{"id":100512,"date":"2025-12-25T12:23:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T12:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/100512\/"},"modified":"2025-12-25T12:23:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T12:23:07","slug":"the-stories-we-wish-wed-published-this-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/100512\/","title":{"rendered":"The Stories We Wish We\u2019d Published This Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been a wonderful year covering our state. Since the last iteration of this list<\/a>, the Texas Monthly team has profiled rising stars<\/a>, joined secret societies<\/a>, and covered the final flight of a war hero<\/a> and the newest frontier of the space race<\/a>. We\u2019ve revisited half-century-old crimes<\/a> and newer ones<\/a> still shaking their communities. We\u2019ve reported on the billionaire<\/a> outsiders<\/a> and Californians<\/a> trying to change Texas and how they have discovered it is a harder business than they initially expected.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And we\u2019ve been on the ground covering both the tragedies that have befallen our state\u2014from the deadly flooding in Central Texas<\/a> to the deadly fires in the Panhandle<\/a> to the deadliest immigration-related disaster<\/a> in the country\u2019s history\u2014and the resiliency<\/a> and heroism<\/a> of our fellow Texans in the wake of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of course, we couldn\u2019t get to all the news and happenings in Texas this year. We were pleased to see other publications paying close attention to our state\u2014and maybe a little bit jealous of some of the work they did. Here are the stories we admired the most.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere Train Dreams Meet Reality in Texas<\/a>\u201dBenton Graham, Bloomberg<\/p>\n

A very readable piece of how-we-got-here journalism, this article from Bloomberg\u2019s CityLab winds through the events and policy decisions that led to Texas having only three passenger train routes, all while the writer, Benton Graham, chronicles his time aboard Amtrak\u2019s Texas Eagle and Sunset Limited<\/a> as those lines\u2019 locomotives lumber across the state. To get from Dallas to Houston by train, Graham must first take a detour to San Antonio. Because of a long layover, the whole journey takes 23 hours\u2014longer than it would have taken to bike.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Along the way, a member of a rail-passenger advocacy group sneaks up on Graham in the cafe car to chew his ear off about trains and a politician makes a peculiar suggestion that we may have simply skipped rail technology in favor of a better mode of transportation: autonomous vehicles. (Call me when a Waymo can get me to Dallas in ninety minutes.) The piece ends with a surprise meditation on what it means to be human. Yes, for Graham, the journey was about the friends he made along the way: a 22-year-old headed to Six Flags who had only been on a train once before, an 81-year-old Detroit Lions fan who was trying to use up a ten-ride pass before it expired, and many other \u201crailfans\u201d who dream of a train-abundant future. \u2014Emma Balter<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200a\u2018I Feel Like I\u2019ve Been Lied To\u2019: When a Measles Outbreak Hits Home<\/a>\u201dEli Saslow, The New York Times<\/p>\n

Eli Saslow has mastered the art of telling humanizing stories about the most polarizing and unwieldy topics. While politicians and pundits, unable to sit with messy ambiguity, recite polished talking points, Saslow seeks out the real people caught in the grip of complicated forces. His reporting is an antidote to social media\u2019s faceless vitriol. For this story, he gained the trust of two parents from Brownfield who had chosen not to vaccinate their children against measles, even though the vaccine has proved safe and effective for decades. When the kids contracted the virus during a nationwide outbreak centered in Texas, the couple rushed them to the hospital and watched in anguish as the disease took its course. Some readers will empathize with the parents, while others will surely judge them, but everyone will finish the article with a clearer picture of how the decisions of policymakers in Washington, D.C., affect the lives of people who are trying to do their best for themselves and their families. \u2014Will Bostwick<\/p>\n

\u201cTexas Attorney General Ken Paxton is handing more of his office\u2019s work to costly private lawyers<\/a>\u201dZach Despart, The Texas Tribune<\/p>\n

