As 2025 draws down, we at The Texas Tribune are reflecting on yet another wild and turbulent year of news in this state.
From a redistricting effort that set off a battle between blue and red states nationwide and a devastating Central Texas flood that drowned more than 135 people, to a drastic political realignment in higher education and a statewide water crisis — the Tribune was there digging deep, holding power to account and reporting from the front lines on these important stories.
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Here’s a sampling of some of our most memorable work this year:
Texas megadonor Alex Fairly joined forces with the GOP’s ultraconservative wing. He didn’t like what he saw.
By Kate McGee
Early this year, Texas House Republicans were at war with each other who their next speaker would be. A new megadonor emerged siding with hardline conservatives. But his splashy entrance into the conservative political arena exposed him to some divisive tactics led by conservative powerbroker Tim Dunn. Now he’s had a change of heart. From the story:
For five hours, Tim Dunn and his advisers walked Alex Fairly through the network of consulting, fundraising and campaign operations they have long used to boost Texas’ most conservative candidates, target those who they deem too centrist and incrementally push the Legislature toward their hardline views.
The two men talked about political philosophy and strategy. They discussed the Bible at length. Fairly was impressed, he said, if not surprised by the sheer magnitude of Dunn’s “political machine.”
“I think most people underestimate how substantial and how many pieces there are that fit together and how coordinated they are,” Fairly said in an interview with The Texas Tribune.
Dunn ended the tour with an ask: Would Fairly be willing to partner with him?
It was a stunning sign of how suddenly Fairly had emerged as a new power broker in Texas politics. Three years ago, few outside Amarillo had heard the name Alex Fairly. Now, the Panhandle businessman was being offered the chance to team up with one of the most feared and influential conservative figures at the Capitol.
History repeated itself when the Guadalupe River swept away Camp Mystic. Why few lessons were learned after the 1987 flood.
By Alejandra Martinez and Zach Despart
In 1987, 10 youth campers were killed by rapidly rising floodwaters in Kerr County. That flash flood is strikingly similar to the July 4, 2025 flood that claimed the lives of 27 girls at Camp Mystic and more than 100 others. From the story:
Thirty eight years and two weeks later, about 25 miles west of the bus washout, the Guadalupe jumped its banks again during heavy rain. Just like in 1987, locals and visitors were caught off guard in the middle of the night by the rapidly rising river. And once again, young campers on summer break drowned in the raging flood.
This time, the water killed at least 135 people in Kerr County and other counties in Central Texas.
But despite the ample warnings that the Guadalupe would flood the region again and the decades of time to act, the Fourth of July flood this year revealed that little had been done to protect the community against future storms.
After the 1987 flood, river gauges were installed to provide real-time information to forecasters and emergency managers. But as the years passed, political will and funding for flood warning infrastructure diminished. An effort to get flood sirens never came to fruition; local governments were repeatedly passed over for grants by the state; and the county eliminated its own flood protection tax.
In rapidly diversifying Tarrant County, a summer of GOP redistricting hits Black and Latino representation
As part of an effort to create more GOP House seats, the Texas Legislature embarked on a bonus round of redistricting this year. Despite explosive growth turning Tarrant County into a racially diverse swing district, it was redrawn to have whiter, more Republican representation. From the story:
In a county where 47% of voters went for Kamala Harris in 2024, there will likely be just one Democrat on the county commissioner’s court, and one corner of the county represented by a Democrat in Congress. The new districts virtually guarantee Republican candidates their seats, without having to court communities of color they picked up in Tarrant County.
It’s an evisceration of political power that community leaders fear will set them back decades. It’s especially painful that this is coming right as these communities have finally seen their political clout grow to match their increasing population numbers, Lillie Biggins said.
“We don’t have a voice except through our elected officials,” she said. “If you earn something, you’ve earned it. But if you’re demanding it [or] just taking it — that’s not how this is supposed to work.”
A Houston mother held by ICE must choose: indefinite detention or be deported without her family
Margarita Avila, a Houston mother of nine, was detained by ICE after an altercation that led to no charges. Her close-knit family members weigh their futures if she is deported. From the story:
Jeremiah crumpled his card, which bore a note written in Spanish in his child’s scrawl: “Mother, I love you, and thank you for having me.” He leaned against his other sister, 27-year-old Ester Avila, who hugged him as she wiped her tears away.
It was the first time any of them could remember Margarita missing a Mother’s Day. She had been sitting in a cell in an immigrant detention center since March as the Trump administration was preparing to deport her to Belize, where she left two decades ago because of threats to her family.
“It’s really hard to see everything my wife is going through,” José said. “It hurts not being able to be with my wife — and seeing my kids sad — because their mother is always around.”
