Estimated Time to Read: 10 minutes

Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s (R) newly released 2026 Report to the People of Texas serves as both a retrospective on the 89th Legislative Session (2025) and a roadmap for the policy priorities likely to dominate Texas politics heading into 2027. The report celebrates what the governor describes as one of the “most consequential” legislative sessions in Texas history, emphasizing school choice, economic growth, border security, public safety, energy investment, water infrastructure, and record property tax relief.

Politically, the document is designed to reinforce Abbott’s long-standing message that Texas remains the nation’s economic powerhouse because of low taxes, conservative governance, and aggressive economic development policies. Yet beneath the celebratory tone lies a broader policy debate that conservatives, libertarians, and fiscal hawks will continue grappling with in the years ahead.

In the release of the report, Abbott said the following:

The central question is no longer whether Texas is growing. It clearly is. The real question is whether Texas can preserve liberty, constitutional protections, and limited government while simultaneously embracing large-scale government-directed investment programs, corporate subsidies, expanded law enforcement infrastructure, and record state spending.

School Choice Takes Center Stage

The single most prominent policy achievement highlighted throughout the report is the passage of Texas’s Education Savings Account (ESA) program through Senate Bill 2. Abbott repeatedly frames school choice as a transformational moment for Texas families and describes the program as “the largest day-one school choice program in the nation.”

The report celebrates a $1 billion ESA program while also boasting of record public education spending totaling $90 billion. That combination reflects the fundamental tension at the center of the Texas education debate.

Texas lawmakers attempted what was self-described as the “Texas Two-Step,” creating a limited school choice program while simultaneously dramatically increasing spending on the existing public education system through House Bill 2. The report itself openly celebrates both initiatives as complementary successes.

Supporters argue that this approach was politically necessary to pass school choice. Critics, including Texas Policy Research (TPR), argue it weakens the very market competition that universal school choice is supposed to create.

True universal school choice requires money following the student fully and consistently. When the government dramatically increases funding for the incumbent monopoly at the same time it launches a limited ESA program, the state risks preserving the existing bureaucracy instead of fostering genuine competition. What’s worse is that now Texas has a bifurcated education system where even more taxpayer money is being spent.

The report also highlights merit-based teacher pay expansion through the Teacher Incentive Allotment program. Merit pay is one of the stronger policy concepts included in the education section because it moves away from purely seniority-driven compensation systems and rewards outcomes and innovation.

Still, the broader education story of the 89th Legislature was not government shrinking. It was government was spending more on both systems simultaneously.

Economic Growth and Corporate Welfare

The report heavily emphasizes Texas’ economic dominance, citing rankings such as “Best State for Business,” “Best Business Climate,” and “Top State for Business Expansion Projects.” Much of this success is real and undeniable.

Texas continues to benefit from relatively low taxes, lighter regulation than many competitor states, a growing labor force, affordable energy, and population migration from higher-tax states. Those structural advantages matter far more than any individual incentive package.

However, the report also openly celebrates billions in taxpayer-backed economic incentive programs. The Texas Enterprise Fund, Texas Semiconductor Innovation Fund, Texas CHIPS initiatives, and the Texas Jobs, Energy, Technology and Innovation (JETI) program are all promoted as major victories.

The report touts billions in projected capital investment connected to these programs, but economic growth should not come from government officials attempting to pick winners and losers.

Free enterprise works best when markets allocate capital, not politicians, bureaucrats, or politically connected industries. Government subsidy programs inevitably distort investment decisions, favor larger corporations over smaller competitors, and create unequal treatment under the law. The report’s celebration of programs like JETI is especially notable because those incentives often shift tax burdens onto smaller businesses and homeowners while offering preferential treatment to massive corporations.

Texas succeeds because entrepreneurs and workers create prosperity, not because government negotiates incentive deals behind closed doors.

The state’s long-term economic strength depends on maintaining a predictable legal environment, low taxes, reliable infrastructure, and regulatory restraint. The more Texas moves toward politically managed industrial policy, the more it risks undermining the free market environment that created its success in the first place.

Record Spending and Bigger Government

One of the clearest themes throughout the report is the normalization of massive state spending.

The report celebrates $20 billion for water infrastructure, $10 billion for the Texas Energy Fund, $51 billion in property tax relief, $90 billion in public education spending, $3.35 billion in border security spending, hundreds of millions in film incentives, and billions in semiconductor incentives and economic development tools.

The issue is not whether some of these priorities are important.

Water infrastructure matters. Energy reliability matters. Border security matters.

The concern is whether every challenge facing Texas now defaults to a government spending solution.

Texas conservatives historically distinguished themselves from states like California and New York by emphasizing restrained government growth and skepticism toward centralized economic planning. Yet the report repeatedly celebrates the expansion of state-directed programs, grant systems, incentive structures, and new agencies.

The report specifically praises the creation of the Texas Cyber Command, the Homeland Security Division at the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), the Texas Advanced Nuclear Energy Office (TANEO), the Texas Regulatory Efficiency Office (TREO), and multiple new grant programs and commissions.