Attorney General Ken Paxton often touts the high-dollar lawsuit settlements that his office reaches with Big Tech companies. Rarely mentioned, though, is who is doing much of that legal work. Now taxpayers know why: In July, The Texas Tribune and ProPublica reported on Paxton\u2019s frequent use of outside, rather than in-house, lawyers, and how a loophole in state law has allowed him to award no-bid legal contracts to firms that have also donated to his political campaigns.<\/p>\n

Some of the report\u2019s numbers are eye-popping: more than $350 million in potential fees to a firm that helped the state secure a $1.38 billion settlement with Google; $24,570 paid for one day of work to a private lawyer helping the state sue Meta (which comes out to more than 38 times the cost of using in-house counsel). The outlets also found that Paxton ramped up his use of outside counsel in late 2020, after he dismissed numerous top-ranking deputies who\u2019d reported him to the FBI for alleged corruption. That scandal led to Paxton\u2019s impeachment, his acquittal, and a $6.6 million taxpayer-funded settlement with the whistleblowers he improperly fired. According to Zach Despart\u2019s reporting, it also left the attorney general\u2019s office scrambling for expensive outside help. \u2014Robert Downen<\/p>\n

\u201cMore Babies and Beef Tallow, Less Blue Hair and Birth Control<\/a>\u201dE.J. Dickson, The Cut<\/p>\n

This colorful dispatch from the Young Women\u2019s Leadership Summit, an annual conference held this June in Grapevine, captures the ascendance of MAGA culture. Out: feminism, reproductive rights, and pants suits. In: marriage, babies (the more the better), and sundresses. E.J. Dickson, a reporter for New York Magazine\u2019s The Cut, speaks to a number of young women more interested in starting families than starting companies\u2014although she points out that many of the speakers promoting that path don\u2019t exactly walk it. Wellness influencer Alex Clark tells the audience to embrace traditional family life, yet Clark herself is a single, successful career woman.<\/p>\n

The story is filled with novelistic detail. Attendees line dance to a Christian hip-hop song, wear buttons that say \u201cDump Your Socialist Boyfriend,\u201d and buy \u201cMAHA red\u201d lip gloss. It would have been easy to veer into mockery, but the piece greatly benefits from Dickson\u2019s sympathetic approach: Dickson writes that she \u201ccould understand why younger women who may have watched their mothers become burnt out, angry, and depressed would rebel against pursuing the same path for themselves, opting instead for a seemingly softer, more traditional approach toward femininity.\u201d \u2014Michael Hardy<\/p>\n

\u201cA DNA Technique Is Finding Women Who Left Their Babies for Dead\u201d\u00a0<\/a>
\nIsabelle Taft, The New York Times<\/p>\n

As happens with many of the best stories, I still can\u2019t decide how I feel about the complexities of the issues raised in Isabelle Taft\u2019s piece for The New York Times. She recounts how forensic genetic genealogy led to the arrest of a 45-year-old Hondo woman for abandoning a baby on the side of a rural road two decades earlier. The law enforcement technique has cracked many cold cases in recent years, some of which we\u2019ve written about in the pages of Texas Monthly. It\u2019s increasingly being used to identify the remains of infants, so-called Baby Does. As Taft writes, \u201cThe new technology has brought the unearthing of long-hidden tragedies.\u201d Some of the women affected, including Maricela Frausto, of Hondo, say their babies were stillborn, and any evidence to the contrary is unreliable. Investigators have a duty to seek justice for these children\u2014but is justice served by long prison sentences that don\u2019t take into account the postpartum mental health states of the mothers? \u2014Jason Heid<\/p>\n

\u201cInside the life of a 24\/7 streamer: \u2018What more do you want?\u2019<\/a>\u201dDrew Harwell, The Washington Post<\/p>\n

