Texas Legislature’s long summer ends with Democrats marginalized, Republicans triumphant and unified

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After more than a month of overtime legislating, the partisan divide cleaving the Texas Legislature came into sharp focus late Wednesday evening, as the Republican-controlled House prepared to close out the special session by adopting new rules clamping down on quorum breaks.

“Doesn’t the minority party have rights?” Rep. Barbara Gervin Hawkins, D-San Antonio and chair of the Legislative Black Caucus, demanded amid a bitter floor debate over the new rules. “I must ask you: How can you smile in a colleague’s face and stab them in the freaking back?”

The Legislature gaveled out of its second special session shortly past midnight Thursday, after Republican lawmakers spent the last two and a half weeks railroading Democrats with a drumbeat of conservative bills and new penalties designed to make future walkouts — like the one used to delay the GOP’s new congressional gerrymander — more painful than ever.

The session’s upshot, beyond the wide-ranging policy implications, was a Democratic Party more marginalized in the House — the chamber where the minority party has traditionally been granted at least scraps from the table — and a typically fractious GOP caucus unified by their unapologetically partisan wielding of power. It was a striking turn for the lower chamber and its leader, Speaker Dustin Burrows, who just eight months ago relied on widespread Democratic support to win the gavel, before using the position to greenlight many long-sought GOP priorities and the contentious new political lines.

Burrows “has brought Republicans together — this whole issue has brought us together, but he has risen to the occasion as the leader,” Rep. Tom Oliverson of Cypress, chair of the House Republican Caucus and a former candidate for speaker, said of the recent redistricting clash. “The speaker’s done a phenomenal job. I do not believe I could have done better.”

Over futile Democratic resistance, Republican lawmakers pushed through much of Gov. Greg Abbott’s jam-packed special session agenda, with their banner achievement being a new state congressional map demanded by President Donald Trump to net the GOP up to five additional seats in next year’s midterm election.

Republicans also passed a set of socially conservative priorities that had previously died in the House, including restrictions on which bathrooms transgender people can use in schools and government buildings, and a clampdown on abortion pills. So much major legislation was adopted that, just before gaveling out on Thursday, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick joked that passage of the landmark school voucher program this year had become almost an afterthought.

After steamrolling Democrats on legislation, Republicans then moved to deter any and all future walkouts through a set of new fundraising restrictions and punishments for House members who leave the state to freeze future legislative action. The new penalties include wiping away two years of legislative seniority each day lawmakers are absent, stripping them of committee leadership positions and imposing higher daily fines.

“There was a time we could disagree, and we weren’t the enemy,” Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston and a 40-year veteran of the chamber, said in an interview. “But now, if we disagree with you, we’re the enemy, and that means you got to be put down.”

The regular session this year began with a contingent of House Republicans pushing for a more partisan regime of governance that would sideline Democrats and elevate GOP priorities above all.

That demand was in part driven by a freshman class of insurgent Republican lawmakers who had ousted a record number of more mainstream incumbents in the 2024 primary elections. Running on a platform of fully relegating House Democrats, their elections shifted the chamber to the right and nudged it to a more willing embrace of bare-knuckle partisanship.

At no point this year was that approach more manifest than in response to Democratic lawmakers’ two-week walkout last month over redistricting, even as the House worked on a bipartisan basis to pass flood relief and camp safety legislation in the wake of the July Hill Country floods.

Though quorum breaks typically foster interparty tensions, this year, Republicans launched an unprecedented campaign to force Democrats back to Austin. The GOP pursued new levels of retribution against Democrats, including by trying to have their seats declared vacant and tagging them with law enforcement for two days upon their return.

The response served to unify Republican lawmakers frequently at odds over how the House should be run, with Burrows seizing the chance to extend an olive branch to the rightmost flank of the GOP caucus that had once opposed his rise to power.

For the Democrats who enabled Burrows’ election, the closing weeks of the session brought further marginalization in a chamber where they already had few tools of resistance.

