Forrest Wilder

2 weeks ago | texasmonthly.com | Allegra Hobbs |Christopher Hooks |Forrest Wilder |Robert Downen

A GOP chief of staff damned Representative Brian Harrison with the faintest possible praise when he told us that the Midlothian Republican would be “good for Congress.” There’s a certain type of lawmaker—like Democratic Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett and Republican Congressman Jake Ellzey—who turns a short, unproductive Texas House stint into a ticket to D.C. In the state legislature, being useless is cause for embarrassment. In Congress, it can be the foundation of a lengthy career.

2 weeks ago | texasmonthly.com | Robert Downen |Allegra Hobbs |Christopher Hooks |Forrest Wilder

Our practice of naming the Ten Best and Ten Worst legislators every session is a tradition that connects us to our founding year, 1973, and to reporter and Capitol fixture Paul Burka, who kept the franchise going for nearly four decades and who died in 2022. As we set out to make the lists in recent years, however, it became common to hear legislative insiders describe each successive session as the worst they’d worked.

Mar 4, 2025 | texasmonthly.com | Forrest Wilder

Bianca Sicich isn’t ready to let go of the prairie just yet. It’s the last Friday of February, the first green shoots of spring emerging from the overwintering tall grass, and she’s up early to volunteer at the Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge, a 10,500-acre preserve sixty miles west of Houston. This morning, she’s literally counting chickens. She’s helping conduct the annual population survey of the Attwater’s prairie chicken, an extremely endangered species.

Mar 4, 2025 | texasmonthly.com | Forrest Wilder

Bianca Sicich isn’t ready to let go of the prairie just yet. It’s the last Friday of February, the first green shoots of spring emerging from the overwintering tall grass, and she’s up early to volunteer at the Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge, a 10,500-acre preserve sixty miles west of Houston. This morning, she’s literally counting chickens. She’s helping conduct the annual population survey of the Attwater’s prairie chicken, an extremely endangered species.

Jan 31, 2025 | texasmonthly.com | Forrest Wilder

Harvey Kronberg’s phone keeps playing the sad-trombone sound. Every time he gets a text—and he gets a lot—his device lets out a loud womp-womp-womp. The sound effect, he explains, is an artifact from last year’s Texas Republican primary, a bloodbath for a lot of his friends and sources in the state House, who were wiped out by a tsunami of spending by Governor Greg Abbott and a vengeful mood among the GOP’s Jacobin base.