“Texas went above and beyond”: A Conversation with The New Yorker’s Jonathan Blitzer

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

[00:00:34] Jim: And welcome back to the second reading podcast. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas of Austin. Uh, very happy to be joined today. For something of a special off schedule edition of the podcast, um, by a very special guest, Jonathan Blitzer is a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine and the author of a recently published look at Greg Abbott, uh, for that publication.

[00:01:00] Jim: In the print version of the magazine, the article is titled Texas Roundup. While online it’s called The Unchecked Authority of Greg Abbott. The, the Market in Me, the marketer in me, likes the former, while the political scientist in me likes the latter, uh, works both ways. Um, I. It’s John’s piece is a very deeply sourced look at the arc of the governor’s political career.

[00:01:24] Jim: Um, in my view with a focus on the intersection of Abbott’s strengthening of the Governor’s office, the politics of what we all know now as Operation Lone Star and changes in Texas and American politics over the last decade, if not more. Uh, John was well primed for this assignment after writing his 2024 book.

[00:01:44] Jim: Everybody who Is Gone is here, the United States, central America, and the Making of a Crisis, which focuses on the position and experiences of migrants from the Northern Triangle of Central America, um, and, and their role in the Mexico United States border crisis that has been so central to Texas and American politics over the last seven years.

[00:02:07] Jim: So. With that. Uh, John, thanks for joining us. Really appreciate it.

[00:02:13] Jonathan: No, thanks for having me.

[00:02:14] Jim: So, you know, in terms of disclosure, John and I were in communication while he was writing the piece. I’m briefly quoted in it, uh, but along with a lot of other people in Texas that regular listeners as of this podcast will be familiar with.

[00:02:28] Jim: Um, so to get us kind of more substantively started, John, it. It seems to be that in some ways the story of Greg Abbott’s political use of immigration in the border operation Lone Star more or less naturally flow in a big picture way from your book, which I, I guess you probably finished in nine, in 2022, and then was impressed, right?

[00:02:55] Jim: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[00:02:56] Jonathan: Exactly. Yeah.

[00:02:57] Jim: So talk a little bit about the, the. From there to here, when you decided to do the Abbott piece, how it all came together, uh, because it has a lot of components, you know, what were you thinking going in? How did your early takes evolve or devolve along the way? Yeah, yeah.

[00:03:17] Jonathan: Well, I, I sort of have two answers to that.

[00:03:19] Jonathan: You know, the first is. Um, studying kind of the history of US foreign policy, the history of US immigration policy, and the politics that grow out of both from the 1980s to the present, which was in many ways the substance of the book really primed me to, to, to look at the different ways in which.

[00:03:37] Jonathan: Lawmakers have used the immigration issue and increasingly over the years, the border issue more specifically to drive political outcomes. Uh, and so, you know, obviously that’s been a theme in our history from the very beginning. Um, and as a theme, frankly, in the history of any country, kind of the use of immigration, uh, kind of us, them dichotomy.

[00:03:57] Jonathan: Uh, a fixation on law and order and a sense of borders. All of that is almost a politically, a politically cliche at, at this point, but, but there really is, I think as you start to dig into the history, I. An increasingly specific set of ways in which lawmakers make use of this issue. And they’re, um, kind of utilizing this as a political issue.

[00:04:17] Jonathan: Happens to take shape at around the same time as a, a genuine policy conundrum kind of announces itself at the US southern border, and so it’s kind of a perfect storm in many ways where there’s kind of endless political gamesmanship that can be done. In and around this issue, and there really is a, a, a major policy problem that the US government has, has yet to find an answer to, which is, you know, really most acute in 2014.

[00:04:47] Jonathan: And we’ve kind of been in this cycle ever since, which is, I. You know, how do you manage American legal obligations to give people, uh, to deliver on people’s right, to seek asylum and to seek protection from persecution, while at the same time recognizing all of the administrative logistical hurdles therein.

[00:05:04] Jonathan: Um, and of course, squaring. The drama at the southern border with the overwhelming need to reform the immigration system more generally, and the fact that really since 2014 we’ve kind of gotten in this political loop where there are broader needs that the immigration system has to have addressed, but politicians increasingly point to the border as a reason, really not to engage in this more thorough going reform effort.

[00:05:28] Jonathan: And so we’re kind of stuck in this cycle. So, you know, in, in many ways, Greg Abbott fits very naturally in this broader history, but I can tell you most specifically. There was a, a concrete moment in which I, I felt like, as a journalist reckoning with these issues, I had to come to Texas and had to make sense of, of, of Greg Abbott’s sort of policy and politics on the issue.

[00:05:49] Jonathan: Uh, and that was not even in 2022 when the busing to Blue Cities started, although that was obviously a huge moment across the country. When the governor started busing, recently arrived migrants to cities like New York and Chicago and Denver, and Boston and Washington DC But I was actually at the start of 2024, just coincidentally at the same time that my book was coming out, I was profiling Alejandro Mayorkas, who was then the Secretary of Homeland Security under Biden.

[00:06:16] Jonathan: And I have to say, almost every conversation I had in Washington, so I was reporting that story primarily in Washington. That was not a story. Um, that I did along the US Mexico border. This was more of a kind of insider’s look. Uh, on kinda the policy and politic and political issues in Washington. But every conversation led back to Greg Abbott, uh, to the extent that, you know, people in Myorca, his inner circle and very high up in the Biden administration all said to me, look more than Donald Trump, the person who is really weaponized this issue in ways that are unprecedented and in ways that we’re really gonna be living with for years to come.

[00:06:54] Jonathan: Is Greg Abbott. And, and that was really, I think, what started my interest in all of this. And of course, you know, at around that time, Greg Abbott was adopting increasingly confrontational policies to, to try to draw the US government into this showdown over the issue. And so it all kind of cohered from there.

[00:07:10] Jonathan: And, and so I was very eager to get to, to, to get to Texas and to spend more time trying to understand kind of the nuts and bolts of his policy. And how he thought through this stuff politically,

[00:07:19] Jim: so. So when you got here, you know, and you started talking to people when you started spending more time here, you know, I’m wondering, you know, how if you were, you know, you’ve got a lot of experience reporting on this issue from a lot of different perspectives.

