Save Rural Texas: Our Land, Our Water, and Our Future Are Not a Blank Check for AI, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. September 2, 2026

Save Rural Texas: Our Land, Our Water, and Our Future Are Not a Blank Check for AI

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

September 2, 2026

I want to call attention to Save Rural Texas, a growing grassroots movement organizing to protect rural Texans’ land, water, property rights, infrastructure, and communities amid the extraordinary expansion of artificial-intelligence data centers. Its message should resonate across political lines: economic development does not entitle corporations to a blank check on our land, water, electricity, or local democracy.

Artificial intelligence is often described as though it exists somewhere intangible, in “the cloud.” But the cloud has an address. It occupies land. It requires substations, transmission lines, generating capacity, roads, enormous buildings filled with servers, cooling systems, and, depending on their design, potentially extraordinary amounts of water. 

Increasingly, that address is rural Texas.

A recent Texas Tribune analysis found that more than half of the data centers planned for Texas are slated for unincorporated areas, precisely where county governments possess substantially less land-use authority than municipalities (Cobler, 2026). In places such as Hood County, residents confronting multiple proposed data centers have raised concerns about water, electricity, noise, traffic, pollution, and the transformation of rural landscapes, only to discover how little authority local governments possess to regulate what is coming (Martinez et al., 2026).

In this vein, I encourage you to listen to this community conversation on the matter with James Talarico to get a sense of just how profoundly our communities, landscape, and wildlife are already being impacted.

This raises a fundamental question about property rights. What does private property mean when a rural landowner can defend the boundaries of a ranch or farm but possesses very little democratic authority over an enormous industrial complex next door? Property rights cannot mean only the rights of corporations wealthy enough to assemble thousands of acres. They must also include the rights of families whose homes, wells, farms, roads, landscapes, and communities surround these developments. 

Texas groundwater law still carries something of a survival-of-the-fittest logic through the rule of capture—what the Texas Water Development Board has memorably described as the “law of the biggest pump.”

This raises an obvious question: In an era of hyperscale AI development, what happens when the biggest pump is backed by the deepest corporate pockets?

Although groundwater conservation districts provide regulation in many places, Texas has no single statewide agency controlling groundwater production, and areas outside groundwater districts remain especially vulnerable (Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, 2025; Texas Water Development Board, n.d.-a).

That legal framework developed long before anyone imagined hyperscale AI facilities. What happens when the proverbial biggest pump belongs not to another farmer or rancher but to one of the most heavily capitalized industries in the world?

Luke Metzger, executive director of Environment Texas Research & Policy Center, and I explored precisely this problem in our essay, “Draining the Ogallala Aquifer for AI? Project Matador and the Myth of Limitless Growth.” Project Matador, being developed by Fermi America in partnership with the Texas Tech University System northeast of Amarillo, is envisioned as a massive artificial-intelligence and energy campus covering roughly 7,570 acres. It is situated in a region deeply dependent upon the already-stressed Ogallala Aquifer (Valenzuela & Metzger, 2026).

The Texas Water Development Board has documented long-term declines in the Ogallala because groundwater withdrawals in much of the region exceed recharge (Texas Water Development Board, n.d.-b). Yet Project Matador has secured access to substantial water supplies. Access does not necessarily equal daily consumption, and actual usage will depend on cooling technology, recycling, buildout, weather, and other factors. Nevertheless, the potential scale should command our attention.

Metzger and I made a simple point that bears repeating: paying more for water does not make it renewable. A corporation's capacity to purchase a scarce natural resource does not answer the larger public question of whether that resource should be consumed at that scale. Markets answer, Who can afford it? Democratic governance must answer, What must be preserved?

This is why Project Matador and Save Rural Texas belong in the same conversation. Both expose an emerging imbalance in which private capital can move faster than democratic governance and ecological knowledge. Texas communities too often learn about massive projects after land has been acquired, financing negotiated, nondisclosure agreements signed, and development plans advanced. The corporation knows what it needs to know about the community before investing; the community may know very little about the corporation until the project is difficult to stop (Goldenstein & Foxhall, 2026).

Governor Greg Abbott's August 3 directive ordering an audit of data centers seeking connections to the Texas electrical grid is therefore significant. It recognizes that the state needs better information about electricity use, water, cooling systems, ownership, incentives, and community impacts (Office of the Texas Governor, 2026). But an audit should be the beginning of reform, not its conclusion. Texas still needs meaningful groundwater protections, greater transparency, genuine community participation, clearer limits on public subsidies, and stronger authority for rural communities confronting projects capable of permanently transforming their landscapes.

