Speaker 1: This week's episode of the Trip Cast is supported by
former US Ambassador to Mexico Antonio Garza. Hello and welcome
to this week's edition of the Trip Cast. I'm James Bargan.
I'm here with Women's health reporter Eleanor Klibanoff and our
fearless leader Matthew Watkins. Hello James, and being beamed in
from Washington, d c our DC reporter politics guru Matthew Troy. Matthew,
how are you.
Speaker 2: I'm doing great? Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: Matthew, Joy and I have spent a lot of time
together in the last seventy two hours.
Speaker 1: The Matthews. That's right. Well, we've got a lot to
break down this week. This week's podcast is all about
the second Trump administration, what that means for Texas, and
trying to look ahead at what this new Trump administration
is going to look like. But before we do that, guys,
it's been a long week. A lot of DC stuff
going on, a lot of speaker stuff going on here
in the text Legislature. Let's just check in. How are
we doing? How are we doing in twenty twenty five
a third weekend? Are we keeping our resolutions? I mean,
we are here.
Speaker 4: Note in a snow storm, I mean Austin has been
just I mean a blizzard is upon us. There was
almost a third of an inch not quite of snow
on the ground. So I think I'm pretty cold and
pretty excited. I'd love a good weather weirdness. So I'm
doing great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, as I think we mentioned in last
week's podcast, I was up in DC for the inaugural
ball and everything like that. My flight from Dallas to
Austin got canceled yesterday, so I ended up having to
rent a car and drive down I thirty five in
the sleet and snow. So that was but I had
to Yeah, it had nothing to do with my children.
It was y'all that I wanted to see.
Speaker 4: Our trip cast listeners are your children exactly, They are
your family.
Speaker 1: That is what matters. Matthew. How are things going in DC?
Speaker 4: Are you?
Speaker 1: Are you keeping your Niear's resolutions?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 2: You know, I'm trying my best and I'm going to
the gym. I'm staying healthy. It's a little over twenty
degrees here, so it's positively you know, tropical. But yeah,
things are great.
Speaker 1: Very very very different perspective from us here.
Speaker 4: It's all relative.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's get started. First. For the Matthews, and
I don't know how we're going to do this since
there's two Matthews here.
Speaker 3: Just calls Choli and Watkin.
Speaker 1: Okay. For the Matthews, you guys were both there in
DC for the inauguration. Give us a breakdown. What was
it like to be there in the city just overall
and then also watching the events. What was the vibe.
I'm sure you guys ran into a lot of Texas
politicians who were there for this event.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I will say one of the more
surreal parts of the weekend was just being in a
big city, a big city that's sort of traditionally viewed
as one of those like liberal elite cities, and just
to like look around and everyone is a Trump supporter.
It was a little bit like backwards in that way, right.
You normally don't associate, you know, inner Washington, d C.
With With with like being Trump's base. But I think,
you know, it was obviously a self selecting crowd, Like
a lot of people who came specifically to see the inauguration,
a lot of people I think disappointed to not actually
get to witness the actual inauguration, and you know, there
I think a lot of kind of chatter about people's
you know, inauguration tickets turning into kind of fancy commemorative
commemorative bookmarks and everything like that. But that being said, still,
I think a lot of excitement, a lot of sort
of you know, people feeling of a people people have
a certain political persuasion, feeling a lot of sort of
you know, relief to be kind of going back to
a Republican administration, a Trump administration, and things like that.
Matthew and I were a part of a sort of
business leader's conference the day before the Texas inaugural ball.
That was an interesting crowd too, because it's not necessarily
your your typical you know, maga you know, red hat
wearing group as much as you're the sort of more
like business alignance support for him. And that was interesting
because I think there was a lot of sort of
cautious optimism. I think a lot of support for Trump,
a lot of support for his policies, a lot of excitement,
but also some questions And I think we could probably
get into this a little bit later around things like
tariff policy and what impact that's going to have on
Texas businesses and things like that, so you know, Texas
came out in full force. Though we all had our
boots and bow ties on, and you know, both among
just like regular people and politicians, a lot of sort
of representation up there in DC this week.
Speaker 1: We get it. Matthew, you're important.
