If it wasn't for that moment, Alex and Sam wouldn't be lost in their favourite track at the club. They wouldn't have shared that electric night front row at a music festival. Or bonded over techno records talking all night long until the sun came up. If it wasn't for that moment, when they were both scrolling on Tinder, and suddenly... A relationship starts every three seconds on Tinder.
Download now. It starts with a swipe. Technical difficulties. Welcome to The Texas Take, the number one politics podcast in the great state. I'm Scott Braddock, and he's Jeremy Wallace. His work, of course, appears at HoustonChronicle.com, and you can find the inside story on Texas politics at QuorumReport.com. Jeremy, you know that this show is a labor of love.
You know that intimately, right? You know how much preparation goes into this. I always, around this time on Friday, will start to receive messages. It could be because my DMs are open. I always want the news tips, right? So my direct messages are open on social media. I'll start to get messages from people, or people will just tweet out in the open. They say, where's the damn show already? It's Friday afternoon. People want to know where it is. And I'll tell folks, look, it takes a little while to get something like this together. I have to take...
And this is in collaboration with Jeremy. I have to take the week's news and put it, number one, in some order for you. Because so much happens. I mean, we are coming up on nine years of doing this show. And the biggest challenge is often just figuring out what order we're going to put this in. Because so much happens every week. Remember I told you, Jeremy, that originally the question was asked.
Are y'all going to be able to even come up with things to talk about when the legislature is not in session? And I just laughed. This is Texas politics. I said, y'all leave that to me. But the session is going on right now. And as I was walking around the building for the second week of this legislative session, the first real full week of the session, I was reminded, and I'm real proud of this, that our audience is so ideologically diverse.
I have the most conservative Republicans coming up to me and some of the most liberal Democrats coming up to me and everybody in between talking about the show, asking about what we're going to talk about, wanting to argue with me about things that we might've said. And I can tell this, if people, if they're, if they're arguing with us, that means they really listened, right? They didn't, oh, they don't just say, oh, I love your show. Love you. Love your show. It's not that kind of BS heaven. No, they really want to take issue with us sometimes. And I think that by, by this time, Jeremy knows this for sure.
By this time, anybody who's listened for a decent amount of time knows that one of my favorite things has always been uncomfortable situations in public, right? I love covering it. And Evan, it doesn't matter if it comes across smoothly on the show. In fact, it's better if it doesn't. I like it for it to be really uncomfortable. Not everybody can appreciate that. But as I was watching the inauguration this week,
I mean, that happened this week. All these other things happened this week. That happened this week as well. We're back in the Trump era. So lots more seems to happen, right? And we will get to, by the way, all of the drama in the Texas House about their rules and banning Democratic chairs and all that. But let's start with this inauguration is incredible. How long did Trump talk?
I mean, if you had to piece it together, it would have been for hours on a microphone, right? At least three speeches. Yeah, I'm thinking 24 straight hours he was speaking somewhere at some point, somewhere around the Capitol or on my TV or somewhere. That was all happening on Monday. And of course, they had some pre-inaugural stuff over the weekend. It was going on for a long time. But one of the most uncomfortable moments was when country legend Billy Ray Cyrus took to the stage there at the inaugural.
Is that a lowercase country legend, right? No, I think he's legendary. I mean, this is somebody who had multiple number one hits. And I know you're an aficionado of country music, Jeremy, but I'm a professional. You know, I started my career as a country disc jockey back in 1996. And so by then, Billy Ray was already all over the radio because his first big hit, as you remember, was Achy Breaky Heart. And that was in 1992.
I was looking this up after I saw him in this just amazing performance at the inaugural. And to his credit, he did acknowledge that for himself and for Carrie Underwood earlier in the day that they did have some technical difficulties they had to deal with. In life, when you have technical difficulties, you just got to keep going. Or as President Trump would say, you got to fight.
How good was it to see our president back in command? President Trump. Now, they love that, Jeremy. And here on the show, my version of technical difficulties, that can be everything from the microphone screwing up to just when I can't pronounce something, which happens all the time. I'm coming up on 30 years of mispronouncing and just rambling into microphones. It's what I've done for so long. At some point.
He got to one of his number one hits, which everybody knows the words to this. It's Old Town Road. Check it out. You want to do a little more of it? This does take me back to my DJ days, Evan, thinking about how we would have played this on Aggie 96 in College Station or K-Tex 106 in Brenham.
Where it sounds like Texas. Yeah, it sounds like Texas. Let me hear you. Let me hear you. I'm gonna take my horse to the old town road. I'm gonna ride till I can't no more. And the crowd loves it. Listen to how they get into it, Jerry. I'm gonna take my horse to the old town road. I'm gonna...
He was jumping across the stage like he was riding a horse, you know, on the Old Town Road. That's what he was doing. Now, he made it clear that he was stretching for a reason. Y'all can put your hands together now like that. If you encourage them, I'll keep going. They told me to kill as much time as possible, so... Does anybody know the words to Achy Breaky Heart while I'm here? Oh, yes, I do. And because of all the problems on stage they were having...
He was forced to sort of do, because, you know, his guitar wouldn't even work. They couldn't get it plugged in. Nothing was happening with the sound system with that. And so he was sort of forced to do an acapella Achy Breaky. You can tell the world you never was my girl. You can burn my clothes up when I'm gone. Come on, like this. Or you can tell your friend just what a fool I've been and laugh and joke about me on the phone.
We played the hell out of this song on K-Tex 106 and Brenham Evan. Or you can tell my feet to hit the floor. Or you can tell my lips to tell my fingertips. They won't be reaching out for you no more. One time. Don't tell my heart. My achy, breaky heart. I just don't think you'd understand. Listen how they love it, Jerry.
Big crescendo now. Now, that was something. And all throughout that day, Jeremy, people were so excited. And I want to make the point that even when it was a train wreck like that, Trump supporters were there. I mean, you heard the crowd, right? They're there. No matter how bad that is, they're still excited about the whole thing.
And then at other points, of course, during the day, you had, as I mentioned, Carrie Underwood with an amazing performance. She just had some technical issues as well. And then you had Trump. To his credit, this is one of the reasons that people really like him. He, as you said, was up at that church in the morning at about 7 o'clock our time, and he gave speeches all night.
He was at these different balls and galas and I think at least three of those. He was dancing around with a sword on stage and all of this other stuff, all of the things that would make his detractors really hate him extra and all the people who love him, love him extra. That was happening like one of those 24-hour telethons.
Yeah, absolutely. And can I say that the Billy Ray Cyrus thing is weird in a couple of ways? One, it sounded more like the spoken word version. Not even Acapulco, forget that. But also, he's only 63 years old. There's some problem there. As a guy who's gone to Willie Nelson shows in his 90s, Willie Nelson has 30 years on the guy, and I think Willie Nelson sounds better.
