<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 the co-hosts here And obviously political science professors where we're putting our degrees to good work.

This week a lot going on foreign policy, domestic policy, municipal policy, all actually to some degree kind of swirled together, right?

Indeed.

Pay attention what's going on around the horseshoe in City Hall?

Let's talk about Iran first.

That's one of the, I think, most pressing issues that's happening this week.

The president has announced that he's extending a ceasefire with Iran after he said he wouldn't.

By the way, this is hopefully an effort to try to get some kind of a deal.

The deal is unclear.

Who's making the deal is unclear.

What's on the table is a little bit opaque.

So still lots of last minute questions that are being asked.

What do you think about this in terms of like the kind of grand scheme of whether this is going to be a conflict that can solve, as a president says, within a couple of days or not?

Well, those couple of days already passed.

So that was like a couple of days a couple of days ago.

Yes, indeed.

So no, there's I mean, this is a mess that was created by this administration, right?

And it was a complete miscalculation in terms of how Iran was going to react to the bombardments and this and that, etc., etc.. They thought that it was going to be a Venezuela 2.0 and that it was going to be very easy.

And just like.

That, like one media cycle.

Exactly.

We pick them out and put someone new in.

That's it.

And to the country.

Right.

Iran doubled down.

Iran is not giving an inch.

President Trump says that talks will resume very quickly.

And Iran said I don't know who are you going to talk to, but not with us.

We're not talking to you.

The Strait of Hormuz is closed, it's putting a choke in terms of oil distribution.

And Iran is just keeps storage in and storage and storing it's oil.

And if they have to shut down their oils.

that's going to be a real mess for the global market.

And obviously we're going to feel it right now.

Gas prices are four bucks on average around the country.

And people are feeling that in a midterm election.

Yeah.

Which is not where they want to be right now.

Numbers need to come down, and the White House is doing everything they can to try to get the decks cleared for what promises to be a pretty bad midterm for them, but they can do some things to solve this problem we saw.

James Talarico, actually, who's the Democratic nominee for Senate, come out and say that the gas tax should be suspended.

We talked a couple of weeks ago about how Sid Miller, the AG secretary here in Texas, said basically the same thing.

There's efforts underway to try to get the strategic petroleum Reserve to be opened up.

And so there are efforts afoot to try to get the gas prices down, but it's not going to come down fast enough, and it may not be soon enough.

Oh, yeah.

Because I mean, if you open the strategic reserve, that's not gas, that's not gasoline storage in whatever secret compartment it is.

That's oil.

And that oil has to be refined.

Right.

And our refineries, especially here in Texas, they don't have the capacity to increase production.

Why?

Because they're old and that's a problem.

So and the other thing is about the tax we talked about it last week is okay, fine.

But but then why are we going to do.

We're spending money on school vouchers right.

And those school vouchers.

We already know that the demand for those already surpass what the legislature intended to supply.

So we have more talks about property taxes, etc.. We're going to cut the tax.

I mean, believe me, I'm the first one who says, like hell.

Yeah, let's get rid of that.

Yeah.

Let's get.

Rid of it.

But the problem is that we're putting the state in a very, very, very bad shape.

And this is what would happen when you start embezzling and putting stuff on the credit card.

You have one of these shocks, and this is what happens.

Yeah.

Governor Abbott says he wants to eliminate property taxes.

We've talked about this before.

It seems like a tall order these days.

I mean, the money is sort of there for you to rearrange it, but it's going to be rearranging in the finer point.

That's really the critical part.

That's also true for Iran, where some of the sticking points involve like, how much money is it going to cost for Iran to be paid off, essentially to not engage in trying to refine its nuclear programs?

The negotiations have come upon the number of $20 billion, which is a lot of money, on top of the billions of dollars already spent to basically decimate their country.

I mean, it would have been cheaper.

Right.

Yeah.

Just pay them to start.

Yeah, yeah.

Here it is.

The bribe end of story.

Yeah.

And that's what the Obama administration, basically the 2015.

We're backing the same in the same without having gas prices where they are right now.

Back to the future.

Yeah.

And obviously to the economic shocks are pretty important.

Like you said.

You know, every time the president sort of negotiates this, it becomes a problem.

Every time he says it's going in the right direction.

Things improve.

So it's just like this yoyoing effect of the economy that you don't want in an election cycle where people want stability.

That's the one thing that I think they can offer, but they're not doing it.

So that becomes a real liability for the Republicans.

