Katrina Pierson

I support an aggressive, science-based response coordinated among the Texas Animal Health Commission, USDA, veterinarians, wildlife officials, and livestock producers. Texas should provide emergency resources for rapid testing, surveillance, producer education, animal treatment, and targeted assistance for ranchers complying with quarantine or movement restrictions.

The response should prioritize the sterile insect technique, which successfully eradicated screwworm from the United States in the 1960s and controlled the 2016 Florida Keys outbreak. In Texas, we should also strengthen border inspection, livestock-movement tracking, veterinary laboratory capacity, and mandatory reporting of suspected cases.

Any quarantine should be geographically targeted, regularly reviewed, and lifted promptly when surveillance data demonstrate that it is no longer necessary. This considers the balance between animal health without unnecessarily disrupting commerce or private property rights.

Early containment is therefore both a biosecurity necessity and a fiscally responsible investment.

Texas should welcome data-center investment, but these projects must pay their own way. I would not support policies that shift transmission, generation, water-infrastructure, or reliability costs onto homeowners and existing businesses.

I would support:

• Requiring large-load applicants to demonstrate financial commitment, credible construction timelines, and available generation before receiving grid approval.
• Assigning project-specific transmission and utility-upgrade costs to the developments creating them.
• Requiring operational flexibility during grid emergencies, including demand reduction or on-site backup generation.
• Requiring water-impact disclosures and locally approved water-supply plans, with strong incentives for recycled water, closed-loop cooling, and lower-water technologies.
• Conditioning tax incentives on measurable capital investment, permanent Texas jobs, infrastructure commitments, and enforceable clawbacks.
• Preserving local authority over land use, noise, water availability, and effects on neighboring property.

I support responsible growth. ERCOT was tracking approximately 474 gigawatts of large-load requests as of June 2026, roughly 90 percent associated with data centers, although many proposed projects may never be built. The Texas Water Development Board also warns that statewide water totals can conceal substantial impacts in water-stressed communities. Those facts support project-specific review rather than either unchecked incentives. Texas can lead the digital economy without compromising grid reliability, water security, private property, or affordable utility service.

Texas must address flooding, drought, water quality, and aging infrastructure as parts of the same water-security challenge. I support fully and transparently implementing the voter-approved Texas Water Fund.

Investments should include:

• Repairing leaking municipal systems and aging wastewater infrastructure.
• Expanding reservoirs, aquifer storage and recharge, desalination, water reuse, and floodwater capture.
• Improving drainage and flood-control infrastructure based on watershed-level risk.
• Strengthening water-quality monitoring and enforcing existing pollution laws against identified sources.
• Helping rural communities replace failing wastewater and septic systems.
• Expanding voluntary agricultural conservation grants for precision irrigation, soil-moisture technology, canal improvements, and other proven practices.

Agriculture must be treated as a partner, not merely as a target for restrictions. Farmers and ranchers protect our food supply, sustain rural economies, and frequently have the greatest opportunity to produce measurable conservation savings.

This approach would protect private property rights, existing water rights, and local groundwater-district authority while tying public funding to verified water savings and measurable outcomes. Decisions should be guided by regional conditions, aquifer science, drought projections, water-quality data, and the economic consequences for agricultural producers and rural communities. Texas should conserve more water without regulating productive farmland out of existence.

Texas needs an all-of-the-above reliability strategy that adds dependable generation while protecting consumers from unnecessary costs. Major projects should require legislative approval and oversight.

I would support:

• Accelerating new dispatchable generation, including natural gas and nuclear power, while retaining competitive renewable and battery resources.
• Expanding transmission where demonstrated demand and congestion justify the cost.
• Continuing enforceable weatherization and fuel-supply requirements for generators and critical natural-gas infrastructure.
• Requiring large industrial loads, particularly data centers, to demonstrate credible demand, pay the infrastructure costs they create, and reduce consumption during declared grid emergencies.
• Strengthening cybersecurity and physical security for generation, substations, pipelines, and control systems.
• Improving ERCOT forecasting so speculative projects are not treated the same as financially committed developments.