Like on stage. Oh, you think? How is that possible? I think there's, but you know what? I was told that it's a good question. I was told that there might've been some drug use issue with Billy Ray Cyrus, but are you telling me there's no drug use issue with Willie Nelson? This is a very different, very different experiences for these two guys. So Trump, as I mentioned, it was just going on all day long. Just to, you know, he was just balls to the wall with his schedule. And at one of the speeches, I think this was the one in the emancipation hall there. That's where Trump noticed.
that Texas Governor Greg Abbott was in the crowd and Trump was talking about, you know, the Texas border and, you know, locking that down and, you know, having a partner in Texas and all of that. But when Trump started talking, he didn't know that Greg Abbott was there. At least that's the way it came across when I was watching this. You tell me, in the middle of it, he starts to say something like, oh, wait, I didn't realize that, you know, the governor of Texas is sitting there because he was nowhere near the front row. So listen to how this goes. We won the Texas border.
That had never been one, as the governor said, he's doing a good job, the governor, by the way, of Texas. But as the governor said, it hasn't. Oh, did I get lucky? Did I get lucky? Supposing I said, you know, he's not here, but the governor of Texas has done a terrible job. Wow. Look at you. You mean we couldn't get you up in the front row? I'll tell you. Look at you. I had a couple of people. And listen.
This is not new for people to be petty in politics. I had a couple of Republicans in Austin say, could he not remember the guy's name? Because he never said Abbott's name. He just sort of recognized that he was there as the governor of Texas. And he just kept saying you. He kept talking about you and saying, oh, it's great to see you and you're doing a good job. And even if he couldn't remember the guy's name, I guess I could excuse it because there's a whole lot going on, obviously, at an inauguration.
He's got to remember everybody's name in that crowd. But Trump said that things for Texas and things for the Abbott administration are going to be different now because of a partnership between the Trump administration and Abbott's office. Now you're going to have a partner that's going to work with you because you didn't have, not only didn't he have a partner, he had people selling the wall, right? We have a fence structure that we worked on, the governor worked on with me. Now, immigration.
And, you know, closing down the borders and tariffs on other countries. And a lot of the themes that were constant throughout all these speeches, Jeremy, you were telling me that it sounded like a previous administration, but not from recently.
From back in history, right? What were you talking about? Yeah, you want to know who would have really loved Donald Trump's speech was Calvin Coolidge. Look, I wouldn't be doing my job if I wasn't bringing this audience from Calvin Coolidge from 1924. Calvin Coolidge, say what? Oh, Calvin Coolidge. Oh, and coming up next here on your favorite country, it's Calvin Coolidge. I'm going to be doing the disc jockey thing throughout the whole show. Coming up next on 12 in a row country, it's the greatest hits of...
Calvin Coolidge. Well, and so what I mean is like – so like because I do this kind of thing. Calvin Coolidge starting off his speech back in 1924 says like we're entering a new era of prosperity and we have a mandate from the voters to do, among other things, restrict immigration.
to erect tariffs and to protect the rich from taxes. It's like that's literally his inauguration speech. And if you listen to what Trump said on Monday, a lot of the same themes were prevalent within it. And Calvin Coolidge even includes this line, not necessarily in his inauguration speech, but later on in his presentations, he talked about how on immigration particularly, America must be kept American.
which feels like it could have easily been a part of the Trump campaign, right? You know, it's like it sounds very much in that same vein. And so like, look, it's important to kind of note that a lot of the themes of Donald Trump really resonated with 1924 America.
So you can see – like we go in these cycles on – particularly on immigration issues where we get much more restrictive at times when people get concerned or worried about something related to immigration. It was the case in 1924, and here we are 100 years later playing out the same fight in the same themes, of course in a very different circumstance in a lot of ways. But you can see the relevance of like – I just couldn't help but compare the –
Trump saying it's the golden age of America begins now and hearing Calvin Coolidge saying we're entering a new era of prosperity now. It's like, oh my gosh, it's like these guys are absolutely in line. Let's just hope that the future doesn't portend the same thing they did for Calvin Coolidge. You non-students of history, after Calvin Coolidge made that speech, we're about five years later is when the stock market crashes and the Great Depression starts.
And a lot of people – a lot of historians would tell you it's because of some of those policies that Coolidge was pushing to cut taxes repeatedly, particularly on the wealthy, that ended up helping kind of set up the vast, immense unemployment that would have hit this country. Well, and that's because these feelings of nativism and the populism and isolationism, those aren't based on –
sound economic policy it's based on vibes right people feel a certain way they feel that oh it's the immigrants who are taking it's the politics of scarcity you know they think the immigrants are taking their jobs they're not i mean you can look at the numbers look at the different economic sectors you know what's happening in the job market
They're not taking their jobs. They are taking the jobs that, and it sounds cliche at this point, but taking the jobs that a lot of those folks just won't do. But we saw this be a successful message for Trump when he won the White House in 16, right? And when he won the White House this time around, rather than only talking about his own grievances, like when he lost in the last election to President Biden, but this sort of warm embrace.
of the Midwestern blue-collar person telling them, oh, you don't need to change anything about your life. We're going to fix it by punishing immigrants and kicking them out of the country and building a wall and all this other stuff. It's good politics for the guy who's trying to win, which is Trump, and he did win, but it's not necessarily something that's going to be good for the country. And to your point, history bears that it's not good for the country.
Well, and another really important point, that exchange between Trump and Abbott, think about what that means here. It's like in that first term when Trump first got elected, he and Greg Abbott had no relationship really, none to speak of. It's like he just did not – it's not like there were enemies or anything like that, but there's just no relationship. Abbott was new as governor. He was clearly going through some learning curve of his own, and so it just wasn't there. But this time around, it's like –
Trump clearly has a, I would almost say weird affinity for Greg Abbott. It's like he really likes Greg Abbott on a personal level in ways I don't fully understand, haven't had a chance enough to talk to him about that relationship, which I would love to do at some point down the line. But clearly Abbott's going to have his ear, is going to have some influence in this administration that he didn't have in the first administration. So keep an eye on that. I think that's going to be really important.
Look, Trump had a great relationship with Dan Patrick and obviously Ken Paxton. But I think now that strong relationship with Abbott is going to give Abbott—
an ability to kind of reach out in a different way. And we're already starting to see it this week. You know, it's like if you saw Greg Abbott says he's going to push to get the federal government to send, you know, send money our way to cover some of the expenses over the last few years. And we'll see what they do. I think Abbott's going to have a little bit more influence in getting Trump to be on board with some of that stuff than maybe he would have had, like, you know, back when Trump first got elected in 2016. Yeah, we'll see what happens with that. That's not a new request for Texas to make.
