The Blast Bulletin: 08.09.25

By Renzo Downey and The Texas Tribune Politics Team

A “NEW DAY” FOR BURROWS AND THE TEXAS GOP

Texas GOP leadership began their Saturday at the Governor’s Mansion with Greg Abbott and House Speaker Dustin Burrows for a message of unity in the face of Democrats’ quorum break.

They ended the day by finalizing a list of censurable offenses that have been committed by Republican House members, including some of Burrows’ top lieutenants.

The State Republican Executive Committee was in Austin to finalize its first-ever legislative review, outlining a list of censurable offenses that some within the Texas GOP want to use to block “RINO” House Republicans from the 2026 primary ballot. 

Those Republicans want to use the list to hold their elected officials to the party’s priorities. Others see it as an illegal effort to deny officials from the primary ballot if they don’t follow the most fervent conservative activists 100% of the time.

But with Democrats fanned out across the country to deny the House a quorum for the mid-decade redistricting, this morning became an opportunity for Abbott and Burrows to portray their united front directly to party leadership.

Abbott and Burrows outlined their efforts to rope Democrats back to Austin, according to state Rep. Mitch Little, R-Lewisville, who was in attendance. Abbott shared his campaign boot camp strategy to enlist Republicans to run in special elections should the courts evict absent Democrats from office.

Burrows also touted the top GOP successes from the 2025 regular session, which ended in early June.

Texas GOP Chair Abraham George told The Blast that he and Burrows have not discussed the party’s censure effort, a new “accountability” mechanism the state party approved at its 2024 convention. Still, Burrows likely knew the SREC members would be approving a hit list that could be used to keep “RINOs” from the ballot.

The Texas GOP has spent money in Burrows’ district with ads opposing his speakership.

Burrows dismissed George’s critiques that the House was letting GOP priority bills stall in the House in an interview with Spectrum News’ James Barragán published May 7.

“I don’t respond to him. He’s not worth responding to,” Burrows said.

But the political environment in Texas has shifted drastically since then. George told The Blast that Democrats breaking quorum has brought every Republican together in a way that’s been good for the party and the “grassroots,” referring to the Texas GOP’s precinct chairs, party delegates and activists.

“We have an open line with the speaker,” George said. “You don’t have to agree all the time. We probably are still going to have some disagreements. That’s part of the process.”

Little, who has previously been critical of Burrows, likened it to “a new day of mutual respect and courtesy and cooperation between the party and the speaker.”

THE LIST OF GRIEVANCES

The State Republican Executive Committee stood with Burrows and Texas House Republicans over coffee and breakfast pastries. But by later that morning, the panel had hunkered down in the Capitol auditorium and outlined censurable offenses that would apply to a majority of the GOP caucus, particularly Burrows’ top committee chairs.

The report doesn’t censure lawmakers. It’s a list of transgressions that county parties can use to censure their representatives and ask to bar them from the March primary ballot.

State Affairs Chair Ken King of Canadian, whose committee was a bottleneck for several GOP priority bills, was the subject of numerous censurable offenses. Even Public Education Chair Brad Buckley of Salado — who quarterbacked Gov. Greg Abbott’s No. 1 priority, school vouchers, across the finish line — was mentioned for not advancing a bill to deny public education to K-12 students who are in the country illegally, House Bill 4707.

The list of offenses include bills that failed to pass in the regular session that Abbott has added to the call for the special session.

A common theme throughout the meeting was that the report needs to be airtight because they may have to defend it in court, as Republican Party of Texas Chair Abraham George noted. Eric Opiela, an attorney helping several House Republicans with pending censures, was in the audience.

“We are talking about providing grounds for possibly keeping an office holder off the primary ballot,” said Rolando Garcia, an SREC member for Senate District 15 in Harris County. “If it looks like we’re really being shady and squirrely and multiplying violations just to provide grounds for keeping people off the ballot, that is very damaging to RPT.”

Perhaps the most contentious part of the meeting came when the SREC took up the Legislative Review Task Force report on Republicans’ effort to ban Democrats from House committee chairmanships, a top priority of the Texas GOP. The House voted to reserve committee chairs for Republicans, but they left vice chairs for Democrats when it approved the rules package back in February. A majority of the House, including a majority of Republicans, voted to prematurely close debate and amendments on the rules and ultimately approved them.

Deborah Kelting-Fite, an SREC member for Senate District 7 in Harris and Montgomery counties, called the rules a “Trojan horse designed to give Democrats more control.”

Steve Evans, an SREC member for Senate District 28 in Burrows’ hometown of Lubbock and West Texas, tried to strip the entire Democratic chairs section from the report, pointing out that it named 51 members — a majority of the GOP caucus’ 88 members.

“This is pretty huge to name this many members when we have so many things going on,” Evans said. “We’ve got the messaging that’s going on from the White House to redistrict, we have the House trying to restore a quorum, and then we’re going to come in here, in their house, and do this?”

Burrows himself survived an important test. Some members of the SREC tried to add voting in favor of Burrows’ election as speaker to the list of political sins, arguing it was the culmination of a conspiracy to give Democrats more power. George shot down that effort, saying the speaker election was not a legislative priority. Only violations of legislative priorities were to be considered censurable offenses.

The SREC voted to delay the final report by a couple days to allow lawmakers an opportunity to try to explain some of their censurable acts to the committee by Monday. The committee will distribute the final report to county parties on Wednesday.

For a rundown of what happens next, check out yesterday’s edition of The Blast.

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