Post Date: December 2017
"Retirement" as a Term of Art: Texas Data Points for the Week in Politics, December 15, 2017
Texas politics continued to be roiled by the ongoing national reckoning with sexual misconduct and gender attitudes in the culture this week, from a hearing in the Texas Senate on harassment policy to a couple of men calling it quits, including yet another Congressman, Blake Farenthold. In the policy realm, good stories on the history of the border wall produced by a team of Texas Tribune and ProPublica, and on climate change and Harvey in the Houston Chronicle, remind us all that we can continue to talk about enduring policy issues, though they also point to polarized public attitudes that make any moves on those issues difficult. All this, and, of course, Alabama
UT/Texas Tribune Poll Data on Issues Under Judicial Review This Week
Matters of intense partisan contention at the state and federal level – LGBTQ rights, voting rights, the President’s travel ban, and abortion – are getting attention from the judicial branch this week. Our polling in Texas has yielded a lot of data on the issue at hand that might be useful in thinking about how they made it onto the public agenda in the first place, how specific politics and laws that are now being contested in the courts came to be, and how actions taken by the courts will be interpreted by the broader public here in Texas
Flynn Sings, Barton Sinks: Texas Data Points from the Week in Politics
General Flynn has flipped, though on whom is still developing. Also still developing is just how many members of the Texas Congressional delegation will not be coming back. Joe Barton opted out, but there’s bad news out today for Congressman Farenthold, too. Over on the other side of the U.S. Capitol, the Senate handling of the tax rewrite (whatever the outcome) isn’t likely to help Congress’s approval rating – probably about as much as Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Bill O’Reilly, and Mark Halperin have helped the news media’s standing. On the other hand, Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s endorsement of Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller is likely to give him a shot in the arm after he picked up a challenger this week. Lest we think there’s no policy news, health care was in the post-Harvey spotlight this week at a Texas Tribune event, and amidst all these other weird things going on, Texas surrendered in one of the voting rights cases working its way through federal courts.