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

I'm Jeronimo Cortina, the 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 on a busy just week.

Week two.

Yep.

Talk about politics.

I don't even know where to start.

I think we should just begin at the front.

And that's to say that there's too much going on for us to capture all of this.

They won't give us.

Here at Houston Public Media, as generous as they are, more than 26 minutes to do so.

We could take 26, like, weeks to do it right.

And so we're going to try to capture as much as we can in terms of specifics, and then give us a kind of big picture take on what's going on, because the 10,000ft view really is kind of what we should keep an eye on right now until things settle down.

If things settle down, we should probably think about like how this all relates to the big picture.

So that's the plan for the week because there's too much, right?

There's a contest going on.

Oh yeah.

It's the presidency on warp speed.

I mean, I don't think we've ever seen a presidency move this fast before.

I'm thinking about the kind of early FDR where, like, you know, there's this flurry of legislation, there are passing executive orders, and it's just the presidency is really reinvigorated.

It must have felt like that.

Right?

Like this.

And this is an era where we didn't even have Twitter.

Right.

And so, like, this is a new moment and I think that that really sort of to the president's advantage.

Right.

Sort of all these things are popping all at once.

Let's get into a few of these things.

The first is a trade war with Colombia.

If you blinked, you missed it.

It was like six hours long, right?

In a nutshell, basically, the president sort of says he's going to send undocumented migrants back to Colombian military planes.

President Colombia says, no, you're not.

Trump says, oh, yeah, we are.

By the way, we're going to put these, you know, terrible sanctions on you in terms of trade.

What do you think about this?

I mean, is this sort of like obviously Trump likes the kind of notion of using trade sanctions as a as a wedge, as a hammer.

Right.

But is it something that's going to pay off long term?

Is it something he can use again and again, or is this the kind of thing where allies are going to start to say, you know what?

Like we're calling your bluff?

Well, I don't know.

I think that eventually we're going to see, other economic blocs, calling the bluff.

Okay.

We're going to see the European Union that already have said that.

Hey, we're as powerful, maybe not as powerful as you are, but, yeah, we control the markets.

Yeah, we have big markets.

Then we have China.

Yeah.

Huge huge market.

Then obviously we have India.

Then we have if you look at Latin America as a as an economic bloc, another economic bloc.

So eventually there's going to be the pieces are going to fall down in such a way that we're going to get into a bonds.

Yeah.

Eve, the Trump administration says we're going to put, sanctions on, European countries.

I would expect the European Union saying, all right, yeah, we're all in this together.

Are we going to put sanctions to you?

So yeah, there are important implications.

And obviously you have Russia as well, in the mix of important markets.

So I don't know how at the end is going to happen.

But I think that eventually we're going to see some pushback.

Yeah.

And like I think that there's a general kind of sense that, you know, President Trump is acting like President James Monroe.

That's a throwback, right?

How great is this week.

We're going to talk about James Monroe and rules in the Texas.

It's like ooh I love it.

But this is something that I think could be problematic for allies.

I mean, you can't bully allies for very long before they start to really get unhappy about it.

And sometimes there will be this pushback exactly where and how we don't know.

And they worked in this case.

And, you know, maybe it'll work every time.

But obviously, you know, we're kind of only two weeks into this.

And so we'll have to see how it plays out.

But like this is a very personality driven story, right?

I mean, obviously the president Colombia is kind of has that same populist streak.

President Trump has.

And at some point he's going to run up against somebody who's just like him and is stubborn like him and won't budge.

And that could create some potential problems.

So I think that it's just going to be this churn.

And I write forever.

People are, you know, complaining how it's like only still like January.

Right?

It's like two weeks into this.

But the fact is that this is probably going to be the kind of par for the course, thinking about this, in a different context, the president also this week fired 17 independent, inspectors general at various government agencies.

This is actually something that presidents do often when they come in.

The president Trump did the same thing in his first term.

Barack Obama did a few of these.

In this case, though, it may have been done illegally, by law, Congress has to get a 30 day notice if this is going to happen, because the whole point of these positions is that they're supposed to root out fraud, waste, and abuse.

So firing them is a bad signal.

Even Republicans like Chuck Grassley looked at this and said, like, hold on.

Democrats obviously pretty clearly said, this is a purge.

And you're trying to, you know, whitewash what's going on at these agencies.

I think that this is definitely kind of complicated for the president.

It's going to be fought out in court, but it definitely is in keeping with this bigger picture of the president trying to try it.

You know, kind of shape and bend the administration and the executive to his will.

Oh, absolutely.

