It’s harder to be a moderate in Washington, D.C., than ever before. Nobody knows that better than the veteran centrist Democrat Henry Cuellar, who faces prosecution from the federal government for his work on one of the few remaining bipartisan causes in Texas politics: the glorious nation of Azerbaijan. On Friday, the Department of Justice indicted Congressman Cuellar, who represents Laredo, on fourteen counts, including bribery, conspiracy, failure to register as a foreign agent, and money laundering. Cuellar and his wife, Imelda, are alleged to have used a network of shell companies to ..read more

The Sweetwater Cemetery welcomed its first permanent resident, an infant, in 1880. That was four years before the incorporation of the city, about forty miles west of Abilene, where the short-grass prairie that sweeps down from Canada peters out. Today the graveyard houses the final resting spots of many pioneers, immigrants, and Civil War veterans, according to a historical plaque on its gate.Across the street sits another graveyard, of sorts. It opened in 2017 and has become a long-term home for thousands of discarded wind turbine blades. Each has been cut into thirds that remain as long as ..read more

U.S. representative Henry Cuellar (D-Laredo) was indicted with his wife, Imelda, on Friday on charges of accepting almost $600,000 in bribes from an Azerbaijani energy company and a Mexican bank, the Justice Department announced.Cuellar allegedly accepted the payments after they had been laundered through fake consulting contracts to shell companies owned by Imelda Cuellar, according to the DOJ. In exchange, Henry Cuellar allegedly pursued policy in favor of Azerbaijan, the department said. Cuellar also allegedly took money from a Mexican bank and influenced members of the executive branch to ..read more

At a symposium organized by the newly formed Alliance for Texas History in Fort Worth last weekend, University of Houston doctoral student Shine Trabucco, who is of Taos Pueblo and Quecha descent, began her talk by “acknowledging that we are on the ancestral lands of the Caddo, the Comanche, and the Kickapoo. We are just visitors and guests on Indigenous people’s land.” Later in the day, University of New Orleans professor Max Krochmal declared that “we are meeting on stolen land in a city built by enslaved Black people and exploited migrant labor.” Not to be outdone, University of North Texas ..read more

On a sunny Wednesday morning, a cyclist pedals furiously down the shoulder of Interstate 20, just south of Dallas. He’s no more than ten feet from dozens of cars zooming by at seventy miles per hour. One tiny mishap—say, a passing driver distracted by changing the radio station and swerving at the worst possible moment—could kill the cyclist. And he has no idea that approaching rapidly behind him is an eighteen-wheeler without a driver in control.Fortunately for the cyclist, pods mounted on the truck’s sides are equipped with cameras, lasers, and radar that give the vehicle a 360-degree pictur ..read more

Historians believe that Spanish missionaries built the first sugar mill in Texas in the 1780s at Mission San José y San Miguel de Aguayo, in present-day San Antonio. Four decades later, Stephen F. Austin’s colonists planted cane in southeast Texas, and over the course of the nineteenth century, sugar grew into one of the state’s most lucrative exports. The sprawling cane plantations along the Brazos River—worked by thousands of slaves toiling in pestilential conditions—became known as the Sugar Bowl of Texas. After mosaic disease decimated the state’s sugar crop in the 1920s, cane product ..read more

His job done in Texas—crime defeated, corruption accusations beaten, wrongdoing righted—Attorney General Ken Paxton traveled from Austin yesterday to a much deeper den of iniquity: Manhattan. “With President Trump in NYC to sit through this sham of a trial,” he posted this morning. “This trial is a travesty of justice. I stand with Trump.”The Texan made his appearance midafternoon, presumably white-hatted, with six-shooters in hand. According to the pool report from a dogged reporter covering the trial of the century, or at least the trial of the month, “Trump entered at 2:12. He pumped a fist ..read more

The social media site formerly known as Twitter, and currently known as X, has long been a cesspool of social ills. But ever since Elon Musk took the reins in 2022, two years after he officially moved to Texas, it has gotten a lot of attention for tolerating a surge in antisemitism, racism, misogyny, all manner of hate speech, and misinformation. So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that on Monday morning, our very magazine got dragged into Musk’s gutter, via a bizarre, doctored image of Texas Monthly’s October 2013 cover. The real cover featured a portrait Texas Monthly commissioned of Greg A ..read more

If you’re a native Texan, or if you’ve lived here awhile, you’ve probably had it drilled into your head: don’t waste water. And you’ve likely noticed how our ever-hotter, ever-drier summers are wreaking havoc on our aquifers, reservoirs, rivers, trees, and landscapes. Thanks to our old pal climate change, we are now even contending with a new type of drought! For those who didn’t get the message, however, water utilities across much of the state have been increasing rates for heavy users, cracking down on rule breakers, and imposing stringent measures such as once-a-week watering rules. Changi ..read more

“Imagine you’re five years old, you’ve just had five margaritas, and your parents send you off to school,” says Alice McConnell, sipping hot tea at her kitchen table in northwest Austin. She isn’t setting up a joke, but explaining what it feels like for someone to have succinic semialdehyde dehydrogenase deficiency, a debilitating genetic disorder that is estimated to affect 1 in 460,000 people worldwide. That would suggest there are more than 17,000 active cases today, yet only 450 patients have ever been diagnosed. Two of those are McConnell’s own children.“If I only had one [kid with it], I ..read more