Of Washington, right. They've asked for that over and over again. I can remember back before Dennis Bonin was the speaker, and he was chairman in the House, and he would be the one to file the bill all the time. Washington needs to reimburse us for all this money that we're spending on the border. So to your point, we'll keep an eye on it and see what happens with that. On the immigration front, you have Trump signing all these executive orders, some of them.
at least seem on their face to be unconstitutional, but it's a very different federal judiciary now. So it's worth watching what happens with this. One of those executive orders has to do with what's called birthright citizenship. This is in the U.S. Constitution. It was put in there as an amendment. What amendment is this? This is the 14th Amendment. I knew that, but I was kind of psyching you out, Jeremy.
Jeremy was – I was getting worried there. I could see that he was about to save the – it was happening in slow motion. He was going to go to the 14th Amendment. Congressman Chip Roy, who of course is an immigration hardliner but is also a constitutional conservative, right? He's somebody who would consider himself a what? A strict constructionist.
Listen to how he hedges on this. He says that he agrees with what Trump's trying to do, but he stops short of making any predictions about what will happen when this is challenged in court. We'll see how this plays out in the legal system. But from my reading of the law, when the 14th Amendment was passed in 1868, a mere four years later, the United States Supreme Court in the slaughterhouse cases explicitly said.
Four years removed from the passage of an amendment to the United States Constitution, the then-sitting Supreme Court said that it did not apply to people who were here as the children that were being born here of people that were foreign citizens. Another court echoed that a decade or so later. One court came in and said, well, no, we think there's birthright citizenship if you're born here to a foreign national, but only if you're a legal permanent resident.
I believe the president's executive order is correct. I believe it is lawful. I believe it is constitutional. I believe he ought to continue to enforce it. And we ought to be challenging this all the way up through the courts and immediately win this. And I believe this Supreme Court will side on the right side, which is that you are a citizen if you are the child of an American citizen. Now, not only did I know which amendment it is, I got it here.
I was going to read it to you, Jeremy, because it's important. And you might think that it would be something that might be hard to understand as a layman and not an attorney. But isn't it remarkable? Neither you nor I are lawyers. But isn't it remarkable that usually, not always, but usually these documents are written in pretty plain English. It's not hard to understand this sentence I'm about to read. This is the relevant language, Evan, from the United States Constitution in the 14th Amendment.
Quote, all persons born. I'm going to stop there. You heard the word born, right? I mean, just so that everybody can focus in on that for just a second. All persons born. It's not hard so far. Evan, what would you think? Are you still suffering with the cold over there? I'm going to quiz you because you've been called on as a legal expert before on a different show. Pop the mic. Okay, let me go through this sentence with you.
All persons born. What would you think that meant? Exactly what it says. All persons born. Everyone who's born? Yeah. So far, okay, all right. Or naturalized in the United States. So don't worry about, naturalized is kind of difficult. But so far, it's all persons born in the United States. Now, what would you think that meant?
Exactly what it says again. This is easy. This is not hard. Some courts are going to be asked to weigh in. I'm asking you first. You think it means what? Everyone born in the U.S. In any state, right? Any of the United States. All 50, right? And subject to the jurisdiction thereof, which means some places that are not states. Now, I'm going to have Jeremy help you with that part. Jeremy, what does that mean? That means...
Puerto Rico, man. That means Guam. That means all of the people who don't get a real representative in Congress who can vote, but yet are part of the American system and are expected to pay some taxes to help us all out. Wasn't John McCain born in one of those places and ran for president? Wasn't he born in Panama or somewhere? Wasn't it something like that? Because I remember this came up when he ran for president.
And they said, no, he's good to go. Well, he's from a family of military guys. He's definitely a military brat. So he's born overseas at a military base. Right. So all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state where they reside. So Evan, take it full circle. What does that mean?
I'm asking you to be like a federal judge right now. And as an attorney, I came up, one of the attorneys making an argument to you. And all I did was just read that sentence to you. What does that mean? Well, if you're born in the U.S. then, or in a U.S. territory such as Puerto Rico or Guam, et cetera, then you are a citizen.
Yes, that's right. And that's it. Now, Jeremy knows the context of the 14th Amendment. Jeremy, why did they put that there? Because it just emerged from slavery. Right. And you had to figure out a way. So you couldn't make this argument that all of these people who were enslaved aren't American citizens. They had...
And that was a big fight at that time period. It's like, are these former slaves now citizens of the United States? And yes. And their kids. Yes. Everybody born to them on the soil of the United States, even if they weren't sworn in at some immigration ceremony, they were Americans regardless.
Now, people agreed with that, right? And part of the question at that time was that some of those slaves had been born here, but they weren't considered citizens when they were born here, but others had been brought forcefully from Africa, right? And so then you had to have a legal resolution for their children, Evan. So that's why it came about. But for my entire life, when questions of the law have been front and center in American politics, people like Chip Roy and Ted Cruz,
And Greg Abbott, constitutional conservatives, rock-ribbed constitutional conservatives, that's what they would call themselves. They would also say that they are strict constructionists. And what that means is that you don't consider what Jeremy just said when you're reading it, right? The court can be completely ignorant of the context for why they put it there if you're a strict constructionist. The strict constructionist would just say the only thing that matters is what words are in that sentence.
From the Constitution, right? So even though they couldn't have contemplated at the time, or maybe they could have, they just weren't thinking about it at all, it doesn't matter that they didn't think about the idea that people might come in from Mexico who would be undocumented and have children here, and then that sentence would then mean that the kids who were born here would be citizens. Because what does the sentence say, Evan? It says all persons born in the United States are citizens, right? We figured that out. It took us, what, 10 minutes.
Now, this is going to happen over months in federal courts as they kind of go through all of this. But we just solved the whole thing for them. Those are children who are citizens of the United States because they were born here, because that's what that sentence says. I mean, if you took a different example, like the First Amendment, which says you had free speech, let's say that when they wrote that amendment that you have freedom of speech, that the controversy in the background at the time was that people were disagreeing about movies.
that some people really didn't like the opinions that some people had about movies. And they went ahead and they put the freedom of speech in there because they said, hey, at the government level, we're just going to say everybody can say whatever they want about movies. But then 50 years later, some controversy broke out because people didn't agree about sports. It wouldn't matter, right? What's in there, what's in the Constitution says you can say whatever you want. It doesn't matter what the subject matter is, right? I'm a GED holder.
giving a master class in how to read the Constitution as a strict constructionist. Now, it's the liberals, Jeremy, who have said what? That the Constitution is a living, breathing document, and it should kind of change as society changes. That's how you get a lot of these different rulings that don't go the way that I just said, Evan. So there's not a lot of – so here's an example. There's not a lot of difference in the facts between Plessy versus Ferguson, which –
It was about segregation of schools and keeping it that way versus Brown versus Board of Education, which required that segregation had to be ended in schools. Right, Jeremy? There's no big difference in the facts of those cases, right? But the society changed and people's thoughts on things changed. There were different justices on the court at that time, and they made a different decision. So if President Trump and his supporters like Chip Roy want to make a change to birthright citizenship, they can do that.
