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Elsa Hull was arrested twice this summer defending a roughly two-acre bird sanctuary on the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo from border wall construction. Both times Zapata County, Texas, deputies dismissed her claims that recently unearthed documents show the federal government does not have the right to develop on this land—in spite of it being in a floodplain. And yet it's become remarkably quiet on the rio since that second arrest.

Surveyors these days approach the boundary line from north and south, but they no longer trespass on this pocket park beneath the small town of San Ygnacio (pop. 495) 30 minutes downstream of Laredo. And, Hull boasts to Deceleration, the machinery scraping the Earth up and down the river from here never got into the park in spite of months of attempts. It's a fact she credits to local resistance.

Deceleration sat with Hull on the banks of the Rio Grande this week for an hour-long conversation after paddling on the river with her from an increasingly rare access point for paddlers on the U.S. side of the river. Increasingly, communities are being fenced out of their own land and away from one of the greatest rivers on planet Earth.

Just not here.

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Texas is getting hotter—nearly four degrees hotter in just the last few decades. The last 10 years all rank among the hottest years ever on the planet, with residents forced to navigate sometimes months upon months of 100-plus-degree days. We know our unhoused neighbors, residents without sufficient cooling, or those with medical conditions are highly vulnerable to heat stress and wildly undercounted heat-related death. But imagine trying to survive this monster heat in a 6x9 concrete box—without air conditioning—and you have a recipe for mass suffering and death. A judge already ruled the fact of most Texas prisons having no A/C unconstitutional. Now we’re waiting for the fix.

This week, Deceleration speaks with Dr. Amite Dominick, founder & president of Texas Prisons Community Advocates (TPCA), about her long-standing advocacy for the incarcerated. She details how the fight began, the response from those in elected power, and why it’s very possible a breakthrough is right around the corner.

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“Project Matador” outside of Amarillo, Texas, pairs Fermi America and the Texas Tech University System seeking a pod of “hyperscale” data centers over 6,000 acres across a privately owned and operated electric grid. Already permitted for 6GW of power with 93 planned gas-fired turbines and seeking to build multiple nuclear power plants, this is a truly climate-breakdown accelerating power footprint that brings severe water concerns atop one of the planet’s most imperiled major aquifers that is relied upon by tens of thousands of farmers and ranchers (you know, the folks who produce our food and clothes, at least for those of us not wearing plastic). Deceleration’s guest this week is Kendra Seawright of Women’s March. She is doing the work of organizing the resistance on the ground that is pushing back on the many assumptions and assertions of what this project is good for—if anything. As more MAGA supporters start to split with President Trump on crypto and AI data centers, this means new challenges to foster a diverse hub of voices. We wanted to hear more about what that looks like and what lessons there may be for others in the trenches.

“We didn’t expect a rubber stamp,” Seawright told us about the permit already in Fermi’s pocket. “We want real honest communication about what this is going to mean for our health and future generations too.”

Next week is the deadline for a new permit application to take power production to 11GW (with a goal of 17GW of power and resulting pollution).

Details/Public Comment: https://www.amarilloaction.org/ai

Past Deceleration Data Center Coverage:

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Deceleration.news: 'For the Earth. And all Her families.'