Uh, so much like Saudi Arabia is striving to re- you know, try to reform itself along different economic lines, what do you think is the future of Texas in this moment of very significant transition?

I mean, I think Texas is con-continued to be, uh, you know, center of, of American politics, uh, in, in the US.

Um, I mean, it is...

You know, there's a reason it's one of the fastest-growing places in the country.

Um, and I always remind people that, you know, when immigrants are coming to the United States, they're not going through Ellis Island to move into New York.

They're going to Houston.

Um, so in, in many ways, these kind of, uh, you know, changes, th-that Texas is becoming a, a kind of a global powerhouse, not just a, a national, uh, powerhouse, I think are really going to affect Texas politics going forward, and that's gonna t- You know, I think, I think we're gonna see some really ugly, um, examples of, of that, that change c- coming up.

And, and how does it come apart during the New Deal?

So much like Saudi Arabia is trying to reform itself along different economic lines, what do you think is the future of Texas in this moment of very significant transition?

I mean, I think Texas can continue to be, you know, center of American politics in the U.S.

I mean, it is you know, there's a reason it's one of the fastest growing places in the country.

And I always remind people that, you know, when immigrants are coming to the United States, they're not going through Ellis Island to move into New York.

They're going to Houston.

So in many ways, these kind of changes that Texas is becoming a kind of a global powerhouse, not just a national powerhouse, I think are really going to affect Texas politics going forward.

And I think we're going to see some really ugly examples of that change coming up.

So what happens to Texas socialism over the teens and the 20s, and how does it come apart during the New Deal?

So I, I, I'm, I'm curious about your knowledge of its history, and how do we then look at today? So give me your sense of Texas past because I think it's important, but I have to live with Texas present.

[laughs] Yeah, I mean, um, you know, I'm sure we can get into to it in depth, but you know, I mean, I'll open up with a couple things I think surprise people.

Um, you know, Texas not only had a, a pretty vibrant socialist party back in the day, it in fact [laughs] had, uh, the second largest one in the country.

Uh, populism, uh, even more important to Texas history and to the nation's history, uh, populism was born in Texas in Lampasas, Texas.

Um, Texas was also a place where as, you know, private property, these new systems of kinda capitalism start developing in the state, it was one of the sites of, like, the fiercest resistance to it.

And one of the reasons I wanted to uncover this history was one, yes, to in- reintroduce people to it, um, but also I think to, uh, show the way that we can kind of forget our history and these kind of logics or ways that we understand a place or understand a culture or understand a people are actually actively created.

Um, and that goes up until today.

Explain it.

Yeah

...

the Farmers' Alliance is born out of this struggle that people are, are going through.

Um, basically the entire system is set up to destroy and impoverish, uh, the actual working farmers.

Vast majority of Texans, uh, are working in cotton farming at this time.

Uh, you know, we do talk a lot about cattle, we do talk a lot about beef, but cotton was king in Texas.

And, um, you see this, as this new class of landowners comes in, just like we were talking about with the fence cutters, um, you see this actual, like, grabbing of land from under the feet of the poor farmers in Texas.

Yeah

So explain everybody, uh, explain everybody about the history of Texas.

Yeah, I mean, um, you know, Texas has this very interesting radical working class and, and labor history that, by the way, has been, like, purposefully put down.

You know, it's not an accident that most people don't know this, this story.

Um, but, you know, I mean, the, the, the, the cowboy strike, uh, in Tuscola, Texas, that's up in the panhandle.

Um, and this is a story where the state is changing dramatically.

And, um, you know, this new landowning class comes and moves in, and they start squeezing the workers.

They start harming, uh, you know, these actual working cowboys, not the guys sitting up high in the big house, but the people who are actually working the cattle.

Mm.

Trump endorsed Paxton, and that's all she wrote.

Yeah, I mean, you know, I, I, I think there's a lot here that I think, you know, is kind of well-tread ground, uh, that Trump controls the Republican Party.

But I m- I think the way that you put it is, is perfectly right.

Uh, it was a humiliating loss.

It was a humiliating loss for, for Cornyn, not only, you know, to be such a senior official to lose a, a race like this, but to lose against somebody who's just such an out-and-out crook, uh, like Ken Paxton.

This isn't, like, typical, you know, Democrat slander against a Republican you don't like.

I mean, this is a guy who the only reason that he still is the attorney general of Texas, uh, is because they had a corrupt, uh, trial for him.

And, and, uh, it doesn't mean it's replicable in Texas, but th- there, I think that obviously the administration's gonna notice that.

If you could just tell us a little bit about that history and the conditions that set up the cowboy strike, uh, i- in the 1880s.

Yeah, um, you know, so I, I won't, uh...

And I'll do it kind of briefly just so people know, though, that, like, Texas, uh, is very economically devastated after the Civil War, but doesn't have the same kind of, like, infrastructural, like, damage that other So- Southern states did.

So land's really cheap-And there's a lot of people, um, moving to the state of Texas, and there's also this new class of people, particularly like Northern and British, uh, capitalists who start moving into Texas and buying up significant portions of the land.

They really start to change, uh, the way that cowboy work is being done, uh, in the state of Texas, and this is around the same time as a new invention, barbed wire, comes onto the, onto the scene.

Um, so what ends up happening is traditionally, like the old Western ideals of, of, of Texas cowboy work meant that if you were a cowboy, you could kind of manage your own herd alongside the boss's, uh, herd, right? And this was seen as like the way that e-everyday people could maybe get a leg up and get to live the American or Texan dream.

As this new class of kind of bosses and landlords comes into play in Texas, they start to see that as competition.

H- H- How real is it?

Why are we seeing all of these issues apparently so suddenly?

Almost all of these communication lapses are the result of this 1980s vintage communication technology that the FAA is still running.

It's not been used in the private sector for over a decade.

And the telcos are ceasing to support this communication technology.

You know, we've all been in the situation of where we receive a notification that we need to update our phone or an app, or it will stop working.

Well, the FAA's been receiving update notifications for a number of years, but they've not had the budget in order to actually update the system.

Why are we so critically understaffed when it comes to air traffic controllers?

We are about three thousand controllers understaffed.

We're talking about old outdated systems, but can you describe them for us? How old are they?

Most of the telecommunication system is the very best technology of the 1980s, and like so much of the equipment that exists in the FAA, it is quite old.

It's decades out of date.

And when it was replaced, it was, it was also replacing technology that was itself decades out of date.

And so that's part of the problem is that the FAA is in a, a loop where that it only does big technology projects every 30 or 40 years, which means that when they are actually delivered, they're already out of date.

Who do you hold accountable?

Let me say first of all that I've been involved in the airline industry for over 40 years, and I have never seen a secretary more intensely engaged in aviation than what Secretary Duffy is.

And so, I have a lot of optimism based on that.