On Tuesday, Texans did something that hasn’t happened in more than 30 years. They fired a Republican governor; they cleaned house.
How could this happen?
Rural Texans – the most loyal Republican voters in the state – were telling anyone who would listen that they felt abandoned. Why? Most rural residents want to maintain their quiet lifestyle with plentiful water resources, grazing land for cattle, rich soil for crops. Under Governor Abbott, AI data center developers were invited to compete for the same water residents depend on. His appointees approved 765-kV lines strewn across critical ranch land. And while farmland was being turned into wind and solar farms, Texas taxpayers helped pay for this industrial hemorrhaging: under Chapter 313 – the state’s biggest tax-break program for most of Governor Abbott’s time in office – two-thirds of the deals signed in its final year went to wind and solar projects.
I’ve been traveling and speaking across rural Texas to personally meet with ranchers, farmers, legacy landowners and country-living people. Two whistleblowers in El Paso told me pecan farmers are being told to cap their wells. And not to worry, they were told: they can get their water from the new AI data center pipes.
Lowell Williams, a third-generation rancher near Blum in Hill County, is another casualty of this industrial carnage. His 700-acre working cattle ranch sits less than 50 feet from a data center that’s going “full steam ahead.” He built houses on that ranch so the fourth and fifth generations could live there. In his words: “They’re gonna kill my property value. They’re going to kill my animals. They’re going to kill my way of life… and my legacy.”
I have repeatedly warned our party leadership this purge was coming if Governor Abbott didn’t intervene with a special session.
My fellow Republicans would respond by asking, “How can a lifetime Republican vote for a Democrat who doesn’t share our values?” Rural Texans are asking, “How can I stay in a party that destroyed what I value most?”
In August, 57% of Texas voters said they opposed data center construction in their communities. Only 30% supported it.
Nobody listened. So the people spoke.
What follows is my column, updated since Tuesday. Read it, and you’ll understand why it happened.
I call it the spread of the industrial spiderweb: AI data centers, Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS), sprawling solar and wind farms, and gargantuan 765-kV transmission lines are aggressively transforming our pristine rural Texas landscape.
Our Texas leaders have offered plenty of reasons why the extraordinary scale and concentration of this industrial infrastructure is necessary.
There’s just one problem.
The narratives don’t add up against the facts. And Texans are smart enough to know it.
We are told America needs more AI data centers for national security.
Fair enough.
Artificial intelligence has become strategically important to America’s economy, military capability and global competitiveness. But here’s my question: How many are enough – and why does so much of the infrastructure required to support them have to be concentrated in Texas?
The United States already has 5,427 listed data centers. Germany, with the second-highest number in the world, has 529. China has 449.
Counts don’t measure size, but even by computing power, America is far ahead. Epoch AI found that, as of May 2025, the United States held about three-quarters of the GPU-cluster performance in its global dataset – approximately five times China’s share. So, America isn’t behind. We’re overwhelmingly ahead.
Then we’re told the growth is necessary because more people are using the Internet and AI. But consider this: China has approximately 1.30 billion Internet users while operating only 449 listed data centers. The United States has approximately 324 million Internet users while operating 5,427 listed data centers. China has four times as many Internet users as the United States. The United States has approximately 12 times as many listed data centers as China. Clearly, population and Internet usage alone cannot explain the scale of America’s buildout.
So, now that the narratives have giant holes in them, how can Governor Abbott possibly justify the aggressive growth of this industry in Texas?
BUT FIRST, LET’S REVIEW HOW TEXAS GOT HERE
This massive expansion didn’t happen in a policy vacuum. Governor Greg Abbott has publicly positioned Texas as the nation’s center for artificial intelligence development.
In November 2025, while announcing Google’s $40 billion investment in Texas – including three new data-center campuses – Abbott declared: “Texas is the epicenter of AI development.” He said America must remain at the forefront of the AI revolution and: “Texas is the place where that can happen.”
Texas’ electric-grid planning doesn’t operate in a separate universe from the governor’s policy agenda.
Governor Abbott appoints the commissioners of the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT). The PUCT has extensive authority over the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). And Abbott himself has repeatedly issued directives to both the PUCT and ERCOT concerning data-center development.
So, when ERCOT began planning for unprecedented new industrial electrical demand, it was doing so in a state whose governor had openly committed Texas to becoming America’s AI epicenter.
And the demand exploded.
ERCOT’s April 2026 data showed approximately 410 gigawatts of large loads seeking interconnection to the Texas grid. Nearly 87% were data centers. By August, the number had grown again. Governor Abbott’s own office disclosed that ERCOT was considering more than 474 gigawatts of requests for new connections to the Texas grid – more than five times Texas’ record peak electricity demand. Approximately 90% of those new power requests were data centers.
Read that again.
Then read what the governor’s own office said about it: “That unprecedented load growth could endanger the reliability and stability of the Texas electric grid.”
Think about what just happened.
Our governor aggressively positioned Texas to become the epicenter of America’s AI industry. The data-center developers came. And the industrial spiderweb followed: 765-kV transmission lines, BESS sites, and solar and wind farms. Requests for staggering amounts of electricity followed. ERCOT began planning the infrastructure necessary to accommodate enormous projected electrical demand.
