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

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

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

Go Cougs, it's March madness.

Thanks for taking time off to hang out with us and talk politics and a really crazy busy week.

You know, March Madness is happening.

Cougars potentially, you know, world champions.

We'll see.

Also, JFK files got released this week.

I know you've been scanning.

Your.

Computer looking for just every little detail, right?

You know, who killed Kennedy?

Are we going to know this?

So we're going to.

No, we're not, we're not.

Oh, okay.

Well, I guess we'll just, - Disappointing Yeah.

Well, what's not disappointing is that there's a ton of stuff going on in terms of the kind of Senate.

We'll talk all about that and we'll talk about Texas.

There's some movement in terms of gambling, which isn't looking real good.

So if you in favor of that, then probably it's not going to be an outcome that is in your favor.

And of course, here in Houston we've got a competitive Russian race coming up.

So lots going on.

Let's dig right into it.

First, Chuck Schumer is kind of in a bad spot with the rest of his party.

The Senate minority leader, basically a facilitated a vote, in the Senate to make a continuing resolution happen.

Republicans were not sure they had the votes in the Senate.

Chuck Schumer was sort of limping along.

Eventually, it was the case that he agreed to have a continuing resolution.

And, this was a kind of problem for his party.

The concern, basically, is that they have given away something valuable here that is, you know, funding of the government for another few weeks, without much to be gained from it.

Are Democrats right here that the people who are unhappy with Schumer say that he's just capitulated to Republicans?

Or is it the case that, as he says, that this is sort of an ongoing negotiation, no reason to, you know, kind of let your powder go right now and maybe it would have been worse if Donald Trump had the ability to run government during a shutdown where they could do a lot of things to kind of, you know, alter where the, kind of personnel matters were maybe even policy changes.

I mean, it's kind of the eye of the beholder, as they say.

So one thing is very clear, one thing that these vote generated is to have a more divided Democratic Party that was.

At exactly the wrong time, exactly.

Where the chief achieved.

So in terms of how much power, the Trump administration and Trump would have had if the government went on on the shutdown.

It depends.

Each agency determines which, services are going to be essential and which services are non-essential.

But other issues, for example, in terms of border protection, hospital, medical care, air traffic control, law enforcement, power grid maintenance, etcetera, they remain open.

Those are that have basically annual appropriations that have to be protected.

Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid also continue.

Yeah.

The big question here is what would have happened if Democrats say you want and as you say, you own it.

Yeah.

Then you fix it, right?

Yes.

People.

That's what the House Democrats.

Exactly.

It's like we're not voting for any of this.

And they didn't.

Exactly.

The House Democrats are mad, especially Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who says basically, oh, yeah, you made every Democrat that is talking to Chuck Schumer.

You made every Democrat walk the plank.

You basically made all those Democrats swallow this tough vote.

They're going to have to go back to their constituency and say, look, we voted for this continuing resolution in a government that, you know, clearly the base is uncomfortable with.

So that's a problem for them.

There's also this chatter about her running against Schumer for Senate.

It's Chuck Schumer in jeopardy here, not only as leader but also even as a member of the Senate.

Well, I think that I mean yes or no.

He's, as you say, a prolific, fundraiser.

He has a very deep connections.

But I think that especially the base that is keeping alive the Democratic Party is not happy at all.

At all.

Yeah.

I think progressives wanted there to be a fight.

And, especially some of the younger members of the Senate.

Right.

Like Jon Ossoff is one and the Kims another.

These are people who are fairly new to the game and yet wanted there to be kind of more of the, I don't know, kind of a brawl.

Right.

And this would have been a good moment for it.

But Chuck Schumer says, look, you know, if we did it right now, it would kind of basically kind of show our cards too early.

There's a lot of fight left.

We don't exactly know what this is going to look like.

Right?

I kind of agreed to the extent to which that we don't know how the kind of politics of this is going to shape out.

Right?

And when you get into a shutdown, like, who's to blame is a big question.

So that could be a narrative shift that could be problematic for the Democrats.

But look, progressives definitely wanted the fight, right?

They thought that if they made it look crazy enough, there's a shutdown.

There's just court cases everywhere.

We'll talk about these in a second, too, like if that's the case and there's just this sort of chaos and it makes the Trump administration look all the more unwilling and unable to govern.

Is that a line that's useful in the future for Democrats because like, this issue is going to come up again, right?

It's a continuing resolution.

It's not like the final budget, right.

They still have to find a final budget.

No, absolutely.

But again, we have seen previous shutdowns.

Yeah.

