The Blast - May 2, 2025

1 day until Election Day for local elections
13 days until the House bill deadline
31 days until sine die

IN TODAY’S BLAST

• Bills are moving

• Brian Harrison’s timely A&M letter

• Cornyn touts alignment with Trump

BILLS ARE MOVING

Yesterday morning, nearly a dozen hard-right conservatives in the Texas House listed just some of the bills they’re demanding that leadership let through the process. Now, it appears that several of those bills are indeed moving.

Yesterday, House committees approved two of the bills, clearing the path for them to get scheduled for consideration on the House floor.

• Senate Bill 1470 unanimously passed the House Elections Committee, chaired by Matt Shaheen, R-Plano. The voter roll clean up bill would hand driver’s license data to the secretary of state to check registered voters against the lists of people whose addresses have changed, who aren’t qualified to vote or who are registered to vote in another state.

• House Bill 3441, by anti-leadership freshman Rep. Shelley Luther, R-Tom Bean, passed the committee 8-1, nearly a full month after it was first heard in the Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence Committee. The bill would make vaccine manufacturers liable for “vaccine injuries.” Luther said Chair Jeff Leach, R-Allen, told her he would put the bill to a vote, some potential goodwill from leadership.

  • “If that happens, it will be a great step toward giving Texans a major victory this session,” Luther said in the morning.

It looks like Leach kept his promise.

Additionally, four of the bills mentioned yesterday are scheduled for House committee hearings next week.

• Yesterday evening, following the hardliners’ press event, Chair Brad Buckley, R-Salado, scheduled Senate Bill 13 for a hearing on Tuesday in the House Public Education Committee. SB 13 would ban sexually explicit books from school libraries. The hearing will come more than a month after the Senate passed the bill.

• On Wednesday evening, less than 24 hours before the hardliners repeatedly named State Affairs Committee Chair Ken King, R-Canadian, as a roadblock to their priorities, King’s committee scheduled Senate Bill 18 for a hearing on Monday. That bill would ban drag story hour events at public libraries.

• Senate Bill 269, a Luther-backed bill, is scheduled for a hearing on Monday. The bill would mandate the reporting of “vaccine injuries” of experimental drugs and vaccines to national databases.

• Buckley yesterday also scheduled Fort Worth Rep. Nate Schatzline’s House Bill 1655 for the hearing on Tuesday. The second-term leadership critic’s bill would cut funding to public schools that don’t have a policy preventing employees from helping a kid come out as trans.

Notably, a couple of the newly moving bills are Senate priorities, as designated by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. Other Patrick priorities are moving, too.

On top of SB 13 and SB 18, there are five Patrick priority bills scheduled for hearings next week:

• The Senate’s homestead exemption plan, Senate Bill 4 and Senate Joint Resolution 2, will go before the House Ways and Means Committee on Monday.

• Senate Bill 23, which would raise the homestead exemption for seniors even further, is also up on Monday.

• Senate Bill 28, banning lottery couriers, is scheduled for a hearing on Monday in former Speaker Dade Phelan’s Licensing and Administrative Procedures Committee.

• Senate Bill 34, on wildfire response, is scheduled for a hearing on Monday in State Affairs.

• Senate Bill 37, which would define the role of college and university faculty senates, including instructing them to crack down on curricula that opponents would commonly classify as critical race theory, will be up in the House Higher Education Committee on Tuesday.

Patrick has been urging the House to take action on his list of priorities, so he’ll likely be happy to see at least seven of his 40 moving next week. There’s also Senate Bill 10, the Ten Commandments bill, and Senate Bill 24, the “horrors of communism” bill, which Buckley’s Public Education Committee reported favorably yesterday.

The anti-leadership conservatives should also be happy to see these bills moving. However, their focus right now will be on House bills.

House committees have 10 days to vote out House bills. We’re talking legislation with an “H” in front of it: HBs and HJRs.

That makes next week a critical week for getting members’ legislation to the floor. Those bills need to get heard in time to get reported out by the following Monday.

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BRIAN HARRISON’S TIMELY A&M LETTER

State Rep. Brain Harrison requested on Friday a federal investigation of his alma mater, Texas A&M University, saying it is still offering courses with diversity, equity and inclusion elements and engaging in inappropriate student recruitment.

