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Today, I'm dipping into day two of Texas Data Center Rebellion, a convening of community members from across the Lone Star State contending with the myriad threats of AI data centers. It'll take a few days to pull the report back, together, but look for it later this week in the Water & Power newsletter. Today is also the final movement of Todos Agua, the week-long teaching intended to help restore a right relationship with water. You can catch us speaking with organizer Azul Barrietos about the effort on the Deceleration Podcast here, with livestreams of the panels we facilitated on Deceleration's YouTube, including 'Water, Territory and Memory' and 'Fighting Data Centers in Texas.' Today Todos Agua convenes in Brackenridge Park, site of years of resistance—and a federal lawsuit—to redevelopment efforts linked to bird harassment (become city policy across our parks system) and pending removal of many trees. And looming over all of this: War on Iran by presidential decree, war on immigrants and trans and queer communities, crushing of our science and culture, war on the Earth and alternative (habitable) futures. And so much more. Hence: No Kings. The last national/global No Kings march is considered the largest day of activism in U.S. history, as we wrote with our photo essay and short video from the last mass antifascist march in October 2025. We'll be out encouraging efforts through documentation, as is our habit. See you there. In San Antonio, you can top off your day with the legal fund benefit produced by Bimbos for Liberation, Mootual Aid, & Be the Change, "Para Los Homies," 7pm at Cherrity Bar: DJ's, drag performances, bands like Pallbexar and Brian and the Bar Flies ($10 donation). Below you'll find dispatches from two of our correspondents, Syris is back with hope for Alternative Futures with a reflection on alternative economics via the Pacific Islands and Gaige Davila is pounding the dystopia beat that is today's RGV courtesy of the insatiable billionaires directing our political leadership. And here we are, pushing updates on our overheating planet and the Prairieland clampdown, to boot, all to insist (again) that another world is still possible. More to come. — Greg Harman

First things first...

Where/When Is Your No Kings?

When our families are under attack and costs are pushing people to the brink, silence is not an option. We will defend ourselves and our communities against this administration’s unjust and cruel acts of violence. America does not belong to strongmen, greedy billionaires, or those who rule through fear. It belongs to us, the people.

Coastlines/Faultlines

'Super Collider': Autonomous Warfare, Space Colonization, & Climate Collapse Meet in Brownsville

Gaige Davila | Deceleration

I’m writing you from Phoenix, Arizona, but much of what comes below was written in Port Isabel, Texas, and Tokyo, Japan. A decade ago I would’ve never assumed a link between the two latter cities would develop.

But when I was walking through the wetlands surrounding the edges of Brownsville and Port Isabel a few weeks ago, I wasn’t thinking of Rio Grande LNG metastasizing by the day. Nor was I thinking of Brownsville’s wedded political and business leaders.

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Reporting

Climate-Fueled Heat Creating a Water Crisis in the Southwest

Mike Ludwig | Truthout

Deadly heat waves have become the summertime norm in Arizona and much of the Southwest in recent years. But this year, those heat waves are coming months before the height of summer. As an atmospheric “heat dome” planted itself over much of the U.S. West, temperatures outside Phoenix reached 101 degrees on the first day of spring, making Arizona the hottest place on Earth.

The heat dome continues to shatter temperature records this week. What crucial snowmelt that remained in desert mountains quickly dissipated, all but guaranteeing water shortages and another violent forest fire season later this year.

A groundwater crisis decades in the making has already slowed the otherwise rapid expansion of suburban sprawl around Phoenix, leaving entire housing developments sitting empty in the desert. That water shortage hasn’t stopped state officials from offering lucrative tax breaks to companies building AI data centers that guzzle huge amounts of freshwater and electricity.

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Alternative Futures

Lessons in Well-Being from the Pacific Islands During Capitalism's Collapse

Syris Valentine | Deceleration

“We will sacrifice because we know in future generations, my children, my grandchildren, are going to be in a better space,” said Tracie Mafile’o, a Tongan researcher based in Aotearoa, also known as New Zealand. I spoke with Mafile’o for this week’s piece about the need for a post-growth economics of well-being and the ways Pacific Islanders approach that work.

Anytime I’m out reporting, I always collect far more quotes and anecdotes than I can ever hope to include in the published piece, and sometimes beautiful sentiments like Mafile’o’s above never make it to print. But it’s sentiments like that that motivate this newsletter.

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Reporting

How the Prairieland 'Antifa' Verdict Threatens the Anti-Trump Resistance

Steven Monacelli | Texas Observer

Late last week, federal prosecutors notched a victory in an unprecedented and controversial trial that sought to tie alleged members of “Antifa,” a decentralized anti-fascist movement, to domestic terrorism. A Tarrant County jury returned a mixed verdict for nine defendants, who were accused of a variety of crimes stemming from a July 4 “noise demonstration” outside the Prairieland immigrant detention center in Alvarado and the non-fatal shooting there of a police officer.

Prosecutors argued the defendants constituted a “North Texas Antifa cell” that shared anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and anti-government beliefs—and that all nine played a role in the shooting that occurred, despite several government witnesses, who took plea deals, testifying at trial that they were surprised when the protest turned violent and that they and the other defendants did not belong to the purported Antifa group.

The defendants said the protest, which involved setting off fireworks and acts of vandalism, was intended to show solidarity with migrants in detention at Prairieland.

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