Lawmakers Promised a "Bread-and-Butter" Session. They Served a Repressive Agenda Instead.

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The 88th legislative session seemed like it had great bipartisan potential. Ahead of it, Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike talked big about skipping "red meat" issues and focusing on "bread-and-butter" ones instead, like improvements to the power grid and lowering property taxes. There seemed to be meaningful consensus on some lifesaving policies, too. Some Republicans said they'd support raising the minimum age to buy an automatic rifle to 21 (a change parents of slain Robb Elementary School students pleaded for), as well as exceptions to the state's abortions bans for victims of rape and incest and pregnant patients experiencing dangerous complications. Meanwhile, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle expressed deep concern about the continued exodus of public school teachers out of the profession. Democrats were suggesting that Republicans could succeed both in reducing property taxes and in retaining teachers simply by agreeing to significantly raise state funding toward education.

But "bread and butter" was not what the 88th Legislature served up in the end. Lawmakers dropped the ball on what seemed like promising compromises and plowed ahead with what turned out to be one of the most aggressively anti-LGBTQ+ sessions in Texas history. Anti-trans and anti-drag legislation (now challenged in court) passed despite massive protests. One sweepingly antidemocratic law threatens to throw out entire sections of city code. Meanwhile, Christian nationalists of the Moms for Liberty variety got the book ­banning legislation of their dreams, schools did not get close to the funding bump they asked for, proposed exceptions to the abortion ban died in committee again and again, and we could go on. Some of the most egregious laws are temporarily blocked, pending court decisions over their violation of Texans' civil rights and our state constitution. Here we take a look at just a few of the laws taking effect Sept. 1 that you should know about, and a few of the laws whose lawfulness is still being ironed out in court.