May 9th, 2023 – Guns & the border again loom large in the final weeks of the Texas Legislature 

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to the second reading podcast from the University of Texas at Austin. The Republicans were in the Democratic Party because there was only one party. Sir, 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?

[00:00:24] Intro: Point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room?

[00:00:34] Jim Henson: And welcome back to the second Reading podcast. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. Happy to be joining in today by Josh Blank, research Director of the Texas Politics Project. Good morning, Josh. Good morning. Well, we sit here. With less than three weeks ago at the end of this legislative session.

[00:00:56] Jim Henson: Fresh poll out last week. Lots going on. We met with Darren Shaw last week, uh, for the podcast. Talked about some aspects of the poll, as is often the case with Darren. We leveraged his interest in and expertise mm-hmm. In national politics and particularly 2024. We wanna return to the poll results as a pointed departure again this week, but I.

[00:01:19] Jim Henson: You know, I think it makes sense for us to focus on two issues that are very much in the news in Texas in the last few days. Um, You know, neither of which are especially pegged to good news. Uh, and, and these are issues that are likely to continue to, to be front and center in the next few weeks. One is gun safety and gun safety legislation and, and, Interesting turn that that’s taken in the last few days.

[00:01:45] Jim Henson: I, in the Texas legislature, which we’ll talk about, and the perennial issue of the border as, um, we look at, uh, the ending of the Title 42 program, coinciding seems to me, with the expected seasonal surgeon in migrant traffic at the border. So we have pulling data on both of those. So let’s, let’s just jump in, um, now, uh, so we’ll start with guns.

[00:02:10] Jim Henson: Uh, It’s been another terrible couple of weeks of gun violence in Texas. Mm-hmm. You know, I don’t know how many times we’ve started the podcast with that particular phrase, but such as it is a little over a week ago, man in Cleveland, Texas, shot and killed a family of five that precipitated a several day manhunt, uh, suspect is now in custody, but that, you know, generated tons of national news and attention in the state.

[00:02:37] Jim Henson: And, you know, we might circle back to that also wound up intersecting, at least briefly. Yeah. With the issue of immigration. Right. And then this past weekend, of course, nine people, uh, were killed. Several other injured, several others injured in a mass shooting at an Allen, Texas mall. That was over this past weekend.

[00:02:54] Jim Henson: We’re recording on Tuesday morning. Now that was all punctuated yesterday. Were they, you know, I think it’s fair to say, somewhat unexpected turn of events, uh, in the house. Select Committee on Community Safety, which moved Representative King’s HB 27 44 out of committee on an eight to five vote. And that’s the bill written, I think, in close cooperation in, uh, with the survivors of the Uvalde Massacre and, uh, in mind.

[00:03:24] Jim Henson: And, and this is a bill that would raise the age to purchase or own certain kinds of semi-automatic style weapons. From 18 to 21. Um, and, and that is a bill I, I, you know, before we get into it, that I would add is pretty carefully and narrowly crafted. Extremely, you know, representative King I think took a lot of input and is a, you know, pretty accomplished legislator and wrote that bill.

[00:03:50] Jim Henson: With important carve outs for veterans, for example. Mm-hmm. And with a pretty narrow scope on what kind of weapons you would be Right. Limiting access to, or, you know, raising the agent Right of, of legal access to now. In the interim between us, thi this, this shooting happened in the interim between us releasing the poll and or collecting the data and releasing the poll and, and this discussion now.

[00:04:16] Jim Henson: And in the interim, one of the things that got the most attention in last week’s poll were a couple of items that we had on raising the age of legal access and red flag laws, right?

[00:04:25] Josh Blank: Yeah, I think I should flag cause you, you just sort of made a point implicitly, I’ll make it explicitly too that we collected this data before this most sort of recent spade of shootings.

[00:04:32] Josh Blank: You know, I think the Cleveland, uh, mass shooting had occurred while we were in the field. Yeah. But we’ll kind of talk about this. We wouldn’t necessarily suspect that to influence the results that much, to be quite honest. Um, but the, uh, the mass shooting in AX definitely happened after we were in the field.

[00:04:49] Josh Blank: So what we found, you know, we didn’t, we didn’t. Pull a ton of, you know, gun control measures because honestly they’re not really, uh, you know, in on the agenda for the most part. I mean, that’s sort what you’re saying. You certainly

[00:04:59] Jim Henson: didn’t seem that way when we were writing questions.

[00:05:01] Josh Blank: No, and the reason that we asked them was simply, you know, I mean, in a lot of ways for sort of two kind of combined reasons.

[00:05:05] Josh Blank: One, you know, it’s still the first session after the Uvalde mass shooting, and this was one of the main, you know, it’s certainly raising the age of to purchase a, a firearm was one of the main proposals that came out in response, uh, to that tragedy. But also in addition to. You know, I think measuring responses to a bunch of, sort of the, the legislative agenda as laid out by the G O P majority, we also wanted to touch it based on some of a few of the major issues that Democrats have been pushing this session, even if we don’t expect them to move

[00:05:31] Jim Henson: very much.