Speaker 4: You go to BOS the Business Leader's conference he was
invited to as a business.
Speaker 3: My favorite moment, I want to say of the boost
and bow Ties, as I spent pretty much the entire
evening with Matthew and our events director matt Ewolt as well,
was we were in a certain room and this will
give you just a sense of like what that ball
is like. And I look and I point, and I go, oh,
there he is. And Matthew goes, oh, who are you
putting to Brian Babin Us Congressman Brian Babon, And I
was like, no, actually, right behind him, it's the rapper
walka flocka flame.
Speaker 1: You know it's Now I'm interested. I gotta be honest.
Now I'm jealous. I think we're.
Speaker 2: Both jamming out, so you know, you know, universal vibes
all around. It's a great time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Matthew, Matthew Joy, how are things for you. What
was the inauguration like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the most interesting
kind of themes is that there's such such a different
mood relative to twenty seven. Back then, you know, the
Trump crowd was kind of thinking, did we seriously just
win this thing? Oh my goodness, And you know, like
a lot of them were traditional Republicans, were thinking, oh,
I wonder what that's going to look like. This is
not kind of the typical Republican playbook, and there's a
bit of hesitancy this time, however, it was very much
the idea of we are so back, baby. It was
very jubulant. They were very confident in themselves, and people
really kind of knew much more what to expect this time.
I think the business community was a bit more enthusiastic
now because they've seen what a Trump presidency is like,
so it's no longer that kind of uncertainty that gave
him pause us time, and they knew that a lot
of his policies were very friendly to a lot of
business interests, particularly businesses that are quite important for Texas,
like the oil and gas sector, also agriculture as well.
So you know, it was just like absolutely jubilance around
the Republican you know, the big Republican ten Matthia, I.
Speaker 1: Didn't want to ask about that because, as maybe one
talkins pointed out, it is seen as the swamp. It's
seen as the liberal elite. And I wonder what sort
of Democrats were feeling if you saw them walking around,
or if you got to talk to any of them,
because the New York Times had a great story about
how the twenty seventeen resistance has turned into the twenty
twenty five resignation, and in talking to a lot of
Democrats it does sort of feel that way, or people
who are not even Democrats but just to pose Trump's
way of doing things and his view of the world.
But I wonder if you could give us any insight
into that since you are in DC and live there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, A important thing to note about twenty
sixteen was that there was a large sense of indignation
on the part of Democrats because they did win the
popular vote, remember so, and already for a party that
really doesn't, you know, have much affection for the electoral college.
There was definitely this kind of sense of this was
a fluke. We represent the way that America should be,
and we will continue fighting, exhausting every single legal avenue,
and you know, like we have the people with us.
That was very much not the case this time. You know,
the Democrats just straight up lost. You lost the popular revote,
They lost in many swing states, and they're really feeling that.
And so there's to us. They're kind of going through
this soul searching of you know, what was wrong with
our message? Do we stand for the things that the
American people stand for. It was a much more kind
of resigned and introspective kind of mood as opposed to this.
You know, let's rally our arms and you know, sharpen
the pitchforks and resists to the Trump administration as much
as humanly possible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was there was a protest on the National
Mall on Friday or Saturday that I didn't actually know
about until I'd picked up a copy of the Washington Post.
That it was I think, far far smaller than the
kind of protests you saw eight years ago. The only
Democrat I saw all weekend was Henry Quaar actually you
know who is also you know, the probably the most
moderate Democrat in the delegation. I think a lot of
them sort of made the decision to get out of
town for the weekend or at least keep a very
low profile. But I completely agree. I think, you know,
I think in some ways it feels a little bit more,
it's less shocking, it feels a little bit normal for
Democrats to have Trump as a president. I think there's
also just a lot of soul searching about how they
handled things last time, how the general more broad electorate
reacted to it, and whether it's maybe smarter to not
sort of freak out about every single thing that happens
and sort of, you know, keep your powder dry for
the fights that you really feel like are going to
be meaningful for you and your constituents.
