Welcome.

Welcome to Party politics, where we prepare you for your next political conversation.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina, political science professor at the University of.

Houston, and I'm Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor also here at the University of Houston.

We're back.

Yes, we are.

In for exciting.

Wow.

Yes.

We've been doing this for a long time.

Obviously on TV for less time, but, it's, been an exciting few years and an eventful few years, in fact.

Right.

It's almost like it never ends.

In fact, while we were gone, like, very few things happened.

So we got a couple of things.

Yeah.

Just a few.

Few minor issues.

International intrigue, domestic chaos.

You know, just the sort of things that we're used to here on party politics, we think.

Or I guess Summer.

Hey, it is one way or the other.

That's a good point.

Yeah.

There's too much going on to ignore.

We'll get to some of that and kind of refresh it as it goes.

But obviously there's a lot to get to in the current week.

So we'll talk about some of those things.

Let's start with kind of our post Labor Day wrap up.

I know you spent all Labor Day laboring.

I did too.

It's unfortunate, but true.

I wonder, though, how many billions of dollars you made over that weekend?

And how many?

One.

Two?

No, not at all.

Zero.

Billions of.

Zero.

Not even on paper.

Well, we can't then, I think play in the big leagues with people like Donald Trump and his family, who did make a lot of money on cryptocurrency.

The Wall Street Journal reports that they made $5 billion in cryptocurrency.

Now, this is, of course, sort of in digital form.

It's not a real cash you can put into a physical safe or, you know, like Scrooge McDuck, dive into a bag of coins.

But for sure, it's the case that this is a lot of money.

And it begins to open the question about what's effective for presidents in terms of their ability to make money in office.

We're kind of in a very new position here, right?

We're used to presidents who put their money into blind trust and don't effectively make money, right?

Or at least can't affect their own bottom line technically.

Although of course, the decisions they made definitely have an effect on economic bottom line.

But I always genuflect on a person like Jimmy Carter, who had a peanut farm in his family.

They put the peanut farm into a blind trust after he left office.

Unfortunately, drought and some other kind of problems had created a serious debt.

They had to sell it.

So the basically him not being in charge of his farm made him happy to eventually lose a bunch of money and then sell his family's heritage.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump makes $5 billion in cryptocurrency.

Is this fair?

Is this right?

Should Congress do something?

Well, I mean, the president is going to do what the current laws and Congress and the courts allows him to do all legal.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

Is it illegal?

No one has said otherwise.

So the problem here is that some of these laws are outdated in terms of how presidents are pursuing these new, I guess, idea of being a president, but also, I guess, monetizing that position one way or the other.

Yeah.

It's like you're profiting off of it.

I mean, certainly the presidents have, you know, sort of made money while they're in office and certainly after office, but we're used to that.

But while they're in office, making this much money is kind of eye popping, right?

It's one thing to have a kind of Trump steaks and Trump wine where you're cashing in.

Right?

But it's another thing to have cryptocurrency with your name on it.

So I worry a cheapens the variety of the presidency, right?

That it kind of makes it feel like it's diminished in its sort of regal ness.

And we don't consider the president to be this kind of monarch, of course.

But, that certainly is connected to the kinds of things they do in office.

And so I feel like this has a potential kind of to erode people's faith in the presidency, which has long term implications.

Now, this is actually becoming a bigger issue than just Donald Trump, because members of Congress are also allowed to trade stocks.

There's been at least a decade of talk about having that practice banned.

So Colin Allred Who is running for Senate here from Texas has come out with this block of different objectives to try to pass when he gets to, if he gets to office to, basically ban members of Congress from trading stocks.

So it's an effort really to try to kind of make people believe that their public officials aren't kind of profiting while they're in.

So we'll see if that plays out.

But certainly it's a lot of money to do.

It's a lot of money.

And certainly, yes, we didn't make anywhere near that much money.

Nope.

But it was a good weekend nevertheless, so we'll at least hang our hat on that.

Speaking of lots of money, Jeronimo, there's going to be a serious fight over lots of money in the federal budget to come in September and into early October, because the deadline for funding the US government is very close.

Yep.

Within 20 days of our kind of fight of the year, sort of this coming out, the federal government is going to run out of money.

So what is the current state of play with all the different figures that are happening?

Well, I mean, obviously the data is September 30th, and that's, I guess shut down day or whatever it's called.

I mean, well.

The Doomsday Clock is.

Ticking down, and basically Congress has to pass a short term, spending resolution that would allow, the government to keep operating, without a real budget, I suppose.

