A Republican Texas lawmaker is pressing outgoing Gov. Greg Abbott to summon a special legislative session before Democratic Gov. Gina Hinojosa takes office following a stunning election that flipped the governorship blue. The push would restrict emergency powers that Hinojosa is set to inherit.

Republican Texas state Rep. Brian Harrison publicly urged Abbott on Wednesday to convene lawmakers and rein in those powers during the remaining ten weeks of Republican control. His demand came one day after Hinojosa defeated Abbott in the 2026 gubernatorial race.

“Republicans lost last night, but Democrats were not sworn in,” Harrison wrote in a lengthy statement on X. “We still have total power in Texas, and we must act like it by using the remaining ten weeks to restore separation of powers and limit the emergency powers that Governor-Elect Hinojosa is set to inherit, that would allow her to destroy liberty in Texas by executive fiat.”

Harrison argued that Texas governors should not hold unchecked emergency authority, regardless of party affiliation. He also said the state should have acted when he first demanded restrictions in 2022.

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“If these are not revoked, Gina Hinojosa will assume not just the powers our state constitution bestows upon a Governor, but will, in effect, inherit nearly all the powers of a dictator,” Harrison told Fox News Digital on Thursday.

“Most people are shocked to learn Texas governors can write, edit, or change any statute on a whim if they just declare an ‘emergency,’ and this is unconstitutional,” he added. Harrison said those powers have previously been abused and claimed Hinojosa has pledged to use them on her first day.

Under Section 433.002 of the Texas Government Code, the governor may issue emergency directives during a declared state of emergency. The governor may also “amend, modify, or rescind” those directives, subject to requirements contained in the law.

Harrison called for the Texas Legislature to immediately approve legislation such as HB911, which he filed in December 2022. The measure was designed to restrict what he described as the governor’s “never ending emergency powers.”

I call on Gov. Abbott to IMMEDIATELY convene a special session to REIN IN EXECUTIVE EMERGENCY POWERS… before Gina Hinojosa is sworn in!

Republicans lost last night, but Democrats were not sworn in. We still have total power in Texas, and we must act like it by using the remaining ten weeks to restore separation of powers and limit the emergency powers that Governor-Elect Hinojosa is set to inherit, which would allow her to destroy liberty in Texas by executive fiat. I’ve warned since I was first elected that NO governor, Republican or Democrat, should have unchecked emergency powers! Now that Texas has elected a Democrat Governor, the urgency is undeniable… and inaction is intolerable. Without action, Governor Hinojosa will inherit the powers of a DICTATOR. Due to the absurd (and almost certainly unconstitutional) Texas emergency powers laws, Gov. Hinojosa will literally have the power to modify laws, ignore laws, or create and enforce laws – including criminal laws – on a whim! Today is a day for ACTION, and bold leadership. The Texas Legislature must immediately pass, and Governor Abbott must sign, legislation like HB911, which I filed in 2022 and warned at the time, that “Never ending emergency powers are antithetical to representative government and render people powerless. Legislative bodies allowing a single executive branch official to both write and enforce laws is the biggest threat to our constitutional system of divided government and should be opposed irrespective of which political party runs the executive branch.” My legislation would protect liberty from executive fiat by, among other things, taking the following actions: 1. Prohibit the Governor from suspending or modifying statutes 2. Sunset emergency orders in 30 days if the legislature does not ratify the order 3. Prohibit the governor from reissuing emergency orders that expired or the legislature rejected 4. Require emergency orders to be narrowly tailored 5. Subject emergency orders to expedited judicial review We have TEN WEEKS LEFT to protect Texas from near total Democrat rule. I encourage every elected Republican in Texas to join my demand for Gov. Abbott to call a special session. The future of liberty in America is literally on the line in Texas, and Texans deserve leadership that acts accordingly. @GregAbbott_TX — Brian Harrison (@brianeharrison) November 4, 2026

Hinojosa’s victory made her the first Latina governor in Texas. During the campaign, she pledged to declare “a high-cost emergency” and introduce executive orders halting state gas and diesel taxes and freezing residential electricity rates, according to the Texas Tribune.

The Texas Disaster Act of 1975 allows the governor to declare a state of disaster and exercise certain emergency powers, including suspending specific regulatory requirements. Disaster declarations must be renewed after 30 days and may be terminated by the Legislature at any time.

Texas governors also may sign or veto legislation passed by state lawmakers, serve as commander in chief of the state’s military forces and call special legislative sessions for specific purposes, according to Abbott’s office.

Harrison said Thursday that his demand “has REALLY triggered low-IQ leftists across America.” He added that he did not “recall them cussing and calling me every name in the book when I filed the same legislation 4 years ago... right after ABBOTT was re-elected!!”

My demand to limit Texas Governor's emergency powers has REALLY triggered low-IQ leftists across America!

