November 2nd, 2021 – Second Reading Podcast

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, Toronto and 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 have 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 November 1st. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas politics project at the university of Texas at Austin. Joining in today by Josh blank research director for same Texas politics project. Uh, good morning, Josh. And welcome back to the. It’s great to be in the studio.

We are recording, uh, at the university of Texas at Austin in the liberal arts development studio. Those spine folks have managed the podcast remotely, and I think we’re, we’re dipping our foot back in, in person it’s normal. It’s kind of nice to be back in here. I don’t have to worry about my wireless connection in my house.

Yeah, no, I like this. I can look at you and I, well, actually, well, two out of three ain’t bad. I think the song goes so with the legislature gone and that the calendar on 2021 running down it’s November. Yeah. Yeah, the action in Texas politics is kind of dispersed right now. And it doesn’t mean that things aren’t going on by any stretch of the imagination neutral.

Well, but it is well, yes. Um, but you know, I mean, I, I’m thinking about that in kind of a, you know, an experiential way in the sense that, you know, once we had, you know, the regular five months session, And then three special sessions back to back, you know, even, even when the Democrats had broken quorum and fled to Washington DC, it did seem like most of the action was in that.

Legislature or legislature adjacent to the extent that the legislature was also so tied to the elections from day one that you know, now we don’t have that one place to look at. Right. I mean, you know, not in the habit of getting up and saying, okay, like, what’s it in the floor today where the hearings, you got to go and kind of look around a little bit more people get to make their own noise, however they want.

Right. Which brings us to the topic of today. So, you know, I want to start, I want to, you know, focus today on the sudden flurry of activity, around of all things, public school libraries, you know, we’ve been talking about this a lot, so. You know, the proximate trigger of this was of all people, Matt Kraus.

How are you going to describe that crowd? Well, you know, we will describe him as the chair of the house investigating committee or committee on investigating, which I thought is also, I hadn’t really noticed funny, very active title for the. And he sent a letter to tea, but you know, to an another thing that was weird about this to an undisclosed BCC list of school districts, surely random, surely random calling, you know, with an addendum in the addendum to his email was a 16 page list of 800 plus books.

50. I believe that, uh, he thought needed to be sorted. He wanted information on how the libraries have them. How much should they paid for them? Right. Where in the school where they located, where they in the library also went in to, to search classrooms, which is an interesting technical, practical point we’ll get to, and then also wanted the districts to provide information about any other books that would cause.

Anxiety. There was a, there’s a phrase and I don’t have it right in front of me. I used it in the mailing last week, but psychological distress echoing some of the language in the critical race theory, quote unquote, bill to students based on sexuality race, but there was also a reference to things being sexually explicit.

There’s basically kind of a, you know, go on a snipe hunt in your library for sexually explicit books. And then as. Several reporters pointed out. And if you, I mean, I, you know, I would say I went through the list pretty closely cause yeah, you would. I would. Um, you know, and when it comes to authors, I mean, well, let’s put it that, we’ll start with it this way.

One of the, you know, some of the coverage, I think at the Dallas morning news, they went through the first hundred or 200 drips on the list and said 97 I think were written by women or people of color. Right. And as you go through the list, there’s clearly a lot of young and again, I don’t have kids. I don’t read young adult fiction.

Sure. Um, but what seemed to me and I did a little spot checking to be a lot of young adults, be comfortable with yourself, kinds of books, several of them having to do with, uh, LGBTQ sexuality, et cetera. So the approximate target here was pretty clear, but also, you know, some books and there were a couple books on the history of Roe V.

Wade and abortion rights. Two books by Tonese coats, right? Best-selling award-winning, award-winning best-selling African-American author. Right. Um, and kinda my favorite was the Williams Tyron book, which, you know, That’s probably generated, which is interesting, probably generational. It’s almost like one of these libraries had a book and a copy of the confessions of Nat Turner and somehow they got wind of it and went, oh, we got to get that William siren book to, you know, a book that has been in retrospect, kind of criticized for writing about, you know, from, uh, uh, about slavery and, and a black perspective by a aged white author, uh, separately.