What happens when one\u2019s entire life\u2014from the most meaningful moments to the most mundane\u2014becomes a performance for digital strangers? That\u2019s the fascinating question The Washington Post\u2019s Drew Harwell explores in his immersive feature about Emily, an otherwise ordinary twentysomething in Austin who is the world\u2019s longest-running live streamer on Twitch. To reach hardcore online fame, Emily has renounced privacy and embraced a life defined by a contradictory mixture of hyperstimulation and acute isolation\u2014her camera stays on as she eats, sleeps, and cries. More than three years in, her livelihood, notoriety, and personal self-worth are dependent upon her willingness to keep the reality show going, even as her real-world social connections erode and her isolation intensifies. Like the iconic 1990s documentary Hands on a Hardbody for the social media age, Emily\u2019s life has become a bizarre experiment in endurance, one that says as much about our collective slide into voyeuristic obsession as it does about the digital diehards willing to trade their physical health and sanity for 2025\u2019s equivalent of a brand-new Nissan truck. \u2014Peter Holley<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200a\u2018Why Sergio?\u2019 Deportation ends 36-year dream for celebrated Waco chef and family<\/a>\u201dSam Shaw, The Waco Bridge<\/p>\n

With its detailed look at a local case of the deportation of a beloved restaurant owner, this story reflects the many similar happenings around the state that remain unreported. Sergio Garcia, owner of Sergio\u2019s Food Truck, built a community in the Waco area through successive businesses that sold ceviche and burritos, even earning the love of the White House press corps during the George W. Bush administration. He was deported in March after years of working with different lawyers to try to obtain legal status, and he immediately faced extortion, in his telling, across the border. The most telling part of the story is when the president of the local Hispanic chamber of commerce says many of Waco\u2019s undocumented residents have essentially stopped leaving their homes, causing ripple effects in the city\u2019s economy. Sadly, in the next few years, we can expect to see the dining scene diminish across the state as workers and customers stay home (as our own Jos\u00e9 R. Ralat reported<\/a>) and many restaurants enter extremely precarious situations. \u2014Kimya Kavehkar<\/p>\n

\u201c11 Women, 9 Dogs, Not Much Drama (and No Guys)<\/a>\u201dLisa Miller, The New York Times<\/p>\n

I went into this story about the Bird\u2019s Nest, a small East Texas community of mostly unmarried women between the ages of sixty and eighty, hoping to gratify a fantasy, and the writer acknowledges that she did too: \u201cI had been searching for real-life examples of a fantasy I have had since my 20s,\u201d she writes. \u201cAfter child-rearing and a career, my friends and I would buy a big house somewhere affordable and cohabitate the way we had done in college.\u201d What makes this story great, though, are the little tensions. While the hamlet these ladies have built is in many ways a utopia, the women also deal with the same crap (figurative and avian) as any neighbors. They have sharply divergent politics, terrible cell service, arguments over cats and trash, and very little privacy. \u201cWe say we respect each other,\u201d one says, but \u201cit\u2019s hard.\u201d These women have been drawn to the Bird\u2019s Nest by something other than fantasy, which is a much more interesting story. \u2014Lauren Larson<\/p>\n

\u201cThe House on West Clay Street<\/a>\u201dIan Frisch, Curbed<\/p>\n

This creepy, haunting story efficiently weaves multiple narratives into one. It\u2019s a murder mystery about how an apartment tenant pieces together what appear to be clues to a horrific crime. It\u2019s a procedural about how the Houston Police Department doesn\u2019t seem to take criminal complaints from poor people seriously. As our Houston-based senior editor Emma Balter points out to me, it\u2019s a policy story about the high stakes of housing insecurity in Texas. Finally, and perhaps most stirringly, it\u2019s a psychological thriller about why a woman would continue renting a room in a house in which she has found\u2014and even cleaned up\u2014significant biological evidence of a deadly act. \u2014Ross McCammon<\/p>\n

