Knee-Jerk Reactions to 2027 Texas GOP Priorities
Some of these look familiar.
The Republican Party of Texas announced its eight legislative priorities for the 2027 session, the issues delegates ranked highest at last weekend’s state convention in Houston.
Secure Texas Elections
Don’t Sharia Our Texas
Completely Eliminate All Property Taxes
Ban Taxpayer-Funded Lobbying
Secure Texas Grid, Water, Energy, Agriculture, and Property Sovereignty
Border Enforcement
Protect Texas Kids
Protect Life
Congrats to the #txlege Hall of Famers: Pro-Life, Secure the Border, Election Integrity, Kill Taxpayer-Funded Lobbying. The perennials. You can set your watch by them.
It’s a beautiful list. It’s also, with one exception, a list of feelings.
And that’s the scam. It’s the master key to every other scam in Texas. Get this one and you get all of it.
The Legislature makes laws. That’s the whole job. They’re wordsmiths. Lawyers, mostly. And like a chatbot, the only thing they produce is words on a page. In their world, language isn’t the most important thing, it’s the only thing.
So a priority written as a feeling can’t be measured. It can’t be failed. It never has to actually happen. The scam lives in the wording. It always does.
Let’s go down the line.
Secure Texas Elections
Secure them how much? When is an election “secured”? Surely nothing’s more secure than closed-source software nobody’s allowed to look at, right? There’s no bill number, no metric, no finish line to any of this. A single voter-roll cleanup will pass and somebody at the next convention will stand up and say, “mission accomplished.”
We’ve seen this movie. Election integrity has been the number-one priority since roughly the Pleistocene.
Don’t Sharia Our Texas
I had to sit with this one. Scorecard says the goal is:
…legislation claryifing that courts and government agencies may not enforce foreign law”
This one is great because they passed this in 2017.
Gov. Greg Abbott has signed Texas House Bill 45, which prohibits state judges from applying any foreign law over Texas and U.S. laws, specifically in family law cases.
Genius. Already done, technically.
Completely Eliminate All Property Taxes
Note the words “completely” and “all.” This is the one item with an actual measurable standard, and it’s the one they will absolutely not hit. Property tax revenue in Texas runs into the tens of billions. They could not even cap appraisals without a knife fight.
Grassroots Republicans are again demanding a path to end property taxes altogether, not just trim rates or reform the system.
“Again.” The word doing the heaviest lifting in that sentence is “again.”
Ban Taxpayer-Funded Lobbying
This one’s been a priority before too. For at least a decade. You’d think a party that controls the House, the Senate, and the Governor’s mansion could stop cities from hiring lobbyists with your money. You’d think wrong.
Since passing it will change nothing that matters to anyone, I suspect we will see movement on this priority. They pass one corner of the blanket ban, check the box, and put it right back on the list a few years later.
Secure Texas Grid, Water, Energy, Agriculture, and Property Sovereignty
They bundled five entire policy areas into one priority so that knocking out any single piece counts as a win for the whole thing. Pass one grid bill, check the box for water, agriculture, energy, and land sovereignty too.
Border Enforcement
Secure it. Enforce it. When is the border “enforced”? There is no number, no gate, no scoreboard. It’s all vibes.
Protect Texas Kids
Protect them from what, to what degree, measured how? “Protect Texas Kids” is the kind of priority that’s already accomplished the second somebody says the words on a convention stage.
Protect Life
Same construction. Scorecard frames it as reaffirming commitments and enforcing laws already on the books.
…reaffirms the party’s commitment to defending preborn Texans from conception and enforcing the pro‑life laws already on the books
Reaffirming a commitment and enforcing existing law. So the priority is to keep doing the thing they’re already doing. You cannot lose.
New chair D’rinda Randall, per Scorecard, told the executive committee the report is still under review but stressed unity.
“unity drives victory”
Seven of eight priorities are written so loosely that any legislative output, or none, can be spun as success. The eighth says “completely” and “all,” and that’s the one they’ll quietly drop.
In 2027 someone will stand at a podium and tell you it was the most conservative session ever.
They’re not lying. They just never told you how they’d keep score.