The Hardline
State Rep. Nate
Schatzline drops Texas Senate bid, endorses conservative activist Leigh Wambsganss.
BY KAYLA GUO
Hardline Fort Worth Republican Rep. Nate Schatzline has dropped his bid to fill the state Senate seat vacated by Kelly Hancock and endorsed conservative activist Leigh Wambsganss, a new entrant in the race.
“My #1 goal was for SD9 to be represented by a true conservative, & with Leigh Wambsganss, that’s exactly what you’ll get,” Schatzline wrote on social media while announcing his reelection campaign to the Texas House. “She has my full support.”
Wambsganss, a former congressional staffer and longtime conservative activist on the Tarrant County GOP Executive Committee, won a crucial endorsement from Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the powerful president of the Senate, just minutes after her campaign announcement. Wambsganss
METROPOLIS
also spearheaded a PAC, Patriot Mobile Action, that led the charge to elect conservative candidates to several North Texas school boards in 2022, making national news.
“I have spent my entire adult life as a volunteer public servant, not for a title but out of conviction,” Wambsganss said in her announcement, emphasizing her advocacy on gun rights and anti-abortion issues. “My mission has always been clear:
to defend conservative Christian family values, safeguard our freedoms, and ensure Texas remains a stronghold for faith, family, and freedom. I don’t need a paycheck to fight for what’s right — I’ve been doing it my whole life.”
Schatzline, one of the House’s most conservative members, had announced he was running for the Senate seat earlier last week. The district became vacant when Hancock, a
“I don’t need a paycheck to fight for what’s right — I’ve been doing it my whole life.”
North Richland Hills Republican, resigned from the Senate last week to take a senior position in the comptroller’s office, allowing him to become the agency’s interim head next week, when Comptroller Glenn Hegar steps down to become chancellor of the Texas A&M University System.
Gov. Greg Abbott has not yet called a special election to fill the North Texas seat, which covers about half of Fort Worth and much of Tarrant County’s conservative northern suburbs.
Shortly after vacating his Senate seat, Hancock launched his campaign to win a full term as comptroller in 2026. l
A version of this story originally appeared in The Texas Tribune
State Rep. Nate Schatzline has backed off a Senate seat that recently opened up when Republican Kelly Hancock resigned from the upper chamber to take over as the state’s acting comptroller.
Emil T. Lippe for The Texas Tribune
STUFF
Live and Let Die
The addition of “can’t miss” prospect Cooper Flagg presents a perfect opportunity for bitter fans to begin to balance their hatred of the Mavs’ front office with a renewed love for the team.
BY PATRICK HIGGINS
Though more than two months have passed since a Mavericks player has set foot on the court, like it or not, an unavoidable buzz is building around the team. In May, near impossible odds saw Dallas figuratively and literally winning the lottery, securing the No. 1 overall pick in this year’s NBA draft. Last week, as expected, they selected standout Duke forward Cooper Flagg, the most coveted NBA prospect of the last decade, save for perhaps San Antonio’s Victor Wembanyama two years ago.
Naturally, the club’s improbable snagging of the 1:1 pick with a 1.8% chance was some savory red meat for the tinfoil-hat set. If there are three universal truths among the dumb-man’s-idea-of-a-smart-man citizens of the online conspiratorial man-o-sphere, it’s that 1.) the shape of the Earth is far from a settled science, 2.) anything I don’t like or
understand is “woke,” and 3.) the NBA draft lottery is fixed.
Regardless, whether by dint of a weighted ping-pong ball, divine sports intervention, or owed to what hated Mavs GM Nico Harrison infuriatingly described in his post-draft presser as “fortune favoring the bold,” the fact of the matter is that Flagg is a Maverick. His addition presents the perfect off-ramp for fans still bitter about The Worst Trade in Sports History™ to set aside at least some of the ire that’s been directed toward the franchise and embrace the team once again.
I know what many (most?) of you are thinking. “So what? I don’t care. They lost
me with the Luka trade, and I’m not coming back just because Nico lucked into ‘the next one.’ I can’t root for this team while he is still running it.”