Another liability for the Republicans is what happened in Virginia this week.

The Virginia legislature voted to re-engineer their maps, basically converting the total number of seats from being like a 6 to 5 Democratic majority to be a 10 to 1 Democratic majority.

So Democrats have netted four seats in a redistricting battle that the Republicans basically started.

So how is this the case that we've seen a kind of negative consequence to this whole redistricting effort that the White House wanted?

Well, once again, if history serve us one way or the other, when Tom Delay, the exterminator Yeah, exactly.

Hot tub.

Tom.

Exactly.

Did this in a mid-cycle redistrictic, the consequences were disasters.

And we're seeing the same thing over and over.

And in addition, if the economy was good, if gas prices were two bucks per gallon, so on and so forth, then I would say, yeah, Republicans are just going to cruise over and win control of every single legal seat.

But the problem is that context.

The problem is these erratic domestic policy that doesn't solve the issues that President Trump did tell us during his campaign.

And also, there seems to be an important fragmentation within MAGA.

We are seeing among all these people in the world, Carlson Tucker.

Just saying, you know, basically we made a mistake regretting backing Trump.

Wow.

Regretting backing Trump in such a way that it's like, wait, what?

What happened?

And then John Cornyn came out and said, hey, Ken Paxton, who has been endorsed by Tucker Carlson, like, what do you make of this?

Right.

You're against Trump now.

So like every part of the kind of MAGA enterprise is being like torn at the seams, you know.

Exactly.

Well, so what do you think this means for the midterms?

Right.

Obviously the balance of power is pretty thin for Republicans.

They've only got a handful of seats in majority that could easily flip the other way.

But these seats are so gerrymandered, obviously, that maybe this won't change anything.

What do you think's going to happen?

Well.

Of course, but in some places gerrymandering is indeed in place.

But the composition of those districts are not as homogeneous as people would tend to think.

So, for example, in some districts, yes, you have people that may or may not vote one way or the other, or you have different races and ethnicities, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, both differently.

So the assumption here is that people are going to vote as a homogeneous block.

And that may not happen.

Especially Latinos.

Right.

Exactly.

That's a Texas thing and also a Florida thing.

Whose fighting out this very battle Ron DeSantis right now is like the most worried man in America, sweating the effort from the White House to pressure Republicans in Florida to make the same changes Texas did.

They might not.

They're balking.

And if they can't get Florida to redistrict, then basically the only win that Republicans had at the White House had on this redistricting effort was Texas.

And that's not enough even now.

As you said, basically to flip these seats.

But in Texas, the jury still out because we don't know what's going to happen.

We have seen indication, as we have said before here, that Latinos supporting the Republican Party and Latino supporting Trump was maybe a blip.

Maybe not.

It's not a part of a Partizan realignment.

Partizan alignments.

Decades, decades and years and many, many elections to come to life.

And just one blip in one election.

That's not it.

What a mistake, right?

I mean, it's so that they should have asked and or read something in political science to tell them this, because this is sort of so obvious that they've blundered this and it's their own fault.

I mean, if you look at the map here, right, the like Utah, which is the most conservative state in the nation, the Democrats actually gained a seat.

And if you look at what happened in California, they picked up Democrats, picked up seats there.

The Republicans balked at making these changes in places like Kansas, in places like Indiana, right.

Where right now.

Like, yeah.

And now the White House has to spend a bunch of money to try to, you know, kind of expunge those folks, which they might not get either.

So it's just been like a money and time and like political capital that's not paid off at all.

Well, it's not paid off.

And people take notice of these things.

And that is what sometimes political strategies are 11,000ft away from, from the ground.

Do not realize.

These like Arlington, Virginia based strategists were like, yeah that'll play.

Yeah.

That'll play in the middle of Iowa.

It's like, brother, you haven't been to Iowa, right?

You haven't been to Texas.

You don't understand how the electorate operates.

So the issue here is that that has consequences because especially they want for the worst thing that could have happened and is gas prices.

It's not that you say, oh, I don't know if if my cereal is two things or more.

This is like you go in and it's going to be double of what you were paying.

Yeah, totally.

Those are still liabilities.

I mean, I just bought a box of Kix cereal.

Remember Kix cereal?

Mom.

Parent.

Kid tested.

Parent approved.

Right.

Was the logo.

It was the little circles that are kind of semi-sweet.

Oh, look.

Three bucks for a little modest box.

Oh, you know, this is the kind of thing that adds up.

