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

I'm Jeronimo Cortina, associate professor at the University of Houston, and Happy New Year.

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

Thanks for hanging out and talking politics with us on what's a pretty exciting honestly couple of weeks that we've been off but also really an important year to come.

So we're going to spend some time this week talking about stuff to watch for in 2024.

There's a lot going on and probably a couple of things that we won't have anticipated, but we will talk about at least the things that we know are going to be on that list.

One thing that did, of course, come up this week was that we had previewed the debate and conundrum about having a final budget deal.

Happily, that seems to have paid off.

Everybody had a little break.

Maybe, you know, they got a chance to decompress a little bit.

Maybe they like what they got for Christmas and had some champagne at new years.

And then ended up at the same place.

And literally agreed to the same thing they agreed to six months ago.

But you're exactly right.

Congress has basically agreed in principle to this spending deal.

The top line numbers have been agreed to by the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer and the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.

But as you say, this basically is the same structure that Kevin McCarthy had put into place.

And you have to imagine that he's probably like spit out his champagne like, yeah, on New Year's Eve, thinking we had this deal and I got kicked out because I was perceived to have played too closely with the Democrats.

So tell us a little bit about what this plan looks like and then what you think it means in terms of like where Washington is on this compromise question?

Well.

It's the same thing, right?

So basically, what this plan does is replicate the McCarthy deal with the Biden administration in terms of providing funding for the government to operate, which it's always a good thing.

Yes, we need money.

One of the things that initially were in the deal.

Right.

Or, you know, the trade or the horse that they were going to trade was immigration.

And we're going to talk about that in just a few minutes.

You know, right now those things are in a separate, separate, separate bill or separate disclosure negotiation, whatever you want to call it.

So it's going to be interesting to see because as you said, yes, they shook hands and, you know.

Yeah, in principle, right?

Yeah, in principle we have a deal.

Yeah.

If that deal materializes or not.

Yeah, it's tough to hammer out the actual language.

And that's where you might see some conservatives say, let's take a pause here because Speaker Johnson came to the office with the intention of being a fighter.

He was going to be the conservative star.

Worth it that McCarthy in theory wasn't.

But now here he is playing nice with the Democrats, giving the White House more or less what they want and, you know, averting a shutdown, which I think would have hurt Republicans anyway.

But some Republicans don't see it that way.

So this deal effectively is full of winners and losers.

I want to get your take on this, but you could make the case that Johnson can say that he and the caucus won.

They got cuts to IRS funding.

They got cuts to COVID funding.

That's what they had wanted.

They were able to secure $16 billion in additional cuts, which is not insignificant.

That's a billion With a B, it's a lot of money.

So they can basically claim that they tried to trim the budget and they did.

So would you consider him a winner in this or do you think the conservatives are going to be really mad about the principle of the agreement, but also that he didn't fight harder to get, you know, more cuts?

Yeah, I think I mean, it's I guess you can see it that way, too.

But also you can see it the other way.

And the other way is like you're not doing enough.

And especially for the group of conservatives within the Republican caucus.

Right.

And those are going to be the ones that are going to be at the end saying, you know, yes or no.

Yeah.

So to me is, you know, they gave them a little bit of crumbs here and there.

Yeah.

But I don't know if that's going to be enough to, you know, appease their appetite for significant accords, barely.

Enough to sponsor burp, as we say.

And Exactly.

They want more.

And people like Chip Roy from Texas want more.

And they say, look, you know, you were a fighter in the caucus.

You talked big like you were going to challenge Biden.

And now here we are agreeing with them on this stuff.

And although I frankly think that some a deal had to get done, there's just no upside to a shutdown.

The fact is that they didn't get everything they wanted and they're going to have to probably redouble their efforts to fight on other issues like the border issue, which we'll talk about in a second.

So I think that's a problem.

But remember, Johnson's in a tough spot here, right?

He's new to the office, so he has very little capital on this.

He doesn't know how to make deals.

That's something you have to learn over time.

He wasn't part of that leadership structure.

He has such a small margin of error here.

Right.

The number of Republicans is dwindling, like almost literally by the day.

Right.

So that's a real problem for him.

And so he really didn't have a lot of options here.

And so in that sense, do you think that, you know, on a curve that he was successful or do you take the Chip Roy route and say, you know what, you're mad.

Based on history, based on former Speaker McCarthy?

I think, you know, he's not a win.

Yeah, not a win.

