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'Read Them Home'
Water & Power
The Texas Data Center Rebellion Has Begun
Deceleration reports back from the 2-day statewide convening of residents fighting data center buildout—from El Paso to Dallas to San Antonio and down to the RGV.
Greg Harman | Deceleration
"No one here is really against AI," the local attendee of the Texas Data Center Rebellion told me, matter-of-factly. "Think about it: Your cup was made with AI. Your shirt was made with AI." It was a frank assessment, and, as the day wore on, proved to be a tad fringe. There was a definite "burn it down" sentiment among many of these who are losing the fields they played on as children, choking on air pollution from new power plants feeding the facilities, or watching a retreating aquifer in the Panhandle get tapped for demands expected to literally suck away their future.
Yes, we're embedded in AI. But that's a new condition. For those holding out for the next cool gadget, maybe that mindset will shift after hearing Sanjay Ravigopal—who, yeah, is building a career inside artificial intelligence, albeit as a rising skeptic—take the floor.
"One reason they are building data centers is for artificial general intelligence, AGI. And that's supposed to replace the human brain. ... They want to create AGI to replace us. ... And they're destroying our environments just for their experimental sake. AI already works, but they're trying to get to the next level."
"Next level" seems to be the one most of us want to avoid. If we could dial back to War Games- or Tron-era technology, I think most of us would adjust just fine. Especially if it meant we could also somehow manage to keep our coral reefs and Amazon Rainforest. Of course, this was also a 'No Kings' weekend, too, and the closing of Todos Agua III in San Antonio. So I had to beg off for most of Day Two of the Rebellion. Yet I still couldn't escape AI concerns. There deep in the marching throngs I encountered a software engineer in an eye-catching pink outfit and giant red line striking out "AI" on a poster:
"AI is really doing a lot of bad stuff," they told me. "I'm a software developer right now and what it's doing to the industry: It's taking away jobs, it's lowering the quality of the kind software we're putting out. It's gonna be a nightmare. We can't control it."
Reporting
Endangered Species Act 'Disemboweled' by God Squad in 15 Minutes, Seven Seconds
Fossil fuel operators exempted from federal ESA rules across the Gulf of Mexico as ‘a matter of urgent national security.’
Wendee Nicole | Deceleration
Wednesday morning, in a meeting lasting fifteen minutes and seven seconds, the U.S. government’s Endangered Species Committee — dubbed the ‘God Squad’ in the 1970s—overrode the Endangered Species Act (ESA), exempting all oil and gas development in the Gulf of Mexico (Trump’s “Gulf of America”). Despite the Gulf providing just 15 percent of our energy production, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth called it “a matter of urgent national security.”
In an unprecedented move, each of seven members voted “aye,” disemboweling the ESA, not for one company, one drilling rig, or one operation, but for “the full scope of the Gulf of America Oil and Gas Activities, and for the duration of those actions.”
Rice’s whale? Pfft. Who cares about the 51 remaining in the world? Kemp’s ridley sea turtles? Pa-shaw. Smalltooth sawfish, Gulf sturgeon, whooping crane, Elkhorn coral? Who cares? Seemingly not this committee.
Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and each member insisted they had no choice. “Under Section 7j of the Endangered Species Act,” said Burgum, “if the Secretary of War makes a national security finding, then the committee shall grant an exemption.”
Reporting
‘A Moral Obscenity’: Trump Seeks Military Budget Boost But Billions in Cuts to Social Programs
“To pay for his endless wars, he wants the biggest increase to military spending in 70 years,” said Rep. Greg Casar. “Hell no.”
Jake Johnson | Common Dreams
President Donald Trump’s White House released a budget proposal on Friday that pairs an unprecedented, debt-exploding $1.5 trillion in military spending with tens of billions of dollars in cuts to domestic agencies and education, healthcare, climate, and housing programs.
Trump’s budget request for fiscal year 2027, which must be approved by Congress, includes $73 billion in total cuts to nondefense spending while boosting military outlays by 42%—or nearly $500 billion—compared to current levels.
Programs cut or eliminated in the proposed budget—under the guise of slashing “woke programs” and “ending the Green New Scam”—include the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Justice program, Community Services Block Grants, electric vehicle charging subsidies, renewable energy initiatives at the Interior Department, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing.
The budget proposal also calls for cuts to the already-depleted Internal Revenue Service, without offering specific figures.
One budget expert noted that, if enacted, the White House’s requested cuts would bring nondefense discretionary spending to “its lowest level in the modern era.”
Analysis
Greetings From Occupied Brownsville: The Dystopian Future Arrives on Texas's Lower Coast
'Economic development' in the RGV means autonomous warfare cozying up alongside LNG buildout and space colonization as wild spaces are paved and locals increasingly feel the pinch of rising rents and groceries.
Gaige Davila | Deceleration
The Austin-based war machinery company Saronic is eyeing the Port of Brownsville for its “Port Alpha” project to develop an autonomous “fleet of the future” (see the Navy contract here). It’s another billions-of-dollars project in an area that just can’t seem to stop getting them. Brownsville officials, of course, love the attention, while many residents near the growing SpaceX shadow are feeling the “Terminator Skynet vibes.”
Local elected officials wouldn’t name the company when asked by the Rio Grand Guardian because of the NDAs they have with Saronic, but some are using the phrase “game changer” to describe Port Alpha.
It seems the growth coalitions of the Rio Grande Valley are living in their own reality, one where benefits are assumed to follow each billion-dollar enterprise…But the rest of us aren’t sure how exactly. They always mention the jobs that’ll come, as if every person who is without one in the Valley has idle–but skilled–hands, ready to construct the next pyramid for the Port’s vision of “progress." No explanation is given as to what these corporations are providing the Valley outside of “jobs,” “economic development,” “growth,” and a litany of other terms that are both the question and answer for developing these things.
Cameron County held a public hearing on whether to grant Saronic a tax abatement last week.
I don’t deny that these companies help people living here make money that wasn't possible before. I have friends that are employed by some of them. But when you look at Census data, nothing has fundamentally changed about the area’s socioeconomics in the last decade.
