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

I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus.

We're professors of political science here at the University of Houston and co-hosts of Party Politics.

We are entering the home stretch, my friend, in terms of the election.

Indeed.

We are.

I am ready because I can't turn on the TV or click on anything online or look at my phone.

Yeah, without getting a text message, well, I mean, or, like, apparently, digital ads or something.

I'm very good friends with Talarico.

I'm extremely good friends with Paxton.

If you give him $5.

You have to give him $5 And many other candidates because it's like, hey, this is James, and, This is Ken Like you're on a first name basis.

That's pretty exciting.

I am, I am.

Yeah, ok.

You know what?

That's great news.

And I think for everybody listening and watching, it's great news that we're coming to the end of this.

Yes.

But there's still more to say.

And I think the fact that Texas is in play is fascinating, right?

Yes it is.

We've been seeing Texas politics for a long time, and there are so many different moving pieces that it's really interesting to kind of see them all come together, and we'll assess sort of, where things stand here just a couple of days before early voting starts.

So, let's dig into it.

In fact, alright, the first discussion point is going to be about a national story that does have electoral implications.

And that's that the, there's a criminal investigation from ICE that is essentially run through DOJ for an Ilhan Omar, who's a representative from Minnesota.

She's been a long time target of President Donald Trump.

The DOJ says that they're basically looking into her immigration paperwork.

The subtext here, of course, is that this is potentially the White House using its means to be able to investigate a political enemy.

So I wonder if you think that this is, kind of complicated and just to kind of throw another log onto the fire.

The White House is also set up a special committee to investigate.

Lisa Cook, who was a, who was a, a Fed Board governor.

So she's basically one of the people who helps to set the nation's monetary policy.

Oh.

The president has long had it out for her.

There's been this controversy about her mortgage, and the president tried to remove her.

The Supreme Court said, you can't do that without due process.

He set up a separate independent internal committee to do exactly that.

So that investigation is ongoing.

And together there's this, I think, kind of wretched stink of the abuse of authority.

And I don't see any other way to describe what this is.

And so I guess my question to you is what effect is it going to have, not just on the election?

Because like, normally DOJ doesn't engage in these kinds of actions before an election because it has complete, you know, problematic outcomes, especially if it's not true or ends up not being true, it's sends a negative signal.

And then what do you think about this in terms of this, the general use and abuse potentially of power from the white House.

Well, I think that the implications are very serious because once you enter into this slippery slope.

Yeah.

in terms of using, justice that in theory should be blind, right?

And use it as a political arm to advance, or go after your enemies, is just a clear.

I would say, marker of what authoritarian regimes have used for hundreds of years.

Yeah.

So that's one issue.

The other issue is looking into the future in terms of when Democrats are in power, whether they're going to return the favor.

Yeah, right.

So that's another potential implications and how far we're going to take this thing over and over.

So you have two issues here.

One is this alleged immigration fraud.

To become a naturalized citizen, it's a very complicated, very arduous process.

Right.

It's not that very easy.

Yeah.

to commit fraud.

Has there been fraud?

Absolutely.

But it's hard on the one hand.

On the other hand is, what is the president trying to do in directing DOJ, or in this case, HSI That is a Homeland Security Investigations Unit to go after that, doing a raid in a house of a U.S.

representative it's also very weird.

And finally, we have the Committee of Inquiry.

Yes.

The White House.

They need, once again, the disregard for the balance of powers, yeah, that the Constitution has.

And the rhetoric is very funny, right.

Because is you hear from the white House and other members of Congress, we should respect, love the Constitution.

The Constitution is.

But then they say, well, only when it goes in my favor, yeah.

because the Constitution is very clear, right, in terms of, the balance of power, the divisions of powers, and what Congress and the judiciary should be doing.

So once again, is, is, is I, I guess, they're trying to attempt is to advance the economy, the policy that the president wants.

And that could have also devastating consequences for the US economy.

That's a good point.

Yeah, I think you're right on this.

And obviously, the fact that this creates this potential abuse of power scenario means that you could see future presidents using it, and it could be much worse and much more complicated.

And obviously, the end result of this is just this abuse of power.

Question.

That's the most complicated and problematic of how the executive is using its authority.

