<Music> 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, also a political science professor here at the University of Houston.

Thanks for hanging out with us and talk a little politics in an exciting week.

Kind of a transition week, as it turns out, right?

We're transitioning at the federal level between presidents or transitioning at the state level.

We've got a new speaker.

We'll spend a lot of time talking about that.

But pretty consequential in both measure.

So lots to get into.

Let's first talk about Donald Trump's legal woes ish.

Okay.

They're not exactly the kind of problematic issues they used to be.

For one, we've talked about this before, but even as it occurs to the system and Donald Trump's outcomes, it's not the case that a lot of the things that he has said to have done are going to be legally problematic for him.

For instance, the just days before he's, inaugurated, to be the next president, special Counsel Jack Smith from the Justice Department basically filed a report which was the basis of the prosecution of Donald Trump, saying that the he was probably going to get a conviction.

So evidence about a pressure campaign on Mike Pence to overturn the election somehow, the January 6th attack on the Capitol, phone calls to Georgia election officials, fake elector schemes, just a myriad of different things.

What will be the consequences?

It turns out nothing.

Right.

Yeah.

Because and as DOJ policy is, they don't prosecute sitting presidents.

So in effect, this will be something that will go away.

And there are serious implications to this.

Obviously politically it's not something that's complicated for problematic for the president, except that people are going to have their own particular grievances about it.

But it obviously is also just, historically speaking, pretty unusual to have a presidency starting in this kind of tumultuous time.

So what do you make of the kind of report and, kind of the whole situation?

Well, in addition to that, New York found him, guilty in, in the New York.

Business for business, records.

Right.

Yeah.

So he has obviously he's not going to spend any jail time or anything like that, but he has been found guilty.

Yeah.

So, I mean, it's the roll on the on the first, case in, in regarding these, efforts to, quote unquote, overturn the 2020 election, the Supreme Court played a very important role saying that presidents have, pretty much immunity to do whatever they want, during their term.

That has a lot of implications.

Could open Pandora's box for these new term.

Yeah, but certainly from an institutional viewpoint is a new chapter in American political history.

It's a great.

Point.

It feels very a house of cards, if you remember the show.

Right.

The British or the American.

Version, the American in particular, the darkness of it, but really both because it's about kind of palace intrigue and who's up, who's down and what powers you have.

There's an assumption, I think, from people that presidents have this kind of, you know, unmitigated power.

But that's not always true.

Although the Supreme Court, like you mentioned, has really given the president to significant, more leeway authoritatively to be able to act so official acts by the president or much more.

Let's say, softly pursued, from a legal perspective than they used to be.

It does put more pressure on Congress to act.

And so obviously, that means that the president, Congress have to work together.

So we're in a kind of new era of kind of presidential power here.

And we'll talk more about this as sort of the presidency Donald Trump unfolds.

But this is really an interesting dimension.

And to me, yeah, like we've talked about before, the fact that this is something that the, you know, kind of incoming president faces means that it's just the case that these scandals aren't as impactful as they used to be.

People either aren't aware of it.

They have seen it, and they dismissed it.

It's something that happened in the past, and it's not just going to affect their future.

So I can imagine lots of ways in which this is true.

And so it's interesting to see that we're at this moment where the kind of friction in the system is so high.

We'll see how he plays it.

Right.

And this will obviously play into some of the consequences about his nominations.

Right.

There are a lot of people who are on the chopping block here potentially that might not get confirmed, but maybe it's the case that they'll all get confirmed.

Yeah.

So let's talk about that.

Really this week was spent, in, you know, dusty Senate chambers confirm a palooza.

We have several different nominees who are going to be scrutinized by the Senate.

The most impactful, probably or two.

The first is Pete Hegseth, who's up for secretary of defense.

And the second is Gabby, to Assad, also up for the DNI.

So this is a, you know, rocky transition and one that will happen kind of before you see an official kind of time that Trump's in office.

What do you make of the kind of overall outcome here.

And then the questions being asked in the process?

Well, I mean, it's, I have no idea.

I don't know what to think.

I mean.

The Senate needs a simple majority to confirm it, right?

Right.

So Democrats do not play a role in these case unless there's Republicans that are holding on.

You know, in terms of who are you going to vote for or against?

Yeah.

To me, yes.

Pete Hegseth and, Tulsi Albert are the ones that seem problematic.

