Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the trib
Speaker 1: Cast for Tuesday, August nineteenth, which is both my mother's
Speaker 1: birthday and Bill Clinton's birthday, which I know because it
Speaker 1: is my mother's birthday.
Speaker 2: Is your mother, Bill Clinton?
Speaker 1: My mother is Bill Clinton?
Speaker 2: Twist?
Speaker 1: No, that's a growing up in the Clinton era and
Speaker 1: having a I thought that was a very fun fact.
Speaker 1: Less relevant now than when I was eight. But anyway,
Speaker 1: we have a lot to talk about this week. I
Speaker 1: am elean Or Klebanoff Law and politics reporter, joined as
Speaker 1: always by my co host, Matthew Watkins. Matthew, how's it going.
Speaker 3: I'm you know, I'm a little grumpy, but maybe that
Speaker 3: I'll lead to a happy podcast.
Speaker 2: Just sat in First day of School traffic.
Speaker 1: I was going to say that the first day of school. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna ask if your kids, I guess maybe
Speaker 1: your daughter are they old enough to be affected by
Speaker 1: the cell phone band?
Speaker 3: So my daughter does not have a cell phone, she
Speaker 3: does have an Apple Watch, and so right before I
Speaker 3: dropped her off, she had to put her Apple Watch
Speaker 3: in her backpack because they're not allowed to wear the
Speaker 3: Apple Watch anymore. And I was like, you were one
Speaker 3: hundred percent going to lose this in the first week
Speaker 3: of school. So if anyone finds an Apple Watch around
Speaker 3: Anne Richard's High school and Austin, just drop it off
Speaker 3: of the text tribune.
Speaker 1: Yeah great, And also like, how will she know how
Speaker 1: many steps she took?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: So yeah, her step going to take it. The Texas legislature,
Speaker 1: I don't know when you think and I think about
Speaker 1: that like kind of I'm like, that's the sort of
Speaker 1: thing that Texas legilature should be keeping themselves busy with,
Speaker 1: Like should we have cell phones in schools? The rest
Speaker 1: of this seems like a little bit of a sideshow,
Speaker 1: but that's what we're here to talk about. We are
Speaker 1: joined this week by two very special guests. We have
Speaker 1: Kayla Lake Saint Charles is not Chicago who and uh
Speaker 1: Renzo We will let him talk about the srec Downey. Thanks,
Speaker 1: thanks you both for joining.
Speaker 4: Us, Thanks for having us.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, as I was telling Kyle and Renzo before
Speaker 1: we got started, I'm going to try to summarize everything
Speaker 1: that has happened in the last ten weeks in two minutes,
Speaker 1: all right, so then we can talk about times where
Speaker 1: things go from here.
Speaker 2: Kay Ready, set go June.
Speaker 1: Second, the Texas Legislature gabbles out siney die. Everyone starts
Speaker 1: making their summer plants. Governor Abbott veto's the THHC bill.
Speaker 1: Everyone cancels their summer plans. Then we start hearing rumors
Speaker 1: that President Trump is asking Texas to redraw the legislative maps.
Speaker 1: Is tech is Governor Abbitt gonna put this on the
Speaker 1: special session call? This is the question. Then July fourth, devastating,
Speaker 1: horrible Hill Country floods, one of the worst tragedies the
Speaker 1: state has ever seen. Then Governor Abbott puts out the
Speaker 1: call it flooding response. It also has congressional mid decade
Speaker 1: congressional redistricting, and it has a bunch of other conservative
Speaker 1: priorities on it. Immediately Democrats start saying, we might have
Speaker 1: to quorum break. We have a bunch of hearings on redistricting.
Speaker 1: People are very upset about it. We see the map.
Speaker 1: It adds five additional seats for Republicans. It gets voted
Speaker 1: out of the committee. Democrats go on the lamb, they
Speaker 1: leave for Chicago and other places. They break quorum. They
Speaker 1: stay out for about two weeks. Governor Abbott a Churnyhynal
Speaker 1: compacton say that they are going to try to remove
Speaker 1: them from their seats. Bunch of legal brujaha proceeds. Then
Speaker 1: they both chambers adjourn. California says they're going to redistrict.
Speaker 1: Democrats return yesterday, say we did it. Republicans say we
Speaker 1: did it. We're back to Special Session number two with
Speaker 1: the maps already passed out of both committees.
Speaker 4: Nice. How do you do under sub two minutes?
Speaker 2: Amazing? You want to just talk about.
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton was born? Did I miss any major high points?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: I think there's just you have all heard me talk
Speaker 3: about this in the newsroom. I think there's this one
Speaker 3: other thing to point out, right, which is the how
Speaker 3: the timing of this with regard to the floods too.
Speaker 3: There's been a lot of talk about Greg Abbott, you know,
Speaker 3: being accused of using the floods as a political football
Speaker 3: to to force the redistricting and things like that. Of course,
Speaker 3: Abbott had called a special session, or at least announced
Speaker 3: that a special session was coming and detailed you know
Speaker 3: that it was very clear that redistricting was going to
Speaker 3: be on the ballot before these floods actually happened. So
Speaker 3: that's like a whole other aspect of this that I
Speaker 3: think is just worth like including in that timeline too.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think he had not formally said redistricting would
Speaker 1: be on the call before the floods, but.
Speaker 2: We all knew it was going to be.