But I also think there's another issue, and that's that at some point you're going to find people just not wanting to be in government service anymore that they're kind of on the hook to be investigated, oh yeah.

for anything that happens.

Yeah.

and they're going to get their house raided, they're going to get lawsuits filed, they're going to get criminal charges and investigations.

These are all things that are going to dissuade people who might otherwise want to be in government from being in government.

So I think that implication has serious consequences down the road, so that even now I think you're seeing basically only the most hardcore, committed partizans in these offices, yeah, that's red and blue.

And the problem then is that you don't have people who just want to be in public service, right?

That's no longer kind of why you're there.

Right You're there because you want to advance Partizan interest.

Well, that's not what most of government does.

And so that creates, I think, this loyalty complication.

And then as a result, you're kind of just weeding out the people who might otherwise want to just be public servants without the kind of partizan bent.

So I think that has implications too.

But that's kind of an unknown moment.

And that's kind of unclear because, you know, we have to see how that plays out.

But what is very clear is that if this is used as a way to try to influence monetary policy, especially in the case of Governor Cook, then you can definitely see this being something that is problematic, oh yes, from a managerial perspective.

Now, the president has tried in many different ways, as we've talked about over the years, to influence the monetary policy.

And it's probably too late to do much good in terms of this election.

But he's hoping that they can rebound, you know, for the next his last couple of years in office.

So there's certainly a kind of an effort here.

And I just don't think it's going to go well.

Right.

Yeah.

Politically it has serious implications.

And even though we're not seeing a lot of pushback on this, you're certainly seeing people, you know, members of his own party push back on lots of issues, some of which we'll talk about today on the foreign policy in the Ukraine.

But let's pivot to talk about another White House decision this week.

He has axed Kimberly Guilfoyle, who is the U.S.

Ambassador to Greece.

The controversy involved a Trump donor who apparently Guilfoyle had asked to pay her $100,000 credit card.

The implications here are pretty profound.

The evidence, though, she says, is not proper, and he says it's not exactly the way things happened.

So there's still some ambiguity about what exactly happened.

But as a result of this discussion, she did get fired.

And so we're seeing effectively a kind of real moment where the scandal did catch up to the White House.

Right.

What do you make of this?

Well, I mean, obviously, its once again, these many other instances of potential acts, alleged acts of corruption by members of this administration that are in very, very high, positions.

So it begs the question regarding have we drained the swamp?

Or not doing the swamp.

Are we allowing these things to go further without investigation and circle back to this issue of the DOJ, why the DOJ is not investigating these things, right, and goes and investigating alleged fraud here or etcetera, etcetera.

By people that do not align with the president.

Right.

That's a good point actually.

Like in fact, we're used to seeing the kind of reaction in agencies when things like this happen, when agency heads, she's not an agency head, but she certainly has sort of a role like an agency, you know, leader would.

And we're used to seeing the scholarship on this suggest that basically when these scandals pop up, that internally, agencies are more likely to do more investigations, right, more internal audits.

So there is a kind of boomerang effect where the scandal does have an effect on trying to kind of clean house.

But we may not see this in this case because of course, it's a Partizan effort, but it's also the case that she has close ties to the Trump family.

So it's possible you don't see much from this.

It's also possible it's not true, right, that this could be something that is found to be untrue, even though, sure, the Wall Street Journal reported this.

So, but I do think in terms of the implications to the scandal, pretty impactful.

And that's that it's not so much the case that's sort of public outrage is the thing that ends careers.

It's mostly the case that these leaders basically have a kind of continuing association with those scandalized is problematic.

So the Trump White House realizes that, like, this is a liability and they can essentially cut ties.

So this is something we've seen before.

The president is the most important figure in the White House.

Correct Everybody else is sort of expendable.

And the farther down you get on the trail, the more likely it is that you're going to get axed.

And so she is an ambassador to Greece, a country that, you know, you could easily find a replacement for, basically gets the axe.

But what's funny is that she actually survived several other scandals that otherwise might have actually in the past caused her to get fired.

So even all the way back to September, there were concerns that she was mixing business arrangements and her professional public government role.

So there are, I think, kind of some hints here that maybe that, you know, again, scandals aren't as impactful as they used to be.

In this case, it did end up being bad for her, but she was able to hang on for a bit longer than usual.

