The Greatest Sideshow on Earth: Behind the Scenes of Ken Paxton’s Acquittal
The impeachment trial of Ken Paxton delivered a steady stream of tantalizing entertainment. But the most consequential moments played out when few were watching.
The impeachment trial of Ken Paxton delivered a steady stream of tantalizing entertainment. But the most consequential moments played out when few were watching.
Fort Worth cleric Michael Olson is no stranger to scandal. But when he threatened to remove a nun from her home, he might have finally met his match.
The Longhorn Network will go off the air next July. But the University of Texas’s pursuit of its own channel changed college sports forever.
Call them the astronauts of the underground. The state’s cavers are a literal subculture, daring to go where no one has gone before.
Alligator snapping turtle populations in Texas were dwindling. One family of smugglers had been poaching them from the state for years.
For a long time, Texas Republican chairman Matt Rinaldi couldn’t win elections. Now he wants to decide them—by exacting revenge on opponents within his party.
Acre by acre, families have lost long-held property near Bryan and College Station—much of it to the efforts of two men who weaponized arcane documents to acquire plots potentially worth millions.
Decades after the Nashville establishment turned its back on Tanya Tucker, the spitfire from Seminole is finally getting the recognition she deserves. But maybe Music Row needs her more than she needs Music Row.
The beloved indie rocker was set to coheadline a summer tour with his sixteen-year-old son. When Dorian died this February, his father sought refuge the only way he could: in their shared love of music.
In the half-century since a troop of Japanese macaques arrived in Texas, a truly wild tale has played out.
Some of the best waves in the world are found at the Waco Surf water park, far away from any ocean.
For forty years, Allie Beth Allman has ruled the glittering world of luxury real estate in Dallas. Then came a flood of coastal money, a technological revolution, a rift with a longtime partner, and the inexorable toll of time.
That left the real culprit free to prey on others, including one victim who was ignored for two decades.
From a small bookstore in Central Texas, the best-selling author rules over the booming Stoicism self-help movement. Why now? Why here?
The inventor of the world’s first cosmetic penile implant says a group of Houston doctors is trying to steal his ideas. Inside the multimillion-dollar feud.
The conservative, gun-toting superintendent of Fort Davis Independent School District is fed up: “I’m not patient enough to spend time with assholes in Austin, and I’m not rich enough to buy any votes.”
The real history is much messier—and more inspiring.
After years of struggle, Charley Crockett is on the verge of stardom. The story of how he got here would be unbelievable if it weren’t true.
One year ago, before the school shooting in Uvalde, Kimberly Mata-Rubio had never been on a plane or given a public speech or scolded a U.S. senator right there in his office. A year in the life of a grieving mother.
They’ve overrun nearly the entire state, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage annually in spite of widespread attempts at eradication—including traps, contraceptives, and a heavily armed Ted Nugent.
Former House Speaker Tom Craddick and his family—including his daughter, Railroad Commission chairman Christi Craddick—earned about $10 million last year from oil and gas rights.
It took him a while to get here, but now he’s out to transform our state with new technologies—if our leaders’ hostility toward renewable energy (and his Twitter misadventures) don’t get in the way.
As we celebrate one hundred years of our state parks, they are more popular than ever. But our booming population is overwhelming the state’s scarce public lands. What will the next century hold for Texas’s “best idea”?
For underprivileged kids, the biggest obstacles to success—homelessness, hunger, violence—reside outside the classroom. Dallas businessman Randy Bowman, who grew up poor himself, is betting on an unconventional fix.
What seems like an outbreak of local skirmishes is part of a decades-long push to privatize the education system.
A $500 million restoration seeks to reverse almost two centuries of cultural and physical neglect at the most popular historic site in Texas. There’s never been more of a concerted effort to make things right.
In 1983 James Reyos was convicted of murder in Odessa, despite having an airtight alibi. Four decades later, he’s still fighting to clear his name.
When I started writing for Texas Monthly in 1973, I didn’t expect it to last very long. But it’s still here, five decades later.
Fifty years ago, Texas Monthly was little more than an idea dreamt up by a local lawyer with minimal experience in journalism. Then it was an actual thing. How did that happen?
The Munns became a national curiosity after five of them were indicted for participating in the insurrection. But the full scope of their malignant behavior is little known—including to the federal prosecutors tasked with investigating their crimes.
The Texas Monthly writer reflects on the run-down home that led him to write “Still Life,” about John McClamrock, the boy who could not move.
Low primary-election turnout and an anemic Democratic party means statewide officials and legislators are far to the right of most Texans.
To his 650,000 Instagram followers, he’s a pioneering “grandfluencer.” But to his adoring second-grade students, he’s simply Mr. Randle.
Plans were underway to revive tourism at Fort Clark Springs in southwest Texas. But then, in a scenario increasingly common across the state, the water stopped flowing.
McCurley was living a quiet life in Fort Worth when new DNA evidence linked him to the notorious crime. Police suspect it wasn’t his first murder—or his last.
The Fifth Circuit is led by four judges who got their start in Texas politics. For these activists, overturning the right to an abortion is only the beginning.
He’s pushing ninety and still saddling up at the Four Sixes Ranch. Just don’t call him the last cowboy.
Organized crime! Illicit booze! The beach! In this exclusive excerpt from her new novel ‘Last Dance on the Starlight Pier,’ Sarah Bird explores Galveston at the end of the twenties, a setting she calls “a gift to a novelist.”
After a quarter century in statewide office, Texas’s most popular politician remains an enigma—even to the folks who keep electing him. But the truth about the governor is hiding in plain sight.
At Elsik High School, students from Honduras, Senegal, Houston, and most places in between form the best boys soccer team you've never heard of.
Jeb’s son is running for his political life in the Texas attorney general’s race. But Donald Trump may get the last laugh.
What pushed an East Texas mother to kidnap at gunpoint the director of the famed college drill team and her nineteen-year-old daughter?
Oil-field medics face long hours, grisly accidents, desolation, and low pay. So why do they do it?
In “the trial of the century,” a Houston socialite was accused of plotting her husband's murder—and of having an affair with her nephew. But Candace Mossler was only getting started.
The record influx of recent arrivals from all over might be exactly what the state needs. That includes Californians. (And no, they’re not turning Texas blue.)
After surviving a devastating accident that left her disabled, Amber McDaniel felt like she could overcome anything. Then her ten-year-old son contracted a rare condition associated with COVID-19.
The Houston social media influencer is a gay Black man with a gift for the absurd and a passion for platform heels. He’s also a star dancer in one of the world’s most rigid, gendered, and segregated art forms.
You love your pet. You love her so much that if you could, you’d buy an exact copy of her. Well, you can! Take it from Blake Russell, president of ViaGen Pets & Equine—and owner of a very unusual horse farm.
The party assumes people of color will turn the state blue. But most Tejanos consider themselves white. And more are voting Republican.
Wheal became a guru in the city’s self-optimization scene, hobnobbing with the likes of Elon Musk. But will anyone listen to his warnings about the movement that brought him renown?