Slideshow: "Mother's Day Massacre" of bills in the Texas House

The last weeks of session in the Texas Legislature's biennial, 140-day marathons are almost always fractious. Long days get longer, bill-killing deadlines come and go, tempers fray and emotions boil over.

With a major deadline looming last Thursday, the House was still struggling through the previous Saturday's calendar, and the fate of a host of bills looked grim. And if things weren't tough enough already, a small group within the GOP calling itself the Texas Freedom Caucus, increasingly incensed at its perceived marginalization, rose up in the early evening and declared its intention, via parliamentary maneuvers, to murder 100-plus bills on the local and consent calendar. These are typically non-controversial bills fast-tracked to pass easily, but lawmakers can effectively kill such items either by talking them to death (that takes 10 minutes), or gathering at least five signatures to oppose.

Before the night was over, observers on social media were calling it the "Mother's Day Massacre." Tribune photographer Bob Daemmrich was there for the duration, and what follows is the long day in pictures.