Speaker 1: And we've seen someone of that already with some of
these immigration bills that are moving through Congress. I think
we'll probably expect to see that a lot more and
maybe picking their shots a little bit. But I do
want to just get into it. Let's talk about what
was said during the speech. Talked about immigration, remain in
Mexico is back, although weirdly he's also ending asylum, so
hard to reconcile how that works. Talked about energy, We're
gonna drill baby, drill, and he also talked about the
Gulf of Mexico, Mars and the Panama Canal eleanor from
an outsider's perspective. Okay, what surprise you what stood out?
Speaker 4: I mean, I think it maybe this isn't necessarily a surprise,
but I think, you know, it certainly stood out. I
assumed all of us listening to, you know, the name
recognition that President Trump gave our governor Greg Abbott, right,
I mean, certainly a big boost to Texas to what
Texas has been doing on immigration. It really felt like,
you know, a validation for this for a lot of
what Texas has been doing, which again not a shocker,
but I'm sure felt good to Abbit and some other
folks in the you know, sort of Texas Republican elite.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was interesting. On the border stuff, it was
big shout out to Abbot, as you mentioned, it was
we're going to build wall fast, which is sort of
what Abbot has already been doing. And we're going to
or are we not? We're going to. We did declare
in a national emergency on the border in order to
send military which is sort of what Abbot did in
Texas too. It was really sort of like an adoption
from the national perspective of what Texas has been doing
for the last four years.
Speaker 4: And this has always sort of been the thing, right like,
when Democrats are in d C, Texas in many ways
becomes like the government in exile for Republicans, right Like
Texas is like trying stuff. Texas is leading, I mean,
just as the largest red state, like trying things, trying
things in the court, certainly trying things on the borders
since we have a significant stretch of border. And it's
like now the political power has shifted and d C
is in back in the hands of Republicans, and we're
sort of seeing those ideas that have been tested here
go national.
Speaker 1: Matthew, what did you see? Did anything surprise you? I
felt like most of it was stuff that he had
already talked about on the campaign trip.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, he was pretty he was remarkably he
was also very on script during his speech, which you know,
for folks who have watched a lot of his speeches
realize that's a bit of a rarity sometimes. But what
was kind of interesting I thought was, you know, the
reactions afterwards. It was much more muted and much more
kind of oh, this is just kind of just the
norm now, even though some of his proposals are extremely
divergent from the norms, everything from you know, renaming Denali
to Matt McKinley to you know, right ending birthright citizenship,
which is essentially just him challenging the Supreme Court to
defy him. So and you know, we saw a lot
of not only in the coverage, but also a lot
of the response from some of the from the Democratic lawmakers.
It was, it was it was a lot of exhaustion.
You know, there's just not much more gas in the
tank to kind of like, you know, repeat the same
message they've been saying for the past eight years.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I'm curious about the second
Trump administration is sort of in the first one, there
was these hopes from even some of his supporters that
after he won the election he would become more quote
unquote presidential. I don't think that anybody is holding their
breath that that won't happen this time around, And in fact,
we saw him hit the ground running. He's got an
executive order on birthright citizenship, he's got he's pardoned a
lot of the people who were either prosecuted or in
the process of being prosecuted for the January sixth attacks
on the Capitol. So I'm just sort of curious what
kind of Trump do we think we'll see this time around?
Because he talked a lot about these things like ending
birthright citizenship, which are very important to his base, and
sending the troops down to the southern border. But he's
also talked about things like what we were just saying,
renaming Mountain Olim McKinley the Gulf of Mexico. Stuff that
just seems kind of so off the wall. What are
we expecting to see in this Trump administration? Or should
we expect to see everything?
Speaker 3: I think, you know, it's a common thing among liberals
to sort of mock the media for being like Trump
has changed, or you know, like the what's the like
running joke like on this day he actually became president
or whatever like that, And you know, like, I think
there's some truth to that mocking, right, Like, I think
to expect him to behave particularly differently from his first
term is probably a fairly unreasonable expectation. The one thing
that I wonder about is what has really changed is
how people are reacting to him. Right. And that goes
from like the business community, which was very reluctant to
engage with him, very very reluctant to compliment him, very
reluctant to like see like to act like they were
working with him in the first year. That sometimes meant
that they incurred his wrath and upset him.
