Cover Story
Musical Chairs at the Texas House of Representatives
Last year’s meetings of the Texas Legislature must have done something to Austin’s elected representatives. After the last special session ended in September, half of our city’s six House members announced they would give up their safe seats, where they might have aged in place for decades, to confront the Republican leaders who foisted school…
News
The Week’s Biggest News in Brief
ICE Protests Continue: As ICE operations continue in Minnesota and around the country, Texas lawmakers organized a “Stop ICE” rally at Pan American Neighborhood Park on Saturday, Jan. 31. According to KUT, thousands of demonstrators joined state Reps. James Talarico and Gina Hinojosa, along with U.S. Reps. Joaquin Castro and Greg Casar, to protest operations.…
Redrawn TX-35 Sets Stage for High-Stakes Democratic Primary
For more than a decade, Texas’ 35th Congressional District was easy to describe. It ran like a political spine between Austin and San Antonio, linking two liberal urban centers through a corridor of heavily Latino and working-class neighborhoods. It reliably sent a Democrat to Washington. In 2026, the district barely resembles that version of itself.…
Under Texas’ New AI Law, Cities Bear the Cost Without the Authority
On Jan. 16, a political attack ad paid for by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s campaign aired, featuring Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) dancing together as partners in the “Senate Swing” and the “Washington Waltz.” Yet, this attack ad is different from its predecessors for a remarkable reason: The images aren’t…
The Mass Surveillance Debate Is Back
Austinites shut down two mass surveillance programs last year, worried about how the technology threatens privacy and aids Donald Trump’s attacks on immigrants. Advocates from over 30 state and local groups banded together in a coalition called No ALPRs to convince City Council to end the Austin Police Department’s automated license plate reader program in…
Music
Music Notes
Sweet Limb Saturday 7, Continental Club Chris Robinson originally founded his Sweet Limb musical project as an act primarily rooted in lo-fi hip-hop. The 2025-2026 Austin Music Awards nominee for Best R&B dropped two EPs last year, with his November release The Pastel Noise demonstrating an increased focus on alt-R&B. Robinson wraps up a night…
Virginia Creeper Toys With Resolution
Girl, You’ll Be a Giant Soon is bathed in a low-wattage glow, like the warmth of a fast-food sign or the blue-tinted incandescence of an infomercial break. There’s a sense of liminal unease driving Virginia Creeper’s third full-length album, palpable in the dissonant space between Michelle Ayoubi’s firmly planted bass and Aaron Arguello’s asymmetrical synthesizer.…
TROY NōKA’s Positive Ripple
On his self-produced fourth album in the last five years, producer/rapper TROY NōKA circles around a loose theme: Every choice has a ripple. With a flow reminiscent of Dropout Bear-era Kanye West, the Austin native’s producing chops shine bright on Ripple due to his penchant for instilling warmth into his beats. Second track “Don’t Forget…
Introducing Country’s Odd Couple
On the surface, Melissa Carper and Theo Lawrence might seem like country’s odd couple. She’s a queer hillbilly twanging, rustic Ozarks gal, and he’s a suave Ameripolitan honky-tonker from France. Pairing the two Austinites together, however, produces its own kind of magic, a chemistry captured at the outset with the playful parry and thrust of…
Ben Kweller, Antone’s Allstars, Tomar & the FCs, and More to Play the 44th Annual Austin Music Awards
Austin Music Awards’ 44th annual celebration comes to you live at Antone’s on March 1 with a packed lineup of this year’s winners and nominees, plus special guests. Political post-punk jokers – and Band of the Year nominees – Big Bill kick off the night, followed by playful indie rockers/Best New Act candidates Gummy Fang…
Arts + Culture
New KMFA Presentation Highlights Real-Time Creative Collaboration
Austin Unconducted has already been on a mission to prove classical music isn’t just for squares or the elite. It’s for everyone. Their latest collaboration with Andrea Ariel Dance Theatre boosts that excitement to an entirely new level. Just as the name suggests, Austin Unconducted is a cooperative orchestra with no conductor. Their music relies…