South Dakota, Governor Kristi Noem might be problematic.

I heard some rumors that all the dogs in the, all the canines in.

Their barking at their Senate.

Are just very nervous, when she goes and testifies.

Right.

But besides that, I don't think that he's going to be very complicated for her to get, support.

Yeah.

There might be some issues that, for example, she use the National Guard.

Well, it sounds like a National Guard to help out at the border, but not within the state.

So the issues that might be inconsequential for for the job, Pete has had, huge, problems so far.

Allegations in terms of, the role of women in the military, the role of the so-called standards at the Pentagon simply denies all those allegations.

So that started with your potential new colleagues is very rocky.

Right.

And then the issues that he says in terms of being a disrupter, etc., etc., without no simple right, I guess outright qualifications of leadership in managing such a big, big, huge, portfolio.

Yeah.

The size of the department in terms of personnel, in terms of financial kind of responsibilities, it's a big place.

It's a lot of money.

Yeah.

And what and what the you know, some Democrats senators are saying is that you never run anything this big before.

And when you did run something like it was.

Running through the ground.

You basically.

Yeah.

And you kind of failed at it and had to fire you.

So that's a definite concern.

And but people like Jody Earnest, the senator from Iowa, who would have been a pretty prominent critic of Pete Hegseth, it's like they're literally polar opposites, right?

You know, she is a sexual assault survivor.

Yeah.

Woman in the military, you know, and he is that very pointed views about what, you know, women's roles in the military should be.

He seems to have soften those a bit.

She seems to have softened her opposition.

And she said this week she's going to back him.

So that momentum really does I think play.

Oh yeah in his favor and and at the end is I think those institutions and all the literature suggests that institutional change moves at a glacial pace.

So moving and having significant changes in terms of changing how the body operates, it's going to be very complicated.

Yeah.

It's not only saying that I'm a disrupter and this and that, etc., etc.

it really takes careful analysis of what they can and cannot do in terms of changing real policy that are going to have important consequences.

A great point.

So, I mean, he might get confirmed and people are going to hold him accountable, and certainly, soon to be President Trump is going to hold him accountable in terms of delivering and having these things.

And he might have, good points in terms of changing some of the culture, within the Pentagon, whether it's for good or not.

I mean, we will see that, but change is always scary in terms of how institutions perceive that.

Yeah.

That's true.

Yeah.

And I think make a really good point that is that these changes aren't just sort of, kind of one person's belief.

These have to come from a kind of whole organizational.

Oh yeah, which is really hard.

And in this context, you need both the president and Congress kind of pulling in the same direction to make it happen.

And it could take years and years.

We don't have that right.

You have a kind of short term reactionary, angry politics about like D.E.I.

or about the role of women in the military, maybe the bloated ness of the bureaucracy.

Those things are complicated enough to deal with from a political perspective.

But then you try to, like, foist them onto some of these agencies that have been operating in this way for a long time, and it's really hard.

So this won't be the last time we see Pete Hegseth in front of the Senate.

He'll have to come back and testify.

When it comes to, you know, the kind of routine process.

Yeah.

And so this will be a kind of ongoing thing.

But I think you're right that this is going to be a lot harder than they think it is.

Or maybe it doesn't matter.

And maybe just the kind of inference of it, maybe the politics of it is enough to say, like, we're going to try this and we're going to say that we did it, you know, make a case that we basically have it done and then it and maybe it doesn't actually happen, but doesn't really have to happen because people will believe that they've tried to do something.

So the optics of this really matter.

And in terms of, I guess, diversity, I think that in terms of, when you look at population growth, when you look at the groups that are growing in terms of population across the country, it's like, well, you kind of need some diversity when you.

Look at the rank and file of the military.

Just because population growth, the people that are, you're going to be recruiting from are from diverse groups.

So if you need to keep the base growing.

Right.

And that's just, you know, normal, active, military personnel.

Yeah.

You need to be going to that particular pool.

Yeah.

So if you're not doing that, then that also poses a national security issue.

Yeah.

Now we could talk a lot about individual issues here.

Obviously Hegseth has got a bunch.

Gilbert's got a bunch.

We'll see Pam Bondi with some tough questions about her role as AG in Florida.

But like I want to talk about the bigger question here.

And that's whether or not these hearings still serve as a legitimate check on presidential power.

No, that's that's it.

Yeah.

And this year all the credit.

