Back to the Hill: What to Expect From the State Legislature in 2026

From immigration enforcement to voucher expansion, the Republican supermajority is pushing for Tennessee to be the nation’s conservative leader

The 2026 session of the 114th Tennessee General Assembly had been gaveled in for little more than a week when fears of a looming winter storm led both the state House and the state Senate to cancel much of their planned business for the final week of January. Even so, Tennessee’s Republican supermajority had already made their priorities clear.

So what’s top-of-mind for the GOP, whose party members outnumber the Democrats more than 3-to-1 in both chambers of the legislature? For starters, it’s likely that they’ll attempt to expand Gov. Bill Lee’s school-voucher program, the Education Freedom Scholarship Act. Republicans have also shown that they want to impose new penalties and expand law enforcement powers related to immigration, with a few dozen immigration-related pieces of legislation already filed. Meanwhile, the culture war rages on, with state Rep. Gino Bulso (R-Brentwood) having filed a number of bills that target the state’s LGBTQ community — not to mention a couple of pieces of legislation named for recently assassinated right-wing firebrand Charlie Kirk.

Technically, the Tennessee Constitution’s sole requirement of the state’s two legislative chambers is that they balance the government’s annual budget, so amid all the customary bickering and bureaucracy, they’ll more than likely get that done. We can expect to see Republicans’ budgetary priorities laid out when Gov. Lee delivers his State of the State address on Feb. 2 — the final State of the State from the term-limited governor.

In this week’s issue, we outline what Tennesseans can expect to see from the Tennessee General Assembly in 2026, from leadership jockeying and culture-war squabbling to budgetary allocations and health care legislation. Read on for more. —D. PATRICK RODGERS, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF