Politics in the Texas House and views of the Trump agenda in Texas

[00:00:00] Jim Henson: Welcome to the Second Reading Podcast from the University of Texas at Austin.

[00:00:05] Intro: The Republicans were in the Democratic Party, because there was only one party. So I tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is, these departures from the Constitution, they have become the norm.

[00:00:24] At what point must a female senator Raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room.

[00:00:35] 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 joined again today by Josh Blank, research director for the Texas Politics Project. Josh, are you warm enough?

[00:00:49] Josh Blank: Never, not now, not, not, not until like, I guess, uh, April,

[00:00:53] Jim Henson: Josh Yankee born now comfortably transplanted to the sunbelt.

[00:00:59] Josh Blank: Yep. Got here as fast as I could. Now I can’t leave

[00:01:01] Jim Henson: Because of the weather

[00:01:03] Josh Blank: and the interest rates, but yeah,

[00:01:04] Jim Henson: The weather and the interest rates and taxes and all of it. Okay. So, you know, the combination of a new speaker of the house and the cold snap that swept across the state, including Austin earlier this week, have had things in a little bit of a holding pattern, at least in the formal proceedings at the legislature.

[00:01:23] Um, but you know, in the last 24 hours, things have thawed out a bit. And so is the process. Both chambers have released their initial budget bills, which, you know, a lot in there. Interesting. You know, maybe we’ll touch on that as we go through. You know, a lot of interesting things in there, you know, not, not a whole lot of big surprises.

[00:01:43] Josh Blank: Yeah.

[00:01:44] Jim Henson: You know, I would say that the two things that stuck out to me the most were, you know, the lingering difference in the approaches to property taxes, whatever the change in the leadership in the house, how seemingly a little bit more, uh, interested in using the compression lever to, uh, reduce property taxes.

[00:02:04] Is the Senate more interested in. leaning a little more heavily on increasing the homestead exemption, bit of an oversimplification. And then, you know, in terms of, you know, I’ll say my hobby horse, but you ride this hobby horse once in a while.

[00:02:19] Josh Blank: Let me see if I can get on, hold on.

[00:02:21] Jim Henson: Interesting to see that the Budget allocation, you know, despite some early trial balloons that the budget allocation for border security, uh, remains at 6.

[00:02:34] 5 billion in both budgets. Meaning nobody seems to be willing, you know, interested in for, you know, lots of, lots of understandable reasons to get in front of suggesting reductions now that there’s a Republican administration in Washington. Even though, as I said, I mean, there were, you know, from no less than the Lieutenant Governor, we’ve seen some suggestions that we might be able to reduce that spending.

[00:02:58] Seems to me that is, is, is not the opening, it’s not the opening gambit. I still think that we may see a little bit of that later, uh, in the face of substantial political risk. And certainly given what’s going on nationally to bring it back to what we’ll talk about, you know, not a lot of incentive given the, the mood on immigration and border security right now to send any signals.

[00:03:21] That you might want to reduce funding on the front end.

[00:03:23] Josh Blank: Yeah. You know, it’s funny. I mean, this is not the topic of today and we’ll come back to it. I’m sure. And I should point out, and we talked about this last week. We have a bunch of results from the December poll that looked at Texans views on the levels of spending and a bunch of different policy areas.

[00:03:34] It’s kind of a nice cross reference. And I think, you know, for this discussion, the main point here is that, you know, Republicans still see the state spending too little on immigration, but basically border security spending. So, you know, the majority part, a majority of the majority parties voters is actually, are actually saying either, you know, keep the money as is or increase it.

[00:03:50] And so there’s not like a, A huge amount of appetite here. I will say this when I saw that one, you know, that figure, I thought to myself, you know, if Trump makes good, which I mean, it seems pretty likely he’s going to, in some sense, at least on this one, in terms of the border, it seems like that’s a really good trade ship for the governor down the line.

[00:04:06] I mean, if the governor wants something near the end of the session, you know, cause it’s really up to him to say like, no, it’s okay if you guys cut. 500 million to put it in this or a billion to put in this if he feels like he can, but you can also sit there and say, why are you guys doing this if he doesn’t like what they’re doing?

[00:04:20] So it gives, I think it actually gives him a little bit of latitude there as we go along and it gives the legislature maybe a little bit of latitude. So if the Trump administration does put a bunch of troops on the ground in Texas does take over a bunch of responsibilities and they can say, Oh, look, we just found this money.

[00:04:34] Jim Henson: Right. Yeah. And that’s, you know, that’s kind of the scenario I’m envisioning. And I think that, you know, it creates some negotiating room for both to, to stand there and then, you know, see, see where things are come March, April, May.

[00:04:46] Josh Blank: Right.

[00:04:47] Jim Henson: Um, so today we’ll, you know, we’ll hit on a. A couple of different topics in addition to that, we’ll, you know, talk about the state of play in the House with Dustin Burrows now installed as speaker.

[00:04:57] We kind of flagged this when we had Darren last week and said we’d come back to it. And, you know, as expected, things have developed a little more so that the conversation, there’s a little more grist for that mill. Uh, and then we’ll look at Texas views of the Trump agenda, uh, based on results from our December UT Texas politics project poll, uh, which again, we talked about some with Darren Shaw last week.

[00:05:19] Let’s look at the new speaker. You know, we, and the consequences of Burroughs, you know, winning the speaker’s race, Burroughs won with support from more Democrats and Republicans. Overall, he won 85 55. The coalition was made up of 49 Democrats and 36 Republicans. Um, meaning significantly. And I think we’ll be seeing more about that later today.

[00:05:43] You know, more Republicans voted against him than for him, you know, and, and I think a lot of the, you know, initial read is that, you know, Burroughs has won, but he finds himself, you know, in a politically complicated position, you know, uh, situated between opponents among the Democrats. Um, you know, just because, you know, he got a block of Democrats voting for him doesn’t mean they’re his lifelong friends.

[00:06:08] And, you know, there was a size, you know, there’s a not insignificant block of more progressive Democrats that. Chose not to vote for him.

[00:06:17] Josh Blank: I think that’s important. I mean, just, you know, we’re sitting here. The second reading is kind of the point, you know, to say like, look, you know, Burroughs is a very conservative member with a very conservative record.