It doesn't look to me like they can do it by their own standards as strict constructionists. It doesn't look like they could do it as an executive order. They would have to change the Constitution, and there is a process for that, right? The Congress would have to – they'd have to do an amendment to the Constitution that would have to be ratified by a two-thirds majority vote in both the House and Senate and then a bunch of legislatures.
have to ratify it the states have to ratify it there's a whole process for that that takes years right for the for the constitution to be amended let me give you a different example and i think this is really interesting so you saw that trump also wants to make another big change in regard to mexico so he's all upset about these mexican migrants and their children and everything he was also upset about the gulf of mexico and wants to change the name of that
to something else a short time from now we are going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America Jeremy you saw that on television and you saw Hillary Clinton and some other people laughing in the background while he was saying that we're going to change it to the Gulf of America and maybe he can do that at the federal level I'm not sure I'd have to look into that
But I saw that some Republicans in Texas were asking this question. Why doesn't Texas follow the lead of Trump and just call it the Gulf of America, since that's what he wants to do? And, you know, a lot of our Republicans in Texas, they want to consider themselves, you know, Trump's allies here. And so one Republican activist had asked the question, why don't in state law, why don't we just change it to the Gulf of America? So everybody will have to call it that. And so if you're in Galveston or Corpus Christi or down on South Padre, you would have to call it what?
That's the Gulf of America. Now, I still think a lot of people would call it what it is, is the Gulf of Mexico. By the way, you saw that we had all of that just terrible weather. I mean, some people in Houston will take issue with that because some of their kids thought it was pretty cool that they had five or six inches of snow. But they had weather disaster going on in some places in Houston and, Jeremy, all the way back to your old stomping grounds of Florida. Yeah. They had ice and snow all along the Gulf of America.
They had ice and snow going on. And I was thinking about when we just called it the Gulf of Mexico, that didn't happen. So maybe we should just stick with that. But I saw that some Republican activists were asking, why can't we just put it in state law that we call it what Trump wants to call it, which is the Gulf of America? So I was talking to a very conservative lawyer about this who was interested in that proposal. And here's what they said. They said it gets complicated. You know why? Because the Texas Constitution.
calls it the Gulf of Mexico. And the Constitution calls it the Gulf of Mexico at least about a dozen times. So here's my point. Just like with the birthright citizenship, they could change it. They could change the language to say, you know, we don't want this to apply to the children of immigrants from these places. And they could list the countries if they wanted to, if they could get it through the constitutional process. But if they wanted to change...
In state law, if they wanted to change it to Gulf of America, they'd have to go through the constitutional process for changing the Texas Constitution, which means two-thirds of the House and Senate would have to sign off on that, which I don't see happening. And then the people of Texas would vote on it, and I actually don't know how that would go.
That would be – most of those constitutional amendments they put on the ballot, most of them passed, Jeremy, with 75 or 80 percent. Gulf of Mexico, I don't know about that. I don't know what people would think about that and whether anybody would want to run a campaign about that. Sometimes for those constitutional amendments, they'll spend millions of dollars to try to pass something. It might be a water infrastructure thing or something else, and they'll try to get it passed. If the legislature was to ask Texans, should it be the Gulf of America?
or the Gulf of Mexico, I don't know how that would go. But bottom line is, whether you're talking about something that might seem as trivial as the name of the Gulf, or about something as consequential as whether a person is a citizen, yeah, you can change that if you want, but it's a lot of work, and you can't just do it by signing your name on a document on the first day of an administration.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, look, we have a long history of fighting back and forth over in the naming of, you know, waterways. You know, just think about Mexico. It's like there's a lot of people in Mexico who still call the Rio Grande the Rio Bravo. You know, it's like there's a reason that they're like, you know, each place has its own way of naming things. So, look, it's not completely, you know, out of.
you know, character for America, then name something different from the rest of the world. I get it. But, you know, yeah, but to your point, it goes deeper, right? You know, it's like, think of all those communities that have a Gulf of Mexico Boulevard or Avenue that, do they have to change that too? You know, it's like, if you're ever in Key West, you'll be on, you know, Gulf of Avenue, you know, Gulf of Mexico Boulevard. I guess that has to change too. How long is it before like governors start having to rename those types of things?
in order to comply with Trump to stay on his good side, right? This is just going to be a lot of headache. Somebody's going to end up in the wrong location at some point going, wait, I thought I was going to the Gulf of Mexico. It's like, no, no, you said Gulf of America. We took you to the Gulf of America, which who knows where that is compared to what people think is Gulf of Mexico. Right, and all these things, it all goes together with what you were talking about with the nativism and the isolationism. Let's just call everything America. Let's say everything.
Let's say the Pacific Ocean is the ocean of America and the Atlantic Ocean is the second ocean of America or something. And it goes back to being inward looking rather than wanting to be citizens not just of this country but citizens of the world. And I think to your point about Calvin Coolidge, see how everything ties together here. To your point about Calvin Coolidge, it's probably economically more important.
now to not be isolationist because of the way that the world economy is interconnected. I mean, it always has been, but that is amplified by technology and the way markets move now. Yeah, and wait till, you know, President Trump learns that there are actually like cities named after like, you know, Spanish language stuff. Once he feels, you know, somebody tells him, hey, by the way, El Paso and Amarillo, you know, that's the step.
And yellow. I think we need to rename those places to comply with this new process, right? You know, Democrats didn't always get their ass kicked on this issue, on immigration. I do think that Republicans, at least over the last 15 to 20 years, have really worked it to their advantage. And in so many campaigns, we've seen it work to their advantage. And Democrats may have been having to deal with it sort of from the back foot.
or they're put on the back foot by this. But they didn't always just get their asses kicked about it. And I'm thinking about the way that Barack Obama would talk about immigration. And when he was the president, going back to 08 and 09, he, just like George Bush, his Republican predecessor, wanted to see something passed that would be considered comprehensive immigration reform. Democrats had a clear message.
At that time, it sounded like this. This is not going to be a free ride. It's not going to be some instant amnesty. Obama in 2009 talking about border security and an earned path to citizenship. What's going to happen is you are going to pay a significant fine. You are going to learn English. You are going to.
You are going to go to the back of the line so that you don't get ahead of somebody who was in Mexico City applying illegally. So you could have earned citizenship for those who were willing to do it, and so many of them are, but there is a reason that what he's talking about and what George W. Bush talked about is called comprehensive reform. It only works, though, if you do all the pieces. I think the American people, they appreciate and believe in immigration, but...