Who?

Look at this thing and say, this is like, not going to work for us.

So even if it wasn't gas prices, it could have been that the one thing that doesn't sell, I think, is just the sort of concept of like how democracy is being kind of challenged, right?

That's something that Hillary Clinton tried in 16 and something that Harris tried in during 2024, and it just wasn't working.

And so that aside, there's still kind of consequences to all of this that make Republicans in the White House look out of touch.

Right.

So you level all this on top of each other, and it looks like things are just kind of falling apart to that point.

There are also troubles in Trump's cabinet.

We've talked the last couple of weeks about some key departures like Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem.

But this week we've had a couple of more high profile incidents.

One cabinet member leaving, Lori Chavez- Deremer is leaving as Trump secretary.

Or is the labor secretary.

And Kash Patel, the FBI director, is in some hot water.

He has indicated he's going to sue the Atlantic over an article that claims he was engaged in excessive drinking and impulsiveness on the job.

What will happen with the legal standing on that?

We don't know, but the political consequences are pretty apparent.

And that's that.

It looks like the cabinet is just in chaos.

What do you make of the impact of this on the midterms, which are, you know, literally now months away?

Well, I think whether I mean, these are the resignations are obviously once again, they see it coming and, you know, you resigned because it's like, oh yeah.

You're going to get asked.

And so you just kind of take the more pleasurable out.

I mean.

It's.

It's better.

I mean, it's safe to run than to be fired.

Right.

Or to, I don't know, something safer than being asked on a tweet like, thank you for your service.

Right.

What does this mean?

Like fired?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

You're fired.

So that's one thing.

The other thing that I think it's very important.

President Trump wants always to portray or to give this image that he is in control.

Yeah.

Like 1,000% in control.

In control of his cabinet and control of what he's doing.

Right.

So the fact that you see these potential alleged behavior, especially by the FBI director or what happened by the now former US secretary of Labor, shows that the president is not in control.

Yeah, I think you're right.

He likes to show that he's in command.

I mean, you and I both watched The Apprentice back in the day before Trump was like a public official.

Yeah.

Remember when he was kind of.

It feels like forever ago, right?

But he's like, sort of took charge and was the key kind of boss who was, you know, kind of controlling this organization.

I think he likes to present that as the case.

And to some degree that's true.

Right.

I mean, he's able to basically, you know, kind of portray this, but also there are just some things that can't be ignored.

And I think what the White House wants to do with, especially the Labor secretary, is to say, let's just kind of have a clean start.

What they don't want is for this to linger over the midterms and have it be another piece of evidence.

Right.

It now, because it's happening this week, we'll be long enough away from the midterms.

But most people like what remember it directly.

They'll remember some general fray and friction of it, but it won't be the kind of thing that's like the reason people are going to vote in also this sort of niche for people who are kind of political watchers, right, who like to see kind of the ebb and flow of politics on the day.

But I think it's also certainly the case that things aren't going great for the White House.

Right.

And like you wouldn't say that this is a healthy sign, right?

This is not a good sign for them.

And it'll have some impact on the midterms, even if it's not like a direct impact on the midterms.

Well, yeah.

Especially because at the beginning of this administration, you know, we were given the impression that everything was 1,000% tighter than the first Trump administration.

And now we're seeing these fractures right within these fractures within the MAGA movement.

Again, within these fractures within somehow of the administration, perhaps not saying we shouldn't do this, but very erratic behavior in terms of what needs to be done.

And it's accomplished from a public policy perspective.

Yeah.

And Trump's philosophy on on scandals was no pelts given like we're not going to sacrifice our people for this scandalized activity even if what happened was bad.

But that's a mistake.

Yeah.

And I've said this before we need scandals to function as they do because they're a signal that something is wrong either with the person, with the rules, with the institution something.

So we need them to function.

So the fact that members and the fact that you've got cabinet officials hanging on for longer means that it does elongate the prospect of having the scandals drag those different parties and those different people down.

So the Trump administration, frankly, would be wise to just distance themselves from these things, especially going into a midterm.

But look, the White House is not the only organization that's struggling with scandals right now.

Yeah.

As it turns out.

And we talked about this last week because we had two high profile members of Congress resign.

And we have now a third and fourth who are kind of in jeopardy too.

But this week, Sheila Cherfilus- McCormick has resigned from the U.S.

House of Representatives.

Her resignation occurred just minutes before the House Ethics Commission was going to schedule a recommendation for sentencing.