Margarita Avila, 50, is among the tens of thousands of immigrants in the U.S. targeted for deportation in President Donald Trump’s second term. Trump has said his administration is going after “the worst of the worst” in an attempt to deport 1 million immigrants annually. But six months into Trump’s second administration, at least 70% of the more than 56,000 immigrants detained across the country didn’t have a criminal record, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonprofit that collects and analyzes federal government data.
How the political tide turned on Mark Welsh, the four-star general ousted as Texas A&M president
By Kate McGee and Nicholas Gutteridge
Shortly after videos of a Texas A&M professor teaching gender identity were posted online, the popular university president was forced to resign. But that was just the final straw for the political officials and university system regents who were clamoring for a more explicitly conservative leader. From the story:
During the short meeting at the Capitol, Gov. Greg Abbott peppered Mark Welsh with questions about the comments Texas Scorecard had dug up, and about Welsh’s views on diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. Abbott was apparently unsatisfied with Welsh’s answers, according to five people briefed on the encounter.
“There’s no doubt the governor was looking for somebody that was conservative in nature, and I think that he felt that maybe Mark was not as conservative as he was hoping he would be,” Regent Bob Albritton said.
But the regents felt Welsh was the right leader for the moment. They wanted a steady leader who could calm the waters after a tumultuous summer of back-to-back personnel scandals that led Welsh’s predecessor to resign.
Over the next two years, Welsh repaired relationships with many students, faculty, and alumni. But the skepticism about the “Obama appointee” and his conservative bonafides never went away. This September, a video was posted on social media of a student confronting a professor over the teaching of gender identity at A&M. Welsh defended the professor privately to the student, which was also caught on video, setting off right-wing outrage. Soon after, Albritton, who is now chair of the regents, called Welsh to tell him he could either resign or be fired.
Blamed for the nation’s historic measles outbreak, West Texas Mennonites have hardened their views on vaccines
The small West Texas town of Seminole was the epicenter of a global measles outbreak this year. Some in the community of Mennonites who live there say they’re less likely to get vaccinated today and more skeptical of government mandates. From the story:
But outside of the West Texas town of 7,000, health experts watched in horror as the once-dormant disease spread like a drop of blood in water across Seminole and the outlying counties, hitting at least three other states and breaching international borders. It killed two children, both Mennonites like Anita Froese. It sickened at least 762 Texans — more than half of whom live in Seminole’s Gaines County — and hospitalized 99 statewide. The West Texas outbreak was the nation’s largest in more than 35 years.
But for the Mennonites at the center of it, the scrutiny was worse than the disease itself. Today, Froese and others say they’re no more likely to get vaccinated, and they’re even less trusting of the government and health officials who they feel targeted them and blamed them for causing the outbreak.
Mennonites questioned why measles forced their religious community into the national spotlight. They didn’t know why TV crews clamored to film them grieving little girls who they believed died from underlying conditions or negligent hospitals rather than measles. They didn’t understand the messages from outsiders demanding they leave the country for exercising their right to not vaccinate.
“You’re looked at as this ignorant people that’s almost fueling this thing, like we’re having measles parties, and that was never the case,” said Pastor Jake Fehr of Mennonite Evangelical Church.
They couldn’t save their daughters’ lives in the July 4 floods. Now they’re dealing with the grief and the guilt.
RJ and Annie Harber have leaned on faith, their community and each other to move through each day after losing their daughters and RJ’s parents. But memories of that night still haunt them. From the story:
RJ faced an impossible choice: He could try to save his kids and almost surely die trying, maybe killing them too, or he could turn back. He could trust the house would hold and the river wouldn’t top the roof and that his daughters would ride out the flood, rattled but alive.
Trees flew past RJ. Then a car came right at him. He started to realize the river could easily take him.
If RJ could get himself back to Annie, maybe they’d all make it through this alive. He turned the kayak around.
“I had to make a decision,” he said. “And it haunts me every single day.”
Only later, around 4:15 a.m., would he see one of the texts his youngest daughter sent. “I love you,” it said.
“I love you,” RJ messaged back from a house on higher ground where he and Annie sheltered with other neighbors. “Go to the roof.”
East Texans united to stop a water sale to Dallas suburbs — for now
By Jess Huff
After a deal to pipe water from Lake O’ the Pines to North Texas came to light, residents voiced opposition everywhere they could to block it. From the story:
Lake O’ the Pines is one of the state’s 188 reservoirs built for drinking water. The lake’s almost 18,700 acres of surface water stretch across five northeast Texas counties: Marion, Harrison, Upshur, Morris, and Camp.