Speaker 4: It seems likely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it seemed likely, but it was sort of
Speaker 1: an open question. I mean, to be clear in hindsight,
Speaker 1: like of course one hundred percent they were going to
Speaker 1: to the call, but it was like, oh, is he
Speaker 1: really going to do this? And now of course it's like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was. He always knows.
Speaker 1: I think he's safe to say he would have done
Speaker 1: it without the floods, but certainly the floods enabled were
Speaker 1: like lowered the political well, there was still a lot
Speaker 1: of political pushback to it, but someone lowered the political
Speaker 1: pushback into doing that. So that's where we are. I
Speaker 1: do want to talk about sort of where things go next,
Speaker 1: but Kayla, maybe you can start. You were in the
Speaker 1: house yesterday as they triumphantly returned question mark or question
Speaker 1: mark on triumphant, if you know, if you ask, what
Speaker 1: was the vibe in the chamber.
Speaker 5: I mean there was just a huge crowd, right outside
Speaker 5: of the chamber that gave them a real warm welcome,
Speaker 5: a lot of cheers. Like you said, they kind of
Speaker 5: returned presenting as heroes, although obviously not like six hours later,
Speaker 5: they did pass the new map out of committee.
Speaker 4: I mean, the floor was pretty quick.
Speaker 5: Speaker of Burrows was really like, enough with the name
Speaker 5: calling and that sort of thing.
Speaker 4: Time for action. Let's get a move on.
Speaker 5: Also, you will have a dps ES court around the
Speaker 5: clock until we vote this smap out in two days.
Speaker 5: So yeah, I mean, I think some wladmakers made like
Speaker 5: made light of their dpsscore people were like, I think
Speaker 5: Renzo tweeted Tony Rose was exchanging phone numbers with her
Speaker 5: s core Ramon Romero was sort of like, oh, we're
Speaker 5: going to become good buddies.
Speaker 4: Obviously not everyone.
Speaker 5: Reacted that way to their ES court, but yeah, and
Speaker 5: I think Republicans were like, let's just get this done.
Speaker 4: I want to go home.
Speaker 3: And of course Nicole Collier does not sign the paper
Speaker 3: and accept her escort, leaving her stuck in the Texas House.
Speaker 1: A representative from Fort Worth.
Speaker 3: Yes, as people, it kind of the House livestream kind
Speaker 3: of becomes like bald Eagle cam and people are just
Speaker 3: watching her like wander around the house floor, which I
Speaker 3: found entertaining.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I used to when I worked in a public
Speaker 1: radio station Louisville, and when we did our fun drives,
Speaker 1: we would always put up on the big screen this
Speaker 1: camera that watched senior Dogs and it was very sweet.
Speaker 1: Had sort of a similar vibe. Not a commentary on
Speaker 1: represent of Collier's age, of course, but you know, just
Speaker 1: sort of watching a lot of nothing rindo. What is
Speaker 1: the vibe from Republicans going into this, Well, I think
Speaker 1: before the Democrats actually came back, there was starting to
Speaker 1: be some talk of like, maybe we should punish.
Speaker 6: These Democrats a little bit more. I mean, that's pretty
Speaker 6: I mean this is full discleasure. This is my first
Speaker 6: quorum break. But I think when there's a quorum break,
Speaker 6: those kind of sentiments tend to come out where like,
Speaker 6: you know, we need to stop this from happening ever again.
Speaker 6: And you know, you had people like Represent Jeff Leach
Speaker 6: from North Texas saying that maybe we should go for
Speaker 6: more congressional seats, kind of echoing what Abbott had said.
Speaker 6: You know, maybe we go for state house or state
Speaker 6: senate redistricting. And I think right now, that seems unlikely.
Speaker 6: Although you know, Abbott was asked about that at his
Speaker 6: last press conference in the Capitol and he was like, well,
Speaker 6: you know it's on the table if you know, they
Speaker 6: don't play along. That's me paraphrasing, But.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it doesn't really seem like there's been a lot
Speaker 3: of chatter. Doesn't seem like yet there's been any action
Speaker 3: towards that, right.
Speaker 6: Right, Yeah, there's been absolutely zero indication that, like, you know,
Speaker 6: that's actually happening. I think what may be more likely
Speaker 6: is legislative punishment and that things that maybe weren't going
Speaker 6: to pass before will pass now. So like maybe bathroom
Speaker 6: bill passes, maybe abortion pill bill passes. So yeah, although
Speaker 6: that one seems like a bit more of a stretch
Speaker 6: to me, just because Republicans also don't like that. Some
Speaker 6: Republicans don't like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it definitely feels like there are like the ways
Speaker 1: that lawmakers talk about punitive measures that like you know,
Speaker 1: we're going to redraw seats or we're gonna you know,
Speaker 1: evict them from their offices, or we're going to put
Speaker 1: them in jail, and then there's like the actual ways
Speaker 1: that you can sort of enact retribution that are like
Speaker 1: much more subtle, but also for like Democrats who've been
Speaker 1: fighting against some of these other bills for so long,
Speaker 1: are pretty devastating to just like Ramrod in this like
Speaker 1: conservative list of priorities.
Speaker 6: The other thing here is that you know, Burrows may
Speaker 6: now have the seventy six votes to be re elected
Speaker 6: speaker from within the Republican Caucus, but that doesn't mean
Speaker 6: that he has the one hundred votes to pass constitutional amendments.