[00:06:25] There are a lot of Democrats, you know, I’m sure who felt they had to hold their nose up with this vote and pick, you know, the better of the two options that were put before them. But this does not mean that, again, to your point, that that coalition of Democrats is all in on Burroughs here.

[00:06:38] Jim Henson: Right, right.

[00:06:39] And, you know, and I haven’t looked at this in too much detail, but my sense is that, you know, there was an ideal, then, you know, as you’re implying, there was an ideological dimension to those who just couldn’t bring themselves to vote for him. Right. You know, and, you know, look, and probably, you know, more significantly, you know, on his other side, a sizable block of Republicans who didn’t vote for him.

[00:06:58] Josh Blank: Right.

[00:06:59] Jim Henson: Who, you know, we will soon find out, you know, what their initial appetite is for conflict today at 2 p. m. The house will debate, uh, the housekeeping resolution and and the rules, uh for the house Uh rules were just the draft of the rules were distributed Um as far as I have heard at four this morning, and then we’re recording on Thursday, you know, a little after 11.

[00:07:23] So the rules have been in the mix, you know, at least among the night owls for about seven hours, um, you know, had a look at them, but they’re 232 pages. Can’t say that I’ve read them all. If you look at the document, the house parliamentarians included a very handy two page overview. Which is built as a synopsis of proposed changes to the rules.

[00:07:46] I think that doesn’t mean that as we go through these rules, there will maybe some things, some, some Easter eggs, shall we say that didn’t make it into the synopsis, but, you know, the major points was, you know, I would say. From a, from a procedural point of view, from the point of view of people on the ground, you know, some degree of restructuring of the committees, there’s often a little bit of jiggling around in the committees, but, you know, a decent amount of consolidation and, and rearrangement in evidence there.

[00:08:17] Um, handful of committees were abolished, but ultimately their jurisdictions more or less folded into other committees. So, you know, for those of you in, you know, business and industry, county affairs, defense and veterans affairs, juvenile justice and family issues, the resolutions calendar committee and the urban affairs committee.

[00:08:38] We’re all, you know, kind of moved, you know, abolished, quote, unquote, and those subjects moved into other committees. So among the standing committees created that will absorb some of those, an intergovernmental affairs committee, which will absorb county affairs and urban affairs, And some of the jurisdiction of the international relations and economic development committee that had to do with state federal relations.

[00:09:05] There is a delivery of government efficiency committee now, um, obviously something that Donald Trump asked state Republican entities to do, um, and asked

[00:09:15] Josh Blank: and answered,

[00:09:16] Jim Henson: uh, you know, Not, not something likely to be ignored, particularly under the circumstances with a new speaker. And then there’s, you know, there are more subtle changes to the way that the speaker and the, and the committees are, are going to function.

[00:09:31] You know, the upshot being there are now a new set of permanent standing committees. Now, the permanent standing committees and the other interesting rules change that speaks to a longstanding campaign debate, goes back to last, you know, the last couple of sessions and, and demands by. Activists and in some segments of the house that there not be any democratic committee chairs.

[00:09:56] So You know, they’re the rules have been amended to you know And i’m reading from the memo to restrict the appointment of chairs of a standing committee To those members of the political party that constitutes a majority of the house membership, but And to provide that, that a majority party member may not be appointed as a vice chair of standing committees.

[00:10:21] So, you know, the key here is that, you know, there will be a letter of the law following of the no democratic committee chairs, but they’re the, The vice chairmanships of the major permanent standing committees, uh, appear to have been reserved to the, to the minority party,

[00:10:41] Josh Blank: not the majority

[00:10:42] Jim Henson: with the vice chair having, you know, some of the, the, the powers that we would think a vice chair would have.

[00:10:48] Again, to promote committee chairs would directly consult with vice chairs in scheduling committee business and vice chairs may designate measures to be considered and witnesses to be invited vice chairs may request impact statements for legislation. So if I was a betting man, I would bet that this afternoon when these rules are debated, we will very quickly see amendments to try to change the wording.

[00:11:13] of this provision from those who are not in favor, those who have been long favoring the, the abolition of democratic committee chairs and, you know, don’t want to see and want to see the Democrats sort of lose power in the committee structure.

[00:11:30] Josh Blank: No democratic vice committee chairs doesn’t really roll off the tongue as smoothly, does it?

[00:11:34] Right.

[00:11:35] Jim Henson: It does not. And that’s why, you know, we’ll see. You know, how this gets processed going forward. So, you know, those rules are available, you know, all over the place. I would also, uh, in terms of looking at the, yeah, anyway, I’ve, so those documents are very much in circulation. If you listen to this, you’ve probably already seen it, but that.

[00:11:53] You know, if you don’t have time to read the whole 200 plus page rules document, the synopsis is a pretty good way to start and have that handy for the debate, uh, this afternoon in the house. Now, you know, the house leadership, you know, avoided this issue with a very, in a sly manner, you know, in the last session, they’ve obviously chosen not to do that this time.

[00:12:15] I’m not going to go into that for those of you. Uh, that have a subscription to the text. And Brad Johnson had a, a nice little account of that in his mailing called fourth reading.

[00:12:26] Josh Blank: Nice,

[00:12:27] Jim Henson: which is nice, you know, good branding. Um, so I, you know, I would say, you know, have a look at that. So judge, what do you, you know, like what’s your, you know, you had looked at some of the committee chairmanships, you know, we’ve been talking about this for months as we go into, you know, the, the next chapter of, you know, several, this, you know, Session in which we’re going to see the rubber meeting the road this afternoon and, you know, just see what the, you know, what the approach of those who lost the speakers fight, shall we say, is going to be, um, you know, like, where are you on all this at this point?

[00:12:59] What are you, what’s, what are you watching for this afternoon? What are you thinking as we see these rules roll out?

[00:13:04] Josh Blank: Well, I think just to start where you, you know, pick up where you left off. I mean, I am really interested to see how, you know, what the reaction is to this idea of essentially As the rules are currently written, it will, again, guarantee all of the standing committee chairs.

[00:13:15] Y’all are right,

[00:13:16] Jim Henson: no committee chairs.

[00:13:17] Josh Blank: Yeah, no, you got it. And then, and so the question is, you know, how adept is the opposition to sort of moving on this? Cause I mean, in some sense, I mean, I, I, you know, and I’m, I’m actually just, I’m just gonna throw this back to you with a question. Cause I just really don’t know.

