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

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

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

Obviously, politics is going to come up in an insane week in politics.

So we're here to get you ready for your dinner party, your cocktail hour or anything else that you might be talking politics at, because you're going to be talking politics this week right, Jeronimo?

Just a bit.

So much going on.

The big news, obviously, is that we have a special session in Texas coming up.

This is going to be big news because there's a lot on the line for the governor and the House and Senate are warring like two opposing factions.

But the big news, of course, of the week is also in D.C. and that's that happily, the shutdown didn't happen.

Right.

We had a can a continuing resolution that limp the budget along, but it cost the speaker his job.

So a lot going on.

Just to kind of give us a quick recap here on the brink of a federal shutdown, like we said last week, the House passed a 45 day plan to fund the federal government until November 17th, which is not that far away.

The legislation basically reauthorizes all the critical parts of government National Flood Insurance Program and also some money for disaster relief.

It does not include money for the Ukraine, which was something that conservatives had argued it shouldn't be included.

So I guess conservatives did get that.

But they also got a pelt out of this.

And that is from their very own speaker, Kevin McCarthy, who is now no longer speaker, still a House member, but he is no longer a speaker.

He went up against the more right wing of his caucus saying, bring it on.

And they brought it.

Yup.

It has been brought and unfortunately he lost his job.

So give me your sense of kind of what this means and kind of how you took this when you first heard about this unfolding, because it was always a possibility, considering that this little group of radicals was looking to, you know, take down McCarthy.

But now it actually happened.

Oh, yeah.

Well, I mean, we knew that this was on the table, right?

Because when McCarthy became speaker, he gave that concession.

Right.

Just one one member can ask to vacate the chair.

And that's what.

Happened.

That's what happened.

And, you know, it's of his own doing, on the one hand, because he gave those concessions away.

Yeah.

You know, just handling the keys of the castle to the barbarian.

And then double dog daring like his biggest enemy in Congress.

To do it.

And he did it right.

Matt Gaetz, who's a Republican member from Florida.

And he pulled through.

Former speaker, didn't get along.

And so at all.

There you go.

And the other thing is, you know, like should have would have coulda be nicer to Democrats.

Maybe he could have saved his, you know, speakership.

But the problem is that he didn't.

Yeah.

And he, you know, did not follow through the things that he agreed that he was going to fall through.

And then, you know, the Democrats also played hardball and say, we're not going to vote for you.

We're not going to help you like period.

That's your problem.

You were not truthful to the promises you broke, the promises to to the Biden administration regarding the budget.

Because remember, in June, everything was ready to do not have these problems for the next two years, right?

Yeah.

And he stepped back because once again.

Right.

These more conservative wing of the Republican Party say like, no way, we're not going to do that.

We're going to do 12 independent bills to fund the budget.

Yeah.

And then nothing was.

Like a double take on that.

Yeah, it's it's like, you know, you go and do something bad or whatever and to the fire department, right?

You basically I don't know.

Yeah.

They're going to slow roll your fire.

Yeah.

And that's because I have a fire.

Can you help me?

I mean, the fire department is going to say like, Yeah, no.

Because the place is on fire.

Yeah.

By a vote of 216 to 2 two.

And he's forced out by this contingent of hard right members of his own party basically throwing the house into chaos.

Now, there is a speaker of the House.

There's a succession plan put into place after 911.

They wanted to make sure in case something happened to the speaker that that would be the case.

They didn't assume that would be like your own party would take like a knife to your back ala Caesar and Brutus.

But that's what happened.

So Patrick McHenry from North Carolina is the current speaker of the House, but he has limited powers and so they have to have a new speaker.

And that's going to be the kind of next big question here.

Now, keep in mind, this is very, very rare.

We have never seen a speaker serve this short a period of time or been ousted in the middle of a legislative session.

And so it's a rare thing because the House is really designed to be very much top down.

It's designed to have this kind of party cohesion.

The speaker, Joe Cannon, the czar, Speaker Joe Cannon in the 1910's, basically survived a similar kind of bid to get rid of him, but it didn't work.

And not surprisingly, he took it out on the people who tried to take him out.

But in this case, it did work.

And now Matt Gaetz, who you are joked earlier off line, is now the de facto speaker, is the kind of person.

Who's leading this charge.

Since January of this year, he has been the de facto speaker of the House.

And it's been lucrative for him.

So a lot of his co Republicans, you know, chastise him and booed him because he was fundraising office.

Like while this is all going on while their party is in chaos.

Right.

Like the dog with the coffee mug, like fire all around.

