<Music> Welcome to Party Politics, where we prepare you for your next political conversation.

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

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

Thanks for hanging out and talking politics with us on a pretty eventful week.

Actually, the president is forcing an issue to the Supreme Court.

Greg Abbott is fighting for school vouchers, which he's had his eye on for a couple of years.

So kind of a real pivotal week for legislatures and for the executive.

So let's dive into it.

As I said, the real big news here is the white House and their fight over the deportation of a Maryland man or of a MS13 gang member, depending on kind of what your politics are.

But basically, the facts are this that Kilmar Abrego Garcia has essentially been deported to El Salvador.

This was maybe a mistake, maybe on purpose.

The White House is sort of unclear about that.

In any case, he's been deported back to El Salvador.

This actually is a breach of a 2019 court ruling which suggested that it's not safe for him to return.

This is really, to me, a kind of step for Donald Trump of defying the law and making this issue move to the Supreme Court, which it's likely to do.

So lots of fray here.

But just top line, what do you think is the kind of implication to the fight over the deportation?

Well, it's clearly that, right?

It's we have not to get very distracted in terms of everything that is going on in the at the margins, but this is truly, Donald Trump, right?

Try to attempt to, assert, the unitary theory of the presidency.

Right.

How the executive has to have all power to do X, Y, or Z. Yeah.

Some of the arguments that we have heard, especially, for example, from, Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, he says, well, you know, as far as I know, the courts, do not have any saying on how we conduct, for example.

Yeah.

Foreign policy.

Yeah.

The executive branch has a lot of leeway in terms of immigration policy.

Traditionally, that has been how the Supreme Court has ruled.

So over the end is going to be very interesting what the Supreme Court has said.

And they have, touched a little bit of the issue, right, in the sense, or saying that, a district court ruling saying that the Trump administration needed to facilitate, but not actually actually, act.

Right.

Given an order of, the district court.

So the Supreme Court has said yes, but I thought exactly.

Yeah.

And, the order that the court brought down was, I think, celebrated by both sides, which probably makes it a pretty good ruling where the administration says you know, we don't have to facilitate this exactly as it was, but then you do have to have a due process element to it.

And that's the real stick here.

That's going to be the question about how they facilitate this.

It's also a standing issue.

So that'll be a feature that also gets litigated.

There's a lot of pieces here I think.

Yeah that obviously are kind of very legalistic in their orientation.

Yeah.

At the bottom of it you're totally right.

This is all about the White House's desire to use this case to be able to press this issue in the Supreme Court.

There's a lot of different versions of this.

Right, exactly.

You know who, the you know, Garcia is and sort of what his background is, sort of some people have suggested he's this a metal worker, right.

That is sort of trying to take care of his family, of the people and the white House in particular, claiming that he's dangerous and shouldn't be in this country.

That is really the political sticking point, right?

That is that the that the white House wants to be able to say on this issue that they can win public opinion, that they know they can get people to believe that this is a problem.

We need to, you know, basically deport people who are dangerous.

That's a probably winnable argument.

And the question really is, and I'm going to ask you this, and that's what you think the kind of sort of legs for due process is like, is there a case where people will look at this and say, yeah, we should have due process period for any single person who was here and in this, you know, American system, do you think that's a winnable argument?

Because really that's what the other side is saying.

You've got a whole delegation of representatives from Maryland.

And, you know, Cory Booker, we're going to El Salvador to try to extract him.

That's happening literally as we speak there, probably in the air.

And so that's what they're going to make the case to, to say that's what the court is telling you.

That's the sort of law and process.

Anything else besides that is just you abusing your power.

Is that a normal argument?

It's very tricky, right?

Because due process is extremely important.

And this is a country in a democracy that, since its founding, has had some sort of, due process.

The basis of the U.S. law is.

Exactly when when you diminish that.

They need to at least be slow.

Yeah.

And he gets very, very very complicated.

Right.

And again he can be used on this side.

Yeah.

But also can be used on the other side.

So true.

So it doesn't really matter once you set the precedent is going to be very very very bad.

Yeah.

Now on the other issue is.

What does facilitate means.

Right.

Yeah.

And that is a key question because, you know, Secretary of Homeland Security Christine Romans said, yeah, we're going to facilitate.

If he gets, freed up by the Salvadoran government and.

Sorry, we have no say in what the Salvadoran government has to present, Kelly has says like hell no, I'm not going to do anything.

But if that happens, right, we'll send him up right?

Yeah.

In the Oval Office.

You know, the president basically said we couldn't do that.

That would be like smuggling a terrorist bank into the U.S. that would be impractical.