[00:07:33] Jim: I’m wondering once you got here. How much you know, how much you were surprised, how much you, it was confirmatory what you saw. And I say that very conscious of, you know, something you’ve probably encountered now the Texan, you know, Texans want to be at the center of the story. And there was, you know, something about that that I think was very evident and, and made it hard on the ground to interpret some of the Abbott’s actions in the beginning.

[00:07:59] Jim: So I’m just curious, like what it was like once you got here, what met your expectations, what didn’t?

[00:08:04] Jonathan: Yeah, it’s a great question. I, I, I will say the thing that I found most overwhelming from the start was spending time in the borderlands in places like Del Rio, you know, places that will be obvious to your listeners as being kind of the sort of this main fronts of what was this, this crisis through 2022 and 2023 and early 2024.

[00:08:25] Jonathan: And I was overwhelmed by the degree to which local Democrats really felt abandoned by the Federal administration. Um, I, you know, this is the kind of thing where as a reporter you can kind of see some of the ways in which this breaks down. So, you know, even as I was working on that Mayor Orca story at the start of 2024, I mean, essentially working on it in late 2023 into 2024, you know, I, I was aware of the fact, and this is as someone who spends a lot of time covering immigration issues.

[00:08:52] Jonathan: That the busing program that the Governor of Texas had put in, had set into motion is in certain ways not so dissimilar from what a more progressive minded administration would want to do to deal with an acute policy problem at the border, which is to say, you know, when you have a large number of people arriving.

[00:09:11] Jonathan: Overwhelming local resources there. There’s a, there’s a very specific need to relieve pressure at the border and to do so by sending people who’ve recently arrived to cities where there are more resources, where there are more legal resources, where there are more housing resources, where the kind of politics in general are able to absorb, uh, the influx of more people.

[00:09:31] Jonathan: And so there is a universe in which. Um, you know, without Governor Abbott in the picture, the federal government does something that looks a lot like what the governor did. Um, and so that was something that I was really kind of picking apart in my piece on my orcas, was trying to understand inside the administration, okay.

[00:09:52] Jonathan: You know, were there dissenting voices here, were there people inside the Biden administration, whether at the Department of Homeland Security or at the White House saying. Look, we have to steer into this issue. You know, the politics seem bruising to us, and so our inclination politically is to look away or to claim that this isn’t really a crisis or to try and find ways of minimizing the news.

[00:10:12] Jonathan: But there was a, a vocal contingent that ultimately got overruled inside the Biden administration that essentially said, look, we need to do some sort of busing ourselves. And where Governor Abbott is not coordinating with local and federal authorities, and that’s very much the political gambit that he’s undertaken.

[00:10:28] Jonathan: We need to do it precisely with such coordination, and that will bring more order to how this situation plays out. Um, and, and I will say as an as kind of a fun addendum, which didn’t appear in the piece, um, there was, even as part of this kind of contingent argument inside the Biden administration, there was even an idea to publicly thank.

[00:10:48] Jonathan: Governor Abbott for initiating this policy and, and, and in so doing sort of to defang this politically, they thought, you know, the people who proposed this idea thought, look, if we’re really looking to throw a curve ball to someone like Abbott who has all of this momentum right now, maybe what we do is we sort of side with him in a certain sense and say, look.

[00:11:06] Jonathan: Thank you for starting to deal with this problem. We’ll take it from here, we’ll work with you on the issue. Um, of course that was overruled because that was just seen as politically too risky. So I had a sense of a lot of this stuff kind of on a policy level, but what I hadn’t kind of reckoned with was what it looked like on the ground for local Democrats.

[00:11:25] Jonathan: Um, and of course after the 2024 election, you know, some of the results of the federal government’s inattention to this problem were just, you know, readily apparent. You Republicans make huge gains in places where they typically struggled, where Democrats typically held strongholds. And so hearing local Democrats basically describe being caught between a rock and a hard place here, you know, having real problems on their hands, uh, and yet.

[00:11:52] Jonathan: Not really feeling like they can go to the federal government or get the kind of sufficient backing of the federal government. And on the other hand, knowing full well all of the ways in which Governor Abbott was making political use of this issue, there being on the one hand divided against themselves and thinking, Ugh, we don’t want to play into these, you know, Republican politics in the state, but on the other, seeing an opportunity to get an infusion of resources from the state.

[00:12:17] Jonathan: So that was something that I found incredibly striking. Um. And the second thing with that, not just to answer too long here, but the second thing I’ll say with that is, no, please go on. You know? Um. I, I spent a lot of time speaking with border shelter operators, um, in parts of West Texas, and, and obviously now they’re on the receiving end of what I think is actually a, a vile political campaign to make it seem like they’re somehow en engaged in unlawful conduct when in fact shelter operators are kind of the lifeblood of.

[00:12:49] Jonathan: The US immigration system precisely because the federal government has kind of washed its hands of any responsibility for dealing with people once they’re released from federal custody at the border. So anyway, there’s there border shelter operators. I, I have a great deal of sympathy and respect for, and feel like right now they’re getting villainized for entirely cynical reasons.

[00:13:07] Jonathan: But speaking to a number of them, um, what was most striking to me, and this was particularly the case in Del Rio, uh, was their sense, at least initially of. Their, um, belief that the government of Texas, the governor’s office. Was engaging in the busing policy in a serious way. Um, you, you know, I live in New York.

[00:13:31] Jonathan: Um, my mayor, who’s maybe not the, the country’s most trustworthy political operator, uh, you know, was saying from the start that, you know, Abbott wasn’t. Telling anyone that he was busting people, you know, with the kind of most malevolent design and all. And all the rest. And I, and I, look, I, I, I think that there was a, a good deal of cynicism in the governor’s policy, not to coordinate with Democrats across the country, but on the receiving end of it all.

[00:13:56] Jonathan: Um, there was kind of this assumption all along that the governor was deliberately manipulating people. Um, and when. Uh, Ron DeSantis in Florida infamously flew a bunch of migrants from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard having very deliberately misled them about what was waiting for them on the other side of that flight.