And in those previous shutdowns during Democratic administrations the Democrat administration was blamed for it.

Yeah.

Not Republicans that force that shutdown.

Yeah.

So once again this is the question here in in which political environment you are operating.

Right.

And that is a key question that I don't think the Democrats have an answer to.

Yeah.

If you are operating in guerilla urban warfare.

You cannot operate.

I think if you were staging a battle of the 16th century, right among, you know, gentlemen, deciding a duel or not.

Right.

And shaking hands before you like.

Yeah.

Kind of surround your enemy with arrows like Napoleon.

No you cannot do that anymore.

Right.

So that is something that eventually needs to be understood.

If they want to do it.

And the other thing is that remember political science, we have the responsible party.

Yeah.

Theory.

Yeah.

And the responsible party theory just basically says that whatever you signal is going to be taken into account by you constituents.

Yeah.

And in this case, the Democrats have not signal anything.

Right.

Kudos to the Republicans because the Republicans have been extremely disciplined.

So what they are pursuing very clear.

Yeah.

And their agenda is extremely clear.

You can agree or not agree with their agenda.

Yeah.

But Democrats are is fumbling the ball all over the place.

So true.

And the core of responsive party government is that the parties are unified and present a clear and distinctly case.

The Republicans are doing that.

Democrats are not.

Nope.

The other problem for Democrats is that they face a more difficult map going into 2026.

Jeanne Shaheen, the senator from New Hampshire, decided to not run for reelection.

This is not the biggest problem because the Democrats have bench in New Hampshire.

It's pretty deep, but New Hampshire is a swing state, so anything could happen.

Well, there you go.

Also, Pete Buttigieg, who was going to run for Senate.

Yeah.

And I think it would be a pretty compelling number.

He's a very good kind of messanger.

Oh, yeah.

When it comes to the Democratic side of things, is decided to run, not run for that or for governor.

So the speculation he'll run for president.

That's probably the case, right?

There's going to be a lot of people running for president.

So he doesn't want to kind of get tied up in something else.

So that could be a potential issue.

The other thing is that is that the Democrats are in a total freefall right now.

The polling suggests that their approval is as low as it's been since before Bill Clinton was president.

In fact, if you look at those numbers, 40% of the public surveyed said that the Democratic Party has no strategy to defeat Donald Trump.

And the good news is, the 24% think that they have a game plan, but it's a bad one, so it's not going in the right direction.

Actblue, which is the kind of small dollar kind of facilitator, is also in freefall.

They've lost staff and they're hemorrhaging, financial stability.

So that's another issue Democrats are going to have to face going into a very competitive election.

Right.

Like if they can control, you know, one of these chambers, there's a potential for them to stop Donald Trump just on the votes alone.

But as it is now, is a message war.

They're not winning.

And that's going to be a real problem.

Oh, absolutely.

100%.

Well, so, the other thing that I think the Democrats are struggling on is how to combat Donald Trump when it comes to the kind of use of executive power, particularly this week, there were two big cases involving immigration, deportation, right, that got, kind of national attention and potentially facilitate a constitutional crisis.

There's a lot here packed into all this.

So just in a nutshell, what's happening is that in one case, the president evoked, centuries old alien enemies act to begin mass deportations.

18th century just.

Yeah.

Which is a long time ago.

Like a long time ago, Venezuelan immigrants, basically have been deported.

The president and the white House say that they were part of this gang.

A judge blocked that order.

The deportation flights continued in some kind of legal ambiguity.

The courts say we were pretty clear.

The president and the white House say you weren't that clear.

We weren't sure.

So this has become kind of a conundrum.

This has led to concerns about the judiciary.

The Republicans responded by saying, well, if you're not going to support this effect, then we're going to impeach you.

Brandon Gil, who's here from Texas, said, we're going to introduce these charges against the federal judge who stopped this order.

John Roberts, the chief Justice, came out and said, you know, no, you don't.

This is a practice that cannot be in effect, right?

We cannot impeach judges because we don't agree with them politically, just messy.

Right.

And there are a couple other cases too.

I shouldn't, you know, ignore those.

But basically deportation of individuals that the Secretary of state or the white House said were problematic or act either infecting, terrorism or some other kinds of issues.

So big legal concerns about what the White House's responsibility is here and the degree to which the courts are going to stop them.

So how do you take the kind of big news of immigration policy this week?

Well, I mean, it's going beyond immigration policy.

Looking into the weeds.

Yeah.

There you go.

That's what we do here.

Exactly.

It's, you know, presidents have ignored, judicial orders before, right?