[00:05:31] Jim Henson: Right, right. And broadly speaking, we’re not even broadly speaking and, and gun safety, gun violence. If you combine that also with school safety, an issue really triggered by really are, you know, issues that are very ENT to Democrats.

[00:05:43] Josh Blank: Exactly. So what did we find? So, so first and foremost, you know, we found, uh, three quarters of VO voters support raising the age collegially purchased.

[00:05:51] Josh Blank: Any firearm, so not even these sort of specific car abouts that we’re talking about. That’s how we phrased the

[00:05:54] Jim Henson: question as kind of a catchall, right?

[00:05:56] Josh Blank: Any firearm from 18 to 21 years of age. So again, 76% of Texas voters, 91% of Democrats, but also 64% of Republicans, so about two thirds of Republicans, 82% of independents.

[00:06:08] Josh Blank: Another item we asked about was sort of the concept of of a red flag law, which we talk about in terms of allowing courts to require a person who’s determined to be arrested themselves or others to. Temporarily surrendered guns in their possession. This was supported by similar large share of Texas voters, 72%, 88% of Democrats, 64% of Republicans, uh, and 57% of in independents.

[00:06:31] Josh Blank: And so that was sort of the big kind of, you know, Check in. I mean, in some ways, you know, it’s interesting because this, these results, you know, ended up receiving a lot of attention in, in the press. Having said that, they’re not really new results for us. Right. These aren’t even really big shifts in terms of the numbers.

[00:06:45] Josh Blank: In fact, they’re not really shifts in terms of the sh, you know, share of voters who support these kinds of re, you know, proposals as we’ve tested over time. Yeah. I mean, I

[00:06:52] Jim Henson: think that’s one of the interesting, you know, I mean, I. You know, I’ve gone, you know, we’ve both done this and we’ve gone back and we’ve looked at the trend here and it is interesting, I mean, how you judge the movement among Republicans, because on one hand, you know, I’m pretty sure that every time we’ve looked and, you know, we’ve, we’ve written about this, it’s not as if.

[00:07:16] Jim Henson: Every time there’s a shooting, we see a definite corresponding shift in favor of more no, you know, gun control, right. To use the old school term or gun safety measures, et cetera. Um, that said, you know, in going back, I w I was talking to a reporter over the weekend and went back and looked at, you know, the item on gun safety that will mm-hmm.

[00:07:40] Jim Henson: Or. Not gun safety. The item on whether more guns make, you know, people think more guns make people more or less safe. Right, right. Or make the, the country more or less safe, you know? And there is a. You know, how should I put this? A noticeable, if not determinative shift in Republican attitudes.

[00:07:59] Josh Blank: Yeah. You know, I mean, we’ve written about this before and there’s some, you know, I mean, I like to, you know, pat ourselves on the back, whatever, but there’s some good stuff on the Texas Politics Project website that really kind of goes through gun attitude and, and, and lays out the case for why a particular mass shooting doesn’t necessarily.

[00:08:14] Josh Blank: You know, uh, lead to big shifts in public opinion. Right? And, and the, and the result you’re pointing to, I think is one of the key results that we found over time, which is that, you know, underlying, I think, widespread acceptance for nibbling around the edges of legal gun ownership. And again, you’re, you’re not talking about taking away legal gun ownership.

[00:08:30] Josh Blank: In those case, you’re talking about adding in some additional hurdles, some safety, some checks, and just like, you know, I mean, it’s a weird con, you know, I just can’t help but compare to this. You know, if you think about years, if not decades of. The right nibbling around abortion exceptions saying, well, we can just kind of, well, can’t we have a two day waiting period?

[00:08:48] Josh Blank: You know, can’t we just, if, and, and the truth is, if you look at public opinion data, generally you do find, you know, around these sort of, you know what people, politicians colloquially call, you know, common sense legislation or well, surely common sense X, yes. Yeah, sure. Surely we should all agree X And you’d see that around abortion.

[00:09:05] Josh Blank: You’d see in the data, you know, you wouldn’t see a huge amount of democratic opposition to say, An extra day waiting period or to notifying parents or things like that. And I think the same thing is true with Republicans with respect to a lot of these gun laws, just like an abortion. There’s sort of a core underlying.

[00:09:20] Josh Blank: Orientation towards the role that guns play in society. That creates, I think, a huge amount of dis tension, especially for leadership when it comes to sort of figuring out both politically what’s palatable, right, in terms of moving gun laws forward, but also what they’re willing to even defend. And that comes to this item that you, that you raise here about, you know, essentially, you know, do, do Texans think more guns means more, mean more?

