When I heard that a wildly popular show about Jesus I'd never heard of was using the DFW area as a stand-in for the Holy Land, I was..intrigued. Christian media is one of the few parts of Hollywood that's thriving & I set out to understand why, for @newyorker.com www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Dallas Jenkins’s show—a prestige drama about Jesus’ life that became the biggest crowdfunded television project in history—has come to model the sort of bottom-up, fandom-first entertainment that is quietly reshaping the industry. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

I didn't know The Chosen monetised its fans/community through immersive experiences to the extent described here. 10,000+ extras – many paying over $1k – took part in the show's feeding of the five thousand. Of course, it makes total sense: this is, after all, what religion has always done so well.

Texas Senator John Cornyn votes with the President 99.2% of the time. For some Republican primary voters, he’s not loyal enough. www.newyorker.com/news/letter-...

“She could feel the Regenerator in there. She could see its outline in certain lights. It gave a mechanical slant to her jaw. The Regenerator was a problem.”

Senator John Cornyn is trying to fight off Texas’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, in a battle to see how far right the state can be pushed. James Talarico, the Democratic nominee, may benefit. www.newyorker.com/news/letter-...

The border wall in Big Bend, Texas, is opposed by environmental groups, local sheriffs, and a pro-gun YouTuber running for Congress. It’s happening anyway. www.newyorker.com/news/letter-...

Due to some poorly-worded headlines, people are under the impression that the border wall in the Big Bend region has been cancelled. It has not -- things are actually moving forward at an alarming rate. www.newyorker.com/news/letter-...

WATCH: Two men promised a $1.1 million 3D printer could fix this town’s housing crisis. To this day, the one duplex it printed still isn’t finished. A $590,000 deposit for the printer was forfeited. And the more reporter Molly Parker asked questions, the weirder things got: propub.li/4nlU1VD

Also: You could already have gotten this story in your mailbox if you paid the mere $25 A YEAR for a print + digital subscription to Texas Monthly. We are, IMO, the best bargain in journalism. subscription.texasmonthly.com/pubs/TZ/TXP/...

Join Pamela Colloff on July 13th to celebrate CATCH THE DEVIL: A TRUE STORY OF MURDER, DECEPTION, AND INJUSTICE ON THE GULF COAST. She will be in conversation with Rachel Monroe. More info + RSVP: www.eventbrite.com/e/bookpeople... @pamelacolloff.bsky.social @rachelmonroe.bsky.social

This book is amazing, everything I thought it would be and more. Can't wait to celebrate it in July!

If you like me enjoy fruit news, may I introduce you to the produce alliance report, wherein you may discover just which produce has been fucked up by just which preventable event? producealliance.com/wp-content/u...

Texas tech now bans students from writing about LGBTQ issues in any form. Mentions of gender identity, orientation etc in textbooks must be skipped. Deafening silence so far from all the brave heterodox free speech absolutists www.erininthemorning.com/p/texas-tech...

they're auctioning off Cormac McCarthy's Lotus Esprit on Hagerty, and I fear I need her

yiiiikes

A great dispatch from the Texas border, where Texas Republicans, led by AG Ken Paxton, have targeted a key nemesis of the far right and Christian nationalists: Catholic Charities.

My long-standing #1 piece of dating advice is to avoid Gen X men at all costs

I have seen one good example of this plate

For the @texashighways.bsky.social "Night Issue," Marfa expat @rachelmonroe.bsky.social returns to far West Texas for a moonlit canoe trip on the Rio Grande. #longreads texashighways.com/culture/seei...

Last year I interviewed my uncle, who was subject to conversion therapy as a young man. The damage is life-long and incredibly insidious. I'm grateful for his wisdom and inspired by the life he's made for himself. open.spotify.com/episode/3JZs...

Inside a trial of supposed Antifa members—and what it reveals about a disturbing Trump strategy. www.newyorker.com/news/letter-...

After Charlie Kirk's assassination, the Trump administration promised a crackdown on left-wing groups. Soon afterward, a group of activists in Texas were charged with supporting terrorism. I attended their trial earlier this month www.newyorker.com/news/letter-...