To a degree, I get the sentiment. The deal that Harrison pulled in February to send away Luka Dončić, the most beloved athlete in the city and in the peak of his prime, for an aging, injury-prone Anthony Davis was professional malpractice and should have cost him his job. I’ll join right in with the “fire Nico!” chants. Yet the asinine trade was his fault, not the players’, and they’re still worthy of your appreciation. Flagg offers the possibility of a clean slate in which to do so.
Do you realize how lucky we are? This fall should have been the first time the Mavs have entered a season without a league-redefining superstar in their ranks in more than a quarter century. That has been instantaneously reversed. The line of superstar succession has been repaired. Dirk => Luka => Coop. Sure Flagg is an undeserved fig leaf that might hide Harrison’s shame, but you deny a gift from the sports gods at your own peril.
It’s been an incredibly shitty sports year. The Luka trade. Kyrie Irving tearing his ACL. The Cowboys missed the playoffs and replaced head coach Mike McCarthy with the Michael Scott of NFL coaching candidates, the totally cringeworthy and extremely uninspiring Brian Schottenheimer. The Stars once again fell short of Stanley Cup glory, faltering in the Western Conference Final for the third straight year, and fired their own head coach, Pete DeBoer, only to install a failed retread even more uninspiring than Schottenheimer in Glen Gulutzan, who failed to make the postseason in his two seasons as the Stars bench boss 12 years ago. In fact, he has exactly one playoff series under his belt as a head coach, a sweep at the hands (“webbed feet”?) of the Anaheim Ducks when he helmed the Calgary Flames eight years ago. The Rangers currently sit fourth in the AL West and are a whopping nine games back of first place Houston. It’s ugly.
And that’s just this year. Setting aside the Rangers’ unexpected World Series steal two years ago, the local sports landscape has been full of inexhaustible frustration for a decade and a half. Legitimate reasons to cheer in sports are fleeting, random, and short-lived. When you have one, you should relish it.
Ultimately, the front office of a franchise is not the team. We should be well conditioned around these parts to root for an organization despite a hatred for its decision-makers. Jerry Jones, Tom Hicks, John Daniels toward the end — there’s been no shortage of overconfident idiots who don’t deserve their position to go around. Nico Harrison is far from the first, and he won’t be the last. You shouldn’t let his failures blind you to the efforts of the players on the court. Fans certainly have a right to be bitter, but the players deserve their support, even if the front office doesn’t. Life is too short to hate the team you love. l
Dumb luck. With just a 1.8% chance, the Mavs were able to select phenom Cooper Flagg with the No. 1 pic overall in the NBA draft.
Courtesy Instagram.com
WEEKLY LISTINGS
Free Will Astrology
By Rob Brezsny
ARIES (Mar 21-Apr 19)
Have faith that the cloudy uncertainty will ultimately evolve into clarity, revealing the precise directions you need.
TAURUS (Apr 20-May 20)
Attune yourself to the arrival of unexpected help and gifts. Set aside any tendency to try too hard, and allow life to sing through you.
GEMINI (May 21-Jun 20)
Remember that masterpieces are rarely completed in a jiffy. Steady work is potentially your superpower. Use your imagination to have fun as you attend to the details.
CANCERIAN (Jun 21-Jul 22)
Identify the single desire that motivates you more than any other. Yes, you have many wishes and hopes, and dreams, but one is more crucial than all the rest!
LEO (Jul 23-Aug 22)
Productive adventures are awaiting you in an unmapped territory. Go carefully—but go.
VIRGO (Aug 23-Sep 22)
Build the lasting beauty and truth that will serve you well into the future. Don’t rush the carpentry. If it’s not working, don’t force it. Re-cut, re-measure, breathe deeply, and try again.
LIBRA (Sep 23-Oct 22)
Your intuition will consistently guide you toward premium sources.
SCORPIO (Oct 23-Nov 21)
You need places and influences that offer you comfort, safety, and tender inspiration. Don’t apologize for making your life a bit less heroic as you tend to your inner world with gentle reverence.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22-Dec 21)
Let unfamiliarity be your muse. Have faith that the truth isn’t vanishing or hiding; it’s simply appearing in unfamiliar guises.