[00:09:44] Josh Blank: Put simply, it means more safety. Essentially, you know, the sort of, if they’re good guys with guns, that’ll deter bad guys. Right? That’ll stop bad guys, et cetera. Or does it just mean there’s a bunch more guns around and there’s more of these kinds of shootings? Yeah, it’s

[00:09:54] Jim Henson: kind of a, you know, it’s kind of, you know, evaluate an almost marketized approach to guns.

[00:09:59] Jim Henson: Right. And,

[00:09:59] Josh Blank: and democrats overwhelmingly, you know, usually three quarters or more will say, yeah, that just leads to, to less safety, right? Right. There’s more guns, less safe Republicans you tend to find about. In the neighborhood of two thirds, but to your point, l going down a little bit over time, which I know more guns leads to more safety.

[00:10:17] Josh Blank: And so that’s why I think, you know, in the wake of these things, you find this sort of, you know, on the one hand calls for, you know, clamping down on, on on guns, you know, especially on the left and on the right when talking especially about things like. You know, so these sorts of things you think about, you know, well if more, you know, we need more good guys with guns around the case of schools.

[00:10:31] Josh Blank: Maybe we need to arm teachers, maybe we need to arm, you know, retired police officers on the school campuses. And this is fully in line with. Yeah, I think where the attitudes are, but it also leads a lot of people to say, well wait a minute though, but how do republicans also say they want to, you know,

[00:10:46] Jim Henson: again, and that has been an active discussion at the legislation.

[00:10:49] Jim Henson: Yeah. And there’s been a ver where you’ve intersected, you know, basically school shootings, gun policy.

[00:10:54] Josh Blank: Right. And I think that’s sort of, and you know, I mean, I think, you know, You know, Senator Cruz almost kind of walked into this in some ways a few weeks ago, cuz he posted this, this, uh, meme to, I don’t really call it really, but I mean something somewhere on some social media, I dunno what you’d call at this point, but a card, whatever you wanna call it.

[00:11:08] Josh Blank: Yeah. Basically saying, Hey, you know, banks have armed guards. Why, you know, why don’t schools? And there was a, you know, a, a big mass murder at a bank, which a lot of people sort of pointed out as sort of a. I don’t even know what you’d say. I gotcha. Yeah. Or whatever, but ultimately, you know, these things are all pretty consistent, but it’s, but it does point to why you see a lot more sort of discussion about like, well, should we arm more teachers than, should we take guns away from more people?

[00:11:28] Josh Blank: Right, right. But to, to the broader point here, I think what you’re starting to see, Is the impact of accumulation.

[00:11:38] Jim Henson: Well, that’s what I was gonna say. I was thinking about we, you know, we’ve been looking for, and

[00:11:41] Josh Blank: I think, you know, again, we, again, we’ve pulled, you know Yeah.

[00:11:43] Jim Henson: Much. This, this is not a, a punctuated equilibrium case, right?

[00:11:46] Josh Blank: No. And we’ve, and we’ve pulled before mass shootings and right after mass shootings and sort of shown the consistency of these attitudes. And you don’t necessarily see, you know, again, big shift within. Even a tragedy as horrible as Uvalde. But when you look at this over the course of three years, five years, even seven to 10 years like we’ve have and have been doing, you are seeing a softening of sort of an absolutist position on this, right?

[00:12:08] Josh Blank: And the absolutist position in this case, isn’t that like, no, there can’t be any restrictions on gun because that’s ridiculous. We see in the data that nobody believes, I mean, almost nobody believes that, but what we’re seeing is a softening in the position that guns don’t have anything to do with this

[00:12:21] Jim Henson: problem.

[00:12:21] Jim Henson: Right. And you know, I mean, you know, the collision between the general attitude and the specific. Incremental adjustment is really just striking here and, and I think makes it very tricky to interpret. I mean, I, you know, because I think, you know, you can see this glass is half, if you know, classic kind of half full, half empty in some ways, literally half, I mean, mm-hmm.

[00:12:43] Jim Henson: You know, the last time we asked about whether text, you know, gun laws in Texas should be more or less strict. After all of the legislation that we’ve seen mm-hmm. In recent years, really after

[00:12:53] Josh Blank: the 2021 session and the, and then the restrict and the, and the lessening of the restrictions required to carry a handgun in most public places.

[00:13:00] Jim Henson: Right. But even before that, I mean, that, that was, that did build incrementally. I mean, we saw campus carry before that. Mm-hmm. We saw. Yeah. You know, relaxation and concealed carry laws, et cetera. You know, even after all that, so after all that, basically in February, 2023, half of Republicans said that gun laws should be left the way they are now.

