In this tumultuous American moment, Texas is still unique in its mind-boggling extremes.
Texas loves to pick on queer kids. At least, the Texas Legislature does. We just wrapped up the 2025 legislative session(s) and, as has become a cruel habit of Texas politicians, lawmakers have once again made the lives of LGBTQ+ Texans harder. And yet, Texas is one of the queerest states in the country. We have more queer residents than almost any state at 1.8 million, second only to California. More than double the number of queer New Yorkers. Texas is home to vibrant gay, lesbian, and drag scenes in Austin, Houston, and Dallas. But many, many smaller Texas towns boast their fair share of underground gay scenes (ask those in the know!). You may be surprised to find drag shows in Waco, but that’s only if you’ve never been.
Everyone knows that Texas has a thriving immigrant community. In fact, nearly 20% of our state’s residents were born in another country. Out of all 50 states, we have the second-most immigrants (again, second to California) and fourth most people of color. We wage digital wars over which city is home to the best taco scene. There are two places in the world where you can buy a kolache: the Czech Republic and Central Texas. Houston and its booming suburbs look more like a UN hearing than a backwater Deep South town. It is the seventh most diverse city in the country by race and ethnicity, but sometimes it ranks much higher, depending on the year and who’s counting. Celebrity chef David Chang once claimed Houston also has the best Vietnamese food in the country, writing in GQ magazine: “I’ve always wondered where the food in a Blade Runner-like future would appear first and what it would taste like — and I genuinely believe it’s here.”
Despite this, the fearmongering and vilification of undocumented immigrants has also found its roots in Texas. Our land commissioner offered up our public land for immigrant detention centers. Polling routinely finds that immigration ranks atop Texans’ list of biggest issues. We are a state that has been made great by generations of immigrants — each member of diverse communities moulding and adding to our culture; yet we have vehemently turned our backs on the immigrants who’ve made homes here. Texas was the home of multiple internment camps during World War II, which housed detainees of Japanese descent, as well as immigrants from Germany and Italy, along with American-born civilians. Just weeks ago, that same site reopened as the largest ICE detention facility in the country’s history.
It is so easy to see Texas as a caricature of itself. National media paints us as a backwards, bigoted, conservative monolith that dreamt up every bad idea that is now infecting our national politics. Local propagandists throw themselves at the altar of the politician who manages to be the most corrupt, the most hate-filled, and the most fringe. But we are much, much more than that.
More than 4.8 million Texans voted for Kamala Harris or Jill Stein during the 2024 presidential election (read: Not Donald Trump). That’s more people than live in Oregon (no offense to Oregon, the lavender farms seem lovely). But Texas isn’t just big, it’s also a place with a rich history of progressives fighting an often thankless uphill battle — largely, to the benefit of the rest of the country. Is your state about to get redistricted? You likely know about that because of Texas Democrats’ quorum-busting in the Texas House. Before the overturning of Roe, it’s likely you read about former state Sen. Wendy Davis’s 13-hour filibuster to protect Texans’ abortion rights. Yes, conservatives have had their boots to the neck of progressives in Texas for decades — but liberal Texans get up and fight, time and again.
Republicans may rule Texas now, but there was a time they didn’t, too. Gov. Ann Richards ran roughshod over the good-old-boy politicians of the 1990s. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed thanks to the sheer political might of LBJ. The deeply progressive (but politically independent) Texas Observer was founded by Ronnie Dugger in 1954 before it became a magazine in the 1970s, when it was helmed by fearless legendary (later-syndicated) columnist and public speaker Molly Ivins. The New York Review of Books once called it, “That outpost of reason in the Southwest.”
“Today, it’s almost hard to remember just how different the Texas government was back in the 1970s,” NPR’s Weekend Edition wrote in 2019. “That’s when Molly Ivins scorched a trail through good-ol’-boy politics like a flamethrower through a cactus patch.”
As long as there’s been corrupt politicians working to sell out the people’s government, there has been someone like Molly writing the first draft of history with verve, telling a man in power that he “ran on all fours, sucked eggs, and had no sense of humor.”
And Molly Ivins was never alone.
For every Sen. Ted Cruz, there’s a Congresswoman Barbara Jordan or a Cecile Richards. For every Joe Rogan and Alex Jones, there’s a Simone Biles or a Beyoncé. For every Ken Paxton or Joel Osteen, there’s a Willie Nelson or a Wes Anderson.
In 1946, Heman Marion Sweatt, a Black man from Houston, applied for admission to the University of Texas School of Law and met all eligibility requirements for admission — except for his race. With help from NAACP lawyers, he sued the state and eventually won the right to enroll. The Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling in 1950’s Sweatt v. Painter, which effectively started the desegregation of the university, but importantly also paved the way for Brown v. Board of Education four years later.
“The criteria used by the court in the application of the separate but equal doctrine gave legal experts cause to believe that the doctrine was virtually dead,” according to the Texas State Historical Association. “It was clear from the opinion that a good-faith effort to supply equality of treatment without integration was insufficient; rather, it must be equality in fact.”
There’s a rabid fight for the heart of Texas between our state’s older, whiter, conservative politicians desperately clinging to power in the face of a young, diverse, forward-looking future.
But as time marches on, pumpjacks will continue to be replaced with solar fields and wind turbines. The old, rich, conservative class of elites who run our state will be challenged and (God willing) be defeated by a younger generation that reflects the progressivism and diversity that has been fighting for decades to take hold across the state.
When we launched The Barbed Wire in August of last year, we promised to become part of a long, venerable state tradition of nonpartisan, progressive journalism.
For one whole trip around the sun, The Barbed Wire has been covering the good, the bad, the beautiful, the hideous, the ridiculous, and the wonderful that is everyday life in Texas. We have covered jubilation and heartbreak; heroes and villains; we have celebrated the beauty of our state, and we have cursed its ugliness.
Here at The Barbed Wire, we only have a handful of full-time staff, but nonetheless we seek to be the ones who can cover the sum of all of Texas’ parts. We want to levy mockery and ridicule at the countless buffoons who rightfully earn our derision and scorn. And, more importantly, we want to uplift and celebrate the people who find joy, happiness, love, and purpose despite the ample warts our state boasts.
We do our best here at The Barbed Wire to make sense of it all because we love Texas, we love Texans, and we are Texans.
We have real skin in the game.
Thank you so much for being a reader for this past year. And if you, like us, want to do your part towards bringing about a future Texas that’s as bright as the folks who live here, I hope you’ll consider joining us as a member.
We aim to show you a Texas that is more human than caricature. A place filled with grit and hope — even when there are boots on our neck.