They can't have a situation where you just have half a million people pouring over the border without any kind of mechanism to control it. So we've got to deal with that at the same time as we deal in a humane fashion with folks who have put down roots here, have become our neighbors, have become our friends. They may have children who are U.S. citizens.
That's the kind of comprehensive approach that we have to take. Such a shift in the Republican Party from the days of the Bush dynasty, when George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush would have talked about this. I remember when Governor Bush was here in Austin, his line on immigration was that family values don't end at the Rio Grande. The Republican Party now is so much more concerned with other things. And so much of it has nothing to do with being.
humane. So much of it has nothing to do with any kind of compassion. Remember the rise of George W. Bush was all about what they called compassionate conservatism. You remember that, Jeremy? Are we old enough to remember that? If I was old enough to be spinning Billy Ray Cyrus records, then I can remember compassionate conservatism. Well, that's over with in the Republican party. And I do think you'll love this transition.
I do think that speaks right to this next thing we were going to talk about, which is the pardoning of the January 6 rioters. You saw Trump this week sign an executive order while just signing the part. He was signing all those executive orders and then signing the pardons of 1500 people, those pardons and commutations. And this is what it sounded like in the Oval Office when he was signing the pardons. You can hear his you can hear his Sharpie going on the paper.
And you can hear him having an exchange with reporters in the Oval Office. So this is a big one. Anything you want to explain about this? We hope they come out tonight, frankly. They're expecting it. Approximately 1,500 people. Six commutations. Jeremy, I've heard some people say,
And this is some of the national news analysis that some very smart people have said that this is just one of the bad things that goes along with some of what some of Trump supporters would consider the good things, that people are willing to take the good with the bad. And even some Republicans have said that for those who were convicted in situations where they were abusive to police, where they were part of the big riot on Capitol Hill, smashing a police officer in a door.
in a door jam and shouting at a police officer that they were going to shoot him with his own gun and all of that, that there are certain folks who support Trump who would just take that as the bad that they want to take along with the good. But you were there at a rally in Waco back in, when was this, March of 23? Yep.
So this is almost two years ago when this latest campaign for the White House by Trump started. That's where he kicked it off, right? And remember how he started it. I'm going to make the point here that this was not just some fringe thing in the campaign. This was one of the main things about his campaign, right? And at the time, who would have thought that this would be the thing that he would really focus in on? But he certainly did. And remember how the rally started in Waco. As you were there, it started with a group.
a musical group that they called the J6 choir. And in fact, Trump featured the January 6 choir, not just at the beginning of the rally, but again, as he was starting the rally and as he walked on stage. And you had people like Ag Commissioner Sid Miller there at the rally talking about the difference between patriots and traitors. You know, when I started in politics a few years back,
It was the Republicans versus the Democrats. And then it changed into something totally different. It became conservatives against liberals. Now, we've gone beyond that. And I'm convinced today it's patriots versus the traitors. Now, some might say traitors are the ones who were storming the Capitol that day to overturn an election.
Officer Michael Fanone was one of those officers assaulted that day. He's talked a lot, Jeremy, on different media outlets. He's been on CNN and elsewhere and everywhere that he could possibly find a microphone to say this into. He's been telling people that this is absolutely disgusting, and he also testified on Capitol Hill about it. Too many are now telling me that hell doesn't exist or that hell actually wasn't that bad.
The indifference shown to my colleagues is disgraceful. But nothing, truly nothing, has prepared me to address those elected members of our government who continue to deny the events of that day. And in doing so,
betray their oath of office. Jeremy, he's speaking as somebody who was in law enforcement, assaulted on that day. You were at that rally in Waco, and not only did they have the January 6th choir that people were hearing just now, but on the screens behind Trump, they were showing some of the activities, some of the things that had happened on that day on Capitol Hill. That was just kind of bizarre, right? Yeah, that's what made it even more like...
just really over the top. You saw the image of them attacking the Capitol and the smoke coming from the Capitol and that song playing in the background and Trump, with his hand over his heart, kind of pledging to it all. And you're like, whoa, what are we watching right now? And to think that, again, it was Waco.
You know, a place where just, you know, and it was close to the anniversary of, you know, the siege by the Branch Davidians. It's like, it's all kind of like, it's all in your head when all that is happening. And look, there's a...
big texas component to all this it's not just that he said it at the waco rally but he kept saying it during the campaign in houston you know later in 2023 in december like he had that it was actually november he had that rally in houston and he led off with that again and he actually talked about it being number one on the charts and having actually taught miley cyrus here we go two cyrus family members in the same show boom wait what about what about miley cyrus with it that his his j6 choir was
higher rated than the miley cyrus songs you know it's like no no no it's like that's not happening he was bragging like he was bigger than miley cyrus like which it's not true but nonetheless it's like uh so like but but the important thing to kind of really like people should hear this it's like bizarre we had we had 18 people just from the houston area who got pardons because of trump for storming the capitol this week that includes three people who were serving time for assaulting police with a weapon
It's like so those are the people that we're talking about who are being pardoned. And an important thing to kind of think about, like if any of these people pardoned who had committed violence against police officers, which is something a lot of Republicans told us that they were like they were OK with pardoning some of those people. But the ones who were assaulting police officers should never be pardoned. They got pardoned. If those people end up creating some sort of crime down the road, if they all have if any of them.
do anything against law enforcement down the road, you know this is going to be an issue in future campaigns, right? It's like if one of these people in Houston is charged with any sort of violence down the road, you can feel this is coming, right? Absolutely. One of the guys who was let go, the guy who was known as the shaman that day, the J6 shaman, I think he tweeted out or he put somewhere on social media.
that he was so thankful for President Trump's pardon and said he was immediately going to, quote, go buy some fucking guns, close quote. Now, I guess he can do that, but I would think that law enforcement would probably keep an eye on him, right? And to draw the false equivalence that has been drawn so many times between what happened on J6 and what happened in the Black Lives Matter.
events around the country. What if some of these folks had assaulted police officers during those riots? You could just take all of the people in their political opinions and flip everybody around. What would Republicans say if people were getting pardons, if they'd been arrested during a Black Lives Matter rally and they had assaulted police officers? How many times have you heard Republicans say,
When they're asked about what happened on January 6th, what do they always go to? They say, well, we had all those riots around the country and people burning down buildings around the country and nobody did anything about that, which wasn't even true. And that's why I say it's false equivalence. But it really is unbelievable. But to the original point on this, Jeremy, it's not just one of the extra things with Trump. It was one of the main things. Yeah. As you said, throughout those rallies, and he started it with it. He started the campaign with it, promising to do this.
So folks can't just act like, oh, it's just one of those extra things I got to put up with when it comes to Trump. So like you said, we'll keep an eye on what happens with those folks who have been released. And I can already see, by the way, there is some really disgusting traffic on social media over the last couple of days. I've seen where some reporters have done stories about some of the people who received pardons from Trump over the J6 stuff.