CAPRICORN (Dec 22-Jan 19)
Some people accentuate your finest attributes, while others bring out less flattering aspects. In the coming weeks surround yourself with your favorite mirrors.
AQUARIUS (Jan 20- Feb 18)
Be in love with the unfinished in the coming weeks. Make inquisitiveness your default position. Reconsider abandoned ideas.
PISCES (Feb 19-Mar 20)
Your ability to discern and appreciate multiple perspectives will enable you to create an intriguing kind of harmony. You will have the power to notice and reveal beauty that has been veiled or unnoticed.
EXPANDED HOROSCOPES
For unabridged versions of the horoscopes above by Rob Brezsny, go to FreeWillAstrology.com.
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BOOKS
Blackfeet Blood
In Stephen Graham Jones’
new novel The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, American expansionism gets its deadly comeuppance.
BY E.R. BILLS
Like most Americans around my age, I was introduced to the Blackfeet nation by the 1972 Robert Redford film Jeremiah Johnson . The only thing fitting about the portrayal of the Blackfeet in this saccharine slice of Napikwan nostalgia is that none of the Blackfeet characters ever express an emotion much less utter a word. They’re simply disparaged by a dodgy Napikwan (Blackfeet word for “white person/people”) and dispatched callously, some in their sleep. Their scalps — though planted on Redford’s saddle — even earn Johnson a Flathead wife.
Now, over a half-century later, it’s probably just as well. The Blackfeet characters’ presence was simply that of wooden cigar-store Indians, as far removed from who they really were as any painted, wooden Christ on a wooden cross above a Napikwan pulpit. But I have a strong suspicion that a young Blackfeet boy in Texas saw the movie a little while after I did, and it definitely left an impression. Now, a rising (if not the) star of contemporary Texas letters, Blackfeet indigenous writer Stephen Graham Jones mentions Jeremiah Johnson in his latest novel, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter. And payback is the plotline. Knowing Jones a little, this is the book I’ve been looking for from him.
I loved Mongrels , his 2016 exploration of indigenous lycanthropy, and I highly recommend it. But Buffalo Hunter Hunter is something else altogether. It may be Jones’ Moby Dick , and the main character, Good Stab, is a much more layered, poignant Captain Ahab. The epistolary narrative is brilliant and sprawling, detailing major events and minor moments in ways that are pregnant with portent and implication. Good Stab is not Ken Kesey’s Chief Bromden, Fenimore Cooper’s Natty Bumppo, the Lone Ranger’s Tanto, or Ismael’s friend QueeQueg. He really is
Melville’s Ahab without rank or vessel, plying the Blackfeet hinterlands not in search of Moby Dick — which Melville intimated was a symbol for Christianity — but for one Christian pastor in particular, who could easily represent the entire Napikwan expansion and the American conquest and seizure of indigenous lands in general. And in some places — especially for a Napikwan like me — the tale verges on Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being (without the sex).
Good Stab’s quest is existential in the starkest, least philosophical sense, so there is very little lightness. The weight and darkness of the white Anglo subjugation of the high plains is frequently unbearable and challenges the flimsy notion of what being an American means,
In the narrowed and broader American conversation, there was no indigenous cause that justified or legitimized the white Anglo effect.
Good Stab is a dagger that’s been a long time coming. His tale is a good stab at so many things that needed to be said or reemphasized about the beauty and grace of pre-European indigenous cultures in North America and how much inhumanity we Napikwan never really answered for. It’s a wonderful though sometimes disturbing read, even if some faint-hearted Anglos may experience the harrowing sensation that they are slowly being scalped (or, in Good Stab’s way, drained of blood). It’s darkly refreshing, and it’s been a long time coming.