Built in the 1950s, deep in the thick pine forest near the Louisiana border, the lake has provided drinking water to seven cities surrounding the lake: Avinger, Daingerfield, Hughes Springs, Jefferson, Lone Star, Ore City and Pittsburg. Over the next 70 years, Lake O’ the Pines became a defining force in the region’s economy and culture. Boats regularly dot the lake while visitors cast lines for bass, catfish and crappie.
Christopher Lepri, a Jefferson resident, said selling the water would result in a decline in tourism, growth and property values.
“Lake O’ the Pines is East Texas’ lifeblood, and that lifeblood should never be for sale,” Lepri said at one town hall meeting. “If Lake O’ the Pines is drained or sold, there would be a decline in tourism, growth and property values.”
After El Paso joined Abbott’s border crackdown, the number of dead migrants in the New Mexico desert surged
By Uriel J. García, Yuriko Schumacher and Pat Lohmann of Source New Mexico
Since El Paso joined Operation Lone Star in 2022, migrant remains discovered in the desert west of the city have increased every year, even as they have declined in every other border sector. From the story:
Historically, Border Patrol’s El Paso sector — which includes all 180 miles of New Mexico’s border with Mexico and 84 miles of El Paso and Hudspeth counties in West Texas — has had among the fewest migrant deaths across the southern border.
That changed in late December 2022, according to an investigation by The Texas Tribune and Source New Mexico, when the city of El Paso joined forces with Gov. Greg Abbott to participate in his signature border mission, called Operation Lone Star.
By 2024, the El Paso sector had become the deadliest place for migrants to cross along the entire U.S.-Mexico border.
From January 2023 to August 2024, 299 human remains were reported in the El Paso sector, the most of any sector along the southern border, according to the most recent data available from federal government data. That’s more than double the number of cases reported during the 20 months prior, when 122 remains were recorded before El Paso had adopted Operation Lone Star.
Since El Paso joined Texas’ border mission in 2022, migrant remains discovered in the El Paso sector have increased every year, even as they have declined in every other part of the border.
Five years after shedding Confederate moniker, a West Texas high school may be Lee High again
The Midland school district rebranded Robert E. Lee High as Legacy High in 2020, part of a nationwide trend to distance public places from the Confederacy. From the story:
Five years ago, she was proud of the Midland Independent School District. Its board of trustees had voted to rename a school carrying the name of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, which she considered a stain on the community, to Legacy High School.
That pride may soon give way to shame. A new configuration of the Midland school board is set to consider reverting the school’s name to Midland Lee, affixing Lee’s legacy once more. A vote may come as early as Tuesday.
“My daughter is going to this school, and she’s an athlete, representing the school, not just in Midland, but when we travel,” La’Toya Mayberry said of her youngest, Erinn, a junior varsity basketball player. “What does this say to her that you want to restore a name that meant whites only?”
How building a new hospital cost this rural Texas town a place to deliver babies
A small Texas town promised locals it would build a new hospital at no additional cost to tax payers. But a series of issues plaguing rural health care providers led to leaders having to eliminate the labor and delivery unit. From the story:
Facing a budget shortfall and rising costs, the hospital board had decided to cut what has long been its costliest service.
Olney’s shiny new hospital, designed to serve the region for the next 100 years, would not be able to deliver babies.
The decision divided the typically tight-knit town of about 3,000 people, angering residents, frustrating local employers and economic development leaders, and pitting the doctor who still wants to deliver babies against the hospital board members who have to balance the budget.
“We cannot make it make sense for us, financially,” Dale Lovett told The Texas Tribune in an interview. “We all want the same thing, to deliver babies and offer every service we can, but it wasn’t an option.”
Trump vowed to end “wasteful” federal spending. Beloved Texas school programs got caught in the middle.
By Jaden Edison
Sweeping and sudden funding changes this year put two revered after-school programs for low-income Texans and a rural teacher training initiative at risk of closure. From the story:
But two weeks before their arrival on Capitol Hill, President Donald Trump’s administration threw one of many curveballs lobbed during the first months of his second term. The U.S. Department of Education notified state education officials on the last day of June that it would pause the disbursement of nearly $7 billion in funds for teacher development, support for students learning English, and before- and after-school programs predominantly serving low-income families, pending a review of how schools had put the money to use. That notice went out a day before states expected to begin receiving the money.
For Texas, it meant a potential loss of nearly $670 million. For Na’Siah Martin and H’Sanii Blankenship, it potentially meant losing the Boys and Girls Club, a space that has aided their growth as both leaders and individuals. Martin, 18, graduated from Navarro Early College High School in June and has participated in the club since elementary school. Blankenship, a 17-year-old incoming senior at the same school, has participated in the club for about as long as Martin.