And, you know, presidents have the right to shape the executive branch however they want, in order for them to be able to execute their public policy priorities.

But there are ways that you have to follow.

Right?

And you cannot just say, I'm firing you like the apprentice.

You know what's brilliant about this is that, yeah, it's like you have 30 days.

All you had to do was tell Congress who agrees with you on everything.

Yes.

Like we're going to fire you.

And that's a normal course of action.

And he didn't do that.

I'm not even going to wait 30 days.

Like, that's a pretty good indication that they're willing to move fast on all of this.

And and really against Congress too.

Well, I mean, not against Congress, because Congress, at least the Republican majority, slim majority, though, are supporting the president every single turn.

Yeah.

So we're going to see how long.

Yeah, that, you.

Know, that's going to last.

We'll talk about nominations in a second here.

But I do think that this is a kind of bullying of Congress, too.

I mean, he doesn't knows he's got the kind of Republicans kind of right where he wants them.

And maybe, like you say, it won't last.

But as it is right now, they're definitely kind of on the chopping block.

And so they're all a little bit kind of scared about this.

But to me the inspector general issue is important because this was a post-Watergate change that really is, kind of fundamental kind of, element about kind of controlling government and making sure that there isn't a kind of repeat of these terrible scandals.

I've done work that looks at these inspector generals and their their offices.

And one of the things you find is that when there are these other scandals in government, the inspectors general step up and do more audits and they do more internal investigations.

That means that they're trying to root out corruption as it relates to kind of general systematic problems.

And if we don't have that, then we're missing potentially these issues.

And as government is really being reshaped by, you know, Donald Trump in all kinds of different ways, you need people there who are looking at this carefully to see, like, are we doing this properly by the book?

But a lot of this is still in churn.

So we'll see how it plays out.

Another thing obviously that happened this week, which is stunning in a way.

It definitely had a kind of seismic interruption to federal government prospects and funding, and that's that.

The president and the administration issued an executive order that paused federal grants, loans, financial assistance programs.

It got blocked by a federal judge and will be fought over in court, but definitely created, I'm going to say, chaos across the country.

And to me, it's interesting because obviously we've talked a lot about the way that President Trump wants to sort of shape the bureaucracy and to change it in a way that benefits him and the white House, this white House, but also like future White Houses.

But I think it's also the case that this is a change which doesn't just hurt Democrats or liberals or big cities or whatever it is.

That right is the enemy de jure.

It also hurts people who are reliant on government assistance for things like small business, biosecurity.

Yeah.

You know, terrorism, border issues.

Right.

Like the range of things that are potentially on the, kind of block here is stunning.

So what is your estimation about kind of what the president's up to here and how it's going to affect the country?

Well, I think once again, he's there ways of doing these things and it's normal.

Yeah.

To see these in every single presidency, every single person has done the same thing.

But the problem is how it's done.

You're talking about thousands and thousands and thousands of grants and grants.

Doesn't mean, like, research grants.

These are grants that are given category or block group grants that are given to, for example, municipalities to fix water infrastructure to change, you know, water pipes and, build roads and these and that, etc., etc.

and it affects both Democrats and Republican led cities, and municipalities.

So this is a huge problem.

And this has important ramifications down the pipeline.

It has ramifications for small businesses, for contractors, for people whose jobs depend on, on, on these grants.

So having a blanket statement and say like, yeah, it's it's like, wait, what?

And the way it happened is also telling, right?

Like the order was very broad saying, you know, that did relate to certain things that the white House wanted to have more details on, like assistance on foreign aid, government organizations, DEI, the green New Deal.

So like, that's pretty broad, as it were.

And so that's what panicked people.

And now the white House came back and said, okay, well, wait a minute now.

Number one, it's not individual level money.

So Medicaid, Social Security that's not affected.

But that still made people panic.

But it definitely had to clarify what they were talking about.

And that is creating additional confusion in a place where you don't want it to be confusing.

So we're still going to see how this plays out.

Just a couple of context points.

The first is that a third of Texas's budget comes from the federal government, and it's from a range of different things, like you said.

I mean, that's a tip of the iceberg.

Yeah, in terms of these policies.

But you're talking about things like disaster relief, you know, veterans organizations like, opioid treatment, homeland security grants, bioterrorism aid, like just a range of things, not to mention like, you know, Medicaid and Social Security, things like that.

So obviously, this is a tremendous impact on a place like Texas.

But the other feature here, and this is sort of more big picture stuff, and that's that the president and the administration want to push the notion that enpoundment is unconstitutional.