They had a kind of rare trial in quotes with respect to the activities that she had undertaken.

Basically, she was accused of doing kind of funneling, illegally funneling Covid relief funds to her congressional campaign and also making other illegal campaign contributions.

There are criminal proceedings that are happening in Miami in February, but obviously this has an impact in terms of her political career, which is now effectively over.

What do you think this says about the state of the health of democracy, but also the House's ability to police itself, which just as a preview, I think is not that bad, right?

Well, I mean, I think that we're seeing these resignations more often because there is this threat of expulsion, right.

And some members of Congress specially, I would say, younger members or junior members of Congress are not going to have it.

And then is this impact that if you don't resign, we're going to go after you?

So on the one hand, this is positive, right?

Because it just shows that people might be able or Congress might be able to at least do one thing that is police themselves in terms of public policy and being the other core branch of government.

We haven't seen enough or.

A lot.

That's all on paper.

But yeah, that could happen.

Maybe.

But it just shows that that.

And then the other thing is, in terms of the state of democracy is wait, what?

Yeah.

Like why?

Where is the shame?

Where is it.

Forget about the shame?

It's like, how on earth do you think it's all right to use Covid funds to fund your political campaign?

Allegedly.

Right.

Where how would you think you could get away with this?

Yeah.

In fact, we know about scandals.

Is that, like, if you engage this kind of corruption where there's a paper trail, you're going to get caught, and if you get caught, then the scandal is going to bring you down.

So those things are all connected and I think totally plays out.

But like as I've said before, it's not so much as scandals don't matter.

It's just that they're like lasting longer than they used to be.

True for some members who have kind of a bigger partizan shield.

So her district would back her likely even if she ran again.

And so those kinds of partizan, you know, heightened moments allow them to be able to survive these scandals in ways that they wouldn't before.

Now the House is a different institution than others, so it does depend on what institution it is, the president or governors or even the Senate, because, you know, there's a different political time horizon.

You've got efforts in terms of like getting up challengers.

So there's a difference between these institutions that does matter.

But in this case, yeah, the scandal finally, finally mattered.

And I think that's the tagline is that the scandal finally mattered.

Right.

It didn't initially matter, but then eventually it does.

Now the other effort here is to try to get Cory Mills, who's a representative of Florida, also expunged.

He is in charged with financial and sexual misconduct.

Nancy Mace, the member of Congress from South Carolina, is introducing a resolution to try to expel him from office.

That is an ongoing question, too.

That could come, too, because like we saw last week, it was a kind of one a year for one of our strategy, right.

So we could see the thing same thing happen here.

Democrat, Republican both go down.

That keeps the count fair.

And honestly, these days it's all about partizan counting, isn't it?

Indeed.

Well, let's look at Texas and see if things are normal down here.

And.

Next topic.

Looking at my notes.

They're not.

Things are still chaotic in the Lone Star State.

Let's talk about religion and politics this week.

Dan Patrick, lieutenant governor, sparked debate by claiming that there is no such thing as a separation between church and state, pointing to the Constitution and saying, where does it say that?

Right?

Of course, it doesn't say that.

But like decades of jurisprudence has made it clear that there is a distinction between church and state.

The linchpin here was in federal court ruling on the Fifth Circuit, on Senate Bill ten, which is the bill that mandates the schools and public schools in Texas post the Ten Commandments picture is okay, that that is legal.

Now.

It had before that been the case that the lower courts had said it's not permissible.

The appeals court says it is now goes to the Supreme Court.

What does this mean for politics?

What's the Supreme Court going to do?

Well, I mean, yes, it depends how you interpret the Constitution, right?

But again, if we're going to interpret the Constitution, like where does it say yes, I mean, 100% is not there, therefore it's unconstitutional.

Fair enough.

Right.

But once again, is these issues about, for example, when we're thinking about Second Amendment, the Constitution doesn't say anything whatsoever, right, about the right to bear arms.

The right to bear arms were for a militia.

So if you want to bear arms, then you have to be a member of the militia.

Then militias have to be regulated.

When we're thinking about arms, weapons or whatever, we're not thinking about, you know, semi-automatic.

We're thinking about muskets, muskets.

Right.

With how quick are you to reload that musket.

The musket.

The.

I guess, iron little a, and then they and then boom.

And that kind of the flame.

That would make me nervous, right?

Yeah.

So reload that every single time you want to fire.

So it's a we going there.

