Mar 28th 2024 – News roundup: The courts shape politics, a speaker’s race is underway in the House, and the presidential contest in Texas.

[00:00:00] 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.

[00:00:24] At what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized? Over the male colleagues in the room And welcome back to the second reading podcast. I’m jim henson director of the texas politics project at the university of texas at austin joined today by josh blank Research director of the texas politics project.

[00:00:45] Good late morning. Josh. Good morning. Happy thursday. Happy, you know holiday weekend It’s on a yeah on a on a We’re live on a Thursday rather than a Tuesday. Uh, I’ve been out of town. We had some various, uh, scheduling conflicts, but here we are and plenty has happened since we recorded last Tuesday, right?

[00:01:05] Yeah, I think that’s right. Okay. So we were on schedule last week. You know, a lot of news in the Texas political world. So I, I think we’re going to do is a little bit of a roundup with some public opinion data points. We used to call the data points approach to things, although there might be some, we’ll try to tease out some underlying thematics here.

[00:01:23] Um, going roughly from local state and you know, finishing with a few thoughts on kind of the national presidential race, if we have time. Um, you know, much of the action has been in the court. So really at the, at the intersection of state and national politics. Right. Right off. So, you know, let’s start where we ended last week.

[00:01:44] And, uh, with the fate of the controversial, uh, Texas immigration law, you know, the latest in a series of SB fours, but, and I mean, over the longterm, you know, I mean, I think it’s always odd to me that we get to know these bills by their bill designations, even though it’s, it’s a vaguely and kind of maddening way to track.

[00:02:06] It kind of bothers the crap out of me actually, because you know what happens in I love our reporter friends, but they, they shift, right? They move around. Someone’s reporting here and then they go to Miami or they go to the next station. That’s sort of the life of the reporter. These are the people we talk to a lot.

[00:02:20] We don’t go anywhere. It seems. And so when you’re like, you’re like, which has before from when, you know, they just say it like it’s so obvious. Everyone’s like, wait a minute, wait, there was an SB eight last, which Uh, right. You know, it’s not really very descriptive when there’s gonna be an SB four every single session.

[00:02:34] But anyway, that’s an aside. Yeah, they may have to, well, I’m gonna, I’m not gonna, I’m not going get out over my skis here, Rob, but we’re gonna come back to this. It’s funny we tip that in there. We haven’t, you know, a lot of things that we talk about, we’ve had the conversation before. We’ve not had that conversation actually, I don’t think anyway.

[00:02:48] Now, you know, speaking of our, you know, our irritability and old madness, you know, we may be not long before we’re, I am shaking my fist . We’re on. Yes, we’re on the, we’re on the Muppet show. Sitting in the balcony, barking at the stage. Um, uh, we spent the entire podcast, you know, on this topic last week. And then within hours, if not minutes of, of us completing the podcast, the status of the law shifted and then shifted again earlier this week.

[00:03:16] Um, But, you know, nature of the thing. So, you know, shortly after we discussed the stay put on SB4 last week in a last minute order by Justice Alito, which was where it was when we recorded, Supreme Court then came back and allowed the law to go into effect, um, and returned it to the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court for a quote unquote prompt ruling on whether the law should be stayed, what should continue, you know, what should happen to it.

[00:03:44] So at that point, the law was allowed, you know, when we recorded the law after the Supreme Court came, Um, and issued that decision, the law was allowed, the state was allowed to enforce SB4, though it became very clear almost immediately that many local authorities had no plan to do so. Now, it had already been, become clear because there was that, you know, few minute gap between the expiration of the law and the initial Alito order that we were talking about last week.

[00:04:12] Just, just enough time for, for the victors to tweet out their success. Right. And, and finally. For plenty of local law enforcement to go. Yeah, I don’t know. Where are we gonna put ’em? I don’t know what we’re doing. Yeah. . Um, so however, this week, uh, uh, late on Tuesday, a three court panel, three judge panel, or a three, I’m sorry, three judge panel on, on the fifth circuit ruled two to one that the state pending appeal original originally issued by the federal district court should remain in place.

[00:04:40] Yes. At least for the moment. you know, and, and urged, but, you know, the undertone there was they were urging rapid action by the appellate court. Now we talked, this does connect with something that we were talking about last week that you were kind of focused on, I think a bit that, you know, there’s some batting or political batting around between the courts going on here and Steve Vladek, the UT law school had a really great, uh, Um, explication of, you know, how to understand that and what was going on.

[00:05:06] That was really great that I wish we had read prior to the podcast. No, no, it’s great. I mean, I think the gist, just, you know, not to go into, because we’re not experts in this like he is at all. And so, but just to say, I mean, my read of it just to sort of, it was like, you know, Essentially, normally, I mean, there’s a sort of a normal process, and really what happened was an abnormal process.

[00:05:23] I mean, it looked abnormal, right? But generally what happens, the normal process, you know, district court makes a ruling. In this case, you know, early in a case, do we allow the law to go into effect, will we litigate this, or do we put a stay on it, right? They put a stay on it, then they appeal, then they appeal.

[00:05:36] The, you know, obviously the, in this case, the state appeals that to the district court saying, Hey, there shouldn’t be a stay on this. Normally they would say either, yeah, we agree. Now go fight it out and let the law be in effect. Or they would say, no, leave the stay in place and then go fight it out as you should.

[00:05:50] Right. In this case, the fifth circuit, and it wasn’t even, this is the whole thing. You didn’t really do that. In fact, they sort of an administrative arm of the fifth circuit, not even the panel of judges was ultimately going to hear the case put something. I think it was called an administrative stay on it and essentially punted to the Supreme Court, which I’m going to say that’s what was our interpretation.

[00:06:07] I don’t know if that’s a legal interpretation. That’s just a sports metaphor. But I think it was kind of fair because the Supreme Court in essentially removing that state didn’t say, Hey, we’re siding with the state or we think that they have a good case here. They were saying this isn’t shouldn’t even be here.

[00:06:22] Yeah. You guys can handle this without us. You don’t need us jumping into this, which I think actually kind of reinforces the idea of like, Hey, you know, guys. Yeah. I mean, it was definitely a kind of, Hey, you guys really need to get your stuff together. And then ultimately when it got back to the fifth circuit, the panel of judges that is actually going to be involved in this then said, we are going to leave the stay in place.