[00:13:19] Jim Henson: Yep. Right Now that is adjacent to, and maybe probably not in that poll, cause I don’t think we asked in this poll. I’d have to go back and check, but, but that is coming at roughly the same time. Mm-hmm. As we’re seeing, you know, the guns say, you know, the, the guns make. People, you know, more guns makes people more safe.

[00:13:38] Jim Henson: Right, right. In a little higher than that, but in that range, you know, high fifties. Yep. In that same time period, but also three quarters or or two thirds roughly, I guess where we are with Democrats a little less than that, I suppose 57% still like. In favor of these incremental proposals that we’re talking about.

[00:13:59] Josh Blank: Yeah. And the thing is, I mean, on that and on that strictest measure, I mean, you know, the reality is to the extent we’ve seen movement on that, that’s anything other than incremental. Uh, it’s usually been after a session in which the legislature has significantly loosen gun access. And it’s usually been a lot of movement among Republicans.

[00:14:14] Josh Blank: Right. And so what we find is that, you know, over the years, you know, as, as the legislature has sort of taken steps to, to, to ease gun access, you see, you know, one. I would say marginal support among Republicans, in most cases, for most of those over the years, I think back over the polling. But then after the poll, you see this, you know, it’s called this thermostatic response where the public says, oh, okay, you did it.

[00:14:32] Josh Blank: Good. Let’s, let’s just adjust back now, or let’s stay where we are. This is good, right? It’s good. I’m

[00:14:36] Jim Henson: comfy,

[00:14:37] Josh Blank: but you know, now I think a lot of voters are having, you know, even I think, you know, Those with relatively favorable views towards gun ownership are needing to kind of come to terms with the fact that you can’t turn on the news within a given week without seeing something and the thing, you know, seeing some, some sort of terrible tragedy.

[00:14:53] Josh Blank: And the reality is, you know, as we enter the summer, it’s not like these incidents are likely to. You know, I would say recede or, or, you know, decrease in frequency. I mean, I think, you know, uh, representative Wu yesterday, gene Wu of Houston during the Democratic press conference earlier in the day on, on gun violence, kind of in the lead up to I think some of the precursor to the movement that led to that vote to, to advance.

[00:15:16] Josh Blank: The, the bill that would raise the age tone, certain semi-automatic firearms brought up, you know, said something. I think that really kind of crystallized, you know, I think a a, I mean, it’s a question, and I mean, I’m, I’m putting a pin in this, right, but it’s an interesting question. He says, you know, you know, Americans don’t, you know, don’t feel safe anymore, right?

[00:15:31] Josh Blank: They don’t feel safe in their churches. They don’t feel safe in their schools. They don’t feel safe, uh, you know, shopping. I mean, you, you know, you, you know, we’re working on a piece right now and there’s a line in it to quote ourselves, which is, which is really just woo. Yeah. Is this thing on? No. Anyway, but you know, it says, you know, I mean there’s an assumption here, right?

[00:15:50] Josh Blank: I think in America, reasonably in a lot of places, that when you send your kids to public schools, that the teachers and the students are gonna be safe. And I think to the extent that like, you know, that can’t be taken as a, as a de facto truth at this point in time. I think that’s a real, I think that’s a real shaking of the foundation of some of these, of some of these ideas.

[00:16:11] Jim Henson: Yeah, I think that’s right. And, and I think I. And, and, you know, as we, and yet, yeah. And yet, you know, there are a lot of cross currents for this, so let’s, so let’s, you know, let’s, so, so, you know, to bring this to bear on where we are at the moment. Um, so Tracy King’s Bill voted out a committee yesterday mm-hmm.

[00:16:31] Jim Henson: With two Republican votes at pains. Very surprising. I’m sorry. At Great Paynes at gr Yeah, at Great Paynes to, you know, as we’ve seen on social media, um, to sort of explain those votes. Nonetheless, the bill has now moved and moved more than people had expected. I’m, I’m pretty sure nobody expected. That they were even gonna get a vote, let alone that if they got the vote, they would get some Republican votes and the bill would move.

[00:16:55] Jim Henson: Yeah. Now, you know, this is where the reality of where we are in the legislative process really, you know, kind of sets in and has. To be mentioned. Right. You know that Bill now has to be heard by the calendars committee, which is meeting fairly frequently now because of where we are in the session. Uh, to be scheduled for debate, it has to be put on a house calendar.

[00:17:16] Jim Henson: That’s gonna have to happen by Thursday. Mm-hmm. In other words, it’s gonna be ha, it actually has to happen before Thursday, because Thursday is the last day in which the house can heal, can hear. House Bills professor for second

[00:17:28] Josh Blank: reading. Professor Enson. I have a question. Okay. Hopefully I have an answer.

[00:17:31] Josh Blank: So if it, if it does get. Scheduled by the calendars committee for a hearing in the full house. Does that mean that it’ll be heard by the full

[00:17:38] Jim Henson: house? I think probably, but it will still be vulnerable to procedural challenge. And it can be

[00:17:45] Josh Blank: procedural challenge to directly or even just a casualty of other challenges.