When a demonstration at an ICE facility ended in a shooting, protesters were charged with attempted murder—then the government added terrorism charges. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/JGTxKK

A beautiful remembrance of a remarkable person

Interesting piece on how Texas megachurch Mercy Culture is leading the way in fusing religion and politics. Its political arm has supported hundreds of candidates into office. www.newyorker.com/magazine/let...

Donald Trump has hollowed out the amendment that prohibited churches from endorsing candidates. A nondenominational evangelical megachurch in Texas has sprung into action. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/3z6Djx

I wrote about the emboldened Christian nationalists who are reshaping politics in Texas and nationwide -- and the cracks that are beginning to show in their political dominance The New Faces of Christian Nationalism www.newyorker.com/magazine/let...

A romping weekend read from @thewesternedge.bsky.social. In the small town of St. Helens, Oregon, where the news media is on life support, corruption thrived. 2,500 pages of new documents have finally revealed the clear story of what happened when Brian Greenway came for Halloweentown.

“Injustice Town” depicts the sexual exploitation practiced by Detective Roger Golubski—who helmed the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department’s homicide unit—as central to his corruption, not a by-product of it. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/lzmmz4

"In the Baltimore study, a number of women said that they were pressured into sex as a way to avoid arrest; forty-four per cent of them were arrested anyway."

Entire article is horrific & there's this too (I didn't know, probably most people did) "In 2023, the Department of Justice established the first nationwide database documenting instances of police misconduct. On the first day of the second Trump Administration, it was eliminated." bit.ly/40fbi83

According to a report by the Associated Press, nearly 1,000 police officers in the U.S. lost their licenses as a result of sexual misconduct between 2009 and 2014—a “sure undercount,” the report noted, since nine states didn’t keep relevant records. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/AbyKqo

I wrote about a horrific police scandal in Kansas City, Kansas -- detailed in Rick Tulsky's new book, Injustice Town -- and the kinds of law enforcement abuse that don't get enough attention, namely police sexual exploitation www.newyorker.com/books/under-...

A new book examines the case of a Kansas City, Kansas, detective who sexually exploited Black women—and the system that enabled him. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/9onIX6

Read this

This headline made me cry.

Evidence that mainstream journalism has adapted to the times, exhibit whatever: An article about TX GOP animus towards Muslims that makes it clear from the top it’s entirely a cynical political project. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/u...

If you're in or near College Station today--go to this!

This is a wonderful post if you are a little high

I cannot tell you how much doubt was consistently directed at the Gaza Health Ministry’s casualty numbers and how much pressure was put on news organizations to couch those numbers as unreliable. Biden himself said they were fabricated! www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...

"I'm coming to Boston and I'm bringing hell with me." --Homan in February "Do I expect violence to escalate? Absolutely." -- Tom Homan in March "I actually thought about getting up and throwing that man a beating right there in the middle of the room" -- Homan in July, referring to a D congressman

for the weekend crowd: I dug into a new podcast that pins a bunch of notorious murders on a long-dead Jewish man from San Diego. It's the ugliest true crime property in recent memory. [gift link] defector.com/michael-conn...

Immigrant families protest inside Texas facility housing 5-year-old boy, father detained in Minnesota www.texastribune.org/2026/01/24/i...

A few families have been duelling for control of Loving County for decades. Then the followers of a hustle-culture influencer moved in. Rachel Monroe reports on the battle for Texas’s least populated county. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/DU7S14

In 2024, law enforcement in Loving County began receiving tips about “a guy doing online posts who says he’s going to come in and take over the government.” Rachel Monroe reports on the battle for one of the richest and smallest counties in Texas. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/p0FsHY

Because we could all use a little distraction: I wrote about all the drama that's been brewing in Loving County, a land of oilfields and family feuds and, most recently, a takeover attempt by an outside group www.newyorker.com/news/letter-...

The All-Star Game starters are 20% Ja(y)len, the strategy is correct