And as you know, President Trump smiles.

Yeah.

Obviously, there's coordination here.

But as you say, right, at this international diplomacy at its highest.

Right.

I just have a meeting before the meeting.

But I think that's right.

Like that, that is really the concern.

And I think that the white House is getting itself into this kind of sticky situation where everything they're saying the contradicts the other things that they're saying could be problematic for them.

Now, the judge has already said that what El Salvador wants and what they're saying is true is not relevant here.

That doesn't matter.

And so really, it's only kind of what the white House has done.

And that's going to be the real issue.

So basically the kind of judge on this case, is starting to sort of ask questions.

They're going to have two weeks of this fact finding it.

What's going to determine exactly what happened to Mr. Garcia and figure out if their claims about this kind of relationship between he and this, you know, terrorist organization is true?

If it's not true, it could be really bad for the white House.

So this is sort of, you know, potential slippery slope for him.

But on the good news for President Trump, it's taken all the conversation away from tariffs.

No one's talking about tariffs anymore.

And so for at least the short term that's good.

And that's a plus for Trump because like the numbers are really bad here.

If you look at the way that this is shaking out basically like the the numbers for the kind of tariff aftermath have been pretty bad for him.

So reminding people that there's something else going on is, I think, really a good, good thing for him politically.

But here I'm going to ask you this last question on this issue, because it's really critical and that's that, you know, it's one thing for the white House to assert the need to have the ability to deport people who are dangerous, right?

It's another thing for them to suggest that they might deport other citizens to other nations to handle the crime issue.

I think the president is just blustering here, but he was pretty clear that he thought that that was something that we're going to do next.

Do you think that's in the realm of public possibility and would people support that?

Well, I mean.

You can send I mean, there is a legal process to do that.

Yes.

And that legal process is if you commit a crime, for example, in, I don't know, let's say country 'W' to be good.

Very, very politically correct.

Right.

But country 'A' wants you because whatever crimes you committed are going to be related to something prosecutable in country eight.

So they can ask for an extradition order and there's international agreements between countries to get those extraditions right.

So you can have for example in many cases you have many Mexican nationals.

Right.

That were involved in drug businesses, cartels, so on and so forth that are actually here in the United States.

Right?

Sure.

In jail, you got so you can do that.

The US can do that.

But the question is which country is going to task, right.

For a US citizen, right, to go to that country to do that?

It's not the Penguin Island, probably?

Right?

It's not going to be the Penguin Island.

But maybe it's the Penguin Island, right?

Just dump it there and I'd go there Penguin friends.

Penguins flying.

Yeah.

Just walking like The bounty of the sea.

Yeah.

So are you good at that?

So.

Okay, so it gets complicated, but just saying I'm going to send us citizens abroad to jail somewhere.

Yeah.

I mean, that's, you know, very, very.

Yeah, it strikes me as just sort of cheap talk.

Right?

It's bluster.

Right.

He's not going to really do this, but to even hint that is scary.

And it is definitely it is very this new kind of.

Absolutely.

Kind of panic among people, who are worried that this is going to a slippery slope to something terrible.

But before this turns into an episode of Narcos, I also want to actually mention something that, is another kind of countermand to Donald Trump's approach here, and that's Joe Biden.

Remember Joe Biden?

He was president for like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, the Senate for a couple of years.

I remember the exact details.

But Joe Biden is back.

Yeah.

Gave a speech on Social Security.

And I wouldn't spend too much time on this because post presidencies are very long.

And hopefully, you know, all presidents have a long time to be able to cement their legacy.

And that's one thing he's up to.

But he had a whole speech on Social Security, and that was a fairly good speech.

You know, Biden's never been the greatest communicator, especially kind of the last part of Biden's term.

But to me, this is a smart, strategic play for the Democrats.

They want to employ Joe Biden in very targeted ways on this one issue, right, where he can be credible on the issue of Social Security.

So that's another kind of issue that, you know, Trump is going to have to kind of face.

Again, the midterms will be here before you know it.

Yeah.

We talk more about the kind of Cornyn, impacts and match up in a second.

But this is going to be, I think, a real kind of, you know, kind of critical focal point for the White House here in the next few weeks.

So we'll keep track of that.

But speaking of forums and things that can get broken, poor J.D.

Vance, Vice President Vance, so happy that his Ohio State Buckeyes won the national championship.

So pleased to see them at the white House.

And then sadly, he fumbles the Trophy literally.

So we're talking about football, right?

This is football.

Okay, but why so late?

That was like last year.

Yeah.

So the tradition is that, you know, the White House invites some kind of these champions to the to so you know, WNBA winners, NBA.