Speaker 6: So it may seem like, you know, he now has
Speaker 6: this mandate, but he still has to play along with
Speaker 6: the Democrats next session, so he can't you go too
Speaker 6: far punishing them.
Speaker 1: And importantly, you can't pass a bill to ban quorum.
Speaker 1: You can't get rid of quorum breaking. You can't let
Speaker 1: me says, you can't lower the quorum, which I've been
Speaker 1: hearing from a lot of people right like, we got
Speaker 1: to find a way to not allow quorum breaks anymore.
Speaker 1: You cannot lower the quorum count without a conscitial amendment,
Speaker 1: which would require one hundred votes. So unlikely, despite all
Speaker 1: of the big talk of the last two weeks, unlikely
Speaker 1: to be our last quorum break, unless you know the
Speaker 1: tex Supreme Court rules that these members can be expelled,
Speaker 1: but even that seems increasingly a long shot now that
Speaker 1: they're back.
Speaker 3: Do we know has anything changed in the Supreme Court case?
Speaker 3: I mean, do do we have a sense of where
Speaker 3: that's going to go?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: Nothing has changed in terms of rulings. We've gotten this
Speaker 1: timeline that extends, you know, past Labor Day in terms
Speaker 1: of waiting for arguments. Certainly, I think there's a sense
Speaker 1: that the Court might just declare up moot now that
Speaker 1: they're back a turn in general. Ken Paxson was tweeting
Speaker 1: yesterday as if that is not what he would like.
Speaker 1: I mean, that would require, you know, probably one of
Speaker 1: the parties to ask for it to be declared moot,
Speaker 1: and he seemed to indicate like he wants to see
Speaker 1: this through. I don't know that. I don't know that
Speaker 1: we've heard the same sentiment from Governor Abbott, but maybe,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe we will. But certainly, as we talked
Speaker 1: about on last week's episode, a long shot legal case.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it's time for me to ask the question.
Speaker 3: I've been sitting in traffic for the last forty five minutes,
Speaker 3: so I'll ask it. What was the point of this
Speaker 3: like we the Democrats leave, they're saying they're blocking this
Speaker 3: terrible map, and here we are thirty days later and
Speaker 3: we're in the exact same place. Maybe some bills, as
Speaker 3: y'all mentioned, that might not have passed in the first
Speaker 3: legislative session will pass. You know, we have heard things
Speaker 3: like we brought national attention to this redistricting fight. But
Speaker 3: the Tribune reported well before the quorum break that Gavin
Speaker 3: Newsom was, you know, or allies of Gavin Newsom were
Speaker 3: already convening meetings to do this sort of like tit
Speaker 3: for tat redistricting. They said something along the lines of
Speaker 3: when they started to indicate they were coming back, that
Speaker 3: you know, we need to come back and you know,
Speaker 3: create a legislative record that will you know, call into
Speaker 3: question and allow this to be challenged in court or
Speaker 3: strengthen the challenge of court, something that would have been
Speaker 3: necessary had it had passed in the first session. And
Speaker 3: you know, you don't have a legislative record if the
Speaker 3: House isn't there. I mean, the only thing that seems
Speaker 3: to have changed between then and now is that the
Speaker 3: House Democrats have you know, brought in a million dollars
Speaker 3: from beteo'rourke, like, what was the point of this.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that.
Speaker 6: Yes, Gavin Usim was already saying he was going to
Speaker 6: try to get California to redraw their lines, but I
Speaker 6: don't think that the national attention was necessarily on it.
Speaker 6: So I do think they are right in that they
Speaker 6: brought the national conversation to Texas and redistricting.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: And I also think that.
Speaker 6: You had a Keem Jeffries in the Texas capital meeting
Speaker 6: with Democrats.
Speaker 2: You had.
Speaker 6: DNC chair in Chicago meeting with Democrats. I think that
Speaker 6: there's now a whole lot of attention from the National
Speaker 6: Party on Texas that they have been lacking for years.
Speaker 6: And they've been saying like, hey, DNC needs to pay
Speaker 6: attention to us, and now they're paying attention, So that
Speaker 6: could be one thing that they're seeing.
Speaker 5: I think another thing I heard Geen Mussey yesterday was
Speaker 5: it gave them time to evaluate the legal case that
Speaker 5: they could bring against these maps and in this map,
Speaker 5: and in the past two weeks they've sort of come
Speaker 5: to the conclusion that they have a really strong challenge
Speaker 5: to be brought, which is why roughly half of them
Speaker 5: are back to now times. Of the essence, if they
Speaker 5: want to kill this map in the court before the midterm,
Speaker 5: then the faster it gets past, the faster they can
Speaker 5: bring this legal challenge. And so I don't know how
Speaker 5: long it takes to come up with a legal challenge.
Speaker 5: Two weeks, but that's no.
