Welcome to Party Politics, where we prepare you for your next political conversation.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus.

We are the co-host of the Great Party Politics show.

We're professors at the University of Houston.

We're at the end of our semester.

So we are, though, at the beginning of the crazy politics of the summer.

We've got obviously, runoffs to midterms.

We've got the president in China, we've got the ongoing conflict in Iran just a lot going up for us personally as academics and also lot going on in the world.

But let's start with Iran, because obviously this is the epicenter of what's going on politically for the White House.

The president describes the state of negotiations as, quote, on life support, unquote.

That doesn't sound good.

The problem is that both sides have dug in on their negotiating positions.

Tehran wants war reparations from the US.

They want basically sanctions for the conflict to date.

They want to control the Strait of Hormuz.

The president says this is, quote, a piece of garbage, unquote.

The US wants basically Tehran to eliminate its nuclear weapons program, and they want to be able to control the Strait of Hormuz.

Just hard to see how there's going to be the kind of common ground here.

Yeah.

Like putting a circle into a square peg.

But I mean, this is an issue that was started by this Trump administration and the Trump administration strategies, a huge miscalculation in terms of it is going to be two weeks most.

And that's it.

That was about two weeks ago.

Well, it's compounded by the problem that president faces when it comes to messaging on the economy, which is already been pretty limited.

But now then, these ask questions about whether he considers the people's sort of bottom line pocketbook issues when it comes to foreign policy issues.

And he says he doesn't.

That's probably true for our all foreign policy.

But this is a bad time for him to basically admit that out loud and for it to be, frankly, used against him in a bunch of ads that we're likely to see coming in November.

So it's a real problem.

And honestly, like the root of the foreign policy crisis is really about domestic politics, at least in terms of how we consider these things politically.

And it's really not looking great for the White House, but there may be an opportunity for them to steer into this.

So here's the problem.

Basically, gas prices are increasing right about four and a half cents per gallon.

You know this as well as anybody.

You've got a massive truck.

You've got to fill that thing up driving every place.

So that's a huge pinch for people.

Fully 77% of the American people feel like Donald Trump.

And the administration is effectively been the cause of this rising prices.

That's also including a majority of Republicans.

That kind of partizanship usually flips the other way.

And in this case is really bad news.

You also see Trump's approval of the economy in about 30%.

So this is not where the Republicans want to be going into a midterm, right?

I want to ask you this question.

What the Republicans propose is that they are going to suspend the federal gas tax.

It's about $0.18 per gallon for regular gas, $0.24 per diesel.

So do you think this is going to happen?

I mean, it can happen.

Yeah.

Congress has to happen.

You see that.

Yeah.

Is it going to have an impact on our pocket books?

Absolutely not.

It's small.

The price increase is so high for gas.

It's like $0.18 isn't going to matter that much.

But no matter a little bit.

Well, I mean like on average, if you're going to be filling up your car, let's say 25 bucks, right, you're going to be paying 23.

Yeah.

I mean, the impact that you're going to get or the relief that you're going to get is going to be around $2, right?

So are people going to notice it when you when prices are almost $2 higher than that they were before.

Yeah.

No I don't think it's going to have a significant impact.

No.

And more bad news for the White House this week is that the kind of consumer price index is up by a little bit, and the numbers don't matter as much as like the way people feel.

You know, we're constantly talking about the price of groceries.

And I think that's where people.

Oh yeah, that's true to those.

Despite the fact that people are like, you know, actually hurting, the numbers aren't good either.

So the story is kind of compounded by that.

So it's a problem, I think that the Republicans terms of how this process goes.

The other issue to note here is that the Republicans are trying to basically package a bunch of other budget items together to take yet a third bite at the apple of reconciliation.

We know, again, reconciliation is a process whereby, like the majority, can bundle together a bunch of budget type items and have it passed with the kind of simple majority, which is good for the Republicans because they don't have enough to be able to become the filibuster.

And so this is an opportunity for them to pass a bunch of stuff without Democratic votes.

But usually the third bite of the apple is where you get to the bitter core of it.

And so they're going to come up maybe with like seeds in their mouth, which everybody likes.

So the things that are included in the reconciliation bill include some affordability sweeteners.

There's opportunities to basically provide some access to affordable housing, which is a plus for value ends.

They want to fund the war in Iran, which is complicated politically.

They want like Senator Ted Cruz is asking for more capital gains, tax cuts, maybe some pieces of the SAVE of America Act.

And of course, the big ask is the billion dollar ballroom.

The president said, this is going to be privately funded.

