March 9, 2021 – Second Reading

[0:00:00 Speaker 0] welcome to the second reading podcast from the University of Texas at Austin. The Republicans were in the Democratic Party because there was only one party. So I tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the Constitution. They have become the norm. At what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room? And welcome back to the second reading podcast for the week of March 8th 2021. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, joined again today by Josh Blank, who is research director for the very same Texas politics project. On the front burner today, we have not. For the first time, Immigration and Border Security Governor Abbott was in mission today did a one of numerous press events he’s done, and maybe we’ll touch on perhaps some of the rationale for doing multiple events around the state a little later in the podcast. But I thought today, with immigration and border security on the front line for a couple of years, Josh and I would talk a little bit about all of this. And Josh, we’ve been I’ve been writing something that should come out pretty soon. Should we get the time to actually finish it on immigration and border security and its perennial presence on the UT Texas Tribune poll? And in a way, I don’t want to overstate the degree to which this is true, the Covid pandemic. I don’t know what the right verb is, and I think we’ve crossed it out in different ways. And the beasts were writing masked, sublimated, you know, suppressed the prominence of immigration and border security in the ways that it shows up in the poll, particularly the salience items. But it’s kind of on the way back, it seems to me, right? Yeah, that is. I mean, it’s interesting. That is a tough verb to choose. I mean, as I said, Can you suppress a preoccupation? You know, and I mean, that’s really kind of I think Freud would say, that’s the basis of Western civilization. Well, okay, this is getting beyond my expertise. Let’s bring it back to immigration. But I mean, that’s right. So I mean, you know, I think the thing that I think people should know as a starting point here is that immigration and border security have been continued to and remain a priority issue in Texas and in particular among Republicans. And to the extent you know, that’s an interesting way you set that up. I mean, to the extent that Covid has mask that, I think what it’s done is, you know, it’s it’s probably taken up. You know, most of, uh, I don’t want to say Just have a bad now And I want to say it’s taking up most of the oxygen, but it’s taking up a lot of the bandwidth of most press coverage, really of everything. I mean, you know, covid and its economic impact. Uh, you know, gender dynamics, racial dynamics, you know, the hospital system, etcetera, etcetera. There’s a covid impact on schools on prisons, on policing, so it’s sort of hard not to talk about Covid. It’s even harder to talk about covid in the immigration space, I think I mean, even prior to sort of the most recent influx of migrants, there was sort of there was talk in the last you know last year or so about you know, what about immigrants in detention facilities? What’s going on there to make sure that these aren’t, you know, going out? But again, that’s just it could have been anywhere else. But the subtext of all this is the fact that immigration border security remained throughout the last year of the pandemic is a priority issue for Republicans. It’s been I mean, you know, you know, it’s funny. I mean, I think when we talk about this, you know, in a lot of ways, as you were talking about it, we sort of migrated immediately to media coverage, which gets to the, you know, the underlying you know, some of the underlying theories of public opinion and what shapes it and elite cues and media cues. And I guess it’s, you know, it’s funny. You can kind of talk about it being, you know, when you talk about it being masked, I think it lends itself to framing it in conceptualizing it in terms of the media coverage and elite discussion. And, you know, I think you’re right to point out that a lot of the covid coverage in which everybody you know media outlets have understandably and justifiably kind of flooded. The zone lends itself to, you know, the coverage. Two stories and two news stories and coverage about COVID and X Y Z and immigration and border security have entered into that. But then there’s also the more cognitive, attitudinal sort of piece of this, you know, which you then I think you were getting too, which is where it shows up in the polling right and how it appears and disappears and what the functions. You know, where that comes from, right when you say appears and disappears, you mean in the polling or yeah, okay. In our measurements of that attitudinal cognitive space or the best measure speaking Buster, Well, it’s funny. I mean, you know, just like, you know, draw the curtain back for a second. I mean, as a public pollster in Texas is regularly assessing attitudes. I mean, we essentially have to have a conversation on almost every single public poll about whether and what immigration items we are going to include on this pole. Because ultimately, really, you can’t go that long without it coming up. I mean, as the current discussion makes clear now, there’s reasons it’s come up again. There’s, you know, huge crush of especially unaccompanied minors, uh, straining the border immigration system at the border right now. And that is a real policy issue that is, you know, is salient. But the reality is, is it doesn’t wanna say it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t really, But it doesn’t. It doesn’t really matter in time whether immigration is up or immigration is down. Uh, it doesn’t really matter whether the state just spent a bunch of money on border security or the federal government has spent a bunch of border security or not. It still remains an issue. So I mean the poll we just release, you know, taken In February, 23% of Texans said the covid was the most important issue facing Texas. 