This is a law that goes back to the 70s, when Richard Nixon wanted to basically reallocate the money that Congress told him to spend.

And as an institutional separation of powers question, the idea here is whether or not the president can basically not spend the money Congress tells them to spend.

The courts.

And Congress said, no, you can't.

You have to spend it the way we told you to spend it.

They have a little bit of wiggle room, but not much.

And so what the Trump White House wants to do is to challenge that that would fundamentally reshape the way the institutions function, how the balance of power works.

Do you think that the courts would give Trump any leeway on this?

Well, I mean, it depends how you read article one six.

Okay.

Well, let's go right now.

So, I mean, I don't think so.

Yeah.

It's hard to imagine they would.

And it's very clear in the Constitution, number one.

Number two, if we take previous, Supreme Court rulings, they tend to go to the origins and to the intent.

And the intent in article one.

Section eight is extremely, extremely clear.

Congress has the power of the purse.

Congress writes the checks, and you're going to, purchase whatever or spend the money.

How we're telling you to spend the money.

Yeah.

So it is the cornerstone of our separation of power systems.

Without that thing, Congress is just.

Yeah, nothing like making suggestions.

And the president is the one who done.

Exactly.

And then you have, like, you know, 20 people who work at OMB, right, who are in charge of basically deciding what gets passed and what doesn't.

It's like the Wizard of Oz, like choosing like, you know, you're going to be passing and you're not like, it's a hard thing to find.

And so this country still clashes, I think, problematic.

And I don't see the constitutional arguments in that Department act of 1974.

Yeah.

is unconstitutional.

I just hard to imagine.

Yeah.

It's how especially when it's weighs on the Constitution.

Yeah.

I don't see how, but yeah.

Look, yeah, I'm just a mere mortal, a humble, a humble.

University, humble ish university professor.

Yes.

So I may be completely wrong.

No, but I think you're right.

I mean, there is, I think a separation needed.

And the courts have been willing to give the president more authority.

But it's been a times when there's not a separation issue.

It's like where the white House asks for more authority over the bureaucracy or over the executive branch.

Right.

The so-called kind of unitary theory of the power of the executive.

Just a theory.

But now the courts are able to put some of this into practice.

And so what the courts have to decide is like, does the unitary theory extend beyond the kind of boundaries of the institution of the executive and my guess is no.

But like we're going to have to see.

Yeah.

Because I guess you never know on a couple of these.

So begin of guessing wrong.

Let's guess about whether or not we're going to get more nominees, confirm this week.

This is a tough week for presidential nominations of some very controversial figures are going to be up on the dais this week.

RFK Jr is nominated to be Health and Human Services secretary.

Kash Patel, head of the FBI.

Tulsi Gabbard is a director of national intelligence.

President Trump has basically said confirm or there will be consequences.

Those consequences are more or less him coming to your district telling the voters that they shouldn't vote for you again.

So what do you make of the way this has come down, not just in terms of like whether they'll be confirmed or not, but also whether the president has any juice left to be able to make Republicans do what he wants.

On these controversial.

Topics.

Well, I mean, if we take any, lessons from recent history.

Yeah.

Like two weeks ago, recent history takes it was confirmed, quite easily.

Yeah, but it was confirmed once he signaled that he was in line ideologically with the current version of the Republican Party.

With these three potential nominee confirmed, Meese.

Wow, that was a mouthful.

I know, I don't even know if that's a good.

No, no thank you.

That's right.

The ideological alignment is very easy.

Yeah.

You have RFK, and Gabbard that have run for the Democratic Party to become president of the US, which is like, I don't know how you're going to pivot from that to now.

Right?

In terms of policy positions, some of RFK, a policy positions fall with liberals.

Some of them are, embraced by conservatives.

So it's not clear the alignment.

And obviously with, Kash Patel, you don't have that, clear GOP ideological alignment.

So.

But he definitely speaks to the grievance word, Of President Trump.

Yeah.

Yes, absolutely.

And some Republicans in in the in congress.

True, but not so many in, in, in the US Senate.

Right.

So that's word.

Yeah.

It matters.

I think you.

Can say whatever they want to say.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We, we don't care about you right now.

But wait till we're done.

Yeah.

No you're right I mean I think that, that there is a sort of recipe here for Trump to be able to push these folks through.

But it's going to be tight.

Right.

And like you said, the Hegseth nomination was barely confirmed.

And so you could definitely see another couple of these Republicans say, you know what, I'm not really sure about this, given some of the background of the people.

And so I need you only need one more.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, you're going to have I mean, if you get three more Republicans to the nay column.