People across Texas are struggling to find information about proposed data center projects popping up in their neighborhoods, like Mason McCallister, center, who has been on a crusade to get information. Meanwhile, local officials and even state elected leaders say they need more information to regulate the growing industry. Illustration by Mariana Ocejo for The Texas Tribune. Source images: Shelby Tauber, Leila Saidane, and Briana Vargas for The Texas Tribune; Aiden Gonzalez/The Texas Tribune

That is why I support Save Rural Texas. Its position is not anti-technology. Artificial intelligence may produce genuine advances in medicine, science, education, accessibility, climate research, and communications. But acknowledging those possibilities does not mean accepting every data center, at every location, at every scale, consuming whatever water and electricity its owners can purchase.

That is not innovation policy. It is the surrender of public decision-making to the idea that technological expansion is inevitable.

There must be places where Texas says yes to data centers, places where the answer is yes only under enforceable conditions, and places where the answer must be no—because an aquifer cannot sustain the demand, because the electrical grid cannot support it, because the public subsidy outweighs the demonstrated benefit, or simply because a community decides that thousands of acres of agricultural land should remain agricultural land.

Rural Texas is not vacant territory awaiting its highest bidder. It is home, agricultural production, groundwater, habitat, history, family inheritance, and community. Texas can embrace innovation and participate in the future of artificial intelligence without surrendering the principle that technology must remain accountable to people and place.

Our communities are not sacrifice zones. Our aquifers are not corporate reservoirs. And our land, water, and future are not for sale simply because someone arrives with the biggest check—or the biggest pump.

References

Cobler, P. (2026, August 14). Data center audit lacks specifics even as Gov. Abbott, industry leaders tout it. The Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2026/08/14/data-center-texas-audit-moratorium/

Goldenstein, T., & Foxhall, E. (2026, August 10). While data centers boom in Texas, their plans stay shrouded in secrecy. The Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2026/08/10/texas-data-centers-transparency-information/

Martinez, A., Tauber, S., Mahajan, A., & Ford, A. (2026, June 2). Eight data centers threaten to transform this small Texas county. Local officials say they have no power to stop them. The Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2026/06/02/texas-data-centers-hood-county-local-control-rural-water-power/

Office of the Texas Governor. (2026, August 3). Governor Abbott directs comprehensive data center audit. https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-directs-comprehensive-data-center-audit

Save Rural Texas. (n.d.). Save Rural Texas. https://www.saveruraltexas.com/

Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. (2025). Groundwater regulation for private well owners. https://www.tceq.texas.gov/response/drought/groundwater_regulation.html

Texas Water Development Board. (n.d.-a). General groundwater and private water well frequently asked questions (FAQ). https://www.twdb.texas.gov/groundwater/faq/faqgwm.asp

Texas Water Development Board. (n.d.-b). Ogallala Aquifer. https://www.twdb.texas.gov/groundwater/aquifer/majors/ogallala.asp

Valenzuela, A., & Metzger, L. (2026, July 23). Draining the Ogallala Aquifer for AI? Project Matador and the myth of limitless growth. Environment Texas Research & Policy Center. https://environmentamerica.org/texas/center/articles/draining-the-ogallala-aquifer-for-ai-project-matador-and-the-myth-of-limitless-growth/

Gender-Baiting Is Dehumanizing—And It Hurts Families Across the Political Spectrum, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Gender-Baiting Is Dehumanizing—And It Hurts Families Across the Political Spectrum

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

June 13, 2026

Elaine Godfrey’s Atlantic piece on the Paxton-Talarico Senate race is a sobering reminder that we are likely to see an ugly campaign season in Texas. Already, the attacks on James Talarico have moved beyond policy disagreement into gender-baiting, mockery, and false claims about his identity. These tactics are not only dishonest; they are dehumanizing.

Whatever one thinks of Talarico’s politics, no candidate should be reduced to insults about masculinity, gender identity, or sexuality. This kind of rhetoric does not merely target one public figure. It sends a message to every LGBTQIA perso—and to every young person who is questioning, searching, or simply different—that their dignity is conditional and that their humanity can be turned into a punchline.

That cruelty is especially painful because Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, and Asexual (LGBTQIA) people are not abstractions. They are our children, siblings, cousins, parents, students, neighbors, colleagues, and friends. They live in Democratic families, Republican families, religious families, secular families, rural families, urban families, and every kind of Texas family. 

Geez, human variation does not sort itself neatly by party, denomination, ZIP code, or ideology. 

That is not “higher education gobbledygook.” It is lived reality.

So when political leaders mock gender identity or use anti-LGBTQIA insinuations to score points, they are almost certainly wounding people in their own communities—and quite possibly in their own families. 

