Following their recent biennial convention, the Republican Party of Texas has revealed its legislative priorities for the upcoming 2025 session, shaped by input from thousands of delegates. The legislative priorities committee streamlined numerous proposals into 15 main priorities, from which delegates selected the top eight.
These priorities aim to guide lawmakers during the 140-day legislative session starting in January. The Texas GOP has announced the following top eight priorities for the next legislative session:
1. Border Enforcement
To combat illegal immigration and enhance border security, the Texas GOP proposes:
- Establishing a Texas Department of Homeland Security to prevent illegal entry and trafficking and deport illegal aliens.
- Enforcing mandatory fines and jail time for individuals and entities aiding illegal entry.
- Mandating the use of E-Verify by all Texas employers, with substantial penalties for non-compliance.
- Eliminating subsidies and public services, including in-state tuition and public school enrollment for illegal aliens, except for emergency medical care.
2. Secure Texas Elections
To ensure the integrity of elections, the Texas GOP suggests:
- Requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration.
- Mandating quarterly updates of voter rolls by counties and the Secretary of State.
- Implementing a mandatory photo ID requirement for all elections.
- Restricting mail-in ballots to eligible disabled, military, and citizens out of the county during the voting period.
- Using only hand-marked, sequentially numbered paper ballots signed by election officials.
- Standardizing in-person voting with a maximum of nine days for early voting and precinct-specific voting locations.
- Counting ballots using a “dumb-scanner” method and publishing results before submission to the county.
- Closing party primaries to only registered Republicans.
- Explicitly granting the Attorney General the authority to prosecute election code violations.
- Removing current Secretary of State waivers from complying with the election code.
3. Stop Sexualizing Texas’ Kids
To protect minors from sexualization, exploitation, and trafficking, the Texas GOP plans to:
- Prohibit taxpayer funding for entities promoting sexually inappropriate content to minors and ban teaching sexual orientation and gender ideology in schools and libraries.
- Repeal affirmative defenses in the Texas Penal Code and redefine “harmful materials” to eliminate loopholes.
- Establish an independent Inspector General for Education to investigate misconduct in schools and refer cases to authorities.
- Require superintendents to report sex crimes in schools to external law enforcement and remove civil liability immunity for schools and their staff.
4. No Democrat Chairs
The Texas GOP advocates for ending the practice of awarding committee chairmanships to Democrats, ensuring all committees are majority Republican.
5. Ban Taxpayer-Funded Lobbying
The Texas GOP aims to prohibit the use of tax dollars for hiring lobbyists and paying associations that lobby the Legislature.
6. Secure the Electric Grid
To protect Texas’s electricity infrastructure, the Texas GOP proposes measures to ensure the grid’s resilience against natural and manmade threats, including weather, cyber, physical, electromagnetic pulse (EMP), and geomagnetic disturbances (GMD).
7. Texas is Not for Sale
The Texas GOP wants to ban the sale of real estate and eliminate taxpayer funding and incentives to governments, entities, and proxies from China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia, as well as to individuals from these nations who are not U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents.
8. End Federal Overreach
The Texas GOP aims to resist unconstitutional federal mandates that restrict transportation and vehicle repair rights. They also seek to ensure Texans have medical freedom regarding vaccines and treatments without facing discrimination or mandates from public or private entities.
These priorities reflect the core issues the Texas GOP delegates want lawmakers to focus on during the upcoming legislative session, setting the agenda for 2025.