So the resignation is a kind of containment strategy, right?

It's not necessarily accountability, but it does provide at least some sense that there are some watchdogs.

So to your point about this being something that, right, needs to be thought through and investigated, it does at least provide some clarity about what we, if it's true, then should be something that's not acceptable.

So we'll see how the institution kind of deals with that issue.

Another Trump issue has been the ongoing conflict in the Ukraine.

This has been exploding this week because the president has issued an executive order, basically to reduce the import restrictions on diesel from Russia.

About 300 tons of diesel and the principal will flow into US markets in general.

I think the hope is that this is supposed to help ease some of the pricing issues with respect to diesel, which are creating inflationary issues and obviously political problems, but there's more to it than that.

So what's going on?

So the issue is that President Trump announced this energy cease fire because the president wants.

To the surprise of like everybody.

Yeah.

And it's an urgent energy ceasefire between the Ukraine and, Moscow.

And the whole idea is to allow the US to purchase or import diesel directly from Russia.

So everyone was saying, wait, what?

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said energy cease fire.

What are you talking about?

They're still sending drones and bombing or energy and gas facilities.

So we're not going to play it because we know and everybody knows, right, that, Russia is not going to enter any ceasefire or anything like that.

And then obviously Republicans here, there is this bipartisan committee between, members of the Senate saying like wait a minute.

I mean, like, what are we doing?

Well, yeah, because they just passed legislation the president signed that basically had, you know, these tightening restrictions, citing sanctions on Russia.

So.

Especially regarding oil and, and, you know, diesel and gas and that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

And now Treasurer is basically like lifting those restrictions.

So there's a bit of whiplash here politically.

And obviously the implications are pretty profound in terms of the race that's upcoming.

Right.

We start voting literally in days.

And so this is kind of a concern because obviously there's a highlight here that this is still an ongoing problem, that diesel prices are still high.

Oh yes.

That just flags people's memory.

If they don't even if they, you know, needed that to say that the prices are still high.

It's a moment where Donald Trump is injecting himself into the debates and into the electoral cycle, which for an unpopular president who's, you know, basically, you know, underwater in many states, including some red states, is not a good position for him to be in.

And I don't know how much 300 tons of diesel will do in terms of what that looks like, to provide for some relief at the pump, but it's not that much.

And so I don't think that this is going to make a huge difference, certainly not a time for it to reduce inflationary pressures before the election.

Well.

And especially from a war that the White House started, that it was going to last a couple of hours.

Right.

The Iran Conflict.

Right the Iran Conflict and etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

But in another point, it only shows, especially when we are looking at the international agenda or scenario, is that the US cannot be trusted.

Yeah.

All right.

As an ally.

And that is what our European allies and all the Western democracies.

Our question is not what are you talking about?

Right.

Like you cannot change and flip flop one way or the other because you have an election.

Yeah.

And our allies are every single day pulling away from the US as the leader of the international arena.

Right?

Yeah.

And I mean, Russia breaking ranks with NATO and the alliances there are certainly like historically, you know, damaging to those relationships.

So it definitely is something that's complicated.

And like the US needs the world, right?

As much as the world needs the US.

The president has outlined a foreign policy that really kind of draws things back in, and that's his prerogative.

And there's some advantages to that, but it's also some serious disadvantages.

And this is one of those moments where a you need the kind of aid of other nations to be able to solve these problems, and the promises to solve them have kind of come and gone.

So, as you say, the kind of, you know, kind of role of the U.S.

in this is really just a kind of spoiler.

And Russia, and Iran, among all the international players, have called the bluff of the president.

Yeah.

And and they one way or the other.

They understand, I think, that, Russia and Iran really understand how the president operates, and they know how to say, no, we're not going to do it.

And I also think there's a rug pull.

Here for the American people.

This is the third time the president has attempted to do something to bring down gas prices, especially diesel prices.

And every time he hasn't followed through on it.

So I think part of the problem isn't so much that, like these are logistically creating complications for people in terms of inflation and high prices at the pump, but also that they look at the White House and say that they're not doing anything to really help.

Right.

Yeah.

And I think that the images here, the kind of optics of this create a real problem for the president politically.

It a really bad moment for a lot of these campaigns that are basically finding, like a lack of kind of political enthusiasm among Republicans.

