a lot of ways, just lazy thinking.

Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I liken it to, we wrote a piece years ago about Hispanic attitudes and Texas towards immigration. And part of it was a lot of people, you know, I think 10 years ago used to sort of kind of blithely say, well, clearly, you know, most Hispanics are for just kind of open borders and it’s like, whoa, you know, and that’s just not right.

Okay. And we can go into that, but not today. Okay. Well, same thing. I think there’s a lot of sloppy thinking going around that sort of has this idea that there’s this sort of democratic position on this. It’s like, oh, they’re, you know. Totally humanitarian driven open borders, whatever. And most of that is honestly, Republicans talking about what they think Democrats think in the absence of Democrats actually spending any time talking about this issue or really thinking about it.

And that’s changing now. And that’s really has a

[00:19:15] Jim: big impact. I think what I would add to that is, you know, the Democrats that are talking about it. Oh, yeah. Tend to be more from the progressive wing of the party, which do. are more likely to fit your, you know, sort of thumbnail characterization of all Democrats.

And so the democratic position has been, you know, very much shaped by the progressive wing that focuses

[00:19:37] Josh: on the issue. And that’s perfect because again, those, those progressives are still the elites we’re talking about. Yeah. But the point is, is that in some ways, you know, they are They do represent sort of the fringe of the party, just as Republicans on the fringe of their party don’t necessarily speak for all Republicans on every issue.

I think the same is probably true for these Democrats. The only issue is there’s no counterweight here. I mean, for Republicans, what the people on the fringe say about immigration and what people say in quote, let’s say, the middle, wherever that is, it’s not terribly different.

[00:20:03] Jim: Yeah, you know, I think it’s, you know, It’d be worth going back and looking at the issue positions on this among Democrats over time, because I’m not, you know, because I, you know, as I’m thinking about this, I mean, I think it’s in attention to the issue.

Well, I, well, this is the thing I

[00:20:17] Josh: want within the party, but this is, this is the nuance I think that’s so important here. And this way of going back where we actually started on this was just with, with salience, right. And this is one of those things that I think is really important in studying public opinion.

You know, we talk about all the time. I was talking about yesterday to a college class, right. You know, it’s very easy to misinterpret public opinion when you assume that everybody has an opinion on every question. And the reality is, and I say this and I say it somewhat hyperbolically, but it’s, I’m, I’ll stick by it.

Most people don’t think about most things because they think about the few things they care about, right? And to the extent that, you know, you say, you go and you ask Democrats, you know, what they think about an issue or where they stand on a policy proposition on an issue that’s not high on their list.

And if anything, they may not have thought much about because it’s, you know, it’s not even in competition with the other issues that Democrats tend to care about. You might end up, you know, seeing again. I think, you know, a set of responses. It does point towards a more, you know, let’s say liberal position towards the border.

But then you have to ask yourself, is this based on like thought? Is this based on the messages are getting from elites? Is this based on, or is this based on sort of a general sense of, well, if I’m a Democrat, I guess I’m for this.

[00:21:21] Jim: Anyway, what’s going on with abortion?

[00:21:23] Josh: Right. And those are different things.

Right. And I think right now we’re actually in this really interesting space because Democrats are paying more attention. Democrats are paying How to both respond to that attention, but also lead in a political environment. Well,

[00:21:38] Jim: they’re not getting, you know, to the extent that you’re a Democrat going, Oh, what should I, you know, and we should make a, people don’t do this necessarily consciously.

But the mechanism is, you know, you look around and see what other like minded people and like minded what you think of as like minded elites are saying. And the elite messaging has been for Democrats, a combination of divided and a moving

[00:22:00] Josh: target. I’ll add one thing, you know, when you said, you know, the sort of the most.

Notable voices are, are the most, uh, I actually said that I didn’t think you were going to say the most notable voices are the most regressive, I’d say, or they’re the most conservative. It’s people like Henry Cuellar and people who are sort of completely almost, almost anachronistic views within the Democratic Party.

And so, but neither of those are actually like representative of like, well, I

[00:22:21] Jim: inquire is an interesting position, you know, an interesting case, like as we speak, because he’s gone from being. You know, kind of the dissident voice to somebody that, you know, is now getting a lot of attention as somebody who was maybe ahead of the game on this, that is now being listened to by the president and by, and is more active in Congress.

Now, part of that is just, you know, the distortion of media coverage that, you know, people, you know, I mean, I mean, queer is a good

[00:22:47] Josh: story. No, I know. I’m thinking, no, where is always a good story. So one way or the other, one way or the other, but no, but that’s a good point. I mean, I just, I think the only thing I’m kind of furrowing my brow at is the idea that like he was ahead of the game.