[00:13:29] I mean, if you’re the Democrats in the Texas House, setting aside leadership, all this, I’m just thinking you had a choice between, I’m looking back right now. Eight committee chairmanships in the 88th session by my count for the most part, not on, you know, I don’t want to say not on fundamentally, not on key committees with respect to the, the agenda of the majority party in the legislature.

[00:13:50] Otherwise they wouldn’t be chairing those committees. Well, it

[00:13:52] Jim Henson: allowed for the fact to remember, you know, not in the eyes of Republicans and in the eyes of Democrats, you know, not all Democrats are the same. And no,

[00:13:59] Josh Blank: I mean, I’m thinking I’m looking at Dutton and juvenile justice. I mean, like, look, and that’s, and that’s exactly right.

[00:14:03] I mean, look, they’re not, I mean, to your point about the ideological division, you know, I mean, they’re not. Putting the most liberal Democrats at the chair of any committee, but I’m thinking if you’re sitting here and you’re, you know, you’re, you’re rank and file democratic member, I’m trying to think, you know, how did you bring him to the table?

[00:14:17] It’s like, well, you guys had eight committee chairmanships. Most of those people are somewhat unique and those Chairmanships are somewhat unique in terms of the topics they cover. What about all the vice chairmanships? I, you know, that seems like a pretty good trade to me. I mean, I don’t, I’m not saying that that’s, I’m not, I’m not saying that that would

[00:14:33] Jim Henson: say for sure under the circumstances, I’m not

[00:14:35] Josh Blank: saying that like, I’m not, I’m not, and I’m not, I’m not saying just acknowledge or not, I’m not saying this is necessarily going to be what the outcome is,

[00:14:40] Jim Henson: but

[00:14:40] Josh Blank: in terms of what’s on the table right now, I mean, for moat, for your average member, if you’re not moody, you’re not dud and you’re not one of these kinds of people in a pretty unique position within the caucus, it seems like there’s more opportunity for you.

[00:14:52] Jim Henson: Yeah. And I think that’s, you know, that’s what made the deal, the deal. I

[00:14:56] Josh Blank: mean, the question then becomes, you know, how does, how does the, you know, the rank and file Republican member react to that? Now there seems to be a sweeter in this too, which is to say that, you know, to the extent that the committees have been somewhat consolidated.

[00:15:06] And you look at this is that, you know, there’s essentially adjusting a rule to essentially say, Each member is going to be put on two of the major, you know, sort of substantive policy committees, you know, essentially regardless by and they were going to accommodate that by increasing the size of those key committees.

[00:15:20] So the idea here would be that, you know, if you’re on the outside, it’s in your Republican rank and file. You had no chance at a chairmanship or a vice chairmanship. Well, you’re not getting stuffed off to the side potentially either. Right. And that’s true even for the 55 or didn’t vote for it. Right, right.

[00:15:34] And so there is Sweenors for those. Guys, the question is now, you know, did based on, you know, what else has been promised, you know, how strong is that opposition to the vice chair piece of this, I guess.

[00:15:44] Jim Henson: Yeah. And, you know, I, I, like I said, I will be surprised if there’s not some pushback on that just because it’s.

[00:15:50] The most obvious thing to push back on, it’s going to feel, you know, it can be presented as an evasion and still, you know, horse trading, which it was, you know, so, you know, we shall, you know, it’s going to be an interesting dynamic, but I, I agree with that, that it, It’s a creative way of creating some potentially new nodes of influence for people in a way that re scrambles without fundamentally changing things.

[00:16:17] But, you know, kind of re scrambles like what the distributive policies are going to, what the distributive decisions are going to look like.

[00:16:23] Josh Blank: I really love the, the, the phrase user, you know, nodes of influence, because I think that, that sort of speaks to the other thing I was looking at this morning, which was just for my own sake, going through the notes.

[00:16:30] I was just looking at the, at the speaker’s vote and I was looking, you know, What was the breakdown of votes from the chairman chairperson, uh, chair people of each of the standing committees from the last session, just to see what it looked like, you know, and I think it’s not surprising. I sort of had a hunch as to what it was going to look like.

[00:16:45] But, you know, the 19 republicans who are still in the legislature. Who were, uh, like committee chairs. And again, I could, I mean, just to be honest, like I could be off by like one either way, you know, if somebody tells me I’m wrong, please email me. I’ll, you know, correct my, you’re almost

[00:16:59] Jim Henson: literally reading off the back of an envelope.

[00:17:00] Josh Blank: I am like almost literally, you know, the back of the envelope. That’s right. But if you look at that, you know, of the, of the 19 chairs who are Republican, 13 voted for Burroughs, and that includes Burroughs, six voted for Cook. And to me, that sort of sees as this note of influence thing, right? I mean, one of the things that sort of struck me all along about this is, you know, You know what, what’s been going on and why this, you know, sort of the, the challenge, it seems for the opposition to, you know, whatever you want to call it, feeling burrows, you know, bond and Strauss, the whole thing is this idea that you could make this a public fight, you know, that if you put enough pressure on people that like they, you know, the men, but nothing pressure on the members from the outside.

[00:17:38] You know, they would react and make adjustments and I mean, that’s true in the sense if you literally get them out of office and bring in new people. Sure. But when you look at this, like, boy, you know, it just sort of see how, like the power and the nodes of power tend to, you know, I would say aggregate together, right?

[00:17:52] They seem to move as a block and it’s not surprising that people were in power. So, you know, there’s not really a lot of interest in us sort of going with a new direction because a new direction means. Probably some of us are losing our jobs.

[00:18:02] Jim Henson: And I think, you know, it’s so simple. Like, yeah, I was just going to say, you can make it a lot more complicated.

[00:18:07] I mean, I was, you know, then, you know, then it is, I mean, I think that’s really the brass tacks is that, you know, you can talk about, you know, there are alliances and personal relationships will be flogging all that and all that matters. And, but the, you know, the currency there is, you know, this is so cliched and, you know, somebody said this to me the night that burrows one, uh, somebody in the lobby and You know, at the time I kind of thought of slightly, well, you know, yeah, obviously, but obvious things sometimes have more subtle implications.

[00:18:37] And that is, look, these people, the end of the day, the voters are making decisions based on, you know, the power they have in this moment at this moment and whether they’re going to gain more or lose more. And so, you know, we should expect that, you know, allowing for people to have different calculations or frankly, to just make mistakes or be unlucky.