[00:06:40] Now this is to the extent of the people who read the tea leaves in this, the whole point of like, whether a stay stays in place, whether a law is allowed to be enforced while it’s on appeal. Yeah. or whether it’s not usually is understood as a foreshadowing of the outcome. The idea here is the 5th Circuit, if nothing else, and look, it doesn’t mean the 5th Circuit is not going to come back and say, hey, Texas can do this.

[00:06:59] But ultimately what they’re saying is based on existing case law and what is before us at the moment. We’re going to put this on hold until we finish the arguments, because there’s a lot of possibilities that this is not going to pass constitutional muster. It’s not going to pass, you know, most of the recent precedent, and that’s the way that you generally read these things.

[00:07:18] Everything else that happened in between there, I think, even though there were people jumping on saying, see, you know, we’re going to, you know, we’re going to force this because this law is going to be, you know, found constitutional, it’s like, slow down. Yeah, part of the, you know, part of the, yeah, part of the back and forth, you know, led out and, you know, the world to lots of premature.

[00:07:35] Outbursts, I would say. Right. You know, now the majority opinion in, in that it was a two one, but, you know, given all that Right, it was interesting. It was a, you know, it was a three, it was a three judge panel, as I said, a two one vote. The majority opinion was written by chief, uh, the chief judge of, of that appellate court, Priscilla Richmond, who was a George W.

[00:07:54] Bush appointee. Um, and, and it ruled essentially it, you know, among its highlights, it was the president’s role to quote unquote, it was the president’s role. to quote unquote pursue non citizens illegally present in the U. S. unquote. Now, Texas can and will appeal. The route of that appeal at the moment is a little, last I read, still a little unclear.

[00:08:19] Yeah. Now, an interesting footnote for, you know, Texas politics people, Texas The dissenting vote in that 2 1 vote or the, you know, the, the losing vote was from Andrew Oldham, who some people may recall was a Trump appointee who clerked for Sam Alito in, wait for it, was also solicitor general in Texas, and then was general counsel to Greg Abbott when then clerk.

[00:08:41] Governor Abbott nominated him for the, I’m sorry, when then President Trump nominated him for the appeals court. Now, you know, another footnote about, about Judge Oldham’s history, he was Solicitor General of Texas when Texas won the case on DACA versus the Obama administration. So, you know, if you look at it, and I, and I think the Oldham dissent was something like 70 pages.

[00:09:06] It sounds right. And, you know. you know, directly bemoaning, you know, what a poor position the state was in, given, you know, the failure of, of the current administration’s policy. So if you’re kind of keeping score on the politics of this at home, you know, I, I think the Oldham role in this is, is, is pretty interesting.

[00:09:27] Um, and again, just for those of you in Texas and we should guess, you know, we, we, mentioned Steve Vladeck from the UT Law School, although heading to greener pastures, I believe, in the fall, if not sooner. Oldham also had a, uh, was like an adjunct appointment at the law school here at some point for a while, I think, after 2019.

[00:09:49] So that, that all is sort of still in play. Yeah. We talked about the public opinion roots on this last week. The only questions I was getting from people last week was sort of, you know, like, Oh, is this a blow to X or Y or Z? And the answer is no, you know, you know, I mean, the whole sort of winners, losers on these things.

[00:10:07] It’s sort of, I mean, it’s just, it’s tired, but it’s also like, you know, I mean, you’re sort of missing the point here. The conflict is still the politics also. Yeah. I mean, you know, this is basically when people, you know, there’s a blow for, yeah, it’s a blow, but I mean, this is like. You know, some kind of like, you know, ultimate fighting match.

[00:10:25] I mean, there’s a lot of blows back and forth there and, you know, kicks to the nuts and stuff. So there’s a lot going on here. Um, On another front, the Supreme Court also heard a, uh, uh, the other, the judicial system, Supreme Court also heard a case Tuesday challenging the availability of Mipha Pristone, the medical abortion agent for use, uh, uh, in, in court.

[00:10:50] Um, you know, that was, you know, your usual kind of open Supreme Court hearing so we could see the transcripts, know who asked what. You know, I think the general consensus was that the people challenging the FDA’s approval of Mifepristone, you know, were probably came out of this looking not like the winners now, you know, they still have to vote that there were a couple of justices who might have been persuaded by this argument, but for the most part, it doesn’t look it looks, you know, if you’re supporting the availability of this, of this drug.

[00:11:31] I think that it looks like this is, this challenge is not going to work. Yeah. I look down to the authority, FDA, et cetera. Yeah. And it looked like the way that, I mean, the, the court watchers, if you will, I mean, their basic interpretation was based on the questions that, you know, majority of the justices asked, it sounded like there were a lot of skepticism about the standing of the doctors to challenge the FDA’s approval of this drug, or, you know, let’s say change the changes in approval of the drug, which is really what this is about.

[00:11:57] Others have brought up that, you know, the court may be You know, I would say reticence to go into a position where whereby, you know, you basically can have anyone potentially challenging, you know, essentially regulatory decision by the FDA and by extension, a regulatory agency, anything. Yeah, exactly. So there’s so there’s a lot of stuff and ultimately the court can escape that by just saying you don’t have standing here.

[00:12:17] Right. And so it’ll be interesting to see just, this is another one of those cases, just how far will they go with this? Well, a lot of people are, I mean, you know, a lot of people are watching this for the obvious reasons people are watching it, but I mean, in the most, most proximate sense, you know, there’s this idea that, you know, if the justices this summer release, you know, some opinion that’s relevant, that’s going to, let’s say, significantly impact or curtail abortion access, especially in blue states, that that’s going to have an impact on the election, which is why people are watching this.

[00:12:41] It’s also, again, let me just say right here, courts, a political institution. Right. I mean, if that wasn’t clear from the previous discussion in last week, we say it again now, and ultimately, I think the justices will be very happy to like exit this without even really addressing the major question, which actually is a question we asked about in our April 2023 polling, which is whether transition you like that, whether or not, uh, voters in Texas approve or disapprove of Texas design laws to prevent women from receiving Medicaid abortion pills through the mail.

[00:13:06] That’s ultimately what this Fundamentally, this is what this gets down to. I mean, yes, it has to do with just the distribution of these terms. Yeah I mean, yeah I mean It’s really about when you can distribute these pills within a pregnancy But ultimately it’s connected to this broader question of being able to ship these pills whether a doctor has to be there I mean, there’s a lot of you know Basically access to these pills and how broadly it is and in particular this idea of getting them through the mail When we asked about this, uh 40 of the plurality of voters disapproved of designing laws to prevent women from receiving medicaid apportioned bills So the mail 35 approved among democrats Uh, 69 percent disapproved, including 63 percent of disapproved strongly among Republicans.