They may imagine they are attacking an opponent, but the damage radiates outward. It reaches the child listening from the back seat, the teenager in the pew, the college student afraid to come home, the parent who loves their child but now feels politically cornered into silence.

Most positively, this moment also reminds us that LGBTQIA people have never been merely the objects of ridicule or fear. They are agents of courage, culture, family, faith, scholarship, public service, and democratic possibility. Every year on June 28, communities around the world observe International LGBT Pride Day, honoring the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York City—a watershed moment that helped catalyze the modern gay liberation movement. 

Pride is not only a celebration. It is a public affirmation that people who have been shamed, criminalized, silenced, and excluded are fully human and fully worthy of dignity, safety, joy, and belonging.

Happy Pride Month, by the way!

This is why gender-baiting is so morally bankrupt. It asks us to move backward, toward shame and stigma, precisely when history calls us forward—toward recognition, repair, and love.

This is not strength. It is not faith. It is not leadership. It is the politics of humiliation.

Texas deserves better than campaigns built on ridicule. We can debate taxes, schools, health care, immigration, war, democracy, and the future of the state without stripping people of their dignity. In fact, we must. A democracy worthy of the name depends not only on votes and institutions, but on the moral discipline to recognize one another as fully human.

The truth is simple: LGBTQIA Texans belong to all of us. They are part of every community, including those that pretend otherwise. To attack them for political gain is to attack the sacred fabric of family, faith, and human dignity itself.

Reference

Stonewall riots. (2026, June 12). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots

‘We Have Not Seen Ugly Yet’

Paxton versus Talarico is already awful.  

By Elaine Godfrey | May 27, 2026

Mark Felix / Bloomberg / Getty
May 27, 2026

TWO THINGS are as certain as bluebonnets in spring now that Ken Paxton is the Republican nominee for the Senate in Texas: Democrats have a better-than-usual chance of winning statewide. And the next 23 weeks are going to be hideous.

Paxton’s big win comes days after President Trump stuck his finger into the wind, determined that the incumbent, John Cornyn, was toast, and gave the attorney general his last-minute support. Even though the nearly 28-point margin was surprising, it was probably always going to be Paxton. A runoff tends to attract the hardest of the hard-core—the kind of determined voter who is willing not only to show up to vote in March, but to show up and vote in March, sit through 12 weeks of brutal attack ads, then head back out to the polls in May. The kind of Republican who might argue, as one woman did in Dallas when I spoke with her last week, that Paxton and Trump are bringing masculinity back to the party like Bambi’s father “coming out of the forest with those huge antlers.”

Now that these dutiful Republicans have secured the animated stag of their dreams, they will turn their attention to his general-election opponent: James Talarico, the 37-year-old Democratic state lawmaker and aspiring Presbyterian minister. In some ways, the two men have become avatars for their respective parties, which will spend the next five months ruthlessly attacking each other.

Paxton, a MAGA folk hero, seems even more committed to the movement than Trump himself is. As attorney general, he filed dozens upon dozens of lawsuits against Presidents Obama and Biden, and sued to overturn the 2020 election results. Paxton and Trump happen to share a strikingly similar ethical and legal rap sheet: Both men have been indicted (Paxton’s charges involved securities fraud and were dismissed after he agreed to do community service and take an ethics class); both have been impeached (Paxton was suspended by the Texas House but later acquitted by the Senate); and both have been accused of—and deny—infidelity. (Angela Paxton is now divorcing Ken on “biblical grounds.”)

Read: Ken Paxton is actually doing this

Although Talarico doesn’t yet have Paxton’s name recognition, he does have strong youth-pastor energy and, at least for now, the moral high ground. As a faith-forward economic populist, Talarico has a core campaign message of love triumphing over hate, and little guys taking on the billionaires. Republicans know that they’ve got a tough race ahead of them, which is why they’ve already settled on a strategy: make Talarico seem like a weird dude.

Unfortunately for Democrats, Talarico has been more than a little helpful in this effort. In 2021, the state lawmaker said that “God is nonbinary,” a statement that is off-putting to some Christians, not because they believe that God is literally a man but because they can’t fathom why someone would drag God into the earthly debate over gender identity. Talarico has also said that there are six biological sexes and that he supports access to abortion, in part, because God asked for consent when he blessed Mary with the baby Jesus. As a candidate in 2022, he pledged to run a “non-meat campaign,” which was never going to play well in cattle country.