[00:17:48] Josh Blank: Yeah, I

[00:17:49] Jim Henson: mean, look, you know, uh, once we get down, you know, say it’s on the calendar for Thursday, that midnight deadline is pretty hard. Right? Right. And so, you know, the chances of this bill getting outta the house are still. Exceedingly slim. Pretty small. Yeah. Right. And, and, and remember that there will be, you know, this gets us into, you know, some things that I’ve, you know, for the insiders, you’ve probably heard some of this or maybe noticed this, that, you know, there’s a lot of discussion in the community right now in the capital community and the, among the professionals and the engaged in stakeholders about how the rules are being enforced in the house.

[00:18:25] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. Without going too much in the history, it does seem like. And, and, and we need to look this up and, you know, hopefully somebody on Twitter will do this for us’. Great. So great. We’ll figure out a way to make the time to do this, but it does seem like the rule, the, the readings of the rules have been pretty tight.

[00:18:40] Jim Henson: Yeah. Particularly in a couple of areas and we’ve seen a lot of bills pulled down or go down on points of order directly. Right. And so, you know, I think what this does is really opens up the possibility that this bill could move. Mm-hmm. By a leadership that is probably ambivalent at best about its chances or could be reading this a lot of different ways.

[00:19:04] Jim Henson: Right. But then be vulnerable to a point of order, like many other big bills have been. This, uh, uh, this session, we’ve seen it, you know, the, the, the bill on supportive care for trans kids mm-hmm. Has been pulled from the floor twice under threats of points of order. Mm-hmm. Right. And so I find it very likely.

[00:19:27] Jim Henson: That as this bill moves, should this bill make it onto a calendar in the house? Yeah. A lot of energy will be going into scrutinizing every single word related to this bill, every move that it’s made in order to find points of order to to get it pulled off the calendar on the floor. Yeah,

[00:19:46] Josh Blank: I mean, it seems to me that this is really setting up perfect for something scheduled late in the process that.

[00:19:52] Josh Blank: At least turns the screws on some Democrats who might want to chub, who might wanna slow down the process of the final stretch. You know, you put this near the end of the counter, it’s like, Hey, if you want to, hey Democrats, kill this. Know. Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot of ways

[00:20:03] Jim Henson: you could play this. Yeah, no, I mean, I think that’s a good point that the general, you know, mood that we expect as we go into the, you know, you know, really starting.

[00:20:12] Jim Henson: This minute. Yeah. If not, you know, it’s already kind of going, is that it’s gonna, right now we’re recording. You start beginning to feel like it’s a zero sum game in terms of time. Mm-hmm. Right? That every time, every, every bit of time you spend on one thing is time. You might not get to spend on something else.

[00:20:27] Jim Henson: Right. And something else that matters. And so, you know, you mentioned Ching, which is, you know, the, the, you know, the term for talking a lot on the floor and raising procedural questions, et cetera, just to burn time to make it harder to, to get to everything that, that. Perhaps some people want to get to get to things that people want to get to, or usually with some kind of specific target.

[00:20:49] Jim Henson: Democrats have periodically used this as have kind of dissidents within the Republican party. Mm-hmm. You know, to simply, you know, reduce the volume of work that the majority can do. Mm-hmm. And you know, we’re already beginning to see that some, um, but I think there’s just enough. There’s just enough going on that a broad enough group of people want.

[00:21:11] Jim Henson: That is kind of the theme of, you know, that the piece that you were referencing earlier that we’re working on that should be out later by the time you hear this podcast, that’ll be out barring disaster of some sort, small scale disaster of some sort. Yeah, I was sailing. Um, and so I think that, you know, that is a real factor here and that, you know, that’s gonna cut a diff a couple of different ways as you say.

[00:21:33] Jim Henson: So it’s gonna be very, You know, interesting few days as we watch, you know, the house move towards this big deadline on Thursday. And, and for those of you that are interested in these deadlines, you can, you can find these, the calendars that have all these deadlines at the Texas Legislative Library and also on the t o site.

[00:21:53] Jim Henson: Actually, what we’ll do is when we post the podcast, yeah, we will. We’ll throw that, that last couple of you know, the calendar of the last month deadlines on that post so that you can just grab it there if you can’t find the others. Okay. So with the time we got left, let’s move it at least briefly, and, and it’s probably a little less complicated in the media in some ways, at least.

[00:22:14] Jim Henson: Maybe, uh, let’s talk a little bit about the border and border security. So, You know, as I said at the outset, we’re about to see the expiration Covid or Title 42. Yeah. The Covid arrangements under Title 42 that it’s worth highlighting, that enabled both the Trump and the Biden administrations to turn people back at the border with, you know, in basically with asylum claims.