[00:13:42] It was 54, 24 approved, disapprove. And of course, worth worth mentioning among women, 30 approved, 50 disapproved, 42 percent strongly, and among men, it flipped 42 approved, 39 disapproved. So overall, you know, one, I’d say, like we talk about a lot, this is an issue. I think one that people have a general, I think, sense about because it’s having to do with abortion, people generally kind of have attitudes at the same time.

[00:14:02] This is a sort of a bit of a new issue in the space. And I would, I would, I would, I would probably, you know, slightly tweak the men, women characterization there a little bit, just because, you know, as we consider, and we talked about this in the podcast a couple of weeks ago, trying to figure out, you know, what the mobilization potential was, you know.

[00:14:22] for, for both sides, but primarily for Democrats in terms of abortion. I mean, women were 30, 50. Yeah. Men were kind of evenly divided 42, 39. Yeah. So it wasn’t quite, I mean, you said flipped and I, and again, it’s, I’m not, Oh, I just, I just, I just meant the direct, I just meant the direction. I’m sorry. Right. But the fact that men are evenly, are evenly divided pretty much, and women are, you know, not.

[00:14:45] Yeah. One, it’s interesting because we know there’s, I mean, one of the things, whenever we see a gap between women and men on attitudes, it’s fair to ask whether that’s gender or whether that’s party because of the, there’s a gap in party ID between men and women, women tend to be more likely to identify as Democrats, men more likely to identify as Republicans.

[00:15:01] However, a 20 point split there is pretty wide. Yeah, that’s, I guess that’s what I was trying to do. You know, 30, that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s not just, that’s not just partisanship. Right, and, and, and again, interesting in terms of thinking about what Independents look like in Texas and where they line up on different issues.

[00:15:18] The Independent number on that I find interesting, too, as we talk about this, you know, what, how, you know, the role of abortion in the fall presidential election. Independents only 26 percent approved, 48 percent disapproved. Right, and most strongly. And also, yeah, also intense. And that’s another thing that’s interesting, you know, the, the, um.

[00:15:35] The disapprovals on these are intense. Yeah, that’s, that is definitely, there’s definitely an asymmetry there. Yeah. And that’s, and that’s a thing I think. And, um, you know, we should, you know, in terms of some of the things we often flag in this, I mean, this was an April 23. result, we were looking at these because there were, you know, there were rumblings in the legislature about trying to limit access to medical abortion, that this was kind of the next frontier given post Dobbs, post, you know, the, the, the, the effective ban on abortion in Texas.

[00:16:09] Ultimately going into that 2023 session, it was an open question whether or not the legislature would, you know, move in one direction, another direction or, or do nothing. And ultimately they ended up cutting. More or less doing nothing, but one direction would be kind of where they are now with the Texas Medical Board, which is related to this, which is clarifying what basically what conditions allow for a legal abortion in terms of, you know, when a when a woman’s life is in danger, what does it actually mean?

[00:16:33] Right, which has been a big, big issue here. Well, the avoidance on that was interesting. I mean, as we, you know, you talk about how this was kind of on the table in the legislature, and they seem to. At least on the whole, there were advocates, but on the whole, kind of take a break, you know, in a way from the issue.

[00:16:52] And, you know, there’s a little bit of that in the medical board and that the medical board had not, has not been very, had not been very quick, you know, to engage in the rulemaking process and to clarify some of this. And it, you know, took a couple of lawyers and. Town Steve and Amy Breton. Yeah. You know, sent a letter and, you know, that seemed to, you know, play a role in triggering Mm-Hmm.

[00:17:11] some kind of response well was required. Yeah. But I mean, and not to split hairs here, I think, you know, going into the, or watching it over the session, I think the take a break thing, I agreed with that. But then, you know, watching the way that the issue has developed going into the campaign season and both sort of the, the reticence of, of most Republican candidates, especially sort of at the national level to really even kind of broach the subject and really avoid the subject makes me think it wasn’t so much a break as.

[00:17:35] is a, you know, again, uh, something like an avoidance. And well, that’s more, yeah. That’s, that’s certainly more precise. Yeah. No, no, no. I think that’s right. It’s a little, little, little, little, little hair, you know, split. Um, you know, we also had, you know, other more general sort of, you know, on abortion, but you know, I, we can do that kind of quickly just for more context.

[00:17:55] Yeah. So. In the February 2024 poll, so the most recently released poll, a plurality of voters, 45 percent said they want the state’s abortion laws to be made less strict, uh, only 27 percent say more strict, 21 percent say left as they are now. So on the one hand, you can take that and say, well, the plurality want it less strict.

[00:18:10] On the other hand, you can take it and say, well, the plurality actually want it either made more strict or left alone. Right. And it’s pretty even. You know, overall, so 45 say less strict, uh, 48 say more strict or left alone. So I think we’re going to see a little bit of left alone that kind of fits the pattern, right?

[00:18:28] And then I was saying, you know, and then also, you know, the other sort of common question we asked, asked about, you know, seven different circumstances that. A pregnant person might face and how long they should have to obtain an illegal, illegal abortion from within the first from never to within the first six weeks and then sort of over gradations to at any time during the pregnancy, no more than 38 percent of Texans supported a complete prohibition in all seven cases, and those cases include, you know, threat to the, you know, um, woman’s life, uh, you know, fetal abnormality.

[00:18:55] And there are majorities between 54 and 85 percent of voters who supported some access at some point to legal abortion during the pregnancy in each of the seven cases. And so this is, you know, this is why, you know, in a lot of ways, when this is the reason, you know, I mean, there are lots of reasons this is an issue, but there’s reasons that this is going to keep being talked about.

[00:19:11] There’s reasons we’re going to hear about this more in Texas. There’s reason to expect this to be a campaign theme. We already uncovered that in some other polling, but ultimately this is an issue that Democrats feel strong with. Because if these are the results in Texas. You can imagine what it looks like in some other states.

[00:19:23] Right. We should do something about that. Meanwhile, in yet another court, in a much less policy centric development, a deal was cut in Attorney General Ken Paxton’s nine year old felony case. Yeah. Progress. You know, an interesting development given all the back and forth. If you listen to this, you’ve You know, arguments over getting the prosecutors pay, over getting the prosecutors paid, arguments over venue, you know, just, you know, a classic kind of let’s stretch this out as much as we can.

