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The 2025 Texas Legislature's special session is kicking off today. Many top GOP priorities that failed to pass during the 89th Regular Session, including big-ticket items like property tax relief and redistricting, have been included in the governor's agenda for the session.
Other top concerns, like flood response and preparedness, have also been added following the devastating Independence Day floods in Kerrville. In total, the agenda for the session includes 18 different items. So, how much will actually get done?
Unfortunately, many grassroots activists aren't expecting the results to be any better than what we saw during the regular session. That includes Trenten Rippey with Young Americans for Liberty, who said, "As hopeful as I'd like to be, I think we're just going to see another legislative session that doesn't produce a lot of results."
Rippey says he expects Speaker Dustin Burrows, who won the gavel during the regular session thanks to support from Democrats, to slow-walk GOP priorities and allow Democrats inside the House to gum up the works with various political delay tactics.
Rippey asserted that even massive pushback from the GOP base wouldn't be enough to stop this from happening, saying, "We saw the pressure, and we saw a lot of constituents angry throughout the regular session, and that didn't seem to affect him too much."
One thing you can expect the legislature to take time for, however, is THC regulation, which was pushed by Lt. Governor Dan Patrick throughout the 89th Regular Session and resulted in an outright ban of THC products in Texas being passed, which Governor Abbott then vetoed, before adding THC regulation to the special session agenda.
While Rippey doesn't expect the legislature to push an all-out ban again, he says things are going to change for THC here in Texas. He thinks there will be more regulation targeting the age of consumption, what vendors can sell THC products, and where they're allowed to do so.