President, Abraham Lincoln ignored, orders in terms of the war, pursuing the Civil War during wartime.

Which is the same.

So that's a that's a key.

The key as the country was in a very perilous, situation.

Yeah.

The key player here in my mind is not Congress.

He's not the executive branch or the judicial branch is Congress because if a president decides not to follow a judicial order, the next player in the game is Congress, and Congress is the one that decides what it is going to do.

Right?

Because if the president says, well, I'm not going to follow your orders, then Congress can pass a law and say, you have to follow orders, or else there's going to be a consequence of.

The law or just kind of clarify things.

Congress can act and rebuke the president and title and the key player here that he's signing it and all.

A lot of people are paying attention to it is Congress, because Congress is not going to do anything.

Yeah.

So historically, they never have when it comes to unilateral power, Congress almost never contract.

Well, at least can be very straightforward ways.

But it can.

Yeah.

And that is a key question right.

Yeah.

So I mean and that's why, for example, the whole mess that the Democrats have right now is going to have implications for 2026.

Anything that have implications in terms of how these unilateral power is going to be used or curtailed by Congress.

It's a great point.

And I think the reason conferences and acting is partly because as an institution, they almost never challenge the white House on these things.

And that's been true since at least the 1940s.

But beyond that, it's a winnable political argument for them.

Oh, so Donald Trump in the white House as strategically, I think, very intelligently, pick this case as one where they can try to engender public support, right?

Right.

Like ejecting people who are gang members and who are violent from the country is a sellable, winnable, arguably for people.

Most people are probably not as attuned to the kind of rule of law kind of discussions that we are.

Since we think about this all the time, where they will look at this and say, yeah, of course we should eject these people.

If the president says they're dangerous, get them out of here.

But obviously that belies the fact that we do have this process, which does require there to be this kind of, kind of facilitation of, of due process.

So that's one issue.

I think that is explains why Republicans aren't doing much about this, and not to mention the fact, of course, that they're basically, you know, in locks their own public on this.

But the other is that my question to you is about the kind of constitutional conundrum that this poses.

Right.

So, Chief Justice Roberts, who almost never says anything publicly, yeah, came out and was very clear that he thought that this was something that was problematic.

It had to stop.

Even the discussion of it had to stop.

I think he sees what the rest of us see, which is that in the future, this will continue to be an issue for the white House, and that battle will not go away.

Do you think that that has the elements of a constitutional crisis that could be a problem for the system itself?

Yes, absolutely.

And, you know, we knew that this was since January.

We knew that the final arbiter in these whole, new, I guess, redefining American politics by the Trump administration was going to end up in the Supreme Court.

We didn't know how the Supreme Court was going to sound.

What was his stand now?

We know exactly 1,000% clear what is the stand of the Supreme Court.

And I think that given that stand is something that is going to open at least some, very interesting discussions within the court in terms of what is allowed and what is not about.

And here the end of the game is, balance of powers, right, and separation of powers.

And that is exactly what is at stake here.

These policies obviously have implications in terms of what they're doing and what they're not doing.

But at the end of the game is these separation and balance of what you can and cannot do.

Yeah.

And the different elements of the executive branch also were affected by this.

The Secretary of State can unilaterally has made some determinations, which has facilitated some deportation.

Is that legal?

We know presidents reach back to use former laws, long passed laws as a source of authority for executive action.

Is this sufficient when the law was passed or a certain set of conditions in particular, in this case, the country was at war with the countries not at war, at least in a formal sense.

Does the same determination still apply right.

These are small kind of issues, but obviously speak to the bigger issue, which is that the president does or does not have power.

So there's a lot of consideration here the courts are going to have to do.

They're going to be working overtime to watch this as we are too, because this really will, I think, be a market point for the administration.

This is going to be one of those pivot moments where you know they're going to win or they're not going to win, and they're going to have to make a choice.

Then do we continue to press or do they facilitate kind of whatever the court's asking them to do?

So we will wait and see.

But we are certainly looking at some churn in Texas as well.

There's been a lot of chatter this week about John Cornyn Senate seat.

He's up in 2026.

The we talked last week about Ken Paxton.

And the primary challenge potentially at root Ken Paxton this week came out and said even more fervently he's considering it.

He's going to put a price tag on it, which was about $20 million.

Probably his a little bit low.

I think it would actually be much more expensive than that.

John Cornyn is licking his lip saying, okay, you want $20 million.

You put that number out there.

I'm going to double it because that guy can raise money, but he's not alone.

Wesley Hunt is also out raising money.