[00:19:55] And then COVID got thrown in there too. And COVID got thrown in there too. It’s a structural factor. Right. And a deal was cut in which the attorney general would pay a little less than 300, 000 in restitution. About a hundred hours of community service. A hundred hours of community service. And I think 10 hours of additional training.

[00:20:12] But we’ll. Ethics training. But no admittance of wrongdoing. But as he, yes, as they, as his defenders were quick to point out, no admittance of wrongdoing. Um. I got to say that’s an expensive non admittance. Yeah. I, you know, for everybody involved, but look, you know, The attorney general escapes what might have been more, you know, severe punishment.

[00:20:37] Now, you know, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of discussion about out there about how, you know, look, this is a pretty low level white collar crime. Yeah. And something that, you know, people, you know, this seems to be in line with what happens with cases like this at this scale. Yeah. I think there were a lot of Democrats in the state who unseen that news alert.

[00:20:55] You know, and the idea in their mind is so yeah, okay, so pay 300, 000. But the alternative was he was going to jail for 10 to 100 years, which was not going to be what was happening here. And I think, you know, the interesting thing, I mean, again, there’s, you know, politics just suffuses this so dramatically in various ways.

[00:21:13] But it was, it was, you know, sort of noticeable that, you know, in the aftermath, you know, Paxson’s lawyers were quick to basically, as you said, sort of claim victory, say there was never a case here. He admits no wrongdoing as, you know, he’s paying his money. And the prosecutors, I thought, said, Hey, look, you know, honestly, this is the first chance we’ve had to actually.

[00:21:30] Put an offer forward because we’ve been all in all these wranglings for the last nine years, right? It wasn’t appropriate at any point in time until now when the case would be heard implication being, you know We might have just done this from years ago. Yeah from day one had would been allowed or you know Now again, they also have some you know, I mean everybody everybody’s got an amount of pressure You know in the spotlight.

[00:21:50] Um You know, so that, you know, for all we’ve heard about Attorney General Pax’s legal difficulties, you know, the thing, the issue still, there’s still a, I think there’s still a civil issue, a civil case. Yeah, I think that’s right. Pending related to this. There’s still the outstanding federal investigation of Nate Paul that there’s speculation that the Attorney General would have some exposure in this.

[00:22:14] Some, some role to play. Perhaps. Yeah. Right. Um, you know, the showing has shown that, you know, we’ve. This issue was out there for Texas voters, um, but not necessarily front of mind, and we’ve got a couple of different. Indications of that, right? Yeah. I mean, you know, in, you know, February, 2024, you know, something we’ve been doing a lot more frequently down for lots of reasons is we’ve been asking voters about, you know, how much they’ve heard about particular issues or how much attention they’re paying to just various issues, just so we can contextualize it both for ourselves.

[00:22:47] And obviously for everybody who consumes the poll, because it’s important, right? I mean, otherwise you just assume everybody’s tuned into everything that’s going on. And these are super informed opinions and sometimes you got to take a step back. Ultimately, you know, 74 percent of Texas voters in February said that they heard either a lot or some about Ken Paxson’s legal problems, you know, as a point of contrast, only 44 percent of the same about his endorsements in the primaries, which was a big topic.

[00:23:09] I think for people who are listening to this podcast, you know, only 14 percent so they’d heard a lot about his endorsement endorsements compared to 36 percent who said the same of his legal problems. Now, I should say. That is a mix at this point of both, you know, let’s say the securities frauds case, which honestly was pretty low salience for a very, very long.

[00:23:26] I mean, really for the vast, vast majority of this. And so some of that, you know, what they’ve heard is about that. A lot of it is probably about the impeachment. And so lowercase was, you know, the right alleged legal violations involved with that, right? And so this is just all to say that, you know, while this is a, you know, a victory for Paxton in a sense, and they’ll certainly play it that way, uh, it’s also the case that, you know, this has become kind of colored who he is for a lot of voters at this point.

[00:23:53] Right. And, and, you know, partisanship is, is deflecting some of that, but. Well, you know, if you look at his, at the trend in his job approval. Mm-Hmm. , it certainly, you know, something had an impact at some point. Yeah. His, his, his job approval almost, you know, have improved dramatically. You know, after basically cratering in, you know, August of last year, at that point, only 28% of voters expressed approval with 46% disapproving.

[00:24:15] Of course, we know it was going on last summer, but as of February, you know, after basically a very steady climb through the final third of 2023, his approval numbers are now at 41% approved, 37% disapprove, which will not, you know. Anything I want to be super excited about when you think about among the entire registered voter population in Texas plus four is Perfectly fine place to be and over the same time period is approval rate among Republicans climbed from 46 percent to 61 percent Well his disapproval declined from 23 to 16.

[00:24:44] So he’s heading back in the right direction. He’s very active out there It’s hard not to see him everywhere right now, you know Pornhub Yeah, I mean, I think that I think that among other things, yeah, you know, and I, you know, the role of the Pornhub ruling in this is, you know, I think his numbers are gonna go down.

[00:25:02] I don’t know what I remember that gender split. We talked about, you know, I, well, you know, there’s a lot to unpack there and I’m going to leave that for now. I think, although don’t go listen, if you haven’t heard anything about this, please don’t go search Ken Paxton Pornhub. Yeah, well, you know, you might as well.

[00:25:19] It’s safe for work now. Um, but you know, you know, the dynamic here, I mean, look, I mean, I, I think the point I really liked that you made a minute ago was like, you know, the securities fraud. It’s probably a very small part of any of this movement that we saw with Paxton. It was mainly the impeachment, the, you know, and the, the cluster of issues that came up in the impeachment from, you know, issues in his personal life, the Nate Paul relationship, the whistleblowers.

[00:25:51] Right. I mean, the kind of, you know, stock hustle, alleged stock hustle. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Was um a pretty small part of all that But still, you know in there in that merc of things and ultimately You know republicans You know a big chair of a big share of republicans and as we were discussing I think you know when after the impeachment We’ve discussed recently, but particularly The most conservative and the most intense Republicans, you know, pretty much bounced back.

[00:26:22] And I think the, the reality of the end of this is that, you know, Democrats are going to feel hard done by the, you know, the justice system in this in some ways are going to feel like he got off easy, but ultimately it’s not changing their opinions of PACs and which really probably crystallized for the most part during the impeachment.

