<Music> Welcome to Party Politics 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 and talking politics with us.

Uh- exciting week.

We have international intrigue.

Yeah, we've got state level kind of conundrums.

We've got, sort of feuds that are maybe quelling at the state level.

So, this is a kind of a good thing.

Yeah, obviously the heat of the session is going to create some, you know, some unusual bedfellows, but also perhaps, you know, some renew some kind of old anger, so I don't know.

Well, we'll see.

We'll see how.

It plays out.

But, let's talk about foreign policy first.

I know that you are versed well in the international intrigue.

You've seen Doctor Zhivago a bunch of times.

I think that works as well.

Yes.

To talk about.

Foreign policy, but actually, huge news this week, right?

President Trump as basically signaled a kind of real shift in terms of their relationship with Russia, at least in terms of the US as a relationship.

Right.

Effectively kind of softening its sort of stance towards the, the, the Russian government.

What's happening, in effect, is that they plan to have peace talks and, additional economic kind of interactions and incentives to work together on things.

This is probably kind of a good news for kind of the world where tensions are reducing.

But on the on the case of.

Ukraine in particular.

Yeah.

Like they're basically like excluding the Ukrainian government from these talks and excluding Europe from these talks.

So.

Correct.

What do you make of the strategy shift here.

I mean, it's a 180 degree shift from like someone wake up in the morning and say, oh, let's try now this thing and exclude everybody else involved in this conflict.

Yeah.

And the thing is, it starts with President Trump saying that, Ukraine started their own invasion.

Right.

Which they didn't see.

Well, very well with the president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zeleneskyy.

And also it changes in the dynamic in terms of our relationship with our allies.

Right.

And that could have very important implications.

Why?

Because yes, Russia is a major international player.

But when you look at the numbers, when you look at the size of their economy, they're not very big.

In terms of that, let's say just for argument's sake, I know the economists are going to say, no, you're wrong.

It's just.

They're always saying that we're wrong.

I know, but just for argument's sake, let's suppose that the world's GDP is 100 and the US has 30% of that.

You have 70% of the world's GDP in other countries.

So my question to you is if you think that eventually the world is going to say, you know what?

We're tired of being bullied.

We're tired of playing you controls 30%, and now we're going to do a new economic block that is going to have, you know, China, India.

Yeah.

Latin America.

Yeah.

Europe.

I don't like where this is going on.

You know, and that is going to have hurtful economic implications for the US for trying to bring Russia back into the fold for whatever reasons.

We don't know yet.

It's a great point.

And I think to the issue the president's going to run into is that Republicans are not totally on board.

Just to quote Mike Rounds, senator from South Dakota, he said effectively, bluntly, Russia invaded the Ukraine.

That is the way it worked.

It's not the other way around.

Right?

The Ukrainian government had really no choice.

President Trump said that they should have taken the deal.

Unclear what deal he means, but obviously the invasion was a trigger point.

Lindsey Graham, the senator from South Carolina, has said that they should let NATO effectively kind of let the Ukrainian if there's ever a kind of similar attack.

That's been a controversial point because Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, is implied, maybe that that's not something they're going to work for, giving away this kind of major concession without the negotiations even starting.

So that'll play out in a kind of unusual way.

But there's still this kind of real conflict between the white House and what most Republicans want.

And of course, Democrats aren't really kind of players in this per se, but they're definitely going to, I think, side with Republicans who say we should back the Ukraine.

The other thing that happened is that it connected to this story is that the Europe, allies are not happy about the way that the.

You know, the President.

Trump's administration is pursuing this.

I mean, we talked about this last week, right?

Vice President Vance went to Europe, went to this AI conference, which is hilarious.

It's a total baller move.

He basically goes the conference, dresses them all down and insults.

Them and then doesn't sign the like the document that he's.

Like the kind of reason they're all there.

And then he high tails it out of town.

But some of the things he said left a lot of European allies very worried.

One thing he mentioned was the kind of reciprocal trade, obviously, which you mentioned is a kind of conundrum that the US might face.

Another is that, basically he suggested that China is not the problem.

It's really Europe.

And their lack of kind of coordination with the US is values.

That's the problem.

So that's another kind of warning sign that the European allies are kind of concerned about this.

The big picture here is that there's a crack in the facade.

There's a this break in the relationship between Europe and the US.

And that's problematic because if it is the case that Russia has designs to try to expand as it did in the Ukraine, then, you know, a divided Europe, without U.S. allies would be problematic.

Well, absolutely would be very problematic.

But again, the issue here is now you're seeing, today, this week, the European Union imposed new sanctions on Russia as, I guess, as a counter, strategy for the talks that were invited between Russia, the US and the Saudis.

