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, Go Coogs.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus Also a political science professor here at the University of Houston, wishing I was on the basketball team because we are making a great run.

The Cougars are in the Sweet 16 they're dancing still let's hope it keeps up right And we can talk about this again next week.

But as is the nature of March, sometimes you just don't know.

The ball might not bounce her way.

So we're hopeful.

But you know, it's a Blue Devils.

No offense to all our Duke fans, but it's, you know, a cougar can eat a blue Devil like all day.

Yeah, that's like you're for breakfast.

It's meal time.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

I feel good about it.

But honestly, that is not the end of the madness, right?

Basketball.

you know, piece of the chaos that's going all around us.

And we've got a lot of things that are happening, both national and in Texas politics.

The big news of the week, obviously, is that Ken Paxton is able to make a plea deal to get his charges of nine years dropped effectively.

That's an interesting development.

I did not have that on my March Madness bracket bracket this year.

So, yeah, we'll talk all about that because it's really obviously a big factor.

But there's a lot of things happening all across the country, including in Washington, D.C.

The House Republicans have left for the Easter break enraged, right?

They have been battered and bad and all across the, you know, beltway and they have not stopped just because there's less legislating to do.

Like I mentioned, there's a lot of things that are happening.

The biggest was that Marjorie Taylor Greene, representative from Georgia, had basically waved a pink slip in front of the speaker, Mike Johnson, saying, we're going to take you out.

That's something that may not happen, but that's a kind of major effect.

Right.

I want to talk about that.

Also, there are key retirements from House members that put the GOP's potential majority in jeopardy.

And obviously, Speaker Johnson's ability to kind of hold on in jeopardy.

Too, in addition to Kay Granger leaving the position as appropriations chair.

Lots going on.

So let's first talk about what's going on in the speaker's issue.

Obviously, Mike Johnson has been in jeopardy.

Right.

This dysfunction is continuing.

Do you think there's a chance this time around he could lose his speaker position?

You never know.

Yeah.

And here we go again right?

True.

I think.

I mean, it can and basically is a fact that for certain members of the Republican conference, they simply do not like.

Right.

When Republicans have to vote with Democrats and regardless of what it is right, if they vote Republicans and Democrats to have vanilla ice cream, they're going to say, no, we want it.

Why are you Voting with Democrats?

Exactly.

It's ice cream.

They don't care.

Right.

So, I mean, it could happen.

And if that is the case, you know, we may have Mr. Speaker of the House, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, right out of the blue and, you know, but it seems to me that Mike Johnson has not been listening to the advice that former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and represent McHenry gave him a couple of months ago.

Right.

Basically, the advice was, you know, there is two things, right?

The first thing is that you need to do this job regardless unless you're willing to lose it, which might be the case.

And also, McHenry told him that, you know, you can either die as a speaker and worry about them taking you out or you can forget about those things and get things done for the good of the country and build on your leadership.

So, yeah, it's a tricky one.

It's a tricky one because, yeah, this is a GOP that's going to have potentially the smallest margin of a majority in a century, no more.

Long gone are the days of Speaker Rayburn where you've got an enduring majority that you can basically wield at your fingertips.

That's not going to happen anymore.

And the thing is that every leader in the Republican Party and eventually and in some cases the Democratic Party, you see them having a target.

There's no way to get around that because you're seen as the problem, even if you're not the problem.

Right.

There are all kinds of problems.

But that's something that many of these leaders are definitely worried about.

And as you say, the kind of proximate cause is that you've got essentially a budget that gets passed because you've got Democrats voting for more Democrats and Republicans voted for it.

That's not a great look for anybody.

But obviously it creates a problem if perception for Republicans who makes it look like they can't govern.

In addition, you've got Mike Gallagher from Wisconsin, who's retiring.

That's also a significant sort of investment in terms of the sort of discussion about China and the information that the state has about China.

He was the chair of the House China Select Committee.

Ken Buck of Colorado was retiring early.

He was also mad about effectively this sort of Ukrainian aid issue.

Historically, you try to get members to stay for as long as possible, assuming there's no scandal or any kind of health issue.

But in this case, people are just dropping early.

It's creating kind of chaos with the Republicans.

The other thing that happened this week was that House Oversight Committee, James Colmer, who is the person who is essentially responsible for the impeachment hearings on Joe Biden, has indicated that the inquiry will fizzle with no vote.

So all this kind of hullabaloo about there being an impeachment and the wrongdoing just went away and none of the witnesses corroborated the evidence, and it just didn't really point in the direction that was going to be useful for them.

