When Senate President Pro Tempore Lonnie Paxton held Wednesday morning’s roll call open for seven minutes, suddenly banged the gavel and declared he did not see enough senators to constitute a quorum, it caught numerous members off guard.
The procedural move — a strategic way to block dozens of bills facing a Thursday deadline — underscored the year’s tensions and turmoil in the Oklahoma Legislature’s upper chamber.
“Pursuant to Rule 8-2 B2, the presiding officer does not see a quorum. When the clerk’s desk is clear, the Senate stands adjourned to a call of the chair,” Paxton (R-Tuttle) said at 9:34 a.m.
While Paxton claimed he could not find the 25 senators needed for a quorum of the 48-member body, NonDoc verified the presence of at least 34 senators throughout the Capitol within an hour of his abrupt adjournment.
“I was in the front of the chamber, and then they said they couldn’t get a quorum, and that’s all I know about it,” said Sen. Tom Woods (R-Westville). “I don’t know if they’re calling senators right now or not or seeing where everybody is, but, you know, it ain’t the first time that people’s walked a vote.”
Senate Appropriations and Budget Committee Chairman Chuck Hall also seemed bewildered.
“I got here at 9:45, and the next thing I know we’ve adjourned. I don’t know,” said Hall (R-Perry). “I mean, I was having a meeting, looked at the clock, and the next thing I know we’re done.”
In a press conference Wednesday afternoon, Sen. Shane Jett (R-Shawnee) characterized Paxton’s action as a “dereliction of duty” and “shenanigans.”
“Today, he and his leadership team made a coordinated effort to tell some of the senators — not all of them — to not come to the floor and release an empty agenda that led others to come expecting to work,” said Jett, chairman of the Legislature’s Freedom Caucus. “Then he adjourned the session claiming there was not a quorum, even though more than enough senators were in the building. (…) The Senate was in session for less than nine seconds. The Senate general order has over 200 bills ready to be heard.”
In his own press conference, Paxton defended his decision to gavel in and out as procedural in nature and justified in terms of having already heard every House bill that deserved consideration.
“You noticed yesterday we actually did a revised agenda at the end of the day and added seven or eight more bills. That was the ones that our floor team had decided, the ones that we needed to finish. And the floor team came to me and said, as far as they’re concerned, they have got the work done that we needed to finish up on,” Paxton said. “We worked hard last week, and that’s why we were having dinner (up here) I think at least two nights last week. We were up here, working late, getting out of here well after dark to do that. So no conspiracies. Nothing crazy’s going on. It’s just today was simply a day — we needed to have a legislative day for the purpose of having the clerk’s desk open.”
When the Senate adjourned just before 4 p.m. Tuesday, Paxton gave no indication it would spell the end of House bill consideration prior to Thursday’s deadline for measures to be heard on the floor opposite their chamber of origin. Instead, he blamed a City of Oklahoma City infrastructure issue that had left the Capitol without water.
“Due to the fact that the water in the building is off and the entire part of town is off, we need to get out of this building,” Paxton said Tuesday.
But according to House Speaker Kyle Hilbert, Paxton told him soon thereafter he had decided not to hear bills Wednesday or Thursday — a choice contrary to his initial commitment days prior.
“Yesterday, late in the afternoon, (Paxton) came by to inform me they made the decision for what they ultimately did today,” Hilbert (R-Bristow) said in his own press conference Wednesday. “Going and deciding later that they were going to not hear House bills, I would have preferred that we had that conversation before a decision had already been made, but that was the decision that they made.”
While Paxton told Hilbert of his plans, several senators said Wednesday morning they had no idea what was coming.
“I’m tired of the games, whatever they’re playing. And I don’t know who’s playing them,” said Assistant Majority Whip Roland Pederson (R-Burlington). “I said all along, everything is going to run on track until the wheels come off, and I think yesterday, the wheels came off.”
Pederson said he did not know what derailed the proverbial train.
“I’m part of leadership, but I don’t really know what goes on behind the scenes,” he said.
Sen. Bill Coleman (R-Ponca City) chose his words carefully when asked how he felt about not hearing bills Wednesday.
“Things were getting strange,” Coleman said. “The budget’s passed and things get strange, and they were getting as strange as I’ve ever seen them.”
Despite the comments from his caucus members, Paxton insisted there was nothing controversial about his decision, nor was it intended to be “adversarial” to the House — and he swore he had nothing to do with Tuesday’s water woes.