25% of Texans said it was immigration or border security combined, so ultimately, it’s, you know, if you just take a step back, even just looking at Texas as a whole, you know, this is an issue that is competing, is competitive for attention, with covid as the most important issue facing the state, and that’s that’s the starting point. To understand this, I think, and then the next piece is that it’s driven overwhelmingly by Republicans. So you know, we’ll you know we’ll. Basically 13% of Republicans say that Covid is the most important issues facing the state. 46% say it’s immigration or border security, So nearly half of Republicans say this is the issue. This is the issue that the state needs to deal with, and this is true pretty much all the time. I mean, that’s sort of the interesting thing. It didn’t matter when Obama was Obama’s president. He’s apparently not dealing with immigration effectively enough. It’s the most important issue. Donald Trump becomes president and he’s going after the issue repeatedly. It’s still the most important issue. Yes, the context changes a little, and yet that the salience remains remarkably persistent. And then So you know. And I don’t I don’t have all the data right in front of me, but it you know, my memory. Is that the high point of the Republican science of immigration prior to Covid, You know it’s routinely when we when we break out that the numbers you just talked about, you know it’s routinely in the low to mid fifties. I think the high point might, you know, it may have hit 60. Yeah, around one of the one of the during one of the crisis. But it dropped, you know, I think it dropped down into the thirties at the height of the pandemic. Maybe early on, very, you know, I think probably April in June, it ticked down among Republicans, and so, you know, it’s hard, you know, And then we’ll have to, you know, it’s probably pretty So graphic on this at some point, and it was thinking about this morning. Yeah. I mean, it looks like, you know, if we’re up at 46 right now, given what’s going on in the news and going on in the world, you know, we’re on the way back. And so let’s talk a little bit, then about, you know, the politics of this. So Greg Abbott was in mission this morning. So what? We decided Mission Texas in mission Texas, you know, did one of a series of recent media availabilities in which he talked about things other than the recent blackouts, or and other than covid, for that matter, unless he was ending the shutdown order and masking, which was, you know, the big event last week, which we talked about in the podcast Mission accomplished. But he had a lot of surrounding actors from, I believe, from GPS from the Border Patrol, underlining the degree to which this is a crisis in which Texas is responding and and this comes amidst, you know, a certain amount of criticism, which I’m sure that they think is unfair. That the abbot team thinks is unfair, that the governor is engaging in at best redirection at worst misdirection in the wake of other crises in the state. I mean, I think it was in the Houston product. I think it was. The Houston Chronicle ran a, you know, kind of a big think piece that was organized around the fact that there were plenty of people willing to say this. Now one can think that’s true, you know, but also realized that stories like that are largely built on messaging from the governor’s political opponents. Yeah, that’s right, one. I think you know when you’re mentioning whether it’s it’s redirection, you know or not. I mean, one of the things I think you know in terms of discussing like, I don’t think there’s a It’s not just about the fact that text that you know the governor is showing that Texas is responding to this. You know what is clearly a crisis, but again, a perpetual crisis. Just to set that aside, I mean both in people’s perception and also in terms of, you know, dealing with the spring surges of migrants who come to the border and our inability to deal with it. So first of all, Texas responded to, but the other big message there is, and the federal government is not right, and so you know that that’s exactly right. So the governor, the governor spent a lot of time to your point in You know what I saw at the press conference today, which was most though not all of it placing the blame for this at the, you know, squarely at the feet of the Biden administration. Now I think a month and a half into the job, just like you know, we’ve been saying, you know, for weeks that we should anticipate this, you know, not for months. And you know, it’s it’s arrived in full force, and by this I mean the use of the federal government is a foil and divided administration as a foil for problems are being experienced at the state level. Um, but, you know, the messaging from the governor was was pretty direct and, you know, hit multiple points. I mean, he blamed the you know, you were talking about the regularity of the spring surge, but he blamed the magnitude of the surge, you know, quote unquote because of the new policies of the Biden administration. Now you know there’s a grain of truth in that I mean there, you know, to the extent that you know, there seems to be ample evidence that you know, potential migrants, you know, get word of what’s happening in the United States, and the flows are to some degree, influenced by what you know, we used to call pull factors in in immigration. That is things about what’s going on in the United States, that that increase the flow of migrants or immigrants from from origin countries. And it does seem like that is the fact and that the Bush administration sent clear signals that they were not going to be as restrictive, and we’re going to engage in more, you know, humanitarian policies, then the trump administration. And there does seem to be evidence that the