A Whole Other Country<\/a>Zoe Kurland, Marfa Public Radio<\/p>\n

In telling the story of Rick McLaren, an outsider who came to the Davis Mountains in the nineties and led a militia in an ill-fated stand for Texas independence, this narrative podcast grapples with the big ideals of Texas\u2019s mythology\u2014the kind that seem to have inspired McLaren to fancy himself the star of his own Walt Disney western. The show shines, though, in telling the particulars: the surprising history of the Davis Mountains Resort, where McLaren began his campaign, and the tales of the residents who can still hardly believe this story themselves.<\/p>\n

There is plenty of Texas Monthly in this podcast. It was a story about West Texas grapes in this magazine that apparently first drew McLaren to the Davis Mountains, where he tried his hand as a vintner. And a recurring voice in the podcast is that of Joe Nick Patoski, recalling his time reporting on the standoff<\/a> for Texas Monthly. But the show is better off for Kurland\u2019s hyperlocal perspective, as someone who lives in the region herself. It isn\u2019t a story just any reporter could get: Many who lived through the Republic of Texas standoff would rather forget it, and almost three decades later, some sources will still only speak about it anonymously. Best of all, though, is the way the show dances between dismissing McLaren\u2019s pipe dream and admitting that, really, there is something different about this part of far West Texas\u2014the way time can fold in on itself and make the past feel present, and the way impossible things can feel dangerously close to true. \u2014Patrick Michels<\/p>\n

\u201cThey Who Have Been Exiled: The Strict Religious Group Behind I-35\u2019s Cheese Cave<\/a>\u201dEmma Ruby, the Dallas Observer<\/p>\n

I was fascinated and horrified by this chilling report about the Waco-based religious group Homestead Heritage, which runs a farm, a cafe, an inn, and craft shops in a village not far from the \u201cCheese Cave\u201d motorists on Interstate 35 have likely seen advertised on billboards along the highway.<\/p>\n

Aspects of the insular community, which imposes strict gender roles, are undeniably cultlike, according to the former second-generation members Ruby interviewed for the story. Morning Alexander, a woman who left the group at age 26, described being ostracized for listening to \u201csecular radio\u201d and learning how to make brooms just so she had someone to talk to. Wearing red, the color of prostitutes, was unacceptable, she said. Hope Glueck, another former member, described how \u201cthinness was prized,\u201d Ruby writes, while \u201cworking out, especially in athletic wear, was deemed immodest,\u201d which led Glueck to watch workout videos on YouTube as a teenager and go jogging in secret at night.<\/p>\n

This story is worth reading for its exploration of the circumstances these and other Homestead Heritage women faced and the considerations they weighed in deciding to leave the group, which has members in five states and ten countries, including India, South Africa, and New Zealand. \u2014Aaron Parsley\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe untold origin story of Trump Burger: A $250K murder-for-hire plot, ICE arrest and vaccine scam<\/a>\u201dSarah Smith, the Houston Chronicle<\/p>\n

Decades ago, academics and theorists determined that everything\u2014where you eat, where you shop, what movies you watch\u2014was political, often in some opaque sense. Our current moment, for better or worse, has ensured that everything is political in the most blunt way. Time was, you\u2019d have to really think about what your choice of cellphone plan or coffee beans meant for union workers in America and farmers in Africa, how your consumer habits reflected a larger values system. Now we have Black Rifle Coffee and Patriot Mobile. Now, moreover, we have Trump Burger.<\/p>\n

In a wild feature for the Houston Chronicle, Sarah Smith reports on the Bellville-based eatery and how it came to be. It\u2019s a tale of immigration, a vaccine scam, and second chances. It goes to places you wouldn\u2019t expect\u2014and ends with a perfect kicker. While it might be obvious what choosing to patronize Trump Burger suggests about one\u2019s politics, it\u2019s less obvious what the story of the restaurant says about our times, and I\u2019m jealous of how Smith arrived at an answer. \u2014Ben Rowen<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Nuns Trying to Save the Women on Texas\u2019s Death Row<\/a>\u201dLawrence Wright, The New Yorker<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve got a thing for nuns. I came by my affection gradually\u2014and well after my eleven-year stint in Catholic school\u2014after being exposed to the feisty, Catholic-social-teaching-in-action exploits of women like Sisters Norma Pimentel<\/a> and Simone Campbell<\/a>. Even the warmest Catholic priest still dons the finery of the cloth and speaks from an elevated pulpit with divine affect. Nuns are in the trenches. Near Gatesville, the members of a convent of the Sisters of Mary Morning Star, a contemplative order focused on prayer and silence, are in the trenches of death row at the Patrick L. O\u2019Daniel Unit.<\/p>\n

