There used to be a sense among Republicans that they needed to keep up some semblance of looking out for the public interest. 

That’s all fallen by the wayside with our “weaving” president, who recently had a message for the nation as data center outrage grows: Sit back and “let Data Reign.” That probably isn’t a winning GOP message when data center backlash has reached a fever pitch. In fact, the anger over the AI-related buildout has even gotten Governor Greg Abbott to scramble to reinvent himself on the issue. Whether or not a critical mass of rock-ribbed Republican voters will break ranks is an open question, but, if so, Democrat Clayton Tucker, who has made opposition to data centers perhaps the core plank of his run this year for agriculture commissioner, will be happy to collect.   

In late September, Abbott ordered the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to pause all data center permits to align with his earlier announcement of a statewide moratorium. It should be a pretty embarrassing pivot from the governor who just last year bragged about Texas becoming the “epicenter of AI development.”

While much of the Texas GOP is trying to redefine itself, the populist Democrat candidate for ag commissioner, Tucker, has built his campaign around the data center issue, taking an expansive view of the Ag commish position. As the AI backlash boils over, it could prove to have been a smart bet. In politics, you reap what you sow, and favorable conditions may be leading democrats to quite the fall harvest. 

Clayton Tucker describes himself as a populist, and it’s fitting on two counts. One, he is a protégé of Jim Hightower, the agriculture commissioner himself from 1983 to 1991 (who was ousted by an up-and-coming Rick Perry as the GOP’s takeover of the state advanced).  A former Texas Observer editor, Hightower to this day is armed with a voice and manner so distinctly Texan you can hear the cowboy hat, and he helped define a short-lived period of hopeful progressive populism in Texas. Tucker is also from Lampasas, the humble birthplace of the Farmers Alliance, founded in 1877, that Hightower drew inspiration from. Not that lineage means anything on its own. 

Populism is probably one of the most abused words in politics today, describing everything from Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump. But populism is more than rhetoric or an us-versus-them style. It’s a movement that deeply shaped Texas politics. With the populist People’s Party becoming the second major party in Texas in the 1890s, it sent a host of sun-battered everyday people to Austin and fought against the corporate takeover of the state. This real populism was deeply rooted in the lives of its members, who’d attend regular meetings, read movement papers, and gather in the summer in the hundreds to debate and celebrate. It was not a top-down movement of demagogues, but bottom-up in a way that very rarely happens. In a world of camera-ready celebrity politicians who promise so much but deliver so little, we could do with a lot more true populism today. 

Those who take a literal view of the ag commissioner’s role may scratch their heads looking at Tucker’s major planks. His issues page lists everything from water access and food affordability to Flock cameras and data centers. In defense of this wide view of the office, Tucker has noted the importance of the office’s role as a voice for rural Texas and pledged to use “the power of the bully pulpit to help locals organize.” In this, he might be taking a page from his mentor, Hightower, who, when running in 1982, noted this view of the office: “I’m a populist, and I believe we’re being screwed by the big boys. … This office has the power to do something—a fleet of cars and planes, large staff, a daily radio show, field offices. It provides a forum.”

2016 photo of Jim Hightower (Wikimedia Commons/Slowking4)

The commissioner race pits Tucker against Nate Sheets, a well-funded honey dealer and connected Republican. You’d be hard-pressed to draw up a storm more perfect for Democrats, both in this race and generally this year, to take the advantage back from Republicans. A self-inflicted economic disaster caused by the unpopular and unasked-for war in Iran has exploded the cost of living nationally, with farmers facing high costs on everything from fertilizer to diesel to electricity, leading many to turn to bank loans to get through the year. Speaking of bloodsuckers, the New World Screwworm, a nasty critter that burrows into open wounds to live and breed, nearly half a century since it was eradicated, is at large in Texas, jumping from cattle to horses. There’s plenty to be up in arms about. 

In the GOP primary, Nate Sheets beat out the incumbent commissioner Sid Miller, an eccentric figure and rival of Abbott, who backed Sheets. The bad blood hasn’t subsided: The lame-duck Miller, never one to keep quiet, has decried the Republican Party regarding everything from the screwworm to beef to data centers. 

On the Big Data question, Miller has surprisingly found common cause with Tucker, appearing with him at a June forum in Matagorda County. He recently told The Source, “I think we could possibly lose some statewide races as Republicans,” adding, “we’re on the wrong side of this data center issue.”

If you follow Clayton Tucker’s social media, you’ll see plenty of evidence of the frustration in rural America over the AI boom playing out in their backyards, with packed rooms roaring with anger over these developments. A Texas Politics Project poll claims 60 percent of rural Texans oppose data centers in their communities. The outrage is in stark contrast to the welcome mat that Texas Republicans gave to the industry. 