Some of these initiatives may prove useful, but government bureaucracies rarely shrink once created.

Texas now faces a fundamental crossroads. Can the state continue to claim the mantle of limited government while overseeing an increasingly expansive network of economic planning, subsidy distribution, surveillance infrastructure, and state-directed development?

That debate will likely intensify heading into the 2027 legislative session.

Public Safety and Expanding State Power

The report repeatedly frames public safety as a defining achievement of the session, particularly around bail reform, anti-gang enforcement, border operations, and law enforcement funding.

Many Texans understandably support stronger responses to violent crime and organized criminal activity. However, the report also highlights a significant expansion of surveillance infrastructure and state enforcement capabilities.

The Public Safety Office distributed more than $1 billion in grants during the biennium, including funding for surveillance systems, body cameras, intelligence systems, cybersecurity infrastructure, anti-gang centers, and expanded border operations.

The report openly praises the expansion of intelligence-sharing and interagency coordination programs.

The challenge for constitutional conservatives is ensuring that legitimate public safety objectives do not become justification for endless growth in surveillance powers or erosion of civil liberties. Public safety matters, but constitutional protections matter too.

Texas cannot simultaneously champion liberty while ignoring concerns about due process, warrant protections, privacy rights, or the long-term implications of expanded government surveillance infrastructure. The growth of state power should always be approached cautiously, even when politically popular.

Border Security and Constitutional Concerns

Border security remains one of the dominant themes of the report, particularly Abbott’s continued defense of Operation Lone Star (OLS).

The report emphasizes more than 536,900 illegal immigrant apprehensions, over 61,700 criminal arrests, nearly 50,000 felony charges, massive fentanyl seizures, and billions spent on border enforcement operations. The governor also celebrates the creation of a new Homeland Security Division within DPS and closer cooperation with the Trump Administration.

There is little question that the federal government’s failure to maintain operational control of the southern border forced Texas into an increasingly aggressive enforcement posture over the past several years. Still, conservatives should not lose sight of constitutional limits simply because the policy goals are popular.

A secure border and constitutional governance are not mutually exclusive. Texas can aggressively target cartel activity, human trafficking, and cross-border crime while still respecting due process protections, private property rights, and Fourth Amendment safeguards.

The long-term danger is allowing emergency-style governance to become permanent governance. Once extraordinary enforcement powers become normalized, they rarely disappear.

Camp Safety and Government Expansion

The report dedicates significant attention to the devastating 2025 Hill Country floods and the subsequent special session focused on youth camp safety. Abbott frames the resulting legislation as a moral response to tragedy, particularly after the deaths connected to Camp Mystic.

The report celebrates new emergency planning mandates, expanded inspections, licensing restrictions, floodplain prohibitions, and state enforcement authority over camps and recreational facilities.

The emotional context surrounding the legislation is undeniable and deeply tragic, but the broader policy conversation matters too.

One recurring concern raised throughout the legislative debate was whether lawmakers responded to a tragedy with overly broad regulations that may burden camps, nonprofits, churches, and rural facilities that were not responsible for the disaster itself. That debate has only intensified recently as camps and operators raise concerns about compliance costs and operational uncertainty.

Good policy requires balancing safety with proportionality. In moments of crisis, legislatures often move quickly toward broad mandates and centralized oversight. Texas lawmakers will likely continue revisiting these policies as implementation challenges emerge.

A More Assertive Texas Government

The clearest takeaway from Abbott’s 2026 Report to the People is that the Texas government is becoming more active, more interventionist, and more expansive across nearly every policy domain. The report celebrates aggressive state involvement in economic development, education, energy planning, cybersecurity, border operations, healthcare initiatives, public safety systems, workforce development, infrastructure financing, and media production subsidies.

Supporters view this as effective conservative governance using state power to strengthen Texas. Critics increasingly worry that Texas is drifting toward a version of conservatism that embraces government growth so long as the objectives are politically aligned.

The report is politically effective because it presents virtually every expansion of state activity as necessary, strategic, and beneficial, but the deeper philosophical question remains unresolved.

How much government growth is compatible with limited government?

That question will define many of Texas’s biggest political fights moving forward.

Final Thoughts

Governor Abbott’s 2026 Report to the People succeeds in accomplishing its political objective. It presents Texas as economically dominant, culturally confident, and aggressively assertive in pursuing conservative policy priorities. The report reflects genuine achievements, including strong economic growth, continued business expansion, major infrastructure investments, school choice legislation, border enforcement coordination, and public safety initiatives.

But it also reflects a growing philosophical tension inside Texas conservatism itself.

Can Texas remain the nation’s model for limited government while embracing record spending, expanding bureaucracy, corporate subsidies, aggressive enforcement systems, and government-directed economic investment?

That debate is far from settled, and it may ultimately define the future of Texas politics more than any individual legislative victory celebrated in the report itself.

---