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

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

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

Thanks for tuning in and talking politics on a kind of big week, for a lots of chief executives, a big week for Governor Abbott.

There's a big pitch on school vouchers.

Obviously, Donald Trump delivered his sort of quasi state of the Union.

So lots of big things happening for kind of leaders in the state.

But we start with some sad news.

And that is that Sylvester Turner, who is a member of Congress from the Houston area, former legislator, former mayor, has passed away.

He's got a pretty long track record, a pretty big legacy.

What are the things that strike you and stick out to you from his long career?

I mean, 35 years of public service.

Yeah.

That's by itself is.

It's a lot, of, public service, his passion, his commitment to, his, agenda.

And I think always trying to serve, his constituents.

So I think, you know, it's it's just, being a role model also coming from Acres Home, from very humble background.

And then, you know, just going to the top of his political career.

And so I think it's, it's it's a remarkable.

Yeah.

Public service career.

The service part, I think, was really the most attracted to me, most attractive for me.

And you can really see in every office he's been in that he's been a bridge builder.

He's been the glue in the legislature.

He was a go between between Republicans and Democrats in the in council.

He was effective at negotiating things in a political world where everything's very partizan.

He was able to make deals.

And I think that was one thing that really he doesn't get enough credit for.

And politicians generally don't get enough credit for.

He was a very, very nice man, but he had a cantankerous side, you and I have seen this and doing some of these.

Oh, yes.

Events when he was running for mayor.

He can definitely get, a little bit thorny, but that's how everybody is.

People who are passionate just have that fire.

Exactly.

It's passion.

As mayor, you know, he was pretty consequential in terms of putting the city on the right fiscal foot.

That was a big problem that the city confronted.

And of course, it still confronts it in different ways.

But he was able to reduce pension liability, which was like the major kind of economic conundrum that the city faced.

And that was a big feature.

When he was in the ledge, you know, he led the way on issues involving, sort of trying to fund public schools adequately in a time where things were going really badly for the state, trying to make sure people's utility bills weren't too high.

These were things that now the state's still dealing with.

And so he was really kind of part of that vanguard of Democrats who was trying to fight for those things that they really cared about.

Right.

And Harvey, Covid.

Yeah.

You know, really.

Crises.

Crises that really test leaders in terms of how they respond.

Yeah.

So I think that's also a testament of, once again, the passion and the kind of I'm willing to negotiate with anyone in order to solve a public problem.

So definitely, significant loss.

And that opens the door for, a special election.

Yeah.

In, district, Congressional district 18.

And we will see when Governor Abbott, calls for a special session.

But obviously, I think that at the end, Sylvester Turner will be remembered, as you said, as a person that was willing to talk to the other side.

And I think that despite the differences that we saw with, state leadership and so on and so forth, at the end, he was a person that was respected in terms of dealing with, what needed to be dealt.

And the district has seen a lot of turnover lately, not just that district, but also, of course, the Senate district that Molly Cook now holds, John Whitmire, of course, moving to be the mayor of Houston so that definitely was another kind of turn in this area.

There has been discussions about the way that this seat will go after Sylvester Turner, who said even before he passed away that he would only be in office for a few terms.

So the next generation of leaders is likely to step up here.

So it's possible we'll see Chris Hollins in that role.

You know, he's been kind of an antagonist of the mayor.

But somebody who's been in public service, also Amanda Edwards, been on council, and she's run for the seat a couple different times.

She ran for Senate, too.

So she's been sort of eyeing that as well.

So there will be, I think, a real transition in terms of leadership here.

Oh yeah.

Generationally, that will be pretty important and telling in terms of kind of what that legacy looks like.

So we'll definitely monitor this as it goes.

But, one thing that obviously was a big news of the week is that President Donald Trump delivered his first address in the second term to the Congress.

We're not calling it a state of the Union.

It's not technically that, but in more or less it is a state of the Union.

This is a pretty baldly partizan speech.

We rarely see presidents deliver this partizan of a speech, but given the times that we're in, given the way that the politics of this works, I'm not terribly surprised.

Actually, we kind of predicted this last week.

Right?

We know that when presidents talk, they want to talk to their base.

That was easy to accomplish, but there was no reference to trying to find a Partizan agreement on things.

In fact, even use the Democrats as like props.

Yeah.

Saying basically, you should be clapping for the things that I have done and also the hypothetical things I haven't done, but that you wouldn't clap for me for it.

Right?

Yeah, yeah, about that.