But a funny presence on the, on the list. I thought. Sure. So the politics of this are, it’s hard to not, not to go straight to the politics, but I guess we should start by saying like, you know, what is this trigger? And what it triggers is then Greg Abbott gets in the game. Yeah, which is either, you know, shocking or completely unsurprising, depending on how you look at it.

Right. I mean, it certainly fits into, I mean, you know, and this is one of those things, it’s, it’s easy to sort of devolve into the pattern, right? We like patterns and it’s so simple here to just kind of look at this and say, oh, well, why would Greg Abbey get involved in this? And I was like, well, because.

The truth is, you know, he’s been doing this most of the session, it’s been a, you know, the multiple sessions, right? It’s been, if there is some kind of issue on which, you know, any Republican can generate a sense of agreement among a Republican primary constituents. Tell Greg Abbott about it because he’s on board.

And that seems to, you know, that that’s kind of the simple answer to this in some ways. I mean, some to some degree, you know, you could ignore Matt Krauss, but I mean, it’s hard also not to imagine that if Krause had gone along and kind of progress with this and push it, that you wouldn’t hear something from, from Don, Huffines running for governor at some point soon.

And that seems to be a pretty big trigger for Abbott. So that’s a possibility, but it’s also one of those things where, I mean, It’s odd in the sense that, you know, cross is sort of sitting here in a Republican primary field for attorney general with three other candidates who’ve run statewide already.

He obviously hasn’t, he’s obviously, I mean, I w I went describing as a back bencher, cause he’s not a backbencher cause he’s on the majority party, but he sort of straddled being in kind of the, the sort of dissident group, which, you know, and also kind of, I would say he’s gone in and out of prominence as he’s shifted positions a little bit.

I mean, yeah. And he’s old, but he’s always been very, I mean, I’ll say this about him. He’s always been. I think he’s been very thoughtful about those shifts in and out. I mean, he’s positioned himself as a more reasonable member of the dissident group on a couple of different occasions. I would say. Let’s just say he, he was, he’s always been an interesting contrast with people, like say former representative Stickland and.

Soon to be former representative Biederman. For example, I would agree with that. And I think he’s someone who also has shown a little bit of a sense. I think he, I think I remember a quote from him. I’d have to go back and look obviously, but I remember him saying something effective, you know, at some point after some of the tactics of, you know, like the freedom caucus and a couple sessions ago, like, so he’s one of the people kind of went out, said, Hey, you know, I can agree with the goals and not think the tactics are right.

And so he’s someone who’s very, really, you know, fairly aware of these things. Maybe a little more south milder in style, almost certainly. So the politics of this seem, you know, again, like I say, it’s hard to not just jump straight to the politics, but we should stop pause for a second, unpack the thing itself and some of the responses, right?

Because that points to why the politics are exactly why we jumped to the cop, to the politics so quickly. So, I mean, I kind of alluded to this in describing the letter a little bit. I mean, Yeah, there’s a deeply impractical piece to this. Sure. You know, from the perspective of, you know, even if you are a school district who wants to comply this kind of thing, rubs up against a lot of the norms near as I can tell of the library know librarian profession.

Yeah. Yeah. And discomfortable reporting information like this back to the authorities, shall we say? Well, well, and well, Krause was empowered to make the request and there seems to be, you know, some degree to which they might be compelled. I don’t think so, but not, but, but not a very deep one. From what, you know, people certainly is allowed to ask.

Certainly there’s a lot of consultation with lawyers that went on. Yeah. He’s allowed to ask, but they are not compelled to, it’s not a subpoena. The rest of the committee hasn’t voted on seemingly so far. I haven’t, there hasn’t been much verbal confirmation from anyone on the committee that this is sort of.

Abroad, you know? Yeah. And not surprisingly from the Democrats indications otherwise. Sure. So, I mean, I, you know, there were some smaller districts that were kind of hustling up, you know, where it’s probably easier to do this sending signals. They would do what they could. The second part of the request was, you know, wildly subjective in terms of saying, oh, do you have anything else?

Like these 850 books, right. Right. You know, that might make people uncomfortable. And as, as somebody very quickly said, well, you know, you know, everybody’s made uncomfortable by something at some, you know, basic logical level. I mean, it’s almost absurd to strip that much context out of it, but it’s also fair.

