Both Texas Senate Candidates Now Want to Crack Down on Data Centers

Paxton's "Texas First Data Center Plan," unveiled Monday in his U.S. Senate race against State Rep. James Talarico, is the clearest signal yet that the local-impact backlash to AI infrastructure has gotten strong enough to flip a red seat's playbook. Both campaigns are now out-bidding each other on data-center restrictions, and they are publicly breaking with President Trump, who told Axios last week that any community refusing a data center would be "making a mistake." (Texas Tribune, Aug. 24, 2026; Gizmodo)

Talarico, who rolled out his own plan on July 22, leads with three planks a Texas Legislature could actually pass: repeal the state sales-tax exemption for data centers, mandate a fixed water-reuse level for large projects, and grant host communities a veto over new siting. Paxton's four-point list, by contrast, mixes one state-level push, one federal co-sponsorship, and two slogans. (Texas Tribune, July 22, 2026)

What Paxton is actually promising to deliver in Austin is thinner than the announcement suggests. His first point, a legislative ban on data centers using Chinese technology, is a political signal more than a state-level mechanism. So is his fourth, a "Texas First" branding plank paired with support for Gov. Greg Abbott's proposals. The two planks that touch the ground are backing Abbott's push to repeal the data-center sales tax exemption and pledging to co-sponsor Sen. Tom Cotton's DATA Act, a February bill that would let data centers build off-grid power plants. The DATA Act has not moved in the U.S. Senate since introduction. (Bloomberg Government on the GOP split)

The third Paxton plank is the most legally novel and the most constitutionally contested: holding data-center companies "criminally liable" for AI chatbots their services host if those chatbots are deemed to undermine child safety. The standard is broad, the speech and due-process questions are real, and the proposal is in Paxton's own X post, not in any current Texas statute. Talarico called the plan "a sad attempt to reverse course" via Fox 7 Austin.

Texas trails only Virginia in hosted data centers, according to Data Center Map, and hosts flagship AI infrastructure including OpenAI's Stargate buildout in Abilene and SpaceX's Terafab project in Austin, a Musk-adjacent effort to manufacture compute chips for orbital data centers. Local impact has been building for months, on rural water tables, on the grid ERCOT manages, and on residential utility bills. (Gizmodo)

Abbott has now moved into the same lane. On Sunday he told reporters AI companies "basically dug their own grave for the problem that's been caused for them, and that's why they got the backlash they deserve," and earlier this month he directed the Texas Public Utility Commission and ERCOT to audit pending data-center grid-connection projects. Trump is on the other side of the line, telling Axios the new power plants being built for AI are "the most beautiful, you've never seen power plants like this" and that any community refusing a data center is "making a mistake." Paxton and Abbott remain politically tied to Trump; on data centers, they are publicly breaking with him. (Bloomberg Government; New York Magazine on the broader backlash)

The federal-state mismatch is what turns a campaign story into an infrastructure story. An EPA ruling in late July cleared power plants serving data centers to sidestep some pollution rules if they sit off the main grid, the same policy the DATA Act would codify for new builds.

A reader's useful takeaway: a competitive U.S. Senate seat is now a real-time test of whether voter anger over data centers can convert into enforceable policy before federal AI rules arrive. The watch items are concrete. Does the Texas Legislature, with its GOP supermajority, ever call a vote on Talarico's water-reuse mandate or a data-center siting veto. Does Cotton's DATA Act move out of committee in a U.S. Senate that has not touched it since February. And does Trump's posture, public praise of the new power plants and public pressure on any community that says no, survive the next time a Texas Republican primary voter opens a utility bill.