flows of of folks you know are increasing, and we can see those numbers. And and the governor made a point of of providing data. I’ve not confirmed this. Uh, he said that there were, You know, there have been He said somebody showed him data today while he was at the border just to give context. Yeah, that said that there were 100 and 8000. There’s been 100 and 8000 migrants of, you know this year after, and I think I’m not sure those are apprehensions or detentions after only 90 plus 90 odd 1000 in the entirety of last year. Now we’ll see if those numbers hold up in some back checking. But I think the broad situation is true. There is a big influx of people brewing, and it is it is a problem for the Biden administration having having had Democrats through the duration of the Trump administration. Criticized how the Trump administration handled this problem, including, you know, the inhumane policies at the border, including separation of families. Um, the bite administration now has to handle the problem. It does raise the issue that this was a problem for the Obama administration. As some of the as you know, some defenders of the Trump administration pointed out that, you know, and again, there was some redirection here but again, something to it that it’s not as if the Obama administration solved this problem and then the Trump administration had arrived and screwed it up. Well, I think you know, but that’s that’s like, I mean, this is sort of unimportant for this conversation, but I just feel like saying it. Anyone saying it anyway, I’m gonna say it anyway, which is, you know, this is the difficulty. I mean, this is one of the difficulties with this issue, right? Is that it is kind of, you know, I can make analogies make it straightforward, which is there’s a certain amount of migrant flow that’s going to happen no matter what, period, right? That’s just because of the fact that you know their structural factors in the country. People are coming from in the United States that have nothing to do with immigration policy or who isn’t. You know which administration is in place. They’re going to draw some baseline number of people to this country, every cycle, every year, whatever it could change based on, you know, basically conditions in their own country. But ultimately, like I would guess. And again, I’m not an expert in the area, so I’m just making a guess. But I’m pretty certain about this. Guess that the vast majority of the flow is that fixed flow ultimately do these signals of the administration’s whether they’re going to be extremely punitive or less punitive have impacts on on those flows, Sure, but for the most part it’s probably not again, really a reflection of the main problem, which is that you know, we have a broken immigration system that doesn’t have any way to deal with this. So as we talk about federal issues, the other piece here, you know, in terms of what the governor had to say is that he was pretty critical. You know, there’s this whole issue that the the governor raised in in. I think it’s being charitable to say they were alarmist tones last week because they were beyond alarmist that, you know, there were, you know, people that have been released after being detained that, you know then tested positive for covid. And so now there’s there’s been this sort of side show, or this new point of conflict between the Bible administration and and the abbot administration about who is going to pay for an administer covid testing man, I got to say, when you describe that you get to the end goal right there, right? I mean, if you think about it now, you know you’ve got Greg Abbott, governor of the largest Republicans, saying the country standing up to the new Biden administration in the first month on what issue? Immigration is an issue that we’ve that we’ve described as you know, you know, I mean, one of the things that I always think about. We talked about Donald Trump. You know, when when there’s sort of more more uncertainty about whether he would gain the nomination, you know whether he could even go on to be a viable candidate for the Republican Party. One of the things that was notable was his focus on immigration, because we said at the time, we’ll say still, this is one of the few issues that really can unify Republicans of all stripes. And so at the moment when everybody’s talking about the divisions within the Republican Party, the fact that Abbott is making such a show of going out, talking about the issue that unites Republicans and casting it as casting himself, really, in a lot of ways, as standing up against the Biden administration, it’s a pretty good look for the governor, especially amongst his voters, right? And so you know, the politics of that or the rhetoric that surrounds that is pretty familiar. You know, the governor was made the point that immigration is a federal government responsibility, although hold that thought. And you know, as a result of that that they should fund whoever does the testing. And then, you know, he made an interesting rhetorical play there by saying that you know the government, you know, the Biden administration was avoiding having ice do that. And then, you know that then raises the notion that the bite administration is going to be against enforcement, that they’re going to be hostile towards ice, which is the enforcement arm for for these policies. And so there was, You know, there’s a there’s an effort to set a very familiar partisan frame and the way that you’re talking about. But the reason I said put a pin on that because one of the other themes that the governor pursued at the press conference and that, you know, unless I’m wrong, you know, the D. P you know, the DPS spokesperson there and and others at the press conference were quick to underline is that the Legislature, the Texas Legislature, has been very proactive and generous in funding the border security programs. So DPS representative made sure to talk