“I know you’re looking for controversy,” Paxton said. “It is not there.”
Sen. Jerry Alvord said he trusts his leadership’s reasoning to cut proceedings short.
“It was a little bit of a surprise to us, a little bit of a surprise to me. But from what I know and what I’ve seen (…) what’s left on the agenda to the best of my knowledge, the state of Oklahoma will probably be fine if we don’t pass the rest of it until next year,” said Alvord (R-Wilson). “I think that our job here is to help Oklahomans progress and for us to stay out of their way. I think we want smaller government, so having fewer laws that are unnecessary is probably not a bad idea.”
Senate Majority Floor Leader Julie Daniels (R-Bartlesville) was more cheeky when asked about the decision Wednesday morning.
“We want to keep your life interesting,” she joked.
Some senators stuck around to gather signatures for conference committee reports and other commitments, such as Ken Nance Memorial Ice Cream Day and the spectacle of Hilbert’s fantasy football league punishment. But others, like Sen. Micheal Bergstrom (R-Big Cabin), headed home after learning they would not be in session.
“I’m going to the apartment right now,” said Bergstrom, who responded coyly when asked if he honestly thought there were not enough senators to constitute a quorum. “Well, apparently there wasn’t. The presiding officer made that decision.”
‘We should be staying here ’til the end of time’
While senators found themselves with extra time on their hands Wednesday, House members groused about gamesmanship in a year that saw a budget deal earlier than any year in recent history.
When the House convened at 10:30 a.m., Hilbert told his members to stay the course.
“I cannot speak for what will happen in the other chamber, but in consultation with the (House) floor leader last night, I made the decision — despite what the other chamber may or may not do at the end of the day — we’re going to take care of business,” Hilbert said. “We’ve got good policy before us to consider to make into law for the state of Oklahoma — maybe some bad policies, too, but we’ll talk about those as well. But ultimately, we have some work to do today.”
Hilbert received a loud ovation, including from several Democrats. Fueled by ice cream, lemonade, pizza, donuts and coffee, the House heard more than 120 bills and voted to override Gov. Kevin Stitt’s vetoes on seven measures. Members rejected Senate amendments on HB 3021 and HB 1728 to set up more negotiations next week, should the Senate be willing to play ball.
Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Julia Kirt (D-OKC) told media she did not think constituents would be happy about the upper chamber’s behavior.
“What I hear from my constituents and from across the state are people thinking that we don’t work hard enough, that we’re not up here really solving problems,” Kirt said. “So when they see us taking off early, I just think it’s a really bad sign that we’re not working on the things that they’re concerned about. We are cutting out early before even our deadlines, so there’s a whole lot of unfinished work sitting there. (…) I am concerned that we didn’t even really give a merit look at all the House bills.”
Kirt said her caucus members “didn’t get a whole lot of information” about Paxton’s plans for Wednesday.
“We always find a new way to make it more difficult than it should be,” she said. “I think that politics is dominating. I think we’re seeing a whole lot that’s around campaigns or fear of campaigns and trying to get back and campaign — worrying about primaries — so I am concerned that we haven’t put people first.”
On Monday, both chambers had passed HCR 1027 to declare the Legislature “will complete its work for the regular legislative session in a timely manner on Thursday, May 14, 2026, prior to the date required to be finally adjourned sine die.”
Jett debated against HCR 1027, saying senators were improperly in a rush to head home and focus on reelection campaigns.
“This is not about saving money so that you can get back to districts. This is very obviously what this is: This is an election year. People want to go back and knock on doors so they can hold onto their corner offices,” Jett said. “This is inappropriate. We should be staying here ’til the end of time so we can focus on the policy issues that we were elected to do for the people of Oklahoma.”
HCR 1027 passed the Senate 28-17. Freedom Caucus members voted against the measure, while Sen. Jo Anna Dossett (D-Tulsa) was the only Democrat to vote in favor of the early adjournment plan.
Paxton said in his press conference Wednesday he did not think constituents would be as unhappy as Kirt claimed.
“Most constituents are glad when we get out of the building and quit passing laws,” he said. “We’ve got our work done. There’s no need to stay here.”
