Rural Texas keeps getting told to wait.
Kat Wall isn’t waiting. Her family has ranched the same Leon County ground since 1850, and she has spent this year in the rooms where the water gets allocated and the cattle market gets decided.
Texas Memory Systems, acquired by IBM
Texas A&M, Industrial Distribution
Energy executive, Texas Thorium
Texas ranchers are hurting. Over 150,000 ranching operations have been lost in America since 2017, and the national herd is at a 75-year low. Yet demand for beef continues to rise.
Five fights that decide whether rural Texas keeps working.
Five places where the policy is moving right now, and where she’s already in the room.
See the work- 01
The beef squeeze
Four companies run about 85 percent of American beef processing, and one of them is headquartered in Brazil. The rancher takes the price he’s handed. The family pays what it’s told. Somewhere in the middle, the money goes missing.
The position → - 02
Texas is running dry
The Edwards Aquifer ran under emergency pumping cuts without a break from 2022 until this summer, and up in the Panhandle the Ogallala is being drawn down faster than it will ever refill. Texans already voted the money through Proposition 4. The job now is making it buy pipe and reservoirs instead of paperwork.
The position → - 03
The reactor America walked away from
America invented the molten-salt thorium reactor at Oak Ridge in the 1960s, then shelved it for fifty years. China is the one running it now. Texas has the fund, the land, the licensed research reactor in Abilene, and the talent to take the lead back.
The position → - 04
Rural Texas gets the leftovers
State infrastructure money follows population. That puts the counties that feed Texas last in line for the roads, the pipe and the lines that let anybody live and work out here at all, and a farm-to-market road is how the cattle reach the sale barn and how the ambulance reaches the house.
The position → - 05
Decisions made closest to home
Government works best when the decision sits closest to the citizen. Heavy industry and data centers arrive needing enormous water and power, and the county supplying both is often the last one asked. The terms should be written down before ground is broken.
The position →
The ranch came first. The policy came after.
Kat Wall was raised in Centerville, in Leon County, where her family has lived since 1850. She studied Industrial Distribution at Texas A&M. Today she’s an energy executive at Texas Thorium, working with A&M on thorium power.
That’s why these five sit together. Work the same ground that long and the cattle price and the water table land on the same kitchen table.
- Ran on reliable water systems and better power for rural Texas.
- Took a public stand against foreign ownership of Texas farmland.
- Works on thorium power for a living, with Texas A&M.
The line is already forming.
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Dr. Ben Carson
Neurosurgeon and former HUD Secretary
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Steve Toth
State Representative, House District 15
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Penny Nance
CEO and President, Concerned Women for America LAC
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Terry Schilling
President, American Principles Project
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Dr. Rick Scarborough
President, Recover America
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Billy Van Davis
Command Sergeant Major
Join the work.
Rural Texas gets heard when enough of it is standing in the same place. Tell us where you are and how you want to help, and you’ll hear from someone organizing near you.
The people who feed this state shouldn’t have to shout to be heard in Austin.
A county with somebody paying attention gets heard. A county without one gets decided for. Yours is going to be one or the other.