So to pivot to Texas, I want to talk about what people have come here for, and that's to talk about the Texas political scene.

The polling this week suggests something, I think really important.

I want to get your take on this.

And that's that.

Basically 70% plus of Democrats are enthusiastic to vote, but only like 30% of Republicans are enthusiastic to vote in Texas.

This has tremendous implications, and I think partly the kind of Trump phenomenon we've been talking about is part of it.

There's the sense that the president isn't doing enough to help the Republicans down ballot, not like coming here.

That's one thing.

Like physically being here is one thing, but like an all out effort for frankly, two years.

But even like two months would have been helpful to try to move things politically and try to get a narrative that was going to be sellable to people which are out there.

It's just a kind of question about, you know, focusing it, making sure you have that trajectory and then spending the money to get there that Trump isn't doing those things.

And so the Trump White House as a result, is kind of a, you know, adrift here.

So that polling also suggests that 1 in 4 Trump voters say GOP candidates should break with the president.

We're sort of seeing this from Ken Paxton, right?

Every other day there's like a leak, right?

Him internally saying, well, Trump is actually hurting us.

Yeah, I mean definitely.

So I mean, he's saying the quiet part out loud effectively.

But I do think that this is a like a liability for Republicans.

So what do you make of the fact that this there's this enthusiasm gap.

Well, I mean, I think that is the lack of tangible results, especially from the Trump administration in terms of delivering lowering gas prices, sending money to households, given all the tires that we have, that we were going to have so much money that we wouldn't know what to do with it, right?

Like, the cartoon, you know.

The duck.

Like Scrooge McDuck?

Yes.

That like.

Swimming into the coin.

Diving into the coins and spitting them out like that.

And, you know, grocery prices, Cocoa Puffs, beef, etc., etc.

nothing has materialized.

That's one issue, right?

That the promises of the campaign were so clear, so obvious that there is not a way of spinning it out, of spinning in a different.

Way into reality.

Why?

Because we enter at, I don't know, maybe this administration around $3 per gallon gasoline.

We're not at that anymore, right?

So you cannot blame the Biden administration for these things because you control the House, you control the Senate, you control the White House.

So yeah, it's complicated.

You own it.

Yeah.

And polling reflects this fact that mostly 70% plus of people suggest that the prices are the result of the Trump administration, not a result of, you know, the Biden administration.

That's a smaller percentage.

So there's a real, yeah, liability here.

I guess the question is where Republicans are.

They just sort of saying we're as frustrated as everybody else.

Are they saying they don't like the messaging?

Are they saying they don't like the broken promises?

They don't like the candidates like it's a lot in Texas to basically only 30% of Republicans enthusiastic.

But I mean, I think that that enthusiasm is also has to be reflected in terms of the couple of past legislative sessions, right, in terms of really, really focusing on important policy issues.

Right.

And those important policy issues have to do, for example, with infrastructure, have to do with issues related to water issues, to taking care of our roads, bridges, so on and so forth.

Right.

The basic stuff.

So I think that the legislature and then the political agenda has gone on.

Oh, we're going to do vouchers.

Yeah.

And some people are realizing like, wait, give me one second.

Why are we doing vouchers if we have public schools, why we're not investing in public schools that have worked for many, many, many, many, many years.

Right.

Why are we not paying our teachers?

You know, this or that, etc., etc.. I got four questions last week from reporters just on public education, and we've talked about this for months, ow public ed is a huge liability here.

But that's just one of the issues.

And what's funny is that they're spending more money on these things, right.

They hit a tremendous amount of money.

Correct.

And on water and infrastructure.

Right.

And on like energy use.

There's a lot of money that's being set aside for these things.

And maybe it's not enough in a big state like Texas, but like it was a start.

So I'm trying to say that like were.

But it's the timing of the start right?

Yeah.

Well know for sure.

Yeah.

And it may not be kind of enough, but like I think what the messaging has been is sort of antithetical to that.

Like there are things they could brag about that do kind of connect with what people care about.

Now, clearly it hasn't really manifest, right?

People are still mad about, you know, inflation.

There's certainly a sense that things aren't going in the right direction.

Things are way more expensive.

Everything's more expensive.

Housing, insurance.

