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There was a time when America believed in itself the way a teenager believes in summer—endless, sunlit, and promised. Don McLean caught that feeling just as it slipped through the fingers of the time. American Pie wasn’t only a song; it was a vigil. A long, circling goodbye to a country that thought tragedy was an interruption, not a condition. “The day the music died” marked more than a plane crash. It marked the moment when innocence stopped being renewable. Buddy Holly, Ri

Rio Grande City formed a committee to explore building an eighteen-hole municipal golf course, a project that would finally give the city the recreational infrastructure other Valley towns have maintained for decades. The committee has begun planning feasibility studies. Rio Grande City already had a golf course once. The Fort Ringgold Golf Course operated from November 1970 until roughly 1990. Pete Diaz Sr., the Valley Mart magnate who transformed his family's grocery store

Congress just authorized federal agents to examine the naked bodies of children. Alone. Without their parents. They're calling it the Kayla Hamilton Act. H.R. 4371 passed the House 225-201 on Monday. Seven Democrats handed Republicans the margin they needed. Henry Cuellar of Texas, Don Davis of North Carolina, Laura Gillen of New York, Jared Golden of Maine, Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, Adam Gray of California, and Marie Glusenkamp Perez of Washington decided invasive body exam

We must declare: Enough! We are done asking for permission to exist. For too long, being brown in America has been treated like a condition to be cured — something to defend, to prove, to justify. We are told that borders protect, that agents serve, that violence keeps peace. But what kind of peace strips mothers from children and terrorizes citizens born under the same flag it claims to defend? For generations, brown bodies in America have navigated a gauntlet of suspicion,

Rose Benavidez boasts about billions. The president of Starr County Industrial Foundation touts figures that would make most economic development directors weep with envy. Over four billion dollars in investments across the past decade. Six thousand jobs created. Wind farms, solar projects, and retail developments transforming one of the poorest counties in America into an emerging powerhouse. The numbers sound staggering despite Starr County maintaining the highest unemploym

Greg Abbott has never faced a challenge quite like Gina Hinojosa. First, she's Mexican-American. Second, she's a woman. And even though he easily won against Wendy Davis, this candidate has something Davis didn't: she's puro 956. The Brownsville native and five-term state representative stopped by Caro's Restaurant in Rio Grande City on Monday to talk with local voters about her campaign. The event drew family and local Democratic officials who turned out to support her candi

The Department of Health and Human Services issued a directive in November 2025 that places Head Start programs in direct conflict with federal law. A Wisconsin program director submitted a routine funding renewal request on September 30. On November 19, she received two emails from HHS containing a six-page list of nearly 200 prohibited words and phrases. The forbidden terminology includes "disability," "women," "tribal," "accessible," "belong," "Black," "female," "minority,

Donald Trump made his choice in Texas's 34th Congressional District on December 18, and the fallout has been delicious. The former president endorsed Eric Flores, leaving his 2022 congressional candidate, Mayra Flores (who shares the surname but not the bloodline), fuming on the sidelines. Mayra Flores wasted no time posting a clarification that screamed "we are NOT related" in everything but those exact words. Eric Flores, who worked as an assistant U.S. attorney from 2021 t

I married Frankie on a Tuesday, because that’s when the courthouse has less people. We got our marriage license a week before, and on Tuesday we both showed up on our lunch hour and said our awkward I dos. It was all very administrative. After we got married, I went back to work. I’m a teacher. He’s a mechanic at a Ford dealership. That day, we ate Jack in the Box, because that’s his favorite. He got some sweet bread from La Reynera. There was no party. No guests. No invitati

Jill Stein is a doctor who abandoned her medical practice to run for president. The Harvard-educated physician became the Green Party's presidential candidate in 2012, 2016, and most recently in 2024. She positions herself as the answer for progressives exhausted by Democratic incrementalism and Republican extremism, championing Medicare for All, student debt cancellation, and opposition to military interventionism. Her pitch appeals to voters convinced both major parties hav

