North Texas data center map; Republican midterm convention comes to Dallas; An update on the Ross Fire

According to a report this spring, North Texas is the No. 1 primary data center market in the world. These are large facilities that house the servers needed to power artificial intelligence. KERA's growth and infrastructure reporter Pablo Arauz Peña teamed up with our partners at the Fort Worth Report and the Denton Record-Chronicle to create a comprehensive map of the data centers in a city near you. Also, the 2026 Republican midterm convention is just around the corner, and some GOP leaders are calling it “truly historic.” For the first time in more than 40 years, it will be hosted in Dallas, a Democratic-leaning city as opposed to its more historically GOP-friendly neighbor Fort Worth. KERA's Penelope Rivera reports on why Republicans may have picked Dallas and what this symbolizes for Texas with the midterm elections in November. And so far, the Ross Fire burning west of Fort Worth has scorched more than 90 thousand acres of land as record-breaking drought conditions and extreme heat continue to plague North Texas. We also now know that the blaze was human caused. To get a little bit more information, we called the state agency that oversees wildfire response in Texas.