[00:26:38] Well, and in particular, the trot, the Senate trot, I mean, I mean, I think, Well, that’s right. When I say the impeachment, I’m talking about the whole thing. I mean, I, I think that, you know, what we’re looking at is that, you know, in the end. You know, we’ve, and I think we talked, we talked about this a few weeks ago in terms of, you know, how views of Paxton were shaped by elite disagreement and confusion in elite queues.

[00:27:01] Yeah. And, and, you know, you say, you know, you’re not a lot, I mean, they’re there, they exist and we can point them out. We’re not going to right now, but there are Republicans who are still out there saying, look, this guy’s a criminal, but they’re few and far between. They don’t have the same soapbox that Paxton has.

[00:27:14] And, you know, ultimately I think what. The end of this case and sort of the messaging around it does is it allows Paxton to lean back in on the see, I told you all along this was political and I’m being persecuted and this is if you hear things about me that are bad, you should know these are just my enemies and the share of Republicans who, you know, who said that, you know, they thought the impeachment was justified or he deserved to be removed from office, you know, went down, you know, it went up and then it went down again.

[00:27:40] And, you know, I mean, once it does seem that for many Republicans, though, as you point out, not all, but for many. Once, you know, the Senate did not convict him, all was, if not forgiven, at least forgotten or has receded. Yeah. I think it’s a fair enough read of that. Yeah. Or, or reconfigured or whatever. Yeah.

[00:28:03] Yeah. Right. I mean, you know, well, you go back to what we talked, you know, one of the things we talked about two weeks ago, I think, in terms of the open endeds in, you know, uh, in the primary. Um, you know, there was not a lot of evidence that, you know, to take the other side a little bit or to kind of put this in perspective in the open end is when we asked people what was motivating them to vote.

[00:28:26] There was not a lot of, you know, I, you know, I really am going to go vote in my state house race because I want to stick up for how badly Ken Paxton was treated. Right. He just didn’t come up in the open ended. Yeah, it’s fun. Nor did his endorsements. It’s funny, you know, we’ll, we’ll get to this later, I guess, but you know, we wrote a piece about, you know, during all this about sort of how Ken Paxton is not Donald Trump, you know, and a lot of it having to do with sort of his ability to, uh, inoculate himself, you know, against sort of these, these negative stories, let’s say, especially these negative legal problems.

[00:28:58] Now, now look, he’s, he’s bounced out. He wasn’t inoculated in the moment. So it’s still true. I’m not gonna have it. There’s some kind of halo effect. I think here about correct. You know, that has to do with corruption and partisanship. Yeah, I will. I mean, that’s well, that’s that’s the interesting question, right?

[00:29:12] I mean, as I said, I mean, what I’m wondering is, you know, now how much stronger is Paxton making that argument when sort of accused of Wrongdoing or anything nefarious to say. This is just my political enemies again. At the same time. I mean, I’ve sort of, you know, this is sort of a test and we’ll see what the Trump campaign is looking like.

[00:29:28] We’ll kind of get to the national politics later if we have time. But I have been saying this to you at least. I don’t know if I sell this podcast, but I mean, you know, trying to like mobilize voters to like I don’t know, vote based on your grievances, not everybody can do that. It’s pretty hard. I think, you know, I’m not sure anybody can really do that.

[00:29:46] I mean, you know, it really does require, it’s like, you know, well, look, if the FBI can investigate me, they can investigate you too. And like a lot of people are like, what? That is one of the, you know, one of the sub issues at play in the national election. Yeah, exactly. And so I, you know, it’s going to be curious.

[00:29:57] Let’s use that as a, you know, as a, we’ll put a pin in that, but only for a few minutes. Okay, great. Cause we also have to mention for this audience, you know, between last recording and this one. Little thing. State Representative Tom Oliverson declared his candidacy for Speaker of the House. Uh, as the current Speaker, Dave Phelan is, you know, continues to be mired, you know, most immediately in the primary runoff with David Covey, but also more broadly, you know, the general sense that his speakership is in danger.

[00:30:28] Pretty, I don’t know, I mean, is it shot across the bow like too, is it, is it not violent enough? Yeah. I don’t know. I, yeah. I mean, is it even a shot? I mean, it’s just like a shot at the bow. Right. Yeah. I mean, well, except that, you know, the ship may sink before, you know, the torture, the metaphor, the ship may sink before, you know, that the shot even gets there.

[00:30:45] But, you know, so just, you know, all of a sudden an interesting candidate, you know, in the sense that, I mean, in, in numerous senses now, you know, for insiders, it was like, yeah, he was one of the, he did have a chairmanship. Yeah. That’s, And so for all of our discussion about how, and I don’t think we’ve discussed you all, the discussion I should say about the fact that, you know, the, the likely speaker contenders, I mean, look, there are some people that are thought of as feeling allies, but this always happens in a speaker’s race who are also.

[00:31:23] Very likely to be, you know, should be considered potential successors and maybe even challengers, even if Feland survives the primary. So, but you know, Oliverson is not really of that group because, you know, he is in some ways, you know, Not always, but in some ways, you know, very representative of, you know, the latest generation of far right Republican House members, both structurally and in the details by and by structurally all I mean, you know, represents a northwestern suburban or exurban Houston district.

[00:32:03] Um, not Houston proper, but in the exurb areas in northwest of there, but linked to Houston. Um, you know, as noted with various degrees of circumspection in both, you know, the media, social media, and, you know, You know, various, you know, publications, you know, shares a consultant with the lieutenant governor and the circumspection in that was, was interesting.

[00:32:29] There were some people like, well, you know, they have the same consultant. They didn’t want to just say, you know, some said it, some didn’t, you know, like it’s, you know, Alan Blakemore and Blakemore and associates is, you know, his campaign consultant. Um, you know what I mean? I don’t. I think it’s interesting people jump on that right away, because it’s like, you know, I think he consults a lot of people.

[00:32:46] Yeah, I mean, I mean, I’m not saying there’s, you know, yeah, no, I get it. There are some common themes, you know, his client. But anyway, and that’s why people are, you know, maybe reticent to jump into, you know, well, what are you saying? You know, um, but that’s, you know, out there. Yeah. And it’s not like, Yeah. I mean, we’ll just leave it at that.

[00:33:05] I think that’s fine. Um, you know, and, and known as, you know, a very conservative member, um, you know, very high profile on the, the, the trans, some of the transgender issues, transgender children issues, et cetera. Yeah. We talked, uh, I think last week or the week before I know in the, in the wake of the primaries, we talked about how if you looked at sort of the, Ideological distribution of Republicans in the legislature as measured using a common political science score.