[00:14:17] Jonathan: That kind of confirmed in liberal America’s mind, I. That any and all busing related efforts were deeply cynical and were kind of un rigorous in their execution. And yet, when you speak to people around the governor and when, more importantly when you speak to shelter operators who could describe what the first days of the busing policy looked like, you, you came away with a very distinct impression that.

[00:14:40] Jonathan: Whatever you feel, whatever you may feel about the governor’s politics. On the issue of immigration, there was a great deal of forethought about how the governor was gonna go about this busing operation. You know, making sure that people did know where they were going, getting waivers signed. Um, you know, coordinating with local shelters to make sure certain baseline conditions were met.

[00:15:01] Jonathan: There was a real intelligence there and, and I, I think it’s important to reckon with that.

[00:15:06] Jim: Now, I could be wrong about, there’s a bunch I wanna pick up on that. I could be wrong about this and my friends in the Texas Press Corps will no doubt. Let me know immediately if I am, but it does seem to me, it did seem to me when I read your piece that the passage in which you talked about.

[00:15:23] Jim: The shelter operator in Del Rio, Tiffany Burrow, I think was her name. Um, mm-hmm. And her comments about coordinating and actually bargaining in a sense with the Abbott mm-hmm. Team. That seemed to be the first time I had read that. And it was, it was a real important part of, of understanding the puzzle. I was saying a few minutes ago that when this first started happening, there was a certain amount of like, you know, what exactly is going on here?

[00:15:52] Jim: Yeah. ’cause it was pretty clear that. You know, there had been busing going on, not supported directly by the state, I think. Mm-hmm. Henry Cuellar and Laredo was one of the, you know, and of course Cuellar is in his own political position and all this, but Henry Cuellar in Laredo said early on in this, like, yeah, this is great.

[00:16:11] Jim: You know, we’re already sending 20 buses a day from Laredo. I, you know, so mm-hmm. You know, more power to you if you do it correctly. Mm-hmm. And I, I think it really does bring out something. Important about Abbott, about that situation that, you know, you talked about the liberal response to this, um. Also the fact that it was, it was both right in terms of the cynicism and the political leverage they gained from it.

[00:16:39] Jim: But you really do underline the argument that they didn’t go at this completely haphazardly. There was coordination, there was discussion with people that they didn’t really, I, I don’t, to my memory, the Abbott team did not. It was not particularly public in saying that they were having those conversations.

[00:16:58] Jim: Yeah. Those were not, you know, big parts of the press releases. Um mm-hmm. You know, and I. And we were seeing that even at the public level in polling as you were describing all that, as I was reading the piece, I was recalling that when we did statewide polling for the UT Texas Politics Project polling, we asked about busing.

[00:17:19] Jim: I. I had questions from from folks about, well, you know, there seems to be a large minority of Democrats that when you ask, do you approve or disapprove of the policy? Seem to approve at it, approve of it, and I didn’t have the direct kind of evidence that you present here, but I said, look, for some Democrats, no doubt, this seems like the right thing to do if you’re.

[00:17:44] Jim: And it’s not just people in the border communities, though certainly there, it probably seemed like the right thing to do, but it’s also from just a general liberal liberal perspective, it does seem like you’re helping people since this is a normal thing that people need when they cross the border, it’s to get somewhere else, you know?

[00:18:04] Jim: So I think all that, you know, was, was a really interesting piece, part of the piece that really kinda worked. So, so now you’re on the other side of the piece that’s out. Um. You know what, maybe some of this is embedded in what you’ve already told me, but I’m curious what you wanted people to take away from the piece.

[00:18:26] Jim: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You know, ’cause it seemed like, you know, when I, when I look at your book, your comments about the book and some of the stuff I’ve read, even, you know, the things you’re explicit about in the book, you really are trying to convey something in the book. I’m wondering what you were, what you wanted people to walk away from this piece with.

[00:18:42] Jonathan: Yeah, well it, that particular sequence of questions of yours is, is actually kind of a perfect way to set up my answer, which is, you know, I think it’s very important for me at a pitched political moment like this, like the one that we’ve been in, uh, for people to kind of understand sort of operationally.

[00:19:02] Jonathan: And on the kind of granular, on the ground level, how a lot of this stuff took shape because I, I, I, I think we’re, we live in an environment now where the kind of political outcomes obscure a lot of the kind of underlying fact patterns, and I. You know, one of the real motivations I had for doing this story was to understand precisely how the busing policy took shape.

[00:19:26] Jonathan: Now obviously this is a profile of, of the governor. It’s, it’s bigger than just the busing question, but you know, personally, as someone who covers these issues, um, I was thinking that. You know, this busing policy more than anything else, vis-a-vis the immigration issue, um, had a kind of major political impact in 2024, and it’s changed fundamentally the way Democrats talk about the issue now.

[00:19:47] Jonathan: Um, and so I found it, I found it really important to just spend. While trying to disentangle exactly what happened, how the idea came about, why Governor Abbott was kind of particularly well positioned to develop this idea over and above the fact that he’s the governor of a border state. Um. You know, what the kind of local players understood was happening as it was happening.

[00:20:14] Jonathan: Those are the people who understand these dynamics best. Um, and so, you know, for one thing, I I, I’m very glad to hear that, that you felt at that time in, in Del Rio with Tiffany Burrow was so, was so instructive because for me it was revelatory. Um, and you know, I’m sure people. You know, I’m sure you know, uh, advocates and journalists in Texas had, you know, a better insight into this than I did.

[00:20:36] Jonathan: I’m, I’m coming in from the outside, but just hearing her kind of anatomize what this looked like, I mean, I was fascinated to know, you know? Okay. What was the first conversation like that you had? With, you know, the Department of Emergency Management, for instance, in the spring of 2022, like, how was this even, how was this idea even broached?

[00:20:55] Jonathan: You know, how did this idea even become a kind of policy objective for the governor’s office and, and once you zero in on things like this. You can actually really start to untangle a lot of policy complexity and political complexity. But for instance, you know, one of the incredible things about Abbott’s office going to this shelter, uh, and asking for its cooperation.

[00:21:19] Jonathan: I mean, think about, I. What that means to begin with, given the politics. This is not a governor who telegraphs any sort of kind of willingness to cooperate or engage with shelter operators along the border. This is a governor whose whole political brand is built around the fact that he’s gonna kind of say, this is how we’re doing it.

[00:21:36] Jonathan: I’m gonna execute anyone who’s in my way. I’m gonna bulldoze. But in fact, because of the way, um, migrant arrivals work at the southern border. And the governor of Texas, you know, the governor of the, one of the most powerful states in the country, um, needs actually the cooperation of a tiny shelter in a place like Del Rio because the federal government, when it releases people, it’s apprehended, only releases them to certain shelters.

[00:22:02] Jonathan: And so amazingly, given all of these kind of. Political pyrotechnics around the issue, you still need to have an envoy from the governor quietly reach out to a shelter operator and start to negotiate some of the nuts and bolts of this policy. And so to my mind, one of the main things I wanted to get across was that was what that looked like.

[00:22:23] Jonathan: Um, and then when you start to kind of widen the aperture around some of those questions, you get a better sense of what the governor’s MO is. And I, you know, I was very struck through all of this. By something that one of his top advisors, Dave Carney told me, which again will come as no surprise to people, but I think is instructive when you lay it next to all of these actual kind of plot points.

[00:22:44] Jonathan: And that is, you know, Abbott given his background, given his sort of professional bent and experience, um, is someone who is obsessed with the possibility of getting sued. Uh, and so it was always, before he adopts any policy, gonna kind of work it from all of the different legal angles. Um, even if that leaves something wanting from a moral perspective, for instance, which is my personal take, he’s at least going to do the due diligence to make sure that okay, you know, we can’t be sued for kidnapping.

[00:23:14] Jonathan: We can’t be challenged in this way. If a court takes up a challenge to the busing program, we’re standing on firm legal ground. That’s something, by the way, that like Iran DeSantis in Florida did not do. And that I think, distinguish pretty clearly Abbot from Yeah, pretty clearly. Um, but that’s something that distinguishes Abbott as a, as a governor and.

[00:23:32] Jonathan: And, and so, you know, my readers of the New Yorker are, you know, I like to think that they, they kind of range across the political spectrum, but I have no illusions about who the readers of the New Yorker are fundamentally. Uh, and I think that there’s a tendency, uh, among kind of center, center left readers and consumers of information to kind of write off.

[00:23:54] Jonathan: The cynical politics of people like Greg Abbott as just being kind of one dimensional and, and I actually don’t think it is. And I, and I think if you want, whatever, your political persuasion, if you want to have actual insight into what’s happening. Um, if you want to have, if you wanna actually be able to fight back politically, whatever it may be, whatever your particular interest may be, you do have to understand exactly what the viewpoint is.

[00:24:24] Jonathan: Um, and my concern doing this work in general is that if you’re not careful, if. I mean, I, I kind of see journalism in any context, whether it’s political journalism or kind of more human interest storytelling as being a kind of radical act of empathy with the person whose story you’re trying to tell.

[00:24:40] Jonathan: Obviously, that is poignant and much more meaningful when you’re telling the stories of ordinary people whose, you know, whose, whose lives the broader public doesn’t necessarily know about. It’s a much different game, obviously, when you’re talking about political actors because there’s a lot of. You know, there’s a lot of cynicism and kind of careful coordination that they’re doing, and you have to be careful as a reporter, not to be too gullible or too credulous of the story they’re telling you on an issue like this immigration issue, where I feel like just by virtue of how long I’ve spent reporting different aspects of it.

[00:25:12] Jonathan: I, I wanted to get as close as I could to the governor and to his inner circle to understand their, their thinking and their, you know, their thought process, the sort of political dimensions they were working out, how they understood some of the policy questions. I. And then I was gonna ping that off of reporting of my own.

[00:25:28] Jonathan: I wasn’t just gonna take what they said as you know, the truth, but I, I, I felt like the only meaningful way for me, as someone outside of Texas trying to understand this kind of pivotal political event, the only way I could make sense of it would be to really try to go in and. You know, to the extent possible, just listen, just understand how the governor’s office operated, how he thinks, because it’s undeniable whether you like him or not, that the governor is a major player in our politics.

[00:25:58] Jonathan: So that was, I think the main, the main goal I had was for people to come away understanding him better. Um, knowing kind of what made him tick, understanding the arc of his career in seeing the arc of his career, of course you have a story of how the immigration issue has shifted, um, and how, you know, Abbott, for example, as Attorney General in the first year as of his tenure as Attorney General, was someone who cast himself as a defender of undocumented immigrants who had been scammed.

[00:26:26] Jonathan: Um, and that was. A, a key priority for him, uh, in the attorney general’s office. Obviously that started to shift, and so understanding that shift, you know, beyond just saying, oh, well look, this demonstrates some fundamental hypocrisy. Fine. I, I actually think it does demonstrate some fundamental hypocrisy.

[00:26:43] Jonathan: But beyond that, what does it mean for someone who is so conscious of his political survival to start to see that he has to position himself differently on this issue? And how does he begin to do that? I think those are the, the smartest and most valuable ways of unlocking what is a pol, an ongoing policy conundrum and a situation in which the politics on, on the issue have just seemed to become totally deadlocked in Washington.

[00:27:06] Jim: Another thing that was really interesting about the piece was this kind of 360 view of Greg Abbott that you get from talking to the people that you did and. You know, as I was listening to you say that, I mean, I think particularly earlier in, hi, early in his governorship, and we might have talked about this a little bit offline.

[00:27:27] Jim: Mm-hmm. There was a real question about. What Abbott was going to be about as governor, if you will. Mm-hmm. And a lot of emphasis on what was called here, his judicial temperament that you’re taught, that you kind of referenced to. You don’t, you know, kudos to you for not really using that term, I don’t think in the piece that became a lot, right.

