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

I'm Jeronimo Cortina, 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 to talk a little.

Politics.

Lots going on, as usual.

We've got, definite, kind of conundrum happening in DC with respect to the cabinet, but not the Texans.

They're the lowest drama.

Yeah.

Going to DC.

We'll talk about that and we'll talk about the speaker's race here in Texas, which is heating up and definitely is going to be a subject of conversation and sets the tone for what happens in January, which is right around the corner.

So yeah, but while we were, you know, putting, fork fulls of turkey in our mouths, the votes were still being counted.

So now there's an official final tally for what the next Congress will look like.

And Democrats have netted two seats, but not enough to get the majority.

It's going to be 220 to 215, which means that the Republicans have a razor thin margin to work with.

Very damaging.

In addition to the fact that Republicans can only lose three votes in the Senate, which will be important for a discussion about how the cabinet is going to unfold.

So how do you make this?

Well, an also of those five, seats minimum that a couple of members of Congress have, quit put in a different way.

So right now, three seats are going to be up, in the air, at least for, you know, the first, three months of the Trump administration until those seats are, replenished.

Right.

The Democrats have got a pretty good record at winning these special elections.

But, you know, gerrymandering makes it hard to make any real progress.

So we'll see how those play out and will monitor that.

But the big news of the week, though, was the pardon of Hunter Biden.

Joe Biden promised multiple times that he would not do this.

I don't know who among us wouldn't if we were president and had the opportunity to pardon our only at this point, son.

But it got a definite pushback from Republicans and from Democrats and basically everybody.

So I want to kind of pose this to you.

Do you think that this is a liability for Democrats going forward in 2026?

Yes and no.

Because on the first part of it, it vindicates, Trump's assertion and of his, and of his team regarding that.

The Department of Justice is a political, right.

You know, machine entity against, people that they do not agree with.

Right?

It's the, the, the deep state, beats best so that has revindicated Trump because in, President Biden's speech, or statement, he said, you know, this is political.

And Trump was like, thank you.

Yes.

You're 100% right.

I agree with you 100%.

Right.

So to that regard, it changes the narrative 100%.

Can it hurt?

Democrats in 2026?

The answer is no.

People do not.

Yeah.

Are not going to remember what happened in Thanksgiving 2024.

I think you're right.

Like the political world will move so fast between now and the next midterms.

Yeah.

I don't think it's going to be a problem for Democrats.

But I do think that Joe Biden's legacy is certainly corrupted because of this.

His notion for running for office, the first for president and then in running in 2020, and was that he wanted to basically keep a kind of normal democracy functioning.

Right.

The norms that were established had to be put into place.

He's kind of definitely chipped away at this, and I don't want to say it's eroded because there's a lot of things that go into the Ryan monument that is our democratic republic.

But for sure, it's the case that a lot of people look at this and say, you're using this power to help your family, right is exactly the wrong thing to do.

And even Democrats are saying, like, the 180 that you've done on this is, a tremendous problem.

So I think Biden has definitely sacrificed the moral high ground when it comes to Democratic rule and really opens up the door for, as you said, for President Trump to say, well, I can pardon basically anybody for any reason.

I mean, just don't give me.

Right?

I mean, true in in his first administration keep pardon, you know, relatives and friends and this and that.

So he has on all other presidents have done it right.

So Bill Clinton famously pardoned his brother on drug charges.

Right, right.

It's not uncommon for the pardon power to be used and to some degree abused, let's say misused.

I think that it's something that for sure presidents have done forever.

This is not uncommon, but it's also the case that we've seen the pardon power be used for power positive purposes.

That is to say, to heal the nation.

Right?

I get the Andrew Johnson's pardon of Harvey Mudd, who was a doctor who set Abraham Lincoln's leg as one of these moments.

The pardon in part, came because Mudd had spent a lot of time helping prisoners, because he was in jail, obviously, for helping the person who assassinated president during yellow fever outbreak.

That's a moment of healing for the nation.

Ford's pardon of Nixon is a good example of this.

Jimmy Carter pardons, or gives amnesty to a range of people who had evaded the Vietnam draft.

So there are moments where we can make this happen.

There have been people this week who said that Biden should pardon Trump for his potential crimes.

What do you think about that?

Oh, wow.

It could be - Stumped You?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that that would be a moment.

I don't know if he would be healing.

