Have you ever wondered how Houston measures up when it comes to raising a family?

Well, this new interactive tool from The Washington Post isn’t super promising. According to their data, Harris County ranked:

💰 61 in affordability 

🎒 65 in education quality

👮 53 in safety

🏛 28 in policy support

Unfortunately, that’s failing on most grading scales. As someone who goes back and forth on having kids, studies like this tend to sway me more towards no.

But I’m curious: Are you currently raising kids in Houston, or planning to?

Just a reminder that with the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, I’ll only be in your inbox again this week on Wednesday! Safe travels and happy holidays.

By Ryan Pitkin

“The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with…” We won’t finish that quote from Steve Bannon, but suffice to say, the expletive he ended with essentially means disinformation.

Misinformation—defined as false, misleading, or manipulated content presented as fact—comes in many forms. When it’s shared deliberately to mislead, it becomes disinformation, a favorite tool of authoritarian leaders and regimes.

Why do they do it? First, to create false narratives that keep supporters convinced power must stay in certain hands. Second, to distract the public from whatever bad faith efforts they are pulling off out of view.

The antidote is media literacy. That includes knowing how to distinguish between news, opinion, analysis and commentary; finding credible media outlets you trust and fact-checking the news you consume from them; and learning how to identify altered images, deepfake videos, and AI-generated content.

In an era of accessible AI technology, rising polarization, and a declining trust in the mainstream media, we are more vulnerable to disinformation than ever. But knowledge is power: The more informed you are, the harder it is to be manipulated.

I’m working on a special giving guide that will be hitting your inboxes super soon.

But I need your help:

What are your favorite ways to give back during the holiday season?

🤫 Shhh… you’re seeing a super secret sneak peek of a new weekly section

❗ NRG Park is reaffirming its commitment to combat human trafficking with new survivor‑inspired signage around the stadium. 

🗣 At an event with the Houston Black American Democrats, US Senate candidates James Talarico and Colin Allred spoke on redistricting maps and the government shutdown.

📅 Though December is filled with holiday celebrations, we’ve weeded through all the Christmas cheer to find other events that don’t require a Santa hat or a wrapped present.

🚫 A new campaign, called “We Ain’t Buying It,” wants consumers to punch back against Amazon, Home Depot, and Target by boycotting the companies over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend—one of the busiest shopping seasons of the year. 

By Sierra Rozen

Clean air, which should be a freely given right, is hard to find in certain Houston neighborhoods, according to new data from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and analyzed by the Houston Chronicle.

The TCEQ has carefully followed a series of air-quality monitors for the past few years, and one pollutant has made itself more known than others: PM2.5, a cancer-causing particle that can easily lodge itself into residents’ lungs.

According to Rebekah Ward, a climate and environmental reporter for the Houston Chronicle, PM2.5 may be small, but it can have deadly consequences.

“So PM2.5, sometimes just known as soot, is essentially very small particles of solid or liquid that are so small that they can penetrate deep into the airways,” she told the Texas Standard. “And because they can penetrate deep into your body, they can cause a lot more severe health effects than larger particles that you might more easily be able to see.”

Some of the neighborhoods with the highest PM2.5 readings are Galena Park, Wayside, Manchester/Harrisburg, Jacinto City, Settegast, Sunnyside, Third Ward, Greater Fifth Ward, and Independence Heights. Many of these neighborhoods also fall under the low-income category, along with having a higher Black, Asian and Hispanic or Latino population.

Particularly, the neighborhood of Settegast has seen some of the highest levels of PM2.5 for the past three years. Data put together by the Houston Chronicle showed that between October 2022 and December 2024, there were 805 daily PM2.5 readings, with 10 of those days being above the TCEQ daily limit.

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Thanks for reading. This newsletter was written by Sierra Rozen with stories from Ryan Pitkin. It was edited by Paula Solis.

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