Yeah.

That it let me ask you this.

Okay.

So big picture.

We're two weeks into the Trump White House.

Everyone sort of like, you know, going every which way.

And I wonder if this what people wanted?

My take is.

Yeah.

This is pretty much what people wanted.

They wanted to kind of shake up a things.

They wanted a more aggressive president, and they probably wanted it in this particular ideological direction.

Do you think that they're getting what they wanted?

Not yet.

Not yet.

We are in week two.

Yeah.

These reshuffling, pushing back, pushing forward.

Yeah.

So on and so forth, has to materialize eventually on what people really, really want.

Yeah.

Which is lower price hotdogs.

On.

A hot dog this weekend of the same price.

Right.

Somehow like the same thing.

Right.

But I think that's kind of the end of it, where people mostly are not paying attention to this day by day, like our watchers, our listeners, you know, we pay close attention to this right on Twitter every time, every minute.

But most people, like, aren't right.

They want to see big picture changes.

And right, like so far, maybe a little, but not totally.

But I mean, it's going to be month one, month to month three.

And then you can say, well, you know, the price of the hot dogs are still the same.

Yeah.

And then I buy.

Good hot dogs do like I don't buy the cheap ones.

Well.

Right.

Don't buy the cheap ones.

But then and these things can take a long time.

Yeah.

Because all these movements and all these changes and all these pushback, he's going to end up in the Supreme Court.

Yeah.

The Supreme Court doesn't rule.

You know, in 15 minutes.

They're going to be like just like, yeah, refreshing your email.

And I mean like stacking and stacking of like yeah, of of these requests for cert.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that's right.

A lot of this is going to come out in the courts, and is going to be fought over there.

And that's probably mostly where we'll spend our time.

So, yeah, we're going to become law experts in addition to the experts about the price of hot dogs.

But I do think one thing that happened is that, you know, this is really reinvigorated.

Democrats, like there was a month or so where they just weren't sure what to do.

There was this kind of wilderness element that, you know, the electorate had spoken and they had lost pretty handily.

Right.

And so what to do?

And I think this week really reinvigorated that.

And although I think some of the messaging has been a little bit weak, I do think that it's the case that they're finding their footing.

And that's going to be where the real kind of dynamic comes in the next, next.

True.

And remember that indeed, President Trump won the popular vote, but he wanted by 1.5%.

Yeah, which is not right.

A landslide victory in terms of the popular vote.

Yeah.

So that means that the country is completely cut in half in terms of what, in terms of at least, political ideology.

And we are months away from 2026.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sorry, but that's also very important.

So that.

Remind me.

Can the president, can the president do what he needs to do?

Yeah.

In this time period.

Yeah.

We the huge colossal changes that he's proposing when we have a judicial system and the courts are going to say, yeah, wait a second.

Great point.

You don't know.

Yeah.

I mean, 100 day mark is kind of the traditional demarcation point.

So we'll see how that plays out.

And then the president also is going to give a kind of joint session speech on in early March.

And I think that's kind of the target for them is like how much can we make this change happen by then?

And what are we going to say about it?

So we'll obviously tune into all of this and more as it happens by the minute.

But let's talk Texas and talk about some of the controversies in Texas.

Now, the first is that Todd Smith, who was, pled guilty last year to felony bribery charges, is now the chief of staff to AD Commissioner Sid Miller.

He's a longtime aide to the AG commissioner.

Smith had pled guilty to commercial bribery.

The state jail felony.

The kind of issue was that he was basically taking money, taking bribes to give out licenses to grow hemp, which he implied would be limited and turns out, are not limited.

So he ends up, along with some associates.

Ends up, having to, pay some restitution and, and and take the bribery charge.

Miller parted ways with Smith after his 2021 arrest and denied any connection to this.

But I think that the kind of enterprise speaks volumes about where we are.

Like, for one, as we said, a lot of scandals don't seem to matter anymore.

And the fact that he's back in the mix is a certain indication that either Miller doesn't care or scandals don't matter.

Or maybe both.

Both.

Perhaps the case that Miller doesn't plan to run for anything again?

I don't think he will.

He's not really in the conversation for like, governor or something down the road.

But for sure, it's the case that this is an issue that came up when he ran in 22.

And if he runs again, probably will come up again, right?

Yeah.

No, absolutely.

And they have been, known each other for the past 25 years.

So, yeah, again, is just an indication that scandals don't matter.

And the same rhetoric that we hear, even though that he, was arrested by the Texas Rangers, even though that he was granted two years of deferred adjudication, he was, you know, found guilty.