And some of the reporters are already being targeted by some of the larger social media accounts that are the MAGA accounts and trying to intimidate anybody for reporting on these people and what they did and now what they've been pardoned for in a really disturbing way. So I'm going to keep an eye on that. And that's happening here in Texas, by the way. I saw an example of it in San Antonio that was extra disgusting.
I'll be keeping an eye on what happens with that. Now to the drama in the Texas House this week. They did what they said they were going to do. They banned Democratic chairs in the House. How many shows have we had to talk about this on? Quite a few. For a number of years, the right wing of the Republican Party in this state has been obsessed with banning Democratic chairs in the Texas House. The fact that this is the very first session.
in which there are no Democratic chairs in the Texas Senate never seems to come up. But for the House, there's some obsession about this. So let's update everybody about it. The Texas House this week voted overwhelmingly. With I think 72 or 73% of the House Republican caucus voting for it, a lot of Democrats voting for it, the House voted overwhelmingly to ban Democratic chairs. And what do you know?
All the right-wingers out there in this state are finally perfectly happy with Texas House leadership. Oh, wait. No, that's not true. What? I mentioned weird stuff on social media. Let me take a look here, Evan. I'm scrolling. Let me scroll Twitter. You know how people post videos on Twitter? Let me pull up one of the videos here, and let's see. Who do we got posting videos right now? Hey, howdy neighbors. I'm Brian Harrison and Nate Schatzlein. Oh, it's Brian Harrison and Nate Schatzlein. This ought to be good.
What's up, guys? We just had two honestly disgusting and reprehensible actions taking place. Over 40 members, so-called Republicans in the Texas House, put their name on a piece of paper to silence you. The effort was led by Representative Jared Patterson, by the way. I think that should be noted. That's right. A nominal Republican led the effort to silence you by silencing and taking the voice away from your elected representatives and stopping our ability to even debate.
a motion to change or set up the rules for this coming session. And to be clear, what they're talking about is a rules package that was approved this week that bans Democrats from being chairs in the House. As I said, isn't that exactly what these guys have said all along that they wanted? Didn't a bunch of Republican activists in the state make and wear t-shirts that said ban Democrat chairs? Yes. Remember this, Jeremy. They were not a lot more specific than that. They just said ban Democratic chairs.
There was no talk about vice chairs. There was no talk about subcommittees. There was no talk about any of this other stuff. What did the shirts say? Repeat it. The shirts tell the truth. What did they say? Ban Democratic chairs. That's all it said. Ban Democratic chairs.
So what the hell is the problem with this? The reality is this, is that they were creating opportunities for subcommittees where Democrats would come in and all of a sudden have the same power. Not only that, they had put inside of our rules that Republicans could not be vice chairs. That's right. Republicans could not be vice chairs. Let me be clear on this. And I think Brian's already said this. This will empower Democrats in a way that no other set of rules in any legislature ever has. Did any of these guys ever think, maybe just for a minute,
That the idea of asking for a ban on Democratic chairs was a stupid thing to be asking for in the first place. That maybe it could be done in a way that you would get exactly what you asked for, but maybe some other things might happen that you wouldn't like. Did they ever think about that? Well, one of the things that these guys are alleging is that it was all rushed through the process. They say they didn't really have time to read all this. Maybe they didn't.
hey, maybe those guys who are ranting about it don't even understand what's there because one of their arguments is that this was all rushed, that this all happened very quickly, Jeremy, that the proposal was made public just a few hours before they got a chance to vote on it. And so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they didn't really understand that what it did was ban Democratic chairs, even though getting that done amounted to about a whole sentence. Do I need to do a whole other lesson?
Evan and, and have, and read a sentence to you and you tell me what it means. No, you don't even need, you don't, we don't need to do that again. The sentence basically just says only majority party members can be chairman and only minority party members can be vice chairman. All right. That's, that's what's in there.
It's really not that hard to understand. But here's Todd Hunter, who is a veteran Republican from the Corpus Christi area. He was being asked by Representative Tony Tenderholt about it. And Tenderholt and Harrison and Schatzlein all think this is a rushed process. And Tenderholt saying, hey, what's up with this? Why are we going so fast? Why did this happen so quickly? Mr. Tenderholt.
The rules, as you've indicated, 81% everybody's known about since 2023. So the remaining 19%, I think we've got to all be honest in here. Eliminating committees, talking about chairs and subcommittees and vice chairs, that's been pretty well talked about for probably two to four years.
Is this a surprise? No, I don't think so. Two, I don't think we're cramming anything. You're very much involved for 10 years. Major bills come before just like this. This is nothing unusual. We have left open times for people to talk. We've been working on these issues, not for a week to two weeks. We've been working on this for weeks. In fact,
Different groups in this room have been holding meetings on rules for at least seven months. Seven months. And if you continue with Chairman Hunter's way of talking, seven is the second number in 47. 47 is the second Trump presidency. And how many conservative victories are going to be made?
During the second Trump presidency. So every conservative ought to just agree with what we're doing here. I had a whole thing where I could basically do Todd Hunter's. It was better than that. I could do a whole thing of Todd Hunter talking about the Oasis County Day, because that's where he's from, Jeremy. Yep. That they've got some of the best seafood in the state of Texas.
And the way he talks is very disarming. You hear that? Tenderholt's asking about why they're rushing this. And so, of course, the device you would use as somebody who's speaking is to talk really slowly. Why are we rushing this? And he says, do you think we're rushing it? I don't think so. And he does these grand gestures and slows everybody. I remember when he was the calendars chairman years ago.
and a bunch of these right-wing guys were complaining about certain legislation dying in the calendars committee, and there were other members of the legislature who didn't want to see certain things passed, Hunter had said something like, look, I'm the calendars chairman. You want legislation killed. It's what I do. There was a whole thing about that. The idea that it's being rushed is silly. I mean, they do these things.
Pretty quick. And part of his argument there, by the way, was that the vast majority of what's in the rules is the same stuff they were looking at before. And they only changed one. They changed what these guys asked for, which is to have no Democratic chairs. And then they shifted up a few other things as well. Well, what I find amazing is that you can't even go as slow as Todd Hunter.
goes in his speech, right? It's hard to even mimic it because it's so much slower than human language allows you to go. Todd Hunter has a different kind of slow speed that he's able to shift into that a lot of other people...
Which, again, makes him probably the perfect calendar chair to kill legislation for sure. But the idea that somehow Democratic vice chairs is a problem, it's exactly how Congress is structured. It's exactly what these people were arguing. They want a system like D.C., where no Democrats have chairs and they're all the vice chairs. They have very little power to do anything. If a committee chairman wants a bill to get through, they still have the ability to do that. The vice chair can't.
push something through a committee as like the Democrats will not have the ability to pass any legislation through just on their own democratic power under this rule. And so it's, you just sit there going, boy, it's like, it's one of those things where it doesn't matter how many victories you get. You've got what you wanted, but no, no, no. It's like, we want the Democrats expelled from the house because the majority of Republicans, you know, voted to make governor Abbott the governor. So apparently that's where we're left.