Another big player that suddenly came out of nowhere.

It's like, oh, let's host the the negotiations here in Riyadh.

Yeah.

But again, the issue here is what are going to be the implications.

So the the strategy is, in my opinion, like President Woodrow Wilson's strategy of being, you know, we're going to isolate ourselves, but that is not going to work.

Right?

Now, the US is pretty dependent upon a lot of stuff coming from Europe.

Obviously, a lot of stuff coming from China and the big winner that hasn't say a word on these thing is China.

Yeah, they haven't said nothing like we are not going to say anything.

Yes.

And is this the big opportunity for China to start increasing their soft power that has been, monumentally increase, especially in big infrastructure and projects in Africa, b construction projects in Latin America.

And they're just quietly expanding their reach.

And these soft power that the US is perhaps losing when they sat at the negotiation table with the people that need to be at the negotiation table.

Right.

Look, and if you're right, I mean, the end of World War One essentially begets the beginning of World War two, right?

That interim period is where the US kind of withdraws and they end up basically ceding that authority.

A lot of it soft power, some of the just hard power because of the U.

S is going to pull back troops from the Baltic region.

And then it could be potentially problematic as a vacuum there.

So yeah, I think you're right.

Lots to kind of watch here as this all unfolds.

But obviously this is not the only kind of crisis happening.

This is happening, is happening right here domestically.

That's about the budget.

But more than the budget, it's also about kind of what the future of the kind of US funding looks like.

So, not to alarm anyone, but the, you know, basically, government runs out of money by spring break.

Yes.

So that's going.

To be an issue.

They haven't made a lot of progress in terms of getting kind of numbers down on paper, which they're going to have to do.

The House is out all week this week.

So in the Senate decided to say, well, you know what, if you're going to go on recess, like, hey, we're going to jump in here and do something.

So Lindsey Graham again passed a skinny budget bill that essentially increase the amount of money that's being spent on defense and border issues by about $340 billion.

The House has been struggling with trying to figure out how to package their agreement.

They want to have about $1.5 trillion in spending cuts.

Notice the T on their trillion, as well as $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, that some of that is going to be an extension of the tax cuts.

But that means they have to raise the debt ceiling to the tune of about $4 trillion.

But some Republicans say it's not enough.

But other Republicans say, wait, you're not cutting enough either.

So it's just a lot of cutting and increasing in very odd ways.

The other conundrum is about whether to have one bill or two bills.

And this is kind of a very insider kind of DC story.

But it matters because President Trump wants one big, beautiful bill, right?

Correct.

I mean, that's an easy sell for him politically.

But the problem is that it's harder to get one big bill passed through the Senate.

And, Speaker Johnson only has one vote to spare in the House.

So there's just kind of lots of problems they are trying to figure out, like how to proceed on the budget.

Trump also wants to throw in the increasing of the debt limit.

Which is a complicated endeavor and politically very fraught.

So just lots of trouble here trying to figure out what to do.

And the timeline is running very short.

So like.

How are we going to get out of this crisis?

I don't know.

Because he just throw everything at the wall.

Yeah.

And see what what's going to stay.

Right.

So increasing the debt ceiling is extremely, extremely bad for many other issues.

For bonds, for the financial security of the United States for the next, you know, 20, 50 years.

And then, the other important issue is that you're saying that you're cutting the budget, but there's been reports that one, Doge has been fined.

The is not the amount of money that there were supposed to be fining.

Or to do what, like you and I do all the time, which is like you, miscode, the data.

Right?

Accident.

And then it turns out, instead of, a billion, it's actually a million, right?

Like your decimal point.

Is.

Meaningful.

Exactly.

And that's going to have implications because, yes, I think that everybody agrees that their needs, the government needs to operate more efficiently.

Yeah, that's not it always.

But the big question here, even if, the Republican budget hawks, right, are going to say, this is not enough.

If we're going to give the tax cuts that are going to cost $4 trillion, we need to find somewhere to.

Offset.

Cut.

$4 trillion can you cut $4 trillion?

Let me tell you right now.

Yeah, the answer is no.

Yeah.

You cannot know.

And I think that there's this kind of, you know, shell game where like the impression is that they're cutting a lot.

But then you look at the actual numbers and they're really not.

Right.

Yeah.

Like they're looking at spreadsheets like this year or this contract.

But the problem is that sometimes those contracts are like multiple year contracts.

So cutting that contract means not cutting the full amount of money.

But just like this year's money, which is a lot smaller.

So they're not finding those offsets, which is a problem.

And those Republicans are really worried.

They say like, look, you've got to find these offsets.

