Ad spending in the Texas Republican race has stacked up to $98.9 million, according to AdImpact, which noted that GOP spending alone would be one of the most expensive Senate primaries on record.
We’re here to break down the numbers for you.
thebarbedwire.com/2026/03/03/t...
join The Barbed Wire’s livestream tonight at 6pm CT
Happy election day!!! The Texas Democratic primary for U.S. Senate has been a wild ride, and while we wait for results to roll in, @thebarbedwire.com is hosting a live stream where we’ll unpack it all at 6pm CT.
LINK HERE: www.youtube.com/watch?v=DI6b...
dove into the $ in Texas’ Senate primary, here are a few tidbits:
- Republicans have spent $98.9 million
- mostly for Cornyn
- bc establishment GOP thinks Paxton would lose to Dems in the general
- Paxton lost a big donor
- Talarico ad spends are 4x Crockett’s
thebarbedwire.com/2026/03/03/t...
WATCH: We're Hosting a Live Stream Panel of Experts, Creators & Journalists to Talk About the Texas Democratic Senate Primary on Election Day
The Texas Democratic primary for U.S. Senate has been a wild ride. The Barbed Wire will unpack it all while we all wait for the results to roll in, from the primary’s historic turnout to the scandals (with a keen eye on fact-checking).
Please keep these good-faith questions and discussions coming because we do try to incorporate them to make our journalism better! Happy to answer things here in comments.
thebarbedwire.com/2026/02/24/3...
We found that rhetoric in the data echoes language used in the highest levels of government. Questions on White Date included IQ scores and how many children users wanted. They correspond to the far-right’s embrace of debunked “race science,” and with the rise of the “pronatalist movement.”
A big question we’ve received has been about platforming — who we name, and why we chose to cover these things. So we laid out reasons for our editorial decisions — i.e. military members’ beliefs in white supremacy can impact public wellbeing.
What did we learn from data from a White Supremacist dating site? A lot, actually.
@stevanzetti.bsky.social went beyond individual Texas accounts, bringing in his knowledge of ultra conservative politics right now. Also tried to answer questions we’ve gotten on past reporting about fascists etc.
a 2-month-old with bronchitis. Castro just confirmed he and his mother were not kept at the hospital — they were deported.
feeling downright sick about this one.
thebarbedwire.com/2026/02/17/2...
EXCLUSIVE: A whistleblower tells @thebarbedwire.com he spent years burying radioactive fracking waste, which melted the bones in his neck and jaw. Then a residential community — and an elementary school — was built on top. 🧵
thebarbedwire.com/2026/02/11/a...
The incredible @saulelbein.bsky.social reported this harrowing, vitally important story for us. It’s just the beginning.
A college friend, Tony, never came back to school after the freshman winter break, because he was doing this in a parking lot and slammed into the bumper of a parked car. He was permanently brain damaged and disabled.
Do not do this.
if you’re open to sharing more, my email is cara@thebarbedwire.com
Kaleb Blain, a 35-year old trans man and pitmaster, was fired from the legendary BBQ restaurant Terry Black’s after he was doxxed over Charlie Kirk comments.
Now he’s running his own barbecue spot in Waco: “I feel better than I ever have.”
By @kitoconnell.com
thebarbedwire.com/2026/01/21/b...
REMINDER: The first rule of Wine Moms Gang is not to talk about Wine Moms Gang, especially not to those narcs on the PTA. If you must refer to the group, acceptable cover stories are book club or Bunco. www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/win...
After federal agents shot another protester in Minnesota, Trump is threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act.
If he follows through, our democracy is in extreme danger, according to a retired brigadier general.
From our friends at @revealnews.org:
A lot of new nuggets in here, including the context in which ICE arrested a 5-year-old U.S. citizen and deported her to Honduras: Austin’s police chief says the girl’s mom called cops after a man she had an expired restraining order against showed up at their home.
Cat really got me with this line: “It’s hard to know where to begin, how to even start parsing through the near-constant deluge of tragedy, misinformation, and violence that has become part and parcel of life under ICE.”
update on Orange Julius!
also hopefully a dose of vitamin People Are Fundamentally Good which we all need right now
9-year-old Amber Hagerman was kidnapped on this day 30 years ago, and 1,200 missing kids have been saved by the Amber Alert system made in her honor.
But her murder remains unsolved.
Still, police are hopeful they can one day crack it using DNA testing.
thebarbedwire.com/2026/01/13/a...
“She’s still taking care of little children like she did her younger brother,” said Amber’s mother, Donna Williams, on the 25th anniversary of the kidnapping. “I’m very, very proud of my daughter.”
our whole newsroom is now very invested in Orange Julius and his female support team.
thanks @keribla.bsky.social for sharing
Our first investigation of the year just landed, and it’s a doozy.
More than 1,000 children across Texas were affected by this.
Through interviews with more than a dozen former employees and the review of internal documents and court records, The Barbed Wire found:
Our first investigation of 2026 is live! We found one of the largest immigration legal service providers in TX had funding cut by the Trump admin for 2 weeks before a judge ordered it reinstated. RAICES declined to take it, but blamed the cuts in legal documents for why it dropped child clients.
RAICES Raised Millions to Protect Minors from Deportation. Then It Dropped Them ‘Like It Was Nothing,’ Ex Staffers Claim.
thebarbedwire.com/2026/01/07/r...
The House investigation said the “entirety of law enforcement… shares systemic responsibility” for the Uvalde school shooting deaths. So… why is only this one low level officer facing charges this week?
Read our attempt to answer that seemingly basic question.
“To prosecute the very first officer on the scene is probably a good measure of whether or not other prosecutions might succeed,” Bassett said. “I think they started with the most obvious possible defendant to see how that would go through the court system.”
Did you know it's been 2 years since SB17, Texas' anti-DEI campus law went into effect?
I'm working on a survey of LGBTQ+ orgs affected by this law, for @thebarbedwire.com. If you were part of, or know of a campus org that shut down or was forced to change goals due to SB17, please get in touch.
“What’s suing Tylenol going to do? Is it going to help the kids? Is it going to bring more awareness? Is it going to get our kids diagnosed more early?”
Please read this one. @thebarbedwire.com spoke with parents of autistic kids in Texas. They had a lot to say.
thebarbedwire.com/2025/12/16/t...
Thank you for this — when we were building a dataset for IRW we realized that everyone who tracks has slightly different counts. We were pretty expansive in ours. At one point we had a whole written out methodology that maybe I should have added. But I’ll dig into your thread!
