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

I'm currently a political science professor at the University of Houston.

And I'm branded running House, also a political science professor here at the University of Houston.

Thanks for hanging out with us and talking a little politics on another exciting week where we've got like, international intrigue, we've got changes in the politics of the Senate races in Texas, but also nationally.

So there's some definite movement this week.

Let's start at the very top and talk about the Texas Senate race.

The kind of big news for Republican Party politics is, of course, if Donald Trump endorses you, you're certainly in the catbird seat.

Right?

But he is unwilling to endorse in a couple of races, including in the Texas Senate race, John Cornyn hinted at this.

This has been sort of confirmed by other outlets.

So we may not see a Trump endorsement.

That is bad news for Cornyn to some degree, but him not endorsing Ken Paxton could actually be a good thing.

So John Cornyn might not be that unhappy about not any endorsement.

Right?

That's better than having a Paxton endorsement and having him have $7 million, which you raise this quarter, essentially just sit idle in a cabinet someplace.

The problem for Cornyn isn't raising money, which he does really well.

And this has been his biggest bite since his career started.

The biggest problem is he hasn't moved the needle.

So what's the problem?

Why can't John Cornyn close the deal with Texas Republican voters?

Well, because of Ken Paxton.

He's still lingering.

Around, right?

I mean, it's very simple.

And given that also the Republican Party within the Republican Party also tends to be, you know, quite polarized.

So the fact that you have, Paxton coming from the right now, hand coming from the ride, and the strategy for each of these candidates, how they're going to outflank each other.

So in these iterations, Cornyn has, had had some salvos, increase ad campaigns, highlight that Paxton is these or that, etc., etc., but that hasn't had any traction whatsoever with the primary voters.

The primary voter is going to be very different.

The primary voice is going to be very polarized, very committed, and very committed to ideals.

So in this case, they see Cornyn, as perhaps not necessarily the one that is going to represent them in the US Senate.

Yeah.

This is a race that definitely typifies that establishment versus a sort of insurgent style that we're used to seeing in Republican Party politics.

And obviously, the fact that Ken Paxton has got all this ethical baggage doesn't seem to affect the Republican voters much at all.

The numbers, you know, haven't really materially changed.

I mean, his negatives have definitely come up positive, have come down.

But even things like this week, the FEC is investigating him and asking him to basically either explain or return about $150,000 in campaign contributions that probably were obtained illegally.

For instance, there's a hundred.

There's $1,000 donation from an Asian Republican club of North Texas.

The FEC says this isn't a registered organization, so they need some clarification on that.

That adds to of more than half, more than half $1 million of concerns that the FEC had had before for Paxton's fundraising.

So there's just a lot of these things that keep adding up in court and keeps pointing it out.

But nobody seems to notice or really care.

So I do think that the establishment, the kind of fixture here for him, is a problem, which is odd because Texas is so unique in that way.

Other Republicans are defending their records and other states, even conservative states.

But in Texas, it's a liability essentially to be part of the establishment are seen as kind of part of the Beltway crowd.

So obviously this will unfold as things go.

But we haven't seen like a lot of big changes here.

I mean, people are still raising money and, you know, they're still sort of ads that float around, but there hasn't been much movement here, especially for Cornyn, who's really kind of stuck in neutral.

Well, yeah.

And it's it's a different type of, establishment.

Right.

So right now he's not that, Paxton.

He's part of the, insurgency movement or anything like that.

He's part of a different stablished that he's fighting another establishment.

Right.

So that is, I think the interesting part here, how these two forces are colliding to see who's going to be in charge.

I mean, Paxton has been in power.

What?

How many years as attorney general?

Yeah.

So he's part of a different establishment.

That's very true.

And and that's what I think is going to be very interesting here that he's going to redefine the Texas GOP.

That's a great point.

Yeah.

And we'll talk you know next week more about the Republican side of things where we're going.

Correct.

You know get into how these debates really materialize on the ground when it comes to who gets to be nominated.

But the big picture for us here is that the Texas Senate race obviously sits in the context of the larger fight for who's going to control the US Senate.

This week.

You have Chuck Schumer, who is taking a victory lap because they managed to get a bunch of good candidates to run in states where they were likely not going to win.

And now there's a chance that they could win.

So if you throw Texas into that mix, there's a good chance that the Democrats could make a pretty firm stand in the Senate.

Maybe not.