[00:27:47] Jim: Very overused here. Mm-hmm. Because that, you know, because I think to really understand it, you have to think about that not so much as a temperament, as a methodology that he. I mean, there’s a temperament piece to it, but you know, he’s a very, he’s a very methodical guy and very, you know, focused on the kind of legalisms that you’re talking about in that whole context.

[00:28:09] Jim: But, you know, I. I, I, I can’t help but think like you circled it. You made a big star in the notes when you got the quote from, uh, from Bill Miller about Abbott. But there’s a toughness to him. Mm-hmm. And a, and a real political acumen that goes with that. And I think there was a real sense of people trying to say, well, it’s not this, it’s that you do a good job of capturing how it’s both, and the, I think the Carney quote you used, contrasting him with Rick.

[00:28:34] Jim: Perry really kind of helps bring that home and it’s, it’s, it’s well used. Um,

[00:28:39] Jonathan: you know, I have to say one of the, one of the really fun things and, and you know, this is like kind of left on the cutting room floor of an article like this, but it was, it was, it was incredibly, uh, valuable to be able to sit down with someone like Dave Carney.

[00:28:51] Jonathan: Um, not just because of his political experience in the state, but. Precisely because he worked so closely with Perry and Abbott. Um, and, and that’s kind of one of the ways for an outsider like myself, I can begin to tease out what some of the distinguishing characteristics are of Abbott and in those conversations, um.

[00:29:11] Jonathan: You know, the sense I got, obviously Carney never said this to me explicitly and would deny it if I suggested as much, but

[00:29:19] Jim: well, we’ll, we’ll stipulate on the record. You’re not saying he said what you’re about to say.

[00:29:25] Jonathan: I mean, clearly it’s more fun to tell Rick Perry stories than Greg Abbott stories. You know, I mean, Rick Perry’s a just a much more charismatic guy.

[00:29:34] Jonathan: Um, he, he’s done kind of zener things. He’s, you know, much more personable, much more of a people person. I, I don’t even think Abbott would deny any of these things, you know? Um, and so what I think was also so important for me as an outsider, I mean, I spend time, a lot of time reporting in Texas, but I am fundamentally an outsider through and through where Texas politics is concerned.

[00:29:57] Jonathan: Um. There is this question of like, okay, here is a governor who looks about as uncharismatic and kind of vanilla and flat as a public political figure can be. And yet he’s about to be the longest serving governor in Texas, you know, and he’s, and, and you know, this is a guy who has kind of run the table on his opponents.

[00:30:18] Jonathan: Uh, he has been, you know, I think I say at a certain point, he, he’s basically come as close to political invincibility as any politician can. And so, you know, what does that mean? Like, we’re kind of, you know, as a writer. I see a subject who doesn’t on, on his face seem like the world’s most kind of introspective, valuable, you know, textured person, but who nevertheless has just an undeniable authority and power and importance in the political landscape.

[00:30:49] Jonathan: I. Let, let’s try to understand how he’s worked that because this is not someone who has a kind of typical political profile, given the dominance he’s managed to pull off over such a long period of time. So that was also one of the questions is like, how is this guy who just looks so bland and sounds so.

[00:31:09] Jonathan: Undistinguished ordinary politically. How was he able to become this juggernaut? You know, that’s, that’s I think another big question in all of this.

[00:31:17] Jim: Yeah. I mean, uh, it, it’s gonna, it’s going to be the question about this period in the state. I think for those who pay attention to the institutional arc of politics in the state.

[00:31:26] Jim: Because another thing I really liked about the piece is the, the way you did capture that one part of the answer to that question has been. His ability of, of his ability, those around him, to leverage this methodology, if you will. I was talking about earlier, to strengthen not only his personal political position, but to strengthen the office of the governor.

[00:31:50] Jim: And that’s where the continuity is. That’s, that’s one of the few areas of continuity between he and Perry and that Perry kind of started that project, but the aspects of Abbott’s toolkit and his personality, you’re talking about. Really enabled him to deepen that strengthening of the office and to leverage the political power that came from that.

[00:32:13] Jim: Mm-hmm. In a really important way. That’s, that’s gonna change the, the shape of the state’s politics and the state’s institutions going forward. I mean, there’s just no two ways about that in my mind. Unless, you know, the, the person who succeeds him is just, you know, fundamentally incompetent. Lets it all go to hell and that happens.

[00:32:31] Jim: Right, right. Right,

[00:32:32] Jonathan: right. You know, it’s funny you should say that because that, that was one of the points, you know, I, I, I, I say it sort of at the top of the piece explicitly, and, um, I, I felt a bit self-conscious in the rest of the piece that there wasn’t an obvious kind of way in which to an atomize. Um, exactly how he’s consolidated so much power in the governor’s office.

[00:32:53] Jonathan: You know, it’s one of those things where when I spoke to you for the piece, when I spoke to other people who were really versed in state politics, the through line in all of those conversations is this, is, is the fact that he had a fundamental kind of vision and strategy for strengthening. This office, um, and that, that’s above all what’s so unprecedented about his tenure as governor.

[00:33:15] Jonathan: It’s very hard to narrate that because it’s an incredibly wonky story. Yeah. Um, and so, you know, it’s like you end up having a reader feel like, well, right, I get it. So, sure. In two, in 2018, he insisted that he has the authority to, you know, revise rulemaking at state agencies and, you know, it’s like. That’s a huge moment, obviously, and I spent a great deal of time researching that and interviewing people about that.

[00:33:39] Jonathan: But on the page to a general interest reader, it’s a little bit of a head scratcher. But I think, you know, one thing that I. Um, really struck me and, and, and I think you and I even discussed this while, while I was reporting the piece, um, the pandemic really changed so much, um, obviously in every facet of American life, but in terms of how a governor like Abbott exercises political power, um, you know, one of the, I think key takeaways wa that, that I, that I got from conversations and from kind of studying this and other people have done exceptional reporting on the subject, um, you know, I’m late to this story.

