The Texan Podcast - Daily Rundown - June 3, 2025

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

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Howdy folks, today is Tuesday June 3rd and you're listening to the Texans Daily Rundown. I'm the Texans reporter Cameron Abrams and here's the rundown of today's news in Texas politics. First up, a final deal was struck in the closing days of the 89th regular session on a $338 billion biennial budget, the one constitutional requirement of the Texas legislature each time it convenes for the first five months of every odd number year. The budget is a 1.2% increase from what has been spent

during the current biennium after supplemental appropriations, but it's a 5% increase from the adopted budget last session. General fund spending is below the constitutional population plus inflation line. State spending has jumped significantly over the last couple of sessions due in large part to historic treasury surpluses

providing more financial slack. The 2026-2027 blueprint is a 36% increase from the budget adopted in 2021 and even larger increases from 2019. This session, the state had multiple expensive priorities on its list, headlined by public education funding and infrastructure. Next, a plethora of bills addressing abortion

were filed during Texas's 89th legislative session related to taxpayer-funded abortion travel, chemical abortion pills, clarifying abortion law exceptions, and increasing funding for the Alternatives to Abortion program, bills that either never got past filing, lavished in committee, or even en route to the governor's desk. Among the most highly anticipated bills taken up was the Life of the Mother Act, aiming to clarify the state's existing abortion statutes by increasing medical and legal professional education regarding care for both patients, the mother, and the child,

and updating the state's legal terminology in order to avoid unnecessary deaths of expectant mothers. Perhaps taking the cake for the most controversial abortion related legislation was the Women and Child Protection Act, seeking to curb the distribution of chemical abortion pills into Texas through private right of action, additional powers granted to the attorney general and liability extended for wrongful death

of a preborn child. It was left pending in committee. In other news, the Texas Senate succeeded in pushing a majority of Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick's legislative priorities through both chambers during the regular legislative session. Patrick released a list of 40 pieces of priority legislation in the first three months of the year covering a variety of issues. Check out the Texan.News for a full list of what bills made it through the process and are headed to the governor's desk. Also, the Dallas Economic Development Committee got a first look at the study of economic benefits to the city of Dallas of

high-speed rail. The study was commissioned in June 2024 and looked at the economic benefits of both the Dallas to Houston and Dallas to Fort Worth routes and estimates the cost of the Dallas to Houston line of $30 billion. It would bring an estimated $5 billion average increase in gross domestic product and 28,300 new jobs to Dallas County. The estimated ride ship is between 3 million and 6.5 million passengers during the first year of operations. Ridership estimates have been unmet by the TexRail built between the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and downtown Fort Worth.

Originally proposed as a measure to reduce congestion and improve connectivity in its fast-growing DFW region, the Federal Transit Administration estimated that TexRail would average 8,300 riders per day or about 250,000 riders in an average month. Last but not least, improving border security and efforts to quell illegal immigration are top priorities for not just the federal government, but state lawmakers as well. And the 89th legislature saw legislation passed in an effort to address both issues.

Senate Bill 8 headlined a major policy fight between members of both the House and Senate this session because of its explicit aim to increase cooperation between state law enforcement and federal agencies in enforcing immigration law. The bill is headed to Abbott's desk. Jocelyn's law or Senate Joint Resolution 1 by Senator Joan Huffman produced another long contentious debate among members of the Texas legislature. The SJR would have required the detention without bail of illegal aliens. But because constitutional amendments require two-thirds support or 100 votes in the Texas House for passage,

Republicans were unable to court enough Democrats to meet the threshold and the bill died. Check out our reporting for a full rundown of the fates of all the border-related bills this session. Thanks for listening. To support The Texan, please be sure to visit thetexan.news and subscribe to get full access to all of our articles, newsletters, and podcasts.