Shea Jordan Smith

But someone who sends out campaign text blasts with links to Aubrey Taylor’s blog…

CANNOT be trusted.

Y’all keep trying to convince me that Melanie Flowers Miles Bazil (did I miss any names?) is vastly different from who she was during her days a Tea Party darling, self-proclaimed conservative leader, and proud Republican…

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was spotted earlier today, January 20, 2026, on a plane heading to Laguna Beach as the state of Texas braces for a rare ice threat and arctic cold front.

Had a phenomenal in-depth conversation with Houstonia Magazine’s Erica Cheng at the end of last year about the state of our city and county, and what to expect in 2026 and beyond…

Read here: www.houstoniamag.com/news-and-cit...

If you told me in 2012, that over a decade later, I’d be siding with Don Lemon in a spat with Nicki Minaj…

I would have never believed you.

“You can never be a great leader… if your heart is not leveled to the needs of the people.”

My pastor, the Rev. Dr. Remus E. Wright, had word before yesterday’s message that was right on time for the upcoming election season, but also incredibly timely as we celebrate #MLKDay

Stefon Diggs still has me blocked on Instagram.

What is it with this new trend of artists hiding features on the streaming tracklists of their new albums?

It’s already bad enough that the song titles are hollering at us…

Politicians at church will always be funny to me.

You can see the discomfort sitting on the ones who only pull up when they need to squeeze out a few more votes. Just fighting for their life to keep up in an unfamiliar environment.

Are we all collectively ignoring that Congressman Al Green ripped up and publicly denigrated the prominent news outlet in Houston because they just so happened to write something not favorable (read as: honest) about him?

Leadership needs generational change. Case in point.

Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett was in Montrose tonight?!

I wonder who made THAT happen…

Or in the few instances where the official City of Houston Tw*tter account goes back and forth with everyday Houstonians.

That’s normal, right?

Everyone working down at 901 Bagby St is so incredibly unserious… because what is actually going on down there?

John Whitmire is the “Mayor of Transparency,” but hasn’t answered the Houston Chronicle since AUGUST and is now “unavailable for a while.”

I guess all official city business will now be released exclusively through the Tony Buzbee podcast…

If you do it perfectly… where is HIS glory?

come on!!!!!

Hey now!

“You know it’s tea when you see those two fingers…

…touching”

In fact, I think it’s alignment. I think it’s conditioning.

And I think it’s preparation for a politics that once again asks marginalized people to shrink so someone else can feel whole.

And that is a group project I’m not interested in.

When white grievance gets loud, Black presence gets interrogated.

When white men feel entitled to rage, Black people get accused of “dividing,” “overreaching,” or “making everything about race.”

It’s not coincidence that these conversations are converging right now.

And instead of challenging this lie, too many people are rearranging themselves around it.

Softening it. Validating it. Giving it nuance.
Coming to terms and making peace with it.

It’s the same reflex America always has in moments of racial tension.

As if the real danger in American politics isn’t white nationalism, but Black people being too visible in a coalition we built and sustain.

Meanwhile, Trump is running back the oldest lie in American history: that progress for Black people is harm and danger to white people.

So now we’re getting this rebrand: that Black voters, Black organizers, Black culture, and Black political language are being “weaponized.”

Not by the right, but somehow by Democrats.

As if Blackness is a prop.

As if our lived reality is a messaging tactic.

Suddenly the problem wasn’t disinformation, authoritarianism, or white grievance.

The problem was “tone.”

The problem was that marginalized people talked too much about being marginalized.

The problem was that naming racism, sexism, and homophobia made some voters “uncomfortable.”

An effort to treat their backlash not as a political choice, but as a wound that needs soothing.

We saw it in how quickly party leaders, consultants, and the media immediately pivoted to scolding the coalitions that consistently and actually show up.

That overlap is not accidental. It’s revealing.

Since the loss in 2024, something has been hemorrhaging inside Democratic politics: a desperate eagerness to recenter “disgruntled” men characterizing their resentment as “economic anxiety” or “frustration with identity politics.”

Progressive, liberals and leftists are flooding Beyoncé’s internet today with stinkpieces on identity politics and “Blackness,” a day after the New York Times reports Trump is out here saying the civil rights movement “hurt white people.”

The timing of this is not lost on me.

God doesn’t call the qualified.

He qualifies the called.

Black people are so incredibly unserious because why are they calling NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, “Brother King Kwame” 😭

“Come Thru” is one of Drake’s greatest records.

Y’all have to stop typing quickly for outrage’s sake.

Should there be a more diverse lineup, reflective of the demographics of Houston, yes… but let’s not act like the bottom line isn’t the driving factor here.