The Small, Armored Mariachi Band and the Backyard Saga: A Personal Account, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. May 30, 2026

The Small, Armored Mariachi Band and the Backyard Saga: A Personal Account

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

May 30, 2026

I’m going to share an experience I just had in the best West Texas vernacular I can fashion. Truth be told, that voice is a quick go-to for me—my immediate response, my first sentiment, my instinctive way of reacting when life catches me off guard. It is the voice of talking to my friends back home in West Texas and saying, with all the force and feeling the moment requires, “DANG!”

Those are my origins. That is part of my identity.

All of us carry complex identities—some we share openly, others we hold close. We move through different worlds with different registers, tones, languages, and ways of being. Sometimes we speak as scholars, sometimes as teachers, sometimes as relatives, neighbors, advocates, or old friends. 

And sometimes, when four armadillos unexpectedly appear in your backyard, you discover that the voice that rises up first is pure West Texas.

So tighten your belt buckle, friends, and watch the video of today’s backyard

Video

 armadillo saga.

You can go straight to the video if you like. Or if you think you might be triggered for any reason, just turn it off immediately, get your sweet tea, and read along with me.

***

I had a wild experience just now.

Literally.

Well, y’all, I was just mindin’ my own business in the backyard today, sittin’ there peaceful as can be, when I heard a rustlin’ sound that caught my attention.

So I did what any calm, mature adult would do: I started recording.

At first, I spotted one little armadillo. Cute enough. Then there were two. Then three. And before I knew it, there were four of them—like some neatly coiffed, armored mariachi band had wandered onto the property, polished up and ready to perform.

Without a booking!

Now, I began this episode calm and collected, but let the record show that my composure left the premises before the armadillos did. 

I went from “Isn’t nature beautiful?” to “Absolutely not, tiny prehistoric possums,” in about three seconds flat.

That’s when I reached for a small metal chair. Not a broom. Not a rake. A chair. Because apparently, when the spirit of self-defense takes hold, you don’t choose the weapon—the patio furniture chooses you.

So there I was, shushing four armadillos off like I was directing livestock traffic at a county fair: “Git now! Go on! This ain’t your Airbnb!” (Okay, I added this part 'cause it's funny!)

And they just moseyed along like they had all the time in the world—we’re talking seconds here. It's all recorded. 

And I'm the dramatic one in this story.

***

Geez, what do moments like these mean? Well, among other things, they remind us that humor is part of memory. Voice is part of place. 

It is a treat traveling back to my childhood and imagining just how much play a story like this would get—and in these truly, wonderful, undervalued, forms of expression in a society where "network English" is the norm.

That we are expected to suppress the dialects that we speak alongside our language or languages, is a matter for another time, but it says plenty about how power shapes even the way we talk from day to day.

Another lesson is that the language we reach for when startled or emotionally disarrayed often tells us something about where we come from.

Today, the backyard gave me armadillos.

And West Texas, the Twang to tell it. 

It's no wonder I became a sociolinguist.

A former life.

I hope I'm not freaking anyone out too much! 😱😱😱

The Empire of AI Comes to Texas: Data Centers, Coloniality, and Resistance in Texas, Chile, and Beyond, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

The Empire of AI Comes to Texas: Data Centers, Coloniality, and Resistance in Texas, Chile, and Beyond

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Link

May 30, 2026

When Erin Brockovich recently observed on MSNBC that "people aren't being heard" in the rush to build AI data centers across the United States, she identified a problem that extends far beyond environmental regulation. 

Her concern goes to the heart of democracy itself: Who gets to decide how land, water, energy, and public resources are used in the name of technological progress? And whose voices matter when those decisions are made? 

For Texans, these questions are becoming increasingly urgent as the state emerges as one of the nation's leading centers of AI infrastructure development (MSNBC, 2026).

According to Brockovich's AI Data Center Reporting Project, Texas hosts approximately 464 data centers that are either completed or in process, making it one of the nation's leading hubs for AI infrastructure (Brockovich AI Data Center Reporting, 2026; also see UT News, 2026). 

Link [pdf]

At the same time, Texas reportedly leads the nation in citizen complaints submitted through her website concerning the impacts of data centers on local communities. Residents have raised concerns about water consumption, strain on electrical grids, noise pollution, environmental degradation, tax incentives, and the lack of transparency surrounding proposed developments (Brockovich AI Data Center Reporting, 2026; Gillette, 2026).

The map created by Erin Brockovich. 

brockovichdatacenter.com

To understand why these concerns are resonating so deeply, Karen Hao's recent book, Empire of AI (2025), offers an invaluable framework. Her reporting from Chile is particularly illuminating. There, communities challenged proposed hyperscale data centers that would consume substantial quantities of water in regions already suffering from prolonged drought. Residents found themselves confronting not merely technical questions but political ones.

Similar to Texas and other states where such centers are getting developed, top-down decisions affecting local resources, drinking water quality, loss of land and so on were often justified through narratives of modernization, innovation, and economic necessity, while those most directly affected struggled to gain meaningful influence over the process (Hao, 2025).
Hao challenges the popular image of artificial intelligence as a largely immaterial force existing somewhere in "the cloud." In reality, AI depends upon vast material infrastructures—data centers, electrical grids, water systems, mining operations, and labor networks that stretch across the globe. Every single AI request relies on physical resources that must be extracted, transported, consumed, and maintained.

