Editor’s Letter: Introducing Our January/February 2026 Issue

Texas Observer reader,

Call me biased, but I do believe you’re holding a damn good magazine in your hands right now.

Michelle Pitcher continues her ascent as one of the state’s best criminal justice reporters and narrative feature writers. Josephine Lee again takes you into a corner of Houston culture you might otherwise never know (see her prior coverage online of the Taiwanese-Houstonian community and of shaved ice, in its many Bayou City forms). 

Special Correspondent Steven Monacelli braids a local Dallas power play into an overarching state- and federal-level war for control of homelessness policy. And freelancer Gaige Davila takes you to southwest Louisiana to illuminate the future of his native corner of deep South Texas. 

It’s a strong start for the Observer to a year that, for the nation, I can only expect to tend toward the awful.

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