It’s more

[00:22:59] Jim: like, you know, I’m not saying he was, but that’s how it’s now being

[00:23:01] Josh: portrayed. Well, now that’s what I would disagree with, but yes.

[00:23:03] Jim: You know, he was a voice in the wilderness.

[00:23:06] Josh: And now, but you know, but why I would say is just to reinforce the point, like I think he was portrayed as a voice in a wilderness because there was a belief that the, you know, that the progressive humanitarian sort of open border version of Democrat was actually closer to the modal Democrat.

And as it’s becoming more of an issue for Democrats, at least in Texas, we can say we don’t talk about nationally. It’s looking like way are probably closer to the modal Democrat, maybe on some of this stuff. Then sort of this, whether real or unreal, this sort of

[00:23:35] Jim: there’s a lot of different things moving at once here, right?

Yeah, I mean, I want

[00:23:39] Josh: earlier explanation, right? But then this idealized or, you know, version of some progressive Democrat and what what they want on the border.

[00:23:46] Jim: And if you look, you know, I mean, more broadly speaking, I mean, I was just looking at this data yesterday for, I think, Yeah. something a student was working on.

But there’s still a much higher share of people in the democratic party that identify as moderate than in the Republican Party. Now that number has gone down. That share has gone down beginning in about 2016, but it’s still, it’s still the case.

[00:24:09] Josh: Um, Well, and again, but that also raises a difficult question of what does it mean to be a liberal on immigration?

Right.

[00:24:15] Jim: Well, and the, and this was just general party ID rights or ideological identification crossed with party ID. So, you know, one of the other fallouts of this is that. you know, then, or another, you know, aspect of this is the deployment of military resources that has been going on for the last three years.

And by the way, this is the three year birthday of Operation Lone Star. So happy birthday, Operation Lone Star, you know, has been very popular with Greg Abbott’s base. But also now is, you know, gaining a lot more traction among Democrats. Yeah.

And

[00:24:52] Josh: that same February polling, two thirds of voters said they, uh, they approved of the deployment and sort of additional expenditures of military and police resources by the state to deal with border security.

90 percent of Republicans expressed support for this 75 percent strong support among independents, it was 59%. And again, notably given this discussion among Democrats, 44 percent supported the deployment, 48 percent opposed the deployment. And so, you know, there you go. I mean, yeah, I mean, it’s not much more to say than what that’s a good political issue, right?

[00:25:26] Jim: Um, yeah. And then, you know, and then we see, you know, and, and, and then the issue, you know, the interesting thing by way of transition to the, to our next point, but I mean, I think, you know, we sort of, you know, it’s not without limit. I mean, I think, and we’ve said in the podcast several times, I mean, I think part of what we’ve seen with governor Abbott with, you know, particular, you know, in very, you know, much more public and, and much more extreme terms since the beginning of Operation Lone Star is probing where the limits are.

Yeah. Right. And so, you know, there, there is, we found a little bit of a limit. So in the last poll, we also asked about, um, you know, the, the conflict between state forces and the Border Patrol.

[00:26:03] Josh: Right. So we asked specifically, you know, do you support or oppose the state of Texas preventing U. S. Border Patrol agents from accessing parts of the Texas Mexico border, which has been going on, um, for I think most notably in eagle pass.

Well, now this, you know, again, this is a little bit different. If you were, if you’re thinking the last couple of results, we saw about two thirds support here. 41 percent said they supported this. 44 percent said they were opposed among Democrats. It was 25 percent support, which still notable. It’s still one in four.

It’s a lot. 62 percent opposed for Republicans. It was 59 support, 28 percent opposed. And so now look, This is a tough question and we should just say right, right at the beginning, you know, I mean, just as a, as a, as a quick, there’s a lot going on here as a quick. So as a quick, you know, pollster aside addition to what we’ve already said, you know, asking people about their support or opposition to preventing someone from doing anything, you know, support for something negative is always a little bit tricky and pulling.

But I’d also say this is another one of those questions where you got to sort of ask yourself, you know, how, how, like, How well formed is this attitude or opinion, you know, right? What are people really responding to? And I think this is a difficult question because I think, you know, there’s probably, there’s likely the possibility that they might be responding to this in sort of different ways, not in a way that I think, you know, makes interpretation difficult.

But if you think about, you know, again, if I don’t really have a strong feeling about this question in particular, what am I reacting to? Well, you know, maybe if I’m Republican, a Republican respond, maybe I’m, I’m reacting to. This sort of state federal kind of idea, this idea that the federal government is, you know, not doing its job.

And I also have to make the association between U. S. Border Patrol and that federal government, which is a little bit tricky. You know, I think if you’re a Democrat or an Independent, you know, if you’ve thought about this a lot, you’ve thought about it a lot. But if not, you know, you might also just be thinking, wait, aren’t they supposed to cooperate?

