Inflation, Food Prices and Cost of Living
Everyday costs are outpacing wages. Families are cutting into groceries, fuel, and savings just to hold even.
A nonpartisan Texas effort
Not red. Not blue.
Lone Star.
Ten line items are hurting Texans in every district, no matter how they vote. Here is the list, and here is how we are making candidates answer for it.
Texas Stands Together is a grassroots effort funded by individual Texans. We take no money from corporations, businesses, or corporate PACs.
Why this exists
Texans agree on more than the noise suggests
Across every part of this state, people worry about the same handful of things. The price of groceries. The property tax bill. What happens to the grid next summer. Whether the school down the road has what it needs.
Those worries do not sort neatly by party, and the people carrying them are tired of a political conversation that assumes they do. Campaign coverage almost never holds a candidate to a plain, unedited accounting of where they stand on any of it. Debates get produced, cut, and spun before a voter ever hears a full answer.
So we are asking for two things, and neither one requires you to pick a side. First, a direct look at where the people asking for your vote actually stand, in their own words, with nothing trimmed. Second, a real say for Texans themselves in what this state does.
The list
The ten line items
These are the concerns that keep surfacing in statewide polling and reporting, year after year. Every candidate invited to a Radio Debate picks five of them and speaks to those five on the record.
Property Taxes and Housing Affordability
Rising valuations push tax bills and rents up together, squeezing longtime owners and locking out young families.
Home and Auto Insurance Premiums
Severe weather and repair costs have driven double digit premium hikes. For a lot of households, coverage now reads like a second mortgage.
Healthcare Costs and the Uninsured
Texas has the highest uninsured rate in the country at 16.7 percent (2024 Census). Medical debt and emergency room reliance shift that cost onto every taxpayer.
Rural Data Center Expansion
Large AI and server farms in the Panhandle, East Texas, and the Permian Basin draw heavily on local water and power while leaving few lasting jobs behind.
Power Grid Reliability
Population growth plus industrial demand from data centers and crypto mining is pushing ERCOT toward its limits, and blackout risk rises with every heat wave and freeze.
Public School Funding
Texas ranks somewhere around 38th to 42nd of 50 states in per pupil spending. District deficits, campus closures, and teacher turnover follow from it.
Water Scarcity and Aging Pipes
Drought, over pumped aquifers, and leaking infrastructure threaten municipal drinking water and agricultural supply at the same time.
Border Management and Local Strain
Border and metro communities absorb outsized local costs for emergency healthcare, public safety, and the day to day services tied to immigration logistics.
Mental Health Access and Rural Hospitals
More than 80 percent of Texas counties are federally designated mental health shortage areas. Where rural hospitals have closed, jails and police become the default responders.
Sources. Uninsured rate from the 2024 U.S. Census American Community Survey. Per pupil spending rank from 2024 to 2026 analyses by the National Education Association, the Texas Tribune, and Raise Your Hand Texas. Mental health shortage figure from Texas DSHS and HRSA shortage area designations.
How we act on it
Two initiatives, one purpose
1. The Local Radio Debate Project
We ask Texas radio stations to host candidate segments built on the ten line items. Each candidate picks five, speaks five uninterrupted minutes on each in whatever order matters most to them, and the segment airs in full with nothing cut. The opposing candidate then answers the same five topics.
Every candidate is also asked one question on the record: do they support the Trust Texans Initiative, yes or no.
2. The Trust Texans Initiative
A proposed constitutional amendment restoring the right of initiative and referendum in Texas, so voters can put measures in front of the Legislature and, if it will not act, in front of the voters themselves.
We are asking all 150 House members and all 31 Senate members to say publicly whether they will vote yes, before the Legislature convenes in January 2027. Everyone starts the tracker undecided.
Neither party fully speaks for the people carrying these ten line items
That is not a partisan complaint. It is the reason this project exists. Whether you run a station, hold a seat, or just live here, there is a way to help.