He's has ads on TV for nothing specific except just the celebration of Wesley Hunt, who's a member of Congress here from Houston.

He could potentially run against, Cornyn, who is vulnerable.

Ken Paxton laid out the case right.

You know, Cornyn is basically too close to, the middle.

He's facilitated the outcomes on bipartisan legislation, on gun control.

He's the kind of too close to that issue in terms of funding Ukraine.

That's a liability, subtle liability.

But John Cornyn has always been pretty successful when it's come to these primaries.

So how do you handicap this race even, you know, a year out?

Yeah.

Well, I mean, senators have not lost a primary election since the 1970s.

Yeah, right.

I mean, yeah, I mean, Ken, well, yeah.

Lloyd Bentsen right, beating Ralph Yarborough, right.

Fluky Yarborough was one of the last liberals in Texas.

Right.

Bentsen was a well-funded moderate.

So perhaps that could work again.

But it was still a long shot, I think, like you say, it is.

But but I don't know.

I mean, here the issue is you, the Republican Party, I think, or voters, one way or the other are not 1,000% consistent in terms of supporting, for example, Paxton or supporting hand or supporting Cornett.

Yeah, right.

I think that there is a lot of variation in terms of that.

I think that there is still a lot of Republicans in Texas that tend to be, more moderate, still conservative, but within the moderate conservative wing.

Yeah.

Oh.

These are going to be more, obviously more more conservative.

Here the the the interesting, factor in this race is that if hunt, runs, then it complicates things.

Not necessarily for Cornelia, but for PACs.

It's a good point.

Splits the kind of opposition.

It splits the opposition.

Both the car name.

Which one?

Which has been, exactly has been a, super ally of President Trump.

He was the first congressman to endorse Trump.

Yeah.

So he it's also he has the trump card one way or the other.

Yeah.

Whether if and only Trump decides to intervene and says, well, hunt is the guy or Paxton is the guy or even Cornyn.

He's the guy, right.

Then that's a good or no.

Well, no.

And to me, it just kind of exacerbates the notion that basically Texas politics are now national politics.

We literally have talk for like three minutes about like Donald Trump being the deciding factor in who's the senator from, from Texas.

So absolutely.

Whoever gets that nod is probably going to have a pretty big leg up.

Although I wouldn't sleep on Cornyn regardless.

I guess my question to you is, I think you're right that, you know, the public is more moderate on gun control, at least as a public, you know, kind of.

Right.

They're also kind of more in favor of, kind of, sort of aiding Ukraine.

They were that could change very much in the next year.

Are these issues that the Republicans are going to be motivated by in a year?

That's a lifetime in politics?

No.

Absolutely not.

Yeah, I guess that's the question is like, does Ken Paxton's kind of theory of the case as to why Biden is not sufficiently Republican enough?

Hold him.

No.

No.

And we just have to wait for the flavor of the month, and see what's going to be the real issue.

Yeah.

And what's going to be the position.

But again, Cornyn has a lot of money.

Yeah, a lot of money.

And we'll have a lot more to come.

Yeah.

And he's going to be an expensive race.

Well, speaking of expensive races and about rolling the dice on running, let's talk about, gambling in Texas.

One a big issue that came up this week was that about a dozen House Republicans who, had replaced pro gaming Republicans, said that they would oppose any effort to expand gaming and gambling in the state.

This is a real setback to the efforts to try to legalize casino gaming, or sports betting.

These are individuals, along with a few people who had supported it in the past to kind of flip their votes enough that basically now it makes it really impossible for this to move forward.

At the same time, of course, the Senate is pursuing legislation like Nathan Johnson, senator from Dallas, is pursuing legislation that says, you know, we're going to put to voters the option to have, right, you know, this sort of, you know, sort of destination gaming.

Question one is, you know, is this going to pass or are we going to see some kind of expanded gaming question to is, you know, do you stand on 16 in blackjack?

I need to know.

How many I, I don't know how many numbers.

If you go to over 21, you lose.

Oh okay.

Yeah.

I'll say at 16, I guess.

I don't know if you're risk averse.

Yeah.

Just like I think Greg Abbott is who is signaled.

Maybe he wants to see this expanded game because the revenue might be useful.

But there are all kinds of negative externalities that come with it.

We spent a lot of time talking about this a couple weeks ago.

I'm not sure you're right.

I mean, it doesn't look like it's going in the right direction, right?

The house will be the stoppage point if it doesn't go.

Absolutely.

And, and and this is a different issue in regards, for example, with online sports betting.

Yeah.

That is staking its own different line and its own different life.