So, again, where is the GOP going here and are they able to really kind of cobble together a story about why they're the better choice to lead the country?

I'm not sure what that looks like.

I don't think that they know.

Yeah.

And, you know, we can see these things, but again, you know, they don't have a solid story.

They don't have a narrative.

But the problem is that given the world of political polarization and extreme political polarization, which we live, these things at the end don't matter.

That's true.

I mean, especially for voters, right?

Especially for the rank and file of both parties, it's like, Yeah, it's I kind of water off the back.

Yeah, they're not really whatever.

But it does have real world implications.

Absolutely.

Yes.

And the last thing that happened, though, as you mentioned, was that Kay Granger, who is a representative from Fort Worth.

She was in office since 1997.

She's the first Republican woman to be elected from Texas to the U.S. House.

She's announced that she's stepping down as the powerful chair of the House Appropriations Committee.

This is bad because for a lot of reasons, Texas being in the middle of these legislative battles is good for Texas, Right.

It means sort of money back to the district, Right.

In effect, it's basically projects.

Right.

Earmarks.

Right.

These are things that tangibly are things that happen on the ground in the state.

And it also means, I think, is reflective of the fact that this is a real loss of clout here.

We've talked about this before, but basically, if only a third of the delegation has turned over in the past ten years, that's a lot.

And now with Kay Granger going, she's already announced she is retiring.

But with her going out of appropriations, it means that there's just this huge gap here.

Now, Texas only has, what, three different people who are members who are committee heads.

Right.

Mike McCaul chairs, Foreign Affairs.

Roger Williams, chair of Small Business.

And Jodi Arrington chairs the Budget committee, which is pretty important and impressive.

But that's a pretty small number compared to the number of Republicans that Texas sends.

So, again, Texas kind of losing clout here with respect to this kind of falling away of members thinking that they don't want to stay in Washington anymore.

Right.

And again, this is, you know, part of the problem is that you know, some of these members that are retiring early is, first of all, frustration in terms of the political process, even though they have, you know, slim, but they have the majority.

And then on the other hand, is they're tired of these hard right conservatives, Right.

Attacking them on you know, basically, you know, a very solid conservative position and.

Just not much done.

Exactly.

It's like, what else do you want me to do?

And like, can Democrats take advantage?

But so far, they really haven't There hasn't been really movement in that except just to sort of be content to let the other team implode, which is, you know, for a march Madness kind of strategy, maybe not a bad one, but that's not exactly also a reason to kind of encourage people to vote for you.

And I think voters really want something to vote for, at least most voters who are kind of really interested in sort of seeing things move.

So we'll see how that plays out legislatively.

I'm not sure people are paying as much attention to that as they're paying attention to the presidential race.

And we have news there, too, this week.

Some important outcomes for Donald Trump.

Actually, he made a pretty good chunk of money on the sale of social truth.

He might make some money on what is being labeled as I'm going to just quote this, that a Trump endorsed Bible and he says in his video, Make America Pray Again.

The Bible, which is $60, can be purchased and is officially endorsed by the former president.

So he actually might make a little money on this, right?

Trump endorsed products definitely have a a like a welcome a kind of you know home for some people so that might be good because he's going to have to pay a significant bond.

It got reduced, though, right.

So one of the outcomes of the business fraud case that was reported this week was that appellate judges effectively gave the Trump team about ten days of breathing room and allowed them to reduce the amount of bond needed to about $175 Million, which, according to him, is easy to find.

So yeah, I guess that's, you know, unlike maybe, me, you could pick him up.

Yeah.

You come with 100 million, maybe not 175 million.

But yeah, Disney World currency, probably.

Yeah, that monopoly money wise.

Yeah, but he can come up with the actual money, which he's going to have to do.

Yeah.

So that's pretty good news for him.

The other sort of bad news for him is that in a different case in the hush Money case, it's going to go to trial.

April 15th has been the deadline that's been set.

This is the case where he falsified business records to cover up hush money payments to hide his affair with a porn star.

This is the first time we're seeing a former president go to trial.

This will probably also be the only trial that starts and finishes by the election again.

Do you think this is going to be impactful?

We keep kind of talking about the ebb and flow of this because it's news, but again, I think for a lot of people, it tends to be the case that it kind of just passes by.

Right.

It's one more sort of headline about Donald Trump and the legal problems.

Is this going to have a continuous more kind of collective effect as things go on and we get closer to November?

No.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I sort of tend to agree and we've talked about this polling before, but there's still significant support from Republicans, right?