“This is what happens after 30 years of one-party rule: Party power begins to see itself as its own justification,” Rep. Vince Perez, D-El Paso, said on the House floor Wednesday, lambasting Republicans’ rules package. “Instead of respecting every Texan’s voice, it silences those who dare to dissent. That is what happens when government forgets that it exists to serve all Texans, not just those in the majority party.”

Democrats warned that Republicans’ moves to trample them would lead the Texas House to operate more like the bitterly polarized U.S. Congress, and eventually come back to bite the majority party.

“I was taught that when a person thinks they’re digging a hole for you — watch out,” Gervin Hawkins said. “Because most likely, they’re gonna fall in it.”

The passage of major right-wing priorities, including the “bathroom bill” and abortion pill crackdown, abruptly settled running policy fights that in some cases had been playing out for years, creating a mix of emotions for advocates on dueling sides of the battles.

Johnathan Gooch, communications director of Equality Texas, noted that lawmakers filed more anti-LGBTQ bills during the regular session than in any other state legislature in the country, at any other point in time — even as acceptance of nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people has generally ticked upward, he said.

“What stuns me is the fact that lawmakers are increasingly resistant to the opinions of their own constituents,” Gooch said. “That is discouraging, to say the very least, because democracy is supposed to operate the exact opposite.”

Anti-abortion activists, meanwhile, celebrated the newfound Republican unity that helped drive the abortion pill legislation to Abbott’s desk.

“Texas has reaffirmed its commitment to both protecting life from conception, and ensuring women are not harmed by abortion or dangerous chemical abortion drugs,” said Amy O’Donnell, acting executive director of Texas Alliance for Life. House Bill 7 “reflects the values of the voters in our state who voted in pro-life leaders in the majority who passed this legislation on behalf of the will of the people. HB 7 reflects the position of many Texans.”

In a reflection of many Republicans’ satisfaction with Burrows, the state GOP’s efforts to censure lawmakers who backed his bid for speaker have largely fizzled out, with Texas GOP Chair Abraham George precluding a vocal segment of the party’s governing executive board from including the speaker vote as a censurable offense.

Abbott also strongly endorsed Burrows to return as speaker, saying at a campaign event this week in Burrows’ hometown of Lubbock that the speaker did a “fantastic job.” Burrows also will head into his reelection bid with public support from Trump, who has endorsed him for shepherding school vouchers and redistricting through the House.

Whether the Republican unity would extend through next year’s election cycle and into the 2027 session remained to be seen, with the House poised to welcome another large crop of new lawmakers to replace the numerous members leaving the chamber to retire or run for other offices.

For Rep. AJ Louderback, R-Victoria, the caucus’ alignment felt like it could be “lasting,” he said in an interview, adding that Burrows has “a solid base of support from the caucus. He’s proven himself, and proven that he can work with all factions.”

Moments from this special session seemed likely to help hold Republicans together.

For one, the Legislature’s failure to pass Patrick’s contentious ban on consumable hemp products did not draw the lieutenant governor’s typical wrath. After sparring with prior speakers over all kinds of legislation that died in the House, Patrick responded to the hemp ban’s collapse with a statement that praised Burrows for getting it through the House during the regular session. The demise of the bill — unpopular among Democrats and a large segment of Republican voters — also appeared to weaken a possible point of ammunition that could have been wielded against incumbents in 2026.

Additionally, some House Republicans at risk of being tagged “Republicans in name only” were entrusted to carry some of the high-profile partisan legislation that reached the governor’s desk, helping build their conservative credentials ahead of upcoming primary challenges. Rep. Angelia Orr, R-Itasca, for instance, was the face of the transgender bathroom ban. She was censured by the Bosque County Republican Party in May and is facing at least one primary challenger.

Burrows “embraced the caucus,” Oliverson said. “He’s given the caucus the ability to take leadership on some things, ownership of some things, and supported us every step of the way.”

Disclosure: Equality Texas has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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