Editorial
The Violence of Trump’s Words
Something Yuuuge was Missing From Franklin Graham’s Waco Revival
At a Waco rally, evangelist Franklin Graham signaled rock-solid support for the GOP agenda. But support for President Trump? Maybe not so much.
In mid-October, evangelist Franklin Graham and his “Decision Texas” entourage stopped off at Baylor University in Waco, mainly to bring souls to Jesus but a...Read More
Burning Down the House: Joe Straus and the End of the Moderate Texas Republican
A tremendous amount now depends on whether a Straus-type successor can be elected speaker.
Joe Straus’ reputation is that of a boring and studious moderate, but that’s dead wrong. The speaker of the Texas House is a freak, a space oddity, an aberr...Read More
University of North Texas Creates Privatized ‘Free-Speech Zone’ Around Donald Trump Jr.
The event reinforces an ongoing assault on press freedom and the First Amendment in an ultimate ironic twist for free-speech rights.
It’s unclear whether we’ll know the exact details of what Donald Trump Jr. has to say when he speaks about “freedom of speech and issues of na...Read More
Fox and Friend: Sean Hannity and Robert Jeffress Share the Self-Love at Church
Jeffress’ megachurch, like others, is a television set with an unusually large studio audience, a fact that Hannity’s Sunday's appearance underlined.
Great changes are afoot in the Kingdom of Man, but how now arrangethèd is the furniture in the House of the Lord? On Sunday morning, attendees of the First Bap...Read More
Federal Prisons Don’t Even Try to Rehabilitate the Undocumented
The Bureau of Prisons fails to provide basic resources to undocumented prisoners.
Flickr/Thomas Hawk Editor’s note: This commentary was published in collaboration with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the cr...Read More
Texas GOP’s Favorite Meme-Maker is Now Helping the Far-Right in Germany
After mastering the art of race-baiting digital campaigning in Texas, Vincent Harris has graduated to working for German nationalists.
screenshot from Twitter On Monday, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz wrote about the role played by the Austin-based political consultant Vincent Harris in the rece...Read More
Even Hurricane Harvey Can’t Temper GOP Hostility Toward Texas’ Big Cities
Governor Greg Abbott scoffed at Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner’s request for emergency funds, saying he "has all the money that he needs."
On August 4, less than a month before Hurricane Harvey made landfall, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick appeared on the Fox Business Network with a diagnosis for ...Read More
Trump Nominee to FEC Tried to Shred Texas’ Already-Weak Ethics Laws
Nominating Trey Trainor to the FEC makes sense: Most Trump appointees either hate or are ignorant of the thing they’re expected to oversee.
In yet another case of the cosmic satire in which we live hitting its mark a little too hard on the nose, the Trump administration last week nominated Texas law...Read More
Will Hurd’s Guide to Running as a Republican in 2018
During a tour of Dairy Queens in his district, the West Texas congressman offered a master class in the rhetorical skills many Republicans are going to need this cycle.
It’s the best of times and the worst of times to be Will Hurd, the Republican who represents the 23rd Congressional District of Texas, a giant swath of Texas ...Read More