The Blast - April 28, 2025

18 days for the House to pass legislation that originated in the House
35 days until sine die

IN TODAY’S BLAST

• GOP hardliners thump their chests

• HJRs start slipping through

• SB 2 signing expected Saturday, and carve-out bill arrives

GOP HARDLINERS THUMP THEIR CHESTS

The House’s local and consent calendar is dead. Truly dead.

As of this afternoon, 72 bills have been offloaded from the House Local and Consent Calendars Committee to the House Calendars Committee. Precisely zero bills are left in the Local and Consent Calendars Committee.

It’s fallout from the blowup that occurred on Friday, as a tit-for-tat between House Democrats and the chamber’s most conservative flank brought lawmaking to a halt. Most bills that were on the local and consent calendar were sent to Calendars instead, and will be on the floor soon, some for a third time.

Republicans kicked off the volley Friday in response to Democrats withholding their votes on constitutional amendments. But the band of Republicans are also telling House leadership, under the command of Speaker Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, that the conservative priorities are dying in committee.

In a post backing on Saturday evening, Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, said the anti-Burrows band won’t be backing down.

“What we did yesterday not only killed the misused and abused Local and Consent Calendar yesterday, but you won’t see another one for the rest of this Session and we’re not even close to being finished,” Toth said. “Burrows’ Leadership team has left us no other options than to burn it all down.”

In a separate post thread that evening, Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, said that legislative priorities of the Republican Party of Texas are languishing in committees. He named the bill to ban taxpayer-funded lobbying (Senate Bill 19/House Bill 3257/House Bill 4860) as one of the several pieces of legislation that are stuck in the House State Affairs Committee. He named Public Health as another bottleneck.

“Committee leadership knows it,” Cain said.

With less than three weeks for the House to pass its bills, it’s crunch time in the chamber. Given the amount of time it takes to schedule a hearing, get the paperwork ready, and place a bill on the House floor calendar with sufficient notice, bills really have only a couple weeks, if that, to start moving.

The local and consent calendar is an important vehicle in the House, because it allows members to quickly pass all their “good government” bills that help out their folks back in the district. Without it, all those personal must-pass bills must end up on the regular calendar like every other bill. There, they’ll be subject to last-minute amendments, debate and all the joys of lawmaking.

More importantly, the House will have to squeeze those bills into its regular calendar.

The daily House calendar for tomorrow is 10 pages long, thanks to the few dozen local and consent bills that were redirected from the local and consent calendar to the regular calendar. The calendar is actually 17 pages long, if you look at the supplemental calendar. Wednesday’s daily House calendar is also thick, with six pages so far.

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HJRS START SLIPPING THROUGH

Constitutional amendments finally started moving in the Texas House today, Monday, 26 days since the House last passed a proposed constitutional amendment. The key is that Democrats have gotten more selective about which ones they’re blocking, and there may have been some communication missteps.

As a reminder, it takes 100 votes to adopt a proposed constitutional amendment, meaning it takes at least 12 Democrats to join Republicans to adopt one of those measures.

For anyone looking for a spreadsheet of the data, here’s a copy on Google Sheets for you to do with what you will.

Here are the major points:

The blockade broke with the first resolution, HJR 99, by Rep. Cody Harris, R-Palestine, a ban on property taxes on for-sale animal feed. That measure was adopted 102-5, with 28 “white lights” from Democrats signaling “present” without casting a vote. Speaker Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, gave Harris a little help by making the rare decision to show the “speaker voting aye.”

However, the next two constitutional amendments sputtered. HJR 5 by Rep. Stan Lambert, R-Abilene, on Texas State Technical College System funding passed but was not adopted 75-22. Republican hardliners defected, but their votes wouldn’t have made a difference. HJR 2 by Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, on banning death taxes passed but was not adopted after coming much closer, 97-9.

On both those measures, 11 Democrats joined the Republican majority. That’s one shy of the minimum necessary, although two Democrats had excused absences.

