The Republican Party Of Texas 2026 Convention Kicks Off Today
The Republican Party of Texas would like to ruin your life and make you miserable.
Yes, I picked clowns as the stock photo for this article, because the Republicans are clowns. But I want to be very clear that some of the things that they are proposing at their Convention are no laughing matter.
Today is the official kick-off of the Republican Party of Texas’ 2026 Convention. And yes, I’m watching it so you don’t have to. I’m clipping and taking notes, and tomorrow I will have a report on today’s events.
Yesterday, their temporary committees met, and I stayed up until 1 am watching what I can only describe as a complete train wreck.
How much of a train wreck? This was from their temporary legislative priorities committee:
What was this woman talking about? Censorship? Apparently, this lady travels around Texas, reading this excerpt at school board meetings as a ploy to get them to burn all their library books.
The Republicans still aren’t catching on.
The Legislative Priorities list is always the most important thing to come out of the RPT Convention, because it’s what the Party pushes for the legislators to pass in the next legislative session. So there’s no guessing work. We know six months ahead of time what Republicans have in store come time to gavel in again.
And I want to point out this one particular video, although there were MANY more just like it:
This man was confused about why the swamp of multi-millionaires in Austin, who don’t know how to govern and have never passed a bill in favor of the working class, isn’t doing more for the working class. He talks about his house being a dump, working two jobs, and his property taxes being through the roof.
But there was never any connection to the fact that his circumstances were a direct result of living under 30 years of Republican governance.
It was actually astounding how many Republicans talked about “solutions” for their problems, which have data and studies behind them that will make their lives worse.
Dubya left too many children behind, and generations are paying for it.
Now, the most horrific part.
Again, we’ll see if it changes in their permanent committees today, tomorrow, and Saturday. But as of right now, these are the Republican Party of Texas’ 2026 legislative priorities:
Secure Texas Elections 🙄
Stop Islamification of Texas
Eliminate Property Taxes
Ban Taxpayer Funded Lobbying
Protect Texas Kids
Safeguard Texas Infrastructure
End Government Overreach
Education Reform
Protect Life
Border Enforcement
Medical Freedom
Reform The Texas House
No Gambling
Courtroom Integrity
Regulate AI
But what does it all mean? First, and foremost, we need to talk about this “Protect Life” bullshit, because they added it to their platform, too.
Here is a clip of Representative Brent Money (R-HD02) using two key phrases, “abolish abortion” and “murder.” That’s important.
Another woman talking about giving the death penalty to women who have abortion care:
A screenshot from the platform:
Another one:
The “Protect Life” plank of the Republican Party’s legislative priorities means:
They plan to give the death penalty to any woman who receives abortion care, even minors and rape survivors.
They plan on banning IVF.
They plan on banning all egg and sperm donation clinics.
It’s unclear whether they immidiately plan on also banning birth control, but we can assume that’s also on the chopping block.
Texas has a maternal mortality rate akin to third-world countries, but in Republicans’ eyes, not enough women have died yet.
Funny thing is, they also want to address the physician shortage in Texas, but there isn’t one genius among them who can figure out why there’s a physician shortage in the first place.
The Islamification of Texas?
What the fuck is that shit? I have no idea. Because when I look all around me, all I see are Evangelical bigots everywhere I turn.
Listen to this 100-year-old white supremacist explain it, from her point of view:
The existential threat to Texas isn’t the grid failing in a freeze, or kids going hungry, or women dying in hospital parking lots because doctors are afraid to treat them. It’s Muslims. 🤦🏻♀️ In Texas. Where the last mosque hate crime made the news, and the perpetrator got a slap on the wrist.
These people aren’t scared. They’re not reacting to anything real. They’re just hateful, shriveled up, mean, small-hearted people who have organized their entire political identity around who they despise. There is no policy here. There is no solution. There is nothing but the hot, rancid breath of bigotry.
But here’s where it gets genuinely rich.
The same people screaming about the “Islamification of Texas” turned right around and enshrined support for a foreign nation directly into their party platform, complete with biblical citations as legal justification.
Plank 249 of the Republican Party of Texas platform doesn’t just support Israel. It prohibits a Palestinian state “within the historical borders of Israel” and justifies that position by citing Genesis and the Old Testament. The Bible.
Foreign religious influence in Texas politics is an existential threat, unless it’s their religion, pointed at their preferred country. Then it gets its own platform plank.
Secure Texas Elections? More voter suppression?
Naturally. Did you expect anything else? The Republicans’ goal is to stop as many people from voting as possible. As long as people are voting in Texas, they will invent problems based on conspiracies (likely made up by a little old lady with too much time on her hands and nothing else to do).
They want to make Texas in-person voting only, with only three days of early voting.
Because why would they make it easier for people to vote? The more people who vote, the more people who vote against them.
All of that was at the “pre-Convention.”
I’m glued to the livestreams, and this whole shin-dig runs through Saturday night. By the time they gavel out, we’ll have the complete Republican Party of Texas platform, every plank, every priority, every fever dream they intend to hand to their legislators when the 90th Legislative Session kicks off. They’ll have handed us the roadmap themselves.
This is the warning I send out every two years, and I’ll keep sending it until it sinks in. Everything you just read can be stopped. All of it dies on the vine if enough Texans show up and vote these people out of power.
They are not inevitable. They are not unstoppable. They are a shrinking minority that has held power for thirty years because too many Texans have either given up or never started.
That ends when we decide it ends.
Stay tuned. I’ll have a full report on today’s proceedings tomorrow, and I promise, it’s going to get worse before it gets better.
Click here to find out what Legislative districts you’re in.
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I remember when John McCain took the mic from the woman premising her question to him on her asinine assertion that Obama was a Muslim. He shut her down firmly and without rancor, but he also pulled the mic out of her hands and turned his back on her before she could react. And that was the last time I know of that Republicans weren't appealing to bigotry because of what it can do for their electoral prospects. I just read an article in the Texas Observer about the horror which is the Dilley Dentention Center. It is a place of arbitrary and capricious government action standing as a warning to us all. This place and its lack of due process foreshadows what Republicans are capable of unless they are voted out in this election.
Michelle, thank you for the report and the videos. I don't have the stomach to watch them in their entirety. I can get the gist for a few seconds, but I just can't keep going past that. You are doing God's work, sitting through all this. Christopher Hooks just published a good article in TM reporting on the Republican contest for party chairman. TX Republican Party insiders are quite plainly just living in their heads at this point.
Hooks mentioned, but did not go into the chairmanship battle on our side. I am voting for Kendall Scudder and I sure hope he is re-elected. Democrats seem to be turning into a viable party for once.
Ridiculous people. Of course Muslim legislators aren’t going to pray during Christian prayers. Neither or Jewish, Hindu or any other non-Christian religion. The irony of the death penalty for women who have abortions is apparently too much for the right-to-lifers to see. Goal clown show.