Speaker 1: They have already asked in the ongoing case against the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one maps, some groups have filed have issued
Speaker 1: a filing to the court proactively saying once these do pass,
Speaker 1: we would like a preliminary junction blocking it, which is
Speaker 1: again a little bit of posturing ahead of you know,
Speaker 1: the thing actually happening, but like, you know, it gives
Speaker 1: them this I think part of it, right, it is
Speaker 1: optics of like if this happens so fast, people don't
Speaker 1: even know it was happening, right, Like this could have
Speaker 1: theoretically passed and like a matter of weeks and you
Speaker 1: get people kind of upset at the capitol. But beyond that,
Speaker 1: like not it's really hard to make people think about,
Speaker 1: understand or care about redistricting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, Well, you know where politics is an
Speaker 3: attention economy, I guess, and I suppose this brought a
Speaker 3: little bit more of attention. It does feel to me
Speaker 3: a little bit like the victory over vouchers in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty three, where it's just like we stopped it, actually,
Speaker 3: and now five million dollars aren't coming to our schools,
Speaker 3: and they're just going to come back and they're going
Speaker 3: to pass it the next time.
Speaker 2: They they pulled together, I mean, and.
Speaker 1: They're going to replace some like moderate incumbents with some
Speaker 1: really hard.
Speaker 3: Line exactly, and the legislature is going to be changed
Speaker 3: because of it. Right, And obviously that's maybe not the
Speaker 3: case this time, at least from who's in the legislature,
Speaker 3: but it might be the case in terms of how
Speaker 3: much power democrats have and how they're treated in the chamber.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think And I wasn't here in
Speaker 1: two thousand and three, but I talked to some of
Speaker 1: the people who were involved in that qure and break cale.
Speaker 1: I know you did twenty twenty one, two three, three, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the last mid decade REGISTRICTA which like I guess I
Speaker 1: had not realized like some of that history as well,
Speaker 1: which was like very similar, right they left the state,
Speaker 1: they but then the maps ended up passing. But a
Speaker 1: lot of people involved in that felt like, well, we
Speaker 1: brought attention to Tom Dealay's plan to like redraw maps
Speaker 1: everywhere and like made it clear that like this would
Speaker 1: not just like kind of sail through. We were like
Speaker 1: a blocker to this larger national plan. And it's like,
Speaker 1: if that's the framing of what they've done here, I
Speaker 1: think that's there. There's an argument there. Yes, the more nationally,
Speaker 1: I think the like framing of like we did it,
Speaker 1: we're heroes, a little bit of a hurt herself, Kayla.
Speaker 4: I think that's right.
Speaker 5: And I also think that split is probably within the
Speaker 5: Democratic Caucus too. I mean two dozen or so, maybe
Speaker 5: slightly under of them are still out of state.
Speaker 4: You know, I don't.
Speaker 5: I think we saw a lot of statements from those
Speaker 5: people who were out of stay. I think we saw
Speaker 5: TMF Jessica Gonzalez both saying like, this is our only
Speaker 5: tool as a minority party is to continue denying quorum
Speaker 5: and so we're going to stay out of state. And
Speaker 5: I think the flip side of the people who came
Speaker 5: back is, you know, let's just get this battle to
Speaker 5: court already and and fight it out there, because we're
Speaker 5: under no illusion that we can we have the votes
Speaker 5: to defeat this map on the floor and that we
Speaker 5: can stay away forever. So I think that that's split
Speaker 5: of what was the point and what's the goal is?
Speaker 5: You know, it's not just among us. I think it's
Speaker 5: among Democrats too.
Speaker 1: As and then the lone only other person who has
Speaker 1: a different strategy, which is Nicole colly or stay on
Speaker 1: the floor. Yes, as we were joking like they couldn't
Speaker 1: get them on the floor and now she won't leave
Speaker 1: the floor. They're like, we cannot figure out where you're
Speaker 1: coming from. But you know, it's getting a ton of attention,
Speaker 1: So it's an attention economy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean in terms of like we are now,
Speaker 1: let's forecast ahead a week or so, We're going to
Speaker 1: have new congressional maps. There will be a legal challenge,
Speaker 1: as we've seen before, those challenges take forever to sort
Speaker 1: of move through the court system unless something sort of
Speaker 1: unusual happens and they managed to get an injunction blocking it.
Speaker 1: We will have five new Republican We'll have five new
Speaker 1: seats that will seem to favor Republicans in the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty six midterms. Kayla, can you sort of talk about
Speaker 1: you know, the position that puts you know, some Democrats
Speaker 1: in I mean we're saying maybe a Caasar dogg It
Speaker 1: this fight.
Speaker 4: Yeah, put them in an awkward position.
Speaker 5: I think Tazar dogg It being the primary interesting primary
Speaker 5: to come among Democrats. I mean it kind of leaves
Speaker 5: Julie Johnson untethered. Al Green's district is like just not
Speaker 5: a district anymore at all. But I mean al Green
Speaker 5: is somebody like Doggett who has said that they're you know,
Speaker 5: committed to running again, which again sets up these weird
Speaker 5: little primaries that I think will sort of reflect these
Speaker 5: broader clashes within the Party of experience and age versus
Speaker 5: you know, youth and a new fresh face and strategy. So, yeah,
Speaker 5: that's going to be pretty exciting.
Speaker 1: Your thoughts on the weird fights we're going to see.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there's also that special election to replace oh yeah,
Speaker 6: Sheila Jackson Lee and then Sylvester Turner. You know that's
Speaker 6: going to be somebody's gonna be elected to serve that
Speaker 6: district for one year and then who knows what's going
Speaker 6: to happen to you know, where you live within that district,
Speaker 6: you may have that new representative, you may have Al Green.
Speaker 6: I don't know if he runs in that district or
Speaker 6: you know what ends up happening. But that's that's a
Speaker 6: lot of turnover for those residents who've had the same
Speaker 6: leadership for quite a while and.