Because when you're talking about even, the latest one, let's say Clinton pardoned his, brother on drug charges.

The country was not as polarized.

Yeah.

If President Biden pardons Trump, then it's everything that has been said during the campaign, during the Biden administration, Trump, his administration the way that he operates bodies like.

Yeah, okay, fine.

No worries.

It's like sanctioning it.

And that made the.

Whole concept of running for democracy.

Oh, like no.

Whatever.

Yeah.

It's like going to H-e-b, right?

Yeah, sure.

Let's just do this today.

Yeah, yeah.

No, I think you're right.

I think it would set a bad precedent, but I also think this sets a bad precedent.

Oh, yeah.

So kind of one question I got asked this week was whether or not the pardon power should be taken away from the president or if it should be reformed.

And I thought this is a really good question.

In the Constitution, basically, as a plenary power gives the president the power to be able to pardon.

Yeah, large.

I mean, there are some restrictions in terms of impeachment, but this is a process that really has been kind of become more political now.

Everything's become more political.

So we'll leave that there.

But for sure, it's the case that some oversight here is probably needed.

So I'm in favor of reforming the pardon power.

The way it works now is basically like pardons are submitted to the special office of the pardon attorney, which is a function of the Department of Justice.

And they vet these files, and then they give them to the president with a recommendation.

Right.

It could be the case that those kind of non-binding opinions become binding in a more formal way.

And although you don't remove the president's power to pardon, at least you put some kind of guardrails on it.

And one guardrail is you can't pardon yourself or your family.

So it's possible that that could be done internally.

Or it could be that now there's appetite to change the pardon power in the Constitution to basically say, you can't pardon yourself.

That we can clarify right now in the writing right now, bring out the parchment.

By.

Scrawl it, you know, on the desk, and then, you know, maybe have it also so you can't pardon members of your immediate family.

What do you think about that?

I mean, I think that these type of processes have to be very well determined.

You have to have very clear guardrails in order for them to be transparent, because when people get confused and I get confused is, yes, we understand the blank power of the Constitution.

It's very power.

Boom.

You pardon?

Whatever.

Yeah, fine.

But still it's where do we want to take these and what's going to be the limit.

Yeah.

Pardon to yourself I mean yeah you can pardon yourself if you're President.

There's nothing that says that you can't.

Yeah.

And what would be especially the implications for the democratic process.

That is the real question.

Yeah.

Now is there appetite to do so?

I don't know.

I mean, to me, there might be because people are outraged about this, both Republicans and Democrats.

And so like Democrats get something they want, which is that you can't self pardon.

There's a concern Trump could still do this right.

I mean he's going to be in office for years.

When Trump issued the last round of pardons for people like, Roger Stone.

Yeah.

People like Paul Manafort like, yeah.

I mean, there was a list of people here who a lot of people at the time he pardoned, they said, like they shouldn't be pardoned.

Right.

But it was a bipartisan consensus.

And he did this kind of mid course.

Right.

So, you know, usually pardons are reserved for late moments or presidents on their way out the door do this.

And for moments where there's a presumption of kind of aggressive prosecutorial outcomes or where like the, the kind of standard kind of sentences are unfair, right?

Like they've been charged with something in a way that's just too aggressive.

Like Obama did this for a range of different drug crimes.

So I feel like there could be an appetite right now to have this conversation and then potentially to put this in front of voters.

Yeah.

No, no, I don't think so.

I think you're right.

I mean, I mean, I need once again, he's polarization is a fact that, president elect Trump controls 1,000%.

Well, no, 99.75% of the Republican Party.

Right.

And if he says, you know.

Yeah.

No.

Yeah.

Then everyone is going to come up and not going to retract whatever they have said that there are rage and this and that.

And I know it's very important.

So what they said three weeks ago about how this was never happened.

Yeah.

The change is right.

Absolutely.

Fully agree.

Yeah.

No I think that's right.

I mean, our politics are two hair on fire right now.

I think to do something which, to be honest, would be a kind of common sense reform, right, that everyone sort of assumes should happen.

And we hope that presidents don't abuse the power.

But as we've seen, sometimes they do.

And it's not a Republican or Democratic thing.

It's both.

But let's talk about DC in a different way.

That's about the way that we're we're stuffing the cabinet.

The Trump administration hit the ground running.

We have a kind of shadow government and waiting here.

Right.

He's presumed that it put all these different cabinet officials potentially.