It looks more like it's going to be funded by the government and taxpayers.

So how do you kind of see all these things playing together?

Is this going to pass first of all?

And second of all, like, what is.

Just that Senator Paul Rand Paul?

And he's like, no, absolutely not.

And maybe he can sway other senators to do it.

But his argument is very simple, right?

He is like, I'm 1,000% in favor.

If this thing is built with private funding, we should not be spending $1 billion on this ballroom at all.

It's a tough sell.

Yeah.

And I mean, I think it gets the problem of the gas tax issue, which is they're still resistant for Republicans.

Right?

So some Republicans have said that they think that this goes too far, either because they don't want to embrace the president's conflict or because they're worried about the deficit.

So, Speaker Thune, Majority Leader, sorry, Thune was really unhappy about this.

James Lankford from Oklahoma sort of expressed some reluctance.

He's in charge of the energy subcommittee.

So, like, there's just a lot of people who on the Republican side are not so convinced this is proper way to go.

I think this could sell.

I think that there's an opportunity here to kind of give these people this is needed, but it has to be done way before the moment where you kind of make this huge billion dollar ask, and it comes at a moment where, like we said, things are financially pretty rough.

And the president's messaging on this is pretty limited.

So, you know, you've got the president who is proposing, for instance, the ballroom.

He's also repainting the reflecting pool.

Oh, yeah, the National mall, which is now gone over budget.

Yeah.

I'm not I think there's some issues with the painting that is not.

I would say it's not the same across the pools.

Oh no.

It looks different.

From yeah I think yeah.

There's some issues over there.

So no, we want the deepest of blue to reflect the kind of national pride.

And maybe some maintenance is needed here.

But again, it comes at a point where it feels like a let them eat cake kind of a situation from the White House.

And people are probably going to look at this and say, why are we spending money on this stuff?

UFC fights are going to happen on the White House lawn and Indy car race.

This all comes at, you know, America's 250th birthday.

And I think in a moment where for a lot of Republicans are just really nail biting on this.

So I guess my question is, do you think the Republicans will kind of balk at the price tag or about just kind of the specific elements of this that they're going to have to defend?

The Republicans are on the cook here because Trump is sort of making them.

Democrats are saying, yeah, go ahead.

We're going to hold you to these votes.

You know what I mean?

We're not even involved in this.

Like, you have to make this choice and we're going to run ads against it.

So.

Well, I mean, I think that the Republican Party has to decide one way or the other what's going to be the future after Trump.

We are two years away from the second term of President Trump, and they just need to decide, are we going to stick with this or not?

Who's going to be the heir of the Trump legacy?

Who's going to be ringing the manga movement and so on and so forth?

So these are very important questions that Republicans need to be thinking about them right now.

But the first, first, most important question is I need to be reelected if they're not reelected.

Right, right.

These questions become a little bit more less important.

Their at home with a cocktail like watching CNN saying, you know, boy, if it was me.

Yeah, I would do this thing or not.

Yeah.

So I think that that's the main point thing and given the messaging.

Right.

Given the messaging is not very good because spending $1 billion on UFC fights, etc., etc.

situates or it's a complete divorce from reality of the average American and that is what is important, right?

And then when you put that with what happened in the in the potential campaign is I'm for America, I'm for workers, I'm for making this country great again, bringing jobs, etc., etc.

and those things have not materialized fully for people to see that over overall.

And finally, I think the most important point besides this is that they will also have to have a very disciplined strategy to be able to capitalize these issues.

Because, I mean, we think in politics is zero sum game.

It is.

But it's also the case that Democrats are really unpopular on a lot of these issues, too.

So there has to be some way that they can find a strategy forward.

But I think you're totally right.

For the Republicans, they have to figure out like, do deficits matter?

Is that something that we're going to focus on?

Right.

Some people like Chip Roy I do, but not everybody is.

We're going to propose the kind of indifference on Iran or even kind of a counter strategy on Iran, right?

That sort of thing.

Republicans have to consider a kind of post-Trump.

So a lot of these questions that are still swirling, that make it a challenge for Republicans to kind of follow that party line when the party line is basically whatever Donald Trump says it is.

On that point, there was been huge redistricting news the last couple of weeks.

It's funny because like three weeks ago, we were talking about how, like Democrats were coming out ahead on this, Virginia Supreme Court ruled like we saw some kind of changes in Utah that actually netted one seat for Democrats.

California redistricted.

So they're looking, it's looking like Democrats to come out ahead.

But a series of events basically made that probably impractical.