What is perhaps most striking is that opposition to these projects is increasingly bipartisan. As highlighted in recent MSNBC coverage, residents from across the political spectrum are questioning whether communities are being asked to absorb disproportionate environmental and economic costs in exchange for promises of innovation and economic growth (MSNBC, 2026). 
In a political era defined by polarization, this convergence is noteworthy. As concerns over water scarcity, infrastructure demands, and local control intensify, the politics of AI infrastructure could become an important issue in future elections.

Recent research from the University of Texas at Austin projects that data centers could account for between 3 and 9 percent of Texas's total water consumption by 2040 (UT News, 2026). In a state already grappling with recurring drought, aquifer depletion, and increasing competition for water resources, these projections warrant careful public scrutiny. This is especially true in Central Texas, where population growth, climate uncertainty, and development pressures are already placing extraordinary demands on finite water supplies.

Yet environmental concerns alone do not fully capture what is at stake.

What Hao's work helps us see is that AI infrastructure may represent a contemporary expression of what Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano (2000) termed the coloniality of power. Coloniality refers to the persistence of colonial forms of domination long after formal colonial rule has ended. It shapes whose knowledge counts, whose labor is valued, whose resources are extracted, and whose interests prevail in decisions about development.

Wikipedia Link

Historically, empires extracted silver from Latin America, rubber from the Amazon, cotton from the American South, and oil from colonized territories throughout the world. Today, the resources being extracted may appear different. Yet the underlying logic remains recognizable. The AI economy depends upon water, energy, land, public subsidies, data, and labor. The benefits frequently accrue to distant investors and technology firms, while local communities are often left to absorb environmental risks and infrastructure burdens.

This does not mean that artificial intelligence itself is inherently harmful. Nor does it mean that technological innovation should be rejected. The issue is not whether AI should exist. The issue is whether communities have a meaningful voice in determining how AI infrastructure is developed and governed.

This is where the concept of transformational resistance becomes especially useful.

In their seminal work, Solórzano and Delgado Bernal (2001) distinguish "transformational resistance" from other forms of opposition by emphasizing its critical awareness of structural inequality and its commitment to social justice. Transformational resistance is not simply reactive. It combines critique with collective action aimed at creating more equitable social arrangements.

More recently, Valenzuela, Unda, and Mena Bernal (2025) have extended this framework in their analysis of resistance to Texas Senate Bill 17 and the dismantling of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in higher education. We maintain that transformational resistance emerges when communities move beyond defending existing institutions toward imagining and constructing alternative democratic futures grounded in solidarity, collective agency, and the protection of the public good.

Viewed through this lens, communities raising questions about AI infrastructure are not merely opposing particular projects. They are advancing alternative visions of development rooted in democratic participation, ecological responsibility, and collective well-being. Their efforts remind us that technological progress should not be measured solely by computational power, market valuation, or economic growth, but also by whether it strengthens our capacity to care for one another and for the shared resources upon which our futures depend (Solórzano & Delgado Bernal, 2001; Valenzuela et al., 2025).

At stake is more than water consumption or energy demand. The deeper question concerns our collective obligations to resources that sustain community life across generations. Aquifers, watersheds, electrical grids, and public infrastructure are not merely inputs into an economic system. They are foundations of collective life. 

When decisions regarding their use are driven primarily by private interests while risks are borne by the broader public, citizens are right to ask whether the burdens and benefits of development are being distributed fairly.

This is why Brockovich's reporting initiative is so important. Her project does more than catalog complaints. It creates a public record of community concerns. It validates local knowledge. It elevates voices that might otherwise remain invisible within highly technical regulatory processes. In so doing, it helps democratize a conversation that too often unfolds behind closed doors.

The lesson emerging from both Chile and Texas is that technological futures are not inevitable. They are political choices.

The question before us is not whether artificial intelligence will shape the future. It already is. The question is whether that future will be organized around principles of extraction or stewardship, concentration of power or democratic participation, private gain or public responsibility.

We should be stunned—not because artificial intelligence exists, but because one of the most resource-intensive technological transformations in modern history is unfolding with so little public awareness and deliberation.

From Chile to Central Texas, communities are challenging the assumption that technological development should proceed without democratic consent. As Erin Brockovich reminds us, people deserve to be heard. 

The growing resistance to unaccountable AI infrastructure reflects a broader demand for transparency, stewardship, and meaningful public participation in decisions that affect collective well-being. At its core, the debate over AI data centers is not simply about technology. It is about who gets to decide, whose voices matter, and whether the future will be imposed upon communities or built with them.

The future of AI should not be determined solely by corporations, investors, engineers, or policymakers. It must also be shaped by the communities whose lives, resources, and futures are implicated in its development.

References

Brockovich AI Data Center Reporting. (2026). AI data centers & our communities. https://www.brockovichdatacenter.com

Bureau of Economic Geology. (2025). Water requirements for data centers in Texas [White paper]. The University of Texas at Austin. 

Gillette, S. (2026, May 28). Erin Brockovich launches map to track controversial AI data centers, which reportedly cost $25B in environmental damages last year. People. https://people.com/erin-brockovich-launches-map-track-ai-data-centers-11985676

Hao, K. (2025). Empire of AI. Penguin Random House.

