James Thibault spent his final hours before the start of the 2025 legislative session on a tour of the New Hampshire State House.

It was nothing new for him. The newly elected 19-year-old state representative from Franklin has walked the halls many times, enough to have a ready answer on his favorite piece of history in the building: a portrait in the Senate chambers that depicts Daniel Webster as a child, reading the Constitution. The 18th- and 19th-century statesman was born in Thibault’s hometown.

Thibault tagged along on the tour to answer questions from a group of fourth-grade homeschooled students about Granite State history and what it’s like to be one of the youngest lawmakers in New Hampshire.

He remembers taking similar tours as a kid.

“Getting to come full-circle and answer those questions that I once had is a really cool thing,” he said.

Thibault, a Republican, began his first term representing Franklin and Northfield as the 2025 session convened on Wednesday.

He wore a gray suit and a blue and gold striped tie with his hair brushed neatly back. He came prepared for the logistics, too, having visited the House chambers beforehand to find his seat (in the very last row of the middle section) and make sure he knew where to go when the time came.

On a frigid, blustery day, Thibault and the rest of the 400 state representatives gathered in a sea of familiar faces, greeting each other at the State House after months apart and voting on changes to House procedures.

As part of those changes, Republicans reinstated a rule that’ll remove the requirement for committees to post public notices of an executive, or closed, session for a specific date and time. Now, they can happen at any time with what Democrats criticized as a “boilerplate” announcement that closed session may occur throughout a given day.

GOP leadership also abandoned an amendment that would’ve cut public hearings for bills if three-fourths of a committee voted to table it. Thibault said he sympathized with wanting to give a way out for bills that were no longer needed or wouldn’t go through, but he also shared concerns that it could’ve tamped down citizen participation.

“New Hampshire is one of the only states, if not the only state, that has a requirement for every bill to get a public hearing,” Thibault said. “I think that makes sure that in our citizen legislature, the citizens really have the most involvement that they possibly can. I think that’s generally a good thing, even if there are some frivolous bills that could be avoided and save time.”

In preparing for his first policy votes, Thibault said he’s gotten lots of resources and information from his party leadership, including some explanations on top issues.

“We’re not all going to be experts in everything, so having that little explainer was definitely great to have,” Thibault said. He supports most of his party’s priorities, like expanding Education Freedom Accounts, protecting biological girls in sports and passing a parental bill of rights.

The initial excitement has worn off since Organization Day, he said, where lawmakers were sworn in with their friends and family in the audience. Thibault had friends from across the country join him to celebrate at his swearing-in last month. Now, he’s ready to get down to business.

“That was more ceremonial,” he said of his first day, Dec. 4, “and now we start getting to the real work of governance … I think that it’s going to be a really productive session, and I’m looking forward to it.”

The freshman legislator is also a freshman in college. Two weeks after taking his first policy votes in the House, Thibault will start his second semester at Saint Anselm College.

Some legislators try to get things squared away before the busy session, and for Thibault, that meant organizing his college courses around session days, which he said can be difficult to work around for some of his required freshman classes.

“I need to make sure that session works in tandem with my college schedule, so I made sure to do that as soon as I got elected,” Thibault said. “I built my college schedule around session to make sure I could always be there … I think it’s important not just to be there for when you have to be on the floor, but also there for your committee and all of the public hearings and the executive sessions and things like that.”

His big days in the House are Tuesdays and Thursdays, so he scheduled classes mostly for Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, plus an evening class on Tuesdays.

As a student himself, he’d wanted to serve on one of the education committees but said it’s “just not feasible” with the workload while he doubles as a college student. Instead, he’ll be on Executive Departments and Administration, which handles state pensions and professional licensing.

All in all, Thibault said his first day went “generally quite well.”

After the votes wrapped up, Thibault attended a few quick but mandatory training sessions, then made it home by 1:30 p.m.

He planned to spend the rest of the day reading, but a full morning of New Hampshire government just wasn’t enough. He’s currently reading two books about Webster: a biography of the statesman by a former Massachusetts senator, and one that explores Webster’s role in forming America.