Freezing Confidence
What to know: According to a TPPF/Overton Insights poll, a whopping 57.1% of likely Texas voters are either “not too confident” or “not at all confident” in the electric grid’s ability to reliably provide power during extreme cold.
The TPPF take: The Texas grid is now in a situation where the winter period, not the summer period, will see the greatest likelihood of electricity shortages.
“Why the persistent lack of trust? Because the structural problems threatening our grid during freezing temperatures remain unfixed,” says TPPF’s Eric Oldfather. “Since the Winter Storm Uri disaster in 2021, 95% of the new capacity added in Texas has been wind, solar, and storage, which will be of little help during the next big storm. This imbalance must be corrected now.”
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Lost the Plot
What to know: Renowned feminist leader Gloria Steinem passed away on Sept 2, 2026 at the age of 92.
The TPPF take: Gloria Steinem lost the plot when it comes to gender equality.
“There’s no doubt Gloria Steinem is an American icon. As the founder of Ms. Magazine in 1972, she shined a light on discrimination against women that had been virtually invisible before,” says TPPF’s Sherry Sylvester. “But after a couple decades of battling for solid causes like “equal pay for equal work,” Steinem transformed the women’s movement into just another dark progressive front betraying American women who thought she cared about them.”
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Texans Turn on Data
What to know: Texans increasingly have turned on AI data centers, specifically the power they consume, in contradiction with President Trump’s “pro-AI” agenda.
The TPPF take: For data centers to make the ERCOT grid more reliable and affordable, the generation mix needs to immediately shift away from intermittent, short-duration resources and toward reliable, energy-dense generation.
“In recent years, the need for new transmission is increasingly driven by the need to move diffuse wind and solar hundreds of miles across the state to load centers, at the expense of Texas residential ratepayers and landowners,” says TPPF’s Dr. Brent Bennett. “Data centers can help reduce this problem by helping to finance co-located dispatchable generation, whether grid-connected or o ff-grid, if policies are changed to enable more of these arrangements to benefit the entire grid.”