[00:33:36] They are all conservative. The question is just from, you know, the most conservative to the not most conservative. Let’s just say, just to make everybody happy, and then you could say there’s a middle of conservatism where everybody’s conservative and they’re conservative, you know, on either side of that.

[00:33:49] But most of the people challenged were on the less conservative side of the midline point line. And Oliverson comes from more conservative part of the midpoint line, which I think is something we should probably expect. And he was not, yeah. And he was not. And, you know, I mean, I think, you know, there’s always the, Oh, uh huh.

[00:34:04] You know, this candidate and also the timing was interesting. I mean, you know, I mean, yeah, you know, there, there is a, you know, I mean, I mean, You know, there’s always, you know, I mean, and, you know, we’re going to have unfortunately months to look at this, you know, to do the analysis of the discourse around competition, you know, speakers, quote, unquote, speakers race.

[00:34:25] We’ll have, we’ll have one or two episodes on that coming up. But I mean, You know the timing and you know, whether you want, you know, can you jump out too soon, etc, etc It’s kind of interesting. There’s probably there’s a lot. I don’t know about this Behind the scene discussions and we’ll we’ll learn more about that You know in terms of what our polling tells us we’ve talked about this.

[00:34:46] Um, you know feelings, you know feelings numbers You know suggested a threat was you know that there was some threat out there Yeah, you know, I mean as if we you know, if we needed that in addition to his potential You know, electoral situation, which is the clear problem. Yeah, right. I mean, beginning in June of 2023, the gap between the sheriff Texans who disapprove of feelings, job performance and those who approved opened up to about 10 points.

[00:35:07] So more disapproving than approving and really remain there for much of 2023. You know, he’s had a slight recovery, but it’s Mhm. You know, February job approval numbers stood at 29 percent approved, sorry, disapproved, 26 percent approved. The remainder of voters, unsurprisingly, don’t really have an opinion of him, which is not surprising.

[00:35:24] And just to be clear here, Democrats are more likely to disapprove of the Republican speaker of the Texas house. It’s not as though this is, you know, this is, again, this is among everybody. Uh, and Republicans are overall more likely to approve than disapprove though, just barely. It was 30 percent approved, 24 percent disapproved.

[00:35:38] Disapprove. I mean, the thing that’s interesting, you know, I mean, and I think people got this right, but I think it’s sort of the balance of this is difficult because I mean, whenever somebody jumps out in a speaker’s race and it doesn’t matter who they are, honestly, you know, they could be someone perfectly, uh, I’m just gonna say a reasonable choice.

[00:35:53] So like a possibility versus someone who has almost no possibility of getting doing this because that happens. Yeah. Happens actually, you know, I mean, more often than the other case and sometimes, yeah, there are more non viable candidates than there are viable candidates. And especially, and I’d say especially publicly.

[00:36:09] Yeah. Right? But I mean, so a lot of the focus was on Oliverson, but I mean, the other way to kind of look at this, and I don’t think I’m saying anything different from you per se, but But to make this point, you know, fear is a good, you know, is a pretty big factor in politics, fear of retribution. And ultimately, that’s what we’re been talking about a lot of these primaries is, you know, Abbott making good on his promise to go after people who crossed him.

[00:36:27] Right. And what you have here is, well, feelings, you know, body is not even yet in the ground. He hasn’t been declared dead yet. You already have a perfectly. He’s not even a, to be fair, he’s not even a body yet. He’s not even a body. And you already have a perfectly reasonable candidate who was in a position of power that, you know, should feel and win, go back, become speaker.

[00:36:47] I would doubt Oliver Sernin is going to be a Busted. He’s going to be, yeah, he’s going to be in trouble, but he’s not worried about it. And that’s the signal. I mean, that’s sort of the overarching kind of way that at least I interpret it. Or any worry that’s there is, is outweighed by the perception of opportunity.

[00:37:01] Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And, you know, a perceived benefit in being the first person out of the chute. from that end of the spectrum. And that’s why kind of what I was wondering. I mean, I’m not well informed or, you know, have been out of town for a few days about like how much we know and what we think we know about the jockeying on that end of the party.

[00:37:26] You know how much, you know, how much discussion there’s been, and I think that is why, you know, people were quick to note the Blakemore connection, frankly. Because they, you know, they sense Luke 10, you video. Fairly or unfairly, it brings with it. You know the intimation of you know, lieutenant governor’s influence and people are very in the house are very touchy about that Yeah, institute always right not just this lieutenant governor always.

[00:37:53] Yeah, I mean certainly with this lieutenant Yeah, the thing if you’re Oliverson and you think like look, you know feeling may not be back if he does come back You know, he’s probably not gonna be speaker ultimately if he can get some commitments now again privately That’s influenced down the line. It doesn’t mean he’s going to be speaker, but it does mean that he might have a block of people he can release for whatever he wants or who knows a lot of, you know, a lot that’s going to go on between a lot of politics involved here in terms of, yeah, the, the fractures in the house.

[00:38:21] Um, You know, I mean, I, I think the interesting thing is when do we see somebody else is the somebody else Appear prior to the primary or to the runoff. Yeah, you know, that’s interesting. I mean, you know, you know And you’ve been doing this longer than me I mean my kind of like experience of this is that you know We find out who the speaker is when the speaker has enough votes.

[00:38:40] Yeah. I mean look, you know, like well This is also where we do the You know, the most important point that we always, and you know, usually I kind of use this in part to just deflect, you know, invitations to speculate without any grounds, which I think we are still doing to some degree. Um, you know, we didn’t even know what the electorate for this election is going to look like until after the November elections.

[00:39:06] So you know. But I mean in term, you know, but the speculation about the positioning is fair in this case, because you know, this is a case where I, you know, I think, you know, it’s, it’s ultimately very fair to say you know that the feeling speakership is on shaky ground. I mean, often we engage in these speculations when there’s not evidence of that.

[00:39:34] There’s evidence of that in this case. So, you know, I don’t want to be too, you know, like poo pooing the discussion, which I often Yeah. Indulge in. I mean, I think it’s reasonable that we’re looking at this because obviously there’s some, you know, the feelings position is destabilized by his, you know, by how the primary worked out.

[00:39:52] And just as, and we’ll just as someone who like, you know, again, we like to deal data. We don’t like to go and rank speculation. And I’ve said before, you know, one of the things I like is I like for the elected officials and the elites to reveal to us what they think. And this is a very good revelation of at least what one.