[00:22:39] Jim Henson: At best. Yes, with at best streamlined, uh, administrative, you know, procedures that is going to end this week. In advance of that, governor Abbott, uh, yesterday announced the deployment of the new Texas tactical border force to the Texas Mexico border. Closely paraphrasing from the governor’s press release.

[00:22:58] Jim Henson: Yes, that’s right. In order to respond to the ending of Title 42. You know, and this is just more resources to the border. At the same time, president Biden has ordered a, a con, you know, a US military contingent to go down to the border. Careful to say that they would not be participating in direct interdiction, but were there to sup, provide support.

[00:23:18] Jim Henson: This is, you know, obviously being seen as too little, too late by Governor Abbott and, and Republicans more generally. But you know, the border and border security has also, you know, sort of been an element, uh, is an element of what’s going on at the legislature. But it’s a testament, I would argue, is a testament to the durability in the centrality of immigration and border security to Republican attitudes in the state Republican politics.

[00:23:45] Jim Henson: And, you know, we’re a broken record on this. Um, But it’s one of the few major policy areas right now where the G O P majority hasn’t been struggling to find some kind of consensus. And we’ve said it on the podcast before, bears repeating. There was an increase in funding for border security after the significant in, you know, I would say historic increases in border security spending over the last few years.

[00:24:12] Jim Henson: Um, They, there were increases in both budgets, no disagreement. Everybody’s pretty happy, at least on the Republican majority with this. Um, and our, and our data repeatedly show why,

[00:24:25] Josh Blank: right? Yeah. I mean it about 60% of Republicans routinely. Uh, say that immigration or border security is the number one issue facing the state.

[00:24:33] Josh Blank: The only, you know, sort of punctuation or is there sort of deviation from that, I should say, you know, happened at the very early onset of covid? You know, we’ve asked two times during this legislative session in an open-ended question what the legislature should focus on and the plurality near majority of Republicans offered up.

[00:24:50] Josh Blank: Deal with immigration or the border. Um, and you know, to your point, you know, even throughout this entire period of increase, you know, not even marginal increase in spending, but significant increases in border security spending and really attention, uh, and effort. The share of Republicans who say the state is spending too little on border security, if anything is inching upward.

[00:25:09] Josh Blank: And the reality is the end of Title 42, despite, again, Codifying in the budget, this huge amount of money that’s been put towards the border, sort of in other, through other means, kind of in the interim, you know, it’s likely to be met, you know, in some ways with a, at a boy, but what, what next? Yeah. And I mean, that’s sort of the interesting, I mean, we’ve talked a little bit about how, you know, the, the, the centrality of immigration and border security in some ways, you know, really gives Republicans something.

[00:25:33] Josh Blank: The Democrats, you know, could really only, just only hope for which is to say, okay, if we just do this one thing Yeah. In some way, shape or form. And the truth is this one thing that’s. In many ways utterly intractable. But as long as we make efforts on this one area, then, you know, we can go back to our voters and say, see what we did?

[00:25:49] Josh Blank: We did this. And you know, for most Republican voters are gonna say, good, great. Yeah. You know, and then they can go on and say, well, what about, you know, this, that, and the other? But, but this is the main thing that really needs to be addressed. I mean, yeah. And,

[00:26:02] Jim Henson: and the fallback on what you might, you know, within the universe of Republican attitudes.

[00:26:10] Jim Henson: Um, you know, the one possible objection is like, this is just, you know, too much money. Now look, obviously we’ve not seen any evidence of that. No. But to the extent that we do see it, yeah. We’ve seen the opposite. You know, the fallback is a pretty easy one right now. Yeah. In terms of saying, well, you know, what can I tell you?

[00:26:27] Jim Henson: I’m with you, I’m with you sister, but you know, as long as Joe Biden’s in the White House. Right. As long as the federal

[00:26:32] Josh Blank: Well, and as long as the federal government is failing its responsibilities. Right. We’re just. Then, so be it,

[00:26:37] Jim Henson: right? Yeah. We’ve gotta spend more to combat the open border policy of y, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:26:41] Jim Henson: So, you know, and, and, you know, and, and the politics of the moment of this year. Yeah, the policy of Miller are very interesting, are kind of interesting. So, I mean, you know, to use the, the kind of horrible, you know, cable news metaphor, but, It’s useful here. You know, the split screen yesterday between what was going on in the house and in the legislature writ large and what Governor Abbott was doing was pretty remarkable.

[00:27:05] Jim Henson: So, you know, in the last, you know, the split screen is, on one hand you’re seeing the house voting out these gun bills in a very, you know, moving a gun bill in a very traumatic kind of development. Um, You know, the legislature generally still kind of locked up over the big issues. Right. Some of which are very important to the governor and the governor’s, you know, ex uh, invested a lot of political capital.