The issue is tricky for Republicans following years of the GOP centralizing so much power in Austin. The Legislature has passed a host of laws that restrict local governments from passing environmental regulations and labor protections.The so-called “right to farm” law, from 2023, is in practice set up to prevent localities from regulating Big Ag. The Texas GOP has fully embraced a plan to centralize as much power as possible in Austin. 

This means even if the GOP wants to change course, they’ve created a legal and political web that makes empowering communities to regulate data centers difficult. And that isn’t even mentioning the general timidity toward taking on the well-funded industry. When Hood County and San Marcos enacted data center bans, Texas GOP Senator Bettencourt challenged them, claiming they were in conflict with state preemption laws.

While data centers have unexpectedly taken a front-and-center role in the campaign, agriculture issues still appear. Tucker points to the 30-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement for hollowing out Texas farming and opening the door for rapid monopolization. Talking about monopolization is where Clayton Tucker’s populist heritage comes through most clearly. Writing on X, Tucker notes the similarities between our time and the Gilded Age: “Today’s monopolists hide behind shell companies and corporate paperwork, but the game hasn’t changed.” The campaign even sells “Bust Monopolies” stickers. 

(Clayton Tucker YouTube)

The influence doesn’t stop there. While populism is often boiled down to a few major policies—anti-monopoly, free silver, regulation of the railroads—it was always more than policy. It historically connected frustrations with a larger critique of the economic system that was leaving most Texans behind and the culture of corruption of the major “interests.”

Tucker’s planks may seem disparate and even beyond the purview of the office he seeks, encompassing everything from soil health, which is certainly under the Ag commish mandate, to Flock cameras, which is not really. But throughout all these positions is a damning portrait of a democracy that isn’t working for working people—and a call for everyday people to reclaim the power. This is the heart of the populist appeal. 

Still, some of the arguments Tucker’s campaign makes walk the line between conspiratorial or, at the very least, dubious. One alarming claim on his website about Flock cameras connecting to personal phones through Bluetooth cites only a Reddit video posted on r/diabetes as evidence. Even anti-Flock activists have called this out as false.  And the site’s stated opposition to proposed 765-kilovolt transmission lines in Texas lines warns misleadingly plays up the threat of “electromagnetic radiation.” Outrage around both these topics is palpable: Abbott yanked state funding for the cameras, leading to some of the dystopian surveillance system being unplugged, and the proposed transmission line buildout is strongly opposed by rural landowners, including country star Tanya Tucker. 

These embellishments, on the other hand, may be little compared to Sheets’ platform, which includes paeans to the 2nd Amendment and anti-abortion politics and dedicates an entire section to confronting Chinese “agro-terrorism.” 

When Jim Hightower announced in 1982 that he was running for Ag commissioner in the pages of the Observer, he reminded readers, “there’s a lot more to being agriculture commissioner than sticking a straw in your mouth and humming, ‘Thank God I’m a country boy,’ but that’s about all the people of this state have had for the past few years.” Hightower revolutionized the office, using it to promote workers’ rights, cooperatives, and organic farming. He also tried to rebuild populist politics through his personality and organizations like the New Populist Forum. 

There are plenty of similarities between Hightower and his would-be successor, though two operate in radically different times. When Hightower was first running, a New Deal and Great Society coalition and historic remnants of populism, still existed. Though limited, Hightower was attempting to rekindle those ashes. In our time, that ember has gone out. Tucker is in the difficult position of trying to both create and mobilize a populist coalition at the same time. The fact that someone is trying, and seriously threatening the Republicans, is an encouraging sign that there is still life in this idea long thought dead. 

One thing missing from Tucker’s campaign, when compared to the historic populists and even Jim Hightower’s campaign, is farmworkers. To be fair, Tucker uses the term working-class, and often in contrast to the monopolists and big Tech. But for someone whose platform includes so much, it is glaring that farmworkers—not small farmers, but those employed for a wage—are less of a focus. While Texas does have a fair amount of small family farms, most do not actually subsist on farming. Farmworkers, on the other hand, are the backbone of Texas’ agricultural economy, and they face abuse on everything from stolen wages to worker protections to profiling. While the ag commissioner can be no stand-in for the Texas Workforce Commission, it does oversee protections for these workers, and they are as worthy of a voice and of the “bully pulpit” as any other. Between the official positions of the Texas Farmers Union, which Tucker is the secretary of, and his association with Hightower, there’s plenty to show where a Tucker ag department might stand, but there is a missed opportunity to highlight and champion the needs of the people who feed us.

Going into November, Texas has a real chance to do something that hasn’t been done in a long while. And, with a win, populism has a chance to return to its roots. 

The post Jim Hightower’s Revenge? A Long-Shot Bid Could Restore Left Populism to the Agriculture Commissioner’s Office. appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Introduction by Ivan Flores and Gus Bova:

Half a century ago, as part of an oral history project, fine arts photographer Dee Azadian and hundreds of volunteer field researchers spent months interviewing and recording the senior residents of Caldwell County, long before an encroaching Austin swelled the population of that swath of Central Texas—today anchored by the stately courthouse and now-famed barbecue joints of Lockhart.

“Caldwell County is an impoverished, tricultural, rural county … impoverished, to use a stillborn logic, because there are many poor people, and tricultural in the sense that distinct communities of blacks, browns and whites make up the population,” reads the poetic and of-its-time introduction to the 1977 book that the oral history project spawned: Earth Has No Sorrow.

(Clockwise, top-left to bottom-left) Manuel Serna and friend in Lockhart. Eason Chamberlain in St. John Colony; (just below) Sadie Baylor in Dale. Farmworkers in Fentress. An immigrant man in Maxwell. Fenora Carter in St. John Colony. Judge Leonard Scott in Lockhart. Reverend S.L. Davis in St. John Colony

That book, archival photographs, and interviews today live on as the Caldwell County Photography and Oral History Collection at the University of North Texas Libraries Special Collections, and the original cassette tape recordings can be found at the Briscoe Center for American History in Austin.

For the project, Azadian made portraits and landscapes of those he and his team interviewed, showcasing the racial and socioeconomic diversity of the county. Their work refocuses history through the lens of its ordinary participants rather than its leading men. And interviewing octogenarians in the 1970s brings us voices and historical material from the post-Civil War era.

These voices are often captured in haunting turns of phrase in the printed oral history. “I came with the century. … Rightfully, I didn’t know my mother. She died when I was born—I was born and she died,” begins the recollection of Felipe Limas, a Mexico-born grocery store owner.

“When Grandma was nine years old, the stars fell. Did you know the stars fell once?” opens Florence Whitehead, a 90-year-old who was still tending her livestock near a spot off the road known as Delhi. And: “I’ve had an interesting life … exciting, moving from one degree of mystery to another,” starts Sadie Baylor, described in the book as “an evangelist and a healer.”

The images that the Texas Observer reprints here—on the occasion of the project’s 50th anniversary—may breed nostalgia. But, to be clear, the oral histories are replete with language to make the modern reader blush, as well as descriptions of grinding poverty and casual violence, reminding the reader that change is often for the good.

All told, it’s a beautiful body of work that challenges us to consider not just what is lost but what remains.

(Left page, clockwise) Mexican Independence Day in Luling. Whitehead. Holland Page, historian, in Lockhart. The hands of Mr. Thompson in Dale. (Opposite page) Juneteenth in St. John Colony

Editor’s Note: Please feel free to download the pdf below to view this photo essay as presented in print.

The post ‘Earth Has No Sorrow’: Visions of a Caldwell County Long Gone appeared first on The Texas Observer.

(Ben Sargent)

To see more political cartoons from Ben Sargent, visit our Loon Star State section. Find Observer political reporting here.

The post Matters of Religion appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Already facing backlash for its decision to forgo reviewing critical post-Roe v. Wade pregnancy-related deaths, the state’s Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee (MMRC) is giving the public more reason to suspect political interference.

Originally slated to be released on September 1, as it typically has been in previous years, state health officials now say the committee’s much-anticipated biennial report that analyzes maternal deaths—and makes key legislative recommendations—won’t be released until December 1, pushing its publication past the November midterm elections and to just a month before the start of the Texas legislative session. Maternal health activists have pushed back on the ostensible reason behind the report’s lag, a new state law that health officials say gives the MMRC a three-month extension.  

“By delaying their most recent report and refusing to release data from 2022 and 2023, [the MMRC members] are not only preventing lifesaving information from being made public, but they are also refusing to honor the lives lost,” said Serita Fontanesi with Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity during a “People’s Hearing” outside the Department of State Health Services (DSHS) building in late September. 

Speaking at a podium decorated at its foot with yellow roses, lit candles, and a photo tribute to five Texas women who died as a result of the Texas abortion ban, reproductive rights advocates and lawmakers gathered to demand transparency and the immediate release of the crucial analysis. 

The committee’s most recent report, released in 2024, showed a jump in maternal deaths in 2020 and 2021, marking the highest rate since the 23-member committee started examining these cases in 2014. The upcoming report will skip the two years directly following the demise of Roe, via the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling, and the enactment of the state’s near-total and criminal abortion bans—pivotal years for health professionals and advocates to assess the impact of anti-abortion policies. 

