TEXAS, USA — Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, was elected Texas House speaker Tuesday, shortly after the 89th Texas Legislative session started.
Burrow was selected as the next Texas House Speaker over Reps. David Cook, R-Mansfield and Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos, D-Dallas. Ramos was eliminated in the first runoff.
As speaker, Burrows will be tasked with appointing lawmakers to legislative committees and selecting who will serve as each committee’s chair. He replaces his ally Dade Phelan, who served as the speaker of the Texas House from 2021 through December 2024.
Burrows is an attorney from Lubbock, was first elected to the Texas House in 2014, and has previously chaired the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, which handles bills related to taxes.
Recently, Burrows served as chair of the Investigative Committee on the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde in 2022 and authored House Bill 3, a school safety bill that included the requirement of an armed security person at schools in Texas.
During the 2023 legislative session, Burrows authored a bill known as the Texas Regulatory Consistency Act, which limited how cities and counties could govern, preventing cities and counties from passing measures stronger than those at the state level on a range of policies. The bill was derided by Democrats and other critics as the “Death Star” bill.
As our content partners at the Texas Tribune reported at the time, Burrows was also the subject of controversy in 2019 after conservative activist Michael Quinn Sullivan accused him and then-House speaker Dennis Bonnen of trying to offer Sullivan media credentials for his organization in exchange for politically targeting a list of fellow GOP members in the 2020 primary elections.
The allegations sparked an investigation by the Texas Rangers and Burrows’ resignation as the Texas House GOP caucus chair in August of 2019, the Texas Tribune reported.
Watch Burrow’s full speech below