Welcome to World Politics, where we prepare for your next political conversation.

I'm surrounded by 14 political science professor at the University of Houston.

And I'm Brenda House, also a political science professor here at the University of Houston.

Dizzying week this week.

We don't normally have filing deadlines this dramatic, but why did we have a long day?

On that day, we'll talk all about that.

We'll talk about some state level politics in terms of changes to property taxes and maybe babies getting rich.

We'll see, farmers too, if Trump has his way.

So let's talk about all that.

But let's start with some kind of sad news.

And that is that we had two deaths this week, very notable political figures.

The first was Bill Ratliff, who was a former lieutenant governor and long term member of the Texas Senate.

Rob page, who was, among other things, the US Secretary of Education.

What do you take away from the legacy of these two stalwart Texas politicians?

Well, in terms of roughly, I think it was a key, nonpartisan approach to politics or a apolitical approach to political problems.

Right.

So we don't see that in more.

Probably we will never see it ever again in our lifetimes.

And then Secretary of Education, he was the mastermind behind No Child Left Behind that now is completely obliterated into oblivion.

Dying a slow death on the.

Vine.

Exactly right.

And I think, very important, public.

Policies.

Yeah.

I mean, he was the wizard in his turned around the district at a time where it was going in the wrong direction.

So.

Yeah, that's fascinating to see.

Bill Ratliff told me when I was writing Mayor Rick Perry at the Senate at that point was not just bi partizan, but nonpartisan, interesting, and really focused on making Texas better.

Focus on things like education reform, which had some serious issues with in the 90s.

Oh, yeah.

And ethics reform, too, which, was something you have to have serious consensus on to move forward.

Yeah.

So sad to see them both past and really a bygone era of Texas public servants who were focused on servant and not on politics.

Yeah, that's a change.

So be nice to have a little bit more of that.

But let's talk about other news.

Obviously, the redistricting fight at the Supreme Court was the biggest news of the week and has really reshaped what's happening in the 2026 election.

For those who weren't paying attention that week, effectively, the Supreme Court has allowed for Texas to use the newly drawn maps, which in some people's minds are racially gerrymandered.

There are certain members of the Supreme Court.

Yeah.

Agreed.

The majority, though, did.

And they said that there's a prima facie you need to be able to let the legislature do its job here, and that really it's too close to the election to make any good changes anyway.

But the bottom line is that Texans will use the new maps, and it's thrown a lot of things in the chaos.

So what are we to expect?

Like big picture from what this whole thing did?

Well, chaos.

You have people running that were not going to run.

People that were going to have retired now running.

People changing districts.

One way or the other.

So once again, is this issue in terms of a very UN procedure.

And as we said last week, the Supreme Court has not, ruled in terms of the merits of the case.

This is just the technicality that they do with the shadow or emergency docket, but still.

Right is, something that has very important implications, not only in terms of filing deadlines or running for a primary election or not, but very important implications in terms of the future of the Voting Rights Act.

And we'll see.

How all these things happen in, these new districts.

I mean, it's likely that given the way the court has signaled their interpretation of what Texas did with the voting Rights Act had like a doornail level.

So, yeah, I don't know.

You know, what they'll do in their cases or how they'll pass it.

But basically that seems to be the implication to me, which means, among other things, we're going to see yet again.

Yeah, you guessed it, more redistricting.

But obviously at the congressional level, we're going to see some changes across the country.

But for sure, I think in Texas, we'll try to redo it again.

You've seen other states basically just completely eliminate opposition parties from potential district victories.

That is stunning in and of itself.

And this essentially greenlights that.

The other though, I think, is that, we're likely to see, I think, more of this gerrymandering in Texas at the various levels, right at the House level, at the Senate level, at the state level.

So there's definitely going to be some big changes here.

And that, again, is going to consolidate the success that Republicans have had.

So for Democrats, you know, they're sounding the alarms.

They're raising money on this trying to get themselves into these positions.

But at the end of the day, the district lines matter because we're not able to sort of fix that.

And they're just going to be essentially fighting this uphill battle all the time.

Yeah.

One of the changes that seems to have resulted from this was that Jasmine Crockett, who is a member of the U.S.

House of Representatives from Dallas, is set to run for the U.S.

Senate.

Now, this has been a kind of long time t is.

