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.
I'm doing great? Thanks for having me.
Matthew, Joy and I have spent a lot of time together in the last seventy two hours.
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.
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.
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.
Our trip cast listeners are your children exactly, They are your family.
That is what matters. Matthew. How are things going in DC?
Are you?
Are you keeping your Niear's resolutions?
Uh?
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.
Very very very different perspective from us here.
It's all relative.
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.
Just calls Choli and Watkin.
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.
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.
We get it. Matthew, you're important.
You go to BOS the Business Leader's conference he was invited to as a business.
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.
You know it's Now I'm interested. I gotta be honest. Now I'm jealous. I think we're.
Both jamming out, so you know, you know, universal vibes all around. It's a great time.
Yeah, Matthew, Matthew Joy, how are things for you. What was the inauguration like.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Now.
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?
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.
You've got people like Musk Suckerbird.
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.
But there are legitimate national security concerns around tiktoms.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So so you.
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.
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.
Yeah, and the chaos that comes with yeah, right.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I mean, Stephen.
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.
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.
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.
Here.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Like I think we're going to see that.
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.
So I think we're going to see in the.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Wade, which is something he's sort of avoided during the election.
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.
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.
I mean, I think Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick saying anything is more than we've heard in a long time on this, and.
He lays out sort of what the agenda is in the sense, right, so what is possible to pass?
Right?
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.
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.
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.
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.