Greg Abbott spent years courting data center developers with tax exemptions and a permissive interconnection framework, treating incoming investment as an unconditional good. As recently as late 2025, he described Texas as the "epicenter of AI development." In June, he sent a formal letter to the Public Utility Commission and ERCOT directing both agencies to immediately shield residential ratepayers from data center infrastructure costs. By July 1, at a campaign event in Bull

The Most Republican Democrat in Congress Faces the Most Democratic Republican in Texas Tano Tijerina spent a decade winning Webb County elections as a Democrat. He won in 2014, 2018, and 2022, each time under the same party banner, each time in a county that had been blue so long that the color felt geological. Then Trump carried Webb County in November 2024, and Tijerina announced on Fox & Friends that he had always been a conservative and that the Democratic Party lost him