Players.

You know like pro football.

Yeah.

Trump floated the idea of having both teams both pro football teams come to the white House, which has never been done and would be a lot of people.

But anyway yeah that's the this is that so okay okay.

But poor JD Vance.

Yeah.

He fumbled it.

But he said.

I would say, response saying like, I just didn't want any other, you know, university or football team to win the championship.

That's why I broke it.

Okay, guy, that's a good save.

Definitely no Buckeyes fan.

I'm a Big Ten fan.

But, boo boo to the Buckeyes.

So let's break that trophy.

And then give it somebody else.

Let's talk about Texas.

A big week for Greg Abbott, too.

He has been circling this day on his calendar for about two years now, Jeronimo.

It's voucher day.

This is the day that the Texas House is debating the voucher bill.

Now, they're literally doing this as we record this.

So we're going to be, you know, behind the time on this.

But what are the stakes for Governor Abbott when it comes to this voucher code.

Well a lot right.

A lot of political capital, a lot of pushing this issue over the past two years.

Yeah.

Trying to make it.

amends.

It's one of the crime rules of, governance having, policies in addition to, border security.

Yeah.

I think they're, you know, very close together.

Yeah.

And it's also a policy issue where there's only, let's say, a very slim majority in the state or a plurality of, Texans that approve this issue.

Extremely controversial, extremely controversial.

So within, the Republican Party, especially when you're thinking about, rural Republicans, most of them were voted out, during the past election.

So it is extremely consequential.

But a lot of things could happen in this week.

There's still a lot of of trail to the kind of conquer here.

And you're right, the stakes are super high.

He spent millions of dollars unseating members of his own party.

He had expended a tremendous amount of political capital to challenge them on issues like vouchers, but also on, border security.

He basically is turned into an influencer, right?

He's posting multiple times per day on this issue.

He's making the rounds at various, you know, private schools.

Like he has really become like a Kardashian, making it clear that he wants this to pass.

And the reason is because he needs this legacy win.

He needs something that is the signature policy of the Greg Abbott years.

And if he doesn't get this, then I actually don't know what it would be other than sort of border security, which, you know, is also my intention.

But this is a big moment for him.

And like you say, this is something that that I think is not a done deal.

And at least in terms of kind of exactly how it looks, are still a need to be able to write.

What the House, Senate, Frankenstein signed together.

Yeah.

We don't know if it's going to be stitches here.

Yeah, a screw over here or something like that.

No.

In Frankenstein, like in, you know, the kind of assumption is that it's easy to do.

It's not right.

This is more like a parody of Frankenstein, where it's like, we don't know what it's going to look like.

We're just gonna try to get this from this piece and this beast from here and, like, it might look okay, it might function okay, but it still has to be put all together.

And that's going to be a challenge.

So we'll monitor this as it goes.

Because like we said, this is really the kind of crown jewel of the session for the Republicans.

If they can't get this passed then it's going to be a real, kind of problem for them.

So we're going to keep track of that.

One thing that was not a surprise this week was the Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor has said that he's running for reelection.

He will attempt to serve a fourth term.

He's tied for the third longest serving lieutenant governor, and a fourth term would bump him to second on that list.

It was something that everyone knew.

He mentioned it.

He didn't have an announcement formally, per se, but it seems like his buddy Donald Trump basically jumpstarted things by saying, I endorse you for lieutenant governor.

And Dan Patrick was sort of caught off guard and obviously happy about that.

But, what do you make of the kind of announcement from Trump and the kind of reaction from, Dan Patrick on this?

Well, I mean, he's fair, complete, right?

It's like, oh, you have to run.

You have to run.

I mean, obviously, you know, running.

He's not going to have any problems whatsoever.

Right?

Right.

There's not going to be a primary, challenger in the Republican primary, in the general election.

Right.

I mean, right.

We don't know.

But most likely he's just going to cruise as he has.

Yeah.

Cruising in past elections, obviously depending on the candidate that Democrats run.

But yeah, I mean yeah, that's a great point.

I think it's interesting that there hasn't been any chatter about which Democrats might run for that seat.

Same is true for governor.

The same is true to some degree for comptroller.

Right.

We've talked about all these races the last few months, and there's not been any discussion about it.

The only thing we've seen is that Colin Allred suggested he might want to run for Senate in the race that pits Cornyn and Paxton together in that primary.

So that's not a great sign for Democrats.

But to me, I think it's actually not a bad year for Democrats to try to.

Oh yeah.

Try to tackle this like.

2018 2.0 yeah.

We've talked about the ways that the midterms are hurtful to the power of, you know, the president's in power.