Right.

And then we have, as you say, hundreds of years of jurisprudence and the fact that it also may be infringing our individual liberties.

Right.

The liberty for us to practice any religion or practice no religion whatsoever.

And that is part of the American dream.

And to have government be neutral with respect to the religions it promotes.

Exactly.

that is part of the establishment clause too and part of the jurisprudence.

The thing to me is that I don't know what the court will do on this.

If they decided to let this stand, it would definitely uproot, you know, decades of jurisprudence on the Establishment Clause.

So it would change the nature of really the kind of line between church and state.

So that would decimate it.

It that's the easy choice for them to say, because they can basically like rely on like all these past cases.

That makes it clear that there is this distinction.

Now they've changed the rules a little bit here and there to allow for more of the religion to be involved in the public sphere.

So it's possible they could find a lineage and find that linkage.

A conservative court could definitely do that.

Yeah, absolutely.

And to me, the politics of this is that would strengthen this hand that Republicans have tried to push for a long time, which is that they want to see more kind of religious kind of elements in public life.

So it would basically make that kind of storyline more momentum, give more momentum to that storyline, to trying to break down or minimize that wall.

So I don't know what the court will do, but it's for sure going to be a mobilization element for both parties.

Republicans can use this as a way to say we've won.

Ken Paxton this morning bragged about it on X. We're also seeing Democrats pushing back and saying look we have to have the separation.

This is a radical court.

You know, this is sort of too far extreme for what we want.

So both parties are obviously making a lot of hay of this, which, you know, again, in our political world is not surprising.

Speaking of politics and the public sphere, let's talk about the prospect that several cities will lose millions of dollars if Greg Abbott pulls funding.

And the hook here is that these cities, basically, in Greg Abbott's opinion, are not following federal policies with respect to ICE.

What do you think is going to happen?

In fact, Houston is voting literally as we're recording this as to whether or not to repeal the ordinance.

Houston got a lot of heat on this because they passed this through City Hall.

It was interesting that it happened that way, because it's one of the first times we've seen council really press a political issue on the mayor.

We have a strong mayor system in Houston, and council has reignited this debate and has pushed.

I think we're going to see more of this going forward, but at least for the current moment.

How do you see this affecting the politics long term, especially for John Whitmire, who has to run for reelection with now the police mad and progressives mad?

That's basically the two wings.

And if you make everybody else, you know, mad, who are you going to get to vote for you?

Well, I mean, it's an ongoing debate, right?

And it's the state claims that it's a violation not only of federal law, but also of state laws, Senate Bill number four, that prevents police from prolonging, you know, or changing interactions that limit immigration enforcement.

So that's one aspect, right?

The aspect of public safety or public law or the implementation of policing or whatnot.

And then the political aspect I think is very important.

It's it's once again, we're seeing these tensions within the Democratic Party in terms of progressive, really pushing forward a political agenda that is not necessarily aligns with that of more, I would say, with more traditional Democrats.

Right.

Especially here in Texas.

That's a great point.

And I think the kind of push to challenge the mayor has been on financial terms, like Chris Hollins is sort of key potential challenger who's saying like the city is being mismanaged.

Well, like the economics, the financial elements of how this plays out in the politics of it aren't as interesting or sexy as, for instance, like whether this is a good policy kind of to challenge the federal government to challenge Donald Trump on.

So candidates like representative or like Council Member Pollard or Councilwoman Salinas.

Right, who's really pushing this effort, has a leg up in terms of getting this political momentum.

And this also, to me is a real test of John Whitmire as the Abbott whisperer.

Right?

Basically, Greg Abbott's came out and said, you know, you have to change his policy.

And John Whitmire immediately said, okay, we're changing it.

So there's definitely a kind of element there where progressives are going to be mad at Whitmire madder than usual at Whitmire.

And it could jeopardize politically what he's up to.

Let's talk about the last kind of component.

And that's parties chairs in crisis.

Democratic party chair Kendall Scudder has received an open letter from several former staff and party incisors, creating challenging strategic direction.

You also have Allen West, Dallas County Democratic Party chair, Republican chair, who is resigned.

What do you make of the party's infighting and leadership in crisis?

Well, I mean, once again, in both parties, I think these asking or leadership is going to reflect these challenges within both parties regarding election procedures, regarding postures, regarding investment.

So and for and it's like big family fighting over.

But we're going to talk about that actually in our next episode.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus.

More Party Politics next week.

<Music>