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

Thanks for hanging out in the group chat this week and not spilling all of our secrets.

Oh, wow, a lot going on this week.

Obviously, the kind of leak heard around the world is the biggest part, but what's going on in Texas?

Two questions about vouchers.

The passing of film incentives in the Senate, which unanimously plug their budget.

And then obviously some controversy with Jasmine Crockett and Greg Abbott.

So a bunch to get to.

Let's start first with, the group chat.

Now, obviously this is something people have heard about.

We're going to talk about the implications to it, in case you haven't heard.

Basically, what happened was that the kind of private conversation between the vice president, secretary of defense, national security adviser, or other top cabinet members, with, pretty, I think, you know, kind of important, interactions on national security policy information.

Well, there was an individual added to the group chat that was supposed to be there.

It turned out the first one was a journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg, who was the, who worked for the Atlantic.

No one really knows how he got out of it, which seems to me to be even bigger of a problem.

The White House indicated that this group chat was real, even though there were some protestations from Mike Waltz that said it wasn't real.

It spurred an entire discussion about kind of national security implications, why they're using signal.

Are our secrets safe?

And then we got people like Big Bird in on the act.

There's so many memes.

Overheard in DC got in on this, which is a fun account if you don't follow it.

So lots going on.

Do you think that this has serious implications for the nation's security secrets, but also just for Trump and administration in the way people perceive it?

Yeah.

I mean, it's, Well, one of the most important things is that, Waltz knows how to use emojis.

I'm really happy emojis are back because for a while they're kind of, like, not acceptable.

Now they're back.

And that he types, very fast.

According to, Vice President Vance, that one of the, exchanges, Waltz writes something, and Vice President Pence was like, what?

Yeah.

But it has important implications, right?

Because on the one hand, there are secure ways of communicating that kind of information.

The implications for the bulging like we're going to have if, if eighteens like untargeted and then it's the, other missiles and these and that.

It's their own way and, and.

It's kind of, of, of like probably you shouldn't be using that kind of, messaging apps to do that.

Then we have the downplay of the Trump administration that if these would have happened during the Biden administration.

Yeah, it would have been a debacle, right?

That Fox News would have changed the name of their network to Democrats.

Leak like this would not have been something that they let go.

But yeah, the Trump administration is saying not a big deal because Trump himself said is a mistake.

He probably won't do it again, which is not that reassuring.

But obviously the kind of problems here are rooted in all kinds of security issues.

The signal use is a problem.

It's also for security.

Obviously, purposes, but also for like just preservation purposes.

Right.

Those apps are designed to yeah, kind of forgotten.

They disappear.

So this is information which is legally required to be kept.

There's currently no archivist of the U.S Trump fired her.

So that's a different problem in terms of keeping these records and making sure the administration is following the law.

So I'm not surprised that they circle the wagons on this saying like it wasn't a big deal.

But I am surprised that, to some degree, they haven't done a bit more of a Mea Culpa to say, like, here's how we're going to kind of fix this.

Congress is reacting, as you might expect, saying, we want to have hearings.

We want to know what happened with the Democrats.

Ha.

Yeah.

Yeah.

True.

Yeah.

And some Republicans are like John Thune said, you know, we need to investigate or rather saying something like they might investigate, right.

Which again, he's not actually he's never been in a position to sort of tell the members of his chamber what to do.

But that probably is as close as it comes to him saying, yeah, this is something you definitely ought to consider.

But my issue is in addition to this, sort of whether or not you think that this is, a scandal that's going to really affect the white House, the same day they issued this executive order that to some degree, had serious rules put into place on voting, really taking a lot of authority away from states, making sure that citizenship was a component of this, which kind of violates the way that the law currently runs, which is to say, right, you can you can register to vote in a federal elections with a particular form.

Now you have to have additions to that.

So this is sort of a moment that was really impactful for the Trump ministration, who had promised to change the way voting happened.

But now the signal sort of leak and controversy is creating a kind of cloud around it.

Is it going to be something that lingers a bit longer?

I don't know if it's going to be lingering or not, because the ones that could take action is Congress.

Democrats do not have, a lot of power in Congress, so there's not.

Going to be underselling it.

But yes.

Now they can be very loud about it, which they sort of have been.

Has that worked?

No.

Yeah.

I mean, like the way that I think President Trump is managing is just how he manages these type of crises.

Just brushing off.

And it's a one off, right.