This is fine.

He's like raising money.

He's setting out appeals.

And the same is true for other members.

Nancy Mace in particular, who is a moderate, but who also voted against the speaker.

So there's a lot of fundraising off of this, which just goes to show you that Partisanship is definitely important, but parties are a little bit more flexible in terms of how they operate now.

And you've got individual people out for themselves, right?

They're not looking out for the party because if they were, they wouldn't have ousted the party's speaker.

Yeah, And so they're out for themselves, right?

Yeah.

And now the question is like, first of all, who is up for the job number one, Right?

Oh, my question is, who would want this job?

But you're you're you're about questions better.

Well like yeah, like do you want it?

Like, probably not.

I don't think so.

Yeah.

Oh, it's like, you know.

No.

Yeah, you know.

No, no.

This is the happy's right now.

Is John Boehner the former speaker?

Oh, yeah.

You know, it was probably like light up Marlboro with a big ol' glass Of Merlot is just as happy as he could be that he doesn't have to deal with this.

Yeah, but you have that question.

And that question is like.

Like, you know, this a couple of names representative Scalise and so Jim Jordan.

But, you know, we'll see.

Yeah, right.

Because none of them are also well liked with the Democrats.

So the same thing could happen and the moderates may not align very well with Scalise or with Jordan.

So that's another issue.

That's the problem they face.

And the most important thing that I've heard, you know, within the tea leaves right now, it's like.

Yes, yes, you have to wait for it to.

You know, the 210 Republicans that voted to keep McCarthy on the job might say, well, we are fed up.

Yeah, we're fed up with these ultra conservative, you know, members of the party, etc., etc., etc.. Yeah, fine.

The question is, are they going to do anything?

Yeah, right.

Because if they do anything right, that means that the Republican Party is actually breaking and breaking with, you know, who.

Yes.

And I don't know if they're going to do that because, you know, one thing he's saying, yeah, we're very angry and this should not have happened, etc., etc.. Yeah, but then the actual question is, are you going to do something?

Are you going to expel them from the Republican Party?

You know, are you gonna send Matt Gaetz to that table where he was at the votes or not?

Yeah, right.

And that is a big question because that could have very important implications for the future of the Republican Party.

Yeah, you're right.

And, you know, you make a good point that Donald Trump tweeted like, shut it down.

We want to see this thing burned.

And I think the Republicans are basically in this tailspin or they don't know what's going to happen.

I called this the expected unexpected, like everybody presumed this was going to happen.

Right.

This was something that was obvious.

It was baked in, as you said, when they said these rules that let one member or any member.

Yeah.

Knowing that there's this real divide, allow them to unseat the speaker.

So we should have expected this.

But at the same time, it's so unexpected because the majority party in the House almost never has these kinds of problems.

At least they never face them directly.

So at this point, there's no real coherent plan for the Republicans.

The Democrats, I think, are in a pretty good position here.

I want to ask you about winners and losers on this, but I think that that, at least for my perspective, that the winners include the Democrats, because the Democrats can now basically come to the aid of the country because we have to have a budget.

Right.

And that means that in about nine weeks they have to redo this whole thing.

And it doesn't look like there's any kind of change from where things were right, except that, you know, you had McCarthy now gone.

So they still have to find some way to fund the federal government, which is going to be a huge fiasco in the kind of chaos that we did expect to have happen.

But the Democrats potentially can work with a lot of Republicans and say, look, we can get this done.

And that's a way for them to be able to bridge jobs.

2024.

I'm moderate Republicans could win as well.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And they're all worried because, you know, they're winning in districts that are, you know, kind of Biden districts.

And so that means that they're going to be worried about it, that they can basically partner with the Democrats on this in a light way.

Right.

By promoting their values and making sure they get their concessions.

But that's what they need.

So and I think they're going to get it.

I think that's the right strategy.

Right.

Because when you look at the Republican Party, I mean, you know that they are eight, right?

Yeah.

You have to be worried about eight, basically.

Right.

You know, some members of the Texas delegation were obviously, you know, into these etc.

etc.

But at the end that were like okay that's a little bit too far.

Too far yeah.

So they stop so that means that you can do it.

Yeah.

And why not.

Yeah why not Now, it's funny because the U.S. House is facing something similar to what Texas is facing.

Right.

And there's just this chaos about who should be speaker.

And you've got this hard right part of the Republican Party that wants to, you know, oust them and to make sure that they get their way.

And it's become a real kind of tug of war.

So we've got, you know, basically a GOP battle happening in Texas and happening in D.C.