And, you know, the fact of the passion of, former President Biden also was like, oh.

Name of at least ten times like, that's pretty.

It was a little bit too much.

Perhaps, perhaps not I don't know, depends on how you see it.

Right.

But definitely not the kind of speech that wanted to build a relationship with Democrats.

And to me, that was kind of surprising.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, to a certain extent.

You were surprised.

Because it's your margin of victory or your maneuvering?

Yeah.

On Congress is very, very, very, very, very small.

Yeah.

You need to at least on a couple of these issues, like ensure that you've got some, like someone.

Right.

But no speaker Johnson might have been, like, sweating, like, oh, my God.

Like, I'm going to have impossible task so far, right?

He has delivered, kind of delivered, but we'll see if he's able to do that.

And that is relying, as you say, rallying the troops in Congress, like unity, unity, unity.

We cannot mess this up because obviously the midterm elections are 20 months away.

Yeah.

And that will create, perhaps some turnover, perhaps Republicans lose the majority in the House or in the Senate.

So yeah, they've got to get these things accomplished quickly.

And yep, that means they're probably going to have to have some Democratic help.

That's going to be an issue, especially because we know the government runs out of money in a couple of days.

As of this recording, it's like nine days.

So that's going to be an obvious problem.

The other problem I think, that the Republicans face is that Trump has this to do list for them, which is outrageously long and probably impossible.

So like just a couple of these things would break the budget overall.

First of all, is balancing the budget, which is practically impossible, especially considering they want to have this huge.

Right.

Money for taxes.

I don't understand.

Yes.

You.

Can't both break the budget and balance the budget.

It's not possible.

But things like the no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on possibly car interest payments like these aren't things that are on the congressional agenda and that he just kind of lobbed out like, okay, go ahead.

You know what I mean.

We know who to blame if it doesn't go well.

That is a hard thing for Republicans to have to swallow, because that's definitely going to be an issue.

And here's the other problem, too, is that President Trump kind of comes to this point at a very low perspective that the his approval rating is lower than it was when he was in his first year doing the exact same thing.

His approval on the economy is two points underwater.

If you look at the economy itself, given that the tariffs, which I'll talk about in a second have come into place, consumer confidence is down.

Consumer spending is down.

There's a sense that maybe inflation is going to rise, leading to stag-flation, the worst s-word right in history that Jimmy Carter confronted that basically ruined his presidency.

So there's just a lot of economic turmoil.

There's a lot of concern that Donald Trump's going too far politically.

So my question to you is sort of how is it that he's going to navigate this?

He didn't act like any of those things were a problem.

All right.

And maybe presidents don't.

And they sort of rise above it and sort of pursue their agenda regardless.

But there are a lot of things that are kind of blinking bright red trouble spots that he hadn't really addressed.

Well, I mean, I mean, to be fair, he kind of, acknowledged that, but a mild, perhaps small discomfort.

Right.

A small pinch of, like, paying $12 for an avocado.

Exactly.

But certainly this is a huge problem, right?

Because, as you say, Is, Okay.

We are having these, perhaps cuts from Doge that we don't really know if they add up to that number because they don't so far.

Yeah.

And then having, making permanent the tax cuts that cost trillions of dollars.

Yeah.

And then trying to, revitalize, US industry by moving significant production lines to the US.

And that doesn't happen in six months, right?

Yeah.

And that is going to have certainly economic implications that the average consumer.

Yeah, is going to feel like if you're a billionaire.

Yeah.

You don't care.

Right?

Right.

You can buy tequila no matter what.

Whatever.

Right.

Go buy a whole tequila company.

Right.

So you can drink your own tequila.

We should start a tequila company as a side.

Yeah.

I don't think we'll manage to do very well.

I like tequila.

Yeah, me too, but I don't any we can discuss.

We'll talk about that offshore.

But, I think that, you know, prospects of having cars, increasing by.

I don't know how much percent.

I doubt that General Motors and Ford or Stellantis or whatever are going to say, yeah, yeah, we'll swallow 25 percent.

Which is a big chunk.

Right.

It is a big chunk.

So so that puts me in a place to say you have basically, in my estimation, you have until the midterm.

Yeah.

To make all these things happen.

And for the American public to feel that relief.

Yeah, I think that's the way it is for presidents who have that kind of very small margin.

Clinton was the exact same way that they knew.

They had to hustle.

Obama.

They knew they had to step on the gas to get things done, and they did.

So they'll have this too they'll find successes.

And, you know, the president had a laundry list of things that he said that he accomplished.

