Healthcare for Trans Veterans Was Already Bad, And Under Trump It’s Getting Worse

Under policies adopted last year, the VA now refuses to support newly transitioned veterans. Even accessing routine healthcare can be a challenge.

Flesh-Eating Worms, Hemp Chaos, and a Blue Texas?

Democrats think they might finally flip Texas, state officials are fighting over flesh-eating worms, hemp retailers are once again trying to determine whether their businesses exist in a legal dimension, and Texas Tech is embroiled in a controversy.

👀 Pride, like no one is watching

Happy Pride, queer stars. On celebrating loudly, the Queerbomb march, and why the move is to blast the haters with bubbles and keep being you.

Ken Paxton, ‘Champion for the Unborn,’ Would Have Let Our Babies Die. We Know Firsthand.

In March 2023, we became two of the first women to sue Texas over its abortion bans. While pregnant with twins, we’d each learned that one of our twins had severe complications that were threatening the lives of the other — and our own. Yet, we were denied potentially live-

🗣️The Texans Who Refused To Shut Up

This week’s stories are about the Texans who built communities, whether that meant opening Black-owned bookstores during a racial reckoning or organizing queer mutual aid in Dallas, decades before Stonewall. 

📚 Learning from queer history...

Your Aunt/Uncle Kit has more deep thoughts for you, alongside the latest in Texas LGBTQ news.

Black-Owned Bookstores in Texas Bring Communities Together. They’re Also Harassed and Vandalized.

Fort Worth sisters Donna and Donya Craddock refer to 2020 as “the unicorn year.” There was the COVID-19 shutdown, but there was also something more — a death that prompted a period of racial reckoning. On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was murdered on camera by a white police officer

Years Before the Stonewall Riots, Dallas’ Queer Community Had Its Own Movement

In 1988, the city of Dallas filled in a hole. City council spent half a million dollars to fix a dangerous gap left on a vacant lot by a construction company. Seemingly good news, right? Well, to local LGBTQ+ activists, it was a sign of how little local politicians cared

Texas County Pursues Death Penalty ‘Almost Exclusively’ Against People of Color, Report Shows. We Have an Opportunity to Change That.

My brother was wrongfully convicted. My wife is a police officer. My sister is the former city attorney for Austin, Texas. I have worked to free innocent people who were wrongfully convicted in Tarrant County and in the state more broadly. I was not shocked — but still incredibly disappointed — when

Trump Finally Endorses Paxton, Cornyn Reduced to ‘Good Man’ Status

Donald Trump has officially endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for U.S. Senate, bucking his party's mainstream donors and siding with the MAGA favorite in the May 26 Republican runoff. In a statement roughly the length of a Russian novel, Trump praised Paxton as an “America First

‘Future Legends.’ Despite So-Called ‘Drag Ban,’ Texas’ Queer Showcases Are Launching Pads for Performers.

In Austin, a city with an abundance of drag shows, one monthly showcase offers a unique platform — and launch pad — for emerging talent. “You get to see future legends get their start, and other people just flourish and find their niche.” That’s how “Big Tits, Bigger Dreams,” or BTBD,

She Thought Her Daughter Was Faking Sick. Then She Found Out Her Elementary School Was Built on a Drilling Waste Site.

EXCLUSIVE If anyone had told Joey Giminiani what was under his house, he never would've bought it. On April 23, Giminiani took off work at the electric utility and joined a Zoom meeting from the home he had sunk his life savings into. He watched as the residential

‘When You Know Homeless People, You Can’t Ignore Them’: Inside ‘The Challenger,’ a Newspaper Written by and for Unhoused Austinites

Clifton Pappas, who is unhoused, has been a distributor for The Challenger newspaper for a year. He walks Austin streets wearing a black cowboy hat with a short rim and a backpack. He also carries what all distributors do: printed copies of the paper, as well as an ID badge

An Oilfield Leak Springs Under a Permian Basin Baptist Church

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here. Salty water is gurgling up from underground in the middle of the small Permian Basin town of Grandfalls, Texas. The liquid began pooling

Did Whataburger ‘Fall Off’? We Sent a Team of Texas Comedians to Investigate.