Three months ago, Texas A&M President Mark A. Welsh III wrote a letter to Harrison chastising him for taking to social media to falsely accuse the flagship of violating the state’s ban on DEI. Welsh pointed out that courses and student recruitment were exempt from the ban. The Midlothian Republican never responded.

After the Texas Tribune sent an open records request to Harrison’s office for a copy of Welsh’s letter a month ago, Harrison posted the letter to social media Friday and wrote that he was asking the Trump Administration to investigate the school.

“His preposterous defense of this egregious discrimination is that the Texas Legislature has not explicitly banned it,” Harrison wrote to Sean Keveney, the acting general counsel for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “I have legislation to do so, but universities should not have to be told by the legislature not to engage in discrimination.”

Harrison served as the chief of staff at HHS prior to being elected to the House. Keveney is a member of a federal task force charged with combating discrimination at college campuses. 

Harrison’s bills — one of which would eliminate coursework and student recruitment as exemptions to the DEI ban and another that would prohibit public universities from offering programs or courses in LGBTQ or DEI studies — have not been heard in the House Higher Ed Committee.

Welsh has said Texas A&M does not discriminate.

“We follow the law. We hire, promote, pay and award employees based on merit and performance. We admit students based on merit, performance and proven potential,” Welsh wrote.

And the State Auditor’s Office has backed him up.

Harrison said in a phone interview with the Texas Tribune on Friday afternoon that he’s met and talked with many Texas A&M officials and is happy to talk to Welsh, too, but what would make him happier is if Texas A&M and all universities stopped engaging in DEI or lost their funding. He said he had been planning to call for Texas A&M to be investigated for a while.

“Today was just the day we got it done,” Harrison said.

HHS declined to comment.

Welsh is the latest person to criticize Harrison’s behavior this session. Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dustin Burrows supported a water development board chair after Harrison’s questions to her during a budget hearing drove her to tears.

Earlier this week, Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, accused Harrison of lying to Texans for attention when he was laying out a bill before the House Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence Committee.

— Jessica Priest

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CORNYN TOUTS ALIGNMENT WITH TRUMP

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn’s opponents want to highlight the times he’s split from President Donald Trump. To counter, the senator has launched a steady beat of content projecting that he’s in lockstep with the president.

This afternoon, the senator’s office sent reporters a memo saying that Texas’ senior senator has voted with Trump 99.2% of the time, higher than Sen. Ted Cruz’s 96.6%. That comes after Axios reported that a group backing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is running an ad in the Mar-a-Lago area accusing Cornyn of betraying the Second Amendment by backing the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.

“As usual, President Trump was right when he tweeted ‘The deal on “Gun Control,”’ pushed by ‘RINO Senator John Cornyn’ — the first step in the movement to take your guns away,” the ad says.

The ad was paid for by Preserving Texas.

U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Houston, has used a similar tactic of running ads around Mar-a-Lago, and Trump has seen it.

“I love your commercial,” Trump told Hunt during a White House event this month.

Hunt confirmed to the Tribune’s Katharine Wilson this week that he met with the White House about a potential run about a month ago.

Cornyn’s work on the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act came under President Joe Biden, so it doesn’t come up in his team’s memo. However, the memo did analyze 1,532 votes across Trump’s first and nascent second terms.

“I have worked hand-in-glove with [Trump] to secure our border, unleash American energy and extend the Trump Tax cuts,” Cornyn said on social media while touting an Axios story about the memo.

Former U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, D-Dallas, has said he is considering a bid, and another Dallas Democrat, state Sen. Nathan Johnson, confirmed yesterday that he is currently looking to run for a statewide role.

“Yeah, I am thinking about a higher office — a couple of different places,” Johnson told Spectrum News’ James Barragán. “I would like to be as useful as I can to the people of this state.”

John Sharp will retire as Texas A&M System chancellor in June after more than four decades in state government and politics. During his tenure, Sharp also oversaw the state’s finances as comptroller, regulated the oil and gas industry as railroad commissioner, and shaped public policy as a state lawmaker.