And they are the pivotal voter here, right?

They're the ones who have the decision making capacity to say yes or no.

And literally that will flip, you know, the budget into that, kind of plus or minus.

So that's a different crisis.

But the other thing is that a lot of Republicans, especially vulnerable Republicans, are looking at what is happening, and they're saying that they're worried, right?

They're seeing the cuts to some of the programs that are in their districts that they would otherwise approve.

And obviously, like you say, you know, we can trim government in lots of different ways, but doing it in a way that's smart, is and targeted is probably better than just kind of start slashing and slashing.

Yeah.

The Republicans, I think, are crying Yelp because they're realizing that a lot of these cuts are going to come back to really hurt them, and that could be a challenge for them in the midterms.

Oh, absolutely.

And the midterms are months away.

I'm going to.

Talk about this in a second okay.

Because we definitely have to talk about this unfortunately.

Yeah.

It's going to be here before, you know we have to get past our trauma.

Not on that, but let's talk about the trauma happening in New York City.

You're a former, city and state of residents.

And that's sort of a stunning, actually kind of turn of developments here.

And that's that's seven federal prosecutors have resigned, rather than accept an order to dismiss corruption charges against New York mayor, Eric Adams, Danielle Sassoon, who was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, has resigned.

She has impeccable like, bulletproof conservative credentials.

Federalist Society, she clerked for Antonin Scalia.

Like, this is somebody who is not like, liberal.

Squish.

And she basically implied in her resignation letter that this was a quid pro quo, that the charges were asked to be dropped.

They told her to drop the charges because then they could get Adams to agree with some of the Ice deportation, kind of approach.

The other thing is, she said, which is more stunning, was that they were going to file additional charges against Adams for obstruction of justice and for, for destroying evidence.

This is obviously a serious set of charges.

And the fact that it's gone away now really underscores the fact that political corruption has tremendous kind of problems when it comes to how these things are prosecuted or not.

So what do you make of the way that this all went down?

Well, I mean, obviously it's very interesting because we're seeing these, I guess, divisions between, I guess, like, the prosecutor, Danielle Sassoon that you had that you said impeccable conservative, credentials and the definition of what the Department of Justice is doing is like.

Wait, you know, we had a deal with this guy.

Yeah.

You know, Brooklyn style, right?

Right.

We have a deal with this guy.

And, you know, now we have to honor these deal.

It feels kind of godfather.

Like, 100%.

It's it's shady.

And I think that the problem is that if you kind of buy as premise that, like, corruption is no longer something that is just on itself a net negative, that we have to prosecute this and figure this out, then it really loosens the accountability of the entire system.

Yeah, absolutely.

This is definitely worrisome as a trend.

And then on the other hand, you know, I guess in in parallel, you have, Steve Bannon going after Musk, in a very, very aggressive way, saying you're not part of this movement.

Yeah.

And that may have or start increasing the enemy within.

Right.

Saying you're not a purist, you're not here to do the job that we are in terms of what, for example, some of these, district attorneys, may have tried to pursue is a corruption case, is evidence on the table.

Yeah.

Well, so there is no political motivation on this side DOJ doesn't just kind of willy nilly indict people to spite what people say.

Like they're serious about what they do.

And if they find a problem here, they will prosecute and they have the resources to fight through.

So this is definitely, like, worrisome.

You make a note about, like, Musk and Trump.

I think that's perfect because Trump and Musk were on Fox News together.

Like they had a little, I don't know, comedy routine.

Right?

Right, right, right.

They're really tight, so.

Oh, yeah.

And I think that that process of sort of working from a very large optical view, but when you kind of really drill down on it, there are a lot of concerns about the way this is going down.

And I think the devil really is in the details.

Obviously.

There's a possibility that the governor of New York might remove Mayor Adams from his role.

That's something that Governor of New York can do.

I'm sure that Greg Abbott is very jealous about that.

But that's something that in New York they can do, this or it could be the case that he doesn't even win reelection.

Right.

The election's coming up this year, and they're his numbers are pretty bad.

Only about 12% New Yorkers say they're going to reelect him.

But speaking of scandal not mattering, Andrew Cuomo.

Who used to.

Be the governor, has got a pretty big warchest he can transfer from a state account to run.

So scandals may just be like the norm now, right?

I don't want to bash New York any more than I have with you.

Okay, that's true, but.

That's a problem, right?

It's not a New York problem, too, because Trump also, you know, commuted the sentence of Rod Blagojevich, who, like the FBI prosecuted, had dead to rights.

Blago was like, I want you to record me.

The FBI says, okay, deal.

They did it.

And they found, like, red handed.

Evidence that he was.

