Texas Observer reader,
Call me biased, but I do believe you’re holding a damn good magazine in your hands right now.
Michelle Pitcher continues her ascent as one of the state’s best criminal justice reporters and narrative feature writers. Josephine Lee again takes you into a corner of Houston culture you might otherwise never know (see her prior coverage online of the Taiwanese-Houstonian community and of shaved ice, in its many Bayou City forms).
Special Correspondent Steven Monacelli braids a local Dallas power play into an overarching state- and federal-level war for control of homelessness policy. And freelancer Gaige Davila takes you to southwest Louisiana to illuminate the future of his native corner of deep South Texas.
It’s a strong start for the Observer to a year that, for the nation, I can only expect to tend toward the awful.
(Photograph by Jordan Vonderhaar/Texas Observer)
The pattern of a midterm year under a GOP president will play out: Primary beefs of varying levels of authenticity and import will emerge, a small fraction of the country will cast some votes, hope will be found. The tea leaves of special elections will be read and, likely, will portend well for Team Blue. Money—not enough for most, too much for a few—will be spent. The best case for American small-d democracy: A leg of the national Republican tripod will be kicked out come November.
The problem? Trump hardly needs a well-functioning Congress to further his agenda of racialized collective punishment and personalized legal vengeance. He’s got his liberated executive branch, which, frankly, the nation’s citizenry as a whole bears some responsibility for allowing. And he’s got the courts for… suffice it to say, a long time into the future.
In other words, barring the intervention of an angry god (not a bad idea), we’re just getting started. You and I, that is, are just getting started.
Whatever you’re doing now to shift the winds of fate toward a better future for the world’s children who didn’t do a blessed thing to deserve all this mess, well, I regret to remind you that you’ve still only just begun.
So, here’s to 2026. It’s coming one way or another.
Solidarity,
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The post Editor’s Letter: Introducing Our January/February 2026 Issue appeared first on The Texas Observer.
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