The Republican National Committee (RNC) will host its first-ever midterm convention next week in Dallas. 

Held at American Airlines Center, the convention has a jam-packed schedule of topics and speakers, with both President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance slated to give keynote addresses. The convention will feature over 100 speakers across its two-day schedule. 

GOP lawmakers and other speakers will talk about “Border Security & Honor,” which the agenda highlights as “aggressively deporting criminal offenders and honoring those who defend the homeland.” 

The convention will run from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. on both Wednesday, Sept. 9, and Thursday, Sept. 10. 

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We analyzed what Observer news stories our audience read most this year and compared it with topics on the agenda. Here’s a breakdown of what to expect: 

Immigration 

According to data from the Deportation Data Project, over 45,000 people were detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement last month. July’s numbers are the highest since Trump returned to office last January. Of these 45,000 people, over 2,700 were in Dallas. 

During his campaign, Trump said the deportation focus was on “the worst of the worst,” as in people in the United States without authorization who had been convicted or accused of violent crimes. However, the data analyzed by the Houston Chronicle show a different reality in Texas. 

Between February 2025 and February 2026, more than 38,000 people arrested by ICE in Texas had no criminal convictions or pending charges, compared with 30,670 who had criminal convictions and nearly 22,720 with pending charges. 

Education and school choice

With Texas hosting the convention, two sections dedicated to school choice and parental rights are only fitting. 

The agenda includes sections on “Education & Parental Rights” and “Education Freedom and Faith.” The GOP will boast about championing school choice and then speak on expanding it for parents whose children “do not thrive in assigned schools.” According to the agenda, the discussion will be framed as a “spiritual war between good and evil.”

Gov. Greg Abbott, who is expected to attend and is listed as a potential speaker, campaigned on school vouchers during his 2022 reelection campaign. At the start of this year, he signed Senate Bill 2 into law, creating a $1 billion Education Savings Account program in which Texans can use taxpayer dollars for private school costs such as tuition, textbooks and transportation. 

In the years-long battle over a state voucher program, anti-voucher lawmakers and advocates voiced concerns about funding being strangled for an already-struggling public school system. 

After Abbott made vouchers a top legislative priority, school choice failed to pass in 2023 while attached to a public school funding bill, even after four special-called sessions. Ultimately, replacing anti-voucher incumbents in rural Texas districts with Abbott-supported candidates tipped the scales toward its passage in the 89th Legislative Session. Republican lawmakers, including Abbott, said the program would benefit low-income families and students with disabilities. 

In its inaugural year, over 100,000 families are benefiting from the voucher program, yet 70% are families with children who were already attending private schools before SB2’s passing. 

The aforementioned spiritual war in education is reflected in Texas legislation such as SB10, which requires public school classrooms to display a Ten Commandments poster and requires Bible stories to be included on required reading lists by 2030. 

Property tax and housing assistance

Property taxes, an issue that has historically united Texas voters, will be discussed many times during the convention. Speakers will talk about “Extending tax cuts and expanding credits so middle-class families can buy homes and launch small businesses.”

Texas passed a bipartisan property tax relief package in 2025, comprising six bills and resolutions, which voters overwhelmingly approved at the ballot box. The raised homestead tax exemptions for seniors are $200,000 and $140,000 for non-seniors. 

The topic of tax cuts appears in seven separate items on the two-day convention agenda. The GOP will introduce the Working Families Tax Cuts Act, Trump Accounts and boosted Child Tax Credits. 

“Rooting out Waste & Fraud” has its own section of the conference, where the GOP will highlight the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) crackdown on fraudulent payments and the redirection of housing assistance to “families who genuinely need it.”