[00:18:58] You know, to maximize, you know, their current power situation, which meant that the people that were, you know, most likely to stick with Burroughs given where he’s aligned were those committee chairs.

[00:19:09] Josh Blank: And as you were

[00:19:10] Jim Henson: saying, as we were looking at your list and talking about it, you know, without going into the details, you know, we can look at those people that didn’t stick with the current, with the institutional leadership.

[00:19:20] And there’s explanation of one type or another for each of those people.

[00:19:24] Josh Blank: Well, what’s it great about? Yeah. And again, there’s exponential. And, you know, and they come from different parts of the spectrum. I mean, that’s the thing. They’re not, they’re not all coming from one part of the ideological distribution here.

[00:19:32] And I think, you know, another way to think about this too, is when you look at that number and you say, okay, so you had, you know, 13, you know, committee chairs, Republican committee chairs from the 88th. Basically, they just had to find two friends.

[00:19:42] Jim Henson: Yeah.

[00:19:43] Josh Blank: Found two Republican friends, and they got to 36, you know, right then and there.

[00:19:47] And that’s kind of, you know, you talk about a body and a process where relationships matter so much. It’s like, well, yeah, you know, and these people are not in these positions because they’re not good at relationship management. Well, you know, and

[00:19:56] Jim Henson: a combination of friends. And as people began to, some of those, you know, the chairs that broke with, You know, the institutional incumbent team, whatever you want to call them, you know, the people that are on the fence or, you know, willing to change their mind, you know, they see job openings,

[00:20:13] Josh Blank: right?

[00:20:13] Yeah.

[00:20:14] Jim Henson: Right. That’s, that’s, uh, you know, some good job. Now, several of those chairs actually are the committees that got reabsorbed into something else, but, you know, be that as it may. So, you know, look, I, I think that a lot of what we’ve seen since Burroughs was elected is, you know, I’ll play it out of some of the themes we expected that, you know, this is not a clean, you know, left, right, ideological fight that it is fairly fluid, but also that whoever won this race was going to be in a difficult position no matter what I think.

[00:20:49] Yeah, and

[00:20:50] Josh Blank: I think I said this last week, but you know, when people try to like, Pair this down to some sort of left right dimension is, you know, it’s better to think about this in some ways is like, you know, okay, to some extent, this is, you know, you can, you can refine this if you want to feel free, but it’s like, and to some extent, you know, we’re looking at, you know, this is about the people who.

[00:21:07] Held agenda control and power in the house and like the groups of people who’ve done that and the people who’ve been more on the outside and the people who’ve been on the outside are not only wanting to, again, have control of that, but they’re also much more open to changing the institution and the rules.

[00:21:20] And I think this is what’s sort of interesting. Now, again, the people in the power. Position or in the power position for all kinds of reasons, real, imagined, seen, and unseen that we can kind of, you know, or not know about, but that’s why this next step is so important because to the extent that the, the larger group of Republicans was ready to move on in terms of remove forward and sort of adjusting, making changes major or minor to the institution.

[00:21:43] That’s what we’re starting to talk about now.

[00:21:45] Jim Henson: Well, and I think that’s, you know, I mean, one of the things that we, you know, will be interesting to see as it unfolds. In the coming hours and then in the coming weeks, and then in the next primary is look the, you know, the challengers to the status quo group, essentially that, you know, persevered in this race for the most part, you know, we’re styling themselves as reformers.

[00:22:07] Right. And, you know, I think for a lot of ideological reasons, a lot of people really, and, you know, particularly institutional establishment people bristled at that a little bit, but, you know, and I think we talked about this a few weeks ago when we talked about the speaker’s race. There was enough substance to that in complaints about the way that the process worked during the Phelan speakership, transparency, the perception of cliquishness, et cetera, that, you know, that mantle of, you know, the idea of reform has been a little sticky.

[00:22:41] And I think we will be hearing again, a lot more of that today. And, you know, whether, you know, how this all shakes out, you know, we had a long conversation. I moderated a panel for Pat, the political, uh, advocates, advocacy association of Texas earlier this week with Brad Johnson and Harvey Kronberg and Mark Jones and Gromer Jeffries Jr.

[00:23:04] And, you know, there’s a lot of kicking around of the idea of just how this balance between What the reform movement was going to look like. We didn’t talk about it in those terms and just what the tenor of the new incumbency was going to be. One of the big takeaways that, you know, it kind of goes back to a point you were making earlier that I think is going to be interesting as this session unfolds is, you know, You know, the degree to which, you know, the nature of internal house politics has become more public, you know, in that discussion, you know, one at one of the panelists said, Look, you know, the days of this just being, you know, the most inside of inside things is kind of is over in the sense that there’s just much more media attention to this.

[00:23:50] And I, you know, I both agree with that, but also would temper it in the sense that The, the, the zone of interest, if you will, has expanded beyond what it was 30 years ago, let alone 40 or 50 years ago. It’s still, as our polling has showed, not something that, you know, the average, even the average person that follows politics isn’t walking around going, Hey, I want, you know, wonder who’s ahead in the speaker’s race,

[00:24:15] Josh Blank: sir.

[00:24:15] You can gauge the first point without, well, you have to, the followup is the denominator is also increased exponentially, but

[00:24:21] Jim Henson: there is still more attention being paid by activists, et cetera. And that’s, you know, and I, I raised that because of this notion of like, you know, Not ideologically, but institutionally, like who’s the reformer and who’s the conservative and who’s going to get to assume those mantles is going to be an interesting play.

[00:24:39] I think as we move forward and also

[00:24:42] Josh Blank: like reform what and just to the point here, which is, you know, you can, I mean, like there’s a, there’s a real, you know, I mean, look, there can be a very real desire for reform from the sense that you believe that, like, as a, as a person operating in the institution, you leave the institution to operate.

[00:24:56] Yeah. More effectively, but I think that obviously raises a question effectively to what end

[00:25:00] Jim Henson: yeah, well, I mean I you know to To give the reformers who do, I mean, I think if, you know, and I’ve asked people that they would say, you know, less self interested application of the rules, more transparency and decision making and agenda development, you know, broader inclusion of the majority party.