The US Supreme Court, basically in the Callais decision, decided that they were going to open the door to essentially minimizing the impact of the Voting Rights Act of.

Lots to unpack there.

But the bottom line is basically that states are more or less going to be able to redraw lines, that respect, to kind of protecting some of these specific districts that they otherwise had.

So that's going to net a handful of seats for Republicans.

You've got the Virginia Supreme Court, which overruled the voters, and that'll change down the road.

But for sure, we're seeing, I think in the near term that basically not be the benefit to Democrats.

They thought it was places like Alabama, South Carolina, Florida Are all moving in the direction of trying to gerrymander netting maybe ten seats unknown.

This is sort of still all up in the ether.

But I think the fact is that where, you know, a month ago, there was a sort of sensibility from the Democrats were going to come out ahead.

Now it's looking like they're going to come out behind.

What's your take on the kind of redistricting wars in 2026?

I mean, it's on both sides, right?

It's Democrats and Republicans.

Democrats, when they have the opportunity, they district Republicans when they have the opportunity They redistrict.

But where is me most is the swing that the Supreme Court took at the Voting Rights Act, right?

And it is a very narrow interpretation.

Right.

Saying we're not in the 1960s anymore and say, okay, fine.

But We're also not in the 1800s.

So the Constitution should not be interpreted as the 1800s.

And sometimes this court has done when we had, for example, Roe v. Wade, when we have a very important issue.

So there is no consistency in terms of we should take the Constitution as a written document.

That is a written document.

We should follow it to the T, or is it a live document that has to be interpreted with today's things?

So do you think that the Supreme Court is in jeopardy of becoming and or being perceived as to political of an institution?

Absolutely.

A lot of legal scholars have looked at this decision and said, basically, they're violating their own core rules, including the Purcell Principle, which is the sort of in that shell.

The principle says we should stay out of politics because this is a liability for.

The poor.

I think that it is a liability is is I do not understand in this democracy.

Right.

Why don't allow people to choose the representative that they want?

I mean, it's something that I've been struggling over the years and also goes to the very own fabric of our founding, right?

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

So to me is a very odd ruling and very politicized that we're entering in a area where the Supreme Court is making these political decisions, right?

And making a whole issue argumentative, whatever.

That doesn't make any sense.

Yeah, there's definitely, I think, concern that the ruling was misread or too narrow, but the impact is going to be very political, and I don't know if it changes things too much except to say that you're probably not going to see some districts get protected in the way they have been.

And certainly Partizanship is now like just a kind of unfettered, you know, caged animal where they can draw lines in whatever way that they want, that is are effectively partizan and orientation.

So that's going to change the dynamics and how this ends up playing out.

You know, we don't know I think in the near term, like we've been saying, Democrats are likely to do better in the midterm.

But long term Republicans are going to net seats, I think, in a normal course of action, because of the way that the lines are drawn, that is going to be a kind of structural advantage.

For them.

But then those lines are going to be redrawn by Democrats.

It's possible.

Yeah.

Although some of these states are very Republican, so I don't think you'll see a lot of changes.

But then the Democratic states will do the opposite.

Exactly.

I think that's what you're saying, right?

You know, you're going to see the kind of tit for tat strategy which just never seems right.

So the bottom yeah, some states are pushing back.

Like South Carolina is sort of making some overtures They're not going to go in that direction.

We saw Indiana do the same.

Some members paid the price for that.

So we're definitely going to see I think outcomes here that are going to be a little bit wonky and very political the meantime.

But to me, the Democrats may have lost the redistricting fight, but they have gained an issue for the midterm, and that is that they needed desperately to have urban voters and black voters and younger voters to be really engaged in this process.

I think this decision and the district, maybe it will happen.

Speaking of elections, let's switch to Texas.

None other than former President Barack Obama was here in Austin, Texas, weighing in on the US Senate race, but also, of course, weighing in on the fight between which city has the best tacos.

Is he tacitly saying that Austin has the best tacos because they went there and not San Antonio, where James Talarico is from?

I'm not going to get into that fight.

That's way too partizan for us.

And I know where the best tacos are.

Okay, well, are you going to reveal.

I'm not going to reveal it.

Let's say if we like cut the mics.

You're going to give just us in the room, maybe our awesome crew, maybe the inside of.

Okay.

I will bring some.

Okay, good, good.

Well, that's a good start.

Those are my tacos.

I'll take that at the start.

But Barack Obama was here for the tacos, but also here for stumping for James Talarico.

And Gina Hinojosa who's running for governor.