[00:34:16] Jonathan: Um, the degree to which Abbott saw the opportunity of the pandemic. Uh, to use emergency declarations and disaster declarations to expand his flexibility and power without being checked or muzzled by the legislature or by the courts. And that’s a trend I. Um, that obviously we’ve seen worldwide. And I have to say, the person it made me think of, and this is maybe a controversial comparison because this person is an, you know, is an actual Latin American strong man, but he’s remains in the news, is the president of El Salvador, Naji Buke, who I had profiled a few years back, um, in kind of 2022 is when I did a lot of that reporting.

[00:34:58] Jonathan: And it was a similar story in that you had someone who, if you looked at the arc of his career, you could see as you could with Abbott, someone who was gonna be, who was a real student of political power and who was very conscious of finding ways within the political system of amassing power and kind of translating that power.

[00:35:18] Jonathan: In, in very visible public displays of political success. Um, and one of the things that really struck me reporting on Naji Bke in El Salvador was that the pandemic for him was the real turning point. That’s when he was able to say, oh, okay, I’m gonna start declaring different versions of a state of exception that suspend ordinary checks on my authority.

[00:35:42] Jonathan: Um, and in the moment. It seemed wholly justified because we were dealing with a, you know, once in a generation pandemic that had grave public health consequences in every direction. Um, but as a political strategy, as a governing strategy that really became in El Salvador, the president’s mo. And in a certain sense, I.

[00:36:00] Jonathan: That also became the MO of of, of Greg Abbott. Um, I, I’m not suggesting a kind of point to point comparison between the two of them, but, but, but the strategy is, I have to say remarkably similar, where, you know, all of the stuff that Abbott did vis-a-vis the border was to declare a disaster. And out of that disaster declaration, which by the way remains ongoing.

[00:36:24] Jonathan: Um, just as in El Salvador, a state of exception declared in 2022 has been renewed every month since then. Um, you know, it’s, it’s that kind of permanent state of crisis that begins with a moment that does seem legitimately sort of crisis worthy, but which, you know, subsequently starts to get watered down and becomes a pretext.

[00:36:44] Jonathan: Um, and, and that I think is a major thing that Abbott has pioneered. And if you look at it. Um, the president of the United States is actually in many ways rhetorically following Abbott’s lead in terms of declaring a state of invasion and, and using that as the basis for all of these extraordinary executive authorities.

[00:37:03] Jonathan: So, so that’s, I think, an important part of the story too, in terms of understanding how he’s taken an office, which historically compared to. You know, this office in other states isn’t terribly strong. You know, you’ve got a competing presence in the Lieutenant Governor’s office. You’ve got kind of a, an odd arrangement with the state legislature and so on.

[00:37:21] Jonathan: So the question is how he’s turned an office that has not been. You know, historically this instrument of great political power into something that, that really is kind of un unchallengeable. Um, I think that’s a, a big part of, of understanding him and what and what’s to come. That’s

[00:37:38] Jim: the peak example of what we’ve been, you know, circling or, you know, kind of.

[00:37:42] Jim: Probing into which is this combination of a very hardheaded institutionalism and a very close understanding of the tools offered within the law and within the system. And coupled with the political acumen and the will, if you will, to exploit that for, for political ends. And, you know, watching that unfold, you know, there was.

[00:38:09] Jim: A very interesting kind of adaptation as the pandemic unfold unfolded nationally. But the way it unfolded here, I mean, you can really, if you look at Abbott’s job approval ratings in state polling, you know, we were polling pretty frequently during that period. And since then, you know, you can basically see Abbott’s numbers.

[00:38:33] Jim: Go up in the early stages of the pandemic and then begin to fall among Republicans as the politics of the pandemic begin to, you know, become more polarized and then go back up as he adapts to that. And so there’s this interesting combination there of the adaptation to what was, I think you remind us all, it was a very uncertain time in how we made these kinds of judgements.

[00:38:58] Jim: But you know, he made that, he made those decisions that you’re talking about in terms of this institutional move towards the state of emergency and the way that you can accumulate authority and then keep it amidst a lot of uncertainty in that period. Yeah.

[00:39:14] Jonathan: And you know, you, you made this point to me, uh, in over the course of my reporting and, and several other people whose, whose judgment on this stuff I really respect also made a version of this point, which was, you know, that period in 2020 on the eve of his 2022 reelection bid when he faces primary challenge from the right from two other.

[00:39:35] Jonathan: Um, you know, candidates, neither of whom on his own has much of a shot of doing really anything, of doing any real damage to Abbott, but who kind of collectively represent to Abbott this threat of, you know, drifting or sagging approval on the right. Uh, and that that is something that I think also speaks to his personality that, you know, whereas some people.

[00:40:01] Jonathan: Would see these two, you know, sort of irrelevant far right challengers in a primary as like a kind of nuisance to be brushed off. He recognizes in them not an immediate challenge to his primacy, but a kind of symbolic threat to what he is and what he represents. And so his approach to that is to swallow their positions whole, which is actually quite an incredible.

[00:40:30] Jonathan: Response. You know, he, he ends up absorbing a lot of their positions himself, and in so doing, of course, obliterates them and also sets the stage for his next. Big political project, which is how, one of the ways in which I’ve understood the push for vouchers that we see in 2023 as emerging essentially out of this period where, you know, it, it feels funny to say, it feels funny to narrate certainly to a national audience that this guy who basically seems unrivaled every time he runs for the governorship, felt maybe as vulnerable as he ever felt politically in that office.

[00:41:06] Jonathan: In 2022, I immediately after the pandemic, partly as a result of just how chaotic the politics of the pandemic were and how much discontent that that kind of rustled up on the right, which is obviously the only zone of the political spectrum that Abbott has to be particularly attentive to. Um, so you know that that understanding kind of how he processed the pandemic and how he kind of moved forward from that period of uncertainty is I also think a, a key to unlocking.

[00:41:36] Jonathan: How he’s operating now several years later.

[00:41:39] Jim: You mentioned earlier on and it was really, it really got to something I was gonna open up and I just kind of passed it on, but I’ll go back to it a little bit that, you know, 2014 is actually an interesting pivot year in that dynamic because the year that Abbott is elected is the same year that Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick is elected, and it seems like an eon ago.