And you have you know, the Dallas Cowboys, Houston Astros, the Dallas Mavericks and also Las Vegas Sands being extremely involved in online sports betting, which is a different issue and has received support from Governor Abbott and former Governor Rick Perry.

The key question in terms of, gambling said, like, you know, the big casinos that we see, etc., that's a completely different issue.

But as you say, it's completely deadlocked and it's not going to go anywhere until there is a change of hearts and mind in that particular aspect.

But I don't think so.

No.

And just a few people.

But it's enough to basically make it sure that they're going to get it.

Now, of course, if it goes to voters, the voters decide.

That's a different question.

But the House still has to pass that version of that legislation that doesn't go to the governor.

But still, that's pretty dicey.

Yeah.

And then it'd be a real serious campaign.

I mean, yeah, the Paxton Cornyn hunt, you know, primary is, going to be a big one for sure.

It's the case.

Oh, yeah.

The constitutional story, constitutional amendments.

On.

Gambling.

Oh yeah.

Absolutely.

But the House obviously has been doing more than just kind of stopping gaming.

You've also been passing legislation to pursue legislation to protect kids, especially in schools.

One bill, prohibits social media companies from giving children access to their products.

One bill from Carolyn Faraday, who's the youngest member, and gave instant testimony about how she, like, only a few years ago, literally was trying to sneak her phone into class.

Her bill would basically ban cell phones.

Yeah, because they're distracting in public school classrooms.

Lots going on.

In addition to the fact that Greg Abbott has essentially backed what is called the Furries Act, which is a banning of animal accessories and behaviors like meowing in schools, an area prone to meowing, except for events like Halloween performances and mascots to make sure mascots are furry, which ours is, right?

Go, Cougs.

So, this is unusual.

It kind of caught people by surprise.

There's this whole debate about, like, public school funding and about vouchers.

Yes, obviously.

And now this comes into the mix kind of out of the blue or Greg Abbott is, some people say is using this as a distraction.

They bump the bill up.

So it's going to get considered more fast than it would otherwise.

What do you make of this?

I mean, I had to Google what is, a very, And what did you find it?

You know, I don't know, it was it's.

Like a role play thing.

Yes.

But the the argument is that it's distracting.

And so basically, it should be banned.

Do we have to have legislation to do this, or is this sort of overreacting?

I don't know, because, all the research that I did, a program for the, for the program was that all these theories have been debunked in the in the sense that, yeah, it's called districts allow that kind of behavior, like having, litter boxes and that kind of stuff in schools.

So, I don't know.

I mean, I'm for allowing kids to go to the classroom and learn, and I'm going to endorse right there.

The funding question is still at large.

Yeah.

Let's talk about that, because that's still a fight that the house.

Oh, yeah.

Having especially the Senate race itself.

Last up, let's talk about CD 18 crush district 18, Sylvester Turner passed away.

And the kind of floodgates have opened a little bit.

Kristen Menefee, the county attorney here in Harris County, is resigned to run he in within days, introduced, kind of a huge list of people of supporters, notable statewide and local officials.

He raised more than $200,000.

And Edwards announced Isaiah Martin is announced.

Doctor James Joseph is staffer for Senator Myles is and has been has been decided to run.

That's a lot of money for him to raise.

He certainly set the tone for it.

What's interesting to me is that he didn't want to wait.

Right.

There's a speculation that he would be a great statewide candidate.

He can raise money.

He's got the right messaging for Democrats, but that's a tough call, right?

Because it's such a Republican state, it doesn't look like the Democrats or he sees a pathway forward.

So C18 is basically kind of an option for more or less a job for life.

What do you.

Make of it?

I think I think that, politically speaking, in terms of the likelihood that he or any other Democrat can win 18 needs is pretty high.

A statewide race is kind of iffy, because Democrats have had not a very pristine record in winning statewide elections.

So I think that, politically speaking, it's it's, it's, I guess the the most secure choice that you could have if you want to advance your political career.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah.

One last thing.

There's a bill that's filed to name part of I-35 that goes to Travis County after Donald Trump.

Right.

Is this an insult?

It's done by Republican?

I think they mean it is like a compliment.

Yeah.

But if you go to I-35, particularly that stretch of 535 is terrible It's the worst!

It is!

It's the worst.

I think it's a bad choice.

Yeah.

But, you know, we'll see if they name it or not.

That stretch, in my opinion, is very bad because it's a terrible stretch.

But we will follow up with these and other important topics.

Next, I'm Jeronimo Cortina And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus.

The party keeps up next week.

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