Funny.... I don't recall them cussing and calling me every name in the book when I filed the same legislation 4 years ago... right after ABBOTT was re-elected!! — Brian Harrison (@brianeharrison) November 5, 2026

Hinojosa wrote Wednesday on X that her administration would “lead with a politics of courage, not convenience.”

We will lead with a politics of courage, not convenience. https://t.co/CeLU7AY7n4

— Gina Hinojosa (@GinaHinojosaTX) November 5, 2026

Democrats scored another major Texas victory Tuesday when James Talarico defeated Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in the race for the U.S. Senate. Some Republican Texas state senators have since pledged to “hold the line” against Democratic policy goals, The Houston Chronicle reported.

President Donald Trump blasted Abbott after the defeat, arguing on Truth Social that the governor lost because he became a “RINO,” an acronym meaning “Republican in name only.”

“If Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, hadn’t become a RINO in the last six months of his Political Life, he wouldn’t have lost,” Trump wrote. “He went back to his original formula, and it wasn’t pretty!”

After conceding Tuesday, Abbott told supporters that he had informed Hinojosa he “would assist her and her team in a period of transition,” according to The Hill. Hinojosa is scheduled to take office in January 2027.

Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said he had warned for weeks that Republicans faced a real risk of losing everything in Texas. He noted that the state had not elected a Democratic governor since 1994 or a Democratic senator since 1993.

“Far too few believed that was possible,” Cruz wrote Wednesday on X. “I am very, very sorry that it came to pass.”

“Now we’ll have both,” Cruz added, capturing the scale of a Texas defeat that has Republicans scrambling to use their remaining weeks of control before Hinojosa assumes power.

History was made last night.