Paxton also defended the peculiar optics of his final floor actions ahead of Wednesday’s abrupt adjournment. Before declaring the water outage as reason to depart Tuesday, he made motions to place his HB 4422 and HB 4423 on the Senate’s general order — something his leadership team had blocked Freedom Caucus members from doing April 28. The two bills would require the Oklahoma Department of Human Services and Oklahoma Health Care Authority to check the immigration statuses of SNAP, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Medicaid applicants in the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system before granting services.
Paxton had previously declined to move the measures — co-authored by Hilbert — out of committee owing to “pro-life” concerns that the unborn children of pregnant women might be denied food stamps or health care access. Nonetheless, he moved to make them eligible for Senate floor consideration at the end of Tuesday’s session.
“It came to my attention last week while I was out of the chamber for a funeral in my district, there was a couple of motions brought up returning to [a pair] of my bills,” Paxton said. “I agree with the fact those need to be moved out of committee to general order.”
On Wednesday, Paxton said he “just wanted to move them up the process so I can continue to work on them,” and he said “we’ll have time next week to do it” if a solution to his concerns can be found.
“When you start peeling that language back, the problems I’ve talked about here before, the issues I have are still there. But I wanted to bring it from the committee process to the general order — that does not put it on the floor, that’s just in general order — so if there is a solution that can be found, we have time to work on it,” Paxton said. “But once again, I will work with everybody that’s involved in this.”
While discussing the Senate’s options for next week, however, Paxton said “the only things that we will not take up are House bills that didn’t make deadline.” By a strict reading of Senate rules, that would include HB 4422 and HB 4423 despite Paxton’s decision to place them on general order to end session Tuesday.
“In our rules, there’s a deadline tomorrow, on Thursday — the seventh, that is,” Paxton said. “All House bills have to be out of the Senate chamber. All Senate bills have to be out of the House chamber. So that’s our deadline when all that happens. The exception to those are things like joint conference committee reports that are still working their way back and forth. You know (…) president pro tempore-speaker bills. There’s certain things that avoid those deadlines. The administrative rules is one of those things, and so those things are still in the mix.”
One of the so-called “speaker-pro tempore” bills the Senate could still hear next week would prevent CompSource from transitioning from a mutual company to a stock company. Paxton said he would take the next few days to study the language of SB 2185, which he co-authored with Hilbert and revealed last week.
“That’s a very complex issue, and I’m still trying to figure it out. We said we’d get the bill filed so you all could see it as quick as you could. You saw that about a day after I knew it was going on,” Paxton said. “I said, ‘Go ahead and get a bill there so people can start talking about it.’ And they are, and I still don’t understand it totally.”
Paxton also said that another hot topic — the proposed “TSET reset” pushed by House Appropriations and Budget Chairman Trey Caldwell (R-Lawton) — is not likely to receive a Senate hearing, despite earlier statements that he intended to pass his amended version of it back to the House for further negotiations.
“TSET is something we could not get support in the Senate to carry on,” Paxton said. “I don’t see that going anywhere.”
At one point in the press conference, Paxton noted that a controversial proposal from last year — SB 2‘s proposed property setbacks for wind turbines — could be revived next week.
“That is in conference committee. That’s a big deal to some parts of the state, but it is also very complex,” Paxton said. “And no matter where you’re at, there’s going to be controversy on both sides of it, and so that’s something we’re trying to work through. It’s still out there. That’s something that if we could come to an agreement over the next week, we’ll try to get that one heard before session’s over.”
Perhaps to the surprise of many, a new version of SB 2 was revealed Wednesday.
Hilbert: ‘Out of the lemons that session has given us, we’re going to make lemonade’
After his press conference Wednesday, Hilbert set up a small table in the fourth-floor rotunda and served lemonade to all takers as part of his fantasy football league’s last-place punishment. After finishing in the cellar for the second time in three years, Hilbert said he stayed up squeezing lemons to make lemonade until 11:30 p.m., a visual he turned into a metaphor about the day’s drama.
“Ultimately, we’re going to govern the House, and we’re going to try to get as many bills across the finish line as we can,” Hilbert told media, declining to characterize the Senate’s decision to stop hearing House bills as a broken agreement. “It’s already happened and (you) can’t change the past. So out of the lemons that session has given us, we’re going to make lemonade.”
Hilbert, who presided over much of the House’s late-night escapade, said he chose not to embark upon an eye-for-an-eye scenario in which his chamber would stop hearing Senate bills until the Senate took up House bills again.