[00:25:19] Josh Blank: Yeah. And I think what’s interesting to me is like, this kind of goes back to this discussion that we have, you know, repeatedly over and over again. Oh, so about agenda control. Because the reality is is Republicans have been incredibly successful. Conservatives have been incredibly successful at passing the laws they want to pass and nearly every case, you know, and like it’s to the point where, you know, you kind of sit here and like each session we’re saying, what are they not?

[00:25:38] What are they still having trouble with? And you can kind of go through this. We all have the kind of the same list, you know, taxpayer funded lobbying vouchers and there’s like a handful of things out there that are still on the list, but they’re very, very small. And so there is a piece of which is like, you know, This does kind of come down to a sense of, to my mind, it is come to, you know, agenda control power, but nonetheless, it’s not really about efficiency because, I mean, I would say like, you know, from an outsider’s perspective, you know, the Texas legislature has been incredibly effective at passing conservative legislation and really inculcating members from challenge, unless it’s coming from their own party and from their own.

[00:26:11] Yeah, I mean, I guess

[00:26:12] Jim Henson: the way I would, you know, I don’t, I don’t think efficiency is really part of what they’re arguing for though. I mean, you know, the power agenda control thing is at the heart of it. But it’s a sense of, you know, the distribution of that. And that’s one of the things that’s interesting about this kind of attempt at some, you know, degree of refactoring of where these nodes are, you know, and it will be, you know, an interesting gauge of the skill of the leadership and the new staff that they brought in to see.

[00:26:38] How they’re able to use that to do what we’ve been talking about a lot in the last few weeks, which is to, you know, defuse some of the, you know, some of the opposition and appeal back some of those numbers we were talking about and whether you can bring people enough people into the tent to weaken your opposition within the party, I think.

[00:26:57] So, all right. So like on the let’s, let’s change gears. We’re in our time and, and look a little bit about what our December polling told us about the Trump agenda. And so. You know, a little inside baseball here. I mean, when we put the December poll together. You know, we had a few things we wanted to do in the big sense, you know, one of them establish some baselines for some of the issues in the politics and policy of the then pending legislature when we did this poll in sort of mid December, um, but the other was to kind of get a similar kind of benchmarking on what Texans views were of the Trump agenda while Trump was still somewhat in the wings.

[00:27:39] Now about a month after that poll, uh, Donald Trump, a little more than a month, uh, Donald Trump has been inaugurated and has, you know, unleashed a fear, you know, a flurry of, uh, and fury may be better, but a furious flurry of, you know, executive orders, political signaling, You know, attempts to sort of follow through on some of the things he discussed during the campaign and, and some things he didn’t discuss as much during the campaign, you know, I think, you know, to summarize it, Donald Trump’s, I think, not surprisingly come in pretty hot in the first days of his restoration to the presidency.

[00:28:18] You know, the news since he was inaugurated three days ago has been, you know, all about early executive orders, directives, um, and again, little of which is too surprising given the leading indicators that we had during the campaign, you know, probably least surprising some of his first and most, um. You know, powerful actions have been on immigration and the border, um, but also signaling actions on the economy, et cetera.

[00:28:44] And, you know, we’re working, we got a piece I’d like to think is about 80 percent done, uh, on these results and on Trump. I mean, I, you know, I’m, I’m interested in what we’re seeing here and, and what the Texas public reaction is. Um, what’s really standing out about that? How do you, how would you enter into this?

[00:29:03] Maybe start by like, you know, just looking at what we’ve, how we tested this and what we found out.

[00:29:08] Josh Blank: Yeah, sure. So what we did was, is we looked at, you know, what were sort of the major, I think, you know, campaign promises, initiatives, you know, clear, clear policy directions that had been signaled by the campaign.

[00:29:19] And then, you know, the incoming Trump administration, the transition team, etc. And what we did was, is we took each of the, I think we ended up with 10 areas broadly and said, you know, Which one, you know, basically, first of all, rank how high of a priority this should be for the Trump, for the Trump administration, right?

[00:29:34] So should this be a very high priority?

[00:29:35] Jim Henson: So, so our response is assess each one individually. Each one

[00:29:38] Josh Blank: individually first. Should this be a very high priority? Is it a high priority? Is it a medium priority? Is it a low priority? Is it not a priority at all? And so obviously, you know, for Democrats, a lot of these are not going to be priorities, right?

[00:29:48] Um, and really in a lot of, just to be honest, much, Much more interested personally in sort of the Republican reaction to the list. But then what we also did was after evaluating each one, and it’s something that should be somewhat familiar to you if you listen to our polling discussions a lot, then we asked, which one of these is the most important priority?

[00:30:01] And that gives us a little, gives us sort of two ways to look at this, or what’s an absolute top priority, but also even setting aside, you know, competition for resources, time, attention, you know, how important are each of these. And I think, you know, the top, the banner result, if you will, is probably the least surprising, which is, you know, deporting immigrants who are in the U.

[00:30:18] S. illegally was ranked a very high priority by 55 percent of Republican voters. If you add the high priority, it’s going to be, you know, 80 percent or 9%, you know, But 32%, nearly a third, one in three also said this should be the top priority. Now, again, not a huge surprise here in Texas, where immigration and border security in particular is a state level problem and a consistently cited, you know, issue for Texas Republicans in particular.

[00:30:42] So it’s not surprising. After that, you know, there’s one other issue that really shows this sort of clear consensus, and then we get a lot more variance. I would say, right, so lowering the prices of goods and services. Not surprisingly, 56% of Republicans said it’s a very high priority, 25%. One four said this should be the top priority of the administration.

[00:30:59] And then after that we, we dropped down, you know, pretty reasonably significantly in terms of let. The, I don’t wanna say the correspondence between the top priority and the very high priority, which is sort of necessary, right? Other, other, uh, priorities for Republicans. This is the share who said it’s a very high priority.

[00:31:14] Strengthening national defense, 59%. Reducing the flow of fentanyl in the country, 60%. That one’s somewhat surprising in some sense, except for the fact that every time you ask about it, that’s what you get. I mean, something like that is sort of jumps off the page when you talk about fentanyl and, and, and sort of illicit drug use in the country.

[00:31:30] Well, and

[00:31:30] Jim Henson: not to jump ahead to where, you know, but if you look at, you know, I mean, that’s the highest single, very high priority among Republicans. Not by a lot, you know, 60%, but it’s not, but at the top priority, it falls down to 6%.

