Watching the world watch Texas.
Issue No. 1, 2026
In this issue of Branding Texas: The kindness of Texans is getting national and international coverage these days; activist and donor Doug Deason partners with environmentalists to help Texas state parks; tuition-free University of Austin scores $100 million from Philadelphia donor and goes tuition-free; Melinda French Gates of Dallas intends $7.9 billion dollar divorce settlement for charity; A.I. centers and start-ups in Texas heat up.
Thomas Graham
New York Times covers multi-billion-dollar effort to expand Texas state parks
Conservative activist, donor and businessman Doug Deason won very positive coverage in a handsome late-December Sunday feature from reporter J. David Goodman, writing in late December in the New York Times. Goodman reported on Deason’s “unlikely” collaboration with Texas environmental advocates who combined forces with Deason to advance a multi-billion-dollar effort to expand and protect state parks. (Crosswind represents Great American Media where Doug is a founder and current Chairman of the Board.)
Goodman, who is Houston bureau chief for the NYT, wrote this about the group’s impact: “Their improbable connection eventually paved the way for a $1 billion state fund created in 2023, which is now poised for its first major deployment as part of the acquisition of a 54,000-acre ranch in the Texas Hill Country about two and a half hours west of San Antonio. It will be the largest addition to the Texas park system in decades.”
Michael and Susan Dell fund savings accounts for 250 million American children
The Financial Times, based in London, picked up that Michael and Susan Dell have pledged a much larger amount – $6.25 billion – to help fund ‘Trump Accounts’ for American Children. (Michael was born in Houston and Susan in Dallas.)
Said Associated Press reporter Thea Beatty, writing for the Chronicle of Philanthropy about the surprise grant: “The historic gift has little precedent, with few single charitable commitments in the past 25 years exceeding $1 billion, much less multiple billions. Announced on GivingTuesday, the Dells believe it’s the largest single private commitment made to U.S. children.”
Under a new law, the Treasury will deposit $1,000 into the accounts of children born between Jan. 1, 2025 and Dec. 31, 2028 and the funds must be invested in an index fund, which tracks the overall stock market. Through their gift, the Dells will deposit $250 into accounts for an estimated 25 million children who are too old to qualify for the new federal $1,000 grant.
Melinda French Gates (from Dallas) directs $7.9 billion settlement to her foundation
Also generating international headlines in January was the stunning transfer by Bill Gates of $7.9 billion to the Melinda French Gates Foundation, part of the couple’s divorce settlement.
Fortune reporter Maro Quiroz-Guiterrez, writes: “Melinda French Gates has transformed her relatively young Pivotal Philanthropies Foundation into one of America’s largest private foundations almost overnight, in part due to her split with ex-husband Bill Gates.”
The generosity of Melinda French Gates has dominated philanthropy now for the past quarter century, of course, but rarely reported is that Melinda is from the Lone Star State, born and raised in Dallas, and intellectually nurtured by the good Catholic nuns and faculty at Ursuline Academy in that city (Melinda was 1982 Academy valedictorian).
A tuition-free University of Austin
National and international press covered late last year, perhaps with a bit of envy, Philadelphia-based billionaire Jeff Yass’ $100 million grant to make the new University of Austin tuition-free – an institution that reporters Francesca Maglione and Annie Massa label a “Free-Speech University.”
Jeff has his own byline in an essay last November in the Free Press, writing “The incentive structure of higher education is broken. My gift to the University of Austin is meant to change that—by tying its success to the real-world achievements of its students.”
Intelligence on Texas A.I. centers “heats up”
I was asked at year’s end to provide emergency media training for one of the nation’s most ambitious A.I. startups, a national legislative intelligence venture in Austin TX, a rush task done before a critical trip by the start-ups young co-founders to New York City and to the New York State Capitol in Albany NY.
In the course of that project, I became again sensitive to the growing footprint of A.I. all across the state, including plans for several huge new in-state data centers.
Earlier this month, Politico reporter Jason Plautz wrote about Fermi America’s plan to build a massive privately-owned national nuclear-powered energy grid for artificial intelligence, with a first construction site already underway in Amarillo TX. (Fermi America is led by former Texas Governor and U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Dallas billionaire Toby Neugebauer.)
Wrote Plautz: “The venture Fermi named Project Matador would host more than 18 million square feet of data centers packed with supercomputers and powered with nuclear, gas and solar plants generating more electricity than 15 states use at their peak.”
Back in November, Reuter’s Juby Babu covered Google’s plan to spend $40 billion in new data centers in Armstrong County and Haskell County.
Wrote Babu then: “The investment, which will be made through 2027, underscores the intensifying competition among AI and cloud service providers to build infrastructure capable of supporting advanced AI models.”
And Matt O’Brien, tech reporter at the Associated Press, reported in the late Fall on OpenAI’s flagship Stargate data center in Abilene TX. Wrote O’Brien: “Stargate, a joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank, said it is building two more data center complexes in Texas, one in New Mexico, one in Ohio and another in a Midwest location it hasn’t yet disclosed. But it’s the project in Abilene, Texas, that promised to be the biggest of them all, transforming what the city’s mayor called an old railroad town.”
According to O’Brien, the Abilene eight-building complex will house a network of AI computer chips and the complex is “on track to be the world’s largest AI supercluster once fully built.”
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