A new era of lawmaking under a Democratic governor and a divided Legislature kicked off Monday when the window opened to file bills for the 2027 legislative session, as the Texas Tribune and Houston Public Media reported. The 90th session convenes January 12, with bill filing continuing through March 12 — and the first-day flurry offers the earliest glimpse of what a Democratic executive, a Democratic House and a Republican Senate can actually agree to do.
The arithmetic is novel for modern Texas. Republicans retain majority control of the Senate, while Democrats will control the House for the first time in decades and will elect a leader to replace outgoing Speaker Dustin Burrows, a Lubbock Republican, on the session’s first day. Above both chambers sits Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa, who campaigned heavily on reversing GOP education policy — including the school voucher program passed in the 2025 session — and now holds the veto pen.
The chamber dynamics got more interesting Friday, when Democratic Rep. Senfronia Thompson, the longest-serving woman and the longest-serving Black legislator in any statehouse, announced she had enough votes to win the House speaker’s gavel. A Thompson speakership would put a Houston institutionalist — a member since 1973 — at the center of every budget negotiation.
Hinojosa has signaled cooperation rather than confrontation. On Thursday, as she announced a transition team made up of Democrats and Republicans, she said, “I would hope that elected leaders from both parties don’t get in the way of the progress we can make together to deliver for working people… I look forward to working with Republican leaders in the Legislature.”
The early bill lists are expected to be crowded with the issues that decided the election. Democrats broadly campaigned on tighter guardrails on data center development — a live issue for landowners and the power grid — pulling back restrictions on consumable hemp products, and lowering the cost of living. A federal ban on hemp-derived THC products taking effect December 11 makes the hemp issue urgent: Texas THC beverage makers told KERA that Square, one of the country’s largest payment processors, has already told them it will stop doing business over the looming ban, threatening firms that generate nearly all their revenue from cannabis products. Republicans in the Senate will have their own counter-agenda, and the veto pen will hover over anything that reaches Hinojosa’s desk. Low bill numbers, typically reserved for the highest-priority legislation picked by the speaker and lieutenant governor, will signal early who holds leverage in each chamber. Lt. Gov.-elect Vikki Goodwin, a Democrat, takes office as part of the sweep, presiding over a Senate whose members remain mostly Republican.
Thousands of bills will be filed over the filing window; most will die quietly. But the opening week’s docket — school finance revisions, hemp rules, grid protections — will sketch the boundaries of the possible for the first divided government Texas has seen in a generation. The Legislature convenes in Austin on January 12.