You know, aren’t, you know, they really, you know, is that, is that how this is supposed to work? But I also don’t think this is something that people have really been faced with very much. I mean, the idea of, you know, a state military force, you know, a police force, essentially prohibiting a federal You know, law enforcement agency from doing its job is, you know, I don’t want to say it’s not uncharted, but it’s certainly not.

It’s certainly

[00:28:09] Jim: unusual, you know, it’s an example of, you know, I was talking about a few moments ago is like testing the boundaries here, you know, from the, you know, from a policy perspective in terms of what the governor and what Texas state government is doing, you know, I mean, it, you know, you know, I wouldn’t, you know, bet my future on, you know, the replication, you know, I mean, we’ll have to, you know, we can test it.

Yeah. Right. Um, but I, you know, I, I can’t help but think that, and I, and I agree with you, like the, the, the pool of knowledge here is probably a little shallower. Yeah. And there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of gray areas in here that, you know, I think you laid out well, I don’t need to repeat that said, you know, I It makes a lot of sense to me, you know, that this, that the, that the, that the results here would be lower than in the other areas, even with, you know, possible measurement, you know, you know, you know, possible, you know, problems with the measurement and the phrasing of the question, et cetera.

When I look at these numbers, they make sense.

[00:29:13] Josh: Yeah. I mean, look, the other thing I’d say is, is, You know, I think the thing that makes this question sort of hard to square in some ways is it’s me. At least I don’t know if this is just is just, uh, you know, I would, I would have thought before asking it. And I think this may be part of the response structure, but that the U.

S. U. S. Border Patrol would still have a positive affect among Republicans more so than among Democrats. I think that’s part of also what might make this kind of difficult when you think about it, right? I mean, the U. S. Border Patrol has been kind of, you know, the Border Patrol Union in particular has been kind of active in recent politics, especially the national level, you know, but to some degree, you know, I may think even more so at the state level, there is something kind of weird about the sort of, you know, Um, you know, unflinching support for sort of police and police agents, unflinching support for border security and the net and the necessity of border security and then this idea of limiting, you know, the actual border patrols from engaging in the activity.

And I think, you know, that’s So that I agree with you, the responses make sense, but to flip it around, you’d say, and yet 59 percent said this was good, right? That they supported this,

[00:30:24] Jim: but I mean, you know, 59 percent compared to Republicans, to be clear, you know, compared to the 90%. Mm hmm who agree with the deployment?

So I mean that’s you know, I mean how you explain that gap? I think

[00:30:36] Josh: I think you’re right I mean it is about there are there are boundaries and we’ve talked about this before too just in terms of immigration enforcement there tends to be almost an a floor for sort of support among republicans towards immigration enforcement and Until about the time you start talking about like separating children from their parents and things like that The other

[00:30:52] Jim: example I was kind of

[00:30:53] Josh: thinking of and there are boundaries, right?

They’re pretty far out there, but they exist

[00:30:56] Jim: Yeah, and it may be even more conventional than you know You We’re thinking here in the sense of, you know, there’s some people who’s like, look, I may think the federal government’s doing a bad job, but do we, should we really like not cooperate? Yeah. You know, and, and, you know, the, you know, the 59 cent, uh, you know, 59 percent of Republicans that agree.

I mean, the interesting thing here is that in most of these cases, when we look at Republicans, independents, and Democrats. On most of these border issues, independents are usually in, in the middle, but more like we’re closer to Republicans than the Democrats. Yeah, and this is the one question where the independents are actually closer to Democrats than Republicans, but that also, I mean, I think that underlines I in a, in a way.

the two different points that are kind of in tension here. One, that there may be some shallow knowledge here, which we can always kind of assume with independence, but also that the gut level response is, well, that seems like a little much.

[00:31:57] Josh: Well, you know, the way that like, I mean, almost, I mean, the way that I’d almost like to ask this question, but it has another set of problems would be almost in the normative frame, which is basically to say, you know, should Texas and the federal government be cooperating?

on immigration enforcement. Now, the problem with that, of course, is that it is a normative statement, and it does, I think, describe the state of the world in which most people expect things to already be operating, which is, of course, Texas and the federal government, you know, work together on immigration enforcement.

How could they not? And if you were to do that, I mean, it’s sort of like, I don’t think we would get like the mirror reverse of these numbers. I don’t either.

[00:32:29] Jim: Yeah. I mean, and we, you know, as I recall, we considered that. We did

[00:32:32] Josh: consider that. We did consider that, but the problem is, is that in setting that up, you know, in some ways what you’re doing, you are forcing people to reject the normative statement, right?