MSNBC. (2026, May 28). Erin Brockovich on AI data centers: "People aren't being heard" [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hQLn5MbsEI

Quijano, A. (2000). Coloniality of power, eurocentrism, and Latin America. Nepantla: Views from South, 1(3), 533–580. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/23906

Solórzano, D. G., & Delgado Bernal, D. (2001). Examining transformational resistance through a critical race and LatCrit theory framework: Chicana and Chicano students in an urban context. Urban Education, 36(3), 308–342. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085901363002

UT News (2026, May 6). Data centers are growing in Texas, but big questions remain about water use. University of Texas at Austin News. https://news.utexas.edu/2026/05/06/data-centers-are-growing-in-texas-but-big-questions-remain-about-water-use/

Valenzuela, A., Unda, M. D. C., & Mena Bernal, J. J. (2025). Disrupting colonial logics: Transformational resistance against SB 17 and the dismantling of DEI in Texas higher education, Ethnic Studies Pedagogies. https://www.ethnicstudiespedagogies.org/gallery/Vol3-Issue1-03_DisruptingColonial.pdf

The Quiet Dismantling of Academic Freedom in the UT System, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D., May 28, 2026

The Quiet Dismantling of Academic Freedom in the UT System

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

May 28, 2026

The rule revision also allows the president to eliminate individual faculty positions
for “bona fide academic reasons.” Jay Janner/The Austin American-Statesman/Getty Images

Recent actions by the University of Texas System Board of Regents should alarm every faculty member, student, parent, and taxpayer who believes that public universities exist to pursue truth rather than political conformity. Under newly revised policies, university presidents now possess expanded authority to eliminate academic programs, terminate faculty positions, and bypass meaningful faculty participation in decisions that fundamentally reshape the university itself.

According to a recent report in Inside Higher Ed, the Board approved revisions to Rule 31003 that allow presidents to close programs not only for traditional academic or financial reasons, but also under vaguely defined “extraordinary circumstances” requiring “accelerated program closure” (Whitford, 2026a; Unglesbee, 2026). The revised policy further enables administrators to eliminate individual faculty positions for what are termed “bona fide academic reasons,” while sharply limiting appeal processes previously available to tenured faculty (Whitford, 2026a).

For many faculty across the UT System, these developments do not appear isolated. Rather, they represent part of a broader pattern of political encroachment into higher education governance in Texas. Earlier this year, the UT System adopted another controversial policy instructing faculty to “eschew topics and controversies that are not germane” to their courses (Whitford, 2026b). Faculty immediately raised concerns that the language was intentionally vague and would inevitably produce self-censorship in classrooms.

The danger of these policies lies not simply in the rules themselves, but in the climate they create.

Tenure was never designed to protect comfort or complacency. Its purpose is to protect intellectual independence—the ability of scholars to pursue difficult, unpopular, or politically inconvenient lines of inquiry without fear of retaliation. When dismissal procedures become easier and program closures can occur without meaningful faculty review, the likely outcome is not institutional “efficiency,” but anticipatory silence. Faculty begin asking not whether a topic is intellectually necessary, but whether it is politically survivable.

The consequences extend far beyond individual professors. Entire disciplines become vulnerable when political controversy can trigger administrative restructuring. Fields such as Ethnic Studies, gender studies, critical race scholarship, migration studies, environmental justice, and public health may increasingly be viewed not through the lens of academic standards, but through ideological scrutiny—towing the "party line," as it were. 

Indeed, faculty quoted in Inside Higher Ed expressed concern that the newly added “extraordinary circumstances” clause appears designed to anticipate future legislative interventions into what faculty may teach and research (Whitford, 2026a; Unglesbee, 2026).

Equally troubling is the continued erosion of shared governance. Faculty senates and governance structures historically emerged because universities are not corporations. Academic institutions require the expertise of scholars to guide curriculum, research priorities, standards of evidence, and educational integrity. 

Yet recent state legislation has already weakened faculty senates across Texas, reducing them to advisory bodies with little institutional authority. The newest UT policies further consolidate power upward into administrative and political channels while diminishing faculty participation in decisions that directly affect academic life.

This transformation should concern not only faculty, but the broader public.
The university is a public trust. Texans fund higher education not to produce ideological compliance, but to cultivate scientific discovery, historical understanding, democratic debate, artistic expression, and critical thinking. When political actors increasingly determine what can be taught, researched, or discussed, universities risk becoming instruments of state ideology rather than spaces of intellectual exploration.

Moreover, these developments threaten the long-term reputation and competitiveness of Texas higher education. Faculty recruitment becomes more difficult when scholars perceive universities as politically unstable environments. Graduate students and early-career researchers may seek institutions elsewhere. National collaborations weaken when academic freedom protections appear uncertain. Over time, institutional prestige suffers not through dramatic collapse, but through the slow erosion of intellectual credibility.

The broader context makes these changes especially concerning. Proposed legislation in Texas has already sought to weaken or eliminate tenure protections altogether. Texas House Bill 1830, introduced during the 89th Legislature, proposed prohibiting institutions from granting tenure or permanent employment status to future faculty hires while expanding grounds for dismissal. Although not enacted in its introduced form, the proposal signals an unmistakable political trajectory.

Faculty within the UT System should therefore recognize the current moment for what it is: not a series of disconnected administrative adjustments, but a larger restructuring of higher education governance itself. The cumulative effect of weakened tenure protections, restricted classroom discourse, diminished shared governance, and politically vulnerable programs is the normalization of fear within academic life.

And fear is incompatible with the mission of a university.