And one of the things that happened over the break was that the president elect put together three Texans who were going to go to the white House, to list them.

The first is John Ratcliffe, who's going to head CIA.

He's a former member of Congress.

Yep.

Brooke Rollins, who is, director of the, of the America First Foundation.

Basically, this is the white House in waiting.

People say lots of staffers are going to come from this organization.

She's going to head the ag department.

And then Scott Turner, who was a former member of the Texas House, is going to head HUD.

We're going to talk later about the speaker's race.

And when Turner's name came up, I thought, is that the same Scott Turner who ran against Joe Strauss in, what, 13 or something?

Yeah, yeah, it definitely is him.

So, these are picks I think that are kind of noncontroversial.

I mean, to me, these are kind of under the radar for Partizans.

I don't think they'll have a trouble getting.

No, no, I don't think so.

I mean, people might disagree with the way that they, implement or they know not implement, but more their policy, preferences.

Yeah.

But I don't think that there's going to be any, any problems in the confirmation.

I don't think that there's going to be any weird positions in terms of this or that or any significant, skeletons in the closet that are gonna, you know, yeah, prohibit them to get confirmed.

So I think, yeah, those are three solid choices, in terms of, you know, just thinking in pure terms of policy.

I don't know anything about policy except it's secret So I'm not supposed to.

Yeah, I'm not supposed to.

Well, I know all about it.

I've got all right here.

So I don't know.

There's a file here on you Of of, you know, that, Department of Agriculture and then HUD I mean, those are very important portfolios that have very important implications for Texas, especially the one we're seeing in Texas, a housing shortage.

Yeah.

Governor Abbott also kind of pushing this issue of housing shortages.

And then obviously, agriculture is extremely important, especially in light of the quote unquote potential, tariffs to Mexico and Mexico replying, well, we're going to reply back, and especially since billions of dollars in terms of produces, imported from Mexico.

So that will have significant implications because now the, especially the agricultural market it's a world market.

Yeah.

So is not just dumping money right into the ag sector and say, okay, here's more subsidies or this or that.

Yeah, they have more important implications in terms of how these commodities are traded and how prices are going to fluctuate one way or the other.

So, extremely both of them extremely important because that has very clear connections with, average, people day to day.

Yeah.

And these picks have been very vocal about the need for cuts.

Brook wall ins in particular, as you said, is going to head AG and she's the head of this organization that fundamentally is the kind of intellectual arm of the Trump yeah, presidency.

And they're looking to cut some of those cuts are going to include cutting farm subsidies, which could hurt Texas, slashing environmental regulations, which some people in Texas would like, cutting nutrition programs, if it's the case of Trump does plan to slice the federal government and really trim down the budget, then AG is going to be on the chopping block.

She's also going to have to help spearhead through the farm bill, which got stalled.

And so the re-upping of that is really critical because that's a huge omnibus bill.

I think for Turner at HUD to yeah, like you said, lots of challenges, affordable housing is a major issue.

Right.

And a big reason why Democrats took serious losses in places like California and New York.

And so I think that that's going to be a critical kind of segment.

Yeah.

But again, is is within the context, right.

When you're looking at, ag and housing, you cannot separate them from the cross-cutting ideal or implementation strategies of the, almost brand new white House administration.

If there's tariff And you cut them and then you cut ag That's a disaster to happen.

It could really kind of bottom out.

A lot of people's incomes.

Are very bad.

And then if you don't deliver on affordable housing and a lot of people voted on those very particular issues, and if you do not deliver, those are issues that is not about, well, we're going to talk about the, you know, deficit ceiling, blah, blah blah.

People have no idea.

Yeah, whatever.

Yeah.

Who cares.

Deficits don't matter.

But it's like, can I afford these apartment or these house?

Can I rent here?

Can I rent here?

Then people notice and then we have, as you said last time in a couple of of years, we have the midterm election.

Yeah, it'll be here before you know it.

And and that's what the president wants to avoid.

I think that the controversy won't end because of the policies.

It may take longer for that trickle into people's reality.

So the midterm may not be where it's most felt.

Perhaps it will take four years.

But for sure, in the near term, we're going to see a lot of impact of what the president's like choices will be.

It's rare, extremely rare for a president to lose a nomination fight.

I mean, there in history, only nine times has there been this the case that we've seen a nominee who hasn't gotten confirmed, one of the more famous and one of the last ones was George H.W.