I guess it's not that surprising that it all flows out that way.

But obviously, the big news of the week is that there's a special session coming up.

So this is Party Politics.

We're going to get you prepped for all the stuff that's happening this week.

I'm Brandon.

This is Jeronimo.

This special session is going to be the charm here.

This is something that the governor has been promising for quite the time.

He's put so much effort behind school choice or education savings account or vouchers or the worst thing to happen to public education, depending on who you are.

Right.

One of those labels applies.

But he's calling a special session that starts Monday for this.

Give me a read on kind of where things are politically right now for the Republican Party and the school choice issue.

Well, it's complicated because on the one hand, you have Governor Abbott that has said very clearly, I want this thing resolved.

And, you know, he's very also everybody knows what are his policy preferences regarding school vouchers or education, health savings accounts, whatever you want to call it.

So we know what he's expecting.

So that's one point.

Even they're not going to do that.

He's going to call 11,000 billion more a special session then.

Right?

If there's nothing, then he says, well, there's going to be political consequences.

Right.

And he has a huge war chest to primary out, you know, some potential members of the House that do not align with what he wants.

He doesn't say.

What he's going to do.

Right.

But as you say, he did say he was going to exact some kind of electoral punishment.

And in the past, actually, that has not been that big of a threat.

Right.

Because he has tried to take out moderates.

Lyle Larson from San Antonio is a good example.

Sarah Davis from here in Houston.

Eventually, they both left on their own accord.

Well, sorry, Larson left his own accord and Sarah Davis got beaten by a by a Democrat.

But neither of them were harmed by the great attempts to try to unseat them.

Do you think that this issue has resonance in these districts where the governor's ability to leverage that massive war chest is going to make a difference?

I don't think so, because then you enter the arena of, you know, the real consequences of implementing such a policy.

Right.

I mean, we don't know what's going to be the final letter of the law.

Yes.

If it's going to be a watered down version, if it's not going to be a watered down version or whatnot, but as it stands.

Right, you know, world Republicans face, you know, dire consequences.

And these dire consequences would be that, you know, losing perhaps access to public education.

Right.

One way or the other.

Yeah.

And the fact of the matter is, are not in every single place where he's a public school, you're going to have a private school.

Yeah.

So in some places they don't exist.

In some places they do exist, but in some places they do not.

They don't exist.

That's one thing.

The other thing is what's going to happen to Friday nights, you know, And football.

Yeah.

If you decimated Mesopotamians, like.

Yeah, starting five, you know.

Yeah.

Starting front line, then, yeah.

You're going to have a real problem that these are all in private.

School, right?

Right.

I mean, that's one issue.

But you know the issue about that.

Yeah.

The other issue is going to be, you know, like busses and stuff that take it to the to the school are also not going to be there because you know public transportation for schools.

Right.

Or school transportation does not apply to private.

You would have to pay for that.

So you have to get that if they have a bus, right?

Yeah.

So there's a lot of questions.

And obviously, rural Republicans are going to be once again perhaps making these alliances with urban Democrats.

Yeah.

So we'll see how far.

Yeah, they're going to do it.

Yeah.

And also there's going to be a point where, you know, members of of the House have to go and talk to the to the constituents and say like, this is what happens.

It comes from the governor.

Yeah.

Here here's the like here's the deal.

Yeah.

And see if that hurts Governor Abbott eventually in those places.

Yeah.

Like does the governor have the juice to make that happen?

Do people love him so much that they're willing to vote effectively in a way that might be against their interests?

I'm not sure.

But the stakes are really high for the governor, right?

He's basically made his whole career on this.

He has staked his reputation and governors look for signature wins.

This would be his signature win or his signature loss.

And that's why the stakes are so big.

I think there's a perception that he hasn't been able to deliver on conservative promises.

This is one of those things that would allow him to do that.

But that's the trouble.

And here's the problem.

That is that that the school choice to become a national issue.

Right?

I mean, it's been a Texas issue for decades, but it's never percolated because there's always been this resistance, the way you describe it.

But now it's a national issue.

If he can deliver any kind of change on this, he will become immediately a very prominent national figure.

That plus all the border stuff, I think, gives him like a very kind of visible role in the national Republican Party.

And so I think that's good.

But the problem is that it's already been rejected.

Now, the Senate is all on board, right?

Dan Patrick is saying like, let's do it.

We're going to make it happen.

The House, of course, is the problem and they already rejected this.

Right.

And that's, I think, a real problem for for the governor.

So how much do you think they can get through?