Whereas, and that’s where you end up with this sort of, you know, support preventing, right? Just to explain a little bit, you know, but you’re right. But the shallow knowledge, I think, is the point, you know, to the extent that, you know, I mean, this is a good way to You know, it’s like a little bit more of a polling podcast this time.

But one of the ways to sort of think about whether knowledge is shallow or not is to think about the impact of question wording. Right, right. If an attitude is really deeply held, is really reinforced by, you know, um, a number of attitudes that push in the same direction or reinforce each other, then changes in question wording shouldn’t really have a huge impact on the distribution as much

[00:33:14] Jim: as we normally

[00:33:15] Josh: expect them to.

Yeah, which is not a ton anyway. But. But then if we go and say, well, what about an issue that you’ve never thought about? And now this is the question. Well, then the question is going to have a big impact potentially on the way that people, you know, generate an answer.

[00:33:27] Jim: I mean, you know, I guess the way I think about that is that, you know, if you’re kind of policy knowledge of this or is shallow or, you know, the, the question prevents you presents you with something that’s, as you were kind of saying earlier, a novel issued a novel cognitive object.

Right. Right. Right. Right. You know, what fills in the gap, right?

[00:33:49] Josh: Yeah. Right.

[00:33:50] Jim: And what seems to me is like, there’s something filling in the gap here that makes independents and Democrats more like each other. And it probably is this notion of cooperation where Republicans, you know, the issues more salient to Republicans, their attitudes are more intense in all the ways we’ve been talking about.

And they’re probably more prime to interpret. Well, there’s conflict on the

[00:34:10] Josh: side of the state. Well, and they’re not just being told repeatedly that Joe Biden’s doing a bad job on the border. They’re being told that he’s purposefully doing a bad job right on the border to let people in. Basically, you know, on purpose.

They’re cutting the barbed wire, they’re suing the state, you know? Right. And so if that’s how you feel, well that, you know, you’d probably come to a different conclusion about

[00:34:29] Jim: cooperation and you used a couple of steps there to the great replacement theory. So there are a lot of big implications here, you know, as we kind of look at these various pieces for understandings of the Constitution, politics of the Supreme Court, Abbott’s position in Texas, um, you know, looking more close, you know, thinking more narrowly about The Alito order yesterday, you know, the way that this issue is now kept alive in a lot of ways, or the way that it’s kept alive, no matter what they had ruled, it’s going to be kept alive, I think, for a while, but, but it also, you know, has raised another issue that we’ll close with today, just, you know, with a few thoughts that has been the subject of a, you know, a somewhat strange resurgence in in recent months.

Although, you know, I did some Google Analytics searches. I forgot to put in the notes for it. I was going to share where you can, it’s interesting to go back and look at the spikes in this, but, and this is on the notion of, of Texas seceding from the United States and the advocacy of the, you know, quote unquote, Texas nationalist groups in Texas.

And, you know, we’ve glanced off this once or twice briefly in the podcast, and we’ve been talking a bit, a bit about it offline. You know, but there has been a real spike in attention to this in in recent months, and you and I, I think, you know, one of the I was kind of gut checking our experience when I ran and did this Google at the Google Trends thing, and, you know, we’re not making it up.

Okay, good. Right? I mean, you can see this, you know, this spike over the last few months. Now, part of it was, you know, dates back to the effort by some forces within the Republican Party to get a texit item on the primary ballot, which, interestingly enough, didn’t happen. Yeah, I mean, same people, but right, same people.

Um, you know, and so I guess, you know, just to be, you know, explicit about it. I, we thought we’d talk about it a little bit. I mean, you know, part of the operative hypothesis for linking these two things is that the conflict at the border has activated both Texas nationalists, such as they are, and attention to the whole notion of Texas secession.

You know, and a lot of this is coming from other states and frankly from other countries. We both talked to international reporters about this, though, you know, as I, as I dug into this, there’s been no shortage of Texas coverage either. Okay. Um, You know as a as a quick google search news search reveals, but you know As I said some of this was triggered I think pretty clearly back in the fall by this effort to get You know this this item on the ballot, but you know, there’s a lot of things going on that are triggering this I think and and You know that the the board and the border, you know issue right now is a real catalyst for that

[00:37:24] Josh: Yeah, I think that’s right.

I mean, you know, one of the things that I would say is, you know, if you’ve been an observer, a student of politics in the state, an observer, a participant or whatever, you know, and if you go to, you know, rallies from time to time, you know, as part of your, as part of your work or, you know, whatever, just for fun, I don’t know.

Vocation or avocation. Vocation or avocation. You know, I can’t think of a time I’ve been at a, at a Republican event that hasn’t had, you know, signs, a table, something about Texas secession. It’s not like it’s a new issue, right? It’s been around. Um, but, you know, at the same time, there is something going on in this moment.