You know, taking it, perhaps pinning on the numbers, but getting pretty close, like they started this cycle basically with like 47 Senate seats, period.

And like a really tough map.

But they've got really good top tier candidates in Alaska.

This week.

Mary, former Rep Mary Pallotta said she is going to run in Maine and Ohio, North Carolina.

These are all places where the Democrats who had been really popular, had decided to run for Senate.

So we're seeing Democrats kind of flood the zone here with opportunities to potentially win.

And it could, ironically, be the case that if Texas flips and that's the one that actually flips control of the Senate.

So there's a lot of things at play here.

And there's still obviously, you know, an uncertainty about all of this.

But on the Democratic side, you know, the Dems are flying all over the place, right?

You have, this week, on Ezra Klein's New York Times podcast, James Talarico.

Nothing says I want to represent Texas like going on the New York Times Ezra Klein podcast.

Jasmine Crockett is doing much the same, taking national interviews and talking about Donald Trump.

I just feel like a lot of what is happening in Texas is getting ignored here, and that could be a problem for any candidate who kind of misses that window.

But let's talk about Texas more in depth, because there are some issues, I think, that are kind of sleeper issues that we'll see materialize in ways that maybe weren't expected, that really do, I think, emphasize that which people want that is to sort of have policies that affect them and combine to help them.

So the Texas House Democrats this week are daring Ken Paxton to investigate Elon Musk's AI chat bot grok.

You can essentially ask grok to do a bunch of things, clarify a tweet, or to change a picture or something.

And that's the problem.

So Democrats are saying that people are using the grok to essentially create images, which are, you know, which are either oversexualized or which potentially are illegal, depending on certain kinds of laws.

And so they're asking the attorney general to investigate this.

What do you think's going to happen with this?

Will the attorney general and the Texas Democrats work together on this?

It seems like an issue where people generally agree.

Why not?

Well, I mean, it's, very interesting because Democrats actually are using something that was supported by the attorney general and Republicans overall.

That is, the, trigger the Texas age verification law for adult content sites.

Interesting.

So there are using that as something that it is obvious what happened and should be investigated as many other countries in Europe.

But they're investigating an already, these, thing we, we would grok but it's already in house bill 1181.

It's right there.

You need to enforce this law.

And exactly as a way to be able to talk about sort of like we said, people that, you know, issues people care about.

Right.

There are serious concerns.

Yeah.

Like you said, internationally, UK is investigating places like Malaysia and Indonesia very banned grok this very reason.

So this is something that's a long time coming.

Rahm Emanuel, who's a former member of Congress, former chief of staff to, Barack Obama, who's running for president as a Democrat, has been talking about these AI issues with respect to people's privacy and generally about kind of screen time for kids.

And it's something that's got some traction.

So I really think this is an issue that could be potentially lucrative as a policy for Democrats to handle it right now, whether they're work together with the AG on this or not.

A little unclear, right.

In an election year, this isn't something that you're going to see a lot of, you know about and singing a matchbox 20 song together.

But, you know, a sing along is always good in politics.

Absolutely.

Or unity is better.

Unfortunately, we don't see a lot of unity on a lot of issues, including the debate over elections in Harris County.

Greg Abbott has floated the idea of taking over elections in Harris County.

The pretext of this is that, Paul Bettencourt, asked essentially an investigation by the Texas secretary of State to look at certain voter registrations.

Really done.

They were done in post office boxes, which is a violation of state law.

Now, keep in mind, there are 5 million registered voters in Harris County and, voting, efforts to investigate the illegal component to this was found about 100 people who had done so illegally, perhaps out of like, you know, sort of uncertainty, perhaps system mistake unclear.

But 100 out of 5 million is a pretty small number.

So Democrats are pushing back on this, saying you're essentially using this small series of breaks as a pretext to be able to bash Harris County elections more.

What do you think this means in the big picture of things?

But I mean, in the big picture of things, the interim Harris County attorney, and I said that the government has no authority to seize control of the county elections.

The voter registrar office has, already fixed those mistakes.

And, this is normal.

My, we don't know if it was.

These registrations were fraudulent or not.

perhaps, you know, but it should be an investigation or whatever.

Right.

But we don't know.

And the intent is what matters.

But whatever it is.

Right?

The problem with these things is what we have said before and is that when you start chipping away and and just planting the seed of doubt.

Yes.