And I think take the perspective of, you know, Hey, look, I’m just a person like working in a school district trying to figure out. You know, how to, what to do about this in a way that doesn’t put me on something, what kind of hot seat? Well, and it’s odd because I mean, this goes, and this is the other thing too, which is the request goes against kind of flies in the face of kind of the immediate context of what was going on in the few weeks leading up to this, right.

It’s hard not to look at the requests in the context of the critical race theory bill on the one hand, which is, you know, essentially, you know, which is certainly targeted at, uh, the kinds of discussions and the kinds of materials in schools. You know, it’s certainly hard not to look at it in the context of the transgender student athlete bill that made it out of the final session of the legislature.

So it’s hard not to look at the way and then, but then sort of that that’ll happen. And then you had sort of in Carolina city, in south lake, you had this, an administrator talking about having to provide both perspectives on the Holocaust. And that’s a, you know, that’s a blackout. For everybody. No, no, no legislator wants that to be sort of seen as like what this bill is doing.

And so that, that, that’s what they wanted. So then you’ve got, yeah, well, but the thing is in the few, you know, in the, I would say the week after that, they were trying to clarify, there’s a, whoa, this is about social studies classes. We’re not banning books, we’re not talking, you know, like there’s a, you know, some IST that canceled, you know, the student government, you know, thing, they’re like rolling.

Did you know, or model UN or something like, well, slow down. Yeah. So there’s a lot of clarifying, but obviously, you know, again, you kind of look at this in the context of all that, the fact that there’s a lot of trying to clarification going on from, you know, Republicans would pass this bill. On the one hand, you had the fact that, you know, crosses kind of doing this solo on the other.

And he’s also running for attorney general in a race where, you know, trying to like most race is going to say, who’s the most conservative, and this is him putting a flag down, but that doesn’t necessarily speak to. It’s a sort of Abbott’s version of it, which was also kind of curious, right. Well, I mean, you know, I think the way you laid it out is, you know, we don’t really have to, it’s pretty straight forward.

I mean, you know, anybody who is, as you say, planting a flag, or, you know, trying to stake out some territory on the far right. Of any race, right. That gets any kind of media attention, you know, is going to have a demonstration effect right up and down the. That’s like you said, I was most surprised and not surprised when the governor came out Monday and jumped on the bandwagon pretty quickly with a letter, as you were pointing out to evolve people back to the association of school boards as boats it’s as if the Republican government of Texas.

Two plus decades doesn’t have any control over the school system, which had funds and creates regulations for. So, I mean, that’s the sort of funny thing I think too about the fact that Abbott’s letter went to Tasmania and not like morale of the tea, if this was really let’s see, and it’s hard not to, you know, look at those things and, and you take the fact.

Kraus has nominal, but not really legal authority. I mean, he, as you say, he can make the request, but compliance has, we’re already beginning to see, you know, both Dallas and Austin have kind of studiously said, they’re not going to do this. And you know, others are probably sending, you know, more subtle messages or, or just hiding behind them or, you know, writing those coattails and hoping this all goes away.

Is that for all, he won’t be chairman of the committee next time. Right. Cause he’ll be gone. So, you know, you can wait this out, but there’s something so purely gestural about it. That is on one hand, I feel naive to be kind of struck by it, but I’m struck by it anyway. And I’m struck by it. I mean, you know, look, I mean, you know, as you said, we should just get that done.

I mean, the politics of this are straight for you. Look at public opinion on. Support for limiting, you know, for the kind of, for the, again, I hate to call it that the so-called CRT bill, in other words, you know, placing limitations on what’s taught in how, in some vague, and as we’re seeing, as you were sort of laying out hard to understand hard to implement way.

Right. Um, which, you know, I, it’s hard to know. Feel like people just didn’t think about it very much in terms of implementation. See if people are actively confusing the situation. Yeah. And it was pointed out that this was going to be a problem and people are like, yeah, whatever right now we’re not doing that.

And it turns out, you know, we didn’t. No that, but sure. You know, if you look at that 61% of conservatives strongly supported that legislation in our June poll, 68% of strong conservatives, uh, proved it. If you look then at the, at the intersection, we talked about all the material. I think you can’t separate this from.