References

Whitford, E. (2026a, May 27). U of Texas makes it easier to fire faculty, close programs. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty/shared-governance/2026/05/27/u-texas-makes-it-easier-fire-faculty-close-programs 

Whitford, E. (2026b, February 20). UT board policy asks faculty to avoid “controversial” topics in class. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty/curriculum/2026/02/20/ut-policy-asks-faculty-avoid-controversial-topics

Unglesbee, B. (2026, May 21). UT System makes it easier to shutter programs, fire faculty. Higher Ed Dive. https://www.highereddive.com/news/ut-system-makes-it-easier-to-shutter-programs-fire-faculty/820932/

Texas House Bill 1830, 89th Legislature (2025). Relating to tenure and employment status at public institutions of higher education in this state. https://legiscan.com/TX/text/HB1830/id/3053324

The Men Who Don't Want Women to Vote or Work, or Have Opinions, by Helen Lewis, The Atlantic

Friends:

What once sounded “too extreme” to take seriously is increasingly entering mainstream political and cultural discourse. The growing masculinist movement documented in this recent piece is not just internet provocation or fringe performance. It reflects a broader backlash against feminism, gender equality, public education, diversity efforts, and democratic pluralism itself.

Readers should resist the temptation to dismiss these developments simply because they sound outlandish or “too far-fetched.” History teaches us that democratic erosion often begins with ideas first framed as jokes, provocations, or hypothetical thought experiments before becoming normalized through repetition, media amplification, and political power. When influential public figures openly discuss repealing women’s voting rights, restricting women’s participation in public life, or dismantling anti-discrimination protections, we should pay attention—not panic, but pay attention.

I do need to say something about Christian debater Andrew Wilson's allegation and twisted logic that women "‘covertly undermine or ostracize their enemies,’ and therefore that ‘all cancellations are feminine.’” 

This is not at all true. Some of the most devastating forms of censorship, silencing, and social ostracism in U.S. history were not carried out by women exercising “soft power,” but by institutions dominated by men: legislatures banning books, universities purging dissidents, states criminalizing Ethnic Studies, overwhelmingly patriarchal churches enforcing orthodoxy, employers blacklisting organizers, and governments surveilling activists. To describe ostracism as “feminine” erases histories of colonial violence, McCarthyism, segregation, patriarchy, and authoritarian governance.

Inasmuch as women are behind this, it would be status quo, patriarchal women behind this within a larger system of patriarchal power.

The question is not whether every extreme proposal will become law. The question is what happens to a democracy when such ideas increasingly shape the moral and political imagination of an increasingly less-fringe movement about which we should all be concerned. 

-Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

The Men Who Don't Want Women to Vote or Work, or Have Opinions, by Helen Lewis, The Atlantic

The influential pastor Douglas Wilson has advo­cated for the repeal of the Nineteenth Amendment. (Photo-illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Lindsey Wasson / AP.)

Douglas Wilson has a modest proposal to improve American life: He wants to repeal the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the vote. In his ideal system, “we would do it in our politics the same way we do it in our church structure,” he told me recently. “And that is, we vote by household.”

Wilson is a co-founder of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, based in Moscow, Idaho. Over the past five decades, he has built a small empire there, dedicated to disseminating his theocratic vision for the United States: a publishing house, a school, a liberal-arts college, and a video-streaming service. His denomination, which has about 170 affiliated churches, counts Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as a member, and Wilson was invited to lead a prayer service at the Pentagon in February. So when the pastor casually suggests disenfranchising half of America, people listen.

When I asked him about this position, Wilson said it wasn’t his top priority—“We have bigger fish to fry”—but something he sees happening in perhaps 200 years’ time. I found this intellectual footsie maddening. “If I said to you, ‘I think all white men should be put in cages—but not now; it’s not my aspiration for now,’ ” I suggested, “then you wouldn’t be interested in a single other thing that I had to say at that point.”

Wilson chuckled. “Oh, I know you’d probably have all my attention.”

This is twinkly, avuncular Douglas Wilson, the guy who joined a hippie congregation fresh out of the Navy because he liked to play guitar, and ended up leading services once the regular pastor moved on. The same guy who once went on a multicity debating tour with the New Atheist Christopher Hitchens, and bonded with him over their shared love of P. G. Wodehouse. But the 72-year-old shows a different side on his website, Blog & Mablog. For more than two decades, Wilson has been airing piquant opinions on unruly women—or, as he calls them, “small-breasted biddies,” “harridans,” “lumberjack dykes,” and “Jezebels.” He once referred to Gloria Steinem and another feminist as “a couple of cunts.” And this is the polite version. Every year he celebrates “No Quarter November,” when he promises to tell readers what he really thinks.

Wilson believes that women should “not ordinarily” hold political office, and should never serve in combat roles in the military. Husbands should have dominion over misbehaving wives’ weight, spending habits, and choice of television programs. His uncompromising vision for America was once considered marginal, the conservative writer Karen Swallow Prior told me. Since his elevation by Hegseth, however, “no one can credibly say that Doug Wilson is fringe anymore.”

Wilson is a prominent voice in what is sometimes called “masculinism”: a movement to fight back against the advances of feminism and reassert the primacy of men. His version is religious, influenced by the notion of male “headship” of the family and Saint Paul’s belief that godly women should “be quiet.” There are also plenty of secular masculinists, as well as nominally Muslim ones, such as the streamer Sneako, the self-proclaimed pimp Andrew Tate, and the podcaster Myron Gaines. Woman-bashing plays well on social media and sells lots of ads for crypto, sports betting, and supplements. You can make good money telling men that they’re the truly oppressed sex.

But this isn’t just a movement of grifters exploiting a quirk of the algorithm. In the past decade, one of the New Right’s major challenges has been to retrofit a consistent ideology onto the electoral power of Donald Trump. Masculinism has been a great gift, because factions with different views on, say, protectionism or Israel or Big Tech can all agree on the overreach of feminism and the need for a return to traditional gender roles. Far from being a fringe belief system, masculinism has become the single most important force uniting the American right, bringing together an unlikely constellation of pastors, posters, senators, preachers, influencers, podcasters, and fanboys.