Chris Van Deusen, a spokesperson with DSHS, said agency leadership (a position appointed by the Health and Human Services Commission’s head, who is in turn appointed by Republican Governor Greg Abbott) requested the MMRC take more time to add details to the report. 

“[T]he acting commissioner has asked the committee to strengthen the report by further describing its work around preventability, better defining the sources of its recommendations, and making clearer connections between the underlying data, findings, and recommendations,” he said. 

For Austin state Representative Donna Howard, who chairs the Texas Women’s Health Caucus, the purported reasons don’t add up. The MMRC claimed to be “on track” for its September 1 release during its March meeting, the last time the committee held a hearing that was open to the public. And as Howard recently told the Observer, she authored a new law specifically meant to help speed up the MMRC review process. She also noted that in the past, the committee has released preliminary recommendations early and released a full report later.

“I can’t come up with any rational, reasonable explanation that this [report] would be delayed, especially amid a midterm election, unless it was politically motivated,” Howard told the Observer. 

State Representative Donna Howard speaks to colleagues on the House floor in May 2025. (Jordan Vonderhaar for the Texas Observer)

As the Houston Chronicle first reported, the rationale stems from a provision in an obscure new law enacted in 2025. Van Deusen cites a “new provision” in the health code enacted by House Bill 4666 during the 2025 session as the reason the MMRC is now afforded three more months before releasing its report. 

However, that bill was simply intended to streamline state health agency reporting to prevent duplicative reports and ensure government efficiency, not as a vehicle to delay essential maternal health data, said state Representative Christian Manuel, the Beaumont-area Democrat who authored the bill. “This bill is being misused and weaponized to withhold information to the public, which is totally going against the spirit and intention of the legislation,” he told the Observer. “I’m disappointed that my bill is being hijacked.”

He said the bill was meant to target programs at HHSC overall, not DSHS specifically, which is the agency supervising the committee. Moreover, Manuel’s office notes his bill focuses on quarterly and annual reports while the MMRC publishes a biennial report. 

DSHS points to an amendment by Wichita Falls Republican state Representative James Frank, tacked on at third reading with unanimous support and no meaningful debate, as the justification for delaying the MMRC analysis. It allows, but does not require, that state health agency reports be submitted no later than December 1, meaning the MMRC could have stuck to its September deadline without fault. 

“The intent [of the amendment] was to align reporting deadlines,” Frank told the Observer in a message. When asked to respond to concern that his amendment is being used to delay the MMRC report, Frank responded: “The decision to release the report with the others when it is due??”

Manuel, the bill author, remains suspicious. “We can’t say if this amendment was being used as a Trojan Horse to push the maternal mortality report until after the elections all along,” said Manuel. “But it’s hard to believe this is all coincidental considering this also happened many years before this bill existed. We clearly have a governor that does not want this data to be released prior to an election.”

In 2022, the state health agency similarly punted the report until after that year’s midterm election, sparking parallel criticism at the time that the move was influenced by politics. 

Especially frustrating to lawmakers like Howard is the report’s delay impeding the ability to file timely legislation to help alleviate the maternal mortality crisis, as legislators heavily rely on the committee’s recommendations to craft those bills. For instance, after the MMRC recommended extending post-partum Medicaid coverage from two months to one year, lawmakers filed bills to support this—and even that took multiple sessions to achieve. 

With bill filing starting in early November–and a drafting backlog already underway at the Texas Legislative Council, according to Howard—the earlier lawmakers file, the better chance their legislation will be a priority. 

“Time is of the essence in getting bills filed so delaying this report and these legislative recommendations by a full three months is a huge setback for us,” Howard said. 

raven Freeborn, chief executive officer at reproductive rights advocacy group Avow Texas, called the health agency’s decision a “politically motivated cover-up.” Without this report, Texans are not going to be “fully informed” at the ballot box this November as Republicans will be able to evade a “full picture of accountability” for the abortion bans they’ve championed, she told the Observer. 

Advocates, including the Texas Women’s Health Caucus, called on DSHS to release the report at least by October 1–but that call has gone unmet. 

“Not only does the state not want to be held accountable for the crisis they manufactured, the non-partisan body tasked with reviewing that crisis is getting caught up in the red tape of politics,” said Freeborn. 

“The new timeline does not match the urgency of this crisis. The stakes are too high to delay this report any longer.”

The post  A ‘Politically Motivated Cover-Up’: Why the State’s Maternal Death Report Was Pushed Until After Midterms appeared first on The Texas Observer.