Texas has 655 data centers operating, planned or under construction, and its counties can't require one to keep its distance from a house. A new Berkeley study finds homes within a mile lose 7.2% of their value. Abbott promised setbacks in June and says legislators need more information first.
Greg Abbott's campaign used AI to swap an American flag for a transgender flag in a photo of his opponent talking to a child about a closed school. Ken Paxton scripted a speech his opponent never gave. Marsha Blackburn put hers in a prison jumpsuit. Cindy Hyde-Smith registered a domain in her opponent's name.
Texas ranks 40th of 50 on the measures we track, with the second-worst food insecurity and second-worst women's health scores in the country. Greg Abbott signed the abortion ban and the school voucher law, never expanded Medicaid, and now runs on affordability after property tax levies rose to $89.4 billion and home insurance premiums rose 79%. Here is the record, and what each of the seventeen Republicans running for reelection has been busy with.
Abbott ordered the Texas Department of Insurance to act on home insurance costs on August 24, 2026, citing a 79% premium increase in six years. In 2025 his Legislature killed both bills that would have addressed it, insurance was not one of his seven emergency items, and it was not on his 18-item special session agenda either.
Abbott's new affordability plan promises to cut property taxes in half by zeroing out school taxes on homesteads. He has been governor since 2015, and statewide property tax levies have risen from $51.2 billion to $89.4 billion on his watch. Nearly 4 in 10 homesteads already owe no school tax, and Texas's 4.1 million renters get nothing.
On Monday, Trump answered the seven in ten Americans who don't want a data center near them by telling them they're choosing to be poor. Thirteen months earlier he had signed the executive order that hands those data centers federal land, skipped environmental reviews and taxpayer-backed loans.
Tony Gonzales resigned on April 14. Greg Abbott still has not called a special election, and the seat is not on track to be filled until January — a vacancy of roughly 260 days. A Democrat resigned the same day in California; voters there have already picked his replacement.
Texas added $1 to every car insurance policy to fight catalytic converter theft. A board Abbott appoints spent at least $30 million of it on AI cameras that log where Texans drive. Abbott stopped it Thursday night — the night before the Tribune published.
More than 1.2 million Texans have suspended voter registrations with the November election barely two months away. Here is the record of the two Texas Republicans on the November ballot who have spent years working those voter rolls — and what you can do before the October 5 deadline.
Abbott paused data center approvals in August of an election year and said Texas needed more information first. State regulators approved the schedule this week: the report lands December 10. Election Day is November 3.
Someone has to pay to power the AI build-out. In Texas, Florida, Ohio, Georgia and New Mexico, these five Republicans have spent the last few years making sure it's you.
Abbott courted data centers and let their tax break balloon for eleven years. In August of an election year he announced a pause — and lifelong Republicans in small towns say they can see exactly what it is. His approval with rural voters has fallen 15 points, and he's now one point ahead of a Democrat.
Abbott wants a law banning Texas public schools from sponsoring H-1B visas — applied to teachers already here, not just new hires. Districts use those visas to fill critical teacher shortages, in roles such as bilingual education.
Abbott is reviewing all state and federal grant money to DFW and Houston airports over foot-washing stations Muslims use before prayer. DFW's has sat inside the airport's interfaith chapel since 2019; Houston's, described as for people of all faiths, since 2024.
Abbott Impact matches your contacts against the Texas voter file, shows you each person's party, birth month and election-by-election turnout back to 2016, and tracks daily who hasn't voted yet. You get points. Your contacts were never asked.
Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller says Abbott's data center crackdown is 'smoke and mirrors,' that he's never gotten a meeting with the Governor in 12 years, and that other Republicans are staying quiet because they're scared of Abbott's $105 million war chest.
Abbott calls city-owned utilities like San Antonio's CPS Energy 'energy monopolies' and wants retail providers let in. CPS says it has the lowest combined residential rates in the state. Electricity companies and their PACs have given Abbott's campaign at least $230,000.
Abbott appoints all 21 board members of the Nueces River Authority and can remove them. It may run out of money for its desalination plant by the end of August. He has no such power over the city council he's threatening to take over — and he's fighting to keep his emails with the river authority secret.
On July 31, delta-8 became a felony in Texas — seven years after Abbott signed the law that made it legal. A month earlier, the head of the country's largest Anheuser-Busch distributor gave him $500,000.
Abbott branded Texas the 'epicenter of AI development' and handed data centers one of the biggest tax breaks in the country. Now, in an election year, he says he's the one protecting us from them.
A governor, an attorney general, a state bill and a 50-member congressional caucus have all mobilized against a Sharia takeover. In Arkansas it traces back to a hate group's blog post and a small subdivision that's been there for two decades.
Christian Castro has sat in a Texas jail for two months because Governor Abbott's office hasn't signed his extradition paperwork. A Minnesota prosecutor has now written twice. Abbott's office says it doesn't comment.
Texas Monthly reviewed 1,300 pages of emails and found Abbott's CAIR proclamation tracks a report written by a fellow at a think tank the SPLC lists as an anti-Muslim hate group — including a claim about the FBI that appears to be false.
Gov. Greg Abbott signed an executive order siccing state health agencies on hospitals and providers over 'birth tourism' — threatening their licenses in a state already near the bottom for women's health.
After ICE shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott went silent for over a week — then offered only that 'any loss of life is tragic.'
CNBC just ranked the 10 worst states to live in America for 2026. Every single one is a Republican trifecta — including Sarah Sanders' Arkansas and Greg Abbott's Texas.