Yeah, Like the Economist YouGov poll a couple of weeks ago found that 79% Republicans have a favorable opinion of Donald Trump.

That's pretty interesting.

But now there are some indications that perhaps people who are in swing states are less likely to vote for him if there's a conviction.

So 53% of voters in swing district said they would refuse to vote for Trump if he was convicted of a crime.

A slightly higher say 55% say they would reach that same conclusion if he were sentenced to prison.

So, you know, we're not like looking at that exactly right now.

But the prospect of there being significant legal problems here doesn't seem to have the same effect.

And, you know, he's been pretty Teflon, right This like his friend Ken Paxton.

But for sure, it's the case that this has some small effect on people now.

Well, no, we actually will vote.

We don't know how people say this in a poll is one thing.

When you get to the ballot box and you've got to choose who's going to be president for next four years, that's a different story.

Yeah, absolutely.

And, you know, it's that's one possibility.

The possibilities are people simply do not go out and vote.

Yeah.

And have a low turnout election that could complicate things, especially with a third party candidate that is well-funded.

And I think for a lot of voters, they think that they're just being bamboozled all the time, right?

It's like both parties are trying to pull the wool over their eyes.

Third parties like RFK, Right.

Whose picked a vice president this week.

I'm not sure it'll matter that much because most of the time a VP is not that important.

Right.

And he didn't pick anybody who was, like, terribly kind of known.

Right.

But I do think voters are kind of worried about all this.

So, yeah, we might be looking at one of the lowest voter turnout of a presidential election in decades.

So that would be stunning to see.

Yeah, but obviously the big news of the week is about Ken Paxton.

And this is our bailiwick.

It's about Texas politics.

It's about scandal.

It's about GOP and Democrats fighting.

Right.

That's what we do here on Party Politics.

And that's what your listening to.

I'm Brandon.

This is Jeronimo.

Let's talk about Ken Paxton Platinum.

Paxton is going to be how I'm going to label this hopefully that catches on.

We'll see.

All right.

Hashtag, hashtag platinum.

Paxton, because he is impenetrable, it seems this week, if you haven't heard the news, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has reached a deal to end the securities fraud charges.

After nine years, the attorney general is going to have to pay restitution in the order of about $300,000 complete about 100 hours of community service in Collin County and take 15 hours of legal education classes, which is like defensive driving for lawyers.

Big picture.

What do you think this means?

Well, I mean, certainly it's a victory for him.

I mean, it's a huge, huge victory, especially after the failed impeachment trial.

Now, this, it's a huge victory.

you know, part of the the the deal or the I think the logic behind settling this case was that the lawyers in Attorney General Paxton did not want to be on the stand.

Yes.

Because once you're on the stand, then you can open up to.

All kinds of questions.

All kinds of questions, and then you're under oath.

Yeah.

So I think that this indicates that, you know, we're going to do everything possible to avoid him to be on the stand.

And they did.

And they did.

And I mean, it's a huge victory.

Like, yeah, it's you know, they avoided yeah, I mean, they were looking at the precipice and and just like a cliffhanger with one nail and suddenly someone throws a rope and, you know, pulls you over.

Right.

But that was it.

I, I think that you could spin this if you're a Democrat to say that, you know, once again, Ken Paxton kind of wriggled out of these charges.

There's some truth to that.

But a lot of this was sort of hype because there was an expectation that there be kind of a conviction.

The fact that these are like serious charges definitely was worrisome for them.

And he hired the best attorneys and they said, yes, job they could.

They delayed.

They, you know, pushed it off.

Yeah.

They're able to get the venue changed.

They were able to kind of, you know, debate about how much money the special prosecutor should get paid.

So, you know, eventually one special prosecutor dropped off.

So just the churn of it definitely played to Ken Paxton's favor.

And it's hard to blame somebody for using every element and every kind of, you know, avenue.

You have to defend yourself legally.

But I think a lot of Democrats look at this and say, you know, this is Paxton getting off again.

But the fact is that a lot of the evidence didn't line up.

Right, Like one of the witnesses who they thought was going to be the person who was going to basically sort of do the most damage suggested and at a deposition years ago that they were the reason that the attorney general then, before he was attorney general, didn't register.

So the evidence really line up in a way that made it an obvious conviction here.

It looked like it was, but then you sort of really dig into it and it wasn't.

So the special prosecutors here at least have some responsibility for saying that maybe they overexerting themselves on this.

Absolutely.

But you have to think that, again, like you say, this is a huge win for Ken Paxton.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, he survived a heated primary and 2022 he was acquitted by the Senate of those charges.