[00:31:43] Josh Blank: Right.

[00:31:44] Jim Henson: And it does make me wonder. About the degree to which, you know, Trump has successfully merged fentanyl with the border.

[00:31:53] I mean, he is using the fentanyl flow as part of his rationale for declaring,

[00:32:00] Josh Blank: you

[00:32:01] Jim Henson: know, an emergency state of emergency and all of this. So essentially you mentioned that about fentanyl, cause I, you know, I think we’ve included it in a couple of things and we keep waiting for it to come up in some of the open endeds It doesn’t pop up that

[00:32:14] Josh Blank: much.

[00:32:14] It doesn’t pop up that much. But as my, in my recollection, I have to kind of go back through the data and it may have been on a different public poll that, you know, I’ve been a part of here, but I, but I think when we ask people about their experience, knowing someone who has experienced a drug overdose, the numbers are very high.

[00:32:29] I mean, they’re shockingly high, I think, in a lot of ways. So I think, you know, this is one of those things where it’s not, you know, again, if you’re gonna say, what’s, you know, what are you thinking about in terms of politics, you know, it’s the border. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But if you say like, Hey, is this a problem in your community?

[00:32:41] You’re going to people are going to say it’s a problem. Like, and so I think that’s sort of where, where it’s at. And I think you’re 100 percent right, which is that, you know, it’s, it’s very likely that the intersection of sort of the discussion around fentanyl legal drugs, and then obviously border crossings is just, I mean, You know, we’re not talking about undocumented immigrants in the country looking to do like, you know, menial work.

[00:33:01] Most of the, you know, campaign rhetoric about undocumented immigrants talks about criminals, rapists, gang members, you know, mental, mental, you know, mental institutions being cleared out. This is, you know, what they’re talking about. Well,

[00:33:13] Jim Henson: and, you know, and the new president has linked fentanyl to a couple of, I mean, you know, he’s used it in immigration and border security.

[00:33:22] You know, he’s talked about it as a public health issue, but he’s also talked about it. He’s also linked it to his trade tactics to, you know, transition to the other piece of this, right?

[00:33:32] Josh Blank: Right. So if we keep going down that list, you know, uh, without going through every single thing, I mean, one of the other banner policies here, of course, is the tariffs.

[00:33:41] Increasing tariffs on imported goods. 15 percent of Republicans say that’s a very high priority. 1 percent say it should be the top priority. And I

[00:33:47] Jim Henson: think we have to say only 15%,

[00:33:49] Josh Blank: only 15%, you

[00:33:50] Jim Henson: know, I mean, that’s a pretty low number proportional to

[00:33:56] Josh Blank: the attention,

[00:33:56] Jim Henson: you know, well, the, you know, yes, the real, you know, the, both the mental and rhetorical real estate gets from Donald Trump.

[00:34:03] Josh Blank: Yeah. Well, and again, with all, I mean, within all of these announcements, the other announcement and people are talking about these negotiating tax or whatever, you know, a 25 percent tax on Canada and Mexico and a 10 percent tax on Chinese imports, which I thought was an interesting point of departure.

[00:34:17] And again, I think that’s probably tactical more so than real, uh, from what people are saying, given that, you know, in terms of the North American free trade agreement and all that stuff, it’s not up for renegotiation unless he starts to kind of shake the. Yeah. Right. I mean, he’s, you

[00:34:29] Jim Henson: know, he’s leaning on Mexico and Canada.

[00:34:31] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Using in part this. You know, the club of tariffs presumably intended to influence their, you know, attention to the link between, you know, illegal immigration and fentanyl trafficking, human trafficking, et cetera. Um, so yeah, there’s a, there’s an interesting combination where the second order effects of taking it second and third order effects of, Trump’s rhetoric have interacted with public opinion here where it’s taken and where it’s not

[00:35:00] Josh Blank: right

[00:35:00] Jim Henson: to my mind

[00:35:01] Josh Blank: Yeah, and so I mean, I think you know, we should get into sort of what we see sort of the interesting part about this I mean, I think you know, which is there’s a lot of tensions in here We can get some more details, right?

[00:35:11] And some of them are obvious. Some of them are less so I think you know at a current moment right now, I think You know, it’s interesting because sort of first and foremost, you can see how much in the sort of flurry you lay out that like, you know, Trump has learned, right? And the Trump administration is learning.

[00:35:25] I was talking to some Democrats this morning and they’re like, you know, kind of, Oh my God. And it’s like, this is like the first drive in a football game. And I’m sorry, one, one sports analogy, right? This is scripted, right? They came in knowing what they were going to do, and they’re essentially flooding the zone right now.

[00:35:41] I mean, it’s kind of hard for people to know where to look, and I think that’s partially on purpose to some extent, because in some ways they’re, uh, doing a really good job of making sure that they are hitting their constituencies, making sure that, you know, the people they made promises to are getting, you know, sort of a quick delivery on some of this stuff.

[00:35:55] But a lot of this stuff is actually, you know, again, they’re Some of the some of the easier things, right? I mean, some in a weird way, it’s kind of easy to end D. E. I. Programs in government institutions. I mean that in multiple ways. We’re gonna talk about that right now,

[00:36:07] Jim Henson: but a political politically for sure.

[00:36:09] Yeah, right, right.

[00:36:11] Josh Blank: I should also say, you know, just as a little political science observation, right? It’s not uncommon for presidents to lean on executive orders more and more, the deeper into their presidency they go. And in some ways, this is is the fifth year of his presidency, and he’s coming right in with a Congress that, you know, may or may not work with him on stuff, but he’s going to get something accomplished right now.

[00:36:27] And this is the fastest way to do it.

[00:36:29] Jim Henson: Yeah. I mean, I, and I think there’s, you know, I mean, look, there’s something, I mean, there’s still something, you know, pretty familiar and consistent about this in the sense of, you know, one of Trump’s effective tactics has always been, at least in his political life, And it’s kind of flood the zone, you know, take advantage of quantity and

[00:36:50] Josh Blank: velocity

[00:36:50] Jim Henson: and velocity in order to push the agenda forward and dominate, you know, go and going back to agenda management, you know, by the time his opponents are, you know, reacting badly to something he said or done four or five, you know, he’s thrown four or five other things out there and, you know, it just keeps his opponents scrambling and he’s being, you know, I think he’s, he’s got more coordination and more.

