18 h. ago The rise of tiny Texas town that became the 'pumpkin capital of America' and grows up to 3 million a year

Floydada, near Amarillo, has been celebrating its pumpkin heritage every year since the 1980s and is considered the pumpkin capital of America.

Politics

2 w. ago Trump to meet with Project 2025 architect on cutting ‘Democrat agencies’ amid government shutdown – live

Trump touts meeting with Russ Vought ‘of Project 2025 fame’ to determine where cuts can be made as the federal government remains shut for second dayHere’s what the shutdown means for travel, national parks and housingSince the US government shut down at midnight on Wednesday, tens of thousands of federal workers have been furloughed (told not to work), while others must work without pay until Congress passes a budget. The shutdown will have a wide range of effects on government services and programs as well as the US economy, from national parks to travel and housing.My colleague Marina Dunbar explains what it means for everyday people:This isn’t the way to have a discussion, shutting down the government and lowering the GDP. We could see a hit to the GDP, a hit to growth and a hit to working America. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago ‘It’s hard to know what day it is’: families tell of grim Ice detention in Texas

Anxiety high as parents and children tell of lack of clean water, inadequate medical care and poor food in ‘prison-like’ conditionsAt the South Texas Family Residential Center, guards allegedly refer to detained immigrant families as “inmates”, spouses aren’t allowed to hold hands, and children don’t know where they can kick around a ball without getting in trouble, according to a stark court filing.Yet those are minor indignities compared with accounts given to outside monitors of a lack of clean drinking water, sleep, healthy food, privacy, hygiene supplies and appropriate healthcare. Alongside government admissions of what attorneys called “prolonged unexplained detention” at the facility in the remote town of Dilley, Texas anxiety levels for detainees are high. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Leaky roofs, collapsed walls, mega debts: when Donald Judd, art’s master minimalist, tried architecture

Weary of the New York scene, and keen to focus on architecture, the artist started buying up properties to play with in a tiny Texas town. Trouble was, he couldn’t stop. We take the tour of his Marfa creationsA colossal cliff of green-tinted glass stretches along the side of a railway line, like a minty glacier greeting arriving trains. The glazing shimmers strangely in the light, its surface variously matt and gloss, wrapping offices and atriums together inside a changeable crystal skin. There’s a reason it looks unlike a typical office block – and it’s not just the Swiss precision.Completed in 2000, the facade of Peter Merian Haus in Basel is the largest, and yet perhaps least known, work of Donald Judd, one of the 20th century’s most important minimalist artists. If you have ever pondered a polished aluminium box in an art museum, or encountered a gnomic stack of coloured acrylic rectangles projecting from a wall, they were probably by him. But few realise that Judd’s prolific ou...

Events

3 w. ago Leaky roofs, collapsed walls, mega debts: when art’s master minimalist Donald Judd tried architecture

Weary of the New York scene, and keen to focus on architecture, the artist started buying up properties to play with in a tiny Texas town. Trouble was, he couldn’t stop. We take the tour of his Marfa creationsA colossal cliff of green-tinted glass stretches along the side of a railway line, like a minty glacier greeting arriving trains. The glazing shimmers strangely in the light, its surface variously matt and gloss, wrapping offices and atriums together inside a changeable crystal skin. There’s a reason it looks unlike a typical office block – and it’s not just the Swiss precision.Completed in 2000, the facade of Peter Merian Haus in Basel is the largest, and yet perhaps least known, work of Donald Judd, one of the 20th century’s most important minimalist artists. If you have ever pondered a polished aluminium box in an art museum, or encountered a gnomic stack of coloured acrylic rectangles projecting from a wall, they were probably by him. But few realise that Judd’s prolific ou...

Events

3 w. ago Chappell Roan review – pop’s patient princess triumphantly takes the throne in New York

Forest Hills stadium, New YorkThe star claims she wasn’t ‘feeling 100’ for her Queens stadium show, but it was hard to see any fatigue as she carried the crowd through her dazzling setlistTime feels evermore like a ludicrous concept in 2025, but it especially collapses when considering the career of Chappell Roan. The Missouri-born pop artist languished in up-and-coming mode for years – I first learned of her prismatic gay club anthem Pink Pony Club via a friend’s recommendation in 2020 – only to experience one of the swiftest ascents into the mainstream I’ve ever witnessed. Just 18 months ago, she was still playing 2,000-cap amphitheaters in mid-sized cities; by summer’s end, she drew the largest crowd (more than 100,000) that Chicago’s Lollapalooza festival has ever seen. Her rise was so vertiginous – viral Tiny Desk, Grammys best new artist, festival undercard to headliner, international chart takeover – that she feels lifetimes away from the artist I saw, stunned by her own zeit...

Politics