What do you make of the politics of this?

I mean, he's, I guess, stepping up the game.

Barack Obama's presidency was very had very high approval ratings.

I think that he connects with people in such a way that other previous presidents are not able to do so.

He's very energetic.

And I think this can, I guess, excite a little bit more the Democratic base that needs to be very excited if they want to beat the Republican candidate.

Yeah, that's a good point.

Like we've talked about, the Democrats have been sluggish in terms of turnout 2024.

If those numbers continue, then they will not be competitive.

There are certainly signs that's turning around.

We talked about the primary definitely had signals that was the case.

But they cannot take this for granted.

So I think calling it the big guns here is probably pretty smart.

This is like, you know, World War II era heavy tank.

Oh, yeah.

Barack Obama is among the most popular members in the Democratic Party.

Yeah.

That is frankly not that popular overall.

None of the parties are.

But this is definitely a good kind of indication.

This is a national race.

And the kind of surprise showing here is really interesting.

Like the Talarico campaign emails us like three times a day what they're doing and how doing it.

This one came almost like as a just surprise.

Like they're, you know, kind of inviting the former president and the kind of effort I think is really useful for Democrats because like we said, they have to be able to, you know, kind of spur the Democrats generally into power.

It also, I think, gives Talarico a better handle on the Democratic electorate that has been reluctant to embrace him fully.

The battle he and Jasmine Crockett ended badly.

There's a lot of riffs there.

And obviously having somebody as popular and as impactful as Barack Obama come is a way to kind of unify the party back together in a moment where he desperately needs it.

But I want to talk about the negatives of this because, like for every ying, there's a yang, right?

Like, Democrats obviously love Barack Obama.

But guess what?

It turns out that, like, Republicans hate him.

So what do you make of the impact of this on the kind of counter side?

Well, I mean, if we were in an election where we would not have a runoff between the Republican candidates, I think that these would benefit the Republican candidate.

Right.

Right now, it's an issue that, yes, of course, everybody hates on the Republican side.

Barack Obama, fine.

But that doesn't get you to be the winner of the runoff.

doesn't make you love the person you're voting for.

Exactly.

So the issue is that this unifies Republicans.

But the question is, there's no difference between those that support Senator Cornyn AG Paxton or whatever it is, because it doesn't matter.

It's irrelevant.

So right now I think that for this particular issue is irrelevant, is something that they cannot engage fully with it because everybody is going to create, whether you're supporting one or the other.

Yeah.

I think that this has a kind of potential down ballot to link the Democrats to a more kind of liberal approach.

Obama is not the most liberal member of the party, but Bernie Sanders is.

And so John Cornyn said that, like you've got Obama coming to campaign for Talarico, Bernie Sanders is going to be the keynote for the Democratic Convention in a couple of weeks.

Then you've got, I think, a kind of swirl where Republicans are saying, look at what your opposition is.

This is the Democrats presenting their kind of national viewers that are very liberal, much more liberal than Texas in general.

That's a line that they've been kind of playing and has been pretty successful.

John Cornyn especially has played that to his success in his last couple Senate races.

It's also, I think, a potential to be able to just polarize the race.

Right.

And so for Talarico, his kind of theory of the case is that you need Democrats turnout, big numbers.

Right.

But you also need people who are kind of Independents Leaners, people who are reluctant Republicans, people who maybe don't care about politics that much at all, about to vote.

If you partizanize this race, I'm coining that phrase trademark me today.

Like, that means that you're going to have a real problem of like, kind of tampering down expectations about partizanship, right?

Because Talarico wants to present himself as a kind of moderate to kind of I'm with you kind of Democrat, right?

Not like a full throated, just straight up partizan.

And I think it's minimizes that message.

Well, I mean, yes, I see your your argument about what party.

Part of partizanisation or partizanisation.

Of trademark.

Like it.

Love it.

But I think that the issue here is that when you see that Talarico's message, right it's very down to earth in the sense of affordability in the sense of, you know, the 1% is taking away, etc., etc., etc.. So I think that that gives him the opportunity to go after these other voters because, yes, the the race is going to be and it is already very polarized.

Right?

But these particular issues are issues that are just going to resonate immediately with more independent or Republicans are not happy or whatnot.

Yeah.

That's good.

Yeah.

I mean, Obama is the more popular of the recent past presidents.

And so I think that that can be a successful enterprise.

And again, this is about the Democrats more than anything else.

And so we're over reading this for, you know, because that's what we do.

Yes, we're analysts and, you know, political scientists.