about how one of the aircraft and some of the vehicles they have that they’re using to more effectively quote unquote secure the border. And they had a couple of props there in the background, I’m sure, accidentally in the camera shot, you know, have been paid for, you know, very, with a generous and an attentive funding of the Legislature. Um, and Governor Abbott jumped in and basically reiterated the points, you know, in the way that he clearly wanted to reinforce, which is that, you know, he he made the point that it’s, you know, it’s been very important to the Legislature has provided $800 million in funding for the last. You know, I think he said the last few sessions and that this has been critical to the fight. Well, obviously appropriations hearings are going on right now. The Legislature is working on the budget, and it was just last week. I believe that in a Senate appropriations hearing, one of the committee members made it clear that you know that budget appropriation was not going to be reduced. Now, this is interesting, because in fact, DPS tried to get an increase in that budget two sessions ago and basically got pushed back by the Legislature when they hit what you know, what seemed to me to be the magic symbolic mark of asking the Legislature for a trillion dollars? There’s a billion. I’m sorry for a billion dollars to pass the 800 million to a billion point. And, you know, it kind of opened it up for even some Republicans to say, you know, you’re asking for a billion dollars and you know you’re not really showing us, you know. What we’re seeing is not a huge increase in border enforcement, but an increase in things like traffic citations in the border regions. And so you know, I mean, I think there’s an interesting balance here between using the federal government and the, you know, national Democrats as a foil and the way you’re talking about. But the fact that the legislative game and the budget process is very much a foot right now and at the same time that the Texas state government wants to accuse the federal government of not fulfilling their responsibilities, they also want to justify continued border spending. Now, those two it That’s actually an easier play now that there’s a Democratic administration than their than it was when there was a Republican in the White House. But the messaging, you know, you have you have two ideas. Intention, right? You know, very close tension right there when you’re, you know, saying in one breath that this is the federal government should be taken care of all of this. But don’t reduce our appropriations in the middle of the of the Legislature making those kinds of decisions right now. Well, the interesting thing is, there’s such clear context for this in the polling data. So, you know, again, the poll we just released were really interesting kind of setting the table for the legislative session before we because at this point we don’t really know what the specific legislation that they’re going to look at is in a range of areas. So one of the things we did was we asked about spending. And I think nine different areas so included areas like K through 12, public education, mental health services, health insurance for the uninsured. Uh, you know, prisons in the penal system trying to think you know what else was in there but one of the other things and there was border security. And what’s interesting among these nine things that we asked about it. And despite the history that your outline here, which is a couple sessions ago, DPS came and said, Hey, can we get like, another 8 $900 million for the border? And they said, Yeah, let’s do it And we tested that at the time, very popular among Republicans, not among Democrats. But they’ve continued to do this. Having said that, we asked people, you know, does The Texas State government has spent too much too little or the right amount in all of these areas, and unsurprisingly, Republicans, conservatives only said did not say that the Texas was spending too little in any area except border security. So borders the only thing move the needle. Only the movie Neil. 61% of Republicans say this. They, despite this again almost billion dollar investment that they’ve committed to over the last few sessions, is spending too little on border security. Less than a majority would say that about every other subject. And what’s interesting about that? There’s sort of two takeaways to that from my perspective, and one takeaway is, you know, this is why, again, the politics of this are good talking about spending, even if even if it is a federal issue, even if Texas is a conservative state that balances its budget, this is a desire amongst Republican voters to make sure the state is spending enough money on board security. That’s one interpretation. The other interpretation here. It doesn’t seem to matter how much money they spend on board security. Maybe if they spent a billion dollars and there are some headlines and said state spending a billion dollars on border security, you might get a little bit of pushback. But at least as of right now. And despite the massive investments the state has made in this again, this federal responsibility of border security setting blame aside, Republican voters don’t seem to necessarily be saying, Yeah, we’ve done enough. And this isn’t to say we haven’t seen this in other places. You know, A few sessions ago, there was movement on gun laws we tested, you know, voters before the session on whether gun laws being made more or less strict before the session, they wanted less strict, including Republicans. After the session, bunch of activity had open carry that kind of share Republic versus want laws, less strict, significantly declined. It reflected the policy here. We’re not seeing that. I think that’s partially because it’s such a I mean, first, it’s just a persistent and Cillian topic. But it’s also just kind of chord of what it means to be a Republican, at least