Many of them were executive orders that could be undone in the courts may object also.

So it's possible that some of these things aren't really continued.

But it is the case that he runs the party.

I mean, the difference between where he was back when last time he gave a speech five years ago to Congress like this.

You know, if Democrats were in charge now Republicans are in control and he is in control of Republicans.

So he has a lot more sway than he used to.

My question is sort of how did the Democrats react?

I mean, we saw Al Green here in Houston getting kicked out, shaking his cane at Trump, saying, 'you don't have a mandate to cut Medicaid.'

Which is the first time that I have seen that in the history, like I remember.

No, it never happens.

Right.

And he'll probably receive some kind of a sanction for it.

But as he said, you know, it doesn't matter.

You know, the principle, the thing was the most important.

There's also certainly the case that, you know, we saw the Democrats, I think kind of with the, like a lack of unity on their message.

Right.

Many of them got up and left halfway through.

Some of them held up little kind of signs that said, you know, Musk steals or, you know, save Medicaid.

There's a lot of kind of inconsistency in how they're messaging.

I still think that they don't know how to combat Donald Trump.

Some are saying let's just kind of let him punch himself out.

And some are saying we have to challenge every single thing that he does every single day.

None of it has really stuck.

And I think they're still floundering.

And to be honest, they look like a kind of fledgling minority party.

And that is going to be a trouble for the midterms because they've got to present some kind of unified front, which the Republicans are.

Absolutely.

I mean, one of the things that struck me is President Trump is a real salesman in terms of how he's selling his idea, whether people are agree or do not agree, that's beyond the point.

Yeah, but he's clear.

And the how he uses words really matters.

And then in contrast, you see Democrats, as you say, with, you know, little signs and this and that.

It's okay.

Yeah, sure.

And then you see the Democrat response and it's once again, 30,000 miles away from Earth.

Yeah, yeah.

It's, you seen very important words on the dictionary.

And yes, we need to be factual.

Anything.

But yeah, it lacks that connection with the average voter.

Why Trump what he's doing is going to hurt people.

Yeah, that's what Democrats need to be doing and they're not doing it.

I think that people want to see some red blood in their president, and they want to see some fight.

And if they don't always agree with the president on things, but they certainly like what he's doing, they like him in that way.

And so, yeah, that's something Democrats, I think could learn from.

So we'll see.

But obviously, you know, the administration is getting pinched in a bunch of different ways.

Like we said, there's a very real possibility that a government shutdown, there's a conversation about having a short term rally, a short term continuing resolution.

There still could dissent about how to pursue that.

No matter what happens, they've got to put the Democrats into at least some of these negotiations because they need them to be able to move forward.

So that's a definite complicating factor.

Things in Ukraine are exploding.

We kind of missed the cycle where there was a, you know, kind of high profile dustup of Vladimir Zelensky by the Ukraine.

I know you're not wearing a suit today either.

I was going to call you out for disrespecting our show and not putting the suit on.

And, but this became a talking point too, for some reason, that's obviously a churn that a lot of people are concerned about.

And, you know, the president is obviously fighting through that.

The third thing is, of course, the tariffs.

Right.

The Canadians are super angry at us.

They're booing the national anthem, right when it's being played.

Mike Myers on Saturday Night Live out of T shirt.

They said, you know, Canada is not for sale.

So like our allies are mad.

We're having to pay more for goods and services.

What is going to be the outcome of all of this?

And we were only like, what, 50 days into this presidency?

I don't know.

I mean, the question here is that what we know about tariffs is what are the, consequences?

Yeah.

And engaging a all war out with every single country in the world is once again something that I'm like.

I know you're, like, literally scratching your head, like.

Why should we do this?

Is this smart?

And again, yes, the US is the best economy in the world.

Yeah, right.

Let's say, as I said before, let's say it controls around 30%, right?

Yeah.

What about the other 70%?

Yeah.

I mean, once you create that, the enemies of my enemy, are they my friends?

Right, right.

The Kissinger style, the primacy, I mean.

Yeah, eventually China is going to go to Europe and say, hello.

Let's cut a deal.

Yeah, yeah.

Or, you know, economies are global.

And so, you know, the kind of marketing, the kind of industrial development, the kind of manufacturing that maybe a one country wants can be produced someplace else.

Donald Trump last night, like in the speech, talked about the Chips act.

He said, I want this to be undone.

I want to stop spending money on this investment, and then I want you to spend it on other things.