The governor who declared Texas the epicenter of AI development ordered an audit before additional data-center projects could move forward through ERCOT’s interconnection process.
Then, on August 23, ABC News’ Jonathan Karl confronted Governor Abbott with the contradiction. Karl reminded Abbott that he had called Texas the “epicenter of the A.I. industry” and asked: “In hindsight, did Texas move too fast?”
Abbott answered: “It wasn’t Texas that was moving fast, it was these data centers.”
That’s difficult to reconcile with the record. Texas didn’t simply wake up one morning and discover that the AI industry had arrived. Governor Abbott invited it. Governor Abbott promoted it. Governor Abbott celebrated it. Then the final straw: Governor Abbott’s administration kept approving projects even during his “pause.” The August pause covered only the biggest projects – those over 75 megawatts – and exempted every data center that builds its own power plant. The day after his September order to stop data center permits, the state’s environmental agency, TCEQ, mailed preliminary approval notices for three gas power plants tied to data centers – among 35 actions that kept projects moving. On Oct. 22, the agency suspended at least 17 permits it had issued after the order.
So perhaps Texans deserve an answer to a very simple question: Who decided how much was enough before Texas began transforming itself to accommodate it?
THE INDUSTRIAL SPIDERWEB
Data centers don’t exist in isolation. They require enormous amounts of electricity. Accommodating enormous new electrical demand requires additional generation and grid capacity. Moving that electricity requires transmission. Transmission requires substations, easements, communication cables and rights-of-way.
Some large data centers can require significant water resources, depending upon their cooling technology and design. New generation increasingly includes massive battery storage systems. And acre by acre, project by project, what once looked like unrelated developments begins to resemble an interconnected industrial system.
An industrial spiderweb.
I was at Governor Abbott’s July rally. He promised to keep AI data centers out of rural community neighborhoods. Listen closely to the wording: neighborhoods. Not rural Texas. Now look at where the next generation of data centers is going.
According to a 2026 Pew Research Center analysis, 67% of planned U.S. data centers are headed for rural areas. That’s a remarkable reversal. Only 13% of currently operating data centers are rural. Yet 67% of those planned are rural. And 39% of planned data centers are headed for counties that currently don’t have a data center at all.
Texas already ranks second in the nation in combined operating and planned data centers. So, I have another question: What exactly are we transforming rural Texas into and for whom?
This industrial expansion is moving across the same rural Texas landscape that contains our farmland, ranches, aquifers, oil, natural gas and minerals. These aren’t empty spaces on a map. They are strategic resources. So perhaps the question Texans should be asking isn’t: Are data centers good or bad? That’s far too simplistic. The questions are:
How much industrial infrastructure does Texas need?
Who determined that amount?
Who benefits economically – and who absorbs the long-term costs?
What happens to our water, agricultural land, property rights and electric grid when hundreds of these projects operate at once?
And perhaps most importantly: At what point does infrastructure intended to strengthen Texas begin making Texas more dependent upon the very infrastructure we’ve built?
I’m not asking Texans to believe a conspiracy theory. I’m asking something far more reasonable.
WHAT IS THE REAL PLAN?
Show us the cumulative water demand, the cumulative electrical demand, the agricultural acreage being converted, the transmission footprint, the tax incentives. Show us who owns the projects and who receives the power. Show us the projected economic benefit to Texans. And show us how much is enough. Show rural Texans the plans for these transformative industrial projects before critical decisions have already been made.
Because “national security” cannot become a blank check for unlimited industrialization of rural Texas. Neither can “economic development.” Neither can “AI.”
If this transformation of Texas is truly necessary, then its architects should be able to demonstrate – in numbers – that its benefits outweigh its costs, and should be able to justify further expansion of this industry over critical natural resources that enable Texas to remain independent.
AND NOW THE STORY CHANGES
On August 3, 2026 – three months before Texans voted – Governor Abbott ordered the PUCT and ERCOT to audit data-center projects seeking connection to the Texas grid. His directive suddenly demanded answers rural Texans have been asking for: how much electricity and water these projects will use, what cooling technology they’ll rely on, what tax incentives they’ll receive, who owns them and how they’ll affect their neighbors.
Good questions. But why weren’t we demanding those answers before Governor Abbott declared Texas the epicenter of AI development?
Case in point: At 4:38 p.m. on Thursday, August 27, while most Texans were clocking out at work, PUCT Chairman Thomas Gleeson dropped an 11th-hour memo to approve two 765-kV transmission contested cases.
In that memo, Chairman Gleeson, an Abbott appointee, removed a conclusion of law from the State Office of Administrative Hearings (SOAH). Administrative Law Judges Shenoy and McCabe concluded that Oncor did not fully comply with 16 TAC §22.52(a)(4), a rule requiring a utility to provide notice of public meetings to landowners affected by a transmission line.