EXCLUSIVE It was 6 p.m. in downtown Austin. Traffic was humming, and responsible adults were bustling, which is to say it was absolutely the wrong time to eat Whataburger. Whataburger is 2 a.m. food. Eating it while the sun is still up feels like seeing a teacher at

It’s Not Just Tony Gonzales. Four More Texans Are in a New Report on Widespread Sexual Misconduct in Congress.

Five Congressmen from Texas are included in a new report released this week on sexual harassment in Congress, which has been rocked with recent sexual misconduct allegations against former U.S. Reps. Tony Gonzales of San Antonio and Eric Swalwell of California. The report by the National Women’s Defense

There Was Yet Another ‘Ugly Fight’ in Houston Over Immigration Enforcement. But the City Already Knows What’s Right.

Editor’s note: The views and opinions presented by guest contributors to The Barbed Wire do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the company, the newsroom, its staff, advisers, or advertisers. Emmanuel Gonzalez, a 15-year-old who has a serious intellectual disability, walked away from his mom’

How Selena Called Me Home to Texas

I have a secret to admit. I’m not a Texas native. Luckily, I’m not a Californian who moved to the Lone Star State. I’m a Nebraskan who fell in love with the Dallas Fort-Worth area. But my introduction to Texas was not the metroplex. Nor was

‘Accusations of ‘Indoctrination’ Were Nothing but an Excuse’: Texas Tech Roiled by Axing of Programs, Free Speech Lawsuit

In recent days, Texas Tech University has come under fire by free speech advocates over its decision to cancel programs — and a first amendment lawsuit filed by a student after she was disciplined in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s death. The university system will shutter its programs focusing on

The Bootlegging, Blues Singing Star of 1930s Prison Radio

This essay, originally written by Maurice Chammah, is an edition of Redemption Songs, a limited-run newsletter from The Marshall Project that dives into the music produced in prisons over the last century. Sign up now to get a song by incarcerated artists delivered to your inbox each Sunday through

This Austin Art Show Is the Mirror America Needs Right Now

Paid content. The Cathedral paid for this article and reviewed it before publication. A pirate radio station broadcasting from inside an art gallery, a cowboy who refuses to be a conqueror, and mirrors positioned so carefully throughout the space that you can't look at the work without looking

A ‘Gut Punch’ of Censorship and ‘Erasure’: University of Texas Professors Decry Rushed Merging of Ethnic & Gender Studies

Nearly two months after University of Texas at Austin President Jim Davis announced plans to consolidate seven ethnic and gender studies departments, students and faculty say they’re still in the dark and bracing for what comes next. On Feb.12, Davis announced a consolidation set to take effect in

How Texas College Students Are Helping Thousands of Undocumented Classmates

Obed Valencia wasted no time in his first two years of college. He joined several clubs, made friends, got an internship — he even won a “Most Involved” student award in his first year at Texas A&M San Antonio, he said. “I made the most of it just because

Is Fracking in Texas Endangering a Day Care’s Children?

In early December, drilling resumed near Mother’s Heart Learning Center. Newly installed gas wells dot property at 2020 S. Watson Road, less than one mile from the day care. One day in December, the sound of fracking machinery was so cacophonous that children couldn’t play outdoors. For gas

Corpus Christi Water Crisis Spurs Stampede on South Texas Aquifers

This article originally was written by Dylan Baddour and appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here. UPDATE: On Tuesday, the city presented plans to achieve 25% curtailment in water consumption across all customer

Elon Musk Wants to Turn 700 Acres of Texas Wildlife Refuge Into SpaceX Property

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is aiming to acquire 712 acres of land in the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, amid the protests of environmentalists and activist groups. The proposal would exchange the wildlife refuge land for 692 acres of land in Starbase, SpaceX’s headquarters on the southern

Our Independent Newsroom Was Built on a Ferocious, Delusional Sense of Hope. Help Us Keep It Going.

When I moved back to Austin to start The Barbed Wire, I was an investigative reporter by trade, and I’d written a book, but I had never managed a team, never created an editorial calendar, never even been a full-time editor. The joke we tell is that I

Who Gets to Lead the Church? Women and LGBTQ+ Pastors Are Forcing an Answer.

For many Christian women, a woman’s role in the church’s ecosystem has long been fixed. But Beth Allison Barr, a historian and the wife of a pastor, felt compelled to challenge the prevailing narrative surrounding women in North American Christianity using history. This culminated in “The Making of