Welcome to Party Politics.

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

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

Thanks for hanging out with us and talking politics.

And it's an exciting year and I think it's going to be another exciting year.

You can tell some changes here if you're watching this.

And that means that you're actually seeing this in our faces where we're now going to be doing this for digital media and we're also going to be doing it on TV.

So lots of big changes, right.

But same old format more or less, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

And the format is the same.

Right.

We want to consolidate a lot of political information that we have over the week and present to you.

Right.

So you can have informed conversations with your friends, with your family, with that uncle that you don't like so much.

That's, you know, the purpose of the of the podcast.

And now we're going to be on TV on digital as well.

So we're very excited.

I like that these New.

Years it's.

Good, right?

Yeah.

Bring facts, not opinions.

Right.

Exciting both.

But we're going to bring at least the facts and talk about all the things that are happening.

And that's the point of the show.

And so obviously, even though we're literally, you know, hours into the new year, there's still a lot going on.

One big thing going to happen this week was that the Supreme Court basically has agreed to hear arguments on Title 42.

Title 42 sounds like a bad like alien film, but it's actually pretty important as a COVID era policy, basically, that is effectively used to turn away millions of migrants, the U.S. border with Mexico.

This is put in place by the Trump administration.

The Biden administration has sought to repeal the policy, but Republican attorney general, including Ken Paxton of Texas, basically used the courts to try to block it.

So now the court, high court is going to hear whether or not this is something that they're going to intervene to try to stop.

So obviously, there's lots of implications to this.

We've talked a lot about the border and sort of security implications.

Well, as a political implications.

So walk us through kind of what this means in terms of the big picture.

Well, this is the second time that Title 42 has been used, right?

The first time it was used in 1929.

Wow.

Just yeah.

The year you were born.

Right, exactly.

To enter in or to prohibit the entering migrants to control a meningitis outbreak.

Yes.

Title 42 has, you know, pros and cons right one of the pros in terms of standard operation procedures is that border agents do not necessarily need to go through any proceedings.

Right.

Someone enters the country without inspection and that person is sent back immediately without anything.

Right.

One of the cons is that migrants cannot be processed.

For example, if they are requesting asylum or anything like that.

Yeah.

So that's, you know, against, I guess some sort of our, you know, legal standards in terms of people requesting asylum.

And the other problem that it creates is that there is a lot of people entering back and forth, right.

And that recidivism creates more people trying to enter over and over and over.

Yeah.

And the rate has increased.

For example, in 2019 it was around 7% of migrants trying to cross again and now it has gone up to 26% now.

And the problem is that without Title 42, people can be prosecuted, right?

If you're into the second time you get apprehended, then that has, you know, legal implications and you can go to jail.

But now there's nothing happens.

Okay.

So you see that revolving door and that's a problem.

Yeah.

Is there are there political implications to this for the Biden administration?

I mean, they fought this along with other immigration advocates who've said that this is sort of unfair and sort of outdated as a policy like this should be a country that welcomes immigrants.

Obviously, politically, it creates this tension and certainly Republicans are against it.

So one question I think is about the Biden administration's ability to be able to handle this and to be able to kind of navigate this in the context of the attempt to try to have some kind of reform of immigration laws.

Right.

And so you're fighting multiple battles at once.

And the Biden administration has been pretty good at this.

Right.

We've talked about this last year and some of the things that they were successful at.

But how you take the temperature down on immigration to be able to get the reform needed is going to be, I think, the real kind of challenge for Joe Biden in the new year because they were close to immigration reform like Senator Sinema was very close to, you know, partnering with some Republicans to try to move that needle.

So that's going to be, I think, a real challenge for them, in addition to the fact that obviously you kind of, you know, it's a kind of crapshoot when you go to the courts, right?

I mean, Biden has not been that successful and so he'd be a problem for them.

And the issue here and I think you're absolutely right, they issue is that our immigration system, our immigration policy does not work.

Yeah.

Full stop period.

End of show.

So that's a problem.

I mean, that's a real problem.

And, you know, without or if Title 42 goes out tomorrow.

Yeah then the Biden administration is going to a huge problem in their hands.

Obviously, politically is not going to be good for the Democrats.

Yeah.

Republicans are going to capitalize on that.

Yeah.

But I guess the strategy, as you said, is we need to fix this thing one time now.

You know, the question is if you fix it, you know, as I say, a comprehensive immigration reform, yet I don't think it will have a chance.