You know, the issues of sexuality and identity, they’re at play here even stronger, uh, conservative and, and strong conservative support for the trans for the ban on transgender, uh, people’s participation in sports. You know, that that was even in the eighties and nineties. So, you know, Duh, right. At some level, I mean, bracketing all the ethical issues and a lot of other things that are, you know, one pack here, the politics are there, but big picture it’s really, it’s a discomforting thing.

I mean, you know, you were talking before you went on about our own professional cultural profile sensitivities to this, which is fair. Yeah. Well was saying. You know, we both have PhDs, we’re academics where everything, we’re all the worst things you could think about us, but it also means that, you know, when you start talking about like, you know, what’s what looks like is heading towards a book ban, you know?

And I mean, you know, it’s kinda hard for me not to be a little squeamish about it. I mean, I think, you know, as, as a, you know, on another level, there’s part of me that wonders, you know, is Matt Krauss’s first campaign event going to be a book burning, like, what are we, what are we doing here? But the other thing about it, I mean, just from a more general hyperbole, um, you know, and I thought the same thing, right, is you won’t know.

Yeah, I was drained. I was really ready to swing for the fences, you know? Um, but shrug emoji, I mean, how, you know, how are you supposed to respond to something like this that is both, you know, so illiberal in the classic liberal sense of the word, and so clearly targeted in terms of race and sexual identity.

Well, there’s two things about that, right? I mean, I think one is that there’s just the fact of it was three things. Actually one, I would actually say this is one of the most conservative things I’ve seen the legislature do, and it’s actually hidden in the public opinion. And when I say conservative, I mean, like in a, sort of a traditional conservative, I mean, we’ve been, we’ve been talking about this all session and you kind of watching Alice and he say, what does it mean to be a conservative in Texas in 2021 right now, as we spend, you know, billions of dollars on a border wall and kind of like things like that, that sort of seem odd, you know, You know, I think there’s a couple, there’s a couple things that fall out of this to me that are just sort of striking.

I mean, one, I would say is the fact that, uh, you know, it’s another example of the erosion and institutions. Like, I mean, if you think about the fact that public schools generally and historically have been kind of cornerstones of communities and we’ve pulled on peanuts, Republic, public schools and public school teachers in the past are extremely highly evaluated.

And this is just another example of another group of people. We apparently can’t trust. Yeah, we can’t trust them, teacher kids. We can’t trust the librarians to, you know, put the books in the schools. And the other thing is, you know, we can’t even trust the kids to like maybe read a book. Decide whether, you know, it affects them or not start a book and decide that it’s not for them.

I mean, there’s part of me that just as a parents in here, it’s like, boy would, it were the case that, you know, every book in the library at the public school was being read by all the kids and they were all like really internalizing and thinking about it. Like, that’s a re that’s not a problem in Texas and they’re getting kind of stuck together well.

Okay. Okay. That’s not a problem that Texas has having, but then, you know, there’s another piece of this, which is, you know, I mean, this is just such a. There’s just a basic positive, which this is just such a good wedge issue right now. And it speaks to what makes us conservative in some ways. Right? So you brought up, you know, the support for the critical race theory, bill, the support for transgender students on the transgender students requiring transgender students to participate on the sports teams that match their gender at birth.

Right that had the, uh, supportive 86% of Republicans. Okay. When the thank you, you have to take a step back here, right. And say, well, so wait a minute. And so I’d only had the support of 32% of Democrats, uh, which is still a lot of debt. It’s a third of Democrats. It’s what makes it a wedge issue? You know, 50% of Democrats, opposed 32% of the Democrats in favor of that critical racer bill, you’re still gonna see us, you know, significant minority of Democrats in favor of it.

When we ask about discrimination against transgender people, 73% of Democrats said that this was back last year, right? That the transgender people face a lot of discrimination compared to 14% of Republicans. So this is not to say the Democrats in Texas. Abandoned, you know, sort of the coalition, if you will.

Right. Ultimately Democrats see a lot of discrimination society. They see discrimination in society against historically discriminated against groups. But what I think, you know, you’re seeing here, and this is what I think is so. Smart about this on one level is the fact that how we, uh, as a society address these things, that’s a big open question that, you know, we’re kind of rushing headlong into and it’s pretty uneven.

