It turns out the “Texas Miracle” Governor Abbott keeps preaching about is actually just a high-stakes trade: we give Silicon Valley our remaining groundwater, and in exchange, they give us a massive “Stargate” data center that creates three jobs and enough heat to finish off the Panhandle. Rural Republicans like Rena Schroeder are finally realizing that their party’s “pro-business” stance actually means “pro-whoever-has-the-biggest-lobbying-budget.” Rena tried to suggest maybe we shouldn’t let OpenAI suck our aquifers dry, but the GOP establishment treated her like she’d just suggested replacing brisket with kale.
While the state is busy handing out $3.2 billion in tax breaks to tech bros, the Texas Water Development Board is having to tell thirsty cities to kick rocks. The SWIFT fund is currently $3 billion short of what’s needed to keep us from becoming a literal Dune sequel. Corpus Christi is months away from a “water emergency,” but their desalination plant got rejected while the state rolls out the red carpet for server farms that drink millions of gallons a day just to keep your AI chatbot from overheating while it hallucinating facts about 18th-century poetry.
And don’t think your local city council can save you. King Greg has discovered a fun new hobby: threatening to yank public safety grants if a city does anything that hurts his feelings or messes with his “top-down” vision of Texas. Whether it’s a water park event in Grand Prairie or immigration policies in Austin, Abbott is using hundreds of millions of dollars in “safety” funds as a leash. Apparently, “local control” is a sacred conservative value right up until a local official tries to exercise it.
Who knew the “Wild West” would end with us all dying of thirst just so a robot can write a slightly better C+ term paper?
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