So here are the issues.

It is very interesting because in the previous one, what we have is that Senate Democrat leader, Chuck Schumer, play ball with Republicans to avoid a shutdown, back in March.

But there was a huge backlash within the Democratic Party.

Yeah, you have now some, I guess, Democratic statement leaders, especially from, New York retiring.

That opens the bottle, and opens up flood gates for Democrats to have a more aggressive stance in terms of what we're going to do.

Yeah.

So regardless of, passing a short term, spending resolution or not, I think the interesting part here is how the Democratic Party is going to realign and have a strategy for the rest of the year and try to recuperate the House and the Senate in the midterm elections.

That's, that's all right.

Beat the Republicans.

We have a majority, take back the Senate.

Yeah.

Kind of hold Donald Trump with the midterms.

But.

If they win that, they're gonna, you know, play ball.

I, I bet President Trump, post on, on, on social media that Chuck Schumer should go to hell.

Right?

Right.

Just like that.

So the question here.

Is, so they're not getting along.

You're saying they're not getting along.

The rhetoric or the language from Republicans is very clear.

And I give it to Republicans.

They're disciplined, they know what they're doing.

And then Democrats are just scattered all over the place running like, what do we do?

And Chuck Schumer with, he's flip form, he's like, who should I call etcetera, etcetera.

Who should I call very slowly destructive.

Yeah.

You're right.

And so I think that's a great point.

Then the question is, I don't know if Democrats see the writing on the wall.

He's like, they're not going to play ball with you.

Yeah.

The question is like, like, are you going to play ball with them?

What's going to.

Happen?

I love this because it's like the kind of like since we've been gone for so long, there's so much pent up things they want to say about what's going on.

And just that moment, like brought it all out.

But you're totally right.

Democrats are adrift trying to figure out what their strategy is.

And even in a place like Texas, there's been this push back on people like Charles Schumer, who, of course, you know, has played ball with Republicans.

But Democrats nationally say the gloves are off, right.

Let's absolutely.

And even in Texas, you have the Democrats who traditionally are kind of more, you know, to the kind of center right of left, say things like, we need to get rid of Chuck Schumer.

He's not the man for the moment.

People like that.

O'Rourke you know, you've got also calling all red saying we've got to make a strategic change here.

So there's definite I think, pushback on Democrats playing ball.

So the issue of course, is just that Democrats have kind of a small part in this.

They of course have to agree, especially in the Senate.

But the Senate's bipartisanship, I think, is a thing of the past.

You're totally right.

Yeah, that Donald Trump seems like he wants blood.

He says, you know, we want to be able to push this resolution for farther into next year, the middle of next quarter, because the longer they push that off, the more leverage the white House has, right?

They can basically operate unilaterally without having to have Congress do anything.

So they're happy to have Congress fight it all out.

Right.

And then they can kind of do what they want.

The House wants to have a quick fix so they can kind of work on a bigger project that would, you know, get this done, you know, kind of for a more full time process.

And no one is going to get exactly what they want.

So we're going to have to see this play out in real time.

And frankly, with a really quick timeline, even at this point, it seems like it's the case that Congress can't even get a budget like they need to have this done.

Like basically by mid September.

So if the ball's not rolling right now, they're not going to hit that October 1st deadline.

So there's a very, very good chance that they'll be shut down regardless of how this all plays out.

Even if there's a solution like today, it won't be something that's able to be executed until like very far into the future.

So we're going to have some kind of a gap there, which obviously creates all kinds of economic problems.

So we'll see how that plays out, because this is obviously pretty important for, you know, the funding of the federal government, which I think most people are pretty, satisfied to have, you want to go to a national park and you want to get, you know, kind of access to your Social Security office.

You've got to have those things open.

So, yeah, let's get that moving.

But let's talk about some other kind of controversial issues.

Now, the over the summer, the president sent federal troops to Los Angeles.

He sent federal troops into D.C. now he's threatened to do so to Chicago.

He says any day now when we're recording this, we don't know if it's happened yet, but he's implied very strongly that it will.

This is an obvious kind of strategy from the president to engage the kind of crime issue as something that primes voters, which I think is effective.

But obviously it has serious implications to the balance of federal state power.

And there's certainly a kind of political wedge here that he's doing this only in places that are very democratic.

What is your read on the effectiveness of this strategy, aside from the kind of legal implications to it?

Well, I think it resonates.

Right.

It resonates because crime is one of those issues that really pumps voters and ones you're being primed, as the literature suggests, about crime, whether you see it or don't see it personally, then you're more likely to say, yes, it is a, significant issue.