For months, we were saying that 2026 was the most consequential midterm election of our lifetimes. Unfortunately, we were right. Sometimes history is to be celebrated; other times, it is to be mourned. Always, it must be reckoned with. 2026 was not simply a blue wave; it was a blue tsunami. It was an ass kicking. It was not simply a bad 2006 midterm election. It was a Watergate-level repudiation. What happened, and why? What are the consequences, and where on earth do we go from here? When all the votes were counted, the problem wasn’t turnout. Instead, our voters, Republicans, Libertarians, Independents, showed up and voted, and rejected our candidates, voting Democrat instead. We’ve lost the House. We’ve lost the Senate. When all is said and done, we will have lost eight to 10 Senate seats. We lost in historically red states, like South Carolina and North Carolina, Kansas and Iowa. We lost in purple states, like Michigan, and New Hampshire, and Georgia. And we just barely won by just a single point in bright red states like Florida and Louisiana, and then there’s Texas. Nowhere are the consequences of this election greater than Texas. In the Lone Star State, we lost every single statewide election. For weeks, I had been publicly warning on this podcast that we were in very real danger of losing everything in Texas. Far too few believed that was possible. I am very, very sorry that it came to pass. Texas has not had a Democrat governor since 1994. We haven’t had a Democrat senator since 1993. Now we’ll have both. Why were the results so overwhelming? Pundits and analysts will break down the results for weeks or months or even years to come, but several things are already evident today. Years ago, the very best political advice I ever got was from Heidi. She said, “It’s not about you. It’s about them. It’s about their kids, their families, their hopes, their dreams, their futures.” Too many politicians forget that. Take the state of Kansas, for example, a state that has not elected a Democrat senator since 1932. It just did. Here’s what exit polling showed were the top issues in Kansas. Number one, cost of living, energy, and groceries. That was listed as number one by 30.6 percent of voters. Corruption. Number two, 18.5%. The cost of the Iran war, 10.1%. The candidates are terrible, 7.9%. The Canada trade war, 7.6%. The GOP didn’t do enough to support Trump, 6.6%. Republicans didn’t pass the Save America Act, 5.6%. Trump’s focus on monuments, 5.5%, and data centers and AI, 3.8%. The top issue, cost of living, is very real. Too many in politics dismissed it. They didn’t understand. They pointed to the macro numbers showing the stock markets soaring, median income at record highs, and poverty at record lows. Those data are true, but they don’t tell all of the story. Here are some stats that are a lot more real and personal. Spam, Hormel’s processed meat substitute, broke record sales, selling 113 million cans last year. That is nearly as much spam as was sold during the entirety of World War II. 29 percent of Americans have used buy now, pay later for groceries this year. That’s double the share just two years ago. In August, banks repossessed 42% more homes than they did last year. In 2024, car repossessions topped 2.3 million, above the 2009 peak in the middle of the Great Financial Crisis. In 2025, 6% of 401k holders took hardship withdrawals, paying penalties. That is a record, and triple the norm. And here’s one that’s really stunning. Americans made more than 75 million paid plasma donations in 2026. That’s another record. That means 200,000 Americans every single day, with a needle in their arm, just to pay for groceries. That is very real pain from real Americans, and too many Republican politicians seem like they didn’t understand or they didn’t care. Food is too high, gas is too high, diesel is too high, insurance is too high, life is too high. Tariffs have made everything too expensive, and the Iran war has dragged on too long. It should have been brief, decisive, and over. It needs to end, and we should never, under any circumstances, give the Ayatollah billions of dollars. There’s a very real economic disconnect. Our K-shaped economy is a yawning divide. Last year, we saw the world’s very first trillionaire, a modern-day Thomas Edison, at the very same time that millions were struggling to feed their families. Data centers being constructed were turning billionaires into centibillionaires, while simultaneously the average American’s electricity bill went up 30% in the last five years. Understandably, people were pissed off, and elected Republicans didn’t do enough to address their very real pain. So, what do we do now? We need to listen and respond. We need to champion economic policies that make a real difference in working people’s lives, and we need to deal with the consequences. Texas is blue. That is a hard sentence to utter. But Texas, today at least, is blue. As we sit here today, I am the only statewide elected Republican who remains in Texas. That’s not something I ever thought I would say. We can be certain that the Democrats in Austin and in Washington will overshoot. In Texas, they will try to raise taxes dramatically. They may even try to adopt a state income tax, or even a California wealth tax. They will try to shut down the energy industry, destroying jobs across our state. They will embrace the radical transgender agenda. They will persecute those they perceive to be enemies, especially Elon Musk. And in Washington, they will attack Trump every single day, constantly. Impeachment hearings, subpoenas, his family, cabinet members, business leaders, open persecution, and nonstop retaliation. Make no mistake. Nationally, the radicals are in charge. The communists and the Islamists who have taken over the Democrat Party have now taken over the United States Congress. They will be unleashed. Sadly, that means many Americans will be hurt. Texans will be hurt. Their assault on business will make Texas a much less attractive place to start or grow a small business. Texas will become more like California if they succeed in halting all new investment into AI. The economic results will be dramatic. Over $700 billion in new projects are scheduled to start in the next year. If the Democrats shut them all down, our country will very likely go into a recession. That will suit the Democrats just fine. They’ll just blame it all on Donald Trump. In the next two years, we need to do two things. One, fight the madness. I will work with Democrats when they’re willing to be reasonable. Last night, I called James Talarico. I congratulated him on his very impressive victory. It was a pleasant conversation, and I told him that I looked forward to working with him to try to benefit Texas. So, if there are things like flood relief for the Hill Country, or trying to get the space academy to Texas, he and I will work together. But if the newly elected radicals push policies that hurt Texas, raising taxes, destroying jobs, opening the border, releasing violent criminals, threatening our children, undermining our constitutional rights, I will fight with all of my strength to defend Texas and to defend the Constitution. And number two, we need to rebuild, getting behind policies that directly benefit the constituents we lost. There’s a complicated story, no doubt, of what happened on Election Day, but as I see it, the key constituencies we lost were blue-collar voters, what had rightly become the core base of our party, Evangelical Christians, who didn’t show up with the same numbers and fervor as prior elections, farmers and ranchers. Tragically, we alienated rural America. Young people, who excitedly had voted Republican in 2024, and who shifted hard blue this cycle. And of course, Hispanics. For Hispanics, there’s a strong overlap with young people and blue-collar workers. In 2024, just two years ago, I was proud to carry Hispanics statewide in Texas by six points, and we swung the Rio Grande Valley red for the first time in a century. It can be done, but in this election, those Hispanic voters overwhelmingly went back Democrat. We have got to turn that around. And for young people, we need to be the party of the future. We need to champion policies that expand their future. Our two single biggest legislative accomplishments of the past two years, Trump Accounts and the school choice tax credit, which will unleash tens of billions of dollars in new scholarships for kids, are generationally powerful. I was proud to author both of those transformational policies, and yet too few candidates all across the country ran on that record. Too few voters were even aware of what we’d accomplished for their kids and their future. But we need to build. We need to expand to continue creating a new investor class for hundreds of millions of Americans, help everyone, every American, become an owner, to have real skin in the game, to create new generations of capitalists ready to reject socialism. People voted as they did because they were angry. Ironically, the Democrats that they elected are going to advance policies that will make affordability worse. The Democrats want gas prices higher. They want to ban gasoline engines altogether. Their extreme environmental mandates will drive up food prices and the prices of everything else. But hear me now: we will bring Texas back. I am filled with hope and optimism. Texas will be red again. We have not suddenly become a bunch of tofu-eating, gun-banning, tutu-wearing pinko commie liberals. That ain’t us. Texas is still Texas. We will rebuild as a true blue-collar party, not by embracing socialism, but by being real free-market conservatives. The way we built the Texas economic miracle in the first place, and we will build and rebuild America as well. When the zealots overreach, and they will, we will stand ready to lead in the direction of freedom, of prosperity, of safety, and security, and common sense. We will return to a new dawn of freedom in America. It is dark right now, but it is always darkest before the dawn, and morning is coming. That is my fervent prayer, and that is my commitment to you. — Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) November 4, 2026

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