[00:37:18] You know, team support for that effort,

[00:37:20] Josh Blank: you

[00:37:21] Jim Henson: know, and I think that just comes from probably, you know, to some degree, you know, having learned from experience and having more people around him that he trusts and that are effective at this and, you know, and they’re not doing the, you know, he didn’t, he’s not bothered other than arguably Marco Rubio and maybe one or two of the economic appointments.

[00:37:43] But even, even those examples are less than before. You know, this is all things people have said, but I think it’s reflected in what we’re seeing, you know, he’s not kind of trying to mess around with saying, well, you know, I’ll be talked into having what the outsiders were calling adults in the room. I think if anything, it was probably, you know, insulted and angered by that, you know, has now has all these people that used to work for him talking shit about him, you know, you know, some of whom he’s now, you know, trying to punish, you know,

[00:38:17] Josh Blank: right.

[00:38:17] Jim Henson: Some of the things he’s, you know, he’s done. And so, you know, I mean, I think when you look at these numbers, The next question is, you know, sort of the piece we’re writing and what you alluded to is, you know, there are, there, there are tensions here and how are those going to be managed? You know, the tensions and, you know, we can, you can kind of get, dig deep into these and we’ll do more about this in the piece probably.

[00:38:42] But, you know, the tension between the fact that the public really wants prices to go down,

[00:38:48] Josh Blank: you

[00:38:50] Jim Henson: know, whether that’s a reasonable expectation among the public or not, they certainly don’t want them going up anymore.

[00:38:55] Josh Blank: Yeah.

[00:38:55] Jim Henson: Right. And now we’ve got this language of, you know, sort of lowering prices because that’s what people are promising and that those people include the last democratic presidential candidate, you know, um, versus tariffs and all, all of these other measures that all things being equal.

[00:39:12] You know, the mainstream position, and I say that, you know, with full awareness of the implications,

[00:39:19] Josh Blank: Jim says, as he throws his hands up in the air to make very clear, just this is what people are saying.

[00:39:25] Jim Henson: Other people have views and I get that, but I, I’m just not persuaded in most cases, but you know, the fact that, you know, many of the things that they are talking about doing will have a.

[00:39:35] The impact of probably raising prices and, you know, cause, you know, fueling price increases, fueling inflation, you know, tariffs, you know, big increases in spending. And, you know, even the increases in spending are going to need to be balanced by, you know, a desire to reduce the size of government. Now, this is what the.

[00:39:56] You know why we’ve got a state DOGE committee now, but you know, the numbers on that that I’ve seen, you know, really don’t add up unless you’re going to really take an ax to things that have real constituencies. And there’s a, there’s a threat, a little threat of consistency between the two segments here in that, you know, a lot of things in political science have been wrong or questionable or conditional.

[00:40:21] One that is pretty tried and true is that when you spend government funding in a sustained way, You know, for not very long, you create clients for that spending. You know, we’re going to see that with the attempts to cut more, you know, if there’s an attempt to cut border security here, whether it’s local actors in the border region who are seeing benefits from direct and indirect benefits from the flow of funds, you know, to the governor’s office to DPS, to, you know, you know, whatever.

[00:40:49] There are lots of constituents for funds as soon as you start spending them. And that’s going to be true in the federal government as well, you know, in, on a much larger scale.

[00:40:58] Josh Blank: And I think something that’s sort of underappreciated, I don’t, you know, I don’t even know if it’s underappreciated, but it sort of takes a back burner is the fact that, you know, Republicans still express a significant amount of concern about the debt and the deficits.

[00:41:08] Jim Henson: Yeah.

[00:41:08] Josh Blank: So when we asked, you know, about the various sort of economic concerns that people hold, obviously, you know, prices, you know, cost of goods and services top the list. You know, three quarters of voter of all voters, you know, regardless of party saying, you know, this is a very serious problem when you look at the Republican responses, the share saying that the debt or the deficit is a very big concern there.

[00:41:26] It’s 60 percent right. So the reality is, is, you know, how do you on the one hand strengthen the national defense? A very high priority of 59 percent of Republicans. Well, the same share of Republicans are also very concerned about the size of the debt. And the deficit, to your point, you can do that, but it’s going to require a big restructuring of the way that resources are spent.

[00:41:43] And then I’ll say, you know what else has about 60 percent of Republicans very concerned? The cost of healthcare. The cost of housing all these other things that actually do also relate to this in a way that and it’s something funny I mean the more we talk about it’s almost like it’s crazy to think this but it’s almost like I’m just gonna ask it as A question as opposed to say it as a statement But it’s like for Donald Trump was winning a second term easier than the second term is actually gonna be to govern

[00:42:04] Jim Henson: Yeah.

[00:42:05] Josh Blank: And part of that is because, you know, Trump’s approach to politics, whatever it is, is, you know, and it’s effective is to, is to say what he needs to say. Right. And ultimately he’s made a lot of promises to a lot of people and now the rubber meets the road and it’s like, yeah, you got 60 percent of Republicans who’d like to see lower healthcare costs, but we’re also going to sign an executive order taking away the cap on out of pocket expenses.

[00:42:25] Jim Henson: As I was reading through the draft of this thing we’re working on, I mean, I had, of course, you know, you’ll let, you know, the kind of bigger, you know, kind of abstract thing here about. You know, the hardest moment of populism when you, you know, are, are successful at that, is actually getting in power and governing.

[00:42:44] Yeah. . Because then, you know, promises, promises, and, and the actual implementation of this. And look, you know, we’ve seen, I mean, you know, we’re already seeing some of these contradictions and the conflicts play out in some, you know, in the kind of ways that we’re talking about the big competing policy goals.

[00:43:04] Mm-hmm . Policy contradictions. But you know. And they signed an executive order, you know, recently, I, you know, as I understand it, you know, basically undoing the, the electric car, you know, electric vehicle mandate passed during the Biden administration, you know, with, you know, Elon Musk probably within spitting distance of, you know, when that document was signed.

[00:43:29] Josh Blank: Yeah. And a company that’s losing value quickly.

[00:43:31] Jim Henson: Right. And then, you know, they’re just, you know, so the, you know, the contradictions are rife and, you know, it comes with. You know, the quaint notion of governance.

[00:43:41] Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean, I guess, you know, one of the things, I mean, we’re just kind of riffing here, so I’m just thinking out loud a little bit.