[00:40:06] What a few people seem to be thinking, one guy for sure, one guy for sure, maybe a few of you, but also, but nonetheless, it is, it is a, you know, it’s not just, it’s not just anybody. It’s not somebody again with, with no chance of being a speaker. It’s somebody who actually, you know, has something to lose here by taking this position, which, which tells you something and is not, you know, you know, this is not like some backbencher.

[00:40:26] Yeah, that’s my, yeah, that’s my point. And it may, and this may sound obvious, but I think we often, um, you know, it often gets a little bit mixed and talking to speakers. And honestly, you know, reporters make this mistake and not a lot of reporters just to be honest, but some reporters make this mistake. I’m sure it’s, this has been obfuscated in the district, but like the voters don’t pick the speaker.

[00:40:43] Yeah, and so there’s sometimes these things get kind of merged and it’s important to be able to separate so yeah You know phelan’s got a problem with with the voters right now right in his district. This is a different kind of problem Yeah. Yeah, um finally for you know, and we’ll you know, just kind of touch on this and come back to it I think but you know, you know, there have been you know, the The presidential nomination contest is, is set, has been, you know, for a few, we can release on Tuesday, but, but, you know, the presumptive candidates are clear and, but there’s a little bit of a Texas hook in that we’re now seeing the candidates swing through Texas to collect money.

[00:41:20] Um, you know, and Trump is the obvious favorite in Texas, but there are some, you know, there’s some interesting questions that come out of what the numbers look like. And, you know, the. The different, you know, the things that are very unique about this race. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, just to tell you where our last set of polling said, you know, in a two way matchup between Trump and Biden in February, Trump was at 48%.

[00:41:45] Biden was at 41%. 7 percent said someone else and 4 percent didn’t have an opinion yet. This is against unregistered voters. You are allowed to say you don’t have an opinion, this is not likely voters, no likely voters exist yet. When we tested a five way matchup, Trump’s support went from 48 percent to 45%, Biden’s went from 36%, so he lost a little bit more with RFK Jr.

[00:42:05] in the race at 6%, Cornel West at 3%, Jill Stein at 2%, and then interestingly enough, and I thought this was actually one of the more interesting things when I looked at this again, the don’t knows go up. So when you actually put in more choices, the share of people who said they weren’t sure actually increased, which I think is, you know, again, you know, the loss in support is not great for either candidate.

[00:42:23] The increase in the don’t know actually is not great for either candidate either, because it’s almost saying, well, actually, if you throw all those people in, maybe I need to look around a little bit is how I take that. But so that’s sort of is kind of where we stand right now. Um, you know, when we think about.

[00:42:36] Sort of looking, have been at, you know, again, because, because of the sort of, you know, because we’re pollsters, I guess, uh, we are, I just don’t love that term, but considering that, you know, a lot of people are asking right now about, you know, well, you know, how should we take the polls? What should we be looking for?

[00:42:48] What are you guys looking at? You know, what are you guys thinking? And a lot of times I think what they expect me to say, well, I’m looking at, you know, Hispanics between the ages of 18 and 28, you know, who live in a city. And it’s like, no, that’s not what we’re looking at right now. What I’m really thinking about is sort of the macro factors that are going to influence the contours of the election that ultimately both candidates are going to play in.

[00:43:06] And so one of those. is the economy and how feel people feel about it come the fall. I mean, one of the big things right now is that most economic indicators are pretty good. Inflation has been the worst of them has been relatively steady. Unemployment is kind of down, you know, the stock market is up and yet people’s attitudes about the economy remain deeply pessimistic.

[00:43:25] And part of that, I think everybody says, yeah, duh, prices, you know, it’s kind of weird. The question is, you know, again, from the political science standpoint is how do they feel in the fall? Yeah, when we get to the end of the summer, whenever people either went on vacation because they could afford the gas or not or whatever can afford the hotels and they come back and they think is the economy going in the wrong direction, the right direction.

[00:43:42] That’s a big, big contextual factor that influences the election. If it’s bad, it’s gonna be hard for Biden. If those views are on the uptick, it’s going to give him a better chance. You know, another big contextual factors and be the border. And that’s going to be how Biden does or does not address the issue or neutralize it as an issue.

[00:43:58] Now there’s, you could imagine, you know, when you say, how would he neutralize? Like, you know, look, if he comes back and kind of follows through on this and gets Republicans in the Congress to maybe pass a bipartisan border bill, like he’s kind of hammering them on, I’m not saying he’s going to neutralize the issue, but it’s going to take some of the sting out of it.

[00:44:12] Well, I think that, you know, and that’s less likely. Oh yeah. It’s going to take some of the sting out of it. Yeah. Right. And, you know, you know, making the calculation that, you know, they can absorb the democratic blowback. Mm hmm. It’s worth it to absorb the progressive democratic blowback on that. And you know, and, and, you know, their estimation of that.

[00:44:34] And again, that’s structural too. We don’t know what, you know, but we expect migration to increase in the spring and in the summer. Yeah, given previous patterns, a lot about the current migration is a little bit different than some of the, you know, past years, not the last couple of seasons, but certainly in the longer term.

[00:44:51] And that’s just, you know, well, undetermined. The only thing we know about that is that, you know, to my mind, no matter what, you know, Biden can do a lot. I mean, barring them getting something through Congress, which I just don’t think is going to happen. Um, You know, it’s just not going to go away and he’s they’re going to be subject to the vicissitudes of it Yeah, well, I would go even further.

[00:45:15] I don’t even think the actual numbers matter because I mean if I mean Let’s just play it out, right? I mean, let’s say, you know come september or you know, let’s say through the summer all of a sudden You know, the numbers are a hundred thousand less per month than they have been recently or they’re on a steady decline You know if biden goes around saying What we’re doing is working.

[00:45:33] My executive orders, whatever they were, are working. You know, the numbers are declining. Like, is that going to really change the dynamics of this? Is that going to lessen, you know, the Republican, number of Republicans talking about the border? No, it’s going to be an issue. It’s one of those things where, you know, we talk about, like, sometimes the voters tell us what the issues are.

[00:45:47] Sometimes the candidates kind of try to shape what the voters are thinking about and talking about. We know that Republicans are gonna be talking about this. It is part of the campaign landscape and environment, no matter what, no matter what the numbers are. Any success that the Biden people try to claim is going to be sort of pushed back on by, you know, one border governor in particular is already pushing back on that.