In an elections or elections in Harris County that have been, you know, pretty well run.

Yes.

Mistake had been made and, you know, the paper shortage and this and that, etc., etc.. Yes.

But those are, mistakes that are normal mistakes that every county election administrator in the world are going to happen once or twice or whatever it.

Yes.

So when you start, heating and heating and heating and heating the democratic process, then we all lose.

Because when people lose, confidence on the electoral process, then things start to go very bad.

That's a good point.

Yes.

And it means people are less likely to turn out or engage in elections in general.

This is obviously in the context of the governor saying that they want to win Harris County, that the Republicans are going to spend time and money doing it.

He's got a huge warchest they can put some effort into trying to move Harris County more to the red column, and that's very likely depending on the candidates and the way they frame it.

But you're certainly seeing some, you know, serious efforts here to try to make that case.

And it's a small thing, but it might matter, as you say.

Yeah, the governor doesn't have unilateral power to take over elections.

But, you know, there is legislation that allows for direct administrative oversight of elections in Harris County.

And so to some degree, there's already this sort of phenomenon happening.

But obviously elections have to be fair and fair, and people have to see that the process is smooth.

And so the process of sort of finding these problems and correcting them is part of that.

Exactly.

I do think you're right that that has to be kind of considered in this bigger picture.

But it's hard to get a kind of degree of, you know, kind of faith in this when you've got, you know, both sides kind of, you know, jabbing at each other.

The, you know, to her credit, Tanisha Hudspeth hasn't really engaged in this kind of political tete a tete.

That's not something that's smart for an election official anywhere, but certainly not for one in Harris County that often has a target.

The other thing to note is that, we have, the Texas officials turning over state voter rolls to the U.S.

Department of Justice.

The Trump administration asked for access to millions of voters across the country.

Some states are giving it like Texas.

Some states are pushing back.

The voter rolls included births, driver's license number or Social Security numbers.

Democrats say it violates federal law and probably sort of contributes to privacy concerns.

So I guess that we are allowing people to mess with Texas.

Now, a question mark.

Do we need to change the statement like that is something that Democrats are asking, and there's some real worry.

This could be a potential problem down the road.

What do you think?

Well, of course.

Right.

Getting access to the voter registration, or text file is very particular for very particular reasons.

Right.

So we don't know what are going to be the intentions.

And Texas law says you can use these for these for these for these you cannot use it for these for these for these things.

So just giving it blindly.

Yeah, it's a good point.

It's something that is like yeah.

Wait what.

Yeah.

Like do we have to sign affidavits when we get the voter file.

Right.

But we don't use it for certain things.

Exactly.

Is the federal government going to say.

I don't know, something like that.

We don't know who's the federal government.

Right.

Good question.

Yeah, I know it sounds like a conspiracy theory taking right now.

Yes, it change the name of the show and, you know, go deep on the web.

But that's a good point.

Like, it does raise these kinds of issues that people are really worried about.

And I do think that, you know, if this was a Democratic administration asking for this, they never would give it.

Right?

Oh, yeah.

And so that's a definite sign that this is a political issue at its core.

But certainly, there's no trust.

And that's the real issue is that, you know, the sort of Democrats don't trust that the Republicans are going to handle it.

Well, Democrats and Republicans don't trust Democrats to handle it well, either.

So that is creating this confusion and definitely going to create some consternation when it comes to how to execute these roles.

Let's keep talking about Texas because some interesting kind of off the radar news happened that this week and that is that Steve Bannon, who's a former Trump political advisor, and also convicted fraudster, decided he's moving his show to Texas for the entire state in February to focus on the March 3rd primary.

This is interesting because Bannon has been at odds with many of the members of the MAGA movement, but I think is using Texas as a kind of, you know, land to plant a deep flag in to say that this is where the MAGA movement essentially will kind of continue.

And he's probably not wrong to specify the Lone Star State as the epicenter of a lot of these changes.

So what do you think this means for the kind of primary in Texas?

And maybe what it says generally about Republican Party politics nationwide?

Well, I think I mean, Bannon represents I would say the purity of the MAGA.

Yeah, right.

He's the enforcer.

Right.

Exactly.

The claim is that, like Texas will be the place where we enforce those things.

So, right, Abbott, Patrick Paxton, kind of, you know, triumph for it is going to be policed here and enforced here more clearly.

And so yeah I think that makes a lot of sense.