[00:43:46] And one of the things that sort of, I mean, I’ll say this, I find it, I want to be very careful and I want to be very careful about not underestimating Donald Trump, because I think he’s really, you know, proven himself. Adept, not necessarily a succeeding, but it not failing in some of this stuff. I mean, he doesn’t necessarily tend to accrue sort of the negative perceptions that, you know, you think might accrue to him in any number of venues.

[00:44:14] And it comes to even like, even something like this. I mean, I sort of wonder, you know, if prices go up and he says, this is Biden’s fault, you know, are we going to see a partisan response to that? I mean, something else I think about is, you know, people have been telling us. You know, really perpetually that the prices are a problem for them and, you know, are, are like, you know, for half of the people, are they going to all of a sudden say, actually, prices aren’t a problem now?

[00:44:35] I don’t think so. I mean, again, we’ve talked about this. It seems unlikely just based on if you kind of play that out. But man, politics is crazy these days.

[00:44:43] Jim Henson: Well, you know, I mean, I think, you know, you mentioned political science will go back, you know, it, In the world of, you know, elite led mass opinion.

[00:44:51] Josh Blank: You

[00:44:52] Jim Henson: know, there are limits to that dynamic, simple terms, you know, average person doesn’t spend most of their time paying attention to politics.

[00:45:00] Politics is complicated when they need to make a decision or, you know, is there forming opinions about politics? They look to partisan leaders and figures of authority to help inform their opinions. That’s not, that dynamic is not infinite in its, uh, in its power.

[00:45:18] Josh Blank: Yeah.

[00:45:18] Jim Henson: And, you know, the question we’re asking, I think, to some degree is like, you know, depending on how this all works out, what the policy consequences are, maybe the minority of economists are right.

[00:45:27] Maybe they’ll raise the hell out of tariffs and prices won’t go up.

[00:45:31] Josh Blank: Will go up. Oh, in pricing. Maybe they won’t go up, right? I don’t

[00:45:36] Jim Henson: expect that, and I don’t know how that would happen, but, you know, it could happen.

[00:45:39] Josh Blank: Well, I’d say there’s another side would say, you know, maybe, you know, the sort of reorientation of government towards less, less impact in the economy produces a big round of investment, you know, across the board.

[00:45:53] Jim Henson: Right. There are scenarios out there. Incomes go up. But my point being that, you know, there is a, you know, at some point there is a tension between what people in authority are telling you. And how that is squaring with your lived experience. Now, you know, the dynamic in that, you know, with changes in media, et cetera, have really have changed a lot.

[00:46:18] Josh Blank: This is the theme. I mean, for me, but it’s

[00:46:20] Jim Henson: going to be the interest, you know, it’s, it’s, you know, in, in the big picture, it’s one of the, the big, interesting questions from the perspective of governance and Paul in public opinion,

[00:46:29] Josh Blank: to me, this is the theme. And I think you really hit on it with all those pieces of changes in the media environment, but also this notion of, you know, how effective can an elite, you know, an opinion leader, someone with the The ability to communicate to a large amount of people who may or may not listen to that person and have some sort of feelings, you know, one way or another, neutral or otherwise about that person.

[00:46:47] Right. And I mean, I think one of the things that you see, like, I just keep seeing at different levels is this notion of, you know, I’m going to tell you the sky is blue, but it’s actually gray, but really it’s blue. And it’s like, I’m going to tell you that the Texas house is run by Democrats. Now, again, this vote could say, Hey, look at, you know, I mean, look, whatever we get a semantics about it, but look at the output and tell me that’s the case.

[00:47:08] Yeah. Right. You know, we can sit here and say, you know, essentially, well, there’s really 25 million, you know, undocumented immigrants. Well, if you start deporting them, I guess we’re going to have a count. Right. Yeah. And so I think that’s where the challenge comes in at some point is that, you know, even if you’re an elite, if you’re going to say, Hey, look, you know, the real problem here is these foreign countries are ripping us off.

[00:47:26] So I need to put these tariffs on. And yeah, it’s going to be painful for a little bit, but you got it. You’ll be fine. Well, yeah. But like, if now all of a sudden I just like can’t afford groceries, like that’s just real life. And I don’t think any amount of opinion is going to, is going to push that. But this is kind of, I mean, you see this more and more, this idea of like,

[00:47:43] Jim Henson: one says that.

[00:47:45] Josh Blank: Well, that’s right. But I mean, I think, you know, that’s, what’s interesting is Trump has claimed that, you know, he has this, you know, he has a broad mandate and you brought the tape. What’s he, what does that even mean these days? But, but I think, you know, this is where I always tell people, this is why public opinion day is actually so important because otherwise, you know, it’s up to him to determine if we were just going to say, Hey, he’s got his 50 percent a little more.

[00:48:02] He has a mandate, he can say they voted for him for whatever reason they want, but we actually have this data here, and what the data says is that one of the most sort of, you know, conservative, consistently Republican states with a nice diversity of people, urban, suburban, rural mix, I mean a real nice melting pot of Republicanism, if you will, most people want lower prices and undocumented immigrants deported.

[00:48:23] Not tariffs. So what happens next? Not to

[00:48:26] Jim Henson: mention the fact, you know, that depending on the magnitude of the deportation effort that, you know, arguably may also have an inflationary impact Yeah, again, depending on the magnitude of what they ultimately wind up how effective

[00:48:38] Josh Blank: they are at it. Honestly, right?

[00:48:40] Jim Henson: Well, I I think you know, I’m gonna I want to leave This is a good kind of place to leave it. I think that’s a, that’s, that’s a question that’s sitting there in terms of, you know, the changing information environment and how that affects the formation of mass opinion and, you know, shifts in leadership norms and institutional norms that are You know, all of which I think changed the fundamental premises of ways that we understood that dynamic 20 years ago, whenever the Zoller book was out.

[00:49:11] So with that, Josh, thanks for being here. Thanks as always to our excellent production staff here in the dev lab and the audio studio at the university of Texas at Austin in the college of liberal arts. I should note, thank you for listening. Remember all of this data is on our website, texaspolitics.

[00:49:30] utexas. edu. We have some surprises coming in how that website looks in the next couple weeks. Be ready for that. Especially, thank you for listening, uh, and we’ll be back next week with another Second Reading Podcast. The Second Reading Podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.