No big deal.

We were very successful etc.

etc.. End of story.

And just waiting for the next controversy to rise out in the.

Media right now.

That's a great point.

I think to, you know, we'll talk in a minute here about Jasmine Crockett and her interaction with Governor Abbott.

Right?

She's really become a kind of vocal opponent of the Trump administration.

So I think the Democrats are looking for that moment.

This might be that moment to really take it to the administration saying, like the mistakes you've made are serious and we'll see how it all plays out, but it's not going to go away.

It'll definitely linger a little bit, but how much it affects their policymaking a sort of at this point, still unknown.

And whether Waltz keeps his job is unknown, something they could decide after.

Kind of enough of this percolates that, you know, he needs to go just to quell the issue.

And the context is going to be important, right?

Because the views about, consumer images were public and consumer spending is in the, in like bad.

In the toilet.

It's in the toilet very, very, very, very bad.

It because of the kind of swirl about news of tariffs and then not tariffs and sort of budget deficits but you know, kind of extra spending, all these sort of concerns.

But this could give, you know, the regular voter that was hoping like having the economy figure one way or the other.

Questioning is like, wait, I'm sorry, what's going on over there that you cannot even.

Right, right, right.

Have secure messaging between top officials.

So it's a complication of things that when you look at the context, when you look at the economy, when you look at the grocery prices.

Yeah, he's he's kind of yeah.

Every point of.

Perhaps creating more obstacles to the Trump.

Administration, more kind of pent up demand for.

Exactly.

President Trump promised when he was running right to sort of, you know, fix some of these international crises and the war in Ukraine.

And, you know, kind of, the fix the economy.

And.

The price of bacon is still high, right?

Like, I don't know what's going on then.

Is we're going to go on Bomb Houthis.

Yeah.

And people's like.

Yeah, well, actually that's a great point.

I think he mentioned said, right.

Secretary of defense mentioned is like, yeah, how are we going to explain this thing.

Yes.

No one knows who these people are.

That's a great point.

Why are we spending blood and treasure on this?

We should be focusing on the things that we care about.

Vice President Vance makes that very point in the book.

We know that because it was leaked.

Right.

And the kind of case he makes is to say people don't yet know kind of why we're doing this, right.

They don't understand how Europe fits into this bigger crisis about the economy.

They don't really, you know, they think the president doesn't understand kind of that they haven't sold this well enough.

They're concerned about the price of oil increasing.

These are all things that I think there's a sense that they know.

The bottom line is still what they need to focus on.

But obviously they're getting trouble.

Right?

While trashing Europe.

Yeah.

In a couple of, text messages as well.

Right.

Easy to do, right?

Yeah.

With lots of emojis.

Well, we talked just a bit about the executive order President Trump issued on voting regulations.

That's going to be obviously working its way through the courts.

Another executive order that's going to work its way through the courts is that the president has basically decided that he's going to dismantle the Department of Education.

This move has been months in the making, if not years in the making, right?

Republicans have been decrying the Department for, many decades.

And obviously the president promised to end this, and, and to kind of reallocate those funds.

The problem is, of course, that that Congress is required in order to close a federal agency.

This is a common problem that the Trump administration has run into.

But it's certainly the case that this executive order can really minimize the impact of d.o.e..

This is a big agency there.

You know, five, 6000 employees.

This is an agency that's got a budget.

It's about $218 billion.

Texas gets about $15 billion in grants and aid that go to school districts.

That goes to helping individuals who need help, especially special needs kids.

It monitors and and adjudicates issues about civil rights violations in schools.

There's a lot of things this department does, and a lot of the just for Texas.

Is this a liability for the president?

I mean, obviously, it's a campaign promise.

And Republicans have been looking to eliminate D.o.e.

for a while.

But is this a problem for Republicans?

Kind of once you start to see the implication to these cuts?

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, because first of all is how if you minimize it, the big question is, what are you going to do with that money?

Yeah.

Are you just going to return the, the, type of, revolution, devolution of power.

I love Reagan, in the 80s to the States.

Yeah.

Without, you know, a big check.

Yeah.

Going to the States so they can absorb those functions.

Yeah.

Or just going to say, hey, you got it.

But you know what?

I'm not going to give you a single dollar.

Yeah.

So that is going to have a huge implications.

You just mentioned 14, $15 billion, missing from the Texas budget.

That's a lot of money.

It's a big chunk of money.