Lawrence Wright tells their story of unintentional communion with incarcerated women in his expansive New Yorker feature. Through that lens, Wright also reveals the workings of criminal justice and capital punishment in Texas\u2014prisoners scheduled to be executed \u201c[mount] a gurney in the shape of a cross.\u201d \u2014Sandi Villarreal\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHis Daughter was America\u2019s First Measles Death in a Decade<\/a>\u201dTom Bartlett, The Atlantic<\/p>\n

Tom Bartlett\u2019s dispatch from the measles outbreak in Seminole is proof that the best journalism often comes from simply being on the ground. Whenever major news breaks, we have an internal dialogue about the right approach. Should we rush to cover it or, as a magazine with the luxury of time, wait until the initial news cycle settles so we can return to the story with more clarity and perspective? Bartlett\u2019s answer was to go straight to the heart of the outbreak: Seminole, home to a large Mennonite community and, by the end of February, the home of the epidemic\u2019s first measles casualty, a six-year-old girl. By chance, one of the first people Bartlett met there was the child\u2019s father. The result is a moving snapshot of a community grieving one of its own and grappling with a deepening distrust in the medical establishment. \u2014Sasha von Oldershausen<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200a\u2018It\u2019s Money and Greed\u2019: Oil, Politics, and Dead Cows in a Small Texas County<\/a>\u201dMitch Moxley, Rolling Stone<\/p>\n

This true crime story set in tiny Loving County has it all: cattle rustling, political intrigue, fracking, violent men, and characters who talk like they walked out of a Taylor Sheridan script. (\u201cHe is a silver-tongue devil,\u201d says \u201ccow cop\u201d Marty Baker of the story\u2019s ostensible bad guy, a county judge named Skeet Jones. \u201cHe is the kind of guy that will be in that courtroom and get up there on the stand and talk that jury plumb out of a guilty verdict. He is that smooth.\u201d)<\/p>\n

The story opens with a crime scene: five cows shot dead on a highway near the lonely oil patch town of Mentone. What unspools is a baroque, cinematic tale. Baker uncovers a cattle-rustling scheme, with Skeet Jones, the county\u2019s top elected official, at its core. Baker arrests Jones, but the criminal aspect is just the tip of the iceberg. The powerful Jones family is split into factions, with Skeet and his allies on one side and Skeet\u2019s nephew, Constable Brandon Jones, on the other. \u201cThis is not quite the Hatfields and McCoys,\u201d explains the county attorney. \u201cIt\u2019s like the Hatfields and Hatfields, right? I mean, it\u2019s brother against brother, uncle against nephew.\u201d The intrafamily fight has all the inscrutable, irrational emotions of a family feud, but it\u2019s clear enough what material interest the Joneses are fighting over: the area\u2019s unbelievable oil wealth and the bounty of tax dollars the industry yields to a county with a population of less than a hundred. (The number of eligible voters is another matter of brutal contention.) Moxley seems almost in awe of this strange, wild corner of Texas\u2014a cruelly barren landscape that is a canvas for all the foibles of the human character. I look forward to the movie. \u2014Forrest Wilder<\/p>\n

Read Next<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been a wonderful year covering our state. Since the last iteration of this list, the Texas Monthly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[30778,223,27,29,28],"class_list":{"0":"post-100512","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-journalism","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-texas","11":"tag-texas-headlines","12":"tag-texas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}