Lately, Talarico has been doing some backtracking. “I know there are two sexes, men and women. I also know there’s a very small percentage of people who have these chromosomal abnormalities, and I believe they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect,” he told CBS this week, adding that there are “some statements that I’ve made that I certainly regret.” Whenever Talarico is accused of being insufficiently pro-meat, his campaign circulates a photo of the candidate gnawing on a turkey leg at the state fair.

Still, both sides have heaps of material to work with. Which is why the next few months promise a total inundation of negative advertising online, and on the airwaves in Texas. Democrats will hammer into voters Paxton’s scandals—and the failures of Republican leadership. “Will Republicans get away with running a superficial attack campaign when Texans are really hurting?” Matt Angle, a state Democratic strategist, told me. “They’ve been in control for 30 years. If something’s broke, they broke it.” Meanwhile, Republicans are already parroting Paxton’s proposed “Tala-freako” and “Low-T Talarico” nicknames. This morning, the Trump adviser Stephen Miller wrote on X that Democrats have nominated their “first transgender senate candidate.” (Talarico is not transgender.) “We have not seen ugly yet,” Vinny Minchillo, a Texas Republican strategist, told me. They’re going to make Talarico “the woke DEI candidate of all woke DEI candidates. And pound him, pound him, pound him.”

The task ahead will be tough for Talarico, who will have to decide when to counter these attacks directly—Define thyself lest ye be defined, as the political maxim goes—and when to remain firmly astride his moral high horse. He will also have to fend off the unprecedented amounts of money that Republicans are pumping into the race in order to protect their fragile Senate majority. Already, Paxton has secured the backing of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which initially endorsed Cornyn and which, last night, dutifully scrubbed its website of all anti-Paxton press releases and ads.

Yet for Talarico, hope remains. No Texan needs reminding that inflation is high, or that the war in Iran has the whole world on edge and gas prices rising. Trump’s polling is bad, and among Texans, Talarico has higher favorability numbers than both Paxton and the president. In what might end up being a particularly good year for Democrats, victory is not only possible but achievable.

Still, if Democrats have done one thing well in Texas over the past 30 years, it’s dash hopes. The last time a Democrat came close to winning statewide in Texas was in 2018. Back then, Senator Ted Cruz beat Beto O’Rourke by roughly 215,000 votes. This time, the figure that Republicans have their eye on is 778,139, or the number of Texans who voted in the March GOP primary but who were not excited enough about either Republican candidate to vote in the runoff. A drop in turnout was expected. But a 36 percent decline “mirrors a lack of Republican enthusiasm we’ve seen in other states,” Minchillo said. For Texas Republicans, that number is “distressing.”

Last night on Truth Social, Trump congratulated Paxton and promised to hold a few rallies to help gin up some excitement. “Texas, this will be FUN!” the president teased. We’ll see.

In Lak’Ech and the Good Samaritan: Texas State Rep. James Talarico and the Redemptive Politics of Radical Neighborliness, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

In Lak’Ech and the Good Samaritan: Texas State Rep. James Talarico and the Redemptive Politics of Radical Neighborliness 

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

September 17, 2025

With tens of millions of views on TikTok and a steady stream of national coverage, State Rep. James Talarico (D–Round Rock) is being talked about as “the next big thing” in Texas politics. In a July 1, 2025 special edition of Austin InSight/Austin PBS, host Laura Laughead sits down with Talarico for a wide-ranging conversation about what’s happening at the Capitol, how his openly professed Christian faith shapes his politics, and where he’s headed next.

What makes this interview worth watching isn’t just Talarico’s rising profile; it’s the way he frames public service through a moral vocabulary—love of neighbor, dignity, and the common good—while pushing for policies that address material needs here and now. That juxtaposition, rare in our polarized climate, comes through clearly in the full, unabridged conversation now available through PBS.

Talarico also speaks openly about his calling beyond politics. He’s an aspiring preacher studying at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and he treats faith not as a weapon but as a compass. For Texans who are weary of performative culture wars, that posture offers something different—an appeal to shared values, even when his policy positions may not be your own.

I find myself in strong agreement with his view that the separation of church and state protects both. It not only prevents the state from privileging one faith tradition over another, but also safeguards the integrity of the church by ruling out the possibility of political co-optation. It’s no wonder that the Austin Seminary has publicly expressed support for his journey.

As we know and have ourselves heard, Texas politics is often narrated as a clash of ideologies. Talarico reframes it as a contest of imaginations: What kind of neighbor will we be to one another? What do love, safety, and opportunity look like when translated into law and budget—not just rhetoric? Agree or not, he is modeling a style of leadership that could broaden rather than narrow the public conversation, especially among younger voters who may first encounter him on TikTok before meeting him at the ballot box.

