The Texas Legislature is back for a special session. Here’s what we’re watching.

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When Texas state lawmakers convene Monday for a special legislative session, they will already be strapped for time.

Members of the Legislature will have 30 days to work through a crowded agenda set by Gov. Greg Abbott defined largely by two items: legislation in response to Central Texas floods that killed more than 100 people, including dozens of children, and a redrawing of the state’s congressional districts ordered up by President Donald Trump.

It appears there is wide consensus among lawmakers that the Legislature must pass laws aimed at preventing another flooding disaster like the Fourth of July one that’s become one of the deadliest in modern state history and raised serious questions about emergency preparedness in a state where millions of people live in areas vulnerable to flash floods.

There is far less agreement on redistricting, which Democrats argue will further silence the voices of the state’s marginalized communities as the GOP tries to gain seats in the U.S. House.

Both issues have peeled attention away from another top-tier item: The state’s top two leaders — Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the Senate’s presiding officer — disagree on how to address consumable hemp-derived products that offer a similar high to marijuana and are widely available across the state thanks to a loophole in a previous law. Patrick championed an out-right ban on the products, drawing rare criticism from his own party and an even rarer veto from Abbott on one of his priorities.

The THC dustup aside, Texas Republicans are heading into the overtime session having already recorded a triumphant regular session. During the 140-day lawmaking period, which wrapped in early June, the majority party passed a program to offer parents taxpayer-funded vouchers for private school tuition and other school-related expenses — the governor’s top priority — as well as an assortment of other Republican priorities, from tightening the state’s bail laws to banning diversity, equity and inclusion in K-12 schools.

Now the GOP stands to register more victories. Abbott added to the call a series of socially conservative proposals — like requiring people to use bathrooms that align with the sex they were assigned at birth and cracking down on the manufacturing and distribution of abortion pills — that failed in the regular session. And primary politics may bear a heavier presence in the halls under the pink dome as some Republican lawmakers eye bigger roles, and with campaign season right around the corner.

“You can't miss the fact that this special session was primarily instigated by this interest in redistricting,” said Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. “The whole session is really wrapped around the upcoming election.”

Here is what to watch for as the special session gets underway:

Agenda management

Among the key questions is how the leaders of both chambers — Patrick and House Speaker Dustin Burrows — manage the timing and pacing of Abbott’s 18-item agenda.

Patrick and Burrows, R-Lubbock, appear largely aligned after working in tandem during the regular session to pass all but a handful of their major priorities — a divergence from Patrick’s history of acrimony with past speakers. The two leaders have released statements in the leadup to the special session signaling they are on the same page on redistricting and flooding.

But the order in which they take up those two items might instruct the rest of the session.

Texas Democrats have accused the state’s Republican leadership of playing politics by moving to redraw congressional lines at the same time they are taking up legislation in response to the flash floods. And Republicans would only fuel that attack — and likely further encourage retaliatory redistricting in blue states — if they take up redistricting before passing bills to improve flood warning systems and send relief money to flood-ravaged communities.

But if Republicans knock out those flood response measures first, there will be little incentive for Democrats to stay in Austin.

Democrats in the Texas House are being encouraged by their own party leaders in Washington to consider skipping town and denying Republicans the quorum needed to approve the new congressional maps. Democrats have not revealed any plans to do that but are openly contemplating the idea.

Attorney General Ken Paxton last week vowed to help authorities “in hunting down and compelling the attendance of anyone who abandons their office and their constituents for cheap political theater.”

Spokespersons for Burrows and Patrick did not return requests for comment last week.

How Democrats respond

Perhaps the biggest looming question is how Democrats — outnumbered in both chambers and powerless to stop most legislation — decide to approach the session.

The nuclear option is to walk out or simply decline to show up to the Capitol at all, denying Republicans the minimum number of lawmakers needed to conduct business. In 2021, Democrats packed their bags to break quorum in an effort to block a Republican bill overhauling the state’s elections. Democrats also fled the state in 2003 to try blocking GOP-led redistricting. Both items eventually passed once enough Democrats returned to Austin.

Rep. Gene Wu, a Houston Democrat who chairs the lower chamber’s minority party caucus, accused Republican state leaders of abusing the flash floods to bring lawmakers back to the Capitol and work through an agenda that “should be offensive to the average Texan” with all its socially conservative items.

He noted how Abbott declined to call an interim legislative session in the wake of Hurricane Harvey in 2017, instead offering relief aid from the state's savings account, but in this case is calling lawmakers back — and asking them to take up a bunch of GOP priorities while they’re at it.

“It’s insanity, it’s cruel,” Wu said in an interview. “It's just the craven politics of it. This is why Americans hate politicians.”

Wu did not say whether he intended to lead Democrats in a quorum break, but he also did not rule it out.

“I don’t think any option is off the table,” he said.

Rep. Ron Reynolds, D-Missouri City, said last week he was ready to “get into good trouble by breaking quorum when justice is on the line.”

The THC impasse

When it became apparent about a month ago that lawmakers would have to return for an overtime session, the issue dominating conversation in and around the Capitol was hemp-derived THC products.

All session, Patrick pushed for a total ban despite pushback from the hemp industry — and later conservative personalities and commentators, who painted him as an overbearing micromanager creeping into people’s private lives.

No less, a total ban on the products sailed through both chambers — only to be rebuked by Abbott at the 11th hour. Soon after issuing the veto, Abbott announced the special session and directed lawmakers to consider an array of new regulations for the hemp industry — such as making it illegal to sell the products to children and teenagers — without eradicating the industry.

Patrick appears dead set on pursuing a ban, however, setting up a clash between the state’s two most powerful elected officials. He’s argued that access to the drug is creating addicts, thriving without enough checks and in particular harming young people.

Patrick last week on social media shared a column written by Kentucky Republican U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, who carried the federal bill that indirectly legalized the products. The op-ed called for a change to the 2018 farming bill.

“This is a massive course correction and should send a strong message to everyone who supports legalizing marijuana in Texas and allowing THC to be sold to anyone of any age,” Patrick wrote.

How ambitious will the GOP’s new map be?

Democrats and Republicans alike are waiting to see how aggressive the redistricting effort will be. Trump is pushing for a five-seat pickup, but it is not entirely clear whose seats will be targeted — or whether such a map could be drawn without endangering GOP incumbents.

At the same time, Republicans will have to steer clear of violating the Voting Rights Act, the seminal 1965 law prohibiting racial discrimination in elections.

The most obvious targets are the two South Texas seats represented by Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo and Vicente Gonzalez, D-McAllen, according to David Wasserman, the senior editor and elections analyst at the Cook Political Report, who last week mapped out where the GOP could look for pickups.

The key will be to bring enough Republican voters in those districts to create comfortable margins without endangering Rep. Monica De La Cruz, R-Edinburg, whose district is situated between the two.

Democratic seats in the Dallas and Fort Worth areas might also draw an edit. But Wasserman suggested the key might be in how aggressively Republicans want to target seats in Houston. They could easily settle for eliminating one Democratic seat — that of U.S. Rep. Lizzie Fletcher — or try to squeeze for two in a gamble.

Disclosure: University of Texas at Austin 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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