I mean, and, and some of it is, you know, it’s, it’s sort of, I think, from our perspective, it’s at least from my perspective, I’ll say a lot of some of it is a little baffling. Right. I mean, in terms of the attention that it’s getting, I mean, there’s an entire Newsweek whose cover is devoted to Texas and multiple articles on this subject, uh, you know, over the last number of weeks in a way that in some cases, like just sort of is

[00:38:19] Jim: Newsweek has been very focused on.

It’s been very focused on, you know, are not entirely

[00:38:23] Josh: clear. Well, in an interpretive ways. Sometimes it really, I think, You know, I think I’ve show questionable judgment. I’m just gonna we can come back to it if we want. I don’t think we need to. But anyway, but look, I mean, the thing is, there is a there’s a situation going on right here, right?

The fight over authority at the border between Texas and the national government and the uptick in the intensity of that right as well. All this stuff that we’re talking about does create this, you know, obvious point of conflict right between Texas and the federal government and not like a hypothetical.

What in the courts like? Between the police forces of the state earlier discussion, right? And that’s that’s different, right? Um, you know the intensity of of you know Sort of the ideological and partisan piece of this with the democrat in the white house And republican dominance of state government.

It’s also sort of hard to ignore I mean just as a quick, you know gut check about this And I often ask reporters who want to talk about this is you know Would we be paying as much attention to this or would secessionists be making such loud calls if donald trump wins? Right. And speaking of what we, I mean, just to raise a theme we’ve raised multiple times, does that sound like a cognitively deep attitude then?

Probably not, right? I mean, if literally, if the political dynamics change, all of a sudden the idea of a complete divorce of Texas from the federal government sounds like less of a reasonable policy goal. Maybe we should ask about how strongly held of a policy goal that is. Right. Um, you know, look, the role that Donald Trump is playing right now and consistently highlighting the border and highlighting immigration and highlighting, you know, honestly, sort of racial and ethnic

[00:39:47] Jim: change.

Yeah, I mean, as a campaign issue, it is, you know, it is undeniably one of the central facets of Donald Trump’s political identity.

[00:39:56] Josh: And what it does is, is it makes, relatedly in a lot of ways, it makes, uh, you know, I would say the expression of. Underlying nativism that we’ve written about and talked about, you know, in the Republican Party in Texas.

It actually provides that it provides for a seemingly high minded expression of what is generally nativism. That’s a nice way to put it.

[00:40:20] Jim: I like that’s a funny way of putting it. Well, but I think I know

[00:40:22] Josh: what you mean. Well, but it’s you know, it’s more like no, this is about philosophy. This is about the role of governments, but it’s not about it.

Okay. It’s not about the changing demographics. It’s not about the people coming over. This is about something else. Something higher guys is

[00:40:34] Jim: anyway. Yeah, sure. Well,

[00:40:36] Josh: at least, well, obviously among the proponents who are having the most success and getting media coverage around this, they’re not talking about, you know, the invasion, you know, as much as they’re talking about, you know, again, state and federal authority.

Right. Um, you know, and then last, you know, sort of, it’s, you know, the other thing that brings us to bear is it’s kind of, it’s an interesting issue. And then on the one hand it’s, it’s, it’s. Almost almost irresistible. I think, you know, in the sort of the politics of the state, right? Because it because it plays into immigration.

It plays into the state federal conflict. And so in a lot of ways, I think, you know, if it weren’t, you know, treason, um, you know, I think there are a lot of like Republican elected officials. Who might jump on this that they didn’t see, you know, potential exposure and problems with it as sort of a path going forward, right?

So, I mean, there’s a lot of things. I mean, there’s also, you know, there’s also, you know, we should mention, it’s really important to mention this. There’s been some research reporting on the degree to which Russian intelligence and disinformation efforts have actually worked to amplify Texas separatist movements.

It’s probably less of a factor than these broader big picture trends. Yeah, I mean,

[00:41:39] Jim: one, you know, I mean, I mean, I’ve been very interested in this and have dug or dug around in this a lot and I, you know, I don’t, I don’t want to say it’s the main motivator here because all these other things have deeper roots, but it’s pretty well documented that one of the Russian tactics is to play up divisions.

And they do this, not just in the United States. I mean, it’s a, it’s kind of in the F it’s in the, you know, the Russian counterintelligence, the Russian foreign policy and counterintelligence playbook.

[00:42:08] Josh: I mean, the Texas nationalists move it as a separatist movement in, in a, in a competitor of the, of, of Russia’s.

And so they’re They are happy to amplify those voices as they would in any country that they have conflict

[00:42:19] Jim: with. So in terms of public opinion, you know, we’ve been interested in this for a long time and we’ve considered and discarded lots of different ideas for how to do this. I mean, you know, it’s very noisy to talk about, to try to ask somebody on a survey about this to my mind.