But now eventually with with like five minutes to spare, that she determined that she was going to run.

It has caused a definite internal debate from Democrats who kick Colin already out of the race, who says, you know, I want to step aside for a smooth and, you know, less contentious.

Yeah, good luck with that.

Give me your kind of top level take on and Crockett's chances of winning this Senate seat.

Well, I don't know.

Well, first, she will have to win the primary, right?

So in the primary election, we have two progressive candidates, Jamie Stella Rico, and, of course, Jasmine Crockett.

Both of them bring a different kind of progressiveness, if that's a word.

Right?

Right.

To the full.

I think it's going to be very interesting the way that they approach, these where I think that, in the case of Crockett, she tends to be more focused on a growing part of the Democratic Party.

I think that Tallarico on his hand, he tries to reach, perhaps, more moderate Republicans and try to stay in the Senate, one way or the other, or left of Sam, you know, to put it that way.

And Crockett is like, unapologetic on like, this is who I am.

This is what you get.

Yeah.

And this is how I confront.

You know, for example, President Trump or these other policies are very confrontational, and it's a style that also, you know, who President Trump has, but in a different way.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah.

Very different politics.

Yeah, I could imagine.

Yeah.

I think you're exactly right.

And I like the way you put that.

I told somebody that she is unapologetically Jasmine Crockett.

She does?

Oh, yeah.

Don't care about the way that this looks and how it's going to be perceived.

She is who she is.

And that's why Democrats like her.

But it's also why some other Democrats don't like her.

And I think your framing of this is right, that there is this concern inside of Democratic Party about how to best proceed on this issue.

Right.

But there's a fear that Jasmine Parker can't win a general election.

I don't know if that's true, because the theory of the case is basically that if you can rally Democrats and potentially some nonvoters, some of which are 8 million out in the state, then that's a win set for Democrats.

That's successful.

That's the better model for 2018.

Yeah.

Now it's unclear how exactly this plays out.

If you look at history for the last ten years or so, moderates have been the successful winners of these primaries.

So there is a sense from some Democrats, at least, especially those voting Democrats, that they think that they want to, essentially prioritize win ability, like in the general election, over the capacity for Democrats.

Well, yeah, but your point or your point is, yes, they have been very successful in primaries.

And then, you know, in the general election.

So, exactly.

And that's why a lot of Democrats are looking at her candidacy and saying, well, look, I mean, everything else we've tried is not working.

Here's a new approach.

Let's short.

The thing is, they're both going to run a similar kind of campaign, right?

I mean, they're going to have their odds with Donald Trump.

They're going to take on whoever the Republican is.

They're going to raise a bunch of money.

It's going to be a national race.

There are serious implications to this that will reverberate, yes, politics in the country, but there are potentially going to be running a very similar kind of race.

I can't wait to see a debate between these two.

You've got Jasmine Crockett, who is just inflammatory.

Yeah, it's just like passionate.

And, you know, you got Talarico, who's a little more even keel.

Right.

Wants to kind of extend this discussion.

Yeah.

And talk more about this faith.

There's appeals to both.

And certainly we're going to see the Democrats split on this.

But I think you're exactly right that this is the first time we've had really progressive candidates in this race and really not a moderate choice.

So, you know, perhaps really we're going to have to do a very strong stress test of this theory going forward.

Who's a better match up with the different Republicans, Cornyn or Paxton or Holmes?

That, of course is a different fight.

Yeah.

You know, we've talked about a bunch, but we don't know who will win.

But like, this is really a kind of match up game.

And it's a strategy that Democratic voters have to think about too.

Oh absolutely.

But I don't think that Democratic voters are going to be thinking in terms of, the general election yet.

Right?

I think that those calculations are left.

For us.

And for political commentators, this and that.

So here he's going to be who's really connecting with the base.

And I think that that is the real, stress test in terms of the message that Crockett is going to bring and the message that Talarico is going to bring.

The message is going to be the same at the end, right?

Is when you look at it, he's going to be the same message.

The way that he's going to, change is the delivery method and how forceful you are pushing that, that, message.

I'm not sure if one or the other is better.

We're going to see how that, plays out, in a. Couple of months.

But the Democrats have to fix the plane while speaking for.

Right.

