Cable News Networks Snub Ted Cruz
Ted Cruz's prime-time speech to the Republican National Convention Tuesday night was not carried by the three major cable news networks.
A native of Houston and a graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, Sonia Smith is a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly. She cut her teeth reporting on crime on the bayou for the Baton Rouge Advocate. She has also written for Slate, The New York Times Magazine, Roads & Kingdoms, and the Kyiv Post, and was a finalist for the 2008 Livingston Awards for Young Journalists for her reporting on sexual abuse at the Louisiana School for the Deaf. Her Texas Monthly profile of leading climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe was included in the anthology The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2017.
Ted Cruz's prime-time speech to the Republican National Convention Tuesday night was not carried by the three major cable news networks.
By Sonia Smith
Lamar County Court-at-Law Judge Bill Harris fired off a fifteen-word email from his iPhone ruling that eminent domain laws gave TransCanada the right to lay pipeline through a Paris farm.
By Sonia Smith
Rumors indicate that members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints may be leaving the YFZ Ranch.
By Sonia Smith
Lubbockites say "good morning" on Twitter more than anyone else in the country, according to a study from some Ukrainian software engineers who monitored American tweets.
By Sonia Smith
After several legal twists, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that Texas can now block Planned Parenthood from its Women’s Health Program.
By Sonia Smith
David Lee Wiggins, 48, had served 23 years in prison for the 1989 rape of a teenage girl when testing revealed DNA evidence did not link him to the crime.
By Sonia Smith
The Texas economic miracle continues. Five of the nation's top ten counties for job growth are in Texas, according to CNN Money.
By Sonia Smith
Willie Nelson was hospitalized in Denver after having trouble breathing before a Saturday night show.
By Sonia Smith
The state legislature slashed women's health funding by two thirds last session in an attempt to target Planned Parenthood. Now, a total of sixty clinics have closed, and only twelve of them were run by that organization.
By Sonia Smith
Texas Board of Pardons and Parole granted parole to a full 31 percent of inmates up for review last year, up from 27 percent in 2003.
By Sonia Smith
Dallas County will begin spraying for mosquitoes after West Nile deaths in the state this year reach seventeen.
By Sonia Smith
Beyoncé swung through Marfa in early July and just posted pictures from her trip on her Tumblr.
By Sonia Smith
Our favorite recent items from the Lufkin Daily News's police blotter.
By Sonia Smith
Monday marks one year since the governor announced he was running for president. What's happened since then?
By Sonia Smith
A blogger looked at the final statements of 478 executed Texas inmates and determined that "love" was uttered more than any other word.
By Sonia Smith
Austin and Pflugerville saw three bee attacks in one week.
By Sonia Smith
The University of Texas responded to a lawsuit questioning its admissions policy by submitting a 55-page document to the Supreme Court clarifying how race factors in to its process.
By Sonia Smith
The country singer was reportedly found naked in the middle of the road outside Tioga Tuesday night.
By Sonia Smith
The stamps with Lady Bird Johnson's official White House portrait were unveiled Friday at her wildflower center in Austin.
By Sonia Smith
San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas top a list of the nation's most economically segregated cities, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center.
By Sonia Smith
A primer on the San Antonio mayor, who was recently thrust into the national spotlight after he was tapped to deliver the DNC's keynote address.
By Sonia Smith
The former solicitor general handily beat Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst in the GOP runoff for U.S. Senator.
By Sonia Smith
A new Harper's article claims that the direct-sales beauty empire is merely a "pink pyramid scheme."
By Sonia Smith
Texas officials are mourning the untimely passing of Chad Foster, the former Eagle Pass mayor who became the face of border communities straddling the two nations.
By Sonia Smith
The district attorney's office dropped all charges against Jeffrey Stern, a Houston personal injury lawyer who was accused of conspiring with his mistress to kill his wife, socialite Yvonne Stern.
By Sonia Smith
Things quickly got personal between Ted Cruz and David Dewhurst as they faced off at the King Street Patriot's headquarters in Houston during Monday's televised debate.
By Sonia Smith
The paper printed Jerry Sandusky's name under a photo of Tiger Woods, proving again that everyone needs a copy editor.
By Sonia Smith
President Barack Obama made four fundraising stops in the Lone Star State on Tuesday, bringing in an expected haul of $4 million.
By Sonia Smith
StateImpact Texas found a substantial connection between hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," and the sudden surge in Texas quakes.
By Sonia Smith
Shares of the Tex-Mex chain are expected to sell for $11 to $13.
By Sonia Smith
Houston is emerging as the Great Rift Valley of strippers—or, at least, stripper tell-alls.
By Sonia Smith
Exploring the culinary preferences of George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, and Lyndon Baines Johnson.
By Sonia Smith
Amarillo, Lubbock, and Corpus Christi landed on a list compiled by OurTime.com, a senior-focused dating site, that purports to rank where the country's "flirtiest" seniors live.
By Sonia Smith
The Austin American-Statesman reports that Jerry Patterson is considering building a desalination plant on GLO land in central Texas.
By Sonia Smith
Rick Perry announced Monday in a letter to the federal government that the state will not expand its Medicaid program nor create a health insurance exchange.
By Sonia Smith
Our favorite recent items from the Lufkin Daily News' police blotter.
By Sonia Smith
Were cleaner beaches in 2011 an unexpected upside to the drought?
By Sonia Smith
The reboot prompts a resurgence of interest in Southfork Ranch.
By Sonia Smith
Last summer, four prisoners died from heat-related causes in Texas's sweltering prisons.
By Sonia Smith
The expansion of the Port Arthur plant briefly made it the largest in the country before an accident disabled the new 325,000-barrel-per-day crude distillation unit.
By Sonia Smith
The billionaire picked up the Waco Tribune-Herald for an undisclosed sum on Friday.
By Sonia Smith
The feds raided Jovitas, an old Austin establishment, and arrested fifteen people they say were involved in a heroin distribution ring.
By Sonia Smith
A scoop from the Austin American-Statesman reveals the state spent $50,000 buying up the drugs last year before other states scrambled to get them from sources abroad.
By Sonia Smith
As much as anything, the economic boom in Texas depends on water. So what will industry do as the state gets drier? The Texas Tribune's Kate Galbraith explains.
By Sonia Smith
The River Systems Institute at Texas State University has deployed $30,000 drone to study environmental concerns across the state.
By Sonia Smith
The billionaire, convicted in March of running a $7 billion Ponzi scheme, faced up to 230 years in prison.
By Sonia Smith
The oil industry cheered news Wednesday that the tiny lizard will not be added to the endangered species list.
By Sonia Smith
Those were the only Texas cities to appear on a list of the country's fifty manliest cities.
By Sonia Smith
The imprisoned polygamist leader, who has put out a dizzying amount of paper from his Palestine prison cell, has warnings for President Obama and the leaders of Mauritania this time.
By Sonia Smith
A representative for Berkshire Hathaway announced the purchase to newsroom employees Tuesday.
By Sonia Smith