[00:46:07] And, you know, quickly, because we do want to get, you know, we don’t know what’s going to happen with abortion. I mean, that is a wild card and gun violence. Both of those are, You know, subject possibly to, you know, high profile events, exogenous shocks, you know, well, I, you know, in the case of gun violence, it is an exogenous shock to the system and when and how close it could be to an election.

[00:46:29] Yeah. I mean, and the details, you know, so the, you know, surprises things, you know, and, you know, All of these conditions really just, you know, play into other things, right, that are just in, you know, that are inherent in this race, you know, that, you know, our, you know, our colleague Darren Shaw was saying, I think in the podcast a few weeks ago.

[00:46:48] Or at least to us at lunch, I don’t remember which, but. Or maybe it was at lunch, but I, well, you know what, he talked about it in, in a panel we did together. Okay. That I may be confusing that with, you know, that fact that you kind of have two incumbents running against each other, which we haven’t seen.

[00:47:00] Yes. You know, certainly not in, in. Um, and then, you know, just the fact that we have two incumbents on one hand, neither of whom seem to be, you know, the pick of the litter for the voters, even though the process has produced them. Yeah. I mean, I think that’s probably more true about Biden than Trump, but I think the way I mean, instead of going in that direction, I’ll go in the opposite direction.

[00:47:30] Just say, you know, we know that there is some. Undetermined, but sort of small faction of discontented voters in both party with who their nominee, both parties, who their nominees are, and it’s probably stronger. I mean, that’s always the case, right? But we say because of this two incumbent thing, it’s probably stronger than we normally would expect it as opposed to a candidate who’s never run before.

[00:47:49] And it is going to be really interesting. I think both, you know, both just sort of as election watchers, but even especially in some ways as pollsters trying to figure out how we deal with essentially this sort of small share of voters in each party. Who are. Who just may not show up, but also how we figure out how to how to deal with that in a world in which negative partisanship is so intense and negative attitudes towards the other candidate are so intensely negative and so widespread, it’s sort of like, well, You know, you you don’t really want to vote for this guy, but you hate this guy.

[00:48:19] So what do you do? And that’s not really to me that you know That really gets to the most at least from a kind of you know Whatever political not even political science in terms of figuring out the zeitgeist of the amer of american politics right now That is the most interesting question Is like as much as we’re focused on these candidates.

[00:48:39] We know them. We’re fascinated by these crosscurrents within the parties You You know, in the end, might negative partisanship just overwhelm all that? Yeah, I mean, the other thing I, you know, I, we don’t know, but that’s, that’s a very interesting question. That’s interesting, because, you know, I mean, the question I just thought of sort of as we’re talking about this also is, you know, what impact, you know, let alone the sort of the election denialism and all that kind of stuff that’s going to go on and talk about fraud.

[00:49:04] But even setting that stuff aside, you know, what impact does an election like this have on people’s attitudes towards democracy? Yeah. You know, I mean, just ultimately, there’s not a lot of, it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of excitement flying around right now about this whole thing. And so ultimately, you know, you can say, yeah, we like having choices.

[00:49:18] Like, well, what if you don’t really like the choices? Yeah. I mean, I, you know, there is, I’ll probably bring it up next in the next podcast. There’s a good piece on the New Yorker that is a new March 27th, I think is when it was published. Um, that is a review of a book on the question of how we consider.

[00:49:38] debate that arose with Trump over fascism in the United States. Yes. You know, yes or no, should we use the word it’s called something like Trump. I think the article is called Trump in the F word. Nice. You know, and I’ll, I’ll link to it in the, when we post the podcast. I’m jealous. That really, that really, I know.

[00:49:54] Usually titles are so bad. That really, um, Kind of puts a, you know, sheds a lot of light on like the currents in this it kind of parses out left and right and you know how people are viewing and and You know just how to rationally approach this discussion about threats to democracy, the language we use, what the implications are, what the political tactics around it are.

[00:50:22] And I think, you know, when you put the, you know, raise the democracy issue, it was a good piece. And again, forgive me for being a poor correspondent. I shouldn’t have mentioned it without being able to remember the article or the author. But, you know, that issue is just, out there. And it’s the meta issue of not only the thing itself, but how we talk about it and the implications of it.

[00:50:43] I haven’t read, I haven’t read the article, but I mean, you can see this already happening where, you know, the idea that like threats to democracy is a quote unquote democratic issue. It’s like they want to talk about, but the reality is, is that this is already morphing into a situation where I think a lot of people on the right are looking and saying, well, in Democrats attempt to quote unquote, save democracy, they’re essentially killing democracy?

[00:51:02] Well, and one of the things that really that this gets teased out in the piece that I think is, you know, one of the is the kind of slightly more from within the top from the left, the kind of within the left critique that says, you know, when you really play up the fact Trump, you know, maybe we should use the F word or maybe not.

[00:51:24] And that Trump is really threatening democracy, that it downplays the dynamics prior to trump’s rise in the political system that were already signs of stress and a democracy that maybe kind of was already not functioning and it would one of the things that made the article it reminded me of discussions we’ve had and a couple things we’ve written about You know, it remind me of the, you know, the sort of theme of Texas was Trumpy before Trump.

[00:51:52] And what do we really make of that and how, you know, that affects how we talk about this. So, okay, I’ve just paused to get out my phone because I felt bad about not citing the author. Uh, that article is called why we can’t stop arguing about whether Trump is a fascist. It’s by Andrew Marantz. It’s in the March 27th, 2024 edition of the New Yorker.

[00:52:18] And the book that, uh, is being reviewed that is the point of departure for this piece is called, did it happen here? Perspectives on fascism in America. Did it happen here? Perspectives on fascism and America published by Norton, right? So with that, um, you will find, if you listen to this podcast on one of the platforms, you will also find a link to the podcast at texaspolitics.

[00:52:46] utexas. edu. I’ll provide author and citation and link for the New Yorker article, uh, we’ll link to the bucket of polling data that we’ve talked about today and, you know, whatever else we think seems, seems valuable, seems valuable or useful. So again, um, that’s texaspolitics. utexas. edu. With that, thanks to Josh for being here.

[00:53:09] Thanks again to the excellent production team in the dev studio in the College of Liberal Arts here at the University of Texas at Austin. Uh, and most of all, thanks to you for listening and we’ll be back soon with another Second Reading podcast.

[00:53:28] The Second Reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.