So if you encounter crime, in such a way that you see it very close to you, right?

Like, seeing these, that, for example, the National Guard presence and something is, oh, something is going on.

I don't feel safe.

And then suddenly I feel safe because we have the National Guard patrol.

So, electoral strategy is very powerful in terms of how the Trump administration is using and is priming year, a year in advance of the midterm elections when they know that the midterm election is going to be extremely complicated.

Now, the issue is here we have, a pebble on the road or some obstacles with these.

District Court Judge Breyer say like, well, yeah, that is illegal, right?

So is not it complicates a little bit more in terms of how the National Guard, can be, first of all, fed allies and then deployed, because that is the key legal issue and political issue, regarding these.

That's true.

And the way you put that, I think is exactly apt.

That's a pebble in the road.

But they have tanks.

Correct.

And they can run right over it so that, you know, three weeks after the fact, the courts say, oh, yeah, by the way, you shouldn't have done that.

Well, Donald Trump says, okay, fine.

Well, three weeks after all, apologize.

Right.

So federal troops of Chicago, federal troops to San Francisco, federal troops to Houston.

Question mark.

Right.

Yeah.

These are all sort of possibilities where there's not really an end to this unless the courts basically say, like, you're prohibited from doing this.

I had no fact.

So the legal system is moving so slowly.

We won't get into all the details this time because there's frankly just too much to cover.

But the number of court cases that are stacked up, that question, what the executive is doing and how they're doing it are going to flood the Supreme Court.

They're going to have to make so many decisions about what the oh, yeah, able to do that.

Yeah.

It will just be a whirlwind.

One of the most impactful Supreme Court agendas that we've seen probably in history.

Right.

Maybe post-Civil War or probably civil rights movement.

And now this moment will be the most impactful, maybe post 9/11 too.

I put that in there as well.

So there are a lot of sort of key moments where the courts are going to have significant say over what's legitimate and what's not.

And, you know, the white House is sort of in the middle of all of it.

So, yeah, because the Supreme Court has made some rule is in favor, quote unquote, of the Trump administration.

But those rulings have been based on technicalities.

So now the Supreme Court is going to have to really go into the substance, get into the weeds and see if it's legal or, illegal, constitutional or unconstitutional.

And that's going to be very, very, very much sleepless nights to all, justices.

On the other hand, they're going to be cramping from writing notes like.

I think they use computers.

Now, not those justices.

They know.

Maybe the younger ones do.

Yeah.

No, you're right.

And I think that's exactly it.

And the problem is they can only skirt so many of these issues before they have to weigh in on it.

Oh yeah.

And so there's no way that they can say like, nuh You know, like I don't know, they had to do it now.

Totally.

Right.

Of the like seven major cases that are working their way through, they can't just punt them all.

No no no no no.

We are going to see a very active court.

Oh, yeah.

It'll be pretty important and change in the course of history.

So.

Yeah.

Well are you agree.

Talk about that.

But let's take a deep breath and go to a pastoral setting in the Midwest where we can take a breath.

Okay.

Waving wheat.

Corn as high as your eye, to Iowa Jeronimo!

Where's Senator Joni?

Ernst has decided to not run for reelection.

What does this mean for the kind of balance of power in Washington?

And frankly, also, what does it mean for Texas?

Well, I mean, let's put that in context.

When, she won her first term, me back in 2014 with the eight, percentage points, when she won reelection, it was by six percentage points.

So you said, well, so far we have two data points.

You cannot generalize over two data points, but you say, well, it's a little bit.

Right.

You know, short, in terms of what, she had doing the, the first and the second term, deponent thing here.

I think it's the context in which these election is going to be taking place.

Much of, the implications of the big, beautiful bill, when you're thinking about, for example, Medicaid that is basically slashing rural hospitals, right?

Are going to have a significant impact on the real constituents of, for example, the Republican Party in in Iowa, when you have issues regarding, some of the products that are used in agriculture that are important in that they have become more expensive.

So all those things are going to have, a significant impact.

And eventually he's going to be over and over and over and over on top of each other.

That could have an implication.

And that opens the door for Iowa, but also for Texas, in which, the situation can be I got a election that is competitive and have a 2018 two point no riddle and have a very good candidate basically challenging.

So Cornyn with a very powerful, I guess, primary opponent that, would be the attorney general.

Paxton.

Yeah.

So, yeah, a lot of things going on.

No, this is odd because, yeah, it does have kind of a cascading effect.