Yeah.

Like that is the biggest issue for me is that now this is just kind of kabuki theater.

It's just a way for, you know, Republicans and sort of to present their best case Democrats to, you know, rattle off their, you know, concerns.

They hold up big, you know, banners and like, you know, Tammy Duckworth had this sort of soldiers creed, you know, kind of, you know, you know, a little poster, it's not really doing anything right.

We're not really vetting these candidates in a way.

And that's a symptom of how these kind of scandals don't matter as much anymore.

Absolutely.

And how accountability is lost.

So we're seeing it in politics.

Yes.

But we're also seeing it now as an administrative matter where we really need the Senate to do its job here.

They really have to vet this because like our enemies are watching, they're looking at this just like we are.

So so he has to get done.

And my fear is that we aren't serving as a clear check on the absolutely.

And the type of questions.

For example, one would look at a has had another, confirmation hearings, at least at the committee level.

It's, you know, you said these about that and these okay.

Sure.

Yeah.

But like that is not telling me.

Yeah.

If the person knows or understand how projects work.

Yeah.

Does the person understand how a cost center works?

Does the person understand how, you know, getting a contract with X, Y or Z works?

What about what policies?

Do you know how the money of DoD, if it's invest in or invest in partnerships these and that.

Like the real question.

That's like your morning job, right?

Right.

Then you have afternoon and evening.

Right?

Right.

Which has other kinds of complication.

So yeah, again, I, you know, without getting into every detail about the way that, you know, these operations work in the agency's function, I'm just concerned about the big picture, which is that, oh, yeah, you no longer see these sort of institutional checks as we used to.

So for the Senate, which was supposed to be advise and consent, it's mostly consent and less advise.

And that's a real liability for a system that needs to have this built into it.

And the argument has been completely destroyed because the argument now is like, well, we think that the president should have the team that.

Right.

He or she wants.

And it's on both sides of the aisle, both Democrats and Republicans.

And you said, okay, yeah, but loyalty versus expertise, he's I don't know.

It's the old trade off.

Right.

That like presidents try to manage as best they can and it's getting harder to do when you've got political payoffs and you have to kind of.

Absolute.

Pieces.

And there's all kinds of different politics surrounding it now.

So we need this check more than ever.

So we'll see how it plays out.

Obviously lots of people to confirm.

And you know the Republicans got the numbers.

So definitely I don't think you're going to see too much by way of denials.

Yeah.

Which could be a real problem for the Trump administration in coming.

They've pretty much got their ducks in a row.

And I think we're going to see him more or less marching to the pond.

So yeah, we'll keep attentiveness to this.

But let's switch and talk about Texas because there's a lot going on in the Lone Star State.

The two big things are that the budget total cap has been set by the comptroller.

And the second is that we've got a new speaker.

Let's talk about budgets first, because that's going to dictate how happy or sad a lot of members are at the end of this.

The Texas Constitution limits how much the budget can be through various mechanisms.

What the comptroller said, who gets to put this in is that, they've got to basically about $194 billion and a little over $20 billion to sort of surplus to spend.

The rainy day fund has got about $20 billion in it, which is a record high.

That number keeps rocketing forward.

That can only be used for certain kinds of things unless they vote otherwise, which they almost never do.

So the good news is just to sort of, you know, put us in a nutshell, is that this is a pretty healthy budget for Texas.

The bad news is that actually, it's odd that members tell me that it's harder to make choices when you have more money.

Yeah, because everybody wants some piece of it.

Yeah.

And you have to say no more.

That's lean budgets.

People can say, well, there's just no money for that.

Sorry, people don't even ask.

But as it is now, there's a lot of money available.

So I guess the question is, is this going to be spent on sort of every priority or a fixed few number of priorities?

What do you think it's going to happen?

Well, first of all, you have to define priorities.

Okay.

Yeah.

So I mean, what I mean, I mean leadership priorities.

Oh, oh something do especially Greg Abbott.

Now Dan Patrick came out after like minutes after this was released and said, okay, here's my plan for the money.

Right?

Like you get a lottery win, you're like, okay, here's what I would spend it on.

Right?

Right.

So he wants to spend it, mostly on tax cuts, which is something that has been in the Republican circles for a long time.

But he also says you wants to spend it on teacher pay, and, and having sort of more, hardening of the grid, basically more energy production.