Speaker 1: Like such a sort of historic district in so many ways. Matthew,
Speaker 1: I know you're dying to talk about it. What does
Speaker 1: this mean in terms of representation?
Speaker 3: I mean, it's pretty I think it's pretty dark, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, this practice of it happening in both states, right,
Speaker 3: you know, I think Democrats would argue, and they would
Speaker 3: argue correctly, that Republicans have started this battle. But what
Speaker 3: it's going to mean is that in places Lake Texas,
Speaker 3: in places like California, people are going to have much
Speaker 3: less of an opportunity to decide who represents them. Right,
Speaker 3: it's being determined ahead of time by politicians wanting to
Speaker 3: preserve power and you know, strength of their party as
Speaker 3: opposed to what our democracy is supposed to do, which
Speaker 3: is people are accountable to the voters. And really, you know,
Speaker 3: if when you move the when you make the only
Speaker 3: primaries that matter are the only elections that matter the primaries.
Speaker 3: And by the way, the primaries, as you mentioned, are
Speaker 3: going to be super interesting and fun, yes, but it
Speaker 3: leads to a boring general election, which means essentially you're
Speaker 3: only accountable to the primary voters, who are a very
Speaker 3: tiny proportion of the electorate, and that skews everything. It
Speaker 3: skews the incentive structure, right. The primary electorate often are
Speaker 3: more prone to these attention seeking behaviors that that you know,
Speaker 3: the hardcore in the parties seem to reward. And it
Speaker 3: just doesn't seem to me like it sets up a
Speaker 3: great system for good governance, which you know, I think
Speaker 3: is supposed to be the goal here, but you know,
Speaker 3: it seems in a lot of ways we've sort of
Speaker 3: lost the plot.
Speaker 1: I mean, certainly I think these like and again it
Speaker 1: happens we've like created this bad system across the country.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are some states that are sort of
Speaker 1: doing this better and have you know, non parson commissions
Speaker 1: and things like that, but generally our system is like
Speaker 1: a race to the bottom, and like your only most
Speaker 1: candidate's only real threat is from someone more extreme within
Speaker 1: their own party, and that's and in I mean all
Speaker 1: these districts that they've drawn, and this has been the
Speaker 1: case for a long time, even whether they're blue or red.
Speaker 1: Districts can be one almost entirely by appealing to one party,
Speaker 1: which means like there's no even putting aside like the
Speaker 1: primaries or whatever, but there's no like need to do
Speaker 1: consensus building or coalition building or like even just like
Speaker 1: the political work of like persuading someone to believe your
Speaker 1: vers like that your view of the world matters, like
Speaker 1: you can just mostly assuming you appease your base sale
Speaker 1: to a.
Speaker 3: Victory, right exactly, and so your your only focus becomes
Speaker 3: appeas of your base, so that you don't you know,
Speaker 3: get that right, get that challenge right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, it's not great. There's another side show happening
Speaker 1: in Texas right now that is similarly about representation in
Speaker 1: some ways, Renzo, this is your time to shine. What
Speaker 1: if you had to summarize in two minutes what is
Speaker 1: going on with the start by what is the SRAC,
Speaker 1: and what is going on?
Speaker 2: TuS up for that? But can you do? Yeah under
Speaker 2: started star.
Speaker 6: So the first question was what is the SRAC. That's
Speaker 6: the State Republican Executive Committee. It's basically the governing board
Speaker 6: of the Texas GOP. And back in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 6: I guess a little over a year ago now, at
Speaker 6: the state convention, they adopted not they being the SRAC,
Speaker 6: but the Texas GOP convention, a whole bunch of delegates.
Speaker 2: This is like thousands of people.
Speaker 6: They adopted this rule that says that no, if you
Speaker 6: are censured under a certain process where you commit you know,
Speaker 6: three strikes against the legislative priorities or parts of the
Speaker 6: party principles, then you could be it for censure and
Speaker 6: even removal from the primary ballot. And that has got
Speaker 6: a lot of people concerned, and you know what the
Speaker 6: Texas GOP may be trying to do here. I think
Speaker 6: that you have to remember that this started immediately after
Speaker 6: the you know, the Ken Paxton impeachment. After the primaries.
Speaker 6: I think there's a lot of anxiety within the you know,
Speaker 6: the GOP primary base that their house, the State House
Speaker 6: was not going to be as conservative as I think
Speaker 6: it ended up being. And so you had this campaign
Speaker 6: to try to hold House members accountable. And that has
Speaker 6: carried over until now where people are kind of happy
Speaker 6: with what Burrows is doing and his leadership.
Speaker 1: And all.
Speaker 6: And so you have this whole framework that's been in
Speaker 6: place in this whole movement, Like the train was already
Speaker 6: rolling on this, and so it's kind of gotten to
Speaker 6: the point now where you have the the State Republican
Speaker 6: Executive Committee. They not have this process that they've outlined,
Speaker 6: and yes, they want to hold members accountable, but like,
Speaker 6: we don't actually.
Speaker 2: Want to boot people from the ballot.
Speaker 1: They don't want to own and like start and also
Speaker 1: I assume start a giant legal process of or like
Speaker 1: some legal blowback of can you remove someone from the ballot?
