Welcome to Deceleration In Depth, where we are growing solutions to an overheating world. We highlight the latest global, national, and regional developments in climate and environmental justice to better inform local action. Deceleration is rooted in San Antonio and the South Texas bioregion but our concerns and enthusiasm are broad. Pitch us your story idea at editor@deceleration.news.
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DECELERATION OPINION
Our Planet's Billions—Or the Profiting Petro Elite? (We Can't Have Both)
It is time to decide.
Greg Harman | Deceleration
Shortly after Jessica Witzel collapsed and died on a Five Points area sidewalk her body temperature was logged at a dizzying 126 degrees Fahrenheit. The sidewalk on that 100-plus-degree day was almost certainly even hotter than that. Though disputed by the local medical examiner—who steadfastly refuses to label essentially any deaths unattended by an ER doctor as heat-related—Witzel died in the heat and from the heat.
Just the day before during this hottest rush of summer a nearby neighbor called the police when they found Witzel, who was living unhoused in the area, trying to cool down with their garden hose.
As a paper published just this month by a leading Texas-based climate scientist makes clear: the body count of heat-related deaths are rising. Increasing, even across Texas, more public health officials are watching and marking heat-related deaths.
Such concerns are rising with global air and oceans temps, which have been pushing upward for decades as the world bakes under heat the planet hasn’t seen since humankind first began to emerge from the African continent over 100,000 years ago.
We were supposed to be moving toward another ice age with glaciers again advancing across North America instead of jettisoning into unprecendented life-threatening heat. But guess what?
The Ice Age was cancelled.
So what to make of President Trump imploding the "endangerment finding" this week, the very root of our climate regulations?
COMMUNITY VOICES
MAGA's War on Disabled People Visible in ICE Attacks and Gutting of Medicaid
Departed Texas-based disability justice activist Bob Kafka had words for this moment: ‘Don’t Mourn. Organize.’
Angela Weddle | Deceleration
Aliya Rahman, an autistic U.S. citizen, recovering from a traumatic brain injury on the way to her doctor, was dragged from her vehicle by ICE agents.
Watching the video and Rahman’s testimony, I felt my stomach twist in knots as white-hot rage rose in my chest. My legs were both heavy and numb. I kept thinking: this could be me.
Then I tried to read the comments. Some were most likely bots: no photos; almost no followers. Others were unfortunately real.
She’s an agitator.
She should have complied.
Officers ran out of patience.
She could have moved.
She’s a paid protestor.
If she were actually disabled, she wouldn’t be protesting.
Like many people, I have watched these kinds of violations for years, the violence against disabled people, against autistic people, against people of color, and queer and trans communities. None of this is new.
But this felt different. Rahman and I share neurological differences, being autistic, and physical vulnerabilities. There is something profoundly unsettling about seeing yourself reflected in the mirror of harm done to another.
I looked down at my hands and thought of hers.
WATER & POWER
Data Center Fights in Round Rock & San Marcos Show Burdens of Proof Falling to Community
'Not your normal cowgirl's agenda.'
Greg Harman | Deceleration
Last week, Round Rock City Council approved a rezoning request to allow Skybox Data Centers to become the ninth data center in this city just north of Austin. Speaking to failures in the duty-to-warn department, eight data centers were approved and moved toward construction before local residents noticed—though they quickly formed up into a potent force of opposition.
An hour south, in the college town of San Marcos, home of the headwaters of sacred springs feeding the region, another zoning change sought by another data center—Fort Worth-based Highlander SM One LLC, in this case—was beat back this week at Council. For a second time.
Community members in both cities told Deceleration just how difficult it is to fight these developments when local governments appear to be functioning not to empower and encourage residents in managing the affairs of their communities, but instead to facilitate the transfer of water and power to the data center owners at the expense of those they are sworn to serve.
“This has been a whole new world to be thrown into, to speak on. Not your normal cowgirl’s agenda.”
REPORTING
Youth Hold the Future—and There is No Room There for ICE
Two San Antonio high school students capture the energy and passion of their peers, who took to the streets on a federal holiday in support of family, friends, and neighbors terrorized by ICE.
Editor’s Note: This past Monday, February 16—Presidents’ Day, a federal holiday for many K-12 students around the country—students from over 50 San Antonio schools marched the streets of downtown San Antonio demanding “an end to cooperation between local elected officials, law enforcement, and federal immigration authorities,” according to a press release sent to Deceleration by San Antonio Students for Peace.
Led by high school students with the support of SASP organizers, the march, mutual aid drive, and press conference followed weeks of student walkouts at high schools across the state—including some here in San Antonio—which prompted the Texas Educational Agency to threaten students, teachers, and districts with investigations, loss of state funding, certification revocations, blacklisting, and even state takeover.
Some schools have responded by suspending students for walking out of class. As captured here by two local high schoolers reporting on the march for Deceleration, students clapped back in particular on the state’s implication that protestors were idlers or truants: if they were, would they be in the streets on a holiday, chanting and marching? Here readers may find the power of these student voices, as captured by two of their peers. —Marisol Cortez
RECENT STORIES
Greg Harman
Texas Observer
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EVENTS
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February 21, 2026
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