Forrest Wilder

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.

Jan 27, 2025 | texasmonthly.com | Forrest Wilder

This story originally appeared in the February 2025 issue of Texas Monthly as part of our public-education feature, “What Our Schools Actually Need.” Two years ago, during the 2023 legislative session, superintendents of Texas schools were optimistic that state lawmakers would boost public-education funding. After all, soaring inflation was straining the already meager finances of districts across the state, and lawmakers had at their disposal a $32.7 billion budget surplus.

Jan 9, 2025 | texasmonthly.com | Forrest Wilder

Let’s stipulate up front: Ken Paxton is not the most magnetic speaker. His voice is surprisingly soft, his affect somewhat listless. He doesn’t so much command a room as take up space in it. But swagger comes in different forms, and there’s a reason 150 or so Paxton fans showed up on a Tuesday at 2 p.m. in the far north Austin suburb of Leander to hear the attorney general talk about the inner workings of the race for Speaker of the Texas House.