They're out there with duct tape, trying make sure the wind doesn't fall off because the infrastructure is non-existent.

The party does fire almost all of the people who work for it.

They're going to have to raise tens of millions of dollars to even remotely compete with any Republican regardless.

This is a challenge that they face.

So basically if.

The.

Texas Democratic Party were a football team, they'd be the Houston Texans.

Right.

A lot of the talent there's a potential there, but they just haven't found that way to get to that next level.

And so I think that's really the conundrum that all of us in the process are facing.

But let me get your take on this.

Like John Cornyn says in reaction to Jasper Crockett entering the race that he's delayed.

Right.

Trying to hide the smile on his face.

Is this a kind of secret plot from the Republicans to basically put somebody in this position where there are not a winnable, you know, they're not able to win a general election?

I don't know, maybe happiness.

I mean, I would say that on paper they should be right.

But here the question is, once again, these message to whoever wins.

And let's suppose that Crockett wins the primary election is going to be if she focuses on issues that do not fare well with the general electorate.

Right.

Or on issues are bread and butter.

Right.

I think that the delivery method, in terms of delivering that, in contrast with what we know Republicans would do.

I think that Crockett's delivery method might be more impactful than Gillespie if this is going to be a general election in terms of values, then I don't know, how a Democrat, whether he's still Errico or or, Crockett.

Could it be that I'm focused on issues?

I mean, I mean, we have seen it right in, in in this this year, Democrats were very successful not getting into the culture wars and just focusing on issues about affordability.

Some that today we know that, Miami has a new Democrat mayor for 30 years, right?

Why?

Yeah.

Pretend that Trump did not exist.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Ignore Donald Trump.

No, you are right.

Right.

Just like.

Whatever.

And then why don't you try to nationalize that race?

And it was a mistake.

And exactly same thing's going to happen here for sure because it's almost an avoidable.

But a smart candidate will basically run that race and forget about Donald Trump.

But people are looking at jobs and profits first ad, which was clever I think.

And yeah, well done.

But basically it was all about Donald Trump.

Her basically getting first name's call by Donald Trump.

Which, you know, certainly magnifies her but may not magnify kind of the message.

So that's what I think some Democrats worry about.

The other is that she's not won a competitive private.

She's not won a competitive general.

So there needs to be some battle tested nature here.

And a lot of people look to call her already and said, well, we've done that.

Like, you can definitely make that happen.

But for her, they're not sure.

She also has a tendency to, you know, inflame Republicans, which okay, you know, certainly it's going to rile up the Democratic base, but it's also going to rile up the Republicans.

So there is a kind of counterweight to that.

That is right.

To make this a very competitive place.

Right.

But as you said, is the a really nonvoters how we can rally those folks?

My friend, you and I have spent the better part of the last couple of years studying this.

Yeah.

And you know as well as I that it is really hard to get people.

It is otherwise typically both at the margins.

You can make those changes.

Maybe that's the winning strategy.

Like remember the difference between or work.

And Cruz in 18 was like 200,000 votes.

If you can make up that difference with some nonvoters yeah, me, but like it sounds like nothing 200,000 votes, you know, in a state.

Right?

But that's a lot of vote.

It's a lot.

Of vote when moving them is so expensive.

And the messaging has to be so precise.

Well, so precise.

But also I think that the contextual, issues in terms of the economy, in terms of unemployment, in terms of inflation, you are citing towards, the Democrats now.

Yeah.

Like the the sea is like calm for Democrats.

Yes.

But of course this off often get that boat across.

Exactly the boat and and get the duct tape ready and, and the cords to plug all those potential holes.

So we'll see.

So let's talk a little bit about South Texas.

And that's something we talked about last week where in require was given a pardon.

Could surprisingly Trump Donald Trump apparently expected something for it which was that he wanted to see Hendrix switch parties because there was like a days before filing deadline that didn't happen.

And Donald Trump basically says, well, like, so much for loyalty, you know, no more Mr.

Nice Guy.

Next time.

It feels like kind of a Sopranos plot where like, you know, somebody trying to, like, make something happen.

But doesn't overtly make that consideration.

So, what do you make of this?

Do you think that he is going to suffer as a result of this, or is this just basically a green light?

I want to throw one log on the fire here to help, and that's that.