Speaker 1: You've got people like Musk Suckerbird.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they're all, you know, showing up at the inauguration.
They're they're donating money to the inaugurate there saying very
nice things to him. I mean, I thought the TikTok message.
Did you see this when when TikTok shut down and
they put on their little notice like we're grateful to
President Trump for like saying he's going to work back
and they credit him after that.
Speaker 1: But there are legitimate national security concerns around tiktoms.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, and even but even just the way the
Democrats are reacting of like I think what they would
describe as like trying not to take the bait. And
I mean it's clear that one thing that sometimes motivated
Trump in his first term was sort of reacting to
how people react to him. They would anger him or
they would you know, he seems to relish a fight,
and like, if that's if this strategy sticks for Democrats,
if they can sort of try to keep the temperature down,
if the business community, you know, other folks do that,
will that just create a different dynamic for the presidency
this year. That's That's one thing I'm curious to see.
Speaker 2: Another thing, another thing that I the really needs to
be you know, mentioned, is just the difference in staffing
that he has around him this time. I mean last time,
he started with the very kind of die hard but
not exactly experienced in government team, and so he filled
in a lot of that experience, that you know, gap
of experience by having people who weren't exactly you know,
really really kind of committed to his cause, but had
a lot of experience working in Republican politics, and that
was a source of a lot of tension. This time,
he has a much more professional team. Susie Wilds's chief
of staff really kind of transformed his campaign into a
very very you know, disciplined tight ship that was very effective,
and you know, a lot of that kind of professionalism
is going to be translated into the but filled or
really really kind of ideologically committed to his to what
he stands for.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's take a brief break to thank our sponsors
Mexico more than just a neighbor. For timely cross border
Insight turned to former US ambassador on Tonio Garza learn
more at Tony Garza dot com. And we're back, of course.
So one of the big things that we saw people
vote on this election was the economy. During the campaign,
Trump promised to fix the economy and reverse a lot
of Biden policies. Since the election, he sort of walked
back and said, you know, it's kind of hard to
change grocery prices, something that many people could have told
him before, but that he you know, he's got that
bombast about him. So, and he's also talked about tariffs
with Canada and Mexico and with other nations. I think
some of the executive orders that he's planning are around
tariffs to Canada and Mexico. Already, what is that going
to do for our economy here in Texas, particularly with
our relationship with Mexico, which is one of our top
training partners.
Speaker 3: I think that this is an area where there's maybe
not perfect alignment between our Republican leaders in the state
and Republican leaders in the federal government. And I'll go
back to this business conference that Matthew and I both
attended and sat in on. There was a national security
panel featuring multiple members current and former members of Congress
who were Republicans sort of dancing around the issue, saying,
you know, we're not sure that these Basically what Trump
has said is that he's going to impose a twenty
five percent across the board tariff on in the US
and Mexico, I mean, sorry, on Canada and Mexico. And
he said yesterday, I believe that he's going to put
that into effect on February first, and you know this
was before he said that on the inauguration. But folks saying, well,
you know, he's a really strong negotiator, and like, what
we really like to see here is that he's being
tough with these countries and other international countries and the
way that Biden wasn't. And that doesn't necessarily mean we're
going to see twenty five percent tariffs. It's just, you know,
this is the opening to a negotiating conversation. And I
think that there was some you know, real concern or
reluctance about like what the impact of that will be
you know, Texas and Mexico are huge trading partners. You know,
the biggest kind of international port in the country is
Laredo now because of goods coming up through through Mexico,
and it would be you know, it would be naive
to say that that's not going to have an impact
at all on jobs in Texas and also on prices
for Texans and beyond if those things go into effect.
I think it's interesting that he did not, you know,
you went down that list of executive orders he signed,
he did not sign an executive order on tariffs for
Texas and Mexico. Yesterday he said he's going to in
a month, which or I guess less than a month,
which does seem to show that there might be a
possibility of wiggle room. But I think you know, a
lot of leaders in Texas, whether it's business leaders or
even political leaders, are are maybe hoping that they can
kind of bring these two countries to the negotiating table
extracts some concessions, perhaps around border security. You know, they
Trump has talked about this being related to the amount
of fentanyl that's making its way across the border, the
amount of undocumented immigrants who are making their way across
these borders, and if they can come up with something
that maybe those tariffs can be avoided.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think one important point is you know that
nod he made to Greg Abbott, and Greg Abbott is
a big business guy. He is a super business friendly governor.