Because okay, my take is is something is going to get through like they will have something.

But we don't know.

We don't know what's going to be the content.

Right.

If it's going to be watered down.

And then you say, well, it's victory.

Yeah, Well, I mean, sure, it's a victory, but.

That's what I think is going to.

Happen.

Oh, yeah.

I'm going to give you a small amount of money.

It's going to be targeted to certain kinds of groups.

And then, you know, we can claim credit for having done it for the first time in Texas.

Yeah.

Question.

Yeah.

So we also you need to explain, right, the new dynamic that is going to exist between the Speaker of the House and Lieutenant Governor Patrick.

That's a great point.

Yeah.

And the fight is become very hostile.

It went from like a Cold War to a very hot shooting war.

I think maybe it's being overplayed.

The tension is there, but it's always been there.

And it's not just about this issue.

It's about the kind of personal issues as well as some of the ideological conflict.

The speaker wants to run the House like it's run by members.

Dan Patrick wants to run the Senate like it's run by Dan Patrick.

And that divide is the real problem.

So the question is, how far are they willing to bend?

My hunch is, as I said, that we're going to get something.

The house will bend a little bit because they know that they've got a bigger picture.

They have to fight out hundreds of issues and they don't want the governor mad at them.

So they want to make sure that they give the governor something.

It's probably a pretty smart play.

My issue is exactly as you said, what does it look like and where's the budget going to come from?

Because that's a real kind of conundrum.

The thing is now Texas is flush happily, pockets are busting.

Yeah, but that might not last forever.

Oh, no, no.

Let me correct you.

Yeah, it is not going to last forever.

Right?

This is not a wish.

Yeah.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

This is like.

This is fact.

This.

This boom and bust.

Right?

So that's going to be the question that they have to face and.

We'll.

See.

Yeah, they're definitely a problem.

But obviously, there's other big news of the week and some sad news actually, and that's that Dianne Feinstein, the long term senator from California, passed away this most recent week.

She had a stunning political career when she entered the Senate.

She was one of seven women.

Today, there are 24.

Only 59 women total have served in that role.

And so she is definitely among the vanguard there.

Those historic achievements that started in San Francisco, where she took over as the first female mayor after a double assassination of the mayor and Harvey Milk, which is sort of famous as a political incident.

She was elected in the year of the woman, which I remember distinctly right after the Clarence Thomas hearings.

There was this kind of backlash against Oh.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so.

Anita Hill, of course, yeah, yeah.

And so so Dianne Feinstein was elected in that kind of grouping and, you know, went off from there.

She was replaced pretty immediately by the the by the governor.

And so we've got a new senator.

Tell us about that.

Well, I mean, it's just he did not want to name any of the potential contenders.

Because Dianne Feinstein wasn't running again.

So.

Exactly.

So we already know that, you know, for example, Adam Schiff is running some other members of Congress, Katie Porter and other members of Congress that have Barbara Lee, Barbara Lee, say, yes, I want to run.

So the governor Newsom said no, like we're not going to do that.

We're just going to name someone that is just going to finish the term placeholder and that's it.

Okay.

Yeah, that's interesting.

And sort of a big yeah, big moment.

But it wasn't the only big moment in D.C. this week.

Representative Henry Cuellar was carjacked wearing, by the way, like, you know, his his gi.

You're right.

Like, he was like, on his way from karate practice and Didn't get a chance to use it.

He's a black belt.

He's a black belt.

Yeah.

He didn't use it.

But he was like, look, you know, there are more of them and they had guns.

This is not like a, you know, road house situation where he's going to roundhouse kicks, all these guys, just better parties to be safe.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And what he was, you know, mostly mad about is that they stole his social.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's like fresh sushi.

Ready to go?

Yeah.

You said it look really good.

Actually, in a funny moment this week, this is a speaker and and budget moment, but Representative Jamaal Bowman was trying to leave the building that he was in and normally he said there's a door that's open.

So he would go through that, but the door was closed.

So instead of like going to a different way, he pulls the fire alarm, which he thought he says was the way to open the door.

But like pictures of the door make it like super clear the.

Alarm, the little.

Yeah.

No.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, speaking of fire alarms, we said that the Paxon impeachment wasn't going to go away.

And we definitely have proof of that this week.

So the Texas Supreme Court this week basically cleared the way for the whistleblower case to go forward.

Now, remember, the whistleblower case was what triggered the impeachment, and it didn't get funded.

And so now it's effectively still like a legal case because they didn't fund it.

So it's still has to go back.