So I think it's a it's a natural movement.

He's been pushing for, President Trump's third term.

And, you know, he has said that he's going to drive a mack truck through the 22nd amendment.

So this is the place to start, one way or the other, as you say, solidify the purity of the MAGA, right?

Yeah.

That in many other places would not be possible.

And we're going to see how effective that is, because like we said and what we'll talk about next week, there's like a lot of candidates in these races.

And I think you're seeing that kind of establishment versus insurgent split to some degree.

There has been a push back on some of the insurgents who are nominating candidates maybe that aren't kind of ready for the general election or who or maybe now is going to campaigners.

So there are a lot of different kind of dynamics to play at this.

But I do think that if the MAGA movement is going to survive, it has to live in Texas, right?

It has to be its kind of beating heart.

And that's really what Bannon is up to.

So Texas is sort of symbolically the command center for the MAGA movement.

And the fact that this is happening, in fact, that he is bringing his show here, which is a national kind of show with a national audience, means that you're going to see like the national donors, like, on, display.

Right?

All of Texas sort of cultural, you know, sort of donor dynamics are all going to play out here in, in the Lone Star State in this primary.

So that'll be really kind of fascinating to see if it works.

And to the extent to which, you know, Bannon can kind of unify the segments of the MAGA movement to, you know, move forward.

Obviously this is, a crazy time for Texas politics, especially as we get closer to the primary.

But we're also seeing significant things happening on the national and international stage.

There's to to chat about.

The first is that you have Donald Trump and Jerome Powell, the fed chair, going head to head.

The other is that there is this, brewing crisis in Iran.

Right.

Let's first talk about the fed.

What happened this week was extraordinary.

You had a dramatic escalation of the president's war against the fed and against Jerome Powell personally.

The federal prosecutors at Department of Justice have investigated Jay Powell over the Federal Reserve's multimillion dollar headquarters renovation.

Trump has been talking about this for months, and it has largely been sort of seen as, kind of pretext for political intimidation, right, of Jerome Powell.

This has been more common, right, the last few months, really, but definitely is an ongoing kind of component here where the president is trying to essentially pressure the fed and the fed chair into making the economy frame the way that he wants it.

And they haven't largely complied.

So what do you make of the kind of unprecedented actions from the president on this?

And do you, frankly believe him when he says that it wasn't his doing?

The DOJ operates independent of the president.

Sorry if you can't if you're not watching this.

You saw my eyes roll the middle of this.

But he said I didn't have anything.

Yeah.

If that it's DOJ.

There's no chance that's true.

Right.

And maybe he didn't tell them to do it, but certainly they're picking up on a pretty strong signal.

This definitely blurs the line between where the independent agency is and where the executive is.

So what are the implications to all of this?

Well, the implications are huge.

I mean, huge in the sense that, undermining the Fed's autonomy could lead to a economic disaster.

Right.

Increase inflation.

How you interest rates, the lack of ability of the US would be that sovereign nation in terms of, dictating, world commerce, etc., etc., etc., etc.

even people like JP Morgan Chase, CEO Jamie Dimon.

Right.

That is not hahaha.

I would say, Not a supporter of like yeah, yeah, liberal like Democrat and Democrats say yeah.

No, no, no no has said that that is a big no no.

And the markets don't like that.

Right.

So having that has had significant problems also within the president's party in the Senate.

Yeah.

You have three senators that have said, wait a minute.

Right.

So the question is, are we seeing more dissent?

Yes.

In terms of what, Trump is saying, trying to achieve and we have seen that they and they announced this thing.

Right.

And Bannon was one of the people that announces, during the campaign, we're going to see how far we can stretch.

Yeah.

The rubber band.

Right point.

Yeah.

And and when we think it's going to snap or when people tell us is going to snap, then okay, we relax it a little.

Yeah.

Right.

All right.

But that's exactly what they're.

Trying to do.

That's a great point.

No this definitely will test the boundary of the president's powers, not just his physical soft powers, right.

Where he can kind of, you know, change things with the rhetoric, but also just the fundamental kind of ways that the executive branch is used, to the purposes of the president, even if it means tackling kind of the policies of these independent agencies.

The other is that, you know, Congress is gonna have to choose sides here.

They're going to have to be to put some guardrails on this or as some have implied, like Thom Tillis, senator from North Carolina, that we're going to have, you know, essentially a hold up of the next person because Powell supposed to leave in May, and he says, we're going to hold up the next nominee until this is all resolved.