I mean, just say, you know, if you think about this and I think, you know, we’ve talked about this before, the idea of, you know, like, you know, you imagine the HR person, you know, you imagine how anyone is listening. This is if you’ve ever dealt with HR people, they’re uneven. Do you want that person? Generally to be doing like the critical race theory discussion at your company, dispersions on the HR profession?

No, not the profession. Nobody that I’ve worked with personally, but that’s a pretty big ask for people on a conversation that, you know, I think we’re all just starting to have as a society really openly. But what it means is you have all these, you know, you either had these. Recorded conference calls of some, you know, untrained, HR, professional, stepping in it on some kind of issue, or you have, you know, teachers doing their best in their classrooms, who then sent home an assignment, having them read a book that, you know, Maybe we need to think about now, you know, if you look at it that way, you’d say, you know, it’s a pretty conservative position to say, Hey, let’s take a pause on this.

And like have some more discussion. That’s not what they’re saying, but ultimately what they’re getting, send me a list of the books. Well, they’re saying let’s take a pause on all of this because we don’t want any of these discussions to take place. But I think the point is what they’re exploiting is the fact that that is not.

In unattractive position to a significant minority of Democrats right now who are still trying to figure out what they think about a lot of these issues. And especially not just what they think about these issues. I think they have a lot of commitments to the issues, but then how do you talk about it to an eight year old?

Yeah. How do you talk about it to. 16 year old. And so there’s a, there’s a, there’s a space there to exploit where, you know, if Democrats kind of run so far ahead into like, okay, what are we going to do to be the most woke, to be the most anti-racist to be the most welcoming of different gender identities and groups?

Well, you know, that’s great for liberal, you know, honestly, I’m the best liberal, liberal, white democratic adults. Yeah. But amongst the rest of, you know, I would say non Democrats, but also a lot of black and Hispanic Democrats who make up a majority of the Democrats in the state. They hold less liberal views on these issues.

And so this is a key point to exploit. So it’s, so the fact is on the one hand, it’s sort of, you know, not surprising that Abbott jumped in on it after Kraus did it because Abbott’s kind of been happy to jump in on most, any issue good for him on both sides, but it’s good for him on both sides. And we’re seeing that, you know, I mean, I think we’re seeing.

You know, some of that in the, in the big national conversation right now, as we’re recording this it’s election day in Virginia and New Jersey, big discussion of public education, how parents are responding to curriculum and things happening in the schools in Virginia, that’s gotten, you know, This has probably been a little too dramatic and we don’t know how it’s going to turn out, but it seems like, you know, one possible narrative here is that in his handling of the issue, the democratic candidate, former governor Terry McAuliffe, maybe snatching Victor defeat from the draws of victory by being, you know, sort of perhaps not as deaf on this issue, as he might know.

A lot of other things going on in that race, a lot of things structurally going on in terms of where we are politically. Um, and I’m sure them call of people. I didn’t have to be sure because you can read it pretty easily are, you know, can find other sources of their problems and in the Biden administration and the Democrat congressional Democrats, et cetera.

But there’s, but there’s no. There’s no debate that that issue has risen and become a major rallying point for Yuncken the Republic and candidate in that race, you know, and just to restate it simply, you know, it’s an issue that, you know, there’s no confusion or differentiation among Republican voters about where they place themselves on these social issues, social questions amongst Democrats, it’s a lot more complicated.

It becomes especially complicated in the suburbs. The Democrats and Republicans are fighting over where basically you have a bunch of parents who are figuring this out. This is, you know, they’re sending their kids to school and trying to see where they stand on this. So it divides those, that group, the rural part of the state, you know, that’s an overwhelmingly Republican, again, there’s no confusion about how they feel about this.

And then you go into the urban centers that are maybe more diverse and honestly you have less liberal Democrats. And a lot of cases, if you’re talking about Democrats of color, I’m going to make up a majority of the party. So it’s all. You know, mechanical insensible at the same time to go back to where we were saying, it’s like, so we just don’t trust public schools anymore.

I mean, that’s how the consequence of it is pretty, you know, dramatic, you know, for a long time in Texas, as long as I’ve been here, which is a long time, you know, the curriculum in the public schools has been a recurring point of conflict. I mean, it was a, it was an early beachhead for. You know what we can think of broadly as the sort of social conservative movement in the wake of wrong, et cetera, the kind of modern social conservative movement in the United States.