Trying to sell the Senate seat that Obama had.

So this is a problem of perception where if politicians think they can get away with something because they can sidle up to, you know, kind of the powers that be, then it really reduces the impact of the kind of way that accountability function.

So, I'm very much against this.

Oh, absolutely.

And this has to be really carefully thought through.

But it definitely is worrisome because this, I think, minimizes the ability for the system to work properly.

Yeah.

No.

Well, let's talk Texas.

Maybe we'll talk about something more.

Okay.

Like let's say less dramatic.

Let's see.

Well I don't know okay.

Let's give it a try.

Happy place.

All right.

There's been lots of speculation about Ken Paxton running for Senate against John Cornyn.

This has been several years in the making, but they've had a pretty serious feud, right?

At one point, they were going back and forth on Twitter.

You know, basically Ken Paxton saying things like, you know, Cornyn is not sufficiently conservative, you're not close enough to Trump.

And then Cornyn shoots back saying it's hard to run from jail.

But Ken Paxton has had a pretty good run of it lately.

Like platinum, Paxton is really I think he's got a new moniker.

He survived impeachment.

Oh, he was able to basically reach a deal to end the securities, fraud charges against him.

The Supreme Court here in Texas kicked out a bar complaint against him about his efforts in the 2020 election.

So he should buy a lottery ticket.

Like, don't run for Senate like.

Your luck is at its peak.

But he is considering it.

And the one way we know that is that the domains that were various Ken Ken Paxton for senator, PACS for senator were registered this week Wesley Hunt also did the same thing.

So I guess it's a long way of saying that we are heating up into the 2026.

Yes, we are.

Season Texas is still considered a red state.

It was downgraded to a likely Republican state, which is a modest change for us politicos.

And we watch this.

But honestly, it's probably still going to be a Republican state.

Yeah, but it depends a lot on how the primary goes.

That depends a lot on how the Democrats respond.

So how is that going to play out?

Well, I mean, there's a lot of, issues in the air and especially the issue in terms of Cornyn being, conservative, not yeah, I don't understand the definition of what it means to be conservative.

Right.

He was running to be the Senate leader a couple of months ago.

He couldn't win the the election.

But it's a very important political figure in the state and also in the US Senate.

Paxton, as you say, comes from, you know, a very lucky run.

Yeah.

I heard that the Avengers are looking to recruit him because he's basically indestructible.

Like.

Yeah, he's like bulletproof, like.

Yeah, like nothing this is going to happen.

So if he decides to run, that's going to be a bloodbath.

He's going to be a very, very, super, extremely expensive primary.

And we're going to see at the end how he can portray that because he's going to be all out.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, Cornyn is sitting out about $4 million in his campaign account.

Paxton can raise money.

It's usually conditional on some event or often Donald Trump kind of giving him that bump, which I think probably he's going to get.

Right.

I mean, Paxton is oh yeah, close to Trump for a long time.

Like Paxton was mentioned in Donald Trump's inauguration speech, John Cornyn and John and and Trump has kind of gotten along more or less lately.

But there's been some friction.

Ultimately, it would have worked out the way that, like a lot of people tend to kind of work out their differences, like with Donald Trump.

And that's a kind of mutual arrangement.

But I think that that could be problematic for Cornyn in a primary.

But there are a lot of people, Republicans, who kind of are unsure about John Cornyn.

I think his kind of efforts at being in the leadership really hurt him.

Any leader is going to be somebody who's targeted in the Republican primary.

You know, the fact that he tried to broker this deal, which is a bipartisan deal on gun control, was definitely something that's going to be troublesome for him.

The polling suggests that, you know, that more people dislike John Cornyn.

And like Ken Paxton, we can massage these numbers lots of different ways.

But basically, Paxton probably is in a slightly better position at this moment than that can change a lot.

But Paxton has been really kind of gunning for this moment for a long time, right?

I mean, he has been working with Donald Trump on the 2020 election issues right before the 2024 election.

You know, he spent a lot of time going after Joe Biden.

Any time Joe Biden lifted up.

His.

You know, spoon to eat his cornflakes in the morning.

But Ken Paxton was there to sue him.

Abortion litigation, election litigation, like Paxton has been kind of preparing for this moment.

And the base just loves it.

So can Cornyn undo that?

It's sort of unclear.

We'll see.

But that's going to be something that we're going to be closely tracking in for for the next 600 days.

Yes, or so.

But there's.

More.

Wait, there's more that is that, down the valley.

Henry Cuellar has been, a struggling to keep a seat, right?

I mean, he's been embattled.

He's been under, kind of indictment.

That's been an issue because obviously there's people who look at this as a problem.