“Let’s face it, it would be easy to get into a tit-for-tat and say, ‘Oh, they’re not hearing bills with an H in front of it. We should never hear bills with an S in front.’ I don’t want to get into that, because ultimately, if it’s good policy, it’s good policy,” Hilbert said. “The people of Oklahoma don’t know, nor do they care, if a bill has an S in front of it or an H in front of it. So if it’s good policy, we should pass it, and if it’s not, we shouldn’t.”
But on Wednesday, the House passed HCR 1028, which would extend the cross-chamber bill deadline until next week.
“We understand the Senate plans to come in next Wednesday and next Thursday and take out more work, and so we would anticipate that they would pass the bills that they told us they were going to hear,” Hilbert said. “So we want to make sure they have that opportunity to come in and pass important legislation.”
If HCR 1028 is passed by the Senate, one bill he hopes his counterparts will hear is HB 4421, also known as Leo’s Law, which would require fentanyl testing in child welfare cases after three-year-old Leo Towe died of a fentanyl overdose in 2024.
Another bill intended to protect children is HB 4227, which would eliminate the statute of limitations for those reporting child sexual abuse and prohibit the signing of non-disclosure agreements in such cases. HB 4227 passed the House and the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously, but it was among the 200 bills left in limbo by Paxton’s decision Wednesday.
During the Freedom Caucus press conference, Sen. Kendal Sacchieri (R-Blanchard) called HB 4227 “a wonderful bill” and expressed frustration with it not receiving a hearing.
“I know where that is driven from. It needs to be heard, and to not even have an answer from leadership as to why it’s not going to get (a hearing) is unacceptable,” Sacchieri said. “Most of us have hit that road block when we do go visit with our leadership. That’s the most frustrating part, I think, for myself. You do go work your bill, and you’re either dismissed or you’re just not given an answer, and after so many days of no answer, you’re left with, ‘Well, what else can I do for my district to get things moving?'”
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Kirt said she supports HB 4227’s proposal to eliminate the statute of limitations on child sex crimes and said Daniels, the Senate floor leader, had not provided her a reason for it stalling.
“I do think there are a lot of folks who are scared of those kinds of measures — what might come up from the past,” Kirt said. “I don’t know the exact reasons why the floor leader chose not hear it, but I think there are a lot of people who don’t want that look back.”
Paxton said the decision on HB 4227’s fate was particularly in the hands of Daniels, Assistant Floor Leader Todd Gollihare (R-Sapulpa) and Assistant Floor Leader Brent Howard (R-Altus), who wore a hat emblazoned with “sine die” during the day’s ice cream social.
“I have a floor team that was reviewing that. The floor team includes a couple of lawyers, or maybe three lawyers, on that team,” Paxton said. “I don’t know why they haven’t brought that forward. I know we did talk, but I’ve not yet had time to look at the details of the bill. They told me that they have reviewed everything, and they heard everything as of yesterday that they thought we should hear.”
As Daniels chatted with others over ice cream in the rotunda, she again declined to discuss her reasons for not hearing HB 4227, although she did leave the door open for its consideration next week.
“It could happen,” Daniels said. “It really could.”
During the Freedom Caucus press conference, Sen. Dana Prieto said a motion to bring up HB 4227 was being planned before Paxton declared no quorum present Wednesday. He also suggested the Senate is not being run honestly.
“I have a business doing search engine marketing for a living, but I’ve been placed on the ag committee. But after being here for four years, I have understood a lot about bull,” said Prieto (R-Tulsa). “I’ve been watching some of the pro temp’s press conferences recently, and I’m just really surprised his pants aren’t on fire.”
Similarly to Prieto’s comments insinuating Paxton was dishonest, Sen. Dusty Deevers (R-Elgin) criticized Paxton’s argument that the empty agenda posted late Tuesday night should have alerted senators that they were done hearing legislation.
“These agendas change. They can change in a matter of just moments,” Deevers said. “Why do you think that that agenda was made and that so many of us showed up? About 34 senators were here. We had plenty for a quorum. But there was a decision made that there wasn’t a quorum. Why did that happen?”
Calling it “politics in action,” Kirt weighed in on the attempted strategies to get legislation heard — or prevent it from reaching the floor.
“The Freedom Caucus is trying to use the rules to their benefit to bring things up that they want to have heard. So of course the majority is going to use the rules to their benefit as well, and I think this is the challenge,” Kirt said. “You’ve got a little bit of gamesmanship instead of it being about the substance of the issues, and that’s unfortunate.”