And then I think some of our congressional Republicans would
all you just think about people like Senator Cornyn. They
don't want to damage that relationship between Texas and Mexico,
which is very fruitful for both sides. So I want
to kick it to Matthew, who I know covers the
relationship between the congressional Republicans and the President and the
White House. So what do you see there, Matthew. I mean,
is there wiggle room for these Republicans to I don't know,
get in President Trump's ear and say, hey, maybe let's
rethink this or you know, it's a promise that he's
made and he is not one to back down on promises.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I think you know, one thing to
mention about the terrorists that independent of the of the
diplomatic consequences of them, I mean, this would this would
impact consumers pretty directly because producers offload the costs of
tariffs onto their consumers, so right, basically raising prices to match,
and so that would be have a direct consequence on Americans.
And you know, like the members of our delegation contained
some of the most ardent pro Trump people. I mean,
you would be hard pressed to find somebody who adores
Trump more than you know, someone like congressman you know,
like Ronnie Jackson, who's his physician, or Troy Nell's who
like wore a T shirt with his face with Trump's
face printed on it into the House floor.
Speaker 1: So so you.
Speaker 2: Know, you definitely have your die hards kind of like
get a ride or die focus in there. That said,
I mean, you know, Texas business community is enormous, that
has an incredible footprint on politics, the oil and gas
industry in particular, and many of our members, including in
the Republican delegation, are quite close with that. So there
is a there is certainly, and they certainly have, you know,
their their own channels to communicate their displeasure with certain proposals,
and they have used these with the President. That doesn't mean,
you know, going publicly against him. So I think Trump
does have this kind of elegant exit if he wants
to not impose these by so many people in his orbit,
saying that this is a negotiating tactic. It means to
be seen if he actually uses that. But even if
he doesn't, even if he does use that exit, something
that Congressman Quay Are brought up in the during this
business conference I thought was really interesting with the idea
of an uncertainty tax, that even if the tariffs are
not implemented, businesses in his town of Laredo, which is
the largest port of entry on the Texas Mexico border,
have already started freezing their activity in anticipation of a
potential TERRAF because they don't want to set up the infrastructure,
set up the skeletal structure for a business deal might
get impacted and take that gamble. So even if it's
not implemented now, the consequences are something felled today.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I'll just add, like I think in
the tech world, which obviously Trump is now like working
much more closely with, there is this idea of like
fail fast, like try things fail and like move on
to the next thing. And I think we have seen
in the first Trump administration sort of that mentality of
like try stuff and like see what happens. The problem,
as Matthew just pointed out, is like the stakes are
so high when you're talking about something like the US economy, right,
or teriffs, Like companies are responsive even to just what
the president says, even if it never happens. And so
I think it's looking back, like there was so much
that happened in the first Trump administration just based on
a tweet he sent or something that he said that
had repercussions that are sort of hard to you know,
we so rarely look back on like what actually went
into a and what was the impact versus what was
just like talked about and how did that have an impact.
So even just this talk about tariffs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the chaos that comes with yeah, right.
Speaker 3: I also think it's just important to point out that
this sort of conversation of round tariffs has really changed
through the rise of Trump. Right like ten fifteen years ago,
there was this sort of broad consensus really shared by
leaders in both parties that tariffs were not something that
they wanted to see happened, that free trade was really
the best policy for economic policy going forward. And you know,
I think Trump's election in twenty sixteen. One of the
things that it revealed was that that kind of consensus
was not shared necessarily by voters around the country in
the way that it was in Washington. And so Trump
comes in, he implements some tariffs. People when that happened
are kind of like, WHOA, this is a big deal.
This is crazy. But then you know, Trump leaves off
as Biden comes in off and keeps a lot of
those tariffs in place, right, And so you know, I
think there is some hoping that this is a negotiating ploy.
We'll see. I don't know, but I think maybe there
are some people who are maybe wanting to go back
to that free trade consensus in Washington and might be
surprised that we might not go back that way. And
if that's true, you know, Texas could be fairly uniquely
impacted by that, just due to the proximity to the
border and the impact that trade has on our economy.
Speaker 1: I want to go to another point that go piggybacks
off of what Eleanor was talking about in terms of
like the chaos that his sort of edict by tweet
can throw us into, which is immigration, and like how
difficult it can be to pull off big things. We
saw with you know, the you know, when there was
kids in cages in El Paso. We saw that. And
I want to go to Matthew Troy because there's been
talk about the massive deportation that Trump plans, and you know,
he's said things on a campaign trail, he's already moving
on them. I don't think there's any reason to think
that this won't go into effect. But I want to
touch on a thing that happened, which was this sort
of infighting between some congressional Republicans that you covered about
how quickly we're going to move on that, who we're
going to prioritize and sort of I think that speaks
to how difficult this might be and how chaotic it
might be. Do you want to weigh in on this,
Matthew and sort of fill us in on which way
you think it's going to go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's something that you know needs to
be kept in mind, is that the number of undocumented
immigrants in this country is called glossful. It's over I
believe eleven million. Now eleven million is more than the
population of the entirety of New York City. Could you
imagine just removing all of New York City it is
an enormous enterprise, or acquire billions and billions of dollars
reasons forces that federal law enforcement just don't have at
their disposal. I mean, Trump did say that he wants
to use the National Guard, but even with that, you know,
just the just the the bureaucracy of verifying people's legal
statuses will be an incredibly expensive and undertaking. So there
is a lot of divisions among Republicans about should we
prioritize violent criminals or should we just kind of go
after everybody? And that was that was kind of the
divide there. But but I think like the bigger kind
of conflict really that's going to arise is how the
squares with Trump's desire to cut federal spending so much
with the implementation of this you know new Department of
Government efficiency, which is you know, a kind of made
by edict entity, you know, trying to find ways to
cut where that doesn't touch the Republican you know kind
of third rails of social Security, Medicaid, medicare, law enforcement,
immigration enforcement. I mean that's like that's like a lion's
share of federal spending, so, you know, trying to trying
to trying to amp up this operation Walls were trying
to cut spending is going to be a huge debate
for the next couple of years.
Speaker 1: Matthew. Do you have any sense of which way it's
going to go, Whether President Trump is going to win
out in the end and it's just going to be
a free for all, like let's just deport everyone, or
there's going to be a more targeted approach.
Speaker 2: I mean, from the legislation that we've seen so far,
it seems like they're targeting more more people who have
been convicted of criminals. I mean, it's it's worth noting
that people who are convicted of criminals are already you know,
pers in line to be deported. So so yeah, a
lot of this is kind of politics, but that seems
to be kind of where the will has been among
Republican lawmakers. It's kind of to be seen if if
the if the White House is going to follow through
on that.
Speaker 1: I mean, Stephen.
Speaker 2: Miller, who's one of Trump's top domestic policy people, he
is pretty pretty ardent for all documents must be deported regardless,
So it's to be seen which side of will whine out.
Speaker 3: You remember, of course, many activists for immigrants' rights called
President Obama the deporter in chief, right as he really
increased the number of deportations during his administration as a
part of an effort to try to bring Republicans to
the table for immigration reform going forward. And the way
that he really did that was through you know, not
your like immigration raids on workplaces or things like that,
but through the criminal justice system, working with local governments
and states, you know, for people that are already sort
of interacting with law enforcement, which I think is just
a much you know, A it's it's a it's easier
to sell to the public doing that, and B it's
just much easier logistically, right, Like I know, there was
some reporting about the Trump administration possibly doing some kind
of raids in the Chicago area, and then they perhaps
pulled back on that after word leaked. I would not
be surprised at all if you see some of that.
But in order to really increase the numbers of people
you were removing from the country, the logistics of that
is just really challenging. And if you're going the most
efficient way to do that is not to send ice
agents out in the streets.