Right.

And so that's just how things are growing in Texas.

And so people are mad about that for sure.

But there are ways to be able to, you know, message around that.

But they're messaging and this actually comes from Dade Phelan.

Right.

Who's the sort of outgoing speaker he's retiring from.

The Texas House says, basically they're focused on things like, you know, like boys and girls sports and things that are so socially driven that most people don't have any real connection to it.

So all of a sudden it's a messaging problem, not so much a content problem.

And I think that's the real liability that Republicans are facing.

And that's why there's this lack of enthusiasm, because the fight is really effectively lost in terms of messaging.

Right.

That's something that they may rally Republicans for.

But rallying Democrats and independents like is sort of unlikely in that case.

So that's why things are are tight.

It's also tight because there's this constant flow of bad news for Republicans, including this week's report from the Wall Street Journal that suggests that Ken Paxton has attended New Year's Eve celebrations in Dubai in 2025, alongside two Americans who were indicted for federal health care fraud charges, one of whom was a donor.

There's also, by the way, video of this.

So, the fact that, you know, he has this constant stream of bad news is clearly problematic, right?

And obviously, the fact that there's a donor connection here means that there's additional kind of problematic outcomes for him and gives the story greater political weight.

I think it also challenges at a really bad time for Paxton, the kind of law and order credibility so many of Paxton's recent ads have been basically him as attorney general fighting for justice, right?

Lots of different ways.

It's about, you know, kind of sex crimes.

It's about, you know, working on education, things like and for kids.

Right.

Sort of suing these big companies who are abusing kids like that is really a winning message, but it's undercut by the fact now that here he is partying in Dubai with people who are, you know, under kind of accusations of fraud.

So what do you make of the kind of politics of this as a kind of nother piece of this bigger picture about how Ken Paxton is faring in the Senate race?

Not good.

It's not good, right?

You know, it comes after the sort of ten days where James Talarico was off the campaign trail with the flu, and the kind of conspiracy theories about where he was, right, that have all been debunked.

Turns out he just had the flu, right?

Just kind of sucks.

Yeah.

Well, yeah.

And then suddenly this, and it was not reported by the New York Times or any other enemies of the administration.

Right.

It was reported by the Wall Street Journal.

And once again, this has very important implications.

Right.

And these implications are and other Republicans have said it over and over and over.

Senator John Cornyn said, like, I mean, why are we doing this to ourselves?

This is how political parties implode.

And, and and I think Senator Cornyn has a point to that.

But the fact that he's spotted with these, two alleged, individuals that have been indicted of health related fraud it's very, very bad because that remains especially in a very high stakes, very competitive election.

A little bit problematic.

No.

And it puts the Republicans on a defensive in a really bad moment.

Right.

I think it also kind of undercuts, yeah, some of the messaging that they want to say that James Talarico is too dangerous for Texas.

Well, like this is like looks equally dangerous in a way.

And so, I guess the question is what the impact will be.

And this is really the big kind of summary question about what Ken Paxton's strategy is.

Clearly, they want to rally Republicans, and they're good at that.

The polling does suggest that although Republicans are less enthusiastic about voting the the Republican ticket, especially led by Paxton's, getting about 90 plus percent of Republicans.

So they're not kind of where they want to be in terms of 95% range, but they're closer than they were a couple of weeks ago.

The real problem here is about the kind of margins, right?

That is, this race is going to be decided by a couple of hundred thousand votes, and you're talking about people at the last minute who have to kind of ask themselves if they're going to vote for Ken Paxton, because now, no more straight ticket voting.

They've got to go race by race, and that means they have to actively choose Ken Paxton.

The under vote is going to be huge on that and problematic for basically the whole ticket.

Right.

Because once you under vote on one, you may under vote on the rest.

That's just the psychology of it.

So there's a real liability here, I think in terms of the very few remaining persuadable voters, I don't think there are many people left.

Like we joked earlier in the show, like, let's just vote already.

But like, there are people who probably either are not decided about whether they're vote, and if they do go vote who they're going to vote.

So there are those last minute choices that, again, if this comes down to a couple hundred thousand votes, it's going to be the margin.

Absolutely.

But that's something that sooner or later we're going to find out.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus.

The conversation keeps up next week.

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