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This surge of polarizing legislation is being driven largely by a combination of confidence and fear. Many observers believe that Republican legislators feel emboldened after Democrats in the 2020 election failed to record the state legislative gains they expected. In 2018, as part of the recoil from Trump, Democrats made significant gains in state legislatures, winning control of six legislative chambers and netting more than 300 seats nationwide, many in the white-collar suburbs of major metro areas. But despite unprecedented investment in local races, and Bidens win at the presidential level, the party did not flip any additional chambers last year; Republicans, on net, gained back about half as many seats as they had lost two years earlier and came out of the election with control of both legislative chambers in 30 states, compared with just 18 for Democrats (with one additional state divided and Nebraska officially nonpartisan).

Democrats failure at the state level in 2020 has encouraged GOP legislators to pursue a more aggressive agenda, many observers say. The dynamic is perhaps most visible in Texas. After Democrats won several suburban seats and narrowed the GOP advantage in the Texas State House in 2018, the diminished Republican majority largely muted social issues and focused on bread-and-butter concerns, such as education, during the 2019 session. The GOPs focus shifted back toward cultural issues after Democrats failed to make the further gains both sides anticipated in November. All the expectations in Texas just didnt happen, so the Republican Party emerged with a kind of renewed confidence, says James Henson, who directs the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.

Republicans confidence, Henson adds, was also bolstered by a practical consequence of their 2020 success at holding both of Texass legislative chambers: In that state, as in virtually all of the states turning right this year, Republicans will control the decennial redistricting process. The ability to draw districts that favor them next year reduces their concern about a general-election backlash against their moves even in swing suburban areas. Carisa Lopez, the political director of the Texas Freedom Network, which works to organize young people there, told me, For progressive organizations [Republicans] have been coming at us from all angles, and it has been exhausting. They have done almost everything they can.

David A. Graham: The frightening new Republican consensus

GOP legislators appear to be operating more out of fear that Trumps base of non-college-educated, rural, and evangelical white voters will punish them in primaries if they fail to pursue maximum confrontation against Democrats and liberal constituencies, particularly on issues revolving around culture and race. Very few of the districts are competitive [in a general election], so all they are worried about is being primaried, says John Geer, a political-science professor at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, one of the states that have advanced the most aggressive conservative agenda this year. Glenn Smith, a longtime Democratic operative in Texas, notes that the states militantly conservative Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has pushed legislators toward his priorities this year in part by persuading them that any moderation risks infuriating an aggrieved Trump base who feels that the election was stolen from them, are fired up, and love the red meat on every issue.

Read more:
How GOP State Legislatures Are Remaking the Country - The Atlantic