Yeah, right.

I mean, there is more chances that I would run a marathon under 10 hours.

Right.

I have faith.

In you, though.

I have faith in you.

Then having a comprehensive immigration reform act that, you know, they have to go piece by piece in order to get a coalition of both Democrats and Republicans voting for that.

Yeah, like immigration reform is like if you had like open heart surgery, whereas Title 42 is like if you took a bayer aspirin.

Exactly.

Like that's like it's unpractical, right?

And so it's temporary.

So we'll see what the courts do.

But obviously the political implications to this, both in terms of the Biden administration, as well as for Ken Paxton, who, you know, continues to kind of press that federal issue against the Biden camp.

I think will be telling in terms of how things go for the next four years.

But before we leave the U.S. contacts and talk more about Texas and the legislative session that's upcoming, there are some chaos brewing in Washington, D.C.

I'm not sure the breaking news on this.

Right.

Very, very new.

Yeah, there's a speaker's race afoot.

Kevin McCarthy, who is the presumed kind of Republican speaker, a ran into some trouble.

And we've reported this a couple of different ways for a few months because it was obvious that he wasn't going to quite get there.

So we have a new year, but do we have a new speaker, a question mark?

This is a struggle for the Republican Party.

So what's your take on kind of what's happening there in D.C.?

Well, I mean, it's very complicated for McCarthy, right?

Because the first thing is that Republicans have a very, very small, you know, advantage or is a majority of very small 300.

And 22 total seats.

Yeah, exactly.

Which complicates things dramatically for McCarthy by McCarthy has been pressured by these, you know, ultra conservative five members of the Freedom Caucus.

You have Matt Gaetz, you have Marjorie Taylor GREENE, an associates, etc., etc., etc.. And frankly, they have played the cards in such a smart way.

Right.

That have pulled McCarthy against the wall.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

And McCarthy at the beginning did not want to concede on some of the demands.

And one of the most important demands is that these members or any other member or a small coalition of members, a.k.a.

these five members, would, could have or would be allowed to have a snap vote at any time to oust the speaker.

Yeah, it's like handing the keys right to the barbarians, right?

They can come and go as they please call your doctor.

Exactly.

And then leave and then come back and leave him back.

So it's you know, it's something that he just conceded.

Right.

I think that, you know, it's something very weird.

And the other thing that I want to know your opinion is that what about the new members?

Right.

New members are sworn in this week.

Yeah.

And some of them have already said like member breaking into running for speaker potentially Speaker McCarthy.

And some of them are smart about it.

We'll talk about Gerorge Santos in a minute.

He of many faces.

But that's interesting because he sadled up to McCarthy because that's smart because McCarthy needs votes.

Right.

Like you say, he can only afford to lose four total votes.

It's going to be tight and obviously this will happen after the time we've recorded this.

But there are big implications to this, right?

I mean, the Republican Party's basically playing a game of chicken with itself.

And that's not ever good for a party to try to get together and govern itself.

The motion to vacate, that's going to be the watchword of the week.

Motion to vacate the chair is what you're talking about.

That's where enough members can vote basically to say, We'd like to remove the speaker.

Remember when Speaker Banner was speaker, there was an introduction of that motion and that was enough to have him retire that prompted his retirement.

The fact that this could actually happen, you could remove a speaker like of your own party when you've got a very slim majority is like unheard of.

Almost.

Right.

So we're probably going to have a big fight on.

This is the first time you've had multiple ballots in a century.

And I think for the Republican Party, the problem is that it suggests how difficult it is to govern in this kind of polarized environment oh, yeah, not just with the other party, but also within their own party.

And the other is that it's really going to weaken the power of the speaker.

I mean, I think no matter what specific rules they put into place here, some of them are just too much into the weeds for us to really get into.

But the fact is it's definitely going to create a kind of vacuum of power for the speaker, and it's going to move this to the committees and to the individual members.

So the House will function more like the Senate.

And you've got a lot of this kind of, I think, power structure shifted to the committees that you had, say, in the 1970s.

So this is a really a different kind of world that they're fighting.

I mean, the problem with the house is its size.

Yes.

Yes.

And that's the whole this is the political science word of the week.

And that's a problem with collective action.

Right.

That's why the House has so many rules and the speaker is so.

Powerful and it's very top down.

Right?

Exactly.

Because you have 435 different minds and different political careers that can derail every single little thing.

Yeah, simple stuff, right?

Like debt ceiling, like passing a budget.

Right.

Basic functions.

So, I mean, I want to I don't want to oversell this because all that.

toilet paper like, you know.

Restocking.

Yeah, yeah.

Everything get it.

They don't they can't vote on the Charmin versus the cheap stuff.

Like always go with the good stuff.

Exactly.

But if you can't get together on this, it's going to be impossible to find some kind of consensus on big picture issues that they have to do, like financially have to do so.

Oh yeah, we'll definitely see this in the implications of this as we go through regardless of kind of what happens.

But some members are having a worse time than others.

And if you could imagine, it is actually people who had a worse week than Kevin McCarthy.

One of them is George Santos.

Some of you may have seen this because it's been such an wild story, but this is a member elect from New York.

He basically has been accused of inventing the entirety of his per personality, his biography, his Jewish ancestry, his investment banking career, property ownership, charitable contributions, even his own sexuality.

So this is a strange story, right?

He says that he's basically guilty of embellishing his resumé.

Opponents say you basically invented yourself nothing and it's hard to believe anything.

And so you should resign.

What do you take away from the implications to this, not just for like the kind of current Congress, but also generally speaking, like where we are as a country, where politically this can basically happen and people more or less get away with it.

I mean, it's generally speaking, I think that it is very, very dangerous, right, that an elected member of Congress has been exposed of all his lies.

Yeah, right.

And has been.

Oh, in addition, he has a criminal case ongoing in Brazil that just started once again because, you know, the prosecutors over, they couldn't find him.

But now that he was on the news, the oh, there you are.

We're restarting this things, right?

Yeah.

So I think that, you know, politically speaking and from the general conception, it's a very bad step.

Right.

You know, Republican leadership should have considered them like, no, this is not going to happen.

Like you're not going to be swearing.

I don't care what happens.

But you're out because you cannot lie to the voters that way.

And we're entering into a phase right where?

Why not?

Yeah, like you can do it.

It's okay.

Yeah.

No, it is not fine, period.

It is not fine.

It's a good question.

After somebody asked me this, that was like our politicians getting worse at lying.

And I think the answer is no.

I think that we're getting worse at caring about the law.

Exactly.

And we've talked about this before wherein, you know, scandals don't seem to hit like they used to.

And so, you know, politicians can survive these in ways that you couldn't years ago.

So that's important.

I think that though, like the scholarship on this does suggest that there are some implications to him.

And we know that, for instance, that those members who have an investigation that sent to the House Ethics Commission generally have a reduced margin of victory by about 14%.

So we know the type of scandal matters that.

So corruption scandals lead to about an 8% reduction in vote share, as well as sex and financial scandals lead to about a 5% reduction.

He won by like a fairly healthy margin, right at 5446 in a pre red district.

So, you know, he's safe ish, but no politician who's face these things is safe.

Obviously, there's going to be a lot of that.

But I think that the implications that we typically think of in terms of how scandals function are thrown out the window.

Right.

We're in a new political partizan world.

No one cares.

And no one seems to care yet.

And it's not clear that the Republicans are going to push back because like we said earlier, you had Kevin McCarthy, who needs every vote he can.

Exactly.

And he can become the people, too voter, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's why this matters.

And that's going to be interesting for like, you know, governing implications down the road line.

But let's talk about Texas because obviously there's been a lot of things happening over the break.

In addition to making resolutions that I've already broken, there are a couple of big things that happened and investigations that are going to be upcoming.

One is that the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, has asked the attorney general and the head of the of the Texas Royal Commission to investigate Atmos Energy, which was an energy company that as a natural gas provider, they basically failed to provide service to about 2 million customers.

And the governor was not happy about it for obvious reasons.

The other is that the Southwest Airlines Dallas own got caught up into some serious problems trying to push, turn around and get people to and from happily, you know, without you know, we managed to avoid all of this by happily.

I know you fly southwest on occasion, but now it's going to be a federal investigation on exactly what happened and what that meant.

So what do you take from these two kind of things that are swirling around the break?

Is this going to affect how people perceive government?

I mean, this isn't directly a government issue, but obviously government regulates this.

And so is this another example of how people are going to sort of see these changes and like or see these problems and not see any changes as a result of these kinds of, you know, investigations?

Well, I think, you know, the in most animals energy investigation, a potential investigation.