The MAGA movement is often framed as a reaction to the first Black president, and to a growing Latino population. But the multiracial appeal of the manosphere and Trump’s 2024 inroads with young minority men point in a different direction. “People ask me what the New Right is furious about,” the author Laura Field, whose book, Furious Minds, describes the intellectual underpinnings of Trumpism, told me. “And I think a good shorthand for that is they’re furious about their own loss of status in society over the last few years and the elites who made that happen, and I think that the pithiest short version of that is that it’s the women. It’s the women who took their status.”

Wilson’s approach to public life clearly has an element of what professional wrestlers call kayfabe—the winking, performative trollishness that now characterizes the online right. He wants feminists like me to get angry with his most outlandish proposals, making ourselves look like scolds or Chicken Littles in the process. But Wilson and a growing number of powerful allies are sincere in these beliefs, and would want to enact them if given the chance.

One of masculinism’s central claims is that no one is talking about men. So true! Men’s issues are not being discussed in Senator Josh Hawley’s 2023 book, Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs. They aren’t being discussed in Tucker Carlson’s documentary The End of Men. They aren’t being discussed in the panoply of Christian books available on Amazon with titles such as Man for the Job, Masculine Christianity, and It’s Good to Be a Man, or in their secular counterparts, such as Why Women Deserve Less. They aren’t being talked about on social-media feeds (which can be highly segregated by sex) or on some of America’s most popular independent podcasts, such as Modern Wisdom, Huberman Lab, and The Diary of a CEO.

For decades, each feminist advance in American public life has prompted an equally strong backlash. The first wave of women’s-rights activists won suffrage for women, against ferocious and sometimes violent opposition. After the second wave secured Title IX and other legal victories against sex discrimination, Phyllis Schlafly successfully fought back against the full ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. By the identity-obsessed 2010s, the full weight of corporate America had swung behind glib slogans such as “The future is female.” This commercial blitzkrieg inevitably convinced some people that women’s advancement had come at men’s expense. A refrain I kept hearing over the past few years was that boys were being made to feel ashamed of themselves, as if they were stained by some kind of original sin. These years have seen a counterreaction, with the total abandonment of the #MeToo movement, conservative gloating over the fall of Roe v. Wade, and the return of straightforwardly sexist put-downs—“Quiet, piggy”—to public life.

Like most popular movements, masculinism has many entry points, and both defensible and alarming forms. At one end of the spectrum are legitimate concerns about male loneliness, the declining share of men in higher education, stagnant wages for non-college-educated men, and the deadening effects of day-trading, gaming, and porn. At the other end of masculinism are a misogynist vocabulary about AWFULs and the longhouse (terms that we’ll come back to) and a political agenda close to that in The Handmaid’s Tale, whereby women are denied the right to work, vote, and control their own bodies.

On the internet, masculinism is presented as a rebellion—a transgressive middle finger to the liberal establishment, expressed in all the words a corporate HR department would order you not to say. In the past few years, leaked group chats have shown Young Republicans and college conservatives using sexism, infused with racism, as a bonding mechanism. “If your pilot is a she and she looks ten shades darker than someone from Sicily, just end it there. Scream the no no word,” read a message in a Telegram thread used by the leaders of Young Republican chapters in New York, Kansas, Arizona, and Vermont. (Several members of the chat were women.) Richard Hanania, who describes himself as a former white nationalist, calls this kind of in-group signaling “the Based Ritual,” a way for younger MAGA enthusiasts to prove their bona fides to one another.

Nick Fuentes has suggested that women be sent to “breeding gulags.” (Photo-illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Jacquelyn Martin / AP.)

Among Gen Zers, Douglas Wilson’s intellectual heir is Nick Fuentes, who leads a loose collection of trolls known as Groypers. A self-professed Christian nationalist, anti-Semite, and virgin, Fuentes has built a fan base in part by deploying vividly misogynistic language. “Our No. 1 political enemy is women, because women constrain everything, every conversation, every man—everything,” Fuentes said on a livestream earlier this year. He added: “Just like Hitler imprisoned Gypsies, Jews, Communists—all of his political rivals—we have to do the same thing with women.” He suggested that they be sent to “breeding gulags. The good ones will be liberated. The bad ones will toil in the mines forever.”

When Texas Regulates Camps but Not Guns: A Comparative Policy Response to Two Child-Centered Tragedies, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. May 23, 2026

When Texas Regulates Camps but Not Guns: A Comparative Policy Response to Two Child-Centered Tragedies

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

May 23, 2026

July 24 is always a special day for me and my husband because it is our
anniversary. It is a day I want to reserve for gratitude, love, memory, and the life we have built together. But this date now also carries additional significant meaning. 

Every year, as July 24 approaches, my mind is pulled back to May 24, 2022, the date of the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and two teachers were killed and at least 17 others were physically injured (Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, n.d.). Lamentably, joy and grief now share space in the same part of our hearts and calendar.

Source: KXXV Facebook

That grief returned again as I and others observed how the State of Texas responded to another tragedy involving children: the catastrophic Guadalupe River floods and the deaths connected to Camp Mystic. In all, I should note, 134 people lost their lives in this horrific tragedy (Shalvey, 2025).

Nothing about this comparison should be read as minimizing the pain of the flood victims’ families. Those children, counselors, parents, and surviving loved ones deserve every protection, every answer, every dollar of relief, and every serious reform Texas can provide. As a consequence, Camp Mystic will remain closed this Summer (CBS Texas, 2026).

Source: Instagram

But the contrast between the two state responses is difficult to ignore.

