AI reveals legislative trends in the Texas Legislature in 2025

The 2025 Texas Legislature opened Tuesday. Typically, our previews of past Congresses highlight and summarize some important bills. We will do something similar this Congress, but we wanted to get a more complete picture by reviewing all the bills introduced this year and in previous Congresses.

Since 2015, the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News have fine-tuned an artificial intelligence model to understand more than 50,000 bills introduced in Austin over the past six legislative sessions. session. (🤖 Editor’s note: Learn more about our methodology at the end of this article).

We track key legislative topics and how they have changed over time, as well as the most active state legislators in Texas politics over the past decade.

As of the end of December, more than 2,300 bills had been introduced in the Texas Legislature ahead of the start of the session. Although the amount of bills has been on the rise since 2019, this is much higher than the past few sessions.

“There’s certainly a lot of pent-up demand,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston. “We have a lot of new members joining us who want to put their own stamp on the legislative process.”

Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University, said introducing a bill is a completely different matter than passing it, but it serves as a “signal” that lawmakers send to voters.

“This is one way we let voters know we’re doing something, even if we don’t actually pass the bill,” Jones said.

Education-related bills account for the largest portion of the bills introduced by Texas lawmakers to date. Nearly 17%, or 400 bills, are related to things like education funding and school safety. HB 351 would adjust public school funding to keep pace with inflation. Additionally, there are some more unconventional bills, such as HB 462, which would increase funding for school safety improvements and allow schools to deploy drones for defense.

Even in the area of ​​education, Gov. Greg Abbott continues to pull the puppets of the Legislature behind the scenes. In November, he said he had the votes to pass a school voucher plan that would allow parents to use state funding for private school tuition, transportation, uniforms and other expenses. The governor also will “fully fund” public schools in November, give teachers raises, increase funding for the state’s merit pay program, and invest in workforce preparation programs for high school students who do not want to attend college. I promised.

“Education is a new basis for political power, and questions about how it is funded, what it teaches, and the structural aspects of public education become new battlegrounds,” Rottinghaus said. .

This session, bills related to crime, judges, and the justice system are the next most popular category, accounting for about 14% of bills.

This year’s dominance of education bills is a slight departure from the past two Congresses (2021 and 2023), when lawmakers introduced more crime and justice system bills than education bills.

However, in previous sessions, education bills outnumbered crime bills. Lawmakers in Congress still have two months to introduce new legislation. The Chronicle and Express-News will continue to monitor what lawmakers focus on as the session continues.

Each session, Texas lawmakers introduce the most bills related to crime and the justice system, education, local government, taxes, health care, and social services, which most state legislatures around the country routinely introduce. This is a fundamental problem that tends to be addressed.

In recent legislative sessions, Texas lawmakers have increasingly focused on cultural bills, including diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and LGBTQ issues.

For example, DEI bills were the 27th most common bill category (out of 31 total categories) during the 2015 session. In other words, this type of bill was not very popular. This session, DEI bills jumped to the 14th most common spot. LGBTQ bills also moved up in the rankings, but not as much as DEI-related bills.

Jones said Texas Republican lawmakers have increasingly drafted DEI and LGBTQ bills in recent Congresses, particularly those related to transgender issues, as they recognize the political opportunity with Texas voters. said.

“Republicans are in a minority position with Democrats among Texas voters, and some of the policies being promoted lend themselves to ridicule and criticism, or are difficult for Democrats to defend. , we recognize that this is a very good issue to highlight,” Jones said.

So far this session, many of the DEI bills introduced deal with preventing discrimination, allowing DEI education in educational settings, and infiltrating religion into the classroom. Democrats introduced the majority of these bills.

Most of the LGBTQ bills to date have been introduced by Republicans and cover a wide range of topics, including regulating bathroom use, limits placed on drag performances, and gender-affirming care policies. had been raised in previous parliaments.

Meanwhile, firearms and weapons-related bills are also growing in popularity, with most Democrats pushing for tighter gun laws, even though they have little chance of winning in a Republican-led Congress, according to a Chronicle/Express-News analysis. It has been submitted.

“Given the mass shootings in Uvalde, Santa Fe, El Paso and Dallas — all mass shootings in Texas — Democrats know there is a problem with gun laws that are popular with Texans.” said Jones. “Common sense reforms like red flag laws, raising the age to buy assault rifles from 18 to 21… They’re so popular that they want to push them and put Republicans on the record. ”

Most of the Firearms and Weapons Bills propose creating new penalties or increasing existing penalties for the use, sale, and transfer of firearms.

A final bill category that is growing in popularity is housing and landlord bills, Rottinghaus said, primarily because housing is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain. This is because housing has become the most important issue in Japan.

Housing and landlord bills are much more diverse in scope, ranging from addressing tenant rights to regulating housing facilities for migrant workers to adjusting rules regarding land ownership.

Meanwhile, bills related to veterans and insurance have become relatively unpopular over time.

According to our analysis, defense and veterans bills were the 12th most popular category in the 2015 session. This year is the 23rd time. Insurance premiums fell to 26th place.

So far this Congress, six of the top 10 bill sponsors are Democrats from metropolitan areas. Sen. Jose Menendez of San Antonio leads the pack, with 72 bills introduced as of the end of December. Democratic Sen. Royce West of Dallas, Sen. Sarah Eckhardt of Austin and Rep. Suleman Lalani of Sugar Land are also among the top submitters.

On the Republican side, Sen. Bob Hall of Edgewood and Rep. Ryan Gillen of Rio Grande City also have introduced a number of bills. The top 10 presenters for this session mainly focus on education and health issues.

Sen. Menendez, Sen. West, and Rep. Guillen have also been the most prolific introducers over the past few sessions, introducing nearly 2,500 bills since the 2015 session.

As of the end of December, Texas senators had passed 681 bills this legislative session. This would average about 22 bills per 31 state senators if bills were evenly distributed among senators.

By contrast, the state’s 150 members have filed 1,702 bills, and each member of the state House has filed an average of only about 11 bills.