good morning class hope everybody's well today is the 13th of September 2024 and I will be posting this unit 2 overview video uh in the in the place where you see the yellow highlighted portion on your screen by the morning of September 16th probably um over the weekend probably open up unit 2 a little earlier so remember that um that for each of these unit overviews I mean for each these units when they open up I'll provide just a little unit overview the first uh unit overview unit one overview was actually longer than the rest of them are going to be U because it was the first one and I wanted to go into some detail so here we go so unit two is going to cover two topics it's going to cover federalism and uh legislative branch federalism I find a very very fascinating subject and you'll learn more about that it's really about the relationship between the states and the national government how much power do the states have and uh and there's a concept that U is referred to a state sovereignty and and also when you're looking at the topic of federalism that is the question of how powerful of the States versus the national government there really is differences there really are differences between the two perspectives in 2024 of the two major parties the Democrats and the Republicans uh so right now the Republicans tend to see the U would would like to see the power of the states grow uh the Democrats really since the Great Depression have been in the other direction and I'm not saying either one of those is good nor bad that's just a pretty obvious um observation to make by the way those two positions have changed over the years there was a time when the when the Dem rats were all about State sovereignty and the Republicans were all about ex shrinking State sovereignty so it's it's interesting how that how that comes and goes but that's a fascinating subject I find it anyway um since I live here in the US I'm curious to know when I live in the state of Texas and it's a there's a lot of screaming in Texas about State sovereignty since we're generally controlled by the Republican party now when we look at the legislative branch of course this is Congress and I think some of the things that that you'll learn learn regarding Congress they may be relearning for you but not everything so let's take a look um further down at the calendar and then I'll show you how unit two is laid out and then we'll call it quits so for unit two remember that all of your units are going to be subdivided into two subunits unit 2A make sure you're studying sections 3.1 and 3.4 out of your textbook and unit 2B which is about the legislative branch study section 11.4 11.5 now as far as dates go you can see here laid out for you the only thing uh so you got an engagement exercise two which is going to be about policy Solutions developing po policy solutions for Public Policy problems this is going to become available to you on the morning of September 29th due on October 9th and just like before you'll have written instructions um and you will also have a video unit 2 exam is scheduled to open at 7:00 a.m. on October 14th and it will close promptly at 400 p.m. on October 17 or October 16 rather the only thing that's unusual here and you can see that um since this is an online course course and students don't really get a chance to meet with me face to face although I will say that a number of my online students do drop in and and chat with me here on the main campus um in my office and feel free to do that uh but I am specifically scheduling a WebEx conference more information coming you'll you'll you'll be reminded of this in your weekly Roundup uh but from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. on October 3rd and what I'll do is I'll give you U for I'll give you a chance to let me know that you're interesting in attending this in attending this and then I'll send everybody the day before maybe that morning a link uh to a meeting so that's coming and predominantly to talk about the research paper now let me go ahead and take you to your uh just a quick layout of how this is going to work remember you're in a you're in student view so you can't see I'm I'm rather in Professor view so you're looking at things that really uh some of them that you really can't see yet but eventually you will so this is unit two and uh so unit 2A is about federalism you can see some of the topics we'll be looking at here related to feder feral ISM particularly the last one here uh that I'm going to point out that Federalism is is a topic that's alive and well Texas and the United States of government are constantly at each other regarding who gets to control what uh inside the state of Texas now I also want to point out that the legislative branch Congress I've got a number of things we'll be looking at here a number of topics and uh and so you can see how it's laid out there hopefully it's it's very organized and um and logically sequenced for you all well I think that's all I want to do I do want to keep this relatively short uh We've not even gone six minutes so good for me I I was short winded actually this time so maybe I'm learning something good luck on your uh your exam one I know that's going to open here on Monday this coming Monday the 16th and U and I hope you do well take care