And how many of these shows that we've done would include a comment from me like this, that it doesn't matter what you do, these people will never be happy. How many times have I said some version of that? And it would be, I mean, I hate to compare people to children because these are duly elected folks. But I'm thinking of when kids are very young.
And they might ask you for – I mean I'm talking five and six years old. And all they want is pizza for dinner. And you even – it's little kids. What kind of pizza? They just want cheese pizza. We want no Democrat chairs. We want cheese pizza. You get them exactly that. And then they would sit there and not eat it, right? They would play with it and not eat it. All I wanted was for you to just eat the cheese pizza. They're still crying and throwing it against the wall and whatever else.
It's the same thing. You got exactly what you asked for. And again, maybe you ought to think to yourself that what I was asking for was stupid, that what I was asking for wouldn't actually achieve what I want, which is to your point, Jeremy, some of these people just want there to be no democratic say in anything. And to make a serious comment about it, the Texas House operates in a certain way because, as you pointed out, I think on the last show,
For all of those members from all over the state, the Democrats, some who are more liberal and some who are more moderate, Republicans, some are more conservative, some are more moderate, they all represent all these different communities. Whether it's a more conservative place like Amarillo or Frisco or a more liberal place like parts of San Antonio or Austin or certain parts of Houston, ethnically diverse.
areas like Fort Bend County and increasingly Collin County and places like that, no matter where the members are from, they all represent the same number of people. And in the House, all of those communities have a seat at the table. And so really what these rules do is they give these guys what they said they wanted, which is no Democratic chairman, but it also allows for all of the members, Republicans and Democrats, to still have some place in the deliberative process.
to a certain degree, still more than in Washington, where to your point, they don't even call them vice chairs, right? They call them ranking members in Washington. So you'll have the ability for Democrats to have some say in the process, but it may not be, I mean, this may not be that much of a change at all because Republicans were dominating everything anyway.
How many times have we documented that? They were just dominating everything anyway. Look at the last two legislative sessions and then go ask, you know, liberal Democrats if they were happy with the results. Of course not. Now, I don't know why Democrats felt the need to hold a news conference after this vote, but they did. And the House Democratic caucus chair, Gene Wu from Houston, fully acknowledged that this does cut into their power, that they have been diminished in the House. And he said, Jeremy, that's because.
Democrats were losing elections. In fact, as we pointed out here on the show, they lost some seats in the House last year. Lo and behold, the people who were yelling the most about banning Democratic chairs voted against banning Democratic chairs. And what I think you saw here today is the House united and working on a set of rules that while it has hurt Democrats and reduced our power, but at least gives us some ability.
to interact in the process and have our constituents' needs met? I do think that for the rules vote, the way that it went, the final vote, I have it here, and this was the unofficial tally, but the final vote on these rules and getting all this set up, no Democratic chairs, but the Democrats do still have some voice in the process. The final vote on it was 116 to 23. That tells me that, and I don't want to read too much into it, but that tells me...
that the speaker who, remember, was elected with 85 votes. The vast majority of them were Democrats, right? He had more Democrats voting for him than Republicans. But he was able to get his rules package through the House, which is just what it means, Evan. I don't need to do this lesson again. It just means the rules they're going to go by. These are the rules of the road for how they have to operate all session. He got his rules through the House.
With more than 100 votes, which is a supermajority, right? So I would think, and I observed this on social media, Jeremy, I said, look, it looks like at least for now, the Speaker, Dustin Burroughs, has a supermajority governing coalition moving forward. Even some of the people, including everyone who ran for Speaker, including David Cook, those people all voted for these rules, right? The only people who are left are the Nate Schatz lines.
The Brian Harrisons and that little group of 23. I'm thinking back to when Joe Strauss had 19 members vote against him for speaker. Subtract 19 from 23. That group, after all the money that's been spent, after all the campaigning over the last few years, and that group that has sought to be the agitators in the House, it's only grown by a handful of people. And I had a former...
advisor to a speaker say to me that, you know what, you could spend all the money in the world and you could, you know, campaign forever in Republican primaries and it wouldn't matter. There would always be about 15 to 20 House members in the Texas House who won't go along with the program. It would be true whether you spent the money or not. There would be 15 to 20 of them who just are not on the team no matter what, and they might have a variety of reasons. In this case, they are organized against the speaker and that's it. But
We've got Lieutenant Governor Patrick, the little guy, telling WFAA in Dallas that he's going to give Burroughs a chance after he was elected with a majority of Democrats in his coalition. But he continues to trash former Speaker Phelan and tie Burroughs to him. Listen to how he says, look, Burroughs was Dade Phelan's main man. Now, Dustin Burroughs, who was his right hand man, is he going to be Dade 2.0 and let the Democrats run him?
Or is he actually going to be a strong conservative speaker and pass these bills that the people of Texas, the majority, want to pass? Now, he's the same person who wrote this in recent days. This is Dan Patrick on Twitter. Quote, any Republican who wins with a majority of Democrats will be a counterfeit speaker who will be beholden to the Democrats. Close quote. Well, that's Dustin Burroughs. So as you have pointed out, Jeremy, these guys are going to come to loggerheads and it may be pretty quick.
We'll see how fast it happens when there's some sparks between them. Yeah, I think there's one key point. Watch for this whole thing as we get into the tax discussion. Property tax reduction, one thing that has been clear for my covering the Texas House and Senate over these last eight years is one thing for sure to me is that Dan Patrick sees increasing the homestead exemption as the best way to give tax cuts.
I know from my conversations in the past with Burroughs and some leaders in the House, they don't feel the same.
And I think that's where this is going to come down to in the end. At some point, mark my words, Dan Patrick and Dustin Burroughs are going to be on the wrong side of this debate over whether or not to expand the homestead exemption or not. That's what I think Patrick's getting ahead of. Patrick wants to make sure when he has a problem with Burroughs, he can call him a counterfeit speaker and all this kind of stuff. If Burroughs doesn't go along with his plan to increase the homestead exemption, but yet again.
Even though there's a lot of people in tax policy will tell you, look, if you keep inflating this homestead exemption, you're not really kind of – you're kind of throwing off the entire tax system as you keep doing it. But look, Patrick doesn't care. Patrick sees this as the easiest way to provide tax relief to the people he wants to get it to.
Well, and that's the thing. It's the easiest way when they have a lot of money to spend. They can increase the homestead exemption by a certain amount, and it will cost billions of dollars to do so. And it's almost as if you were reading your quorum report this week, Jeremy, because when I was writing about the base budgets for the Texas House and Senate, they unveiled their first ideas for budget stuff. They don't agree on that already. They don't agree on the thing you're talking about. Correct.