[00:27:30] Jim Henson: Good example of that would be ESA slash vouchers. Mm-hmm. Which, you know, still seems to be. You know, at, at an impasse in terms of what’s going on in the house. Right. And it’s an open question whether what the governor has been doing for the last couple of months in terms of, you know, putting pressure on house members, frankly.

[00:27:49] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. To, to vote for vouchers. Um, You know, I don’t want to overstate this, but one would be forgiven. Let’s put it this way. Okay. One might be forgiven for thinking that the timing of the coming of, of the end of Title 42 and a expected surge at the border kind of comes at a good time for Governor Abbott.

[00:28:13] Jim Henson: Uh,

[00:28:14] Josh Blank: no, I would say, I was gonna say, it’s an excellent, it’s like, I mean, it’s, it’s a gift in a lot of ways because, you know, I mean to, just to, just to flesh out a little bit more of what you’re talking about here. I mean, right now legislature is locked up over how they’re going to move forward with a property tax reduction that they have.

[00:28:29] Josh Blank: Promised and promised repeatedly throughout the 2022 campaigns and into the session. Uh, you know, I mean, to this, to the, you know, the voucher bill, I mean, the Senate has moved and the house is really not even, there’s not even really a competing proposal right now That, right. I mean, it’s almost just locked up.

[00:28:43] Josh Blank: Uh, you know, there’s big, big differences over how, how the state is going to improve the reliability of the electric grid. There’s, uh, you know, similar disagreements over how, you know they’re gonna address school safety. So the fact that, you know, A potential summer surge of migrants at the border at this point.

[00:29:03] Josh Blank: That’s going to dominate coverage, especially in, in right wing media that’s gonna be Right. You know, the primary source of information for Republican primary voters could not come at a better time, assuming the legislature is not gonna be able to be successful on all of those things. Right. I was gonna say, they’re not gonna be successful in any of those things or all of them, but I think it would be surprising, given where they are right now, to see a bunch of compromises all of a sudden emerge at the 11th

[00:29:24] Jim Henson: hour.

[00:29:24] Jim Henson: Right. And so, yeah, and it is just a very open question, you know, I mean, we. You know, we did a, a, a post and, and a podcast, I think of, you know, few weeks ago about, you know, what is going on in the Republican party. Mm-hmm. The role of Republican primary voters and to draw these two things together. I mean, you know, the difference between what you’re looking at on immigration and border security, which is we’ve said a million times on the podcast, is the great Republican unifier.

[00:29:52] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. And even what we were looking at in, in. The gun data a few minutes ago. I mean, there’s still 25% or so, 24% if you want to be exact, uh, of Republican voters who still say that gun law should be less strict. Right. So we emphasize the movement on the other side last time, but as we talk about where some of the difficulties are and, and.

[00:30:17] Jim Henson: You know, the kind of, you know, essentially the, I was gonna say the tyranny, and maybe that’s not quite right, but mm-hmm. You know, the preoc, you know, the preoccupation of. The under, put it this way, the almost under fairly understandable preoccupation of Republican incumbents with Republican primary voters mm-hmm.

[00:30:40] Jim Henson: You know, really is kind of at play in both of these, but they manifest in different ways, right? Yeah. Because the distribu, because of the distribution of public opinion being different on these two issues. Mm-hmm. If you think about, you know, and we’ve looked at this in great depth. You know, the difference in intensity on some of the, on immigration and border security issues is not that great when you break it out by ideological intensity.

[00:31:07] Jim Henson: Right. Party intensity of party identification. You do see more variance on guns. Yeah.

[00:31:12] Josh Blank: I mean it’s really, you know, the thing is, I was thinking about this yesterday when the house moved that bill and. You know, it’s just, I was saying how difficult it is and I was thinking in particular the idea of defending these things and you know, so just, just imagine for a second, you know, the house ends up bringing this bill to the floor.

[00:31:28] Josh Blank: Let’s say they cobble together all the Democrats and enough Republicans to pass, you know, this bill that raises the age, let’s say for some inexplicable reason, the Senate decides they’re gonna pass in and make Abbott deal with it and veto it because he signal he is gonna veto it. Let’s say he doesn’t veto it for some reason, now the state become, gets sued.

[00:31:46] Josh Blank: Right, right by, by a Second Amendment group. So the attorney general. Ken Paxton is now going to be put in the position of defending a state law that creates a barrier to access to guns for some people. Right. Like, if any of this sounds crazy to you, I mean, thinking about the, the, the stacking of things that would need to happen.

[00:32:04] Josh Blank: Right. And the reality is, is, is, is none of that is, is reasonably, the governor’s clearly signaled that he’s not gonna, you know, he, he probably would not

[00:32:10] Jim Henson: sign this and he, yeah, he’s on the record pretty firmly as saying that he thinks that it’s un it’s unconstitutional. Yeah. You can set

[00:32:15] Josh Blank: aside, you know, The hypocrisy of that statement around other sets of laws and whether that seems to matter at all, blah, blah, blah.