So that's a reasonable, I think, outcome for the money.

Yeah.

But is that going to happen?

Well, I mean, to me we need to focus on two big huge priority.

In terms of infrastructure.

The first one is water.

Yeah.

And the second one is power.

So every time that they mention the grid, I'm.

Yes, it sounds like a minecraft.

Like, right.

Of water and power.

Exactly.

I mean, yes.

Yeah.

As you know, the city of Houston is facing a crisis.

Yes.

Now we need, like, what, $15 billion to fix our water infrastructure?

Some projects and should suggest that by 2030, Wayne going to have water or we're going to have shortages.

So the time is now, and we have these surplus and these surplus needs to be invested in things that we in capital projects.

Meaning once again, water infrastructure, because it's not only Houston is West Texas, and east Texas and the Panhandle and south Texas everywhere.

And the power grid, you cannot operate a state bringing more business, being business friendly, so on and so forth, without power and without water.

So true.

Yeah.

I mean, the estimates suggest that we need basically about $154 billion investment in water in order to make things happen.

And they will.

I think that money is there.

But more likely, what they'll do is probably have a special allocation and then kind of skim off the top of the rainy day fund.

Now, voters already approved basically a way to fund a water bill or fund a water fund.

That does fund private rights.

But most people say like it's not enough.

They need more.

I don't know if that's that's what you're the problem is like, even the money that they have now, which seems flush, is not enough money to fix all these problems.

So that's again where the priorities come into play.

So let's segue to the governor's priorities and lieutenant governor's priorities.

They say that they want to do school vouchers right.

Which could have a fiscal note that reaches into the billions every year.

Where's the revenue going to come from?

The surplus is positive right now.

Yeah.

And the rainy day fund is flush.

Yeah.

But that's not going to last forever.

No.

So the question is where is the money going to come from?

I don't know, I mean, I have no idea.

Because that is a huge problem.

And especially when you see the context of things, if you had the infrastructure and to attract business over and over and over and over and over and keep growing, growing, growing and growing, they say, okay, we're going to have a very solid revenue.

Yeah.

But if you start having problems in terms of water, we still or regarding power, then businesses aren't going to say, oh, I love it.

I love your policies, I love longhorns.

Blew up on its barbecue, so on.

And so.

Aggies.

Right.

But yeah.

No that's right.

And I think that's the real problem.

And so you know, there's about a 9% growth in sales taxes, which is an indication that it's growing.

More people are here.

Correct.

People are spending money here.

That's a plus.

That's what the state needs in terms of generating that money.

But then more people yeah means more.

Water, more demand.

Yeah.

More demand for water and power.

Yeah.

So you got to build your Minecraft Village like in a way that like doesn't grow too fast, but also has resources to be able to grow when you need it.

So this is this is the this is a crisis.

Right.

So in terms of, of vouchers, the question is not if it's going to pass, I think it's going to pass.

The question is how and how, you know, the enchilada is going to look like what are you going to put into it.

Yeah.

That members.

Yeah are going to say, okay, I'll let it.

I like a really messy enchilada.

I'm going to be honest with you.

Like I like all this stuff on it.

Hold on.

Let me just get into it.

But you know, it's going to look that's going to be right because then you're going to have like, well yeah, it's too hot or I don't like beans or I like these and.

Then cheeses and melted enough.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Lots of potential problems.

But yeah, the good news is there's money.

And so that's something that they can do.

I mean, we didn't talk about like the tax cuts.

Right?

I property tax reform has been something that has been expensive.

Yeah.

There's been $18 billion last session to fix things.

Most people still look at their tax bill and say it's too high.

Yeah.

It's going to be another kind of yeah potential you know, big money item.

So they're going to have to follow this out.

But let's talk about the personnel, which is really what we've been waiting to do.

Yeah.

For like six months at least almost a year because we've seen this moment coming.

The ancient Greeks have designations for different plays.

Okay.

Like so you know, this being a classically trained, Ivy League educated.

Yes.

Academic, the Greeks have basically plays that are either satire, they're tragedies or they're comedies.

The Texas legislature fight over who speaker is all three.

Right.

You had the following things.

You had concerns about billionaires astroturfing.

The Texans with $50 tweets.

You had the lieutenant governor claiming that the former speaker, former speakers, were part of a Goodfellas style mafia.

That was like looking to take advantage of the, members.