And this is at a time when public schools in Texas are struggling.

So many of these districts are just crying, uncle, saying, like, we don't have the money.

We need to educate the students.

They're trying to trim back in all kinds of different ways.

The fight about vouchers is still ongoing, and so there's just lots of churn about what to do about it.

Let's talk about that.

Let's shift to talk about Texas politics, Texas policy.

This week, the governor and lieutenant governor and speaker, the big three had a press conference with a bunch of other members of House and Senate.

They say they have the votes.

Right.

I should hasten to say that, we know as political scientists that a lot of times that the kind of chambers will get rolled little have.

What it means is that you have a lot of people sign on to a bill to be the co-sponsor of a bill, but then ultimately they don't vote in favor of that bill.

It's this odd arrangement that happens in some legislatures, but it happens a lot in Texas.

So they look at the numbers and say, we have enough coauthors.

If they all co-sponsors or they all vote, then we're going to get it passed.

That is true.

But that doesn't always happen, right?

They're really still pushing hard to make sure it does.

And one of the ways they've tried to do that is this week they had Ted Cruz.

None other than he, of the US Senate to come and stump for vouchers.

He cut ads that put in districts for about 14 Republicans thanking them for their support, probably just making sure that they stay in line.

Right.

Yeah.

Which is a technique that, you know, presidents use to make sure they've got their kind of ducks in a row, but obviously they have to do that too at the state level on this issue.

That may not be the kind of case and story that they've got.

The votes.

Do they have the votes?

Who know?

Who knows, maybe they think they do it.

Sure.

And they might but it's kind of because the real issue that Republicans in the past, session voted against vouchers, it is still they're still there.

A lot of those.

Members ended up losing their seats, are retiring.

Well, 15 out of 21 that were targeted lost.

And that's fine, but, Not fine for them.

But some of them were quite mad.

Like Lynn Rogers whole like writing op ed saying this is going to hurt the state.

And it just sort of other, kind of grousing that he's got with, kind of leadership that's currently engaging in these policy choices.

But I think that's the real concern is that there are still this undercurrent that is worrisome for proponents of vouchers to say like that.

We don't quite have it yet, but they're really pushing hard.

Yeah.

And it could be the case that even if they don't have it now, by the time the votes kind of actually have to be called, they will.

The thing is that there's still big questions about like, how much is in the accounts, who gets covered, what the specific dollar amounts is in terms of limits on income.

If there's any accountability to the individual institutions.

Those are all kind of differences between House and Senate that are problematic, but also just, you know, kind of still lingering concerns for me.

I need to common sense.

I mean, because one way or the other that's going to be, tax dollars going to potentially private institutions to find, no, any way of monitor and how that money's been, are they going to be required, for example, that private institution are required to take the star test?

Yeah, they're going to take it or not.

Yeah.

So those are going to be important things.

And then the other thing is you open the door.

All right.

From a budgetary perspective that this thing becomes unsustainable.

Right.

And we have examples like Arizona.

Right.

And that could have potentially very important implications because in addition is not only ESAs, education savings account, but then it's going to be property tax relief.

Right.

And, and and it's like you keep adding, adding adding and that becomes problematic.

All of a sudden you've got a huge like sticker price on your car that you can't afford.

And it becomes a problem for future budgets.

I think that's right.

I also think, and no one has talked about this yet, but there's a legally actionable question here about the constitutional function of public education.

That is a right, yes, imbued in the Constitution.

Republicans and people who are pro vouchers have disparaged the quality of public education, saying that the private education is a better education.

Well, if some people are getting the private education and some people are getting the public education, isn't that inherently an unequal system that can have serious constitutional implications?

So I haven't seen that argument made yet publicly, but my guess is that if it passes is probably the way it's going to go.

So, you know, vouchers may be something that financially they can swing right now if there are questions about the future, but legally, there could be questions about the way that this is handled in the future.

So we'll see how this plays out.

Will Ted Cruz be the difference maker?

Is he the closer.

But I don't know.

A lot of Democrats looked at this and said, well, we hope that he is able to do what he did for the Astros.

Oh, for the Texans and for UT for vouchers.

Right.

By killing it, the Cruz curse.

We'll see if the Cruz curse extends to vouchers or not.

That debate is upcoming.

But let's talk about, one of the kind of more, I guess you'd say kind of, untoward issues that happened this week.

One of the spicier issues as well.