ERCOT’s preliminary forecast shows extraordinary potential demand growth through 2032, driven largely by large industrial loads. That requires disciplined planning, but it should not become an excuse for blank-check spending. Reliability investments should be based on verified demand, measurable performance, and the ability to produce power during extreme heat, extreme cold, and periods of low renewable output. Texas consumers should not be asked to conserve while extraordinarily large new users avoid responsibility for the costs they impose.

Texas should protect productive biomedical research without writing a blank check for institutional overhead.

I would support:

• Continued federal use of audited, negotiated indirect-cost rates rather than an abrupt, one-size-fits-all cap.
• Stronger disclosure of how indirect-cost reimbursements are calculated and spent.
• Regular federal audits, benchmarking among comparable institutions, and limits on unrelated administrative expenses.
• Advance notice and a reasonable transition period for any lawful reimbursement reforms.
• Targeted state matching funds for research involving cancer, neurological disease, maternal health, infectious disease, biotechnology, and other strategic Texas priorities.
• Expanded partnerships with private industry and stronger commercialization pathways so successful discoveries generate jobs, investment, and intellectual property in Texas.

I would not support automatically replacing every lost federal dollar with state taxpayer money. Universities, particularly institutions with substantial endowments, should demonstrate cost control and share responsibility for administrative expenses. However, laboratories, patient-safety systems, specialized equipment, data security, and regulatory compliance are legitimate research costs. Abruptly eliminating their support could drive researchers and investment out of Texas.

Taxpayers deserve transparency and efficiency, while Texas patients and businesses benefit from a research system capable of producing medical discoveries, clinical trials, skilled jobs, and new companies.

The fallout from the 2020 pandemic has eroded public trust with the medical community and government. Public trust cannot be restored through ridicule, censorship, or coercion. State officials should communicate plainly about both disease risks and vaccine safety, acknowledge legitimate questions, publish timely data, and work through local physicians, pharmacists, schools, churches, and community leaders.

I would support:

• Preserving informed consent, parental rights, and Texas’s existing vaccine exemptions.
• Ensuring families can voluntarily obtain recommended vaccines through physicians, pharmacies, and local health departments.
• Providing clear information about vaccine benefits, known risks, contraindications, and adverse-event reporting.
• Strengthening disease surveillance, laboratory capacity, rapid case reporting, contact tracing, and outbreak-response coordination.
• Allowing targeted, temporary exclusion or isolation measures for confirmed cases and high-risk exposures during an active outbreak, based on medical evidence and due process.
• Requiring transparency regarding vaccine-safety monitoring, adverse events, state contracts, and public-health recommendations. Government should present evidence honestly while respecting the physician-patient relationship and parents’ responsibility for their children. The goal should be informed cooperation, not a one-size-fits-all mandate that further undermines public confidence.

Scientific evidence and expert input should inform policymaking, but they should not replace constitutional judgment, public accountability, or common sense. Science can estimate risks and likely outcomes. Elected officials must also consider individual liberty, economic costs, feasibility, unintended consequences, and the proper limits of government.

When claims compete, I would examine:

• The quality and design of the underlying studies.
• Sample size, replication, effect size, and real-world relevance.
• Whether data and methods are transparent.
• Conflicts of interest and funding sources.
• Whether conclusions exceed what the evidence actually demonstrates.
• The consequences of acting, delaying, or being wrong.
• Input from practitioners and affected communities, not only institutional experts.

Scientific consensus deserves serious weight, but consensus is not infallible and should never be used to end legitimate inquiry. Public opinion cannot change biological or physical facts, but it can reveal practical concerns, value judgments, and failures of public trust.

Good policy follows the evidence while remaining humble enough to change when better evidence emerges.