here, welcome back to the realignment. Hey everyone, thanks for the break last week. I'm finally back

from paternity leave and took the time to actually catch up on everything I've been putting

off for the past two months. Ahead of tomorrow's Realignment Return with a new season of

interviews. I wanted to drop an interview I recorded with

George P. Bush, son of Jeb Bush, and former Texas Land Commissioner. With the realignment sponsor,

the Foundation for American Innovation, two of us will be exploring Texas politics and policy

through a realignment lens. We're going to intersperse these interviews and segments

throughout the realignment's usual programming're going to intersperse these interviews and segments throughout the

realignment's usual programming. This project is personal for me, not just because I live in Texas

and was born here, but because I think what's happening in Texas for good or for ill is at the

center of America's political realignment. After hosting this show for six years, I started

thinking about

what I'm going to write in my first book, which as of now is going to be about the relationship

between the state of Texas in the 2020s and the overall political realignment of the United States

that we've covered on this show. Back when I moved here in 2022, I dove deep into all sorts of

readings about Texas. And I found this really interesting economist piece that was written in 2000,

and it was put together at the precipice of the George W. Bush presidency in the first term.

And the central idea of the piece was that looking at different

states and places in the country has been an effective means of understanding the country,

even if you don't actually live there. Think back to the early 1900s. If you go to New York,

you're going to see all the issues that were going to shape the country. You had fights over

labor unions and workers' rights. You had fights over labor unions and

...