Watching this episode also stirred something personal. I realized that Talarico and I share a spiritual inheritance—our grandfathers were both Baptist preachers. My granddad was my pastor throughout my entire youth. My own father—my late grandfather's son-in-law—continues in ministry today as a missionary in Peru. Incidentally, my grandfather was also a minister, for a time, in the Mexican Presbyterian church in my hometown of San Angelo, Texas, which he viewed as theologically similar to that of the Baptist Church.

I am deeply grateful for having grown up in my grandfather’s Mexican Baptist church where we believed deeply in the Golden Rule: to treat others as we ourselves wish to be treated. I've previously mentioned on this blog how this ethic is practically universal in faith traditions across cultures, including the Mayan philosophy of In Lak’Ech, rooted in empathy, reciprocity, and the recognition of our interdependence and the responsibilities we hold toward one another in a community and in society.

The parable of the Good Samaritan is fully about the Golden Rule and In Lak’Ech, speaking to a deeper principle of radical neighborliness. It teaches that compassion requires crossing boundaries of identity, tribe, and nation to see the humanity in the other—and to act on that recognition. These traditions remind us that true faith and true justice are not abstract ideals, but lived commitments to care for those around us, especially the vulnerable and marginalized.

Abundant thanks to Rep. Talarico for modeling a politics rooted in faith, imagination, and radical neighborliness—neighborliness that is not so radical after all, considering it echoes the Golden Rule, In Lak’Ech, and the shared moral teachings at the heart of nearly every faith tradition. His example reminds us that compassion and justice, far from being fringe ideals, are the foundations of the democratic society we aspire to build.

A conversation with Rep. James Talarico: The aspiring preacher making a name in Texas politics

Austin InSight/PBS, July 1, 2025

Sermon on "Abortion, Female Personhood and why Pro-Choice is Consistent with the Bible," by Texas State Rep. James Talarico

Friends:

Good morning. Happy Monday!

I am so inspired by Texas State Rep. Talarico's sermon that argues for women's full personhood instead of the second-class status that the denial of reproductive rights signifies.

I couldn't agree more Rep. Talarico's mother's perspective that "Women can never be free until they belong to themselves."

So much wisdom and clarity here. Thanks to George Hornedo for sending this video and message appearing below.

-Angela Valenzuela

***

Rep. James Talarico, the Texas Legislature’s youngest member, just posted a video of a sermon he gave at his hometown congregation in Texas. Rep. Talarico, currently in ministerial school, argued that Jesus Christ was a radical feminist and the Bible is a pro-choice document.

Rep. Talarico shot onto the national stage last year during the Texas Democratic quorum break in

opposition to voter suppression legislation when he challenged Fox News host Pete Hegseth’s lies in a primetime interview. Earlier this year, his speech to the Texas State Democratic Party went viral again as he called out national Democrats for "spineless talking points & soulless fundraising emails." Beto O’Rourke recently called him "the best politician working in the Texas Legislature right now." 

Rep. Talarico is available to talk about his sermon, fighting for a pro-choice Texas, and his role as the youngest member of the Texas State Legislature. Please reach out if you have interest in connecting with Rep. Talarico.

Watch the video here. Read the thread:

“This summer, more than half our population became second-class citizens. 

Every one of our neighbors with a uterus became the property of the State. 

And nothing is more un-Christian.” [...]

“The only way we can allow an embryo’s rights to trump a woman’s rights is if we believe a woman is not a full person—which has been the default belief for most of human history.”

“Being Christian and being pro-choice are absolutely consistent because Christianity is a feminist religion.” [...]

“When a mob of men threatened to stone a woman for adultery, Jesus called out their hypocrisy.

When a bleeding woman begged for help in a bustling crowd, Jesus stopped to heal her.

When a young woman wanted to do theology instead of housework, Jesus honored her choice.” [...]

“Jesus famously summed up his teachings into two commandments: love God and love neighbor. 

He gave no preconditions, no qualifications, no exceptions. 

Love thy neighbor regardless of race, class, or gender.” [...]

“The story of Mary is my favorite story in all of scripture…

We only have Jesus because a woman consented to creating him. 

The story of Jesus begins with a single, simple, extraordinary act of feminism.” [...]

Faith is deeply personal. And your beliefs might not be the same as mine. 

That's why we have a separation of church and state—no government can keep you from expressing your religion or force you to express theirs.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about our faith. [...]

For too long, pro-choice Christians have allowed anti-choice Christians to take over our faith and our country.

On this Sunday before Election Day, we must speak up.

Vote your values on Tuesday.