The problem is that a bunch of states, including Texas, have spent billions of dollars to develop infrastructure to encourage that.

Texas Instruments is spending like $1.5 billion in Texas and Utah to develop manufacturing plants.

So, like, the economies are really global in a way.

And if the president decides to shrink that in the US side of things, it could be like a serious problem.

But you're right to in that, you know, it's not so much just the countries are kind of at tug of war here.

It's the industries and it's the goods.

Right?

I mean, the Mexico supply 63% of vegetable imports and 40% of 40 plus percent of fruit and nuts.

Gas prices could climb because the instruments that are used to kind of, you know, manufacture, and to process the crude oil are from other nations.

So increase in gas prices, all the car equipment, all the car pieces that get assembled elsewhere and maybe kind of finally put together in the US are all put together here.

This is just a long way of saying that this could have serious ripple effects on the economy, that the president did acknowledge and said, well, okay, maybe it'll be a temporary pinch, but how much of a pinch are the American people willing to put up with when they wanted to have just low egg prices, period.

That's it.

I mean, I don't think it's going to be a small pinch because once again, moving a plant right from Mexico to the US, you know, it's not easy.

It's not like, okay, you're not playing SimCity.

Yeah, right.

You can move your your industry from one side to the country or whatever it is.

No, it's more complicated than that.

Yeah.

And then the capacity that other markets have.

Right.

If.

You know there's some goods are going to be substitutes.

Right.

If you're going to looking for a pickup truck and you're looking at Ford and, you know, whatever it is, suddenly you have a Chinese pickup truck that is, you know, same thing and probably cheaper.

Yeah.

In other markets.

You're going to go for that one.

Yeah.

So industries are also going to be hurt because yes, the internal market is very strong, but he's not as strong as the rest of the world.

It's a good point.

So that has important implications.

The price of eggs.

Well yes.

During the Biden administration eggs went up.

But during this administration eggs have gone up as well.

Yeah.

So it's not just blaming the other guy because at the end.

Yeah.

Right.

People are going to ask is that all right.

Yeah.

Fair enough.

Yeah.

That guy was a moron or whatever it is.

But yeah, you've been here quite a while and we haven't seen anything.

So like my Waffle House meal, like, cost extra because the surge is there.

Exactly.

I want to ask you about one last thing.

And that's the sort of theme of the address.

Now, Trump is a great showman, right?

Oh, yeah.

You know, offered a kind of admission to the, you know, to military academy to.

Oh, yeah.

Prospective student.

He made up one of the, like, the kids who, was suffering from brain cancer, honorary secret service member.

So, like, these are, like, kind of.

Yeah.

Nice moments.

Right?

And the tone of it, I think two really did kind of connect to conservatives.

Everybody else I'm not so sure about.

But he talked about the kind of renewal of the American dream.

I know you've done a lot of work.

Right.

Subject.

And so I'm wondering from you kind of how you see the president's pitch here to the American people.

Do they see this as the new American dream, in the very conservative view of things like maybe too conservative view of things?

Well, it depends, because there's no definition of the American dream, right.

So the American dream has many interpretations for many different people.

Is this it, though?

I mean, this is his, clearly.

But like, is this what people share or not?

I don't think so.

I think that it's it's a little bit more complicated.

And thank you for the plugging it.

Yeah.

Any publishers watching.

Right.

It's a new book that I'm working on.

But it's very first of all, it's very difficult to measure it.

Right.

So you can have the economic aspect.

You can have the value aspect.

You can have the I would say inspirational aspect.

So the way that he's selling the American dream, it's also very commodify in a sense that we're going to make your life better.

Period.

End of it.

And that has implications for how people understand it.

And It's if my life better yes or no.

Yeah.

And need not something that it's like well now I can spend more on Amazon or you cannot spend more on Amazon.

Yeah.

Or you have the bill collector knocking at your door.

So that is something that is not selling an ideal.

Yeah.

That could be different to measure.

And you could have perhaps different ways of interpreting it.

It's something that is real.

Do you have more money yes or no.

Yeah.

And people are going to say yes or are you working five jobs instead of one?

Yeah.

And that's a great question because that's really kind of what the president's trying to pitch.

Right.

And I think to some degree that's working.

But obviously some parts of it are still going to be a little bit lumpy.

And that's gonna have to play out over the course of like a little while longer.

There's also this threat that maybe the tariffs will be released.

That would be a problem because the economy basically like took a pretty song hit.

So there's a lot of things that we're still watching as it goes in flux, but let's shift and talk about Texas.