And I

[00:42:34] Josh: think generally. Yeah, I mean, first and foremost, you know, one of the things that we try not to do is engage in, you know, total hypotheticals, right? You know, so one of the things that I think, you know, we do our best, I think, with especially around policies is, you know, in some cases to be patient.

You know, and to wait till a policy actually exists or a policy vehicle, you know, otherwise to try to go and see what the underlying attitudes that might inform people’s reaction to a policy. But one of the issues here is that, you know, secession is not legal, right? I mean, you know, just it’s, it’s very clearly illegal.

The most conservative of Supreme Court justices. I mean, there’s this very sort of famous quote of, you know, from Antonin Scalia, basically saying the civil war said it settled the legality question about secession. And I mean, you know, if you want anyone who would maybe have the most open. It would probably be the late justice, right?

So one, you have to ask people about whether they support, you know, essentially something that’s not technically legal, right? That’s the first thing. The other issue is, is this issue of sort of cost. And this is sort of what kind of gets lost in all these, I think the proponents of sort of Texas succession and a lot of the media

[00:43:38] Jim: coverage goes on.

I mean, I mean, most reporters and you raised this again, no, I asked them about this. And what I got was hand waving,

[00:43:45] Josh: essentially. Well, I mean, you know, the reporter I spoke to recently, I mean, you know, look, if you go back and read one of the main proponents books, which I have not, maybe I will, you know, apparently it goes into a great deal of detail about all of these, you know, basically how all this stuff is going to be dealt with, but that’s not the discussion we’re having, and that’s not the discussion that is being, that is not the political frame that’s being put around this.

as part of the justification, rationale, and even evidence that this is a widespread view because all of that discussion is inconsistent

[00:44:11] Jim: with a lot of the

[00:44:12] Josh: right. And it ignores, you know, basically lost, lost federal revenue, the impact on the economy, right? You know, uh, the impact on the movements of, of people within Texas, right?

There’s all kinds of possibilities out there that we can start thinking about, you know, the water supply, who funds it. Who inspects food now in Texas, right? I mean, there’s a million things that come up, but ultimately that’s not really for a survey question, right? You know, that, like, uh, you know, it’s sort of a yes or no support, oppose kind of thing, because ultimately going back to what we said before, if these aren’t deeply held opinions, which I would say most people are not thinking about Texas becoming its own nation, then what ends up happening is, is that whatever you insert in the question is going to influence results a lot, right?

So, you know, the other piece here that nobody really talks about is, you know, Trade offs right now. I mean, I’ve said this to a bunch of reporters, but you know, many of the proponent, I mean, the most obvious proponents of Texas secession are very conservative generally in their political views and the way that it’s almost portrayed is, well, we just take what’s great about the Texas government and then it just becomes the only government.

And it’s like, yeah, but like the Texas government would have to change dramatically if it became the only form of government, right? And it would involve new taxes, new fees, new responsibilities that we have to decide on. So the same very same people who are Seemingly the target for secession would also be the ones who might be Most aghast at how much bigger texas government would need to become Yeah, right.

So I mean in short i’d say, you know It’s an easy issue to get soft opinions on with like a necessarily gauzy question, you know Do you do you think texas, you know should could go at it on its own? Do you you know, do you support or suppose texas becoming its own country? Do you think you know texas could run itself better than you know, washington than washington, right?

You But at the same time, it also means that if we include anything like the possibility of physical violence, businesses leaving the state, increased taxes, how about an income tax, how about an income tax? I expect it’s going to dramatically change the responses. And in fact, even in the polling that, you know, the separatist movement has commissioned on its own.

You see that in their own polling from the first question they asked, which is sort of the gauzy version to one that like. Proposes it might not be that easy. And then, you know, it drops significantly. So what do we do? Well, It’s pretty what I was giving you all that set wind

[00:46:27] Jim: up giving you all that detail We took a much more general approach.

Well, we did because I mean, you know, it was the underlying attitude

[00:46:32] Josh: approach Yeah, and so look this is this is fairly indirect But you know, we repeated a question we asked 10 years ago where we asked people do they generally tend to think of themselves as? American first and texan second or Or Texan first and American second, or they don’t know.

And what we found was in this survey in, again, February of this year, 26 percent of Texans said they considered themselves Texan first, which again, not everybody’s from Texas, not surprising. It’s also, you know, but to the point of, you know, how does this have to do? It’s like, well, look, if you’re thinking that Texas should be an independent nation, a part of this is this idea of Texas and Texan ness and all that, we just kind of want to see what is sort of the base of people who see themselves as.

