Texas Lege Watch: Jared Patterson Wants to Regulate Drag Shows. He Has Trouble Defining Them.
Under his new Texas bill, any community theater that hosts a performance of ‘Peter Pan’ could find itself regulated as a strip club.
Dan Solomon writes about politics, music, food, sports, criminal justice, health care, film, and business. Dan started working with Texas Monthly as a freelancer in 2013 before becoming a staff writer, covering topics from the Baylor sexual assault scandal to the gentrification of Austin barbecue to the legacy of Texas outsider artist Daniel Johnston. His reporting has appeared in the New York Times, GQ, Vanity Fair, Wired, Fast Company, Billboard, and Deadspin.
Under his new Texas bill, any community theater that hosts a performance of ‘Peter Pan’ could find itself regulated as a strip club.
By Dan Solomon
The small-government conservative has proposed a bill to allow pregnant drivers to access carpool lanes.
By Dan Solomon
Will Beyoncé finally get her Album of the Year award, and more we want to know.
By Dan Solomon
John Bloom, a.k.a. Joe Bob Briggs, discusses his 2004 opus on the making of the slasher classic and the New York bias against a Texas original.
By Dan Solomon
It’s worked for the GOP elsewhere, and nothing else has worked for Democrats here.
By Dan Solomon
Republicans are pursuing South Texas Latinos. Democrats are counting on the Dobbs abortion decision. Nobody knows who’s going to turn out to vote. And the polls are all over the place.
By Dan Solomon
For the first time in fifty years, single-issue abortion voters are pro-choice. Can Texas Democrats capitalize on it?
By Dan Solomon
Where’s the passion? Where’s the intensity? And where are the robot arms, Congressman?
By Dan Solomon
The ninth installment in the Rocky franchise puts honorary Texan Michael B. Jordan and official Texan Jonathan Majors in the ring, and we are here for it.
By Dan Solomon
We know she’s a savage and a big ole freak, but is the Houston hometown hero funny? On ‘Saturday Night Live,’ we found out.
By Dan Solomon
We expected political statements, massive crowds, and sweaty concertgoers. We saw two out of three.
By Dan Solomon
Spurs legends past and present reminded residents that they haven't been forgotten in the months since the shooting at Robb Elementary.
By Dan Solomon
An abortion to save the life of a pregnant patient is “not an abortion,” according to Texas’s junior senator.
By Dan Solomon
After years of breakups and makeups, the rock band is back with a poppier sound.
By Dan Solomon
Discussions of race or sex, or just the wrong vibes, are all it takes for a book to number among the 801 bannings in Texas this year.
By Dan Solomon
On his summer barnstorming tour of Texas, Beto O’Rourke argued that Republicans are waging war against Texas values.
By Dan Solomon
The lieutenant governor said the company was “discriminating against the oil and gas industry." He didn’t mention his own holdings in the firm.
By Russell Gold and Dan Solomon
There was crying in baseball after a Pearland pitcher beaned a Tulsa batter on Tuesday. What happened next might restore one’s faith in humanity.
By Dan Solomon
The damages awarded this week in Austin are only the beginning of the likely end of Jones and Infowars. But it remains to be seen what that means for other purveyors of misinformation.
By Dan Solomon
Plaintiffs’ attorney Mark Bankston and F. Andino Reynal, who represents Infowars in the case, both have distinct challenges. Last week, their tensions boiled over.
By Dan Solomon
The trial this week in Austin to determine what Infowars owes in damages for defaming Sandy Hook parents could have had huge free-speech implications. Because of Jones’s choices, it won’t.
By Dan Solomon
A jury in Austin, selected on Monday, is about to grapple with that surprisingly complicated question.
By Dan Solomon
After KVUE and the Austin American-Statesman published video from inside Robb Elementary, one policeman incorrectly became a symbol of larger failures.
By Dan Solomon
Enjoying that AC? Thank the mighty power of the sun and the renewable energy source keeping the grid afloat.
By Dan Solomon
The 82-year-old actor, known for playing the heaviest of heavies, was an instrumental part of the movie that launched the careers of Wes Anderson and the Wilson brothers.
By Dan Solomon
Big John’s approval rating has taken a serious blow in the month after the Uvalde shooting—driven largely by Republicans and independents.
By Dan Solomon
Amid worst-in-a-decade drought conditions, fireworks displays from Lubbock to Fort Worth to Houston sparked flames.
By Dan Solomon
Texas, as well as neighboring Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, will outlaw abortion within days to weeks. The procedure will still be available in Kansas and New Mexico.
By Dan Solomon
John Cornyn helped wrangle other senators from both parties to advance a spate of provisions. But will the Texas Legislature follow his lead?
By Dan Solomon
A smoking octopus and pointy-eared aliens: Johnson's sketches on political letterhead are wonderfully weird.
By Dan Solomon
In a last-ditch bid to avoid paying massive damages to the Sandy Hook families he defamed, the Infowars host sought bankruptcy protection—and failed to win it.
By Dan Solomon
Follow along with the latest sayings and doings of Louie Gohmert, the Republican congressman for Texas’s First Congressional District.
By Dan Solomon
Harini Logan claimed the top spot last night, making her the seventh Texan spelling bee champ in the last ten years. T-E-X-A-S!
By Dan Solomon
The state’s account of how law enforcement responded to the massacre at Robb Elementary School has shifted as it’s been contradicted by witnesses and video.
By Dan Solomon
Governor Abbott’s comments showed just how lost our leaders are when it comes to gun violence.
By Dan Solomon
The Texas A&M football coach denied Saban’s claim that the Aggies “bought” all their players and called the accusation “despicable.”
By Dan Solomon
An all-time-great game seven offers a hint of how high Luka Dončić and the Dallas Mavericks can fly in the 2022 NBA playoffs.
By Dan Solomon
The Texas Railroad Commission candidate stripped down in a campaign video to get attention for her issues—and landed a spot in the May 24 Republican runoff. Which means it’s time to hear her out.
By Dan Solomon
At the World Food Championships’ Final Table last weekend, Dallas College student Preston Nguyen took the top prize.
By Dan Solomon
With small-screen projects such as ‘Moon Knight’ and ‘The Good Lord Bird,’ Ethan Hawke’s righteous believers get more room to breathe.
By Dan Solomon
Texan actors have a strong presence in the MCU. But which performances would we watch in any multiverse, and which would we prefer blipped out of existence?
By Dan Solomon
Vin Diesel, in a long, feelings-heavy Instagram post, revealed how close the venerable Texas star came to playing Lucas Hobbs.
By Dan Solomon
The Houstonian pulled double duty on ‘Saturday Night Live’ as host and musical guest. How’d she do?
By Dan Solomon
San Antonio’s Briana Saldaña brought her A-game (with a little help from Kelly Clarkson).
By Dan Solomon
Katy ISD is considering a ban on the Pulitzer Prize–winning graphic novel about the Holocaust. Here’s what the book taught me.
By Dan Solomon
Elgin's Riley Leon survived a harrowing encounter with a tornado. Now the community is getting him back on his feet.
By Dan Solomon
Is “vanilla milkshake” as confounding a flavor as it appears? Does a chicken sandwich-themed chip taste like chicken? All your questions answered.
By Dan Solomon
The festival was smaller and less overwhelming than in times past, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing—or a sign of things to come.
By Dan Solomon
Kazka’s male members took up arms to repel Putin’s invasion. But the band’s singer, Oleksandra Zaritska, was still determined to appear at the festival.
By Dan Solomon
The Lone Star State was well represented at this year’s SXSW, and these films feature settings, accents, and subject matter to remind you of home.
By Dan Solomon and Cat Cardenas