House Backs Two More Patrick Priorities
with Film Bill Vote as Final Agenda Piece
Capitol Inside
May 24, 2025
The Texas House is set to complete its work on Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick's agenda for the regular session on Sunday with a vote for a film incentives measure that he pushed through the Senate without concern for opposition from conservatives who've ripped it as corporate welfare for liberals in Hollywood.
As Democrats and Republicans marveled at the Senate president's emergence in recent days as the Legislature's supreme leader, the House advanced a pair of Patrick top 10 priorities on Saturday with tentative nods for a Ten Commandment mandate for public schools and a border security bill that empowers sheriffs to enforce federal immigration law.
House Republicans gave the local migrant apprehensions proposal tentative approval on an 89-50 vote for Senate Bill 8 today with assists from three Democrats - State Reps. Terry Canales of Edinburg, Sergio Munoz of Mission and Richard Raymond of Laredo.
In votes that unfolded mostly along lines, the Republicans rejected more than a dozen amendments that Democrats sought to incorporate into the Ten Commandments requirement that Patrick conceived in 2023 and has been pushing this time around in Senate Bill 10. Democrats argued that SB 10 would made Christianity the unofficial religion in public schools by forcing them to display large copies of the commandments on classroom walls at every grade level including kindergarten.
School districts would not be allowed to tinker with the prescribed text that the sponsors of SB 10 copied from court rulings that use excerpts from the King James Bible that's the gospel according to protestant Christian faiths. The Baptist General Convention and the Christian Life Commission have opposed the commandments mandate since the Patrick hatched it and pushed it through the Senate in regular session two years ago.
After House Republican leaders let the Ten Commandments bill die without a vote last time around, Patrick had no cause for doubt on the fate of SB 10 in the House on Saturday night when it scored an initial OK on a vote of 88-49 after several hours of debate and protests from Democrats that would not affect the outcome.
The same three Democrats who sided with the Republicans in the House vote on SB 8 supported the Ten Commandments bill on second reading tonight as well.
The House must decide whether to endorse Senate changes to an $8.5 billion public school funding plan that's $700 million more than the proposal it approved in House Bill 2. The House and Senate are still locked in negotiations on a new two-year budget for state government.
But Senate Bill 22 - the Patrick plan to revive a long-neglected Texas film industry with an initial infusion of $500 million - appears to be the last major component of the agenda that the lieutenant governor crafted and muscled through the lower chamber with almost no apparent resistance from GOP Speaker Dustin Burrows and the lieutenants on his leadership team.
Patrick is being hailed in Capitol hallways as the first legislative leaders in Texas to ever appear to control both chambers at the same time in the wake of a stunning retreat by House Republicans on a THC regulatory proposal in favor of a ban that would force more than 10,000 small businesses to shut down in a prohibition repercussion that would put 53,000 Texans out of work.
Patrick wasn't satisfied with the historic frenzy he triggered in the House this week with a threat to force a special session if the THC legislation returned to the Senate without a ban. After promising House Republicans that the Senate would vote to expand the Compassionate Use program in House Bill 46, a Senate committee gutted the proposal by removing conditions that were designed to benefit military veterans who are suffering chronic pain, traumatic head injuries and other health problems.
Veterans groups may see the State Affairs Committee's vote to dilute the Compassionate Us bill as Patrick's
way of exacting revenge in light of their steadfast opposition to a THC prohibition. The House THC bills that Patrick and the Senate altered radically are both sponsored in the House by State Rep. Ken King - a Canadian Republican who's a top Burrows lieutenant as the State Affairs Committee chair in the west wing.
more to come ...
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