Texans, right? And it’s relatively high. I mean, you know, you might say it’s relatively low depending on how you think about it, but one in four Texans, 63 percent said they were American first, uh, among Republicans. So again, we think is the, the fundamental group that is being targeted here. 57 percent said they were American first, 35 percent said they were Texan first among people who said they were extremely conservative.

So this is the highest, you know, possibility. 53 percent said American first. 42% is a Texan first. Now, this doesn’t mean the 26% of Texans would vote to secede from the union. No, this does not mean the 26% of Texans would start voting for a secessionist party. It does not mean the 26% of Texans are in favor of secession.

It simply means. That they identify as texan before american now these numbers interestingly enough Look pretty consistent with some better polling that was done On the the direct question of succession which found about the same share of texans Saying that they’d be open again in a gauzy way open to open to the idea of Succession or secession.

Sorry, it

[00:48:16] Jim: gives us kind of the you know It gives us an upper limit and does give us uh, you know I mean, I this is again one of those questions where you look at this and you think you know Pretty plausible, you know, I mean in terms of you know, the party differences Um, you know the stability of it from when we asked the question You know 10 years ago in a slightly different form You Um, but I, you know, I think, you know, the point you make is right without, you know, over elaborating.

Um, you know, that 26 percent is, you know, very roughly speaking, kind of the pool, you know, the pool of, you know, if you were going to, if you were going to target market some kind of a Texas independence movement. That’s your pool. Yeah. Right. But it, but it’s, but as you say, importantly, you know, you’re not getting all of those or, you know, who knows, but I, well, and, you

[00:49:12] Josh: know, maybe I should just say, as I was just thinking about this, as you’re saying it, but like as imperfect as the question is, the flip side of the response is actually almost more important.

Nearly two thirds consider themselves to be American before taxing. Yeah. And that, that group is probably unlikely to vote

[00:49:24] Jim: for. for the president. So, um, I don’t have much time do I don’t have much time do much time to do that. So uh, So, much time So, When we see a Republican in the White House. Absolutely.

And I, you know, I would have to go and I need to go back and maybe look at those good, that Google trend data and, you know, divide it up by presidencies. But my guess is that that would hold. Um, you know, and as you’ve said, you know, one of the reasons this is, appealing to some people and on the ground is that there’s not really been a robust public discussion about this.

We’re not really airing this out in any real way. And so all of those kind of trade offs and all those conditional things in terms of a factual evaluation or a rigorous evaluation of the proposition, shall we say, you know, is not really happening. And so what we’re seeing is, you know, another instance of, you know, what we’re seeing a lot right now Right, which is, you know, you’ve got, you know, the groups that are living in the Republican party right now have a lot more leverage on affecting, you know, what’s going on in the state because of, you know, the uniform nature of Republican rule in the state.

Right. You know, and

[00:50:53] Josh: so. And the dynamics of Republican prime low turnout, Republican primary elections and safe seats that we talk about over and over again, which do, uh, magnify the power of small issue publics, right, uh, or at least magnify their importance because they become the basis for, you know, primary

[00:51:10] Jim: challenges.

And if you look at, you know, and you look at, you know, this is another issue where you see a lot of primary candidates, trying particularly those. Well, you know, primary candidates, both incumbents and challengers. You know, the words sovereignty of the state comes up a lot and sovereignty is an interesting word to use in this setting, because You know, it’s a little bit of a Rorschach, right?

You can not be at all, take, you can not at all take the idea of secession or independence seriously, but if you’re a conservative and there’s a Democrat in the white house, the term sovereignty for the state can resonate in the right way without going too far. But if you’re a nationalist, you can see the word sovereignty and go.

Aha. Yeah. You know, and I think, you know, I mean, I was talking to a reporter that was kind of pointing, you know, she and I were talking about this a couple of days ago and you see that pop up in this discussion among candidates who want to nod to this without buying into

[00:52:11] Josh: it. Having said that though, I mean, this is one of the things, you know, I mean, I think one of the themes in this podcast is I, you know, at least one of my themes, I guess, in the way that I look at things is, you know, I look at elites and I look at their actions as a way to kind of, uh, You know, uncover for me what they’re seen and how they read a situation.

And one question that I always ask, you know, reporters about this is, you know, given the politics in the state, especially when, you know, especially a reporter who’s been following for a while and kind of knows the dynamics that, you know, given the politics of the state, given the dynamics we see in Republican primaries, uh, You know, do we really think that if, you know, Greg Abbott’s polling showed him that this was a good issue among republican voters?