A Seriously Fun Consideration of the Superfan
Fandom, in Jenny Tinghui Zhang’s hands, is empowering and connective; a path to absolution and to paranoia; and a serious source of revenue. Put simply: It’s complicated. With Superfan, Zhang pulls at the troubled threads of what it means to be and to have admirers from a brightly colored quilt of internet-informed contemporary fiction. Minnie,…
Screens
The Moment Review: Brat Summer Is Definitely Over
Say “music mockumentary” and most people immediately go to This Is Spinal Tap, or its precursors, All You Need Is Cash and the “Bad News Tour” episode of the British TV series The Comic Strip Presents. The setup is comics playing fictional musicians and often inadvertently becoming real-life rock stars in the process. Yet there’s…
Dracula Review: Dead And Not Loving It
There are three major influences on just about every modern film version of Dracula. First, of course, Bram Stoker’s seminal epistolary nightmare. Second is the 1927 stage production and subsequent film starring Bela Lugosi, which introduced the idea of the vampire as charismatic sex symbol. However, no less influential is the 1974 movie, crafted by…
Whistle Review: Death Comes Quickly in This Supernatural Horror
There’s a twisted ingenuity at the heart of Whistle, the new horror from the pen of former Austin literary scene mainstay Owen Egerton. The victims of the supernatural shocker meet the final fate that they always would have faced: It’s just a lot earlier than they’d hope. That’s explained to teen investigators Chrys (Dafne Keen,…
Columns
Day Trips: African American Heritage Monument, Kendleton
The African American Heritage Monument stands proud in the waning light of the day in Kendleton, one of the first U.S. towns founded by freed slaves. The red hue of the nine 40-foot-tall, pre-cast concrete pillars in a cluster at the end of Juneteenth Plaza glow in the late-afternoon sun. Each of the columns is…
Qmmunity: Eat Your Heart Out
Happy week before Valentine’s Day, Reader! Maybe you have a sweetheart or several at once; maybe you’re single but still want to mingle; or maybe you just want to have a nice time despite the horrors – whatever the situation may be, the time to plan a stellar V-Day is now. Next week, eh, that’ll…
As Austin FC Returns, So Does a Community When We Need It Most
With all due respect to an enormous pampered rodent up near Pittsburgh, miss me with that six more weeks of winter rhetoric. The start of the soccer season – the true sign of spring – is just three short weeks away. Austin FC is back, and so too, is The Verde Report. This marks the…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
The term “banana republic” was coined by O. Henry, who’d fled to Honduras in 1896 to escape embezzlement charges by a Texas bank. The Year of the Horse is being celebrated in China with a new plushie toy of a sad-looking red horse, sewn by accident with an upside-down smile. In a TikTok video, Dr.…
Feedback: February 6, 2026
Tightening the Purse Strings Dear Editor, Austin City Council’s January 22 vote on office spending made one thing clear: Ryan Alter still hasn’t learned the lessons from his office spending problems in 2025 [“Council Tightens Rules on Office Budget Spending,” News, Jan. 30]. At a moment when public trust is fragile, Alter voted to block a common-sense…
A New Leaf
Content warning: This column mentions suicide and self-harming behavior. Back in early 2021, I lived up the street from a coffee truck with a weed leaf logo. I was in graduate school at the time, pacing around my apartment for days on end, starting to smoke weed almost every day. Lockdown had taken a toll…
The Luv Doc: A Disturbing Amount of Hubris
Dear Luv Doc, A few months ago I met a man through a dating site who checked all the boxes. He is a good-looking silver fox type, long divorced, recently retired, has a paid-off home in West Austin, has a nice car, and as far as I can tell his retirement income allows him to…
Fun + Games
Free Will Astrology
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): The coming weeks will challenge you to think with tenderness and feel with clarity. You’ll be called on to stay sharply alert even as you remain loose, kind, and at ease. Your good fortune will expand as you open your awareness wider, while also firming up the boundaries that keep mean…