Speaker 1: I think that you guys possibly are being too optimistic
about this. I think President Obama did it that way
because he also was trying to advance immigration legislation.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 1: President Trump doesn't want to advance any type of immigration
legislation that would open up paths to citizenship. He wants
to get people out of the country, and so I
think we should be prepared for at least some chaos
when it comes to these massive deportations that he's promised.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think he's probably like he and
Steven Miller and others are going to want to be
able to point to enforcement actions that will probably get
a lot of news and get a lot of attention
for sure.
Speaker 1: Okay, we've talked a little bit about the relationship between
Texas and the federal government in a second Trump administration. Eleanor,
I want to come to you because when there are
Democrats in the White House, Texas becomes sort of the resistance,
I guess, the true conservative leader, and they're suing the
Obama administration, particularly the attorney general's I'm sorry the Biden
first Obama then Biden Attorney General Greg Abbott did it
then Ken Paxton followed in that they were constantly talking
about it. They're constantly sending news releases about their latest lawsuit.
I think even up until the last day, Ken Paxton
was sending emails about his last lawsuit against the Biden administration.
What happens to the Attorney General's office here in Texas
now that theoretically they are in line with the federal
government and what does that open them up to do
or how does that change that office?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean Attorney General Ken Patton has been very
you know, proud of the fact that he has sued
the Biden administration over one hundred times and has really
sort of set himself up in the media as like
the litigator in chief against the Biden administration's priorities. When
we saw the transition from Obama to the first Trump administration,
Texas did still bring some lawsuits against certain policies, more
like holdover policies from the Obama administration. But I think
you know, that energy, the like political litigation energy that
was being directed the Biden administration, we're now going to see.
You know, certainly that doesn't go on ice now. I
think it gets directed in new and perhaps like entirely
unprecedented ways, right. I mean, we're already seeing lawsuits against
nonprofits in Texas, like you know, some that help migrants
at the border. We're seeing lawsuits against individual doctors, you know,
for allegedly providing gender firming care, or a doctor in
New York for providing allegedly providing abortion pills to people
in Texas.
Speaker 1: Like I think we're going to see that.
Speaker 4: You know, a lot of lawyers get recruited here from
sort of this conservative legal infrastructure because they want to
take on, you know, aggressively political litigation. And if you're
not going to direct that at what the presidential administration
is doing, you're going to find somewhere to direct that energy.
Speaker 1: So I think we're going to see in the.
Speaker 4: Next four years a real explosion of litigation from that
office that you know, again we're gonna, like the first
Trump administration, like wear out the term unprecedented.
Speaker 3: I'm really interested to see whether kin Paxton's efforts against
technology companies continue. You know, I was just scrolling through
my email. January ninth, kin Paxton sued tech TikTok. In December,
he launched an investigation into TikTok and other companies. He
sued TikTok in October as well.
Speaker 1: There's an ongoing lawsuit against Meta as well, right, right,
And some of these lawsuits are actually good lawsuits, like
this is a this is a I think that TikTok
lawsuit that you're referencing is for TikTok advertising that they
are safe for kids, which obviously we know not to
be true from like a lot of the social media
studies that there have been. And the Metal lawsuits are
also I think very thoughtful lawsuits.
Speaker 3: Well, he won, you know, over a billion dollars in
a settlement from Meta from a from a prior lawsuit
as well. Yeah, and that has been a big part
of the kimpax and playbook is to file these suits
against technology companies. But that was during the time where
Republicans have been very hostile to technology companies. You know,
we've already seen that start to shift. It'll be interesting
to see whether that shifts in Texas as well.
Speaker 1: Yep. Sure, final thing that I want to talk about.
We can't leave this week's podcast without talking about abortion.
Yesterday on Monday, we reported on the passing of Cecil Richards,
which is a big moment in Texas. I think also,
I just want to talk about where does abortion go
under a second Trump presidency, especially in the light of
Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick this weekend telling Jason Whiteley at
WFAA that he's perhaps open to changing the language on
abortion or anti abortion laws in the state. And then
so this becomes a state versus federal thing. Should we
expect it to be continue to be a state versus
federal thing? And I'll get Eleanor and Matthew on this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I'll start just briefly by addressing Cecil Richards,
like you said. You know, she was the longtime head
of Planned Parenthood, also daughter of former Texas Governor Anne Richards.
She passed away on Monday after a battle with brain cancer.