Dallas, Democratic Representative Jasmine Crockett has been kind of in the news for attacking governor, governor, Abbott for using a wheelchair.

She made this comment in, a, an event where she said that, basically we have Governor Hot Wheels down here.

This was met with strong reaction, especially from Republicans saying it's unfair and really gross for her to say it this way.

She says she wasn't talking about the wheelchair.

She was talking about the bussing.

Right.

And transportation of migrants, from Texas to other places, which has become obviously national news, puts Greg Abbott kind of in the driver's seat when it comes to questions about immigration.

So do you think that this has long term implications for how the Democrats are messaging against either Governor Abbott or Donald Trump and or on the issue of immigration?

Right.

Well, first of all, that type of comments coming from whoever are coming are like an old repugnant.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's it's it's like really.

Yeah.

You know, and goes for both sides.

Right.

This case is like no.

Hell no.

All right.

We're not gonna go there.

Right.

Theoretically speaking.

Right.

But we are there.

Yes.

Well that's a great point.

I mean, I think that people have all experienced politicians using this language against other people.

I'm happy that they're she's being called out.

I wish that everyone would always be called out on this in a bipartisan way.

Yeah.

That almost never happens.

No.

Absolutely not.

And here the question is, when you have, I mean, President Trump, he uses that every single day.

Yeah, I would back.

And so there's this like line of discussion in political science about the use of angry politics, like in the use of kind of this language to rile up the base.

So I went back to review this and did a search.

And one of the things that came up when we talked about last time was that Donald Trump called Kamala Harris, mentally disabled, right?

Again, like totally too far, right.

Inappropriate in any single way.

But the use of this language has become commonplace in American politics.

The goal is really to, you know, kind of rile up the base, right?

It helps with fundraising and helps visibility.

I think that for her, she wants to be in a position reacting to the concern Democrats have that they aren't doing enough to counter Trump to be that spokesperson.

She wants to be the face of opposition to Donald Trump.

The question here is like, what the Democrats should do about all this?

We've talked about this for the last couple of weeks, she says, kind of with her rhetoric here and with her actions.

She wants to be that person.

Is she the right person to do it?

She's been vocal against Nancy Mace.

She's been very kind of visible in committee hearings.

Now, this is the sort of latest example of this.

All eyes are on her on this issue.

And I wonder if this is going to undercut that to some degree.

I don't think so.

I mean, and I think that it's a clear indication of how divided the Democratic Party is.

Yeah.

On the one hand, you have, representative Crocker, AOC, so on and so forth, fighting and yelling and screaming and saying, well, this is the reality.

Yeah.

Either we come up with a clear messaging in terms of what we stand for, or we're going to keep, you know, things at 30,000ft of the political discourse.

Yeah.

You kind of see it every day that obviously, more, seasoned, Democrats are more moderate and, and tried to engage in a civic discourse.

But as we have said here, is that reality in American politics does not exist.

So you are competing or trying to advance your message, perhaps in two different realities, right?

Like what was the superheroes?

What was a bizarro world, right?

And then the real world.

So either you are in Bizarro world, right?

Act like what happens or not.

Is it bad for the American political system?

1,000%, yeah.

Can you escape?

Yeah, I don't know.

It's hard to now.

I mean, I blame social media, right?

Like my bony finger shaking it.

The.

Internet for ruining our world.

But that's really why it's happening.

Because when they do it, it's a basically a power grab.

It's a way to sort of get that attention that's useful for most purposes, fundraising and for building a base coalition, especially a national one.

If she wants to run for something different, like we know that there'll be a Senate seat that will be in contention.

John Cornyn, Senate seat, is up in 26.

So the Democrats will need somebody to fill that.

Perhaps she's that person.

That's one issue.

The other is that, you know, as you say, the implications of this are serious.

If this continues as it is, it really affects how people want to run for office or if they want to run for office.

You get the kind of people who make those kinds of statements running, and you don't get the kind of people who want to move away from it.

Literally today I saw an article saying, like, people are checking out of America saying, I don't want to live here anymore.

It's too contentious.

Those are the kind of implications to the right of this that really do have, I think, serious long term implications to, to the state.

And also in terms of policy production.

So if you're running either one side or the other in the complete extreme, completely 1,000%, polarized environment vilifying the other side, there is no way, right, when it comes to a reelection.

Yeah.

That you can say, oh yeah.

And me on my opponent from the other party, the are basically the incarnation of evil.