Not enough of a win to be able to say.

But maybe he can get a win on something like border security.

Right.

There's been oncoming ongoing bipartisan talks on this issue.

And like you said, the chambers have basically agreed that they're going to partner together the border security plan with the Ukraine funding package.

Obviously, the White House is in some political danger on the border issue because you still have this context where there are, you know, thousands of people pouring across the border daily.

And this has become a real international issue.

Yeah.

Now, obviously, we live in Texas here, the epicenter of where this is happening.

Greg Abbott has made this a major political issue and has rankled the feathers, rankled the feathers, wrangled ruffled, ruffled, ruffled feathers of all of the creatures big and small, and other mayors of big cities who are receiving a lot of these migrants whom that, you know, the governor in Texas here is bussing to other places, are pushing back.

They're begging the Biden administration to do something about this.

So there's a lot of pressure on the Biden administration to do something politically.

This is an issue which Republicans can win on, and they may be very well winning on it right now.

It also divides Democrats.

And because of the kind of complications like we've talked about over the last few months, this is an issue that potentially could haunt them in the election.

So give me your take on like where this could lead and what the kind of best outcome is for each of the different players.

Best outcome for Biden, best outcome for Republicans.

boy.

Well, I mean, the problem with the border is that is, you know, immigration per se is a very complex phenomena that cross that cuts across, you know, many other different policy domains.

Yeah.

On the one hand, there is a need for labor, for instance, right here, qualified labor that would go and, you know, it's willing to work on the fields, etc., etc..

Right.

So there is these demand for labor and we have seen it that some positions have not been filled because workers here, they don't want to work on that particular industry.

And then you have, you know, push phenomenon, especially in Latin America, countries that have been, you know, having significant problems.

Right.

When you look, for example, at the case of Mexico, you have seen that Mexican migration to the US has basically go down, right, because Mexico is not doing so bad as in previous decades.

Yeah, right.

So that's one problem with immigration.

Yeah.

The other problem is the our immigration system and our immigration system, both Republicans and Democrats agree it's completely broken 100%.

The immigration docket in immigration courts are up to here.

Yeah, they cannot simply process as many asylum applications.

We have laws that determine how asylum seekers need to be processed, so on and so forth.

Yeah, so that's a problem.

Yeah.

And then obviously there is a political problem.

Yeah.

You know, Republicans are arguing, you know, this is chaos, we're being invaded, so on and so forth.

On the other hand, Democrats saying, well, this is just basically, you know, Republicans do not care about human rights on and so forth.

Yeah.

It's hard to ignore the imagery around it.

Right.

Where like you're seeing a lot of the kind of grouping of the border and people are climbing over fences.

And it's hard to know in a world where we live in if it's true or not, and if it's happening in real time or if this happened six months ago.

Right.

But it's still meaningful politically.

And so, yeah, even if it's not correct and even if you can kind of parse these numbers in some way that makes it better for Democrats, I still think it's a problem for them and they're going to have to deal with this.

yeah.

And the problem is like they're kind of looking for a bipartisan solution in a Washington that doesn't deal well with bipartisan solutions.

Right.

Yeah.

We've had the least productive Congress in like 20 years that just passed.

So getting something in anything pass is really hard.

And they're hitting some snags on things like tighter standards for asylum seekers, expanding expedited removals from the interior and giving the president what they call parole power the ability to effectively admit full classes of migrants on an emergency basis.

So these are some really thorny political issues and the numbers themselves could probably worked out.

But obviously Republicans have dug in because they can use what they see around them and the politics of it as leverage to be able to force the Biden administration to find all of something they don't want to swallow.

The question here or the first premise is that you cannot have immigration comprehensive immigration reform, period.

That doesn't exceed.

They're going to incrementally move.

Exactly.

That's the best they can do.

What Governor Abbott has done, very successful.

Right.

And perhaps this was an unintended consequence.

Right.

Was to put pressure on the Democrats.

Right.

Especially especially on the White House.

Be a Democrat.

Yeah, that's I think you're exactly right on that.

It's a stroke of genius in a way, right?

Yeah, it is.

Yeah.

I mean.

It maybe it was a risk.

They took it, like thinking maybe this would happen this way, but it happened.

It happened the way that you describe it.

Right.

And that pressure is real.

And so.

Exactly.

Biden camp can't just sit around and do nothing right to say like we're going to try to wait for the Senate to work a deal because that has to be something that they're involved in.