And I saw all this coverage in some other publications where it looked like, oh, you know, Texas House and Senate, basically almost identical budgets and everything kind of has the same priorities. They're talking about property taxes and they're talking about school vouchers and talk about some of this other stuff. Here's what I wrote, part of what I wrote at Quorum Report. It's an early indication of legislative friction to come. Much like two years ago, House and Senate leadership are not on the same page when it comes to the homestead exemption.
And tax compression. Remember two years ago, and people couldn't even believe I was saying this, but it's what happened. I mean, having some institutional knowledge matters, right? Yeah. They couldn't believe they were upset with me for even uttering the words special session. But it was exactly that that kicked off special sessions two years ago. Yeah. Right? And you couple the fact that the House and Senate don't agree.
that Patrick wants to push the Homestead exemption up to $140,000 from where it is now at $100,000. And think about this. It wasn't that long ago that the Homestead exemption was $15,000. I mean, in the last few sessions, they have erased a whole bunch of homes from the tax rolls by moving it up to $100,000, right? And to certain parts of the state, that just completely changes their tax base, right, in certain places. And if you look where it is now at $100,000,
Patrick says it's not good enough. And he wants it to be, I think, to your point about him, he wants it to be a legacy thing that he moves it up to 140,000 before he's gone in office. And then I don't know, you know, he says he's going to run again. We'll keep an eye on that. But he wants it to be a legacy thing that he drove the homestead exemption up that high. It's popular with people. It's popular with homeowners, of course, popular with voters. And the thing about the homestead exemption that is really difficult for the state going forward is that is in perpetuity.
We gave everybody a lesson on how constitutional amendments work. The Homestead exemption has to be done through constitutional amendment. And unless you're going to convince people to vote to raise their taxes, they're never going to take that back. If they go back to 100, you know, if they go up to 140,000, that's where it's going to be. And the other thing that contributed to us having multiple special sessions last year, two years ago, is the fact that Governor Abbott never got into the details of this.
with the legislature during the regular session. And only once he called for a special session on it, did he then throw out the great idea of asking them to do what Don Huffines had asked people to do, which is to use the entire surplus to try to do tax compression and buy down property taxes and put us on a path to having no property taxes. And you might've noticed, Jeremy, that that hasn't happened. So I'm not sure if that's what's going to hang us up again. But when I start to say, hey,
We could have special sessions over this. It's not even that long ago that it happened. Yep. We've been here before. We've seen this fight once before. In fact, we've seen it multiple times. Yes. All right. One last thing here. I didn't realize this was going on. Like I said, a lot of things happening. We had to figure out how to prioritize all this for you. Jeremy attended a debate. Among those, how many candidates are running for DNC chair? Was it all of them who were here in Austin this week?
No, no. There's nine who are actually running still to be the chair of the Democratic National Committee. But what they had – the Texas Democrats had three of the top contenders, the three people who are most likely to be one of the winners on February 1st, have this debate here in Austin, Texas to kind of hash this thing out. All right. So one of the themes that emerged I guess was kicked off by – is it Ben Wickler?
who is the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. He's in the mix. Yeah, Ben Wickler, who's one of the three favorites here, who has a lot of support. He's got a bunch of big supporters so far, but we'll see how this all goes. This is all insider Democrats who will be voting for this up in Baltimore again next weekend. But he ended up kicking this thing off, and it really kind of shocked me to hear the language that he used. But hey, you hear for yourself.
All right. So he started to talk about how this state, Texas, could be key in the Democrats nationally making a comeback. Now the front line in the fight for American democracy is Texas. There is no long term future for Democrats to win national elections unless we do the kind of year over year building and investment and organizing not just with the Democratic Party, but with the union movement, with our allies and partners. So what did you think when you heard that?
Well, it didn't end there. What struck me, and this is why I wrote about it in the newsletter, the Texas Tech newsletter yesterday, was because after he said that, you had Ken Martin, who's another one of the three. He ends up saying, Texas, to Ben's point, is absolutely critical to the future of winning the presidency and winning control of Congress back. And then as if that wasn't enough.
You had Martin O'Malley, who's also running. People remember him as the governor for Maryland who at one point ran for president. But he says Texas is the key to the country's future. So I'm hearing this in succession. I'm in this crowd of Democrats. Mind you, the crowd of Democrats I'm sitting in is a crowd of Democrats who haven't won a statewide office in Texas in 31 years and hasn't elected a Democrat president since Jimmy Carter in 1976.
You put that in context and you just heard three people saying it's Texas that's going to be the Democrats that lead us to the future. You can imagine it was kind of quiet in the room when he was outlining on this. That was my next question. What was the audience reaction like as that kept playing out there? Well, I was trying to look around to see if as many people were looking at each other as I expected them to be like, oh my gosh, wait, we're the ones who are going to save the nation? It's like we can't.
get Colin Allred even within the same zone as Beto O'Rourke. It's like we haven't quite been the powerhouse lineup of the Democratic Party for the last, again, 31 years. There's some work to be done here. But look, to their point, they were making the case that is really important is that, and we've talked about this particularly before the session, look, if...
The national Democrats could ever tap into Texas and get Democrats to win here. Of course. The thing that we are – we have all these electoral college votes. We're only adding seats to Congress. So you shift Congress and the presidential races. You can see how important it is. And I think that that 2018 cycle in Texas will forever be in people's heads, right? In 2018, we flipped 12 Texas House seats. We flipped two congressional seats.
Federal work came within an eyelash of winning a Senate seat. Two Texas Senate seats as well. Yeah, exactly. And so you have all this kind of going on. And that gave people, oh, wait, maybe Texas is close. Well, it hasn't been close since, at least not in the same way. Biden got close to winning Texas versus Trump. It was only 5.6%. That was pretty close. But this last election cycle, everything got worse. So again, you're sitting in that crowd and as well-intentioned as these people were in trying to win the Texas.
vote, I think it probably made a lot of people in that room nervous that like, oh wait, you're calling on us to help get us to victory? Well, you know how far back you have to go for Texas to be competitive for Democrats? You'd have to go back to when Billy Ray Cyrus had his first hit. Perfect. Which was in 1992, which was something that we started with, which is achy, breaky heart. And if anybody wants to think...
that we were only going to play the really problematic version of that. No, we'll end the show with the song in all of its glory. Now, you should check out Jeremy's newsletter before we wrap up here. I do want to mention he's working on that for this Friday. What's coming up in that today? Yeah, I'll have a lot more on Brooke Rollins, who's Trump's USDA pointy. I'll have a lot more on her in the newsletter.
All right, and you should be a subscriber at quorumreport.com and houstonchronicle.com, and we will see you next time. Here on The Texas Take.