Speaker 6: It would come from that, yes, and you know, millions
Speaker 6: of dollars and defending that yes. So in the state
Speaker 6: party already being kind of broke.
Speaker 1: You know, sure, right, that's very good summary.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well I haven't even gotten into what happened most recently.
Speaker 1: Yes, now two minutes again.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So, for the first time in this whole reforming
Speaker 6: of the Texas GOP that you've had in the past
Speaker 6: few years, they decided that they're going to have this
Speaker 6: Legislative Task Force report that was going to be basically
Speaker 6: a scorecard of the session, like what were the good
Speaker 6: things that members did?
Speaker 2: What were the bad things?
Speaker 6: And the subtext throughout all this was that the list
Speaker 6: of bad things are going to be the central offenses,
Speaker 6: and so you had it was months long process to research.
Speaker 6: They were going through the House journals, they were going
Speaker 6: through public statements that members had made, and you had
Speaker 6: this segment of the sor rec that was really trying
Speaker 6: to create this list of every single thing that was
Speaker 6: done wrong. And then you had this other segment that
Speaker 6: is that had been kind of more like, hey, these
Speaker 6: are our friends, like they've been playing along.
Speaker 2: House calendars Committee Chair Todd Hunter.
Speaker 6: He doesn't have to help us, but he's been helping us.
Speaker 6: And so there's kind of this like split brand thing
Speaker 6: that's been going on within the SEC. And I think
Speaker 6: what ended up happening this past weekend was they had
Speaker 6: added in a few extra.
Speaker 2: Strikes in the.
Speaker 6: Report and that by doing that, they ended up roping
Speaker 6: almost half of the the GOP caucus into potential censer
Speaker 6: territory and.
Speaker 1: Potentially being removed, not being allout to run again. Essentially.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so that happened. I think everybody freaked out. They're like,
Speaker 6: maybe we should pump the brakes on this. They delayed
Speaker 6: the report by an extra week, they gave members a
Speaker 6: chance to respond, and in those responses, there were some
Speaker 6: of those items that they've targeted, be like, hey, you
Speaker 6: should back off on this, and ultimately they did back off.
Speaker 6: It took a they had to revote.
Speaker 2: On one of them.
Speaker 6: I won't get into what happened there, but they voted
Speaker 6: one way and then they came back to the next stay
Speaker 6: voted the other way. And by the end of it,
Speaker 6: you ended up with only Ken King, how State Affairs
Speaker 6: Committee chair with like over a dozen centrable offenses and
Speaker 6: those are mostly for holding up GOP priorities and the
Speaker 6: State Affairs Committee, which is like been the bottleneck that
Speaker 6: has kind of always been the bottleneck, right. And you
Speaker 6: also had a former Speaker Dave Feelin, you know, getting
Speaker 6: three strikes, and you had Senator Robert Nichols getting five
Speaker 6: or six strikes, but he's already retiring. Yeah, so you
Speaker 6: kind of ended up with like, oh, well, now all that,
Speaker 6: who is going to get centered.
Speaker 1: And like, are we even going to see this through
Speaker 1: for those two right, like are Feeling and King and
Speaker 1: really try to strip them from the ballot. Is that
Speaker 1: like going to end up even happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's.
Speaker 6: Like the they could try to remove them from the ballot,
Speaker 6: but that's like the most extreme option, that is the
Speaker 6: upper bounds of what the SRAC could.
Speaker 1: So they might just give him a slap on the
Speaker 1: wrist and be like.
Speaker 6: And they would only do that if the county parties
Speaker 6: asked them to. Okay, So for all.
Speaker 1: This like there, I mean it is it's like the Democrats.
Speaker 1: Of course, I have spent a lot of the last
Speaker 1: couple of weeks being like bemoaning their lack of options
Speaker 1: and like the challenges being the minority party Republicans proving
Speaker 1: you can make even being the majority party very complicated
Speaker 1: and hard and not that fun. Like they're like really
Speaker 1: trying to start this internal war against each other that
Speaker 1: they don't nobody even seems to really want.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I think what you saw a couple of
Speaker 6: weeks ago where the SRAC was coming to town to
Speaker 6: have this meeting where they were going to adopt this report,
Speaker 6: and then they ended up going to the governor's mansion
Speaker 6: and they met with Dustin Burss. That's the first time
Speaker 6: they had met with the speaker, and he was there,
Speaker 6: Todd Hunter, I mentioned the Coulendar's committee chair.
Speaker 2: He was there.
Speaker 6: Mitch Little, a freshman representative who has kind of been
Speaker 6: an anti leadership force but also now has been a
Speaker 6: little bit complimentary of what Burrows has been doing. You know,
Speaker 6: he was there, So I think that's that gives you
Speaker 6: a good picture of where the state of the Texas
Speaker 6: GOP is at right now, given the quorum break and
Speaker 6: everything else, that has kind of helped put internal stuff aside.
Speaker 1: Well, that's what I was going to ask in cale
Speaker 1: maybe have a sense of this from Republicans, like how
Speaker 1: much has this quorum break served to unify Republicans.
Speaker 5: I think it has absolutely unified Republicans. I talked to
Speaker 5: Tony Tinderholt and Tom Olivers in yesterday and they're like,
Speaker 5: Democrats have done a great job of getting us all
Speaker 5: on the same page. They were both like, yeah, we've
Speaker 5: both been you know, sort of in the anti leadership contingent.