Here are the 16 Democrats of interest. The bulk, but not all, of these are moderates or closely aligned with leadership:

• Three Democrats voted aye for each constitutional amendment: Reps. Philip Cortez of San Antonio, Oscar Longoria of Mission and Richard Raymond of Laredo.

• Three Democrats voted aye all but once: Reps. Bobby Guerra of Mission (HJR 5), Armando Martinez of Weslaco (SJR 18) and Eddie Morales Jr. of Eagle Pass HJR 31.

• Nine more Democrats voted aye all but two or three times: Alma Allen of Houston, Liz Campos of San Antonio, Sheryl Cole of Austin, Harold Dutton of Houston, Venton Jones of Dallas, Joe Moody of El Paso, Sergio Muñoz of Mission, Claudia Ordaz of El Paso and Mihaela Plesa of Dallas. However, at least Allen, Jones and Ordaz registered corrections with the journal clerk, changing several of their aye votes to nays.

• Rep. Mary González, D-Clint, was absent for committee business for the first four votes but was an aye for the next three, until voting nay on the final one (SJR 18).

Supposedly what happened is that Democratic leadership had told members that today, Monday, would be the day they would end the blockade. However, Democratic and Republican leadership aren’t finished hashing out this mysterious “deal” that Democrats want, so the blockade was still partially on. Not every Democrat heard the latest word from the caucus before heading to the floor.

Democrats did seem to concede on two of the compassionate measures. Sixty of the House’s 62 Democrats voted in favor of SJR 3, the measure backed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick for the Dementia Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, and 58 voted in favor of HJR 72, the measure by Rep. Candy Noble, R-Lucas, that House leadership had floated as a trial balloon last week because it would create a homestead exemption for adults with intellectual or developmental disabilities.

The only Democrat who never voted “aye” was Rep. Jessica González, D-Dallas.

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SB 2 SIGNING EXPECTED SATURDAY, AND CARVE-OUT BILL ARRIVES

Multiple sources tell The Blast that Gov. Greg Abbott will sign Senate Bill 2 on Saturday afternoon, the last stop for the historic education savings account bill.

It won’t be the first bill signed this session, but it should be good enough for second place, a signal of Abbott’s achievement after a yearslong push to introduce school vouchers in Texas. The bill is expected to be signed in Austin at the Governor’s Mansion, although a school could be a fitting place for that signing.

Meanwhile, Sen. Brandon Creighton — sporting glasses and a new haircut — has followed through on his commitment to bring up legislation to ban the families of state lawmakers and statewide elected officials from benefiting from the state’s upcoming voucher program.

The Senate gave the Conroe Republican permission to introduce Senate Bill 3061 even though we’re well past the bill filing deadline. The text for SB 3061 isn’t online yet, but its bill caption says, “relating to the eligibility of children of certain elected officials to participate in an education savings account program.” The bill has been referred to the Senate Education K-16 Committee, which Creighton chairs.

The bill text isn’t on TLO as of publication time, but it looks like this is the bill to watch.

Education K-16 will take up the bill tomorrow during its previously scheduled committee hearing.

While beginning his closing arguments in favor of SB 2 last week, Creighton addressed concerns by progressive Sen. Roland Gutierrez of San Antonio that elected officials and their families could benefit from the state’s ESA program.

“I think his comments were excellent about the conflicts and the provisions that didn’t survive,” Creighton said. “We could suspend on Monday [today] and bring that policy back in a separate bill, so stay tuned on that.”

House Democratic Leader Gene Wu of Houston carried the failed House amendment that would have included that change to the bill, but Republicans voted it down. In 2023, Gutierrez got a similar amendment through the Senate.

At the same time the Senate suspended the rules around SB 3061, the chamber suspended the rules to take up Senate Bill 111 by Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, in committee tomorrow, as well. The bill addresses transparency in special education legal proceedings involving a school district and is identical to a version by Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, House Bill 3170.

For now, we wait — for confirmation on the bill signing ceremony and on SB 3061’s fate.