And so this is a chance for them to really, I think possibly unseat some of these individuals.

But the fact that no one's talking about it, no one's raising money, no one's kind of making this national kind of stink about it is a real, I think, issue.

So anything is going to happen has got to happen pretty fast.

But yeah, we have a new, the state House Democrats have a new, Texas Democratic chair, like, what, two weeks old?

Yeah.

So still.

New.

But still independent of the party structure.

There have to be candidates out there who were thinking about it, and.

Oh, I'm sure that there's someone thinking about it.

Right.

But they haven't said it out loud.

I mean, it's going to be very interesting to see how does that and obviously, if the money comes back to Texas or it's going to be once again, it's like, oh no, this is our chance or anything like that.

I do think that, yes, the midterm is going to open possibilities for Democrats.

But again, as we have said before, is and I think you taught me these, me, following you over the years.

I'll put my mortarboard on.

Yeah.

I.

Mean, I have a robe if you need.

One, but you need, the right candidates, right?

Yeah.

To run for the right office.

Yes.

So we'll see.

So true.

No.

And honestly, two, if Allred is running for Senate, that's going to be the marquee race that's going to suck up all the money and probably all the attention, making it harder for these down ballot races that people really aren't that aware of.

Any way to be able to function.

But I think for Dan Patrick, him running again is, kind of impressive victory lap on a really strong career.

Like he has changed the role of lieutenant governor.

And the thing is, he's done it in less time than other impactful lieutenant governor.

So he is really reformed that oh yeah, lovely to meet his needs period.

Which politically is just a stunning change institutionally.

The other is that, you know, I think for him at least, he needs that leverage with the House to say that he's running for reelection means he's still going to be relevant, still going to be powerful.

You know, on what has the session passed 2026?

So he's got to do that because he still has lots of fights with the house.

And if the house doesn't pass vouchers in the way that they like or they don't pass any of his other kind of 30 plus priorities, then he's going to definitely make hay of it.

And that I think he needs to have some political muscle behind him.

So announcing yeah, actually makes a lot of sense for him politically.

So, you know, kind of President Trump helped him out a little bit there.

But speaking of races, let's talk about the race for attorney general.

Now.

We've hinted this a couple times today.

We mentioned it last week, Ken Paxton is running for Senate against John Cornyn.

That's a primary fight.

But Paxton can't be on the ballot as attorney general and running for Senate.

So he has to pick.

He has made his choice.

He thinks he can unseat John Cornyn.

We'll see.

But in the meantime, a lot of people are going to decide they want to run for him.

Absolutely.

A couple people this week have suggested that they want to do this.

You have former U.S. Attorney John Bash has launched his campaign.

He was, former special assistant to Donald Trump, a prosecutor in the Western District of Texas.

He was actually in charge of prosecuting former, state senator Carlos Jarecki.

So he's got some, you know, Democrat hunting kind of vote to beat, is there?

I think that for, him, the certainly Trump connection is important, but he's not going to be alone in that maze.

Middleton.

The senator, from the kind of Galveston and sort of East Texas region, an oil and gas businessman and a very big GOP donor, has said that he's going to spend at least $10 million to get the seat.

That's basically Mini Patrick.

He is the sort of acolyte.

I figured one day he'd want to be lieutenant governor.

Maybe he still will be, but this is the seat that's open for him.

So he's, definite choice there.

You know, the AG has always been a bit of a parking lot for other races.

John Cornyn once said that AG stands for almost governor.

And so, you know, Cornyn took a different path to go to the Senate.

And, you know, obviously the rest is history.

But as it is now, these people are clearly looking at this race as a stepping stone.

And honestly, people like John Cornyn and like compacts and have made this office a stepping stone that is worth having.

And even if that's the end of your career, it's still the case that this is a pretty powerful position where you can do a lot of political things.

So what do you make of the way that this is shaping up?

It kind of happens slow, right, as Paxton announces.

Right.

It didn't happen right away.

People all jumped in.

And, you know, there's a glut of people who want to have these statewide offices.

So what do you make of the kind of people who are signing on or we're going to see more people?

What's going to happen?

Well, I mean, I don't know if we're going to see more people.

Yeah.

The fact that $10 million is like, I'm going to put at least at least 10 million bucks, you know, raises the bar.

Does.

Very, very.

Higher price of of these elections is going up.

Oh we talked about Comptroller two.

That's going to be another expensive race.

Like this is a lot of money to spend on these races that never has been done before.

Yeah.

So that's that potential limits right.

What we don't know is what the Democrats are going to do.

Right.

And if they have someone that is also willing to pay up at least $10 million.