You have one member filing a criminal complaint against his own party's chair.

Just all of the drama, all of the comedy at the end of the day, we have a new speaker now, Dustin Burrows from Lubbock, rebuffed a far right challenge that we've talked about a bunch of times, 85 to 55, nine people voting present but not voting.

What do you make of the outcome here?

Pretty stunning, in a way.

It is pretty stunning.

Especially with all I would say, the anticipation that was built.

On the other side.

Yeah.

In terms of we have the numbers, we have the numbers, we have the numbers.

And at the end these like.

Yeah, We didn't get what they wanted.

Yeah.

I mean, he won with a minority of Republicans supporting him.

Yeah.

Institutionally speaking, without looking at political parties or ideologies, anything like that, I think it's it's positive for the institution.

Yeah.

Because if we follow our own democratic processes, every member has a right to represent their district and every member has a right to lobby for their constituents.

So I think that that's important in terms of our substantive believes in terms of democratic processes.

Yeah, yeah.

What's going to be the outcome?

I have no idea.

There'll be serious implications.

I mean, you know, the Abraham George, the chair of the party, came out and said that, you know, we're going to primary people who didn't support them.

Some of these folks are in jeopardy now.

We've seen some of them survive primary challengers.

Right.

So they're not that worried.

Maybe, but some of them could be Caroline Farideh, who's a freshman member.

You know, she's going to have she switched her vote to Barrow.

She's from West Texas.

So she said, like, you know, this is good for our community, right?

She's going to get a primary.

Her father is like one of the prominent donors in the Republican Party, so she's probably going to be okay.

Laci Hall from Houston here.

She also voted with Burroughs and was one of the people who nominated him.

And that's going to be a problem for her.

We actually speculated Off-camera about this, that she spent a lot of money in the last cycle thinking this exact problem was coming.

So they've seen this issue coming for a while.

How they'll hold the line, you know, we don't know.

But certainly it's going to be the case that a few things are going to happen.

Number one, Phelan is still going to be the enemy, right?

The kind of, let's say, like, what do you like the swamp that the conservatives say happens?

Austin is certainly going to be still a talking point.

In fact, Greg Bonnin, when he introduced Burroughs, made a slip and said the next speaker, Dennis Bonnin.

And people have said that.

Bonnin.

Dennis Bonnin former speaker yeah, was the kind of architect behind some of this.

Well, that's not going to quell that.

So that'll be an issue.

We're going to see friction between House and Senate.

No question.

Yes.

Right.

Dan Patrick came out almost immediately and said like, you know, you you've done the wrong thing here.

You know, you, you know, you've bowed to Democrats, basically, who've, you know, more of them voted for Burroughs than Republicans voted for Burroughs.

So that's going to be certainly a talking point and will have implications to what happens in the session where there'll be Democratic chairs.

They didn't vote on rules yet.

They usually do that the same day.

But when tensions are too high, everyone needed a breather.

So they didn't do that.

They may very well though, so we'll see how that plays out.

That could be an issue, but I'm not convinced.

Honestly.

You.

They promised us like busloads, 18 busloads of people.

Republicans said we're coming to sort of support this.

Not that many people came, maybe 50 people, maybe 70 people came.

I just don't think that the Republicans are going to care that much in two years.

Who was voted for speaker if the session turns out to be conservative?

And also remember these pro, school vouchers.

Yeah.

So he's very conservative.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

So I mean, is that the way to appease, for example, Governor Abbott and said like, okay.

And then Abbott certain he's great political pressure away from the issue.

Yeah.

Maybe, are we going to have that Star City they star deal 2.0 yeah.

Which he was the author of extremely conservative bill that every conservative wanted.

Right.

So, I mean, he's up in the air.

The only thing that I think is, is, is up in the air more logically is the role that Democrats are going to play.

Yeah.

And how much leeway they're going to have.

What do you think is going to happen there?

I don't know, I mean, I don't know if they're going to get tours or not.

I mean, who knows?

My hunch is to say no.

But they very well could I don't think it'll be like a significant role, but, you know, they'll have some input, which is really what they wanted.

They wanted to protect the chamber.

That's why they voted with Burrows and many of them on the very first ballot supported him.

So we'll see how it plays out.

Yeah.

But that's something that we're going to keep an eye on it on the next, at least 140 days.

Coming.

So that's it for today.

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

The conversation keeps up next week.

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