So to me, the biggest impact won't necessarily be on Ken Paxton, who already has a pretty fixed sense of kind of where he is politically, but on everybody kind of around that impeachment orbit, especially like the Dade Phelan, the one of the first things that happened after the news came was that Dan Patrick sent out messages saying that Dade Phelan is to blame for this impeachment.

Right.

This is a sham.

He's being harassed that is going to, I think, have a blowback effect on Dade Phelan, for sure, but also the other people who are Republicans who were voted in favor of impeachment and our in runoffs.

So this is going to have ramifications beyond just Ken Paxton.

But certainly it's the case that that might matter.

Paxton is still not out of legal jeopardy.

Right.

There's still an investigation about him firing some of the whistle blowers.

There's still an investigation into his relationship with Nate Paul, the Austin real estate mogul.

These are fairly investigated.

Very also serious.

But again, only an investigation.

There's a bar complaint against him so he could potentially lose his law license.

I doubt that it's hard to get disbarred in Texas.

Do you think that the rest of this is going to be as impactful as what we've already seen so far?

He survived impeachment.

He survived federal securities charges or any of these other things going to happen politically that's going to hurt him?

I don't know.

I mean, and the fact of the matter is, first of all, how much money he has in order to defend himself, because these things are very expensive.

And he cannot pay the restitution out of campaign money.

It's got to be personal money.

But the defense legally can be out of his money.

So, you know, that's one issue there.

The issue is, you know, he has been saying that he wants to challenge Senator Cornyn.

Yes, which.. yeah.

I mean, it's another complication, very complicated.

But yeah, he might he might not.

But look, no.

He's shown to be very effective at moving the base.

Right.

And this week he is doing many more things that sort of promote that.

Right.

So this was news from last week, but updated to this week.

Many lawsuits filed by Ken Paxton's office against online pornography companies have essentially shut down by the function in the state over the state's law that has an age verification requirement.

So last week, Pornhub shut down, right?

And then he's suing other companies to effectively do the same thing.

This is a base priming effect.

They're also looking at Banning TikTok, which is part of this.

They've banned abortion.

They've limited gambling and medical marijuana as well as recreational marijuana.

There's a sense here that the base really does kind of lead the way here.

And Ken Paxton is able to effectively communicate to them.

So challenging, John Cornyn seems like a really prime opportunity.

yeah.

If he can kind of crate ride this crest, it could happen.

It could be a real battle in the primary.

Yeah, but you never know what happens in a court of law and especially under these, you know, relationship with Nate Paul and the FBI investigation, things can get, you know.

Yes.

Very much complicated.

And again, the securities fraud, it's you know, could have gone very bad.

But most of these securities fraud cases end up in settlements, right?

Yeah, It's very rarely when you see something like that.

I mean, unless you're Bernie Madoff or, you know, the Bitcoin dude, But you're talking about billions of dollars, right?

I mean, those are end up in jail time.

This one is, you know, like Kim Kardashian that sold something without disclosure.

Yeah.

You know.

Like it's like a Martha Stewart, right?

It was like kind of, you know, she did jail time, which is no right.

It wasn't nice jail.

It was a nice jail.

I think it was like open.

And, you know, you have.

You can guard in most of the day arts and crafts or.

Crafts and cooking and that.

Kind of well, I never want to find out.

But you to take their word for it.

But you're right.

I mean, I think voters are smart enough to look at this and say, look, these charges aren't that impactful.

But of course, just the notion of having the attorney general in legal jeopardy and having to go to remedial law school is definitely a part of that problem.

I do think that there is sort of an effect there.

Now, whether it's an effect that's going to last into the next election and or be effective in a primary, I don't really know, because that's how John Cornyn is going to come out him to say, like, first of all, you know, you're too extreme.

Second of all, you're not doing your job well.

Third of all, you know, you've got these ethical problems that we can avoid if we can.

So there is a kind of a credibility effect there that's problematic for him, but hard to know.

It's a long time in the future.

Right.

And so this March Madness, we just play it one game at a time.

Exactly what.

You see.

Yeah.

So obviously, at least for this week, he's able to survive and advance, Right?

That's what March Madness is all about.

Well, speaking of surviving, we know Dade Phelan, the speaker of the Texas House is in a serious fight for his political life.

And it just kind of keeps getting worse for him.

This week, State Representative Tom Oliverson here from Houston announced that he is effectively mounting a pretty surprising challenge to Dade Phelan's speakership.

He's called the Republican House dysfunctional.