[00:42:02] Jim: But that dynamic of Abbott being ever attentive to the potential for challenges from the right really started was, was present from the very beginning. Patrick epitomized that for a long time, so, you know, in the years between 2014, really up to the, you know, even through the pandemic and, and it was manifest during the pandemic as well.

[00:42:32] Jim: The big guessing game here was whether Patrick was going to challenge Abbott. Exactly. And so that was fueling that. And I, I think at a certain level, that 2022 primary, the caution in not underestimating the more marginal challengers that year was a well. You know, cultivated weariness of what was going on the right.

[00:42:56] Jim: And I, you know, that just peaked at that point. And by that point it was becoming, I think, a little more apparent that Patrick was not likely to challenge Abbott. But if you talk to people that I were present during the period of, you know, the kind of Abbott Strauss, uh, uh, Patrick. Unstable triangle that you touch on in the piece briefly.

[00:43:23] Jim: That was, that was one of the driving dynamics of that. And I think you’re right to, to, to tie that to what’s going on. Um, I. Uh, when you, when 2022 rolls around, I don’t wanna keep you too much longer, but I, I do want to end by kind of telescoping back out. I’d feel remiss to not ask you, given your expertise here as I, as I look at, on my phone, at the midsection of the New York Times homepage, three stories right in a row.

[00:43:53] Jim: Uh, three headlines with deportations Trump’s Trump Steps closer to Showdown with Judicial branch. Next one, white House denies violating judge’s orders and deporting Venezuelans. Third headline Below that, brown University professor is deported despite a judge’s order. We were talking about this before we started recording, but I want to circle back and end on this.

[00:44:18] Jim: You know, you have done a lot of reporting for the book in this, and we’ve talked a lot about this judicial temperament. You know, you have a real, I think you have a lot of thoughts and you’ve, you’ve reported a lot on. The role of judicial system in immigration policy, but I think it now telescopes out in this moment to the role of the judiciary in the larger state of play right now with the Trump administration.

[00:44:46] Jim: You know, I’m wondering, as you look at these headlines this morning, and they’re pretty new, and I know you probably don’t have a ton of time to think about ’em, like, what, what are your thoughts on this and, and where this goes next? You

[00:44:56] Jonathan: know, in some ways being in the trenches, reporting on the first Trump administration gave me a kind of special window into some of the things we’re seeing now because the kind of brazenness now and the sense of unaccountability that you’re just seeing kind of out in the open right now was first tested during the first Trump administration and the, the zone of policy where it was tested during that first.

[00:45:19] Jonathan: Term was on immigration. Um, that’s kind of been the sort of vanguard for a lot of what Trump’s kind of wildest ideas about executive authority kind of tend to play out. Um, and so one of the things that I was told during the first Trump term by people high up in the Trump administration, um, was that, that they had a, a special approach to.

[00:45:48] Jonathan: Nationwide injunctions, you know, to courts basically intervening and saying, okay, we have to halt this particular policy because it’s unlawful. And until we have time to, to weigh the kind of different facets of this policy on the merits, we are suspending this. Whatever initiative it was, um, inside the Trump administration during the first term, there was an evolving sense of how to respond to those things initially.

[00:46:12] Jonathan: It was met with just great frustration, uh, and hand wringing. Um, and Trump got angry. Trump got angry at his first Attorney General Jeff Sessions, um, you know, felt like he wasn’t doing enough. For example, with that, the initial travel ban to fight it in the courts, the Attorney general’s hands were tied.

[00:46:28] Jonathan: They kind of kept going back to the drawing board, trying to water down the travel ban so it would pass legal muster. Eventually they did, but that to Trump felt like. A kind of political loss, even though eventually it was a success because they managed through kind of all sorts of legal tweaking to get through the policy they wanted.

[00:46:44] Jonathan: But in the kind of power politics that matters to Trump, which is all that matters to Trump, um, this idea of sort of flouting authority from other branches to shore up his own is kind of front and center. And what you started to hear in the kind of middle years of the first Trump term, I’m thinking 20 18, 20 19.

[00:47:05] Jonathan: Was that Stephen Miller Trump’s now senior advisor, and at the time top immigration advisor would tell people in the administration, look, let’s just charge ahead with our policies. And sure we’ll get enjoined in a federal court. But first of all, the courts are slow and we can operate decisively and swiftly.

[00:47:26] Jonathan: And as the courts kind of slowly churn through their reviews, we can charge ahead with our our policies. And secondly, we are every day. Appointing more and more judges to the federal judiciary. And so if we lose in a federal court that’s friendlier to democratic challenges, uh, we’ll win at the appellate level.

[00:47:47] Jonathan: Uh, and we’ll even win at the Supreme Court level if we have to. So let’s not slow down based on any sense of judicial checks or resistance. The actual strategy is to speed up through them, um, because that only proves our decisiveness, and it only reveals how sclerotic the court system ultimately is to check a President’s agenda.

[00:48:08] Jonathan: And so it doesn’t surprise me that here we are in the second term where members of this administration feel like they have a mandate they never had before, doing all sorts of things that legally are completely radical, if not. Overwhelmingly unlawful. Um, but this game that they’re playing essentially playing chicken with federal judges and saying, oh, okay, well you, you said that we had to turn this plane full of Venezuelans around.

[00:48:33] Jonathan: Sorry. Uh, the plane already left. You know, you see, I think there was an Axios report I read yesterday where you had two people inside the administration speaking. One was very clearly Steven Miller and another was some other sort of nominally more. Kind of bureaucratic voice, the nominally more bureaucratic voice said.

[00:48:53] Jonathan: Listen, we’re not trying to challenge a judge. The, the bottom line is these deportation flags were already in the air when the judge issued his ruling. Um, we were just, it was just out of our hands at that point, which is, you know, factually inaccurate, but was nevertheless the kind of faint toward the reasonableness.

[00:49:11] Jonathan: That every once in a while you see from Trump’s inner circle, the other voice quoted in the Axio story was very clearly Steven Miller’s saying, what right does a judge have to tell us how to run immigration policy? Which is, you know, the actual unvarnished view of how people in Trump’s inner circle see this and they’re gonna fight this to the last, uh, and so, I don’t know, you know, I, I leave it to the legal scholars to sort out kind of what the questions are for the rule of law.