And they really have to be at the front of this because it's a liability for them.

So, I mean, the Biden administration has one option and one option only.

Yeah.

they have to come up out with a proposal very clear.

Yeah.

In the sense of given something to what Republicans want and then put them on the spot.

Yeah.

Like you want, you know, to take away parole pardon from the executive.

Fair enough.

It's out.

Yeah.

What else do you want?

And then start the negotiation process and then if then want to seek to negotiate because it is a rich, a rich issue that brings voters to the polls.

Yeah.

So if you try to take away the oxygen from the room and saying, yeah, I'm willing to sit with Mike Johnson tomorrow.

Yeah, come to the White House, bring your people tomorrow.

Yeah.

And we'll sit down and discuss these things.

I agree there are two problems.

One is that like presidents hate giving away their power.

All presidents both both parties.

True.

Right.

And so that's one issue.

But that can be nuanced, right?

The other is that when presidents get involved politically in negotiations over legislation, it partizan ises things.

And that polarization creates a difficulty of getting things passed.

So more I think, yeah, no, it does.

I think the biden administration is waiting right?

They're like, like, you know, chomping at the bit to get into this.

But the more that they are, the harder it's going to be to get something passed because it's going to be perceived to be like the Biden plan and the Biden plan won't pass in a House that, you know, has, you know, a lot of people who don't Like Joe Biden.

and why in by the speaker of the House to the White House.

So that's why you have a joint conference.

And if they don't apply, then it's like you play The blame game.

You exactly.

Do we just solve the immigration problem?

I think we did.

I mean, just bring it to Washington.

And 48 hours.

Give me 72 hours.

OK 72.

So I can site see a little bit and then.

Get some get get some Yeah.

Get some local delicacies.

yeah.

And then you'll be set.

I agree.

Well let's since we solve that problem, that's a different problem.

All right, Let's solve the problem of the Iowa caucuses, the 2024 election.

Jeronimo, is upon us.

We are literally like the days away from the Iowa caucus.

This is going to be an important test, I think, for Donald Trump.

The polling has consistently had him ahead by, you know, high double digits.

So he has to put in a good showing here.

But he's got some competitors who are really making some tracks.

Right.

You've got Nikki Haley, who has been surging in polling.

She put together a massive fundraising number just to pull them up here.

She put in $24 million last quarter and that outpaces every other person.

That's 83,000 new donors in that period, which is pretty impressive.

The numbers are looking better for her.

She did have a bit of a SNAFU where she said that she was going to compete in the Iowa caucuses, but that New Hampshire, the primary that comes the week after, would correct the Iowa results.

Exactly what she meant was kind of unclear.

But Iowa took that as an affront because it's easy to offend Iowans, apparently, especially politically.

They don't like to be challenged on that.

But regardless of all of that, and maybe even regardless of some of the stuff about people asking her questions about why the civil War persisted, why sort of things like that, And she had an answer that didn't involve slavery, which is the most obvious answer.

She has been moving ahead.

So like I said, I think Trump really needs to have a good showing here.

I'm not sure they will, because in terms of organization, in terms of money, in terms of impact, they simply have just been coasting on their lead.

Do you think that there's a chance here for an upset and what would that look like?

I mean, I don't know if it's going to be an upset.

I mean, if we base our decision or analysis based on the polls, I would say absolutely not.

Yeah, but, you know, these are polls.

No, and it's a caucus.

So people have to show up.

And, you know, it's cold in Iowa.

That's likely to be like in the single digits, which is unfathomable for us in the races.

But it could snow also, which makes it hard for people to get to the polls or to the caucuses.

So that could create some complications.

You know, so so it's you know, it's decision time is game day.

You need to have your quarterback ready, all of your fans ready, defensive team, special teams ready.

And as you say, I haven't seen too much of a traction in Iowa, especially on the ground work, especially from the Trump campaign.

So we're going to see if he delivers or not Delivers.

As you say.

I think he needs a solid win.

Yeah.

I mean, he needs a double digit win, single digits or close win.

It's going to be very bad because then you have DeSantis and Haley, you know, ready.

They're going to smell blown in the water and then boom.

Yeah, no, you're right.

And on your kind of football analogy that the team has to be ready to use, the quarterback of Team Trump is spending time in court.

Yeah.

And so we'll talk about that in a second.

But obviously, to me, that creates a real problem where you've got Nikki Haley out knocking on doors.

You've got Ron DeSantis.