Yeah.

And.

Yeah, he's back in the mix.

He's back in the mix.

And what is more important, or what I think is very interesting, is the rhetoric surrounding these thing is in terms of what Commissioner Miller has said.

Well, this is a witch hunt.

Yeah, okay.

And yeah, like they're not trying to get him.

They're trying to get me excited.

They just got him first.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is a pretty typical scandal.

Like get out of jail kind of play playbook.

And for sure, it does indicate that this is sort of something we're used to dealing with in the American political system.

The other connection is that this is something that basically undid Jim Hightower in the 1990 race, when Rick Perry ran against him.

There were, like his aides, Hightower's aides had gone to, you know, had pled guilty on similar issues.

And, you know, it basically cost Hightower his seat, so doesn't happen anymore.

We'll see.

Let's switch to talk about rules.

And I know that you, like me, are a super nerd and love talking about government rules.

Institutions matter, rules matter.

And the Texas House fought through a bunch of different rules.

So there was controversy because some conservative Republicans didn't want to go as far, to make some of the changes, and they wanted to restructure some things.

But the new House rules, which passed, abolished six committees, added two new committees, has only Republican chairs, but does give some additional authority to vice chairs, specifically giving them kind of a priority spot on witnesses, which can be useful to shape kind of bills.

They can prepare an impact statement.

They can request research on bills.

So like it's not like a great set of powers.

But conservative Republicans pushed back and said, you're empowering Democrats.

The Democrats like came out with the set of facts saying this.

And then what they said, was, you know, taken to be that that they took a victory lap.

It's not clear that's what's going on here.

But the Republicans and the conservative wing are definitely pretty happy.

It was a big test for Burrows, and I think largely they didn't back down.

Right.

They didn't kind of cater to the kind of more conservative crowd.

But the split certainly signals there's going to be additional infighting, and this is going to be something we're going to see all session long.

Freedom caucus members say it's war, like we're going to fight.

Oh, yeah.

Everything.

Yeah.

They can and maybe they will, but, it's going to have implications for what goes on in the session.

Right.

Well, absolutely.

Because, Speaker Paul is walking a very fine line, but so far Democrats are in line.

Yeah.

And there is also a bunch of Republicans that fall in that category.

And then the question here is if the, more freedom, caucus is going too far.

Yeah.

And you need, you know, more people to play with because you don't have control of the house, you don't have control of the floor.

So it is important for you to learn how this thing is one thing, being making a statement and then the other one working with the other members to pass some legislation that you really care about.

Yeah, tweeting something is one thing, but you know, actually trying to accomplish something is another.

Or trying to battle the speaker all sessions.

Yeah, it's going to be a challenge.

But let's talk about leaders and we're going to have the state of the state coming up.

Greg Abbott's giving this on Sunday night.

What do you expect.

So we're going to have obviously, school vouchers.

He's going to be right there in.

An emergency item.

And these are items present to the governor and basically say, this is your jump start.

You can go ahead.

Exactly.

And this is how the governor lays out his priorities for, the legislative session.

So, private school vouchers, bail system changes.

We're going to see border security.

Also, he mentioned that he wants to see more water infrastructure.

Yeah.

So those are the big topics.

Gambling?

Gambling?

I don't I don't think gambling is going to be.

We won't talk about it there.

I don't.

Think so.

He might be in favor, but he's not going to talk about it.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's right.

I think that's exactly right in terms of issues.

I wonder a couple of other things too.

How much overlap will there be with Dan Patrick's agenda?

Like whose side does he take here?

Number two, does he challenge or embrace Burrows now?

Burrows is obviously kind of like in the crossfire for him.

The question is, does Abbott fully go in on that?

And what does that look like?

Number three, does he mention Trump.

Like, does he really embrace that as he has?

Right.

He said things like, you know, Texas's you know, resources in terms of criminal justice are at your disposal for all the immigration issues are up to.

So does he talk about that.

They're therefore kind of politicizing things?

Yeah.

And what's the ratio of these kind of big ticket items like water transportation, insurance reform, like you said, to like saber rattling stuff like DEI and abortion?

These are all kind of questions I think that we ought to ask.

And really, he needs a win this session.

He's got to get every item passed.

He's been getting like 80 or 90% of stuff passed.

Which is pretty.

Good.

It's pretty good.

Now I've got to get 100%.

And I think that is going to be key session.

I think that eventually is going to be session.

I think he's not going to go all, against Burrows.

We're going to see more collaboration, but that's going to be something that we're going to talk about next week.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina, And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus, the conversation keeps up next week.

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