“I’ve always been committed,” said Schroeder, 62, of her allegiance to the GOP. That is, until she learned about a massive data center, part of OpenAI’s $500 billion Stargate project, going up south of her property.

The project has been championed by her party’s standard-bearers, President Donald Trump and Gov. Greg Abbott. But the more Schroeder learned about data centers popping up across the state, the more she became convinced her party was corrupted by industry lobbyists, seemingly brushing off what she saw as an existential threat to rural Texans like her.

So in late March, at a GOP precinct meeting in Falls County, Schroeder suggested they propose a data center ban at the upcoming state Republican convention, which sets the party’s priorities.

“They started screaming and yelling, and you would have thought I started World War III,” Schroeder said. “They said, ‘We won’t accept that, Rena. You’re gonna have to revise it to regulations.’”