Speaker 5: We've had disagreements with Speaker Burroughs. But they both really
Speaker 5: commended the way that Burrows handled this. I asked if
Speaker 5: there was a speaker's race today there like he would
Speaker 5: get the entire Republican caucus. And the other thing they
Speaker 5: mentioned in terms of sort of what run to have
Speaker 5: alluded to earlier was, you know, they're absolutely determined to
Speaker 5: pass every single thing on the call and then some
Speaker 5: more which Speaker Burrows.
Speaker 4: Had also.
Speaker 5: Sort of said I think last week, and you know,
Speaker 5: they were like if Democrats had any leverage going into
Speaker 5: the first special session or any like seat at the table,
Speaker 5: they don't anymore. And so I think Republican Republicans are
Speaker 5: very much on the same page now in opposition to
Speaker 5: the Corn Break.
Speaker 3: It's pretty amazing what Burrows has done. I mean, I
Speaker 3: feel like I've said this multiple times on this show
Speaker 3: over the months, but but to go from being sort
Speaker 3: of the representative of that loathed leadership faction in the House,
Speaker 3: something that like multiple speakers have not been able to
Speaker 3: sort of shake off and face that sort of intense blowback,
Speaker 3: you know, session after session after session. Do you have
Speaker 3: kind of flipped this in one session from highly controversial
Speaker 3: like was his you know, know, ascension to speaker even
Speaker 3: legitimate under the House Caucus rules, to where he stands
Speaker 3: now where you say it's essentially unanimous in support. You
Speaker 3: just kind of have to tip your hat. I don't
Speaker 3: think I thought it was possible to have pulled that off,
Speaker 3: and it seems, at least for now that he has.
Speaker 1: That's what I was gonna say they're a fickle butch
Speaker 1: you know, politicians writ large, so you know, it's a
Speaker 1: long time till the next speakers.
Speaker 5: But at the same time, even though he's sort of
Speaker 5: consolidated his caucus behind him, I don't think we've seen
Speaker 5: Democrats sort of really condemn him either. You know, like
Speaker 5: even Ramon Romero yesterday was like, I don't blame Burrows
Speaker 5: for any of this. You know, this is all on
Speaker 5: Governor Abbot's hands, and Burrows has even though he's been
Speaker 5: aggressive and harsh in trying to get Democrats back, which
Speaker 5: is something that the Republicans have been you know, very
Speaker 5: appreciative of and happy about, he's also, at least in
Speaker 5: my ears, sort of struck this tone of you know,
Speaker 5: the minority party always has a role to play in
Speaker 5: the House, you know, they always they have a right
Speaker 5: to you know, have their say, and but also like
Speaker 5: the majority is going to prevail. So you've seen him
Speaker 5: sort of manage to walk this fine line that hasn't
Speaker 5: seemed to make anyone really unhappy. In facts, like everyone
Speaker 5: seems pretty satisfied.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean even just like his excuse me, even
Speaker 1: though like his tone in the chamber has been like
Speaker 1: through this whole thing has been like pretty like uh
Speaker 1: almost like I mean, amused is not the right word,
Speaker 1: but almost just like we're gonna get them back, guys.
Speaker 1: Like it's i mean it's leadership in a sense, right,
Speaker 1: like what supports his politics or not, but like it's
Speaker 1: like he's basically being like you guys can like scream
Speaker 1: and bang your you know, feet on the ground, and
Speaker 1: you guys can be so mad over here, and like
Speaker 1: I'm just like gonna be like we just got to
Speaker 1: get quorum. We're just gonna do what we got to
Speaker 1: do to get quorum. Even now with this Nicole Collier thing,
Speaker 1: like you know, the name you're hearing flowing around is
Speaker 1: like Charlie Garren for you know, as the House chair
Speaker 1: of the House Administration Committee, like as the one who
Speaker 1: sort of is making calls. It's like, it's interesting that's
Speaker 1: not sticking to Burrows.
Speaker 3: I think it was one of y'all who kind of
Speaker 3: described Burrows's tone yesterday is I'm not mad, I'm just
Speaker 3: just disappointed.
Speaker 2: I think that was that was a stuff on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, but yeah, no, it's it's.
Speaker 2: Work credits, Yeah, shout out to that stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, but It's true, it's just very like letting
Speaker 1: everyone else be like having the meltdowns kind of Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I'm sure, you know, he probably is feeling pretty
Speaker 1: good about how this is all played out. But again,
Speaker 1: it is a long time till the twenty twenty seven
Speaker 1: speakers race, and god knows what can happen twenty twenty seven,
Speaker 1: we will have a whole other primary in them, or
Speaker 1: a whole other congressional race in the middle of that.
Speaker 1: You know, our congressional delegation could look very different.
Speaker 2: We will have.
Speaker 1: Major statewide races, open primaries for the first time in
Speaker 1: several of those. Going to be an exciting stretch of politics.
Speaker 3: I'm really curious, and I don't expect any of y'all
Speaker 3: to know the answer to this, because I don't think
Speaker 3: anyone knows the answer yet. But I'm really curious about
Speaker 3: what this means for the long term with regard to
Speaker 3: a dis routine, right, Like, is this a one time
Speaker 3: flash in the pan because Donald Trump told them to
Speaker 3: do it, and nobody else really seemed like they wanted
Speaker 3: to do it, and even California doesn't really seem like
Speaker 3: they want to do it, but they feel like they're
Speaker 3: going to do it because the Republicans are doing it
Speaker 3: in Texas, and are we entering a new era where
Speaker 3: you know, states are manipulating their maps every two or
Speaker 3: four years to try to upset the dynamic, or is
Speaker 3: this going to be like a one time thing that
Speaker 3: we've moved beyond.