After the July 4, 2025 flooding, Texas moved quickly and concretely to regulate youth camps. Governor Greg Abbott signed House Bill 1, known as the Youth CAMPER Act; Senate Bill 1, known as the Heaven’s 27 Camp Safety Act; and Senate Bill 3, which created financial support for early-warning sirens in flash-flood-prone areas (Office of the Texas Governor, 2025c).

Source: Office of the Governor

These were not merely symbolic gestures. The laws require youth camps to adopt and annually update emergency plans, train staff, orient campers, notify parents of floodplain risks with signed acknowledgment, and share emergency plans with local emergency services (Office of the Texas Governor, 2025c). The laws also authorize enforcement through inspections, complaint investigations, license suspension, or license denial (Office of the Texas Governor, 2025c).

Most notably, Texas placed direct restrictions on where youth camps may house children. The Heaven’s 27 Camp Safety Act prohibits the Texas Department of State Health Services from licensing youth camps with cabins in FEMA-designated floodplains, with limited exceptions (Office of the Texas Governor, 2025c). In plain language, Texas said that some camp operations must change because the risk to children was too great.

That is a serious governmental response. It regulates an industry. It imposes burdens. It changes operations. It restricts what camps may do in the name of child safety.

And that is precisely why the Uvalde comparison hurts (e.g., Valenzuela, 2022).

After Uvalde, Texas did act in some ways. The Legislature passed school-safety measures, including House Bill 3, which required school districts to determine the appropriate number of armed security officers and generally ensure at least one armed security officer is present at each campus during regular school hours, subject to a good-cause exception when funding or qualified personnel are unavailable (Texas Legislature, 2023). Later, House Bill 33, the Uvalde Strong Act, addressed active-shooter preparedness, emergency-response coordination, reporting, training, public-information requirements, and school-safety equipment such as breaching tools and ballistic shields (Texas Legislature, 2025).

Source: Fox KDFW

Those measures matter. But they largely regulate the school environment and the emergency response after a threat exists. They do not meaningfully regulate access-to-the-weapon pathway as a preparatory response that Uvalde families repeatedly asked lawmakers to confront.

One of the clearest examples was the effort to raise the minimum age to purchase certain semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21. That proposal, championed by Uvalde families and advocates, stalled in the Texas Legislature (Serrano, 2023). So, while Texas was willing to restrict summer camps after children died in a flood, it was not willing to impose a comparable restriction on young adults’ access to certain firearms after children were murdered in a classroom.

That is the painful contradiction. After the Guadalupe River flood, Texas regulated the setting that contributed to the deaths. After Uvalde, Texas regulated doors, officers, training, response plans, and security tools—but not the firearm access issue that many grieving families identified as central to prevention.

The financial response across both tragedies also reveals a complicated picture. In Uvalde, the state announced a Family Assistance Center to help affected families and community members access crime-victim services, death benefits, counseling, funeral services, transportation, childcare, spiritual care, and other support (Office of the Texas Governor, 2022a). 

The state also announced an initial $5 million investment to establish a long-term Family Resiliency Center in Uvalde County for psychological first aid, crisis counseling, behavioral-health services, and related support (Office of the Texas Governor, 2022b). Separately, the Robb School Memorial Fund was established to support victims’ families, teachers, and the Uvalde community, including help with health care, travel, and funeral expenses (Office of the Texas Governor, 2022a).

Source: Fox KDFW

But those supports are not the same as full restitution. Nor are they the same as accountability. 

In April 2025, Uvalde city leaders approved a $2 million settlement for the families of the 21 people killed at Robb Elementary, described by the Associated Press as the first financial resolution from the many lawsuits following the attack (Vertuno, 2025). That settlement also included nonmonetary measures such as enhanced police training, expanded mental-health services, an annual May 24 day of remembrance, and a permanent memorial (Vertuno, 2025). Even so, other lawsuits remained pending, including actions against Texas state police officials and others (Vertuno, 2025).

For the Guadalupe River flood victims, financial relief has also appeared as a patchwork rather than a single, clear state restitution package. Governor Abbott joined the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country in announcing more than $40 million in long-term housing relief following the July 4 floods in Kerrville (Office of the Texas Governor, 2025b). 

He also appeared with the Vaqueros del Mar Texas Flood Relief Fund as $25,000 checks were presented to families affected by the catastrophic Hill Country floods, particularly those who suffered severe storm damage or lost homes (Office of the Texas Governor, 2025a). Meanwhile, families of Camp Mystic victims filed lawsuits alleging negligence and failure to evacuate; later reporting noted multiple suits seeking more than $1 million each in damages (Runnels, 2025, 2026).

So, in both tragedies, affected families have faced a mixture of public aid, private donations, insurance-backed settlements, and ongoing litigation. But money after death is not justice by itself. Relief funds can help families survive the aftermath. Settlements can acknowledge harm. Lawsuits can pursue accountability. But no payment can replace a child, a teacher, a counselor, or the future that was stolen.

The deeper issue is prevention.

Texas has now shown that when children die, the state can move beyond condolences. It can pass laws. It can regulate an industry. It can restrict dangerous placements. It can require emergency planning, training, warning systems, inspections, and licensing consequences. The Guadalupe River flood response proves that Texas knows how to turn grief into regulation.

Source: KSAT.com

The question is why the same kind of regulatory courage has not been appliedto gun access after Uvalde.
Again, this is not an argument against the camp-safety laws. 

Those reforms were necessary. Children should not sleep in cabins where flood danger is ignored. Parents should know whether a camp sits in a floodplain. Staff should be trained. Emergency plans should be real, reviewed, and enforceable.