Basically, he was able to get this committee position back.

He had been suspended from it.

But he's now going to be back.

And the Appropriations Committee, which is extremely important to.

So it's almost like he's, you know, sailing clear here.

I think what he's, in terms of reelection, once again, is this issue, whether, there's going to be a primary challenger that, can outflanking from the left.

And as you know, was these potential political scandal eight that matters for, his voters?

Not anymore.

No, he's not going to jail now.

No wife.

Yeah.

Donald Trump is, to some degree laid hands on him blessing this because although he had this friction about that, you can see certainly some people read into this that Donald Trump essentially like pardoned him because he thought that he was on the same page as he was on border issues and not on the same page.

Right.

That's like, early Christmas gift.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

In a district that, you know, it was a pretty swingy district, but, you know, a trump, you know, kind of aligned candidate to do well.

And so be interesting to see.

Let's talk more Texas politics though, because it's ever interesting.

Okay.

Yeah.

Patrick had a couple of ideas about giving money away this week, which is very, Dan Patrick likes them to do.

But one of the things was that he was going to essentially propose a state program that was going to parallel the federal program that Donald Trump proposed to give every child born in the state $1,000.

The other is that he proposed to increase the homestead exemption on property taxes again and, basically leveling it to what the country defies, and putting up for work.

At this point, it's still people who are 65 and up because of Operation Double Nickel, I call Operation oh my gosh, this is a ton of money.

It's dope.

What do you think about this?

This is.

And Patrick, the most conservative Republican state has ever seen, essentially having these kind of programs.

Yeah.

And people.

Yeah.

Everybody.

Yeah.

Lena.

It all goes, various county let's give money away type of stuff.

Well, being sued by AG Paxton and I don't know if AG Patton is going to sue the attorney, the lieutenant governor and say that.

No, you cannot do that.

It will be very, very like.

Yeah, because I mean, just look at Harris County.

What happened?

But but anyways, love to.

See that battle.

But yeah, I don't think that's.

No, it's not going to happen.

I'm telling you right now, the interesting part is, once again, is we're putting a lot of strain in our future finances.

We're spending money that we have right now, but that we don't know if we're going to have in a couple of years.

So that is a very risky move, giving money to every, new born in Texas you're talking about, I don't know, maybe $300 million a year, right?

Give and take.

In 2023, the fever was around 388,000 newborns in Texas, according to the CDC.

So, that's a lot of money now on a binomial budget.

That's a that's $1 billion, right?

That's yeah, it's a fast and the state.

But now is money, but not a lot to play with.

And if you start to give away this money it could be complicated.

The other thing is that Republicans look at this and say, well, if there's money to be given, then why are you just giving money back to taxpayers in the form of rebates or a reduction in the sales tax or whatever it is?

I know that's a compelling question.

And there's also very conservative Republicans pushing back and saying, well, look, a lot of people, you know, were born here and they're not like legally allowed to be here.

And so that's the problem too.

So there's still a lot of, I think, confusion about this, but it does underscore, number one, Donald Trump runs Texas.

Right.

Like he said we want to do this federal level temperatures Galveston state.

The other said Patrick and Abbott have a disagreement about how to handle property taxes.

Yeah, we just chatted about this briefly a week ago, but Dan.

But but Greg Abbott, in this proposal for reelection said, look, you know, I want to eliminate property taxes.

Yeah.

Patrick literally this week said that's not possible right.

By me increasing sales tax by like, you know, $0.20, which is not practical.

Right.

So, what do you make of this internal fight in the Republican Party about how to fix one of the most hated taxes?

And that's property.

Taxes?

Well, yeah, it is the most hated taxes.

And it gives them these rare public, fighting that the end.

Everything is fine eventually.

But once again, it's different ways of how to tackle this problem.

That is, property taxes.

And I think that, here is who's going to be the owner of this particular issue, right?

Is it going to be the governor or is he going to be the governor?

So the type of proposals to fix property taxes are, one way or the other.

The most, creative so far.

Yes.

But once again, the problem is we don't have income tax in Texas.

Right?

Property tax is the one that funds a lot of stuff.

So it's going to be expensive and potentially damaging.

Like there are people who have short memories here in the 80s, serious downturns, early 2000, serious downturns.

There's just a lot of complications when you put kind of all your dollars into one basket.