as far as I can tell. In all the polling data we look at. Yeah, I mean, you know, this is gonna be a little reductionist when I first say it, but I will. I will qualify this. But you know, we wrote a piece in I believe the fall of 2015 about the surge of nativism defining the Republican Party in the run as as Donald Trump’s campaign was developing. And we were really looking and very in a lot of ways at the rise of this in Texas in the trends that we’re now talking about, that were already apparent between 2010 and if not a little earlier, but certainly between 2010 and 2015. I think there is an interesting dynamic here in which, in practical terms, as you said earlier, immigration and border security under most circumstances are great unifier IRS for Republicans. But it was that way before Trump. It was that way during Trump. We’re now seeing that it’s that way, at least post Trump presidency. We can’t push Trump completely out of the picture because he will not allow that per se. But you know, and I think in the current context something that you know, which is very different than 2015 and a couple of key ways is that one of the other big pillars of Republican identity and ideology and we talked about this and and public image, and even though I hate to say it Republican branding is both on one hand. Immigration, border security, cultural identity. On the other hand, it’s pro business, good stewards of the political economy in Texas that we call the Texas model. The push for this at the moment to go back to the redirection point does seem to be part of a real concern that much of the public coverage and much of the outside view of Texas for the last month or two, if not a little longer. But certainly in the last month after the winter storm and the outages has been WTF is going on in Texas that they’re having a winner. So I mean, I mean, I was talking to somebody connected with the international business community just this morning who made it very clear that from the perspective of outside, that’s really what people were wondering. If you’re from a part of the world and you’re thinking of investing in Texas and you’re from a part of the world that’s above the tropics that deals with cold weather every year, you look at what happened in the last month and you’re sort of scratching your head about the fact that hospitals in one of the major cities in the state of the major city in the state in Houston, ran out of water. I think that got, you know, that got subsumed in a lot of things for us on the ground here. I wouldn’t underestimate the degree in which that is playing very large in the national I, in which I think the abbot administration and and the leadership in the state are pretty painfully aware of that. And so I think that there is a real powerful desire to direct attention away from that while the Legislature is grappling with this and along those lines. I mean, it’s been an interesting morning in Texas communication because we saw the governor do this press conference and send the kind of message is we’re talking about and direct attention to the failure of the federal government. And this is their responsibility trying to do that not only on immigration and border security, but with this whole thing about testing at the intersection. Ironically, of the pandemic and border security well over in the capital, Speaker of the House stayed feeling was on statewide radio this morning on the Texas Standard, the state NPR show produced here in Austin, gave a live interview for the Texas Standard, in which, you know, when asked about how the state was going to pay for the response to the power outages he flagged, it was going to be expensive. And you know this credit talked about some of the policy responses that he’s been promoting this week, including kind of a financial fund based on the on the the model of of water infrastructure that was implemented 78 years ago. But when asked how he was going to pay for it said two things very powerfully floating a trial balloon about using the rainy day fund, which I think, well, you know, we can just all assume now it’s probably going to happen. But second, what was the other source of funds? Federal money Through the Cares Act. So there’s this continual kind of balancing of, you know, playing the different polarities and different valances of Texas’s relationship with the federal government that I think is just fascinating. And look, I don’t I don’t want to, you know? I mean, it’s not that it’s some do particularly Democrats, and one might in some circumstances call this just based hypocrisy and move on. But I do think it is more complicated than that, and it can come off that way. But the structure of the budget and the structure of federalism in the United States and Texas is placed in it is not going away. You know, another layer on that that I was thinking about as you were talking about it is, you know, at a moment when both nationally and internationally you know people are looking at Texas with, you know, some derision. You know, you could say more division than usual, whatever you want it to be. But there’s a narrative about how you know, at least nationally, I know the narrative has been How could you know this? You know, this muscular, energy rich state that’s so certain of itself, like Texas have this. You know, this problem that we expect to see in, you know, developing countries, not even in the United States, let alone in a place like Texas, right. And that’s the narrative, right? That’s a problem genuineness and some of that criticism. But But that’s not like it’s not earned, and I want, and that’s the thing I 100% degree. There is a certain amount of there’s a certain amount of shopping for a certain amount of like, you know, again, I didn’t grow up in Texas. I know what people outside of Texas think about Texas. There’s a certain amount of that definitely going on here. The fact that there’s sort of an international side of