There’s nothing approaching the erstwhile white savior mentality so panderingly glorified in Dances with Wolves or, more recently, Taylor Sheridan’s Wind River . Good Stab uses our medicine against us, then returns to what’s left of his tribe. And therein lies Jones’ unassuming genius. Good Stab doesn’t approach his people’s plight, his personal curse, or his quest for vengeance like the Napikwan caricatures of Stallone’s Hambo or Bruce Willis’ Dumb- Hard . Good Stab considers them, approaches them, and addresses them like an authentic Blackfeet, making all the Kevin Costners and John Waynes look like petty pilgrims and the glaring pretenders they always were.
especially as writers like Jones bring this history to the fore.
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter would have been a horror story even if nonfiction, but the supernatural elements of Jones’ tale are poetic and wildly (if not morbidly) thought-provoking. The diabolical antagonist, the Cat Man, is a European or Indo-European monster loosed upon the landscape, a nightmare of the Old World, now corrupting the Blackfeet present and Napikwan New World. It infects Good Stab, and, though it costs him virtually everything, he masters the monstrosity he becomes and uses it against whence it came, exacting bizarre, codified vengeance. And though very few of Jones’ readers or his audience may be Blackfeet, they will find themselves on Good Stab’s side.
In the narrowed and broader American conversation, there was no indigenous cause that justified or legitimized the white Anglo effect. It was more like white Anglo affectation and effect, and Jones lays all that bare. But the humanity he captures in every direction and in all parties is endearing and compelling. It’s probably better than we Napikwan deserve, and it’s captivating.
Though speculative fiction, I think The Buffalo Hunter Hunter — in terms of both information and real understanding — surpasses nonfiction classics like Empire of the Summer Moon and Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI . It’s that pure and powerful. l
Fort Worth native E.R. Bills is the author of seven nonfiction titles, including TellTale Texas: Investigations in Infamous History.
Courtesy Saga/Simon & Schuster
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones Saga/Simon & Schuster 448 pps.
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General Motors Financial Company has multiple openings in their Ft Worth, TX office: Data Scientist II – OSI (Ref#22029.72.2). Req. Master’s in MIS or CIS & 3 yrs exp as data scientist using python, SQL, data modeling, data analytics, & data science.; Sr Oracle App Dev (Ref#22029.71.4). Req. Bachelor’s in EE or CS & 7 yrs exp in oracle app dev role using SQL, PL/SQL, Oracle BI/XML Publisher, Oracle App Frmwk (OAF) & KoFax.; Sr. Data Enablement Analyst (Ref#22029.39.2). Req. Master’s in Eng, Math, or Stats & 5 yrs exp using data querying & analysis, SQL, Python, & R; data viz using Power BI & Tableau; data modeling, research & analysis related to problem formulation, root cause analysis, & forecasting; statis analysis via hypothesis testing and predictive methods; data quality, data gov, & agile evnt.; Software Development Engineer III (Ref#22029.140.5). Req. Bachelor’s in EE or CS & 7 yrs exp in software dev eng role using C#, JavaScript, ASP.NET MVC, Web Svcs, REST API, Selenium, & Azure DevOps.; Software Development Engineer II (Ref#22029.174.4). Req. Bachelor’s in CS or Comp Eng & 3 yrs exp in software dev eng or related role using SQL Server, ASP.NET, C#, and JavaScript. All jobs allow for 100% telecommuting. To apply, email resume w/ ref code to recruitment@ gmfinancial.com. EOE.
EMPLOYMENT
Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. in Fort Worth, TX seeks to fill the position of Technical Instructor, Prin to deliver Instructor-led training (classroom/virtual), technical job training and direct product sales or business development training for internal and external customers. Supports course design and development/ updates of training content or curriculum based on individual business need. To apply, visit jobs.halliburton. com and enter #200516 in “search by keyword” field. If offered employment, must have legal right to work in U.S. EOE, including disability/veterans.
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POTTER’S HOUSE
Join the Potter’s House of Fort Worth (1270 Woodhaven Blvd, 817-446-1999) for Sunday Service at 8am and Wednesday Bible Study at 7pm. For more info, visit us online at www.TPHFW.org.
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PHYSICAL MEDIA ROCKS!
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