I mean, you know 60 plus He wouldn’t pursue it at least I don’t see pursue it in the sense of like, you know pursue exit But he wouldn’t flirt with it more than he gave me that more of a nod and he and he’s been pretty careful I mean he’s been asked to I mean, I look like he’s been asked directly He’s avoided sort of talking about it very directly and even a lot of the candidates in the house So even like there’s some candidates who you know sign the pledge basically saying therefore and you know again kind of like vouchers or Where is it on their website?

I don’t know. It’s not on the front. That’s for sure. Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, I mean, right now, this is important because I think, you know, there’s sort of two things here that are, I think, worth saying, like, I don’t think this is a big issue for most voters. I don’t think it’s a big issue for most Republicans.

I think even among those for whom it is, you know, A potential issue. I think for some large share of those, it’s a little bit more, uh, demonstrative. You know, I think about Democrats moving to Canada. It’s like, yeah, they’re still mostly still here. You know, I mean, you say these things, right? Got it. You know, got it.

I’ll see you in Vancouver, you know, but it’s like, yeah, but that’s not,

[00:53:47] Jim: you know, the exit option is always, is, is, is always a romantic fantasy more than it is a real reality. But

[00:53:52] Josh: given like, I will say this. So, so first thing I want to say is this is You know, this is a fantasy. I mean, in most cases, both in terms of the practicality of it, but especially in the way that public opinion is being described by the proponents of it, absent any sort of counterweight as sort of this broadly popular thing, not to mention the fact Mechanically, this is almost impossible.

Like the, I, you know, in the sense of like how our legislative process, you know, even people who know this does would not support as you need democratic votes, honestly, to make this even become something of a reality or even put it before voters, all that kind of having said that this does look like a lot of other issues.

I mean, it does look like a lot of issues that seem sort of fringe in the Republican party that, you know, get magnified in Republican primaries and become something that needs to be dealt with. That doesn’t mean it makes it through the legislature is a lot of things don’t, But, you know, do you, do I think that someone’s going to be filing, you know, their, their secession constitutional amendments, you know, because they usually do, because they usually do.

And they’ll do it again. Right. Does this, does this change, you know, and again, and when it happens, newsweek is, I’m sorry, newsweek, but like newsweek is going to come along and say, Oh, Texas secessionists get one step closer to their goals. And it’s like. Did you go back and look to see whether they’ve taken that

[00:55:05] Jim: step?

[00:55:06] Josh: Just think just a little, you know, just a little check. So I don’t want to say this is, you know, this is just like a dead issue or this isn’t something that’s going to crop up at some point in the future. Cause it does feel like a lot of Republican issues, but the current discussion around it is so divorced from, I think the reality.

And, and I mean, part of this is just, I’ll just, I’ll end my part with this, which is say, you know, Patriotism, American exceptionalism, you know, especially, you know, what American identity means, which is a big topic unto itself. Pretty big weights in the Republican Party and conservatism in particular. And so, you know, I haven’t heard a really good argument as to how we swear those things away that this is both on the one hand is allegedly very, very Popular movement with, you know, tons of support, both within the Republican Party, beyond the Republican Party, but how that squares away with, you know, an idea that, you know, Donald Trump and Republicans are saving America because American exceptionalism, patriotism, cultural identity are so important and things that need to be saved.

And to me, those things are just so obviously in conflict with each other. Yeah. And I, and I

[00:56:12] Jim: think that what we’re seeing, you know, in the, in this, this recent rash of coverage is that. You know, where the better of these stories wind up is saying, you know, is moving away from what nationalists want as a reality to trying to figure out what it means that they’re so persistent and that they have a home.

You know, increasingly within one of the political parties. And I think, you know, that’s the more interesting element of this. But it is tricky, you know, I think, for people to kind of tackle the story and not get sucked into the reality, which is the reality. You know, pretty minimal of it as a prospect.

Right. You know, to minimal to zero as you’re saying. It’s not

[00:57:00] Josh: a good, it’s not a good, it’s not a good, uh, hook as they say. Right.

[00:57:03] Jim: Um, but, but at the same time, you know, try to tease out what this tells us about what’s going on in the state, what’s going on in the party and what it is, you know, in a much more, you know, And the kind of cosmic sense that I hate, but, you know, it’s hard to avoid, you know, what is it about, you know, Texas that this kind of a sentiment is just so durable and, you know, the obvious historical explanations, but it’s an interesting question about how it continues to get recharged.

And I think that is productive to figure out where that charge comes from. Right. And we touched on a little of that and maybe we’ll figure out a way to do that. So with that. Thanks again to Josh for being here. Thanks to our excellent production team in the Dev Studio in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin.

Uh, as always, you’ll find results we talked about, interpretations, discussion, uh, of today’s podcast on the web at texaspolitics. utexas. edu. And of course, thank all of you for listening, and we’ll be back soon with another Second Reading Podcast.

The Second Reading Podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project. At the University of Texas at Austin.