You know, I for in writing her obituary, was going
through some of her social media and she had this
tweet the day of that Trump won his second election
where she said, you know, people, to paraphrase her, you know,
she's like people who do the sort of work that
we do. Know, like you lose, you lose, you lose,
and then you win, which is you know, sort of
frankly the where the abortion access movement is in Texas, right, like,
they're losing. They've lost a lot the last couple of years.
That's also where Republicans were and you know, sort of
anti abortion folks were for fifty years. Right, they were losing,
they were losing, they were losing, and then under President Trump,
they got this huge win. They got the thing they wanted,
which was, you know, the Supreme Court justices that they
needed to overturn Roe v.
Speaker 1: Wade, which is something he's sort of avoided during the election.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think where do you go with
that now is like a much messier question, right, Like
there's a if you give a you know, the one
thing many people, everyone in the anti abortion movement agreed
on was like Roe v. Wade needs to be overturned.
President Trump made that happen. The next steps are a
little bit I think less people are less cohesive on
what those next steps should be. As you mentioned, even
within Texas, like sort of you could argue like the
leading state for anti abortion laws and litigation. This weekend,
Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said, you know, he would be
open to clarifying the existing abortion laws to ensure that
doctors feel safe treating women with complicated pregnancies that like
is not if that happens. And we should note that
Senator Brian Hughes, who authored the law, came out and
said he'd be open to talking about that, and we
heard some stuff from House members as well. If that happens,
that is certainly not going to be a repeal of
these laws, right, Like, the Texas will remain a state
where abortion is banned. They clarify that language to sort
of leave doctors feeling more empowered to treat complicated pregnancies.
We're talking incremental changes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm noticing a big hesitation on or skepticism. You
keep saying if, yeah, you don't seem convinced that it's
going to move forward.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick saying anything
is more than we've heard in a long time on this, and.
Speaker 1: He lays out sort of what the agenda is in
the sense, right, so what is possible to pass?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: So, I mean, certainly, could we see this get talked
about more than it did last session? Absolutely, could we
maybe even see some clarify I mean, we saw a
bill last session that went really under the radar where
it sort of gave doctors affirmative defense if they treated,
if they like, terminated a pregnancy to treat sort of
specific conditions, which was heralded as sort of this like
we we did something. We you know, clarified these laws
a little bit. And doctors you know have said offering
us an affirmative defense, which says, if we get to
you know, if we get face criminal charges, then you
can defend it yourself, is not enough to like free
them up to practice medicine the way they want to.
And I'll say, you know, before the last session, Attorney
Governor Greg Abbott said, if we need to clarify these laws,
we will, and nothing happened. So I'm I wouldn't say skeptical.
I would say I'm standing by for more information.
Speaker 1: Matthew. Let's close it out with you, like I said
during the election present and Trump sort of site stepped
a lot of these questions about abortion and potential national
abortion bands. It becomes again, he said, we're going to
leave it to the states, so it becomes again a
state versus federal thing. Should we expect any movement on
abortion from the federal government from a Trump administration.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they haven't really indicated that so much. I mean,
you know, the official kind of line from the Trump
camp has always been like, this is the state's issue,
so let's let the states decide, and you know, just
in terms of the kind of political play of it,
Republicans throughout the cycle has indicated that abortion, defending abortion,
defending their bands on abortion is not a winning political
issue in any of the polling or focus grips they've done.
They'll also say, on the other side that Democrats had
way too much confidence in campaigning off of abortion, and
that's the reason why they did so poorly in several
key elections, including in Texas. But I mean that without
that kind of strong political will and also such a
large agenda list you ahead with reconciliation this year, we
haven't really seen that much momentum on the national front
for a national band.
Speaker 1: Okay, thanks Matthew. That's gonna do it for this edition
of the Trip Cast. Thanks to Eleanor thanks to the Matthews.
Please send us pictures of you in your boots and
bow ties. Join us again next week and please follow,
like us subscribe to our podcast so that we can
keep doing this thing. Thank you to our sponsors. Former
US Ambassador to Mexico Antonio Garza. Our producers are Rob
Avula and Chrisphobda. Our theme music is composed by Rob.
See you next week.