Austin, TX
Thousands of bills filed for 2025 Texas legislative session
AUSTIN, Texas — True to tradition, Democratic Sen. Judith Zaffirini, dean of the Texas Senate, this week filed the first Senate bill ahead of the 89th Texas legislative session.
“Before a session is over, we’re already working for the next session,” Zaffirini said.
The first 40 bills in the Senate are reserved for the lieutenant governor’s priorities. Zaffirini’s Senate Bills 41 to 74 have a large focus on education. She reintroduced a bill that would allocate state funds to provide free pre-kindergarten to families.
“The reason I keep filing is that I believe so strongly in it and that times change, people change, situations change,” Zaffirini said.
Education is a priority for many Democrats in the lower chamber. Rep. Mary González introduced multiple bills that focus on providing quality education from early childhood through higher education.
“I really think of all my bills as a birth through career type of agenda. So we have everything from inclusive child care to exploring the ways in which special education is addressed in higher education,” González said.
Education is a large priority for both parties, though many Republicans support the idea of school vouchers to allocate taxpayer dollars towards private schools.
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said last week that private school vouchers are his priority. His preferred bill has not been filed but is expected to be debated in the first 60 days of the session during which only his priorities are taken up.
This year, college students across the state spoke out against the law that removed diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) offices from their campuses. Democratic Rep. John Bucy filed a bill to repeal the ban while Republican Rep. Carl Tepper wants to take it one step further.
“We just want to put everyone on a level playing field,” Tepper said.
He filed a bill to ban DEI offices and initiatives from government entities. He expects this bill to be successful.
“The offices of diversity, equity and inclusion, which I think is a misnomer, they were really weaponized to be sort of a reverse discrimination against Asians or white people and others, and showing favoritism of some races over others and certainly sexual orientation as well,” Tepper said.
Republican lawmakers are also focused on a number of bills involving border security.
Rep. Terri Leo-Wilson filed a bill in the House to prohibit undocumented immigrants from receiving in-state tuition by requiring a university to notify law enforcement of undocumented students.
She was unavailable for an interview but said in a statement: “This legislation is a top priority of the Texas GOP, and it honors the message Texas voters delivered when they elected me and other like-minded conservatives to the Texas House.”
Lawmakers will gavel in January. Zaffirini — who has never missed a vote during her tenure — is looking forward to the first debate.
AUSTIN, Texas — Texas is getting its first major new national stock exchange in decades, and finance experts say it could create new opportunities for Austin’s tech companies and startups looking to grow.
The Texas Stock Exchange is launching this week in Dallas, with live trading expected to begin as early as Friday. The exchange began operations Monday, and it says all publicly traded stocks should be available on the platform by the end of the month. Thousands of publicly traded stocks are expected to be available by then.
Ray Perryman, President and CEO of the Perryman Group, said the launch signals Texas’ growing influence in the financial sector.
“It really lets the world know that Texas is indeed a major player in this industry,” Perryman said.
Gov. Greg Abbott called the exchange another sign of Texas’ expanding economic reach, saying, “This is another step that expands the financial might of Texas in the United States, and cements our economic power on the global stage.”
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Perryman said the exchange could provide another path for companies to go public and could help attract more growing companies to Austin and the rest of the state. He said the added access to capital could have ripple effects across the economy.
“It increases opportunities for firms in the area to expand, have access to capital, to be more profitable. That means they hire more people. That means they pay more taxes. That means they buy more things in their supply chains,” Perryman said.
Texas ranks second in the U.S. for Fortune 500 headquarters, behind California and ahead of New York. With the Texas Stock Exchange set to launch, experts say Austin’s startup community could see even more growth.
Perryman said Austin-area tech firms could benefit from having an in-state exchange option.
“They’ll now have a vehicle here in Texas that will be more efficient and less expensive to register on than the traditional exchanges,” Perryman said.
Perryman said the exchange’s success will depend on how many companies choose to list on it, how much investment it attracts, and how many additional companies decide to move to Texas.
Elon Musk’s electric car manufacturing company Tesla recently leased a 682,000-square-foot speculative industrial building in the Austin Hills Commerce Center.
The industrial building, which sits at 11801 Decker Lake Road, is set to be completed by January 2027. The project is helmed by Sansone Group and Principal Asset Management, and Musk’s Tesla is set to occupy the second phase of the development, according to reporting from the Austin Business Journal. The total size of the Austin Hills Commerce Center will be 1.4 million square feet when complete. It’s currently unclear what Tesla will utilize the space for.
The development highlights the increased demand for massive industrial buildings in the Austin area. According to the outlet, there are at least a dozen speculative buildings that span upwards of 400,000 square feet in various stages of development, from finished to the early planning phases.
Throughout the Austin Metro and across Texas, large swaths of real estate are rapidly becoming Musk’s playground. The world’s richest man has 2.2 million square feet of space around Austin on lease, and more than 10 million square feet that he owns and built.
The Musk company portfolio includes a reported 112,000-square-foot sublease at the Seaholm Power Plant in downtown for xAI and the airport-adjacent Gigafactory, which spans over 10 million square feet. A $20 billion Terafab campus, that would feature 2 million square feet for research and development, is in the planning stages.
Bastrop County is home to several Musk-owned business’ buildings, most of which are placed along country road FM 1209. Musk is also building an Optimus humanoid robot production facility near the Gigafactory. Musk’s companies have spanned the Austin area’s entire suburban space, from as far north as Taylor to as far south as Kyle.
Areas outside of Central Texas within the Musk companies include Cameron County, which is the home of Musk’s Starbase that functions as a manufacturing hub as well as the headquarters of SpaceX. The Starbase facility also includes the company’s primary launch site, which was recently relieved of local legal pressure centering around the company’s ability to shut down public Boca Chica Beach for launches.
— Hunter Cooke
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AUSTIN, Texas — THC products in Texas will once again be up for discussion during a hearing from state lawmakers today. The hearing will look at the health and public safety impacts of THC. This is the first step in deciding on potential changes to hemp laws when state lawmakers return to the Capitol in January. Currently, the state’s hemp industry remains in legal limbo. Retailers can legally sell many hemp-derived products, but the rules surrounding smokeable hemp like Delta-8 THC remain tied up in court.
Should Texas pass stricter or looser laws on THC products? ANSWER BELOW and see the results LIVE on CBS Austin This Morning from 4:30 a.m. to 7 a.m.
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