We can only hope they will overreach:
Red-state leaders emboldened by Donald Trump’s presidential victory are not waiting for him to take office to advance far more conservative agendas at home.
Idaho lawmakers want to allow school staff to carry concealed firearms without prior approval and parents to sue districts in library and curriculum disputes. Lawmakers in Oklahoma plan to further restrict abortion by limiting the emergency exceptions and to require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public schools, while their counterparts in Arkansas are moving to create the felony offense of “vaccine harm,” which could make pharmaceutical companies or their executive officers potentially criminally liable.
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But few states have bigger, more aggressive plans than Texas. Ahead of their biennial session, which begins Jan. 14, the Republican legislators who control both House and Senate have proposed a multitude of measures that would push the state further right.
Migrants are a particular focus, with bills to create a “Texas border protection unit” and to repeal instate tuition for undocumented students, requiring colleges to notify law enforcement if they learn a student is undocumented. They also would require state police to DNA-test migrants taken into custody, allow troopers to return undocumented immigrants to Mexico if they are seen entering Texas illegally, fingerprint and track migrant children in a database and bar immigrants who are in the country illegally from accessing public legal services.
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“Red state legislatures and governors are chomping at the bit,” said Craig DeRoche, a former Michigan House speaker who is now president of the influential conservative Family Policy Alliance. The group has chapters in 40 states where, he said, conservatives are sending a message to likely members of the incoming Trump administration on a variety of issues: “Don’t fix it there. Send it back to us so we can fix it here.”
“There’s going to be an extraordinary accountability. And red state governors and legislatures are going to lead on that,” DeRoche said.
Of 27 states with Republican governors, 23 are backed by GOP legislative majorities, all of which will reconvene in the New Year. Republicans flipped Capitols in Michigan and Minnesota this election, breaking Democrats’ trifecta control, and they hold a supermajority in Kansas that will allow them to override any veto by Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat.
“The alignment of a Trump-Vance administration and the beginning of legislative sessions is a looming perfect storm of conservative policies in red states,” said Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, a legal group that has marshaled more than 800 lawyers to counter an anticipated onslaught of conservative legal battles on multiple fronts, from reproductive health to labor rights, free speech and public education.
Still, it’s not clear where or how or how fast Trump will try to capitalize on his state allies once he’s back in the White House. “We don’t know if they will target communities in red states quicker than in blue states,” Perryman said. What she and others do know: that those allies hope to find much success given the momentum of Trump’s win, not just with new proposals but with some that previously fell short.
Simone Leiro, spokeswoman for the Democratic-aligned States Project, sees GOP lawmakers already pursuing two types of legislation: those that fan the culture wars and those that give more power to corporations. “It feels like they can get away with a lot more without scrutiny,” she said Wednesday.
Nowhere is GOP activism more visible than in Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott hosted Trump’s incoming “border czar” Tom Homan last month at a state-run base established just minutes from where many migrants cross the Rio Grande. Homan called Operation Lone Star, Texas’s $11 billion border enforcement program, a “model” for national immigration enforcement.
Since the Nov. 5 election, Texas has added more barbed wire along the border and buoy barriers in the river. A state police unit patrols daily on horseback. Abbott has asked the legislature for another $2.8 billion for the program in 2025.
“We’re going to be doing more and faster than anything that’s ever been done to regain control of our border, restore order in our communities, and also identify, locate and deport criminals in the United States of America who have come across the border,” he said during Homan’s visit to Eagle Pass.
Red-state leaders emboldened by Donald Trump’s presidential victory are not waiting for him to take office to advance far more conservative agendas at home.
Idaho lawmakers want to allow school staff to carry concealed firearms without prior approval and parents to sue districts in library and curriculum disputes. Lawmakers in Oklahoma plan to further restrict abortion by limiting the emergency exceptions and to require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public schools, while their counterparts in Arkansas are moving to create the felony offense of “vaccine harm,” which could make pharmaceutical companies or their executive officers potentially criminally liable.
You are what you read. Reveal your 2024 reader type with Newsprint.
But few states have bigger, more aggressive plans than Texas. Ahead of their biennial session, which begins Jan. 14, the Republican legislators who control both House and Senate have proposed a multitude of measures that would push the state further right.
Migrants are a particular focus, with bills to create a “Texas border protection unit” and to repeal instate tuition for undocumented students, requiring colleges to notify law enforcement if they learn a student is undocumented. They also would require state police to DNA-test migrants taken into custody, allow troopers to return undocumented immigrants to Mexico if they are seen entering Texas illegally, fingerprint and track migrant children in a database and bar immigrants who are in the country illegally from accessing public legal services.
Skip to end of carousel
T
End of carousel
“Red state legislatures and governors are chomping at the bit,” said Craig DeRoche, a former Michigan House speaker who is now president of the influential conservative Family Policy Alliance. The group has chapters in 40 states where, he said, conservatives are sending a message to likely members of the incoming Trump administration on a variety of issues: “Don’t fix it there. Send it back to us so we can fix it here.”
“There’s going to be an extraordinary accountability. And red state governors and legislatures are going to lead on that,” DeRoche said.
Of 27 states with Republican governors, 23 are backed by GOP legislative majorities, all of which will reconvene in the New Year. Republicans flipped Capitols in Michigan and Minnesota this election, breaking Democrats’ trifecta control, and they hold a supermajority in Kansas that will allow them to override any veto by Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat.
“The alignment of a Trump-Vance administration and the beginning of legislative sessions is a looming perfect storm of conservative policies in red states,” said Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, a legal group that has marshaled more than 800 lawyers to counter an anticipated onslaught of conservative legal battles on multiple fronts, from reproductive health to labor rights, free speech and public education.
Still, it’s not clear where or how or how fast Trump will try to capitalize on his state allies once he’s back in the White House. “We don’t know if they will target communities in red states quicker than in blue states,” Perryman said. What she and others do know: that those allies hope to find much success given the momentum of Trump’s win, not just with new proposals but with some that previously fell short.
Simone Leiro, spokeswoman for the Democratic-aligned States Project, sees GOP lawmakers already pursuing two types of legislation: those that fan the culture wars and those that give more power to corporations. “It feels like they can get away with a lot more without scrutiny,” she said Wednesday.
Nowhere is GOP activism more visible than in Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott hosted Trump’s incoming “border czar” Tom Homan last month at a state-run base established just minutes from where many migrants cross the Rio Grande. Homan called Operation Lone Star, Texas’s $11 billion border enforcement program, a “model” for national immigration enforcement.
Since the Nov. 5 election, Texas has added more barbed wire along the border and buoy barriers in the river. A state police unit patrols daily on horseback. Abbott has asked the legislature for another $2.8 billion for the program in 2025.
“We’re going to be doing more and faster than anything that’s ever been done to regain control of our border, restore order in our communities, and also identify, locate and deport criminals in the United States of America who have come across the border,” he said during Homan’s visit to Eagle Pass.