this, too, and especially with respect to, you know, sort of businesses and all that kind of stuff, like that’s all problematic. But what I think another interesting layer in this and thinking about the turn back to immigration and border security on the one hand, clearly contrary imposed to the to the federal government on the other is it’s sort of It’s a return to insularity, right? It’s a turn. It’s a return in some ways, to us against everybody else, and you draw a line around the Texas border and say, You’re on this side of the line or you’re on that side of the line and right now it’s much more of a discussion. I think you know, and I think that’s something you talk about brandy, but I think about this. You can say this is all disingenuous. I think a lot of Democrats will say this is purely Abbott trying to distract from again the storm distract from covid etcetera. But I also say, you know, I feel like I’m always on here trying to give the governor the head of the doubt, and I’m just, you know, just try to give you the benefit for the doubt, to some extent. But you look at these attitudes. This is what his Republican voters want right again, you know, 46% that immigration border secure most important interface in Texas on an open ended 24% brought up immigration or border security is the most important issue that the Texas Legislature should take on. That’s twice the share that said Covid. 72% of Republicans say that undocumented immigrants currently living in the U. S. There’s more than 10 million more than 1.5 million in Texas should be deported immediately. 40% agree with that strongly, uh, 75% of Republicans only 25% of Republicans in the states Increasing racial and ethnic diversity is a cause for optimism. 75% either said it was a cause for concern or they’re not sure the one area where this gets complicated, and I’m sure we should wrap this up soon. But the one area where this does get complicated is if the current serves that we’re talking about is primarily made up of Children. And that seems to be really what we’re talking about here is is these. You have to do it the way that we handle Children when they cross the border, but also our ability even to house them all. Once you start talking about Children in immigration, it does soften GOP responses. We saw that with the child separation crisis over, I guess that was two summers ago now, 2017 to 3 summers ago. But also, you know, when we ask about DACA, the program that allows, you know, people brought here as Children, through no fault of their own, have gone to college or, you know, on the military and basically can get citizenship, you know, we ask about whether that program should be continued to enter. The share of Republicans say that should be continued continues to increase. The share who say it should be ended continues to decline. So when we talk about Children, it can get a little bit complicated. That’s kind of what I’m interested to see, what the next step of this is, because again, there’s a natural punitive response in a national prohibitionist response. But if we’re talking about thousands of kids with no parents sitting in Texas, whether they’re Texans or not, it’s going to get a little bit more complicated to just go out and say, You know, we need to get everybody out of here. Well, I think that’s right. But I think and I think the governor telegraphed in his appearance today what direction they’re going to go with. That, and part of it is a play that we’ve seen before at the national level. Which is to say that the presence of Children is not necessarily about families, that we’re seeing more Children. We’re seeing more unaccompanied Children and that this is a function of insufficient attention to the cartels and criminal smuggling of Children. It’s not about Children is the answer. And well, when I was doing what I was gonna say, what I was gonna say is that it’s you can subsume this into the idea that this is a policy failure by the Biden administration that the bite administration sent these signals. Everybody thinks it’s It’s, you know, the border is quote unquote open now. And so it’s the Biden administration’s fault that this is happening to Children, and they’re not taking care of the Children once they’re here. Texas State Government The Republican leadership was hamstrung. ER couldn’t deploy that argument during the Trump administration during the family situation. And during that humanitarian crisis, they will be able to deploy that this time the governor laid the predicate for it today, and we can expect to see much more of that, unfortunately, because it is going to be a significant policy problem and a humanitarian crisis on the border again. The national coverage has said that were that the Obama administration is sort of desperately now searching for two to open facilities and find places to house them. These are not going to be probably significantly more humanitarian than the ones that we saw during the Trump administration, at least based on the indications we’re seeing so far. That’s gonna be the challenge for the for the Biden administration going forward, Um, and this time, unlike when that challenges being faced by the previous administration. They’ll be doing it under a barrage of withering criticism by Texas Republicans, who were much less critical about this situation as it unfolded during the Trump administration. So we will continue to watch. That will, of course, have more polling on this as this unfolds. Jim Henson here thanks to Josh Blank for being here today, thanks to the folks in the liberal arts development studio in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. For, as usual technical and production support be well out there, you can find much of the data we talked about at the Texas Politics Project website Texas politics dot utexas dot e d u. Thanks for listening, and we will talk to you next week. The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.