[00:49:36] Jonathan: It certainly seems to me to be. Unprecedented territory if, uh, you know, an administration basically getting a very clear judicial order and ignore simply ignoring it and actually making a show of ignoring it, and it’s now happening with a frequency and an undeni ability that, you know, you can’t explain away, that I think is as grave and scary as it gets.

[00:49:57] Jonathan: Um, and it always starts with immigration related things because there isn’t. I mean, to be frank, there isn’t a clear domestic political constituency for asylum seekers in the United States. Um, so, you know, it’s very easy in, in raw political terms for an administration like this one to say, oh, well, these Venezuelans that we’ve apprehended, they have ties to a Venezuelan gang.

[00:50:20] Jonathan: Trust us. We’re not gonna show you any evidence. We have no need to show evidence, but it’s enough for us to summarily deport them and we’re gonna deport them now, as we’ve seen in contravention of a judicial order. You know who’s gonna speak up for the people who are now put in this impossible position, these, these, these migrants were accused of unspeakable crimes that many of ’em have not committed.

[00:50:43] Jonathan: We saw it, for example, in the first batch of people who were flown to Guantanamo Bay. The administration said initially, all of these people are gang members associated with a Venezuelan gang called ua. And then when there was actual legal pressure applied to the situation. Lawsuits filed a judge starting to weigh, you know, the circumstances the government eventually admitted Oh, right.

[00:51:07] Jonathan: Of the 177 Venezuelans we just flew to Guantanamo, where we’re holding some of them in the same cells that were used for Alqaeda suspects in, you know, the early two thousands, uh, turns out 51 of them had no criminal records. Oops. You know, it, it’s the kind of thing where with any amount of scrutiny, you can pierce any of the administration’s arguments.

[00:51:26] Jonathan: But who is gonna mount this kind of scrutiny? Certainly the Democrats right now are scared to, to take this, this fight on. Um, and so the people you have are, you know, people who believe in, um, you know, progressive immigration policy. People who believe in the rule of law. I wish the constituency I.

[00:51:42] Jonathan: Politically we’re broader in terms of people who had really let out. A huge outcry over what’s happening. But I think one of the reasons why the Trump administration can get away with things like this, or at least feels that it can, is because who’s gonna come out and fight there isn’t. You know, right now the Democrats are in total disarray, and so there’s on this issue above all on the immigration issue above all.

[00:52:05] Jonathan: And then more specifically within the immigration issue on the sub set of asylum related issues of people who have come to the United States seeking protection, seeking relief, you know, who’ve arrived through the border, who’ve arrived through a policy created during the Biden years to try to alleviate pressure at the border there.

[00:52:23] Jonathan: There’s really, I think, a sense of, well. No one is really challenging us here on, on these, on these issues, on the values or on the merits of them. So if we’re gonna expand presidential authority, this is the best laboratory that exists to us because we can do it the most brazenly and see what happens.

[00:52:40] Jonathan: And so that’s what we’re in right now, and I, I find it to be an incredibly scary moment.

[00:52:45] Jim: Yeah, I mean, I, I think it’s, I, I couldn’t agree more in terms of the connection between this testing of the boundaries of separation of powers and, you know, the, their ability to ju defy the judiciary, uh, and, and the way that immigration and border issues are the best place for them to do that.

[00:53:06] Jim: You know, not only are the Democrats. Sort of get on their heels and, and have their own, you know, as I was saying earlier and we were talking about, uh, their own divisions in their base. There is just such unity among Republican voters. Um, and I. Even more so than among Republican elites on these restrictive views of abortion, uh, of immigration in the border, uh, the ability to, the, the willingness to tie immigration to criminality, that there’s just, there’s, there’s no source of pushback either within their base or, or outside.

[00:53:45] Jim: Uh, I think that’s right. And,

[00:53:47] Jonathan: and I have to say, just by way of concluding. The one of the big reasons, if you ask me why Democrats right now are in such disarray, obviously they’ve never been great on immigration issues because there’s too much variance inside the caucus and competing interest groups and on certain policy approaches and so on.

[00:54:03] Jonathan: But the reason I think above all, I. Why Democrats right now are the most reluctant to speak up on immigration issues, has to do with the consequences of Abbott’s busing. I mean, I think you basically have in states like New York, in states like Illinois and states like Colorado, Massachusetts, um, the voices of strong resistance to Trump’s first term immigration agenda.

[00:54:28] Jonathan: Are now very muted because they were politically blindsided by the consequences of Abbott’s busing. And as a result, have this attitude. And, and, and this is to, to be clear, this isn’t my analysis. This is what I’m told by, you know, senior congressional staffers that, well, the public has voted, you know, the public has spoken, you know, Trump’s 2024 election.

[00:54:53] Jonathan: Enunciates as clearly as as, as we’re willing to admit that like the public is, has grown increasingly hostile to immigrants and to immigration generally, and as a result, we have to tread lightly. That’s the thinking in Democratic circles, which I think is incredibly dangerous and wrongheaded. But what unleashed that was the political consequences of Abbot’s blessing, which just re you know, is to reiterate his central role in the current moment.

[00:55:17] Jim: Way to tie it all together. John, thanks. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us today, uh, and for the great piece. I appreciate both and you know, keep in touch.

[00:55:26] Jonathan: Oh, it’s such a pleasure. Thanks

[00:55:27] Jim: for having me. We’ve been talking with Jonathan Blitzer about his piece on the March 17th, 2025 issue of the New Yorker and on the New Yorker website about Greg Abbott and Texas and the age of the Trump LED GOP and its implications for a lot of different things, but particularly immigration, politics.

[00:55:46] Jim: You should also look for Jonathan’s excellent 2024 book. Everybody who is gone is here. The United States, central America, and the making of a crisis. As always, thanks to our excellent audio production team in the dev studio here in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin. Thanks to you all for listening.

[00:56:04] Jim: Keep an eye out. We’ll be back soon with another second reading podcast from the Texas Politics Project. The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.