But I do think that there are some you no real positive because Talarico needs to raise serious money.

This is an indication that he's being embraced by Democratic Party.

Let me ask you this question.

There's been some chatter lately for those of us who are very online about Talarico running for vice president.

That is to say that he's actually being asked questions from the media like Will, if you're elected, you serve for your full six year term in the Senate.

This seems to be like way, way, way early.

Jumping the gun.

The same thing happened Beto O'Rourke, right?

Like, his meteoric rise looked like it was going to never end, but then all of a sudden, crashing down, it did.

So how do you make when you think of this sort of process where, like, you know, we're just sort of creating these heroes or Democrats are creating these heroes and then like all of a sudden, you know, they don't win in Texas.

I mean, they don't pitch it, right?

Yeah.

Well, they have to take down those expectations because they're completely 1,000% naive.

By bringing the former president in.

Well, I mean, to me, that's like so as a negative side of things, it's like, okay, here's the kind of president and like here's James Talarico, who is talking about is like vice president and quotes doesn't help that case.

Right.

To say like we're over hyping these expectations.

Yeah.

No it doesn't.

People don't.

Think that way.

No.

Yeah I mean, I think that's true.

Yeah.

It doesn't.

Help because we're looking at these memes where it's like, you know, Barack Obama kind of a head and you've got James Talarico over that next to him.

So people are meaning this saying, like, all these kinds of things.

So yeah.

It's like it's a very niche kind of thing most people don't care about.

But, you know, these are kind of the political trends that we're we're watching and that we deliver to you here on Party Politics.

Let's talk about the Republican side.

John Cornyn banking a huge amount of money between the last kind of filing period, April and May 6th.

He's brought in about $4.5 million.

He's got $8 million on hand ahead of the primary.

That's a lot of money.

Paxton's on raising that much money was going on.

I mean, Cornyn has been one of the greatest fundraisers in the history of the Senate.

So he's just doing what he knows to do.

So.

I mean, get ready for ads.

Oh, yeah.

Like, it's going to be an onslaught.

It's going to be a huge a huge battle.

And I think that well, first of all, we're very close to find out who's going to be the victor in this race.

Wow.

Yeah.

Early voting starts next week, two weeks from now.

Yeah.

It's really close.

It's going to be very interesting.

And we're also seeing Ken Paxton pursuing a strategy.

I think that's pretty smart.

You don't have to raise a lot of money if you can play to your base.

And he for instance, we talked about before is using his office to sue people and essentially put these issues into the field.

One thing he's doing this week is opening investigations into various school districts over the Ten Commandments law, which requires Right.

These Districts to prominently display the Ten Commandments.

He's also suing Netflix, which people have no doubt heard of.

People like to Netflix and chill.

But what we have is the attorney general saying that when you watch Netflix, Netflix watches you.

They're harvesting our information.

And he says that's illegal.

The legal side of things, you know, I don't know how it's going to play out, but like, it definitely is something that gives him an opportunity to make headlines, to make it look like he's working for us on issues that we understand and care about.

So in a way, it's pretty smart for him.

You don't have to raise that much money to pursue this kind of strategy.

No, no, no, of course not.

But once again, the issue here is that also the Republican Party within the Republican Party is polarized one way or the other.

So if you're catering to your base, you're base already knows what they want and your base is going to support.

Right.

What you need to do is to make sure that they're going to be turning out in greater numbers than your opponents in this case.

Senator Cornyn, but the issue here is then how is that going to play out in the general election for whoever wins this runoff election?

So you're tied to these issues.

Exactly.

You know, kind of forever.

Exactly.

So it's a small strategy, but I think the short term will have a more impactful outcome than we're looking at medium and long term, especially looking at the general election.

Last issue is that the border wall in Big Bend seems like it's not going to happen.

The US Customs and Border Protection commissioner has said essentially it's canceled.

Bipartisan pushback from Texas.

What do you make of the outcome here?

Well.

Thank God.

It's obviously State Park.

Beautiful.

It has a lot of wildlife that goes from Mexico to Texas and the other way around you.

A lot of migration, a lot of species go one way or the other.

So I think it's important to to have that, you know, as it is.

And there's not a mutual like kind of dissatisfaction with this.

Like you can have conservation and border security.

They have technology they can use to employ this And I think that's the kind of win win here.

Like this is going to be a policy that government is going to push.

They need to do with a can of protecting.

And so it seems like that's a compromise.

So I guess that's a win right.

On that compromise on that win.

That's it for this week.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus.

The conversation keeps up next week.