Right?

It's not running means there's a kind of domino where, you know, you've got sort of somebody else is going to have to run.

The people like Ashley Hanson, who's a rep who's started to raise money, is certainly going to be in a good position to raise more money than Joni Ernst did anyway.

So that's certainly going to be a positive for them.

And Trump won Iowa by 12 points.

So it's a very red state.

But there's glimmers of hope for Democrats.

They've got good candidates running at the statewide level will they'll which will juice up support top of the ballot.

And also they just want a special Senate election in a Trump district by a significant number.

So there are kind of signs that possibly what you're talking about is true.

But nationally for Democrats they've got a pretty tough map, right.

They want to even hold serve if they want to continue to be where they are right now, not to speak of even gaining, they're going to have to protect Georgia and Michigan, which they can do.

They've got good candidates are raising money, but that's still a tall order in a moment where there's a lot of political flux.

They also need to win seats in North Carolina and Maine.

Now, Thom Tillis isn't running in North Carolina, so there's a possibility that Democrats can use that kind of open seat action to win.

But again, tough.

They have to beat Susan Collins in Maine.

That's also going to be tough.

So there's just this sort of moment where there's a challenge to try to kind of try to get, you know, Iowa in that big span of things.

So, you know, at that point, then you've got a, you know, 49 seats for Democrats, which means that they've gained but not enough to be able to kind of really, you know, make any kind of traction legislatively.

So we'll see how that plays out.

But I like the Texas connection, too, because if Democrats are able to, make pressure on Republicans to spend money in places like Iowa to defend it, for places like North Carolina to defend it, or places like Texas.

To.

Defend it, it becomes a very expensive proposition.

So it's really a question of a foot race to funding Democrats right now.

We're kind of lagging behind Republicans nationally.

But, you know, there's obviously going to be a lot of effort to try to get Texas to flip.

So that will definitely talk about as we go on and get closer to the primary season.

But at this point, it's still, I think, kind of, up in the air.

So we'll talk about that as we go, but let's talk a little bit more about Texas, especially with respect to voting.

So Donald Trump issued an executive order that basically does two things that sort of mandates that there be like a paper ballot for any voting machine, which is expensive and not what normally happens.

Right now, although some counties do, and it requires mail voting to go away.

So no more mail voting.

That's a lot.

Can he do it?

First of all, I guess that's one question.

No, it's okay.

Good.

Okay.

It would be unconstitutional because the, primary authority to regulate elections, it empowers, first of all, Congress and say, like we're going to change the stand.

So far, Congress has not changed anything.

And elections are run by states, period.

End of the Constitution, But.

You said it perfect.

Yeah, that's.

That's about it.

In terms of the legal age.

Yeah.

If we had more judges will speed this whole thing up, but it's still going to have to be litigated.

Right.

And probably the white House will lose this.

But again, really them fighting is the point, right?

I mean, it's really just a kind of series of these sort of expectations that they want to do.

And policy changes they'd like to see happen.

But realistically, like this is not going to hold.

Right.

And even if it did hold, it might actually might hurt Republicans because a lot of Republican states vote by mail and they want to see more of their voters, you know, participating in that way.

And if they can't, then it could be a real problem.

Now, what's funny to me is that the president talking badly about mail voting and saying it's like kind of where fraud is, first of all, is wrong.

That almost never happens.

Like the span of like this prior, like three cycles.

The Heritage Foundation found that there were like 200 cases of fraud by mail.

So it's like infinitesimally small.

But even if it wasn't, it's still the case that Donald Trump talking badly about mail balloting like hurts mail balloting.

So you then see Republicans having to kind of go vote in person because they're convinced that their president says this is unfair or it's unjust.

And so that means that it's going to put a lot more pressure on Republicans to kind of come out to vote.

And if there are any reasons for them not to vote, say the weather's bad or the economy's a little wonky or they think that they're going to lose, then they won't come out to vote.

So like in a sense, you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot here, which I think is a real problem.

But I mean, we saw it, right?

We saw in 2020 when, when the president went against, mail in ballots 2024, he didn't say anything about mail in ballots.

Right.

And everything was fine.

But now he's reverting to 2020 and it's we already saw what happened.

And I'd heard you.

Yeah.

So why are you doing it again?

I don't know, but it sends a signal, especially to those counties.

And states are friendly to the to the president in the sense that they may.

Yeah, do some changes, here and there and and perhaps, following the, the leadership of President Trump.

So that's a great point.

Like, they don't have to like affect all counties.

They can just kind of pick the ones that are friendly.