Bush's pick and John Tower of Texas, who was the one who actually broke Republican kind of lost record here in Texas by winning a Senate seat that Lyndon Johnson held.

He was considered an alcoholic and a womanizer.

And so he got scrutinized and got denied.

This obviously is a trend that the president elect would not like to see happen.

But it is certainly the case that as Steve Bannon, the president's former advisor, said, it's like Christmas Day every day, like they're willing to do whatever they can to get their people in place.

This means, of course, that there's going to be some controversy they're going to have to wade through.

Right.

There's no doubt that, it's the case that Trump just, I think, simply isn't really listening to people when they say that this isn't the way things are done or this is a potential problem.

Nominee like, he's going full steam ahead on all these, which could come back to haunt them.

But as Mike rounds, who the senator from South Dakota said, you know, the Senate job is to advise and consent.

Sometimes it's about advise and sometimes it's about consent.

So I think a realistic Republican point of view is like some of these are just going to have to take and accept.

But there are problematic elements here.

None of the Texans, as I said, I think are going to be a problem.

But some might.

Let's start with Kash.

Patel, who is the president's nominee for the director of the FBI.

He's been, obviously widely criticized for having conspiratorial beliefs.

He said he's going to shut down the FBI building on day one.

He publishes the trilogy of children's books that are kind of on the borderline of conspiratorial, lots of unusual things here happening.

There's been bipartisan pushback on this, but no one has said officially, no, this is one issue, right, of several, including John F Kennedy Jr. Or Robert Kennedy Jr. And and Pete Hegseth, who've run into some troubles.

Yes.

What do you think about the way that this is going to play out in, in November or in, in January?

Well, I think I mean, there's two things, in my mind.

One is President Trump testing the waters and see how far he can push these nominees, because these are extreme peaks, right?

One way or the other.

And let's not think in terms of ideology or loyalty.

Right.

In pure terms of public policy, these are extreme peaks that are going to disrupt whether it's good or bad.

I don't know, how bureaucracies work.

If you look at Kennedy, it's anti-vax.

When the Department of Health, Human Services is like, oh, we need to vaccinate.

Why?

Because that's science, etc., etc., etc..

Right.

The disciplines, for example, of all the National Institutes of Health's and all the centers that create 95% of the research, medical research in the world.

So, yeah, in terms of policy.

So my take is, okay, how far he can go through and then sneak someone that he's going to be like 2 or 3 steps below that.

Yeah.

Extreme.

It's a smart play actually for him.

You flood the zone with information, you provide people with information, and then you kind of just wear down people's consciousness.

Your game theory.

Yeah.

Right.

With this extreme.

Yeah.

So then they're going to peak, you know the let's let's still extreme candidate once again in terms of polls.

Yeah.

And then my real peak right.

He's going to.

So it's a sacrificial lamb maybe.

So I mean that's one.

And then the other one is the other point here is if the Senate right is going to say, oh, you know, we love you, we support you.

But yeah, we also have to take care of the institution.

Then that red hat.

But we can't have.

Yeah, yeah.

Pete Hegseth, who's been accused of, you know, all kinds of terrible sexual misconduct, personal, you know, misconduct, financial mismanagement of the.

Oh, yeah, even his mom came out and said that, like, he needs to look in the mirror like, that hurts.

But she retracted that right?

Still.

Yeah, I know.

What' said is said.

But in any case, like, there are certain problems here, right?

And I think you're right.

You know, as of this recording, this is still all set, but there's been this rumor that maybe, Ron DeSantis will step in to be the, you know, be in Hegseth's place as defense secretary, but we just don't know how these parts are moving around.

But I think you're right.

Actually, the Trump starting early is probably pretty smart here, right?

Like, if things go badly by the time November rolls around, people won't remember the real tragedy and the chaos of all of it.

Right?

They'll basically kind of go forward with the new, you know, pick that whatever Trump has.

But I do think that the kind of bar is lower, that the standard for trying to get the nominees over is going to be a lot lower.

So I think there's a really good chance that some of these folks are going to get to be put into place.

So it's going to be a interesting kind of four years for sure.

Let's switch gears and talk about Texas in particular.

Talk about Greg Abbott, who issued an executive order in August.

So a while back requiring hospitals that accept Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Plan to ask people who are patients, whether they're a U.S. citizen or not.