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• The House today preliminarily and unanimously passed the Uvalde Strong Act, House Bill 33 by Rep. Don McLaughlin, R-Uvalde.

• House Bill 366 by former House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, is on the House calendar for tomorrow. The bill, known by some as the meme-banning bill, would require disclosures on political advertising with modified media on it. This bill will surely sail through smoothly with no dissent from conservatives and zero resistance from Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in the Senate.

• The election, health and safety, and penal code preemption bill, Senate Bill 2858, has been added to the Senate intent calendar for tomorrow.

• House Bill 15, providing framework for the Texas Stock Exchange, is on the House calendar for Wednesday.

Committee highlights this week:

• The Ten Commandments bill, Senate Bill 10, has been scheduled for a public hearing in the House Public Education Committee at 8 a.m. on Tuesday.

• The Senate Education K-16 Committee will meet at 11 a.m. or upon adjournment on Tuesday to take up 10 bills, including the aforementioned Senate Bill 111 and Senate Bill 3061.

• The House Homeland Security, Public Safety and Veterans’ Affairs will meet at 8 a.m. on Wednesday to consider more than a dozen bills, including Senate priority legislation to establish the Homeland Security Division in the Texas Department of Public Safety, Senate Bill 36.

View the full list of upcoming committee notices here and here.

The House will convene at 10 a.m. tomorrow.
The Senate is recessed until 11 a.m. tomorrow.

View the House and Senate floor calendars here and here.

• The second bill to get postponed to death this session is House Bill 787 by Rep. Terri Leo Wilson, R-Galveston, on jumpstarting vehicles on the Galveston-Port Bolivar Ferry. “TxDOT has been very cooperative, already started step one of this bill and sent out a press release,” Leo Wilson said. She postponed it until her 70th birthday, Jan. 3, 2030, effectively killing the bill.

• For those curious, the first bill to get postponed to death was House Bill 1710 by Rep. Brooks Landgraf, R-Odessa.

• Rep. Richard Hayes, R-Hickory Creek, caught freshman Rep. Paul Dyson, R-Bryan, reading from papers.

TX-SEN: Asked by WFAA whether he would run for the U.S. Senate in 2026, former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-El Paso, said, “We’ll see what the future holds, but I’m going to do whatever is the greatest good for the greatest number in this state.”

HD-10: Former state Rep. John Wray, R-Waxahachie, shot down rumors that he will run for his old seat, currently held by state Rep. Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian. Wray says he is still in the running to fill in for the unexpired term of Ellis County judge. [h/t The Texan’s Brad Johnson]

Travis Dems: Travis County Democratic Party Chair Pooja Sethi will step down on June 21. A half dozen Blast sources say this is to run to succeed state Rep. Vikki Goodwin, D-Austin, who has been considering a run for lieutenant governor since at least 2023. Sethi is also Goodwin’s chief of staff.

• The federal government and Mexico have reached a new agreement on the water treaty involving Texas. U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz put out statements thanking President Donald Trump and members of the administration, including Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, for securing the deal on water owed to Texas. “Today’s announcement demonstrates that under the Trump administration and the Republican Congress, the United States will insist that other nations meet their obligations to Americans,” Cruz said in his statement.

• The embattled Texas Lottery Commission is set to consider its selection process for a new executive director at its meeting at 10 a.m. tomorrow.

“Can Texas lawmakers agree on how to spend billions to save the state’s water supply?” by Jayme Lozano Carver and Alejandra Martinez of The Texas Tribune

“Senate bill could reverse Dallas voters’ decision to waive governmental immunity” by María Ramos Pacheco of The Dallas Morning News

“Trump signs order requiring nationwide list of sanctuary cities and states” by Michelle Hackman and Tarini Parti of The Wall Street Journal

“MercadoLibre proposes to move US legal home to Texas from Delaware” by Reuters

“Luka Doncic says no to ever again living in Texas on video show” by Timothy Malcolm of Chron

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