Texas school choice bill heads to Abbott's desk: TWITP

AUSTIN, Texas - In This Week in Texas Politics, it was the end of the line for several big issues like school choice. 

But, we also saw a new partisan battle line being drawn at the state capitol. 

FOX 7 Austin's chief political reporter Rudy Koski and our panel of analysts discussed the hot political topics this week.

What they're saying:

RUDY KOSKI: This week in Texas politics, we saw a lot of verbal fistfights, some chemtrail turmoil, and some laws literally going up in smoke. Let's get the headlines from our panel, and we'll begin first with Brian Smith from St. Edward's University. Brian, what's your headline?

BRIAN SMITH: What seems like a lifetime of legislative sessions, school choice becomes a reality.

RUDY KOSKI: Karina Kling, what's your headline for the week?

KARINA KLING: I think I'm sticking with that same theme. Governor Abbott finally gets his private school vouchers win.

RUDY KOSKI: And Philip Jankowski from the Dallas Morning News. Give me a headline.

PHILIOP JANKOWSKI: Yeah, same deal, school choice wins.

School choice bill 

RUDY KOSKI: And we'll start off with that. Governor Greg Abbott got his school choice bill sent to his desk. Brian, there's a lot of political blood on that bill.

BRIAN SMITH: Yeah, the governor outright threatened Republicans with vetoes. They brought in the President of the United States, and now it's up to the governor to make it work.

PHILIOP JANKOWSKI: My sources are really talking about a sort of power shift with the governor, kind of looking more powerful than ever within the Capitol.

Renaming the New York Strip steak?

RUDY KOSKI: What's in a name? Well, a few political actions under the Capitol Dome tried to answer that this week. We had votes on legislation to rebrand the New York strip steak to the Texas strip and Texas jumped in on flipping the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

KARINA KLING: I think it's kind of a fun back and forth on some of these issues, as we see with bets on games among governors and various things like that, but probably some more pressing issues we need to be focused on here in the state.

Other legislative bill hearings

RUDY KOSKI: Legislation creating a special dementia research initiative group passed this week. That's the good news. The bad news, it's funding bill involving legislation for a constitutional amendment may fall victim to some school choice payback by Democrats. This tactic may also deep six some bail bond reform. Philip, you know, this is a strange political hill to fight and die on for Democrats.

PHILIOP JANKOWSKI: Yeah, don't forget homestead exemptions too. I mean, there are a lot of really popular things that could be held up by this tactic. And Monday, which is where a bunch of them got delayed to is where you could really see a standoff.

RUDY KOSKI: Earlier this week, the Senate gave initial approval to a bill to track costs incurred by undocumented migrants on Texas. Democrats argued that the study should also document the annual benefits of migration.

BRIAN SMITH: Now this is a real partisan issue. Everybody knows it's short-sighted just to look at the costs. And also, we don't know how many people are in Texas who are unauthorized. So, any report's going to be partisan to the core and expect this document to show that immigrants are a huge drain on Texas because we're only looking at one side of the issue and through one lens.

RUDY KOSKI: The House pushed out a school cell phone bill. It even includes restricting smartwatches. You know, I've seen support for this idea, but I also think it could be a paper tiger.

KARINA KLING: I think that one of the key arguments that has also been raised, aside from policing it and enforcing it, is just the ability for students to have a device on them to be able to contact them very quickly at school. So maybe some communications and some issues that may need to be worked out there with schools as well in terms of being able to get a hold of your student.

RUDY KOSKI: State lawmakers took up some climate and energy-related bills pushing natural gas. No surprise there. Restricting renewables, no surprise there with the exception of nuclear power, they love nuclear power, apparently. We also had a hearing on a bill that would ban seeding the atmosphere with reflective particles to address climate change. Philip, you did a series of articles on this topic.

PHILIOP JANKOWSKI: You have like one wing of the leadership saying we need an all of the above, we need all the power that we can get, especially in light of these concerning demand projections coming from ERCOT. Then at the same time, they really only want one kind of power generation, that's natural gas.

RUDY KOSKI: Along with the energy issues, this was a moving week for a lot of bills. Karina, are there any other items that really caught your attention this week?

KARINA KLING: Yes, legislature-related, not necessarily a bill they're working on, but A through F school ratings finally released after a 19-month legal battle showed one in five schools getting a D or F rating.

BRIAN SMITH: Well, it looks like destination casinos are not going to pass again this year, but I'm still really confused about the DOGE bill considering that we have a pretty lean state that doesn't spend a lot of money.

This Week in Texas Politics Wrap-up

RUDY KOSKI: You can see this full discussion on the Fox 7 YouTube page, but let's wrap everything up now with one word for the week, and we'll start off with Karina. Karina, what's your word for week?

KARINA KLING: Yeah, with the month of May just around the corner, things starting to move more quickly, I'm going to say, accelerated.

BRIAN SMITH: I didn't think I would ever say this, but measles.

PHILIOP JANKOWSKI: Yeah, and in the same vein as Karina, I'll say, Coffee.

RUDY KOSKI: And that is This Week in Texas Politics.

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