But children should also be safe in classrooms. Parents should not have to beg lawmakers to consider firearm-access restrictions after their children are murdered. Families should not have to watch the state regulate cabins more directly than guns.

Both tragedies demanded compassion. Both demanded financial support. Both demanded accountability. Both demanded prevention.

Texas responded to the Guadalupe River flood by saying: camps must change.

After Uvalde, Texas still has not been willing to say with equal force: gun access must change, too.

That is the contradiction I cannot stop thinking about. And every time the 24th comes around, I remember Uvalde's grief and how love and loss can live side by side. But public policy should not stop at mourning. It should protect the living.

References

CBS Texas. (2026, May 1). Camp Mystic will not reopen after withdrawing 2026 license following hearing over deadly floods [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQi3voPG3m4

Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. (n.d.). Critical incident review: Active shooter at Robb Elementary School. U.S. Department of Justice. https://cops.usdoj.gov/uvalde

Office of the Texas Governor. (2022a, May 27). Governor Abbott provides details on state resources available to Uvalde community impacted by Robb Elementary School tragedy. https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-provides-details-on-state-resources-available-to-uvalde-community-impacted-by-robb-elementary-school-tragedy

Office of the Texas Governor. (2022b, June 1). Governor Abbott announces $5 million investment to establish long-term Family Resiliency Center in Uvalde County. https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-announces-5-million-investment-to-establish-long-term-family-resiliency-center-in-uvalde-county

Office of the Texas Governor. (2025a, August 9). Governor Abbott gives Strait to the Heart funds to Hill Country flood victims. https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-gives-strait-to-the-heart-funds-to-hill-country-flood-victims

Office of the Texas Governor. (2025b, August 21). Governor Abbott, Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country announce over $40 million in long-term flood relief funding efforts. https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-community-foundation-of-the-texas-hill-country-announce-over-40-million-in-long-term-flood-relief-funding-efforts

Office of the Texas Governor. (2025c, September 5). Governor Abbott signs Texas summer camp safety bills into law. https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-signs-texas-summer-camp-safety-bills-into-law

Runnels, A. (2025, November 10). Parents of flood victims suing Camp Mystic for negligence. The Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2025/11/10/texas-floods-kerr-county-camp-mystic-lawsuit/

Runnels, A. (2026, February 6). Family of still-missing camper sues to shut down Camp Mystic. The Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2026/02/06/texas-hill-country-camp-mystic-lawsuit-negligence/

Shalvey, K. (2025, July 15).Texas flooding updates: Death toll reaches 134, search continues for missing, ABC News. https://abcnews.com/US/live-updates/texas-flooding-live-updates/?id=123729682

Serrano, A. (2023, May 23). Gun safety advocates see signs of progress in first session after Uvalde shooting even though raise-the-age bill stalled. The Texas Tribune. https://www.ksat.com/news/texas/2023/05/23/gun-safety-advocates-see-signs-of-progress-in-first-session-after-uvalde-shooting-even-though-raise-the-age-bill-stalled/

Texas Legislature. (2023). H.B. No. 3, 88th Legislature, Regular Session: Enrolled version. https://legiscan.com/TX/text/HB3/2023

Texas Legislature. (2025). H.B. No. 33, 89th Legislature, Regular Session: Enrolled version. https://legiscan.com/TX/text/HB33/2025

Valenzuela, A. (2022, May 30). Remembering Uziyah Sergio Garcia (August 13, 2011 ~ May 24, 2022) of San Angelo, Texas. https://texasedequity.blogspot.com/2022/05/remembering-uziyah-sergio-garcia-august.html

Vertuno, J. (2025, April 23). Uvalde leaders approve $2M for Robb Elementary families in first settlement over 2022 attack. AP News. https://apnews.com/article/uvalde-texas-2022-school-shooting-million-settlement-06c2477186c48edcb4fe5f8ffe2a4f0b

A Funeral for Academic Freedom at UT: Five Videos from a Day of Grief, Witness, and Resistance, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

A Funeral for Academic Freedom at UT: Five Videos from a Day of Grief, Witness, and Resistance

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

May 22, 2026

There are moments when symbolic action captures the truth of a political moment more powerfully than any policy memo, hearing, or institutional statement ever could.

The UT Funeral for Academic Freedom, held on this week on May 20, 2026 of the UT System Board of Regents meeting, was one such moment.

I recorded five videos on my iPhone that day, each documenting a different part of this powerful public action. Together, they offer record of grief, protest, analysis, and collective witness in response to the ongoing attacks on faculty governance, academic freedom, Ethnic Studies, Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and the broader intellectual life of the public university.

There is, indeed, a great deal to grieve in the current moment.

Hats off to Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT) for organizing and carrying out these horse-drawn carriage funerals in three Texas cities: first at Texas Tech University, second at The University of Texas at Austin, and third at the University of North Texas in Denton. These are striking, disciplined, and morally clear actions—ones that make visible the stakes of what is being lost when political power seeks to discipline knowledge, silence dissent, and restructure universities from above.

Below are the five videos I recorded from the UT event.

Video 1: A Short Walk from the UT Tower to the Horse Drawn Carriage on Inner-Campus Drive

The first video captures the solemnity and symbolism of the funeral procession itself. The horse-drawn carriage made visible what too many institutional actors continue to obscure: academic freedom is not an abstract principle. It is foundational—together with faculty governance and tenure rights and protections. It is a living condition of democratic education. When it is weakened, faculty lose the ability to teach and research honestly, students lose access to critical knowledge, and the public loses one of its most important democratic institutions.

