Senate Republicans Weigh Rules Change to Curb Lieutenant Governor-Elect Goodwin

Republican senators are discussing whether to rewrite the Texas Senate’s rules to cut the powers of Lieutenant Governor-elect Vikki Goodwin before she takes office in January, according to Scott Braddock, editor of The Quorum Report.

“You have the GOP caucus in the Senate. They met this week, almost an emergency meeting, right, to talk about whether or not they could do that, get rid of the lieutenant governor’s powers,” Braddock told KPRC 2 in Houston. “It’ll be criticized as a power grab, but I do see that as likely.” Senators have not filed or adopted any change to the rules. Republicans will hold 19 of the Senate’s 31 seats when the 90th Legislature convenes on January 12, according to KPRC.

They would not need a new law to do it. The Texas Constitution makes the lieutenant governor president of the Senate, but most of what makes the office powerful comes from the rules the senators adopt for themselves, under the constitution’s grant to each chamber to set its own procedures. Under the rules now in force, the president of the Senate appoints every committee and subcommittee “unless otherwise directed by the Senate” and refers each bill to a committee when it is first read. When the rules are silent, the president decides. The Senate can change those rules by a majority of its members, through a resolution that goes to a committee and back to the floor, under Rule 22.01. “Most people don’t know this, but it’s not in the law that the lieutenant governor gets to preside over the Senate and set the agenda,” Braddock said. “That’s up to the senators.”

A second push came from the House. State Rep. Brian Harrison, a Republican from House District 10, asked Gov. Greg Abbott in a letter dated November 4 to call a special session to limit the governor’s emergency powers before Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa is sworn in on January 19. “You are still the Governor of Texas, and you still have the power to act,” Harrison wrote. He pointed to his 2023 bill, House Bill 911, which would have required certain emergency orders to expire after 30 days unless the Legislature extended them. It never advanced. Abbott has not called a session. Only the governor can, and the Legislature can take up only the subjects the governor names. Braddock said Democrats could block a session before January by staying home and denying the House a quorum.

The Senate’s first-day rules also settle which bills senators will ever hear. Whoever controls referrals controls the bill to let Texans vote on Texas independence, which died without a hearing in a House committee in 2021 and 2023, and the Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM) has said it will ask the new leadership of both chambers for a public hearing on a bill that sets that vote for November 2027. A rules fight in January decides who gets that request in the Senate, and Republican senators are now weighing whether it will be Goodwin.