Sharp and Tribune Editor-in-Chief Matthew Watkins discuss his career highlights, the future of Texas higher education, and how the state has changed over his career.

Doors open at the Tribune’s Studio 919 at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, June 17, and the one-hour event begins at 9 a.m.

RSVP today

• The House today was scheduled to take up House Bill 3717, a bill on developing trials to use ibogaine for treating opioid use disorders. However, the House adjourned early, ahead of the inclement weather. Marcus Luttrell, the brother of U.S. Rep. Morgan Luttrell, R-Magnolia, testified in favor of the bill in committee. Former Gov. Rick Perry has also voiced support for the measure.

• An election integrity bill on combining smaller precincts is scheduled to appear on the House floor on Tuesday. That bill, House Bill 342, is backed by the Texas GOP and has the stated goal of cutting down on election costs.

• Sen. Brandon Creighton’s “Death Star” follow-up bill, the preemption bill about election laws, health and safety laws and the penal code, Senate Bill 2858, is back on the intent calendar for Monday after preliminarily passing 19-12 at the start of this week.

Committee highlights next week, in addition to those mentioned at the top of today’s Blast:

• The Senate State Affairs Committee will meet at 9 a.m. on Monday to take up several measures, including the call for a federal constitutional convention, House Joint Resolution 98.

• The Senate Local Government Committee will meet at 10 a.m. on Monday to take up dozens of measures, including the House’s business property tax exemption measures, House Bill 9 and House Joint Resolution 1. The committee will also take up Senate Bill 2519, the Senate version of the bill to crack down on funding mechanisms like those funding Project Connect.

• The House State Affairs Committee will meet at 8 a.m. on Monday to consider five bills, including legislation to abolish the state lottery, Senate Bill 1988. That’s different from the narrower lottery couriers ban, Senate Bill 28, which is docketed for Tuesday in the House Licensing and Administrative Procedures Committee.

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

The House and Senate will convene at 11 a.m.will convene at 10 a.m. tomorrow. The Senate is recessed until 2 p.m. on Monday.

View the House and Senate floor calendars here and here.

• Beto moment: U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas, has started telling colleagues that she’s “made for the moment” and wants to become the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, according to Politico.

• U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, predicts that Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts will make for an “interesting debate,” according to NOTUS’ Haley Byrd Wilt. “If we get off the field completely and there’s a void, then our adversaries will fill it,” McCaul said of foreign aid. “A lot of this is authorized into law by Congress. I think only Congress can eliminate it.” That comes as Musk is set to dial back his involvement in the administration.

• Gov. Greg Abbott will sign Senate Bill 2 tomorrow, approving the state’s education savings account program, marking the end of the governor’s voucher odyssey.

• U.S. Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Lubbock, will be on Fox News Sunday.

Do you or someone in your office have a new job you’d like mentioned? Email us.

• Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday appointed Adam Booth, Tara Turk-Zaafran, Wanda “Jean” Streepey and Latisha Andrews to the State Board for Educator Certification. Booth is a third grade teacher at a charter school and a graduate of Hillsdale College. Turk-Zaafran is a former vice principal of an interfaith private school. Streepey is a high school business teacher in the Highland Park Independent School District. Andrews is the founder and CEO of a charter school in Houston. Booth and Andrews don’t appear to have Texas educator certificates as issued by the SBEC.

“How Greg Abbott took a flailing school voucher movement and turned it into a winning issue” by Jasper Scherer of The Texas Tribune

“U.S. declares military zone around El Paso, allowing soldiers to arrest migrants” by Uriel J. García of The Texas Tribune

“Judge denies effort by U.S. Rep Cuellar of Texas to move bribery trial to hometown of Laredo” by Juan A. Lozano of The Associated Press

“Chip Roy steps up pressure on Congress to cut Medicaid expansion” by James Osborne of the Houston Chronicle

“Gregg Popovich done coaching Spurs; Mitch Johnson takes over” by Shams Charania of ESPN

Do you or someone in your office have a birthday you’d like mentioned? Email us.

(May 2) U.S. Rep. Julie Johnson, D-Farmers Branch
(May 3) State Rep. Shelby Slawson, R-Stephenville
(May 4) U.S. Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Amarillo
(May 4) U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Austin

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