He's like in diners talking to people.

You know, you've got some of the other rivals who are not, you know, making debates and aren't, you know, polling.

Really high, like Vivek Ramaswamy, but they're definitely out there fighting, too, and to some degree fighting for the same voters.

Right.

Like some of the Trump supporters may decide that we haven't seen Trump the legal problems or really issue game day decision.

I'm going to think I'm going to go with Team Haley instead.

Right.

Or Team DeSantis.

So the polling doesn't suggest that's the case, but he's not doing himself any favors, right?

He's making speeches about how he'd be a dictator and and how, you know, you know, these rambling kind of campaign events that he's kind of known for.

I mean, people find it endearing, but also creates problems for him.

So as a legal question, as a political question, he definitely is going to have to I don't know, suit up in a better way, right?

Yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, but you get the helmet on tighter strap that chin guard down.

Yeah.

Like buy the mouth guard.

I don't know.

Yeah, well, something because otherwise you spend most of your time in court, which is where he's been.

So Donald Trump this week traveled to Washington, D.C. to appear for an appeals court hearing about the case in terms of his prosecution about efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Basically, the question here is whether or not the president is immune from prosecution for actions that he took while in office.

This is a Trump question, but it's also a bigger question about what the president's immunity looks like after they leave office.

We've never had a president who's been indicted after they've left office.

So this is all kind of really new territory.

So the appeals court is going to have to kind of tease this out.

Now, Trump's argument basically in the camp that his legal argument is that because he was president, he's immune from these.

Questions, period.

Period.

But the prosecution's argument basically is that this extended claim of immunity has never been something that's been extended to presidents, has never been relied upon.

So some of the dynamics of this are really interesting.

You've got the lawyers for Trump answering questions about what would exactly consider a qualified immunity or full immunity here.

Like, for instance, if you had the Navy Seal team sent to execute the pull out of a political rival, would that be something that would be cover up all from this sort of blanket immunity that the Trump team is claiming?

And what the Trump lawyer said was, well, if they had been sort of, you know, prosecuted from Congress, impeached and Congress had given them the final.

Okay, then then that would be okay, because then you have like a verified outcome that didn't strike the justices as being very fair or kind of concerned with the rule of law.

So those kind of questions to me are really interesting here.

And I think to me, the biggest kind of conundrum that the courts face is how broad to make the blanket immunity.

They could make it very broad in the way that the Trump legal team is saying, like whatever the president did in Oval Office while in office, they can get away with it, for they can have a much more narrow version of it so that things that don't cross other kind of criminal statutes can be considered immune.

But beyond that, maybe not.

So there are lots of ways they can pass this, but the politics of this are really stunning.

And that's why I want to ask you was like, what do you think this means for 2024?

Here's a president under indictment saying they can do effectively anything they want, including and up to assassinating political rivals.

So assuming they don't get caught and Congress is sort of jacked, but when would a Republican Congress object to a Republican president killing a political rival?

I don't want to even go there, but that's the question that we confront.

So what do you think this means politically for the president, former president?

Oof, I guess I don't know.

I mean, because if you know these appeal courts and eventually is going to go to the Supreme Court besides that yes, indeed, the president has blanket immunity while empowered to do whatever they want unless, Right.

A partizan country partizan body which is Congress determines if it is an impeachable offense or not based on a definition of high treason and misdemeanors that is bay in itself.

Yeah, right.

He's going to create havoc that is, you know, basically democracy would be dead!

That's a stunning Point actually, because then what you would have is a Congress who would have to stop the president at every action to say, we're going to officially sanction you for this action because in the event later on, want to prosecute you for it, we have to have some kind of record.

Exactly.

So it would basically clog up the politics of Washington.

All.

The time.

yeah.

And what are we going to spend our time playing?

Impeachment, impeaching everything for every reason.

And we have seen that.

We're seeing it today, maybe.

Not far from.

Because it's the weaponization of of tit for tat, for impeachment.

And frankly, that's going to stop, you know, the whole process and everything else.

Yeah, it's a great point.

No, I think you're right.

We'll see how this plays out, because politically, this could be damaging for the former president.

It's the one major liability that he faces.

So we will see.

But in the meantime, let's talk Texas.

This is Party Politics.

I'm Brandon.

This is Jeronimo.

Obviously, there's a lot going on.

The Lone Star State.

We're heating up with primaries.

But before we get to that point, maybe even feeding this to some degree is a lawsuit from DOJ.

The Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against the state of Texas alleging that the new immigration law essentially is unconstitutional.

Basically, the law which is set to take place in effect in March, gives local police the authority over immigration enforcement.

And it's faced criticism about the potential to lead to racial profiling.

There have been isolated incidents where people have reported this to be true already.

It also allows for a judge to order an undocumented person to return to the nation from which they entered.

There's a lot of thorniness here.

This is obviously an attempt to try to overturn prior law, which the Supreme Court has said it was limited.

Texas wants to lead the way on this.

You have a lot of politicians here who would love to see that as a feather in their cap.

You're an expert on this stuff.

What do you think is going to happen here in terms of the kind of border security issues?

Well, I think, you know, this is clearly a federal prerogative, right?

Immigration policies are federal prerogative.

Do you think the courts will agree?

I think the courts have to agree.

And there is enough jurisprudence and enough cases before we have Arizona, SB 1070 before that has been ruled like, yeah, you cannot do that kind of stuff.

So I think I mean, the court said in my opinion, based on jurisprudence, based on the Constitution, the proper clause, etc., etc., it's clear that they have they have it.

But once again, it creates more pressure for the Biden administration and especially for Congress, because Congress is the one that changes law is not the precedent.

So here Republicans and Democrats are at fault.

And I think that if Governor Abbott wants to really have a change, he needs to start pressuring, you know, at least the Texas delegation know the border governors interest ratio of the delegations to say, okay, now we have come to the point that we need to change these things.

So we'll see how it goes.

Yeah, but DOJ getting involved in this definitely is part of that process, right?

Like it's as much as the legal questions, also a political question.

So you're going to have a lot of these primary fights which we'll talk about over the next couple of weeks centering on these questions.

Right.

How far to the right can you go on border security?

But the tension, the fights, the battle inside the GOP isn't just about immigration.

It's also about Ken Paxton.

Yes.

So we talked last year about this ongoing conflict when from the lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, and the Speaker of the House Dade Phelan about the conflict and the impeachment of Ken Paxton, the attorney general, it ultimately led to Ken Paxton's acquittal, but the cost of it is still in dispute.

So just this week, you had the lieutenant governor attempting to continue to put political pressure on the speaker by saying that he is "slippery Dade" Telling him that he needed to essentially agree to this audit, which would tell the state how much money the House spent.

The Senate says they spent roughly half a million dollars on this.

So how much of the House spend do you think this is going to be an issue that the lieutenant governor who clearly didn't make and use resolution to make new friends.

Right.

Is going to change the dynamics in primaries?

yes, absolutely.

Yeah, 100%.

So we're going to see that tension being, you know, transpired in the primary election.

And we have had, you know, those that support it.

Ken Paxton and then the governor has endorsed some.

The lieutenant governor has endorsed on the speaker of the House.

So it's just, you know, all front battle like WWE.

I remember with everybody in the ring.

The Battle Royale.

Exactly.

Someone would share a piece of wood.

Yeah.

We're going to see what's going to happen.

Exciting.

Well, inside the GOP battle is not going to be the only battle.

We're also going to see lots of battles between Republicans and Democrats.

And one is going to be in South Texas.

It's just going to be an interesting race here.

And some of the events of the week kind of lend some interest to this.

Former GOP Congressman Maya Flores, who's running for her old seat in south Texas, is accused of stealing photos from other social media accounts and from other news magazines and passing them off as her own cooking.

So people have dubbed this grub gate.

Now, she is basically using these pictures saying it's her own homemade food.

So her opponent representative Vicente Gonzalez says that she's the Jorge Santos of the Rio Grande Valley.

What do you think?

Is this going to matter to voters?

I mean, yes and no, Right?

I mean, like sure.

But as you said, scandals are death.

But, you know, we saw what happened with Jorge Santos, Right.

So in my heard.

Because what voters want is authenticity, right?

I think that's totally right.

Yeah.

And that's exactly what they're asking for.

So we're going to see if that's going to be the case or not.

And if GrubHub and stealing some enchilada pictures are going to have an important point.

I know you would never do that.

When you see pictures of food, I assume it's food that you've cooked.

Absolutely.

It always looks stunning.

So it looks like it should be like in a magazine.

Yeah, but it's your actual Absolutely.

100%.

Thank you for the filters on the.

Yes.

But we're going to leave it with an empty stomach.

And that's it for this week.

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

The conversation keeps up next week.