[00:32:21] Josh Blank: But he’s made very clear where he stands on it. The Lieutenant Governor’s made very clear, I think, where he stands on the idea of gun laws and what direction they should go in. And again, there’s no, there’s no elected official and say, who’s going to even come close to defending one of these laws? Should it get to that point?

[00:32:39] Josh Blank: And so, right. I mean,

[00:32:40] Jim Henson: I, you know, as, as, as you know, we were talking before the podcast, you know, One can come up with, you know, several very path dependent right? Scenarios of what might happen here. It does still seem like the most likely outcome is this, is that this bill does not get out of the house.

[00:32:59] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. Um, but in, you know, the broad scope of things, as we’ve said many times in this, you know, it, it’s easy to be myopic and, and, and look in some senses being myopic is, Is what you need to do. You know, you need to see what’s right in front of you at certain points, right? In the longer term, it probably will be significant if this bill.

[00:33:20] Jim Henson: It doesn’t pass, which is the most likely outcome, but it will be significant that it got out of committee this time in future sessions. I suspect. I

[00:33:28] Josh Blank: think maybe, I don’t know, maybe I’m a little bit more skeptical. I mean, I, well, I’m not

[00:33:32] Jim Henson: saying that it guarantees that it’s gonna, you know

[00:33:34] Josh Blank: No, no, no, no. I mean, I’m not even saying that that’s not true.

[00:33:36] Josh Blank: I guess, I mean, to me, I think the. The, the, the best sort of, I don’t know, rationale for why that bill moved at all was just totally the immediacy of it. I mean, if you kind of look around, you look at the, the succession of shootings, the succession of mashing in Texas in short order. Yeah. Uh, you know, I mean, honestly, you know, I don’t, I usually think that this sort of stuff is overplayed, but I’m, I don’t think it is here.

[00:34:00] Josh Blank: I mean, I think the, the persistence of the Uvalde family is just, Being there and being relentless about this. Yeah. It’s just something just, it’s hard for legislators to say, I’m just gonna ignore you cuz you can’t.

[00:34:10] Jim Henson: Yeah. It’s, it’s totally, I also, you know, I think I also wanna give a little credit to, to representative Tracy King, who’s been very, very persistent and very smart in the way that he wrote this bill.

[00:34:19] Jim Henson: Um, Yeah, I mean, I think that’s right. I mean, I, I, you know, I guess I would say also

[00:34:24] Josh Blank: that I was gonna, I just gonna, one thing that I was just gonna say, I think the, the, the accumulation of, again, what happened to Alan this weekend and that legislative deadline hitting when it hit well, that created the momentum to do something.

[00:34:37] Josh Blank: And again, and I don’t, you know, again, look, I’m not, you know, I mean this might sound cynical. I think this is just part of, you know, I think the game of politics that gets played, but it really ch, I mean, if you look at it, you really change the new cycle. If only for a single cycle or two.

[00:34:51] Jim Henson: Right, right. Well, I think, you know what I was gonna add to that and you kind of got to it, but the, you know, it’s just, it’s the combination of, you know, that the information environment, right.

[00:35:00] Jim Henson: And you know, All of that that you’re talking about, as you say, you know, we’re always talking about like, you know, well, does something happen? Do people respond? The timing of the El Paso shooting, the timing of the shootings is often not right in the middle of a session. Right? Or during a session. The fact that this happened not only during a session, right?

[00:35:20] Jim Henson: With these mobilized groups, and in particular the Uvalde families, you know, sort of on site who already there, right to right, yeah. And the fact that, you know, frankly, the members that are voting for this, particularly the Republican members on that committee, not to take anything away from them per se, but the calculation has to be there that.

[00:35:43] Jim Henson: You can vote this out of committee. Say that you know, you were willing to give it a hearing. This goes for the leadership as well. Mm-hmm. But also rely on the fact that the clock and the calendar are both on your side in terms of where the session are, if what you want is to have it both ways, a little bit, not to put too sharp a point on it, but I think with that, thanks for being here, Josh, as always, help prepping for this.

[00:36:08] Jim Henson: Uh, thanks again to our excellent production team in the dev studio in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin. Uh, And our team consists of Will today, period. So thank you. Will, um, we’ll post this podcast if you’re, if you’re hearing this on, on one of the podcast platforms I I referenced earlier, that will, uh, we’ll have a post at our website at Texas politics dot u texas.edu.

[00:36:34] Jim Henson: That’ll also have. Graphics and links to data that we’ve talked about, and we’ve talked about a lot of, a lot of things today, as well as, um, uh, to that calendar I mentioned. So thank you for listening and we’ll be back soon with another second reading podcast.

[00:36:51] Outro: The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.