I think it's important because you have to hold, you know, certain companies, especially when you're talking about public utilities.

This is a public utility and public utilities should be, you know, governed well, obviously, they're governed by law.

But also, you know, the government should step in when you know, that regulation doesn't doesn't doesn't work.

And the fact that, you know, a lot of people in the Dallas area lost gas pressure or this or that.

I mean, that's important.

Right.

But then again, brings us to the core of the problem.

The core of the problem is our energy, you know, infrastructure.

Is it up to par or not?

And, you know, regulators, state legislators, the governor, etc., need to pay attention to the core of the problem and try to fix it.

And on the Southwest, I mean, it's it was a bizarre story.

71% of Southwest flights were canceled.

Right.

That's that is a that's a lot that's a lot of flights and a lot of of of customers that were extremely.

Yeah, even more mad than usual, right.

When you're flying giving them rides.

And it's not like the movie was Planes, Trains and automobiles.

Yeah, that was a great one.

But I mean, people were going to be, you know, very mad.

And the fact of the of the problem is that, you know, Southwest did not know right where the pilots were.

She's way the flight attendants and the crew were.

Yeah.

Because they were using them 1990s you know scheduling system.

Right.

Probably like pen and paper or something like that.

It's like it's like a little push below push car.

Exactly.

And that created a whole problem.

And I think that, you know, now that the secretary of Transportation and all the other regulators are going to look into it is like, hey, we are now in the 21st century.

You need to have that technology.

You need to I mean, there's I'm not for everything.

Right, right, right.

Yeah.

Like have an app for these that make.

It work, right?

Yeah.

No amount of free peanuts is going to make us better.

But yeah, it seems like they've kind of tried to.

I don't know.

I can't do it, but I can be persuaded.

A peanut and a Diet Coke in your ears that you're always forgiven.

Yeah, not pretzels.

The little pretzels.

No, that's not good.

I don't like them.

You like the peanut?

That's.

That's cool.

I appreciate that.

I think, too.

I mean, on particular, the Southwest Airlines thing was so strange, obviously, to get to the bottom of some of that.

But I think that the energy regulation issue is the most interesting to me because Greg Abbott has definitely got to keep his finger on the pulse of the public when it comes to how the energy infrastructure and the grid holds up and he's got to be able to, I think, kind of shift blame around, right, because people are going to look at him and say, oh, you know, when the power goes off it's Greg Abbott's fault and he's going to own that issue.

He needs to make sure that, you know, all these companies are in line and the grid is going to hold.

So basically that's what he is doing here.

I mean, anything you can do to change it, you know, now.

But certainly the investigation is going to give him some leverage to say, like, you know, we're doing everything we can, kind of full court press style.

So that's certainly going to be of interest.

But obviously he is going to have his hands full with the legislative session, which is upcoming for those people who are new to Texas.

Texas has a biennial legislature, so we meet once every two years for 140 days.

Some people say that they should meet once every hundred and 40 years for two days.

But this is definitely something we're going to live with.

The legislature is always cause for a bunch of fun.

There's a lot of things happening in terms of the dynamics.

What are some kind of highlights that you expect to see in terms of like just the just the political kind of dynamics of of the next session?

Well, obviously, there are a lot of very important issues.

And this is a sharp public public policy issue.

Yes.

We're not talking about different type of issues.

Right.

These are the issues that, you know, legislators and the government should focus.

And some of those issues obviously are the power grid.

Right.

We have seen some tension between Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and Governor Abbott in terms of, you know, do we need to spend more time on these or is it fix or not?

But I think that, as you said, Governor Abbott is like stepping on and said life are like you have to the you know and if you're not going to deliver as a company right yeah.

You're going to have some consequence and that's going to be very important.

Obviously, we're going to have, as usual, border security, law enforcement issues and education and obviously election integrity and how to divide.

Right.

27 billion tax surplus that the comptroller, Hager, is going to talk about a couple of days from now.

I'll I'll take half and I'll invest it wisely.

I promise to do a good job.

I don't need to have one percent.

Yeah.

I will be more than happy.

Right?

Right.

But there's obviously some complications in how much money they can spend, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

There are limits legally to how much money they can spend.

And actually, they still have to kind of maneuver around some of those laws and take some tough votes potentially to kind of break the cap, to be able to spend it all.

But I feel like it's a it's a better session.

I mean, sessions that that the states flush economically are always much calmer and much happier.

