We’re excited to share our first round of Texas and national leaders joining us for The Texas Tribune Festival in downtown Austin Sept. 24-26.
Among those taking the TribFest stage this year are former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel; Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves; Texas state Rep. and Democratic nominee for Texas Governor Gina Hinojosa; Erin Harkey, CEO of Americans for the Arts; U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin; Jazmine Ulloa, author of “El Paso: Five Families and One Hundred Years of Blood, Migration, Race, and Memory”; Rothko Chapel President Abdullah Antepli; and Julie Scelfo, journalist and founder of Mothers Against Media Addiction.
Hear about the forces remaking American politics and why all eyes are on Texas with November’s midterms. And dig into the defining issues of the moment: immigration and the border, the future of public schools, raising kids in a digital world, and the role of pluralism and the arts in our civic life.
Emanuel, most recently U.S. Ambassador to Japan, is a leading Democratic voice on both domestic politics and foreign affairs. Under Reeves, Mississippi has posted nation-leading K-12 gains now known as the “Mississippi Miracle.” A longtime public education advocate first elected to the Texas House in 2016, Hinojosa is now running for Texas governor. Harkey leads the country’s top arts advocacy organization at a moment when support for the arts faces deep challenges. McCaul, who represents Texas’ 10th Congressional District, is chair emeritus of both the House Homeland Security and Foreign Affairs committees, placing him at the center of the country’s national security debates. In her new book, El Paso native Ulloa offers a sweeping human history of America’s most storied border city, told through the violence, power and privilege that shaped it. The newly appointed president of Houston’s Rothko Chapel, Antepli is a globally recognized scholar and leader in cross-religious and cross-cultural dialogue. And Scelfo, an award-winning journalist, founded Mothers Against Media Addiction, a grassroots parent movement now spanning 50 chapters across 23 states.