Video 2: Mourning What Is Being Taken

The second video documents the atmosphere of collective mourning. This was not performative grief, but a solemn recognition that the current assault on higher education is already producing real consequences: self-censorship, faculty departures, weakened shared governance, attacks on DEI, threats to curriculum, and the chilling of intellectual inquiry.

Do listen to SEAT co-founder and leader Cameron Samuels’ eloquent eulogy, delivered before the horse-drawn carriage, as faculty and students place banned books into the hearse alongside the urn of ashes symbolizing the death of academic freedom. It is a haunting and powerful moment—one that captures both the sorrow and moral clarity of this public action. The ritual makes visible what too many official statements obscure: when books are banned, expertise is discredited, and faculty are politically constrained, the university’s democratic purpose itself is placed in jeopardy.

Video 3: Students, Faculty, and Community in Public Witness

The third video shows the horse-drawn carriage and mourners passing in front of the UT Tower and proceeding along Guadalupe Street—a powerful public procession meant to raise awareness about the crisis now facing higher education. As I note in the video, universities are increasingly being pushed toward censorship, surveillance, and political control. The broader public, including Texas taxpayers, needs to know that this is happening in their name and with their public dollars.

Students, faculty, staff, and community members gathered to insist that the university belongs to the people—not to political appointees, donors, ideologues, or governing boards that disregard the expertise and labor of those who make the university what it is.

I also underscored an important point: we do not indoctrinate. Indoctrination presupposes a closed system—an echo chamber in which one only hears, repeats, and promotes what already exists within it. That is the opposite of what teaching requires. Indoctrination is anathema to the work that we do in the classroom. 

I elaborate here that education demands questioning, growth, evidence, dialogue, and the willingness to revise one’s assumptions. Faculty members are themselves always learning, reading, rethinking, and “re-tooling”—engaging new literatures, theoretical frameworks, histories, and areas of study so that we can better understand the world and help students do the same. That is not indoctrination. That is education. And we do it well! 

Thank you very much! Time to stand up and take a bow? 😃

Let's move on.

Video 4: Dr. Nic Ramos on the Attack on Expertise

This fourth video is one of my favorites—second only to the press conference itself, captured in video five—because it features a wonderful conversation with UT American Studies professor Dr. Nic Ramos, who names something crucial: the attack on UT faculty is also an attack on expertise.

This point cannot be overstated. What is unfolding in Texas higher education is not merely a disagreement over administrative structure or campus policy. It is part of a broader campaign to delegitimize the knowledge, judgment, and professional authority of faculty—particularly those whose research and teaching address race, gender, colonialism, inequality, public memory, and democratic accountability.

Dr. Ramos makes the insightful point that Copernicus, who claimed that the Earth revolved around the Sun, would not be able to teach at UT Austin under such conditions because of how radical that perspective was in its own time, pushing real academic boundaries of thought that our university system rejects. 

He tells his students that “research expertise, by its very definition, means that we push boundaries,” and that scholarly arguments are designed to “innovate change,” to foster debate and discussion. This, he says, is why he “serves steak, not soup” in his classroom. 

Love it. Steak, not soup.💗

It is a vivid and memorable metaphor. “Soup” suggests something pre-digested, blended together, and easy to consume. “Steak,” by contrast, requires students to chew, wrestle, question, and develop their own intellectual strength. 

Moreover, for the record, I interject here that Ethnic Studies and Women and Gender Studies are often misrepresented as an attack on the traditional canon or a curriculum centered on “great white men.” It is not about erasing canonical thinkers or dismissing their contributions. We're not anti-civics or anti-cannon. Instead, we seek a fuller, more complete civics where democracy has been made by all—women, civil rights leaders, immigrants, students, communities of color and so on.

Rather, these areas of study expand the frame by bringing more histories, voices, and perspectives into view. Doing so gives students a fuller and more honest understanding of civic life in a democracy.

Dr. Ramos helps us see that the struggle before us is not only about protecting individual faculty members or specific departments. It is about defending the very conditions under which knowledge can be produced, debated, revised, and shared in the public interest—and in the ongoing development of knowledge itself.

Video 5: The Press Conference

The fifth and final video is the 45-minute press conference, where I and others offered public statements about the significance of this moment. The press conference brought together multiple voices, each speaking to the harms already underway and the urgent need for organized resistance.

We spoke in defense of academic freedom, shared governance, Mexican American and Latino Studies, African American and African Diaspora Studies, American Studies, and the democratic purpose of public higher education. We also spoke against the normalization of political interference in curriculum, faculty governance, and the intellectual life of the university.

This is a time for clarity. We must refuse the language of “efficiency,” “restructuring,” "balancing," "consolidation," and “compliance” when these terms mask deeper efforts to narrow the scope of knowledge and weaken democratic participation inside Texas public institutions.

The funeral was symbolic, yes—but it was also diagnostic. It named the bankrupt logic of policies that seek to silence, erase, intimidate, and control. At the same time, the gathering itself was evidence that academic freedom is not dead so long as students, faculty, staff, and communities continue to organize in its defense.

I am grateful to SEAT, AAUP-UT Austin, Austin SDS, the Latino Coalition for Excellence in Higher Education, Texas AFT, the Texas Association for Mexican American Chambers of Commerce, and all allied organizations and individuals who continue to show up in this struggle. The work ahead is immense, but this action reminded us that grief can become testimony, testimony can become organizing, and organizing can become power.

Academic freedom is worth defending—not as a privilege of educators, but as a public good.

And in Texas, the struggle continues.