He called Dade Phelan out for his vote on the impeachment hearings.

He's basically said that, you know, he's not going to have any Democratic committee chairs.

We've talked about this a lot previous.

This is pretty common and has been for a long time.

But Republicans have been up in arms about it.

So I think those days are likely numbers.

He's also talked about trying to get to work right away in the session.

That's not legally allowable considering the rules that the state's constitution puts into place.

But perhaps they can get around it in some various ways.

He also suggests that we should elect a Republican from the Republican caucus and then that's, you know, effective with the speaker instead of having a full vote of everybody.

That's not uncommon.

That's also what the U.S. House does.

The interesting thing here is that Oliverson shares a consultant's with Dan Patrick.

So the kind of scuttlebutt among a lot of people watching this say that this is Dan Patrick trying to impose his will on the other side of the rotunda.

Now, he's tried this for a long time.

He's tried to do it politically against.

Right.

Dade Phelan and now he kind of institutionally sort of try to get a new speaker elected.

What do you think of the kind of full effect here and whether or not it's going to be a successful challenge?

yeah.

Well, I mean, I think it is it's going to end up in terms of the House, you know, deciding if they want to be, you know, a subunit of the Texas Senate.

Yeah, basically.

Right.

Yeah.

And do they want to be like D.C.?

Because that's really what they're right up to here, right.

Switching speakers, is there always in jeopardy, pushing conservative legislation that, you know, gets challenged in court.

Especially when you have a session?

These past session were the conservative agenda was pushed miles and miles away.

And, you know, whether we agree or disagree, that's not the point.

The House worked.

They got a lot of conservative legislation passed and Phelan has been bragging about that on the campaign trail.

I mean, and it was done.

It was done pass voted and sign something that we do not see in Washington.

So I guess if you bring that kind of maneuvering here, I mean, it's just going to be a disaster on the one hand.

And then on the other hand is what you do to me today.

I will vote for you tomorrow.

Right?

Right.

I think Democrats are just like waiting with.

Yeah.

And they've run with one every single little thing that happens.

You know, they're having a tally and eventually this is going to shift, right?

One way or the other.

You're asking me or telling me?

I'm telling you you're asking me.

I think I'm not sure.

But I do think you're right that.

I even say it's going to be in my sense, like one of these days.

Right?

We're living on Mars, right?

The Texas house is like, yeah, finally run by Democrats, maybe.

But I'm skeptical, right?

Because it's just the way things are gerrymandered.

But you're right.

Eventually there's going to be some movement in that direction.

And I do think that that, you know, what goes around comes around for sure.

It's going to happen in, yeah, U.S. House in Texas.

We'll see.

But for sure this week, there's an interesting kind of development.

The last thing for the week is a question for the Texas Medical Board.

We don't talk about regulatory issues because it's boring, but really important.

This week, the Texas Medical Board issued proposal guidelines that defined medical emergency exemptions for abortion.

This is something that advocates had hoped would kind of clarify when and how you can.

Doctors can deliver an abortion, but didn't go as far as they would have liked.

The guidance does clarify that the abortion is allowed in cases of an topic pregnancy But they did say that the draft rule didn't necessarily shield doctors from performing abortions.

That's a criminal issue.

That's separate, they said.

So not a lot of guidance from it.

Just a little bit.

Now, Texans can weigh in on this.

Actually, the Texas Register, which I have my students do, they will recognize this assignment and that's that.

You can see what the pros are from these, you know, agencies and you can comment on them.

So if you don't like it or you like it, you can comment, what do you think about the political implications to abortion decisions and discussions right now?

Well, I mean, he's going to play a very important role in 2024.

And, you know, Republicans, there are, in at least competitive districts are going to be targeted by these.

Interesting.

Yes, for sure.

That's the case nationally as the Supreme Court hears cases involving this abortion drug that may be banned, the FDA's power may be limited.

The chief justice and some of the other associate justice were skeptical that that we should limit the FDA in this way.

But abortion being on the ballot effectively, whether it's literally or not, is something that helps Democrats in Texas and elsewhere.

Well, absolutely.

And the implications for the role that agencies play in regulating the spirit of the law that comes from Congress, it has huge implications.

And we saw once again bedfellows going into you have Justice Neil Gorsuch and then siding some sort of with the.

Yeah, with the more liberal side of the Supreme Court.

They only.

Need two to jump over to.

Support exactly.

Liberals on this.

And that's the ball game.

That's a ball game.

And in that note that's it for this week I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

And I'm Brandon Roddinghaus.

Go Coogs.