Now, this earlier this month or last month, I should say, in November, a cardiologist at Texas Children's here in Houston said that we are telling people they don't have to answer that question.

Abbott, during Thanksgiving week, kind of shot back and said, well, you know, you better be sure you've got clear records, right?

The implication from Abbott was that this is something they're going to use to possibly take away funding in the future.

Not clear.

They can do that.

But of course, the threat sometimes isn't enough to be able to get what he wants.

So what do you make of the kind of back and forth on this?

Well, I mean, so first of all, the executive order doesn't necessarily make patients, to to answer the question, I so that's, one point and that's my understanding that I think of other, more, smart people and legal scholars, do that.

They have to ask the question, but then individually is like.

You know, compliance.

Compliance to it because it would be impossible to, to to, I guess, verify or not.

Very fine.

Whatever.

Now looking at 30,000 food, Bill and from, pure academic perspective, I think that there is a lot of research that shows that, undocumented migrants are less likely to use, medical services.

Okay.

And among those, it's, Latinos are less likely and there's, you know, some research that shows that, obviously that data is imperfect.

Yeah.

So if Governor Abbott is going to provide that data, then, you know, it's something that you're going to verify that that is the case, right?

Number two is that also I think it's important to highlight the contributions migration costs.

Yeah.

There is no question that migration costs right.

But also migration contributes and contributes a lot.

Contributes to the agricultural sector especially here in Texas.

You know construction services industry.

And more importantly at the national level it brings and gives a lot.

Yeah.

Billions and billions of dollars on Social Security payments that will never ever be reclaimed by these individuals.

A great point.

So yeah.

Yeah, I was thinking about our conversation from a few weeks ago about the border.

And, this is an issue where the Lois Cole course, a senator here from Texas filed a bill that suggested that the every employer has to go through E-Verify, which has been kind of in the works for a while, but hasn't been fully.

Of course, not.

Set.

And if that happens, then it could be a potential problem, because all of a sudden, a lot of people are not going to be in the labor force like we talked about, and it could be a problem.

So we'll monitor how this plays out.

But it's definitely important to the bottom line economically for Texas.

Finally, let's talk about the speakers right.

It's heating up.

Bring it.

On.

The question is who has a path to victory here.

Representative Cook says that he's got 49 votes.

This is kind of funny.

He's, certainly trying to claim that he's effectively most of the way there.

Dade Phelan hasn't released a list of names of people supporting him, but he needs at least 14 Republicans if he's going to have all the Democrats, the Republicans meet in caucus this weekend to be able to vote.

And whoever is the majority vote getter for the caucus is going to get all the Republican votes.

In theory, it makes it really hard for David feeling to move through.

The problem for Dade feeling is that a lot of members basically set their agendas with his, and it didn't work well in their primaries.

A lot of them lost their primaries.

Those that did survive got bloodied in the process.

Yeah.

So a lot of them basically you're kind of really not that willing to kind of side with feeling.

So I think that it could be a real problem for him to be able to move forward on this.

And if he doesn't win, it could be really chaotic in the session where you've got a new speaker who hasn't been around very long and things are probably gonna slow down.

So what do you think about the way that this is going to play out here?

I mean, on the one side, you know, the other?

Well, the Senate and certainly the government are going to be very happy.

Yeah.

The biggest winner here is Patrick, right?

Especially feeling losers.

Absolutely.

100%.

But then, you know, it's the calculus of what's going to happen in the next session.

And that's what's going to be the important thing where the Democrats are going to say, like, all right, that's your show.

You run it.

Let's see what happens.

But they still need some Democrats one way or the other.

Right?

Right.

And within the Republican Party.

Yes.

May have some votes, but again, is not a party that is 100% aligned within itself.

There are rumors there's another person running that would unify the caucus that could be a third off.

There you go.

It's still really tough, though, and Republicans need to have a kind of firm guide on this, because if they don't, then things are going to slow down in the legislature is such a chaotic place in this short session that it's very likely that they aren't going to be able to get enough done, put things in place where they have to be to pass the full legislation.

So time is there any.

Secret ballot or not?

Ballot?

Yeah, secret ballot here so people can hide behind that.

But the thing is that most people have been very public about it.

Right.

Like that.

So that's definitely, problem for Phelan.

Yeah.

Well, it's something that we're going to see.

Definitely.

And obviously we're going to report next week on what happened.

But for this week that's it for today I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus.

The conversation keeps up next week.

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