You saw some very choice words and the whistleblower saying, you know, we want justice.

What's going to happen there?

Well, I mean, is going to start once again in Travis County, and they're going to have that.

They in court.

And basically what they're arguing is that they were fired illegally because that goes against the Texas whistleblower Act.

So it's going to be very interesting because here you're not going to have, you know, senators from the state of Texas.

Right.

Saying if he or not violated the law.

Yeah.

So here, most likely it's going to be a jury of his peers.

Right.

And I don't mean all their state attorneys general attorneys, but he's going to be just the regular citizens part of these jury and they're going to go forward and something that we have seen before in terms of the at least the evidence that was presented here is perhaps, you know, there is no smoking gun in terms of wrongdoing, in particular regarding letting them go because of whistle blowing.

Yeah.

But it raises a lot of questions.

And, you know, depending on how that evidence is presented to the jury, he can be found guilty.

It could be a real problem for him.

Yeah, no, but you're right.

In fact, this came out during the during the impeachment trial that if you're if you blow the whistle and you're fired within a certain amount of days, the presumption is that it's retaliation.

So they've got the law on their side, which is why the settlement came out so quickly.

Yeah, but obviously they didn't get paid.

And so, like you say, this is going to go to court where the judge will not be.

Dan Patrick.

Right.

And that's going to mean that you may have a different outcome.

Yeah.

Not to say that Dan Patrick had any sort of finger on the scale, but this is what the Republicans who are the managers in the pizza parlor claiming and new evidence came out this week actually to the Dan Patrick had conversations with senators during the deliberation process.

Now everybody says that this was about procedural matters, like basically like Royce West asking, can we go home if we come to a verdict?

And so in principle, you know, everyone is still kind of kept there, you know, kept their neutrality.

But it does raise questions about how involved he was.

Do you think this is a political problem for Dan Patrick because it's still here?

It is.

I mean, it is.

And at least raises the questions, right?

Yeah, It's, you know, like, should you have contacted them?

I mean.

Yeah.

So those are the issues of why you're contacting these two particular senators.

Right.

And again, I'm not saying that, you know, he said like do X, Y or Z or whatever.

It could have been, you know, procedural questions and, you know, perfect.

Yeah.

But the issue here is like, yeah, I don't know.

Like.

You know, what else happened this week is that they asked Dan Patrick, the media asked Dan Patrick to provide the speech that he would have given if Paxton was found guilty on any of the articles and he declined to like by law, they were allowed to.

But I'm curious to see what that was like.

Right, Because he had this massive screed, which, as we said earlier, kind of makes a bigger divide between himself and and the speaker.

So that was interesting.

A piece of evidence came out this week, too, that suggested that one of the contractors that was working on the Paxton's house, which was part of the bribery allegations, had emailed with Nate Paul to provide updates about the home.

And it turns out that this contractor was asked to testify at the Paxton trial, but he said he was going to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights to not self-incrimination, so therefore was basically excluded as a potential witness.

Do you think that this kind of continuing churn is a problem for the Republicans and that, you know, obviously, Paxton was found not guilty on these, but this is still a political problem for them?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, absolutely.

It's a political problem.

And they need to resolve it because one way or the other, this thing is going to stay.

You know, on the news.

Yeah.

And regardless of what happens to the to the very date of of this trial, you know, he can hurt the Republican Party and he can hurt them the very bad.

Yeah.

The brand.

And that's going to be extremely, extremely complicated.

Yeah.

Well one thing to grow on for the week is that you're going to see news about the impeachment inquiry that Joe Biden is being investigated for.

The news, as you can imagine.

Because you need a speaker.

As you can imagine, that got bumped from the headlines.

But there was a chaotic hearing.

Oh, yeah, full of witnesses, including Jasmine Crockett from Dallas, who had went off on the Republicans efforts to try to do this.

They're also going to likely be more, you know, let's say, X-rated pictures of Hunter Biden, which the Republicans have been trying to introduce.

So there's this a lot of chaos here.

Give me your quick take on what's going to happen this week and what that might mean.

Well, I mean, we're going to wait to see that.

Obviously, this week we're going to hear a lot about who's going to run for the speakership of the House, who's not going to run if they have the vote, if they don't have the votes.

That's extremely important.

And also, you know, in preparation of the special session.

Right.

Which is wanting to see the agenda and how it's going to look like, and that is going to give us a lot of information in terms of what's going to happen next week when the special session continues.

And those are very good questions.

But we're going to continue next week when we return and discuss this and many other matters.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus.

The conversation keeps up next week.