Webb County Judge, Tano Tijerina has decided that he's considering running.

He's hired some consultants.

He's met with people in DC about this.

This is a winnable seat, potentially for a Republican.

This is a Biden plus seven district.

But Trump carried it in the last election.

The valley's been moving in a more red direction.

But like we've talked about, it's maybe not as durable as people think.

But this is definitely something.

And he has the visibility to make it happen.

Remember, he switched parties live on Fox and Friends, and if there's anything that Donald Trump likes the showman.

So it could be the this all plays to his favor.

But that's a long time to like next November.

So it's uncertain.

But this is interesting to see.

So here the issue is when we're looking at the election results remember that.

Yes.

President Trump got a lot of support in terms in, in the Valley how a down ballot races, was kind of mixed, right.

And Democrats in, in many of these races where, triumphant.

And so the big question here is who is going to run, is Cuerllar going to run, you know, well, maybe there's going to be problems.

His previous primaries have been very, very, very close.

Pretty close, you know, and the question here is even, the Democrats find the right candidate to primary out Cuellar that obviously yeah.

Democrats doesn't like Cuellar anymore.

That's a great Can they afford to lose him though?

Right.

And possibly give that seat to the Republicans?

That's the big question, right?

Yeah.

So if you can find the right candidate to primary out, Cuellar then, it's up in the air.

Those challengers have always been liberal.

And so in that district that might not fly.

Right.

So that's the real danger is like how you kind of shuffle the cards.

But it's a matter in terms of turnout.

Because younger Latino tends to be a little bit more liberal.

But if they don't turnout then it doesn't really matter.

It ends up like it was in 22 or even 24.

Then things are going to go in a bad direction.

Yeah.

Let's talk about the legislature.

This week, it turns out, it was, McDonald's day one day.

So grimace.

Not other than Grimace.

You have a Grimace like style, right?

Today.

No, no, no, was on like, on.

The, on the floor of the house or actually, he was in the he was in the, in the, up in the owner's box.

He was up in there, up the gallery.

But also Paul Wall was there throwing up h for H-Town.

So it's an unusual kind of partnership.

That's where we are in the legislative process right now.

Things are just a little bit in flux.

One other unusual partnership is now Dade Phelan.

And Dan Patrick, they've kind of made up.

They've kind of exchanged, kind of cryptic valentines to each other.

Right?

Basically over the issue of school choice.

Right.

Donald Trump says, let's pass it.

You know, Abbott says, let's pass it.

And, you know, Dustin Burrows says, yeah, we're going to pass it.

We're in.

So I wonder if this is sort of a new détente moment.

The committees that Burrows put together basically look like we would expect all Republicans.

Yes, it's committee heads.

Burrow's basically got his lieutenants into place.

Yep.

He maybe ruffled some feathers with the sort of, vice chair, you know, to doing to some Democrats.

And Joe Moody is the president pro tem, back again, which, you know, is also something that happens all the time, right?

Yeah.

But of course, just being Democrats, it's going to get, a problematic target.

So how do you make the what do you think of the sort of, you know, the denouement that's happening here?

And I.

Think in.

The large.

It's a new dawn.

It's a new.

Day.

Yeah.

And and I think that, you know, the relationship between the big three is changing.

Yeah.

Burrows, has been a true conservative before, so there's no question about that, that he's, what they call, Republican in name only.

Like, not even close.

Yeah.

So I think that it's a way, perhaps of saying and negotiating with the Senate and negotiating with the government and say, okay, you won school vouchers, fair enough.

I'll give you school vouchers.

Then we won X, Y or Z.

There are some things, yeah, that they disagree on.

Maybe bail reform is one of those possibly putting ten commandments in classrooms.

So there are some things they probably will fight about, but they have to be on the same page.

It looks like the breakfasts are working and they bring down these breakfast.

So yeah, and they had eggs, which is like treasure now.

It's like salt in medieval times.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like this is great.

So I guess it worked.

But definitely there's been kind of this I think relationship, which is good.

Now Burrows is promised to protect the institution.

That's why Democrats sort of sided with him.

It was an ideological thing.

So he's gonna have to stand up Dan Patrick on some things, and that's going to be potentially, a problem because Dan Patrick doesn't like that.

He wants to kind of run the things the way.

He does, but the house isn't unlike the.

House is correct.

You know, much more, kind of bottom up.

And so he's not going to have quite this burrows like, not like the scheme that would have to pass, but it looks like so far there.

Yeah.

Things are moving along.

And that's one of the things that we're going to keep monitoring for the next couple of weeks.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

But I'm Brandon Rottinghaus.

The conversation heats up.

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