Yeah, but this is the moment Democrats have been waiting for, right?

They've got basically open seats here and they're going to fight the money battle.

But like the money is going to be there for them.

They have to pick the right person.

Correct.

That's a tough call because a lot of Democrats might look at this and say, you know, yikes, this is a tough win and I got to raise all this money.

I'm not sure that they want to, you know, kind of bridge that, but we'll see.

But Republicans are definitely interested.

Chip Roy has been described as somebody who might want to run for the house.

This, he's got about $2.5 million in campaign cash sitting around.

So that's a possibility, too.

There's maybe more people will see.

But, definitely this is going to be a race to watch, and Republicans are going to be kind of clawing over each other to get.

Yeah, they get that spot because as we saw, these don't open up very much.

Right?

Right.

The last time there was an open seat here was more than a decade ago.

Yeah.

That definitely something that these Republicans are kind of anxious to kind of jump on.

Speaking of people running for office, Maya Flores is back.

Right.

Representative Maya Flores had a very brief stint in Congress, basically about six months.

She flipped the 34th congressional district.

Now, this is odd, but because of the way that the calendar fell, she was, elected for a very short time, to replace, Filemon Vela and it, of course And then she had to run for the district that was created.

She lost to this and that.

Vicente Gonzalez, even though she came very close.

So now she's switching the office, the congressional district she's running for to a different one.

She's going to run against Henry Cuellar, who we've talked about many times.

Yeah, that district is kind of Laredo anchored.

And he is in jeopardy.

Right.

He's under indictment.

The valley's changing a little bit.

That's not exactly in the valley, but like that area in south Texas is is definitely more red than it was.

He only won by 6%, less than about 13,000 votes.

She's present as a good candidate, probably somebody who could fit that role for the Republicans are looking for.

Democrats admit actually, Kendall Scudder, as you mentioned, that there's a lot of vacancies in terms of precinct chairs that they need to fill, and county chairs aren't as plentiful as they could be to make sure they have the ability and institutional capacity to facilitate this.

How do you think this is going to play out?

I mean, is Cuellar that vulnerable?

I mean maybe, right.

Maybe.

But as we have said, you have said that you have a book coming out with those things.

These do these really matters.

Do people really care if he's indicted or not?

Yeah.

Who cares right.

They maybe don't even know.

Yeah.

Yeah maybe.

Yeah.

He has connections.

He has been there.

He's one of those, conservative Democrats.

Yeah.

That if he can fend off a Republican attack from the right, he would be the right person, right?

Yeah.

The problem is, is he good with the Democratic Party?

Probably not.

Still a little shaky.

But the Democratic Party also wants as many chances as possible to, defend that particular seat.

So that's one issue.

My Flores is.

Yes, it's, right.

Candidate.

The same thing.

Faith, family, values tag, flag, etc., etc..

Perfect.

Check check check.

But the question needs the context and the context.

These midterm, President Trump policies.

Is the economy going to be good.

Yeah.

What about the tariffs?

They're going to affect etcetera etcetera etcetera.

So anything that says Republican and the economy's not good.

It's it's going to be super tough.

So tough for a year.

But let's talk about Trump in the primary.

The corn in Paxton primary, he said this week when asked directly, what do you think is going to happen?

Who are you going to endorse?

He says, I'm not sure that's still forming as a race.

To me, it's interesting that he wouldn't back Ken Paxton.

They've been allies and friendly, but he and Cornyn seem to have mended their ways.

We've mentioned this.

It's also the case that the fact that Trump is being strategic about this is really interesting.

Normally, he's willing just to kind of go in for his buddies, but that hasn't happened here.

So to me, this makes this more of an open, competitive race than we might have imagined, even though Trump would definitely be a kingmaker.

The problem is, as you say, this is a midterm.

Trump's numbers are not going to improve that much, and in fact, probably going to go down.

And if Democrats have a better year, Republicans have a worse year.

It could be a tough endorsement for whoever gets it.

Actually, it could be less.

Exactly.

It was, you know, the key there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Right.

I mean it could be that.

And also President Trump has said, look, both of them are my friends.

We have to see what's going to happen or not.

But again, the context is going to be very important.

And perhaps, you know, none of them are saying like, oh yeah, give me one or yeah, oh, don't endorse me.

Don't it?

Yeah.

Good luck.

Hoping for no one to.

Order windows.

Me because he can't surprise you.

He'll just text it out.

Yeah, exactly.

But obviously we're going to keep track of that.

And obviously President Trump at the end is going to endorse one or the other.

But that's it for this week.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus the conversation keeps up next week.

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