Like a more normal.

Okay.

Week Maybe.

Yeah.

One thing that happened this week is on public education.

The Senate unanimously passed a big teacher pay raise bill about $4.3 billion.

The House and Senate are both negotiating over vouchers.

In an odd twist, the Dallas County GOP chair, Allen West, who's used to be the, you know, state county site chair for the GOP, came out against vouchers, which is a little bit unusual.

He received a bunch of blowback on that, because there tends to be this kind of unity on this, especially among people who are on the more conservative side of things.

Basically a thin majority of House Republicans signed on to the voucher bill.

So there's at least some movement in terms of getting things done, about 79 co-sponsors, which is more than they need to pass.

But the concept in political science is called rolling, where you have a majority that supports something, but it ultimately doesn't pass.

And as an odd twist of fate, the Texas Legislature, it gets rolled a lot.

So a lot of people are saying that they're in favor of this, are going to sign on to the bill, but don't ultimately vote for it.

So those people include Dade Phelan, who's sort of uncommitted to this.

But there are some people who didn't sign Andrew Darby, Jay Dean, Ken King, and a bunch of others who are still kind of uncommitted.

So vouchers are still very much kind of in the, in the, in the churn on this, and just to throw one more piece onto this, it's about football.

It's Texas.

It's Friday night Lights, it's about how to keep unity in these communities.

And so there are people who have come out, like Dave Tepper, who've said that we can't afford to have the districts robbed of any students or any money because it will kill Friday Night Football in Texas, which would be a terrible thing.

But, maybe overreached from what he says.

But this would be a potential problem.

And maybe one more kind of log on the fire people saying, well, we shouldn't do this.

So what do you make of where things are on school choice and school funding?

I mean, that's one point of the argument.

The other point of the argument is how you're going to prioritize, students that apply for these.

Yes.

The brackets are huge in terms of, yeah, we're going to give you priority to this set of people.

That is basically, I don't know, 79% of school age, children that fallen in a low income household as defined by SB two.

Then you have that HB three.

That's the voucher version, of the of the house has more complicated formulas.

If you're below the 500% of the federal poverty line, then you're first in line.

But then, you know, below 200 below.

So what?

Now we're getting to the nitty gritty of the money.

Yeah, I need to like people are saying oops.

Well, well, that's a lot of money.

Yeah.

That's too much.

Like yeah.

That's not the right people.

Exactly.

So that gets complicated.

And that's exactly what I think it gives them the opportunity to say, yeah, maybe we should put it on a hold.

Yeah.

And not vote it, but we'll see.

It's.

Yeah, it's a lot of money and it's a big policy change.

Yeah.

And potentially constitutionally troublesome.

So they're going to have to really think through what that is.

So that'll continue as a. Yeah obviously point as we go.

Another kind of point that the Senate was working on this week is really two things.

One is that they introduced a bunch of legislation to kind of make Texas healthy again.

It's correct.

To increase the number of hours that public school kids spend in physical education, do things like banned federally, okayed food additives by bans, snap individuals from spending money on chips and soda and energy drinks.

So these are all pretty commonsense things.

I think they'll probably pass.

I don't think there's any real objection to them, other than just a sort of mandate that it has to be done.

But one objection that might come about is that, Dan Patrick this week said that, in fact, what is known as a New York strip, actually a Texas strip.

And so he has a very specific history of this where he says that this was a Texan invention.

So much beef is produced in Texas.

We should have it called the Texas Strip.

So are we going to be eating Texas strips pretty soon instead of New York strips or.

Well, this just another.

Way that, you know, legislators are kind of trying to prime the culture wars.

Well, I mean, both.

But according to the Meat Buyers Guide of the North American Meat Processors, this is on your shelf.

Association.

You don't even look this up like you just on your shelf, like pulls off.

Boom.

There is different definitions because the New York steak is also a strip or whatever.

It's also called the Kansas City Steak.

Right.

And you can see in the catalog you can see the numbers 1179 and 1180.

Be the scientific definition that it can be either bone in gotcha or boneless.

So now we're and all of our listeners and watchers are meat experts.

Bud Kennedy, who is the sport?

We're Star-Telegram, food writer and political writer.

So the reason is called New York Strip.

So they can charge more money for it.

So.

Well, I guess maybe we'll keep it that way.

But I'm going to enjoy a nice Texas strip this weekend.

I'm I'm going with you as well.

And that we'll report that on next week's, episode.

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

The party keeps up next week.