Yeah.

We work together and pass uphill.

No, they cannot do that is you're closing the doors before actually getting to the door.

Yeah.

So when you get to the door is like you open it.

No I'm not.

No you do.

Nope nope nope.

And nothing.

Gets right.

And we've called that members before for being show horses and not work horses.

Right.

Like using social media or TV as a way to get known and be kind of visible and not actually do much work.

A lot of members are sadly doing that, and it does hurt the system and the ability to get things done, which are correct.

Let's talk about a different controversy this week, which is actually kind of a past controversy.

During the impeachment of Ken Paxton.

Right.

Dan Patrick requested information from the House that dictated and documented how much money that they spent.

The audit has been done.

The House spent about $5 million.

Here you've got now Dan Patrick saying, you know, this, is sort of still, again, too much money.

It's a waste of money.

Obviously the impeachment didn't pass.

Do you think that there are any implications to the kind of finding, as it were, and whether or not there will be kind of any blowback on the House for this?

I don't think so.

I mean, I've, referenced that Phelan was, still the speaker of the House, absolutely, 100%.

Right.

But it seems now that the big three are getting along together, and I'm perhaps we'll see something different can be contentious one way or the other.

If, there are controversies, especially when they get together and iron out, the Senate budget versus the House budget through, reconciliation or through, the committees.

However, I don't think that there's going to be such implications because also a lot of people that voted to impeach AG Paxton are gone.

Yeah.

So.

Right.

They're looking from the sidelines.

Yeah.

So yeah, we spent the money.

Yeah.

That's a great point.

I think that one implication though, for Dan Patrick is that, you know, he wants to be the most conservative person in the room.

So the question is like, why relitigate this now?

Partly it's because he wants to be that person.

He wants to be in that position.

He always has been.

That's been a successful place for him to be politically.

So obviously he wants to make hay of it.

The other is that, like you say, there's going to be a lot of upcoming negotiations on the House versus the Senate.

This is another way for Dan Patrick to point his finger at the House and say, hey, you know what?

Guess what you guys did?

You did it wrong.

I'm still mad about it, holding it over their head effectively.

Now, like you say, a lot of those people are gone or no longer in power, but it's a way for him to have that leverage.

The other thing is that, like, Ken Paxton is going to probably run for Senate, and he's all but announced.

And so this will be something that really keeps the kind of grist, in that mill where he wants to be able to talk to the base and say, hey, you know what?

Look at this tragedy that happened.

All this money was spent and nothing actually came of it.

Although will, of course, mean that one thing people know about him is that he is not only number one close to Donald Trump, which could be a problem in too many state, but also right that a lot of the scandalous things that happened are going to be very much front and center.

So I think it has implications politically for all of them.

But let's talk about political implications for the very top of the ticket.

Tim Waltz is coming to Texas to Fort Bend County.

What do you make of it?

Well, I think it's, controversy because representing Mills has not had, allegedly, town hall meetings, in his district.

And they're just saying he's not coming.

We're coming because he's Walz and Beto O'Rourke and they're just going to, the county's, fairgrounds.

Yeah.

To see what the people think about it.

I think that's a smart play to say, like, look, they're not using it.

We're going to be here for you.

Absolutely.

All of the people.

Right.

Trying to reclaim that because they really do need to.

Yeah.

That's been something that Democrats really have soul searched over since the, you know, results of the 2024 election that they weren't talking to people enough, they weren't listening to people enough.

So.

Right.

This may change that.

Tim Walz is running.

He's running question mark, I guess.

Yeah.

So maybe there's no one else.

I mean, at this point, if you look at the polling kind of nationwide for top Democrats, it's like Bernie Sanders, AOC and then like, like everybody else at 1%, including Tim Walz.

So possibly he's in the mix on this.

But I also think that it's funny that they people still talk about Texas.

Right?

Walz is still coming to Texas, especially Fort Bend County.

Right.

Which is the kind of suburban trend county that Democrats want to win in.

So it's not surprising really going where they're going.

Yeah.

And when you project it to the national level, it's a very, very good test ground to test message in to states how people perceive while you're talking if they like you or not.

I think it's a good experiment.

Obviously we don't know if he's running, but that's.

What he's running, though, right?

Oh, absolutely.

Between you and me.

Oh yeah.

And that would be something that we are going to talk about definitely in the next couple of weeks.

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

The conversation keeps up next week.

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