It's I think that that's going to be the kind of hallmark of the session.

I don't think it'll be the case that they're going to get along by any means, because obviously Partizanship has reached this kind of epic point.

But I do think the Texans are going to probably need some toothpicks to pick all of the red meat out of their teeth because it's going to be a red meat session, at least in part.

But I think a lot of that is going to be governed by the dynamic between the leaders.

Right.

So a couple of different things are worth noting.

First is that since the 84th legislature, which is the first legislature that Greg Abbott was governed over, you've got 125 new members of the House and 25 new members of the Senate.

That's almost an entire legislature full of new members who are within, you know, more five years and a couple of sessions, old.

So there's a lot of authorities when people ask me like why the governor's got this much power.

I mean, there are all these reasons why, but one of them is that he basically is able to reshape the Republican Party in a way that he likes.

So you've got obviously that dynamic in play.

The other is that you're going to have, I think, a House versus Senate dynamic, right?

You've got Speaker Phelan, who is I think was kind of gaining the respect of the members.

I mean, he's a new speaker, relatively speaking, but I think he's spent a lot of money to try to get people elected.

And so I think he's in good shape there in terms of getting the respect of the members.

Dan Patrick on the other wing of the Capitol, though, is obviously runs the Senate like with an iron fist.

And he is the most powerful lieutenant governor we've had.

And there's going to be a lot of, I think, head butting here when it comes to that.

So we'll see how far they want to go.

Right.

Like, definitely Dan Patrick has priorities that the House doesn't have, including school vouchers.

I want to ask you about this.

Right.

This is a big factor because so much of what the kind of Republican Party's been fighting about internally has been about how to fund public schools.

So basically, vouchers are a way that, you know, you can use some of the public money to apply to private schools.

So basically and some are saying that like your money follows the kid, right?

So you've got a kid, they're going to give you X dollars if you want to.

You can apply that money to like a savings account or to, you know, go to private school tuition room.

Republicans say it's a nonstarter.

Our public schools are critical.

And in any case, there aren't enough of these public private schools to go to.

Dan Patrick And advocates are saying that, you know, it's more fair system and you know, it allows for there to be solutions to failing schools.

What do you think?

Well, I mean, it's a very complicated issue for Republicans, right?

Because as a as the state has changed demographically.

Right.

In the big Texas Triangle, the Dallas Fort Worth area, Austin, San Antonio and Houston Metro, those areas have become, you know, a bastion for Democrats.

On the other hand, Republicans, right.

Are getting most of their support in these rural areas.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

And population growth in those rural areas is not as high as the one that we're seeing, especially in these big urban cores.

Yeah.

So rural areas, as you rightly said, is like they don't have the School for Little Children, Private School, Inc., AC.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

They have a public school.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

That's the lifeblood of it.

Out of your community.

Elementary, middle school, high school, end of story.

Yeah.

So if these, these is, these schools get less money, right?

They're going to be hurt.

Yeah.

So I don't know how they're going to navigate that because their core constituencies are like, these are no go.

Yeah, we don't want it.

I think so too.

And I think they're going to run to problems too with some bills are talking about that are going to affect transgender kids.

There's been some proposals to basically ban that kind of therapy.

So that'll be a big fight that for sure they're going to have.

The use and teaching of race in classrooms is going to be another one to exactly how they hone that right from the what they passed last session is going to be a big part too.

So that's going to be another kind of factor.

There are a lot of these bills, I think, that are going to be a challenge for the House to get through.

The good news is that there are lots of other stuff they can find about stuff that people are worried about financially and think I can take some priority.

So my guess is you're still going to see these bills, but I'm just not sure how far they're going to get.

But I did have a question about Democratic committee chairs right.

This has been a kind of real situation from where the right is challenge.

The middle is the middle of the Republican pack to say you're doing this too many.

So what's the over under on, say, ten Democratic committee chairs?

You take the over, take the under.

I never understand those.

You think it's going to be more than ten or less?

No, no, less than ten.

Okay.

Less than ten?

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, we've got a speaker's race in Texas, too.

That that'll be interesting.

Obviously, that'll show some of those dynamics, too, and it's going to be pretty fun to watch.

So they gavel in this week and we're going to find out more about what goes on.

Yep.

And we'll keep you all informed next week.

Thanks for listening.

Thanks for watching.

And don't forget to like and subscribe.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

And I'm Brianna Rottinghaus.

We'll see you next week.