The following day, the PUC commissioners, appointed by Governor Abbott, unanimously approved two 765-kV lines with little to no discussion, effectively rubber-stamping the first two lines of the 765-kV STEP buildout. In the meeting, Gleeson made Oncor – which is 80.25% owned by San Diego-based Sempra – “promise to work with the landowners” on route adjustments. That same day, AG Paxton submitted an amicus brief supporting landowners’ challenges to the 765-kV lines, explaining that the PUC does not have the authority to implement a statewide plan without the approval of the Legislature, and urging the commission to delay the decision until next session.
Rehearing on those two lines has since been extended, with a decision expected in early December. Will the PUCT honor or ignore AG Paxton’s intervention?
Texans deserve a seat at the table to be heard.
They deserve advance notice. They deserve public meetings. They deserve access to the facts. They deserve the opportunity to say no. They deserve to know if their civic leaders signed NDAs or MOUs to generate these deals behind their backs.
They deserve an opportunity to ask questions about water, electricity, emergency response, property values, transmission, taxation, compliance, safety measures and the cumulative impact of multiple projects. And they deserve those answers before, not after, their communities are transformed.
And if the situation is serious enough that the governor’s own office warns this unprecedented load growth could “endanger the reliability and stability of the Texas electric grid,” an even bigger question demands an answer: Why an audit instead of a special session?
The governor of Texas had the authority to call the Legislature into special session.
Governor Abbott has exercised that authority before. Yet his own June directive said he would “work with the Legislature next session” to enact legislation requiring data centers to use water-efficient cooling systems, accurately report electricity and water consumption, end outdated tax incentives and adopt protections for neighboring communities.
Next session?
If Texas’ water, electric grid, property owners and rural communities require statutory protection from an industrial expansion occurring right now, why did Texans have to wait?
That session is approaching. The Legislature convenes January 12, 2027. Voters have chosen new leadership, but the people’s demands remain:
Require a justification for every new project.
Put enforceable statewide protections before them.
Debate them publicly.
Vote on them publicly.
An audit can collect information. A directive can impose requirements within the existing authority of the PUCT and ERCOT. Neither substitutes for legislation where new statutory protections are needed.
Texans measure actions, not promises.
This no longer feels like the careful launch of a burgeoning new industry. To many rural Texans, the excessive, accelerated spread of the industrial spiderweb feels more like a hostile takeover to destroy what they value most. I implored state representatives to stop ignoring Texans’ requests, testimony, petitions, pleas, emails, calls and protests to stop the spread and call a special session. I reminded our civic leaders rural Texans are needed to win in Texas. I asked our Republican leadership, “Why would you alienate the party from your trusted, conservative rural voters?”
On Tuesday, disheartened, fed-up Republicans showed Governor Abbott they had had enough.
Governor Abbott, you chose the party over the people.
You chose the PUC over the people.
You chose corporate profits over the people.
You chose the AI developers over the people.
Now the people have chosen a different party.
And to every leader taking office in January – Democrat or Republican – hear this clearly: rural Texans are not a voting bloc you can take for granted. They are landowners, ranchers, farmers and families who will hold you to the same standard.
When the Legislature convenes January 12, put enforceable protections at the top of the agenda to protect the people, not your party.
Because the people who just held one governor accountable will not hesitate to do it again.
Sources
Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, AI Index Report 2026 (Cloudscene data) – U.S. 5,427; Germany 529; China 449 data centers.
Epoch AI, June 5, 2025 – as of May 2025, U.S. held about three-quarters of GPU-cluster performance in Epoch’s global dataset; China approximately 15%.
DataReportal, Digital 2026 – approximately 1.30 billion Internet users in China and 324 million in the United States.
Pew Research Center, April 13, 2026 – 67% of planned data centers rural; 13% of operating centers rural; 39% planned in counties currently without one; Texas second in operating and planned (296 and 170).
ERCOT, Senate Business & Commerce presentation, April 1, 2026 – approximately 410 GW of large loads seeking interconnection; approximately 87% data centers.
Gleeson/PUCT decision: https://interchange.puc.texas.gov/Documents/59315_5815_1677969.PDF
Office of Gov. Greg Abbott – Nov. 14, 2025, Google announcement; June 10, 2026, data-center directive; Aug. 3, 2026, audit letter (474 GW, 90%).
ABC News, This Week transcript, Aug. 23, 2026 – Jonathan Karl/Gov. Abbott exchange.
Texas Tribune, Aug. 28, 2026 – PUC approves two statewide transmission lines; Paxton amicus brief.
UT/Texas Politics Project poll, Aug. 5–13, 2026 – 57% oppose, 30% support local data center construction.
Texas Tribune, Oct. 23, 2026 – “Data center backlash cracks rural Texas Republican wall.”
Lowell Williams – his video statement on Facebook.
Click2Houston/Texas Tribune, March 2, 2023 – Chapter 313: two-thirds of 2022 agreements were renewable projects (Comptroller Glenn Hegar).
TCEQ actions after the pause: FracTracker Alliance, Oct. 19, 2026; KUT, Oct. 20, 2026; Public Citizen, Oct. 22, 2026. Office of the Governor and Texas Tribune, Sept. 21, 2026 – TCEQ permit order.
El Paso pecan farmers – two whistleblowers, interviewed by the author (one in person, one by text).
