Steven Monacelli

3 days ago | thebarbedwire.com | Steven Monacelli

In the late 1940s through the 1950s, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy were leading figures in the Second Red Scare. The campaign of persecution targeted people accused, often falsely, of being communist and subjected them to public shaming, blacklists, and raids. You may know it better as McCarthyism. Why is this relevant to Texans in 2025? There’s an old saying apocryphally attributed to Mark Twain: History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.

2 weeks ago | dmagazine.com | Steven Monacelli

If you hadn’t already heard, it’s municipal election season in Dallas. Early voting has begun. And like budding flowers to springtime, so are burgeoning PACs to election season. Two new political action committees have recently distributed physical mailers and digital ads endorsing slates of Dallas city council candidates. But until now, the PACs’ funding has been a mystery. They were only recently created, and mandated financial reports weren’t released until this week.

1 month ago | thebarbedwire.com | Steven Monacelli

Once upon a time, in the 1920s, the State Fair of Texas hosted “Fitter Family” contests that graded entrants on physical appearance, health, behavior, and intelligence. The winners, according to the eugenicist judges, were most likely to produce offspring deemed genetically superior — and were “invariably white with western and northern European heritage.”The 1925 winners of the “Large Family” contest happily posed on a series of steps.

1 month ago | sacurrent.com | Steven Monacelli

By Steven Monacelli, The Texas Tribune on Sat, Mar 29, 2025 at 10:55 am Last month, Congressman Marc Veasey, a North Texas Democrat, sent a letter to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Acting Deputy Director Kenneth Genalo demanding a swift investigation into James “Jim” Joseph Rodden, an ICE assistant chief counsel who acts as a prosecutor for ICE in immigration court in Dallas.

1 month ago | tspantx.com | Steven Monacelli

Last month, Congressman Marc Veasey, a North Texas Democrat, sent a letter to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Acting Deputy Director Kenneth Genalo demanding a swift investigation into James “Jim” Joseph Rodden, an ICE assistant chief counsel who acts as a prosecutor for ICE in immigration court in Dallas. The letter came in response to a Texas Observer investigative report that identified Rodden as the operator of a white supremacist social media account.