Speaker 1: Fingers crossed for one time thing. I'm just gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and put my vote in that camp. But I
Speaker 1: think I do think some of that depends on how
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six goes.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: If this blows up in either party's face, but I
Speaker 1: think particularly the Republicans face, I think there will be
Speaker 1: a lot more hesitancy to like embark on this again.
Speaker 2: But one of the things that it is done.
Speaker 3: We've talked about this in the past, right, is that
Speaker 3: the reason the Republicans drew the maps that were currently
Speaker 3: drawn was because of incumbent protection, right, And they've done
Speaker 3: a pretty good job of drawing maps that I think
Speaker 3: for the that is going to allow them to safely
Speaker 3: gain seats in twenty twenty six. But what happens is
Speaker 3: over five to ten years, populations shift, and you know,
Speaker 3: suburbs pop up, and you know, all those different types
Speaker 3: of things and things that once looked safe get less safe.
Speaker 3: Particularly if you change the margin from a forty percentage
Speaker 3: point to a twenty percentage point, it's a narrower gap
Speaker 3: to go. So I don't think it's inconceivable that in
Speaker 3: twenty thirty, for instance, you know, some of these seats
Speaker 3: that they drew will become might become more competitive. And
Speaker 3: what do they do then? That's I think the question
Speaker 3: is do they just allow that to happen and say like, ah,
Speaker 3: these are the maps we drew, or do we end
Speaker 3: up back in all the same place again.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean they're constitutionally required to redraw the maps
Speaker 1: in twenty thirty one, right, right, So they definitely will
Speaker 1: redraw it then, and it'll be interesting to see what
Speaker 1: lessons they've taken from this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was.
Speaker 6: Basically the point I was going to make, is that
Speaker 6: it's a shorter window that they have to worry about
Speaker 6: the Dumby matter taken effect.
Speaker 1: Even than two thousand and three when they did the
Speaker 1: mid decade last time, then they had, you know, seven
Speaker 1: years to see how it played out.
Speaker 5: But I think I've heard even from Republicans who are like,
Speaker 5: I mean, yeah, we have the margin in Texas and
Speaker 5: we've won enough in the past election to be able
Speaker 5: to do this. Like, I don't know that I've heard
Speaker 5: anyone really describe it as a long term strategy. It's
Speaker 5: a short term keep a majority in the House in
Speaker 5: twenty twenty six, let Trump finish out his term, pass
Speaker 5: all the stuff he wants.
Speaker 4: To pass, and then that I think people will.
Speaker 5: Argue about whether that is generally popular, But if you're
Speaker 5: of the belief that it is, then that allows you to,
Speaker 5: you know, get Jade Vans into office after Trump and
Speaker 5: that sort of that is the long term goal is
Speaker 5: not necessarily to you know, continue padding the majority, but
Speaker 5: it's to set off this sort of domino.
Speaker 3: Ef Yeah, but there there was once a time where
Speaker 3: corn breaking was considered sort of the nuclear option, and
Speaker 3: you'll do it. And now we're in this cycle where
Speaker 3: you know, it's like, oh, well you did in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty one, why don't you do it now? You know,
Speaker 3: And like it just sort of it feels like another
Speaker 3: kind of weapon has been placed on the table and
Speaker 3: like eventually someone's going to pick it up.
Speaker 6: And I think what's fascinating is that nobody likes gerrymandering, right,
Speaker 6: But when you can say the other party's doing it. Yeah,
Speaker 6: then this is a defensive measure.
Speaker 2: Ye. People are all game for it.
Speaker 1: Right, and it becomes a tool, like I mean the
Speaker 1: idea that like people have been sort of dangling this
Speaker 1: out there, not of we're gonna yes, like, oh, we
Speaker 1: could redraw worst congressional maps for Democrats, which would endanger incumbents,
Speaker 1: but we could redraw house maps, we could redraw Senate maps.
Speaker 1: They have a lot more flexibility on that, like they can.
Speaker 1: There are these tools now on the table, and it's
Speaker 1: like a loaded gun sitting in the middle of the table,
Speaker 1: and uh really the only thing that would like, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of disable that is what we did see like
Speaker 1: after the Obama which is that Republicans did, which is
Speaker 1: like shift the dynamics of state houses. Right, Republicans control
Speaker 1: a lot of state houses that control a lot of maps.
Speaker 1: Democrats want to unload that gun win some seats in Texas.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's gonna become a lot harder, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah in the Congress. Yeah, yeah, right, yes, exactly. All right,
Speaker 1: Well that is it for this week's episode. Thank you
Speaker 1: guys so much for joining us. Renzo Kyla, We're gonna
Speaker 1: fore you guys back to the wilds of the Chambers.
Speaker 1: Uh see what Nicole Collier's up to. Matthew, thank you
Speaker 1: for braving the traffic to get here. Our producers are
Speaker 1: Rob and Chris. You can watch the trip cast on
Speaker 1: YouTube or get us wherever you get your podcasts, and
Speaker 1: we will be back next week.