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Michael and Ericka Prince tu bones bbqBack in 2017, the barbecue competition special BBQ Rig Race aired on Food Network. At the end of it, the Tu Bones BBQ team, led by pitmaster Michael Prince and his friend Kirk Boudreaux, took home the $10,000 prize. Rather than using the money to get out of the food truck he’d been operating from, Prince gave it to Boudreaux, who desperately needed a car. The business thrived anyway, thanks to the recognition, and a few years later, Price traded his food truck for a stall at Frisco Fresh Market, where he still serves every Saturday and Sunday.After early success at the market, Prince sought to grow into a new restaurant space, but the COVID-19 pandemic changed those plans. “This may be the right spot to…

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Why Put a New Sports Franchise in Houston?The WNBA might be the American sports league with the most potential for growth. It’s hard to imagine the NFL or NBA getting that much bigger than they already are, and although Major League Baseball seems to have mostly leveled its decline, the sport isn’t winning new converts by the millions. Soccer, meanwhile, has been five years away from dominating the nation’s sports landscape for several decades now. But women’s basketball is a different story. The game is steadily minting new superstars at the college level. Last spring, for the first time ever, the women’s NCAA championship game drew more viewers than the men’s final. In the pros, one of the major challenges the WNBA has faced is that there simply aren’t enough teams to ensure…

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willie nelson do you realize?? cover imageIn 2002, Johnny Cash recorded what turned out to become one of his legacy-defining songs. It was unlikely to happen at that point in his life. Cash was seventy years old by then, nearly a decade into a creative revival in a career that saw him go from a superstar and icon to being dropped from his label and playing county fairs, before an improbable rebound back into the zeitgeist with his stripped-down 1994 album, American Recordings. The Man in Black was already a legend at that point—“Folsom Prison Blues,” “I Walk the Line,” and “Ring of Fire” were already firmly established in the cultural canon—but he added a signature song to his catalog with an unlikely cover of the Nine Inch Nails song “Hurt.” Trent…

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The Maternal Mortality Rate Surged in Texas in 2020 and 2021The rate of Texas women who died because of pregnancy or childbirth rose sharply in 2020 and 2021 to the highest since the state started tracking maternal deaths, in 2013. Even excluding deaths related to COVID-19, the numbers were worse than usual, reversing two years of progress in driving the maternal mortality rate downward.The Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee released a report this month analyzing pregnancy-related deaths within one year of childbirth. The committee, which works on a several-year delay, closely analyzed cases from 2020.The maternal mortality rate in 2020 was 27.7 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared to 17.2 in 2019. With COVID-related deaths excluded, the rate was 24.2.But the report shows, once again, that maternal mortality does not impact every community…

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What Interviewing a Suspected Serial Killer and His Victims Taught Me About EmpathyThe first time he called, I was home with family on a Saturday afternoon in 2022. I asked if he had time later to continue our conversation. “Yeah, I have nothing planned,” he laughed. It was a funny line. His name was Billy Chemirmir, and he was in the Dallas County jail awaiting trial on eighteen counts of capital murder. Just a few months earlier, his first trial had ended in a shocking mistrial. Of course he had time. It wasn’t like there were pressing appointments to schedule around while he was incarcerated.I’d been covering the case against Chemirmir for three years as a reporter for The Dallas Morning News. He’d been accused of stalking elderly women at luxury senior living communities in the Dallas area, posing…

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A New Trump Ad Cites My Texas Monthly Reporting—And Distorts ItI awoke last Friday to learn that I had been conscripted into the fracking wars. It wasn’t my choice, and it wasn’t the first time.Earlier in the week, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign had released a thirty-second ad in Pennsylvania, which is the second-largest natural gas–producing U.S. state (behind Texas, of course). The gist was that his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, would ban fracking all together if she’s elected. Harris says that’s not true, but as the adage goes, truth is often the first casualty of war. "Harris will ban all fracking…that will immediately put tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians out of work."Trump's newest ad attacks Harris on fracking. #PAPol has seen $260m in aired Presidential spending since Super Tuesday, making up 23% of all aired…

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leon bridges downtown fort worth checklist illustrationMUSICLeon, Leon BridgesOctober 4The Fort Worth artist’s previous solo album, 2021’s Gold-Diggers Sound, captured R&B energy inspired by the retro Hollywood hotel where it was recorded. His new project is a self-portrait that reflects his Texas roots—even if he recorded its thirteen tracks in Mexico City and Nashville. But judging by the song “Peaceful Place,” which blends Latin and West African vibes, Leon’s sonic points of origin may be the EPs Texas Sun and Texas Moon, which Bridges made with Houston’s globe-trotting, genre-bending band Khruangbin. Wherever he’s creating music, his pristine sound inspires nostalgia for a place—or a feeling—that he loves. As he sings on “Peaceful Place”: “I feel at home / Anywhere that I go.”FESTIVALOktoberfest, Fredericksburg October 4–6Immigrants from Deutschland (and their traditions) began arriving in…

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collin allred rallyBy all accounts, U.S. representative Colin Allred is the underdog in this year’s U.S. Senate race. Texas, after all, hasn’t elected a Democrat to statewide office in nearly three decades. But Allred, who was born and raised in Dallas by a single mother and played football at Baylor University and in the NFL, says his “uniquely Texan” story will resonate with voters. He’s also playing up his willingness to go up against the Democratic establishment—as he did in January, when he joined congressional Republicans and a handful of Democrats to support a resolution condemning President Biden’s handling of the nation’s southern border. But what’s really boosting his campaign, he says, is the sentiment that he repeatedly hears from voters: they’re ready to move on from…

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ted cruzHalf a mile east of the U.S. Capitol stands a handsome three-story townhouse with red-brick siding, copper oriel windows, and a corner entrance inscribed with the name of its owner, the innocuous-sounding Conservative Partnership Institute. Most passersby likely have no idea that Donald Trump’s campaign to overturn the 2020 presidential election was largely coordinated behind these stately walls. So was the January 6 rally that turned into a violent assault on the Capitol. In recent years the CPI has spent tens of millions of dollars recruiting and training operatives to staff what its leaders hope will be a second Trump administration. If the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 provides the battle plan, the CPI represents the staging ground.Late on a balmy night this summer, though, the…

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opening spread of "Who's Wasting Our Water?," August 2024.Navigating the Water CrisisI’m writing in response to the “Who’s Wasting Our Water” cover story [August 2024]. While the articles were well written and comprehensive, I believe you failed to thoroughly investigate desalinization. There is no such thing as a water shortage on Earth. The challenge lies in making the water we have suitable for consumption in areas where water is scarce, and desalinization technology offers a promising potential solution, particularly for Texas, with its access to the Gulf of Mexico.  Furthermore, I believe that expanding nuclear power generation could create excess power to operate desalinization plants and pump fresh water inland. By combining technologies in both the energy and water sectors, Texas has the potential to lead the way in sustainable water management.James Greene,…

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