Gov. Abbott orders special session on Hill Country flooding, redistricting, THC and unfinished GOP priorities

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Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday unveiled a jam-packed agenda for the upcoming special legislative session, calling on lawmakers to redraw Texas’ congressional maps and address several unfinished conservative priorities from earlier this year.

The governor, who controls the agenda for overtime legislative sessions, also included four items related to the deadly Hill Country floods over the July Fourth weekend, directing legislators to look at flood warning systems, emergency communications, natural disaster preparation and relief funding for impacted areas.

The flooding has killed more than 100 people, with more than 160 still missing in Kerr County alone.

Abbott’s call also includes redrawing the state’s congressional districts — following through on a demand from President Donald Trump’s advisers, who want to fortify Republicans’ slim majority in the U.S. House by carving out more GOP seats in Texas. Republicans in Texas’ congressional delegation have expressed unease about the idea, worrying it could jeopardize control of their current districts.

As expected, Abbott’s agenda for the session — scheduled to start July 21 — includes legislation to more firmly regulate THC products, such as new restrictions to keep them from children. Abbott had previously announced plans to take up the issue after he vetoed an outright THC ban that had been championed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

The ban on consumable hemp products that contain any THC easily passed the Senate, which Patrick oversees, then overcame scattered opposition in the House from a handful of Republicans who backed a proposal to more aggressively regulate the products instead. Abbott vetoed the bill last month, saying it would not have survived “valid constitutional challenges.”

A majority of Texans oppose a ban, according to a June statewide poll.

Abbott also included several high-profile and controversial conservative priorities that didn’t pass during the regular session, including proposals to ban cities and counties from hiring lobbyists to advocate for them in Austin; require people to use bathrooms that align with the sex they were assigned at birth; and crack down on the manufacturing and distribution of abortion pills.

More than 40 Republican lawmakers, including Patrick, signed onto a letter to Abbott in June asking him to include the abortion pill proposal on the special session agenda. Senate Bill 2880, considered the most wide-ranging legislation to crack down on abortion pills in the U.S., passed the Senate earlier this year but stalled in a House committee.

The so-called “bathroom bill” similarly failed to reach the House floor. An earlier bathroom measure also made it onto Abbott's agenda for the 2017 special session, where it died under opposition from business interests.

The governor's call to bar local governments from spending public money on lobbyists — a practice dubbed by critics as "taxpayer-funded lobbying" — has also failed to gain traction through multiple sessions, despite long-running support from conservative activists and a vocal contingent of GOP lawmakers.

Abbott is also directing lawmakers to reconsider a proposal to allow the attorney general to prosecute state election crimes. Texas’ attorney general does not have authority to independently prosecute criminal offenses unless invited to do so by a local district attorney, which the state’s highest criminal court has repeatedly upheld.

But after successfully unseating three members of the Court of Criminal Appeals in November, Attorney General Ken Paxton pushed the Legislature to carve out an exception for allegations of election fraud. The Senate passed one such proposal, but it didn’t clear the House. Abbott is asking lawmakers to reconsider the idea in the form of a constitutional amendment, which requires support from two-thirds of both chambers and voter approval in a statewide referendum.

State lawmakers meet every other year. They adjourned their 140-day regular session in early June. Special sessions can run for up to 30 days.

Since taking office in 2015, Abbott has called at least eight other overtime sessions, according to the Legislative Reference Library of Texas. He called four of them in 2023 — keeping lawmakers at the Capitol for almost the entire year — during a dispute over property tax cuts, border security measures and his push to create a private school voucher programs.

Other issues included in Abbott’s 18-item agenda are the creation of laws that would shield records accusing police officers of wrongdoing that are not substantiated; boost protections against title and deed thefts; and authorize political subdivisions to reduce fees for certain builders.

The brimming agenda lays the groundwork for the GOP-controlled Legislature to add to the variety of conservative victories recorded during the spring regular session. Already this year, Republican state lawmakers have created the school voucher program the Legislature failed to pass in 2023, mandated public schools to hang the Ten Commandments in classrooms and strictly defined man and woman in state records — a change that could have far-reaching implications for transgender Texans.

Many Republicans celebrated that Abbott was setting such an aggressive agenda. On X, Rep. Brent Money, a Greenville Republican, thanked the governor for including property tax cuts and shared a letter he and two dozen other Republican lawmakers signed this week asking for a “fundamental reset” of the property tax system.

Abbott did not spell out how far he wants lawmakers to go, calling broadly for legislation “reducing the property tax burden on Texans.” But he also included the option of “imposing spending limits on entities authorized to impose property taxes,” which includes cities, counties and school districts.

The agenda sparked immediate condemnation from some Democratic state lawmakers. Houston Rep. Gene Wu, a Houston Democrat who chairs the House Democratic Caucus, blasted Abbott for pairing flood-related items with an agenda otherwise dominated by GOP priorities.

"Governor Abbott listed flood preparedness at the top of his special session call, but then buried it under a pile of cynical, political distractions," Wu said in a statement, calling Abbott's agenda a "stunning betrayal."

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