TEXAS, USA — An East Texas Republican State Representative who has been touting anti-transgender legislation says the rest of the party is starting to come around.
In terms of conservative priorities, Rep. Bryan Slaton says on Inside Texas Politics that legislation that would ban gender affirming medical care has a great chance of passing this session.
The Republican says there were two bills targeting transgender Texans in the House last session and he filed nine amendments.
“This session, as of right now and we’re not done, over 24 bills have been filed from members who didn’t agree with me last time. They didn’t like that I was pushing the issue. But now they’re filing the amendments. I think there’s a lot of support for the issue,” he said.
While Democrats maintain influence in the Texas House following committee assignments, it is shrinking based on the number of chairs they received.
Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan handed eight of 34 chairs to Democrats, down from 13 last session.
Slaton calls the new committee assignments a “mixed bag."
He and other Republicans to the right of Phelan demanded the Speaker not name any Democrats to lead committees.
“For it to go from 13 down to 8, I think there’s grassroots that are, you know, they’re happy about that, but they’re still not completely satisfied because we’re still giving away chairmanships to eight committees,” Slaton said. “They’re going to deal with very important things here in Texas and someone from a different political party is going to be making those decisions.”