So we'll see how this really shakes.

But like these are proposals, right?

Like we're going to study.

Exactly the numbers.

Yeah.

But then governor don't think that we're starting to see more.

Is the Texas economy being diversified.

But again is oh yeah we're going to do bitcoin mining.

But that creates a lot of problems.

I like the.

I didn't put this on our list.

But yeah Texas is investing it like a like a $5.

Million in Bitcoin.

Bitcoin okay.

Like I don't know about you man.

But my bitcoin tanked in the last month.

So I just invested a bunch of I don't know I went down.

Three coin I buy it nothing gold nothing.

You keep your money under the bed.

Yeah.

You need to diversify.

Oh well different events.

That's so true right.

Yeah.

Well, let's talk about a couple of themes that connect these together.

That is that the Supreme Court has declined to hear a Texas book ban appeal in a case that was very closely watched by free speech advocates in lower court and basically said that this law can go into effect where, stemming from a lawsuit in 2022, from a particular policy from the legislature that, the counties could remove, from public libraries, books that are dealing with sex, race or gender themes that touch on all kinds of different complicated subjects that the Republicans in the bill say is more problematic.

This means that some books like this do with the titles.

It's perfectly normal change bodies growing up, sex and sexual health was off the shelf, as well as Larry before you leprechaun.

So just all kinds of scandals happening there.

What do you make of the politics of this and the legal fight about whether or not Texans can inject these policies in, from the state?

Well, I mean, it's once again a surprising, issue in terms of the Supreme Court saying or refusing to hear this case means that the fifth, Circuit's ruling is going to remain in effect.

Basically, the Fifth Circuit said that, First Amendment does not guarantee a right to receive information from public libraries.

Okay.

That's fine.

This is going to have an impact in, in a number of states in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and, and, the ingredients of these, ruling that argue that, this is going to undermine free speech and allows local governments to exert these control over what information is accessible to the public for example?

Yes.

That has implications for these issues in terms of, First Amendment rights or not.

Yeah.

And also it has implications to what local governments can and can't do.

This isn't a new policy.

This is something that local governments have been allowed to do.

But now the state essentially puts a blanket across it.

Yeah, it does mean that this is going to be something that the state's going to have to contend with at the local level, but then other states too, can now essentially kind of wade into as well.

The court's not going to take this case, and perhaps other states can engage the same kind of that too.

Yeah.

Without the fear of there being some kind of, legislative, or legal oversight.

Let's shift gears to talk about national politics.

And that's Donald Trump.

He is proposing a plan to give away $12 billion in assistance to farmers who are harmed by terrorists.

What do you make of this?

Well, I mean, it's it's one way of saying, oops, We're sorry.

Right.

Well, yeah.

Oh.

I'm sorry.

I need basically given, 11 billion to, crop farmers, especially those that, have struggle, soybean producers because China is not buying, much more, soybeans from American, farmers.

So it's just a way of trying to fix the situation that was created by the Trump administration.

Whether it has these distributed effect on the midterm election.

We'll see.

Yeah.

This is pretty common for presidents, right?

They definitely World War Two is true that politics like swing states and states that they won.

So we're likely to see that.

And this is true because most of these states are voting for Donald Trump to the tune of 67%.

So he's getting these votes.

But there are a lot of concerned farmers out there.

And Republicans, frankly, are pushing back, saying, look, you're going to benefit agribusiness, large companies over small farmers.

And, you know, this is also the case that it just shows you the trade question is not really focused on what's happening for people.

And that is another damage point for Donald Trump, who says, by the way, that he gets an A plus plus plus plus for the economy.

Oh, you and I are in the midst of rioting, and we know the university will let us give them any pluses, but he is giving himself a very favorable grade.

That's a problem, I think, because he's not recognizing that there is a crisis happening for American voters.

And I think that's going to be a real blindspot for him.

Well, it's a grim black spot because whether you are, once again, this is a supermarket that prices our prices.

Period.

I can't talk your way out of this.

No, bacon's too nuts.

It ain't.

It's it's very special.

And holidays coming up.

Absolutely on a stock up.

And on that savory note that's it for this week.

I'm Geronimo Cortina.

And I'm red.

And rounding out the party heats up next week.

I'm hungry for bagels.