Two Texans Make Time Magazine’s Most Influential People List
Ron Paul and Cecile Richards were named among the most influential people in the world.
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.
Ron Paul and Cecile Richards were named among the most influential people in the world.
By Sonia Smith
Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton have thrown their support behind incumbent U.S. Representative Silvestre Reyes, who faces a primary challenge from El Paso City Council member Beto O'Rourke.
By Sonia Smith
Polygamist leader Warren Jeffs is the subject of a new A&E Biography documentary set to air Monday night.
By Sonia Smith
Former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz used the bulk of his time in Friday's Belo debate to slam Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and his policies.
By Sonia Smith
How Texans are marking the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.
By Sonia Smith
The sleepy Senate race picked up this week, with allegations of rigging a debate and the release of first-quarter fundraising numbers.
By Sonia Smith
United and Southwest are squabbling over whether Houston Hobby should become an international airport. Which airline will prevail?
By Sonia Smith
Karl Rove's American Crossroads super PAC has placed a $1.7 million ad buy in six swing states in the wake of Rick Santorum's depature from the race.
By Sonia Smith
Megachurch Pastor Ed Young, known for his unorthodox methods, brought the beasts onstage as a metaphor for Jesus. But did the stunt violate a city ordinance?
By Sonia Smith
The fallout from the state legislature's record $5.4 billion cut to school finance continues.
By Sonia Smith
A Victoria hospital makes headlines for its policy of not hiring severely obese employees, but it's not the only company in Texas to engage in this type of discrimination.
By Sonia Smith
Fans cheer the arrival of Beyoncé on the social media platforms Tumblr and Twitter.
By Sonia Smith
If you build it, will they come dump their nuclear waste? Not necessarily, as Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons is learning.
By Sonia Smith
At the same time Texas is fighting to get water from Oklahoma, state officials want to block Mexico from pumping water out of the Rio Grande.
By Sonia Smith
How have industrial chicken farms changed Texas?
By Sonia Smith
The scimitar-horned oryx will be fully covered by the federal Endangered Species Act starting Wednesday, but could this mandated protection actually lead to the extinction of the species?
By Sonia Smith
George W. Bush's post presidency has been marked by silence. What has he been up to?
By Sonia Smith
Feral cats are not typically considered productive members of the economy, but several "feline employment agencies" in Texas are out to change that.
By Sonia Smith
Our favorite recent items from the Lufkin Daily News' police blotter.
By Sonia Smith
Three men allegedly agreed to a murder-to-hire plot proposed by DEA agents posing as members of the Los Zetas cartel.
By Sonia Smith
Jesse Joe Hernandez, who was pronounced dead on Wednesday night at 6:18 p.m., had beaten a 10-month-old baby to death in 2001.
By Sonia Smith
Lauren Scruggs, the 23-year-old model and fashion blogger who lost an hand and eye in the accident, rejected a $200,000 settlement.
By Sonia Smith
In an excerpt from his long-awaited fourth volume on LBJ, Robert Caro delves into those fateful hours in Dallas on November 22, 1963.
By Sonia Smith
Foreign leaders visiting Mexico often don sombreros as a display of cross-cultural good humor.
By Sonia Smith
Test your smarts with 15 sample questions from the new STAAR subject matter tests.
By Sonia Smith
Rick Perry drew chuckles on purpose over the weekend with his speech at the Gridiron Dinner in Washington, D.C.
By Sonia Smith
Recent rains may have some fooled, but the costliest drought in the state's history still grips Texas.
By Sonia Smith
Texas's senior Senator pushed for Rick Perry and the Obama Administration to work out their differences to ensure the Women’s Health Program can serve low-income women.
By Sonia Smith
Trey Sesler, an online anime critic from Waller, is said to have been planning a Columbine-style attack on a local high school.
By Sonia Smith
Companies released some 14.6 million pounds of industrial pollutants and toxic chemicals into Texas' waterways in 2010. Find out which water channels are the dirtiest.
By Sonia Smith
Watch out, Whole Foods! The California-based specialty grocery chain just confirmed it signed a lease for space in San Antonio, the fifth location for a Trader Joe's in Texas.
By Sonia Smith
David Dewhurst's campaign put out a new commercial last week that focuses on his father's military service and curbing deficit spending.
By Sonia Smith
Celebrate the first day of spring with a slideshow of baby goat photos.
By Sonia Smith
Thousands of women angry over cuts to women's health care in Texas expressed their outrage on Rick Perry's Facebook page.
By Sonia Smith
A Texas appeals court upheld the child sexual assault conviction of sixty-year-old Allan Keate, an FLDS member and follower of Warren Jeffs.
By Sonia Smith
Ron Paul's campaign is bleeding money and reporters. Will he be able to slog through to August?
By Sonia Smith
Doonesbury takes on the controversial sonogram law this week, devoting six pen-and-ink comic strips to the legislation, but several newspapers around the country are boycotting the strip.
By Sonia Smith
Curious about the reading habits of Evan Smith, CEO and editor-in-chief of The Texas Tribune? Read on.
By Sonia Smith
Matthew McConaughey reveals that he has moved back to Austin.
By Sonia Smith
The Dallas Zoo’s new koala exhibit, featuring two koalas on a thirty-month loan from the San Diego Zoo, opens Saturday.
By Sonia Smith
A gunbattle in Piedras Negras, which killed a Mexican police officer, prompted American officials to close two bridges in the city. This comes less than a month after an El Paso woman was hit by a stray bullet shot from Juárez.
By Sonia Smith
Leslie, homeless icon and local celebrity, passed away early Thursday morning.
By Sonia Smith
The Friday Night Lights heartthrob tells GQ he's building a house on the lake in Austin.
By Sonia Smith
Texas plans to execute Keith Thurmond Wednesday night for the 2001 murders of his estranged wife and her new boyfriend.
By Sonia Smith
The Houston financier was found guilty of orchestrating a multibillion dollar Ponzi scheme and now faces a life sentence for his crimes.
By Sonia Smith
Homeowners Associations have long had a bad rap, and that was before one tried to take away a disabled girl's pet kangaroo.
By Sonia Smith
The drought leaves nothing untouched. This week the drought impacts the state’s rice farmers, migratory bird populations, and hot tub owners.
By Sonia Smith
The Texas Observer's Melissa del Bosque traveled to the Juárez Valley, where the murder rate is 1,600 people killed per 100,000 inhabitants, to report on the violent drug war gripping the region.
By Sonia Smith
Our favorite recent items from the Lufkin Daily News' police blotter.
By Sonia Smith
The family of Lt. Peter Burks was horrified to discover that two dating websites used a photo of their son, who died in combat in Iraq in 2007, alongside the text "Military Men Looking for Love."
By Sonia Smith