And it seemed like it had kind of subsided a little bit for a while. You know, I mean, I mean, for a while it was, you know, the state board of education was ground zero for curriculum and, you know, it would go away for maybe a year or so, and then it would come back, different books would cycle through. And that was just a constant, I mean, it was just like, The focus of despite particular during the, during the two thousands and early 2010.

And it does, you know, it puts me in a mind of my old structural self and, you know, the public education system is ground zero for socialization and for right. You know, how citizens are created. And I think that that’s not lost on either, you know, Progressive’s or conservative. And I think we’re just, we’re obviously in, for another big round of that, because if you step back, I mean, yeah, we’ve been, we’ve been talking about fights.

I mean, not even in the abstract, in the education system. I mean, we’ve been talking about literal physical fights on the grounds of schools for the last. Six to eight months now, over masks and over, over the COVID measures and, and mass and vaccinations and, and openings and closings, and the terms of all that, you know, and it’s almost as if we’ve organically come back to the point where, you know, if we’re going to have a very ideological.

Polarized political system, and we’re going to have political leaders and entrepreneurs who realize that and are incentivized to stoke that conflict. I think we’re in for a lot of this coming up. Yeah. I mean, it seems, I mean, you know that, I mean, that argument is very convincing for imagining, you know, the next session, a pretty big focus on like the 1836 project in Texas.

Right. Yeah, exactly. Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Speaks to that. Right. I mean, that’s the idea here is that, you know, well, if we’re going to be shaping, you know, young Texans, we’re going to do it then. Well, and there’s, you know, and you know, I mean, I, you know, it puts me in the mind, we’re going to need to probably do some polling on this.

I mean, another thing I pulled for this conversation was simply, you know, the approved disapprove of the state leadership’s handling of K through 12 public ed in the. Session and you know, it was pretty mediocre. Yeah. You know, 27, you know, they were underwater 27 approved 30% disapprove overall. So, you know, three points in the negative and a lot of people.

Kind of keeping their powder dry on this. So it was a lot of neither approved or disapproved. Now, you know, Republicans were 42, 16 Democrats were 1446, but I think that tells you that, you know, the thing that people were hanging it on. When we were in the field in June was not funding. Cause they weren’t really talking about that.

It was even at that point, probably not as much the COVID stuff, some of that was at play, but it was the end of the school year that was before the Delta surge. Right. Um, what was on the table were the transgender measures. And the critical race theory stuff. And so, you know, the, you know, forgive me, you know, public school curriculum is a side of ideological struggle is, you know, there’s more of that in our future coming up.

Yeah. Exactly right. I mean, the sort of theme that I take away from all this it’s sort of interesting and it speaks to the sort of cultural hang of a cultural shift. It’s sort of means in a trajectory and a trend over time in terms of the lack of trust that people have towards each other. But like, to the extent to which now, you know, the state is either extending trust or not individuals.

Right. And you think about it as like we don’t trust public school teachers. We don’t trust the people who like volunteer their time to administer elections. We definitely trust everybody to have. And we definitely trust everybody to enforce an abortion ban. Well, then, you know, and then, you know, you have to think, okay, so if you’re telling us we can’t trust them, who are you telling Texans?

You should trust, but see, this is what’s great though. This is perfect because this is actually, it comes actually because an interesting back-end around argument for charter schools and for pulping, for school choice and for homeschooling. Well, we saw, and we saw a little resurgence of that during COVID.

And I think all of that has just been more roiled up now. And I, it’s hard to see the temperature being turned down again, as long as there are incentives for, of which of which there are many. Yes. So, so here we go. I think we’ll, that will draw to a close, I want to, uh, flag for people that. You know, spoiler alert, we’ll have new polling data soon, keep an eye out in the Texas Tribune and on our website.

Um, that is, is looming very soon, depending on when you listen to this. Um, and there will be lots of interesting stuff in that poll. So, uh, thanks to Josh for being here. Thanks again to our crew in the liberal arts development studio. Thanks to you for listening. Uh, find us@texaspoliticsdotutexas.edu. Stay safe and be.

The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas politics project at the university of Texas at Austin.