You’ve been credited with coining the phrase “the yee haw agenda” when you tweeted a couple of photos of Ciara wearing a cowboy hat in September. The hashtag went viral and you ended up being referenced in Rolling Stone, Jezebel—even the Irish Examiner. What’s it all mean?
I was just being funny and playing around. You know how people say “the gay agenda”? Because it was like people getting upset at gay stuff being pushed? So I was like, oh, this is the yee haw agenda. Like, it’s cowboy hats on black girls.

Why cowboy culture? What piqued your interest?
My grandma watched Walker, Texas Ranger; my mother watched Westerns. And my father, Issiac Holt, played football for the Dallas Cowboys. So from 3 months old on, I’ve always been around cowboy stuff. I was 7 when my parents got divorced. Once they split up, I never told anybody he played football because we were struggling so hard. When I would tell people, “My dad used to play football,” they wouldn’t believe me. So I just kept it to myself. But that’s when I started to pay attention to pop culture.

How did you build a following?
I started with an account on Tumblr, femburton. I would post archival fashion pictures, pictures from music videos. Even current stuff, like photo shoots. It was like what Twitter is now, but it was way earlier. So that’s how most people know about me. Now my Instagram is @theyeehawagenda.

The latest Census estimates have Dallas’ population hitting a wall in 2019, creeping forward about 2,000 residents while northern neighbors Frisco and McKinney continue to be among the fastest-growing cities in the U.S.

Fort Worth has another good year, adding almost 20,000 residents to 895,000 overall. That’s in line with its growth this decade and good enough to leapfrog San Fransisco and Columbus to become the 13th most-populous city in the country. Dallas, which remains ninth on that list, had been growing steadily this decade, adding at least 17,000 people each year since the 2010 Census. The population has increased by about 145,000 people since 2010, to 1,345,000, according to the estimates.

Texas is all over the list of the country’s fastest-growing large cities. Frisco comes in at fourth, growing by 6.1 percent last year to 188,170 people, while McKinney sits at sixth with a 5.4 percent growth rate to 191,645 people.

A trip around some other North Texas suburbs, based on the estimates:

This isn’t a new video, but I’m seeing it for the first time, so it’s new to me. Thought I’d bring you a laugh on Friday. You’re welcome.

Lawyers from the Dallas firm McCall, Parkhurst & Horton made the familiar two-hour drive out Highway 281 on May 15, 2015. They were headed to the tiny town of Windthorst, a dairy farming community with a population of about 409 people that was founded in the late 19th century by German settlers. Only three things distinguish Windthorst from all the other towns that dot the wide and flat landscape south of Wichita Falls: its handsome Catholic church; its billing as the “Dairy Capital of North Texas”; and the fact that, over the last 20 years, Windthorst has issued hundreds of millions of dollars in tax-exempt bonds for organizations across Texas.

The McCall lawyers made the trip that day to work on the town’s latest deal—a $35 million tax-exempt bond to refinance the construction loan for the Dallas Arboretum’s parking garage, which it built in 2014. A couple of weeks earlier, the lawyers placed ads in the local paper announcing a public meeting, and they arranged a meeting of the volunteer members of the Windthorst City Council, a rotating group of citizens whose families have known each other for generations. Windthorst doesn’t have a city hall, so the Council met at the city’s credit union. After a brief presentation from the lawyers, council members signed some documents that created a legal entity, the Red River Cultural Facilities Finance Corporation, for the sole purpose of refinancing the Arboretum’s debt.

Here’s how such a tax-exempt bond issuance works: if the prime rate stood at 4 percent, a construction loan from a bank might carry 6 percent interest. Selling bonds is a way for the borrower to reduce its rate on the loan by transferring the debt to another investor. The interest rate on a tax-exempt bond may be as low as 3 percent, but because the investor doesn’t have to pay taxes on the interest income it receives from the borrower, the effective yield of the investment may be greater than it would be on a taxable bond with a higher rate. The bond purchaser still makes a good return, and the borrower reduces its cost of servicing the debt.

Greg Vieth, who owns a crop-spraying business and whose turn it is to serve as mayor of Windthorst, admits that the precise mechanisms that allow Windthorst to issue so much public debt lie beyond his grasp. He says the lawyers assured the citizens of Windthorst that their involvement was a formality—a “pop around,” as Vieth puts it. In exchange for each bond issue, the town of Windthorst receives a fee ranging from about $10,000 to $30,000, depending on the size of the bond. “It’s a win-win for us,” Vieth says.

And for 20 years, the city’s role in what’s known as “conduit financing” has seemingly been a win-win. Since 1998, according to public records, Windthorst has participated in bond issues totaling at least $230 million. They have included projects for TCU ($40 million), Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas ($11 million), the Hockaday School ($18 million), and Parish Episcopal School ($5 million). The $230 million total includes only bonds sold on the open market, deals that are public records. The Arboretum deal was done through a private placement.

The Oak Cliff gardener on how we can make traveling monarchs' annual Dallas pit stop more pleasurable.

150 Attend Dallas Police’s LGBTQ Outreach Meeting. The Resource Center hosted a town hall meeting with Police Chief U. Reneé Hall and other higher ups in the wake of the murder of Muhlaysia Booker, the transgender woman who was gunned down in East Dallas weeks after being beaten in Oak Cliff. The meeting had been planned prior to her killing, but it became the focus. District Attorney John Creuzot was also hand. Both expressed support of the community, but couldn’t discuss details of the investigation. They did say, however, that Booker’s killing shared similarities to the murder and attempted murder of two other trans women in the last year.

Small Plane Crashes Into McKinney Home. This is a weird one. A Piper-PA 28 Cherokee crashed into the back of a family’s home. The mother was in the kitchen and two of her kids were in the living room. The crash left a giant hole in the back of the home.

Flooded North Texas Lakes Remain Closed This Weekend. Rain soaked them out of commission. NBC 5 has a list of which to avoid this holiday weekend.

State Rep. Victoria Neave’s Rape Kit Bill Heads to Gov. Abbott’s Desk. House Bill 8 would require an audit of all the untested rape kits in the state, to determine how many there are, what their status is, and where they’re located. In 2017, Neave passed a bill her rookie season that allowed Texans to donate a dollar or more toward rape kit testing when they get their licenses renewed. State Sen. Jane Nelson, of Flower Mound, got a complementary bill passed to add $50 million each year to pay for employees and technicians that can be hired to test the kits. Neave’s initial bill raised more than half a million dollars, but local authorities were nervous about hiring techs without a more consistent funding source.