So we're not going to like just sort of sort of succumb to the whim of the white House on this.

We're going to make sure that we have some say, and we're going to make sure that we stabilize this because it's so important, like you say, this is connected to the US dollar and U.S.

dollars connected to the entire global, you know, economy.

So to mess with one thing means to mess with.

Yeah, but the problem is the urgency in the white House, because November is coming very close and you cannot wait until May.

That's true.

Yeah.

So we'll see.

And the other presidents have, you know, run afoul of fed chairs before.

In fact, George H.W.

Bush blamed Alan Greenspan for his loss.

To some degree, it's probably true the economy wasn't improved in time.

And although all the foreign policy issues were positive for George H.W.

Bush, the economy was a negative.

And that's the thing that really drives most people attention.

So yeah, we'll see how this all plays out.

But there is definitely a lot of risk here.

Speaking of risk, let's talk about what's going on in Iran.

This is an unusual situation.

Essentially, there are just mass protests happening all over Iran.

You've had thousands of people killed, tens of thousands of people killed.

If you read some reports, and it's all because the economy is tanking.

Inflation is 40 plus percent.

There are water and energy shortages.

People are mad and it's definitely showing there is potentially sort of a crack here for the U.S.

and allies to say, we can try to make some regime change here while this is all going on.

President Trump has essentially said help is on the way.

They have stopped talks with the Iranian government.

So there's likely something brewing.

In fact, even as we're speaking probably between when we do this and when this crisis out, we're going to see something.

But obviously the implications are pretty big, because here's a president who ran on essentially no more foreign wars.

But here we're now in the conflict thick of it with Venezuela.

Right.

And that's Iran in the Middle East.

Yeah.

Places.

So what do you make of the kind of effective.

Well, we don't know where to help on the way means.

Right.

Yeah.

And yes, indeed.

Iranians are completely fed up with a regime that started in 1979, and they just wanted gone.

Yeah.

The way that the Iranian government has responded is extremely violent.

Right.

And that has implications.

And we will see if, the white House does something or what military action looks like.

We have no idea.

What does that mean, a point.

It could mean lots of things.

So, yes, could be let's bomb once again.

I don't know, some sites.

Yeah.

Or who knows, who knows.

Yeah, I don't know.

But the risk is still pretty high.

Oh, yeah.

I want to frame.

This was a positive for the president.

I mean, if he's going to lean into the foreign policy part of being president, this is one way to do it.

Although there was this sort of debate about endless wars and it being a problem for the MAGA movement, this is a conflict.

He can essentially run from the Oval Office.

He doesn't have to get troops involved, and you can have all the technology to be able to bring to bear on this.

If it erupts into a major problem, obviously that's a different issue.

But, this is potentially something the president can use as a positive.

The other is that it lets him essentially say the Democrats were kind of too focused on diplomacy and not enough on action.

So there is a potential him for him here to say, like on foreign policy, you know, Democrats were on the wrong direction and the Trump White House is going in the right direction.

So there's a potential here for him to spin this in a plus way.

But obviously there's lots of unknowns right now.

So well we'll play it out.

Yeah.

And I can also see the argument from the white House that, you know, even though there were no international conflicts or anything like that, and it has been said, over and over, but it can be bring forth especially during the campaign, for the midterm elections, is that these interventions make America great again.

Makes them, makes us safer.

Just getting rid of bad actors is a positive thing.

So, yeah, if you think about the world's conflict, sort of the China, Russia, Syria, Iran axis, right.

Then they're all weakened in some sense by this and the U.S.

and then kind of by design, some is sort of stronger so that that could work.

But also you open the door for Russia and say, like, I. We wouldn't mind having that.

Yeah, yeah.

Finland looks, you know, like a nice place that I would like to have anything to look good with.

You know, Stars and Stripes hang of it.

Yeah.

So one last thing.

This is an on the list, but I want to get your take on this.

The white House is coming under pressure because they put some gold lettering in the rose garden.

You saw the pictures of this?

Yes.

Okay.

What do you think?

I know your taste run like to trump.

Very gold and very bold.

I have no, no, no comment.

I'm okay with.

It.

No president should put their stamp on it.

But that's something that we're going to perhaps discuss next week.

I'm Karen Cortina.

And I'm branded writing house.

More party politics next week.