Senator Mark Kelly, the combat-tested Navy captain turned Arizona senator, has launched a blistering 46-page federal lawsuit against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon, exposing what can only be described as a brazen, vindictive power grab by the Trump administration. This isn't justice—it's a political hit job, a chilling warning shot fired across the bow of any veteran or lawmaker daring to speak truth to power. In a move reeking of authoritarian overreach, Heg

ICE is here. The inevitable is happening here in Starr County and all across the Rio Grande Valley. Social media is filled with photos of people being detained. There is impotence. There is anger. There is fear. And sadness. That suffocating feeling in the air has a name: anomie. South Texas is a border region. The people who live here know immigration enforcement. But this is different. Now people are being detained at gas stations, at stores, at churches. Now filming an arr

The conversation around feminism has deteriorated into something genuinely stupid. Women bicker over dinner bills while the point sails right past them. Paying half on a date has absolutely nothing to do with equal rights. That's not activism. That's just bad math pretending to be principles. Feminism operates on a scale far beyond who picks up the tab at Olive Garden. The movement rests on one straightforward idea: women deserve the same rights as men. Not approximations. No

Greg Abbott's campaign account hit $105.7 million in January 2026. That staggering sum didn't come from bake sales or grassroots fundraising. It came from billionaires who expect results. Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass handed Abbott $6 million in December 2023, the largest single campaign donation in Texas history. Yass's net worth hovers around $29 billion, and his priority issue is school vouchers. Abbott spent 2024 using that money to unseat Republican legislators who

When Northgate Market floated the idea of a gigante concha rolling down the streets of Pasadena for the Rose Parade, it wasn’t just another pretty float — it was a dare to one of the most traditional stages in the country to make room for us. It was an invitation for Mexican-American families, from East L.A. to the Rio Grande Valley, to see something deeply familiar placed unapologetically at the center of the national gaze. Because let’s be honest: that giant pink concha was

Senator Josh Hawley asked Dr. Nisha Verma a straightforward question during a Wednesday Senate hearing. The answer required one word. Either yes or no. Instead, he spent the next five minutes avoiding a simple yes or no. "Can men get pregnant?" he asked. Verma, an obstetrician-gynecologist and fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health, testified before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on January 14 during a hearing titled "Protecting Women: Exp

Vicente Ventura Aguilar spent his last documented moments doing something completely ordinary. The 44-year-old was moving to music with friends on a South Los Angeles street corner near a strip mall. Security cameras caught him at 8:40 on an October morning, laughing and dancing. Five minutes changed everything. Federal immigration agents in masks flooded the corner. They deployed some kind of spray. Multiple people got arrested. Ventura became one of them. What happened next

Barack Obama stood at a podium in 2014 and delivered words that still echo louder than any policy Trump has ever managed to articulate. "Felons, not families. Criminals, not children. Or gang members. Not a mom who's working hard to provide for her kids. We'll prioritize." The speech laid out a framework for immigration enforcement that acknowledged reality instead of weaponizing fear. Obama prioritized deporting actual criminals while recognizing that millions of undocumente

Across Texas—especially along the border—people continue to face intimidation and civil rights violations during encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Even U.S. citizens have been wrongfully detained or questioned. These are difficult times, but knowing how to respond safely and lawfully can protect you and others. Here's what every Texan should understand—and share—about what to do if ICE appears at your door, your workplace, or stops you on the road. 1.

Judge Baldemar Garza issued a direct response to challenger Abel Villarreal Jr.'s campaign attacks, using a social media video to defend his record and question his opponent's reliability. The 229th District Court judge framed his rebuttal around a lesson from his mother. "My mother taught me a lesson I carry every day," Garza began in a video ad. "No puedes tapar el sol con un dedo. You cannot cover the truth with a single finger." The judge addressed criticism about his war