And so this is actually a legal strategy that's pretty smart from the president.

Right.

So for instance the ending of in-state tuition for people who are undocumented taxes, all that has to happen is the Trump flags.

This idea says we're going to sue on this.

And then friendly attorney generals like Biden, like Ken Paxton, say, okay, yeah, great.

We're going to have this sort of policy change without going through the legislative process.

So this is another way that this can happen.

So to your point, right, there are these counties in Texas who have basically changed their voting process to have from touchscreen to the kind of hand marked ballot, just because Donald Trump has issued this order, which, again, is legally still suspect.

So that definitely has a serious implication to these counties that may want to switch around.

So we're certainly going to see some interesting implications to that.

We'll find out how that plays out in the kind of chaos of normal elections.

But before we get to elections, let's talk about what's happening in the legislative field.

Because so many laws go into effect in Texas, September 1st is like the kind of right big moment, right?

That's when the kind of laws kick in.

What are some of the laws that, you know, kind of you track that you thought were interesting that are going to come into effect, this week?

So we have, one of my favorite, the the Water Development Board that is going to, develop, 1 billion each year for, framework to fund water projects.

So that's, something, extremely, extremely positive.

You have obviously, a constitutional, ballot for, dementia research that could put the stayed in, top of dementia research while you have, the federal government changing priorities in terms of, research.

So it's an interesting, counterbalance of what could happen.

And that would allow Texas to have, a very important leg up in terms of, of that.

And obviously we have, vouchers, so on and so forth.

Yeah, there's this is big, some big change.

Oh yeah.

Right.

Definitely true.

Some huge policy changes for secondary ed.

Yeah.

Definitely interesting.

I think what's happening is that there's so much demand.

Right.

That's happening.

And Republicans have pushed so many bills that like that Greg Abbott can't even keep track.

Right.

There's just like a volume of them.

And he signed a lot of them.

Right.

A thousand and something.

Yeah.

Like more than a thousand bills.

And like you said, there's a bunch of these that are going to be interesting, but you're also seeing the Senate really push hard, like Dan Patrick running for reelection obviously has an incentive to make this happen.

He's there are no breaks over there.

So he can do whatever he wants.

And in effect, he can push laws and laws and laws.

And so that's why we're seeing a lot more.

And, you know, I hate to remind you of this again, but we're in an election year, right?

Like this is going to be a moment where they all want to take credit for this thing.

So there's a bunch of stuff on the list.

It happened.

Cell phone restrictions in public schools.

Yeah.

You know, the kids are not happy about that.

Of course you can't have your stuff even during passing periods.

Teacher pay raises.

They were sort of again, on public Ed had a bunch of money.

They're the Make America Healthy Again legislation.

SB 25 requires warning labels on food.

That's pretty interesting.

That's going to be a major change.

So maybe no more big Red with your barbecue.

It could be just big.

Okay.

Soda property tax cuts.

Those have to go to voters too.

But that could be a significant play.

So there's a lot here that Republicans can kind of talk about.

But beyond that, let's talk about the special right, which is sort of last thing on our list.

There are still a lot of things beyond redistricting.

Now, redistricting, of course, is the biggest issue.

Yeah.

The maps have been shaken up like an ant farm, and they have to be re kind of maneuvered.

So the ants are going to find these new pathways.

The legislation has been signed by Greg Abbott.

We'll certainly see the implications of that, especially as we find the legal process.

But what else did lawmakers do in the special and or what else did they not do?

Well, so far we have some improvement, I guess, in in in campers security issues and how to keep them safe when they go to camps.

Some funding for, flood control, also for emergency notifications, especially available for counties.

We have the debate and know the weight of THC that we don't know what's what's going to happen.

And then the obviously red meat issues that are floating in in terms of these.

Special issues always.

And we'll do a wrap up of the special once we're done, because that comes up next week.

But I want to echo your issue on the THC reform.

That was really the trigger for the special.

And nothing has happened.

Yeah.

And we may see a kind of last minute attempt to reform.

There is a House bill floating around that basically restricts THC 21 plus.

Most retailers already do that, but there's no state law that requires that.

That is on the governor's call.

So we could see that as an issue.

So we'll find out kind of in the next last minute closing moments of the session if they decide to tackle that.

But to me, there's a lot here that Republicans can take credit for.

So I think they can probably take a knee and just say, hey, we'll see you next time.

Well, I think that all state legislators are going to say, as I'm saying by now, that's it for today.

But we will see you next week.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus.

The party keeps up next week.