Horse Paste, Proud Boys & Jesus’s “Best Friend.” From The Barbed Wire

Howdy, folks! I’m Brian Gaar, senior editor of The Barbed Wire. The sun is broiling, Gov. Greg Abbott’s base is still mainlining horse paste, and the Wild Texas Newsletter is back with stories from our beloved dystopian state.

Remember last year, when we thought the moral arc of the universe bent toward justice? Turns out, Texas politics has gone from bad to “hey, do you smell smoke?” in 12 months flat.

Trump is back in the White House, barking orders at Austin like a spray-tanned mob boss, and our lawmakers are free to unleash their worst instincts. Democrats can’t even go to the bathroom without a DPS officer lurking outside, and yes, that’s a real thing. 

The GOP passed school vouchers that siphon $1 billion away from public schools. They banned DEI and LGBTQ+ student clubs. And they’re still trying to make Ivermectin over-the-counter because, apparently, horse dewormer is the new Texas penicillin.

When we launched The Barbed Wire this week last year, Texas was dysfunctional. 

Now it’s dystopian. 

The way things are going, next year’s newsletter will just be a list of evacuation routes. Please feel free to become a paying member while we’re all still here!

Meanwhile, if you get arrested in Denton County, you could end up with a court appointed attorney who once led the Proud Boys. Yes, really. Jason Lee Van Dyke, a former Proud Boys leader, has been racking up court-appointed cases on the taxpayer’s dime. It’s … something.

Now for some wacky religious news! Federal prosecutors say David Taylor, who calls himself “Jesus’s best friend,” and another self professed religious leader Michelle Brannon ran a forced labor scheme that made $50 million off unpaid workers in Texas and beyond, according to a federal indictment.

The operation allegedly involved call centers and lavish homes, and — because of course — threats of “eternal damnation” for anyone who didn’t hit their donation quotas. Oh, and women were allegedly forced to take Plan B. 

Finally, let’s talk about something good for the soul: Nicolandria. Yes, that’s the ship name for Nicolas Vansteenberghe and Olandria Carthen, the interracial couple from “Love Island USA” that has TikTok crying happy tears and your aunt Googling “what is a stan account?”

Their love story is more than reality-TV fluff — it’s sparking overdue conversations about race, desirability, and what it means for Black women to be loved out loud in a world that too often doesn’t value them enough.

Need a Court-Appointed Lawyer in North Texas? You Might Get One With a White Nationalist Tattoo.

Jason Lee Van Dyke — one-time leader of the Proud Boys, sender of racist tweets, and attorney for white supremacists — is receiving taxpayer dollars to represent people of color. Officials in Denton County say there’s no rule against it.

By Steven Monacelli

EXCLUSIVE

Editor’s note: This story includes quotes in which the subject uses offensive racial slurs and references to racial terror. The Barbed Wire does not condone the use of such language, but believes them to be newsworthy, important context. Any racist language has been censored with hyphens.

This is a story about white nationalism, taxpayer money, and the right to fair representation. 

But it’s also about the rabbit-hole of right-wing extremism, a $100 million libel lawsuit, and an alleged “assassination plot.” 

Let’s start with the basic facts: A North Texas lawyer notorious for his involvement with far-right extremist groups — and his legal representation of members of white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups — is working as a court appointed attorney in Denton County, according to records reviewed by The Barbed Wire.

Forty-five-year-old Jason Lee Van Dyke lives in Decatur, about 40 minutes northwest of Fort Worth. 

Van Dyke has taken at least three dozen clients as a court appointed defense attorney in the Dallas suburb of Denton County in recent years. In addition to being the preferred lawyer for Patriot Front, a North Texas-based neo-fascist white nationalist group known for their public marches and racist propaganda vandalism targeting marginalized communities, Van Dyke has an extensive history of personal involvement with far-right extremist groups: He was at one time the national chairman of the Proud Boys. He also pled “no contest” to a prior criminal charge for lying to a law enforcement officer and has past disciplinary actions from multiple state bar associations.

Despite this background, court records indicate Van Dyke began to work as a court appointed attorney representing criminal defendants in Denton County at least as early as 2024. Many of the cases were assigned in 2025. Out of all those cases, 17 of the clients are white, ten are Black, four are Latino, one is Asian, and three are of unknown ethnicity. At least 17 of those cases are ongoing.

The Barbed Wire was only able to reach two of Van Dyke’s clients, both of whom declined to speak on the record, citing his ongoing representation of their cases. 

The Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution provides that people accused of crimes have the right to legal representation, including having a publicly appointed attorney if they cannot afford one. (Those rights were strengthened in 1963 in the Supreme Court ruling on Gideon v. Wainwright.) Denton County does not operate a full-time public defender’s office, and court appointed attorneys like Van Dyke are brought in to represent clients who cannot afford a lawyer.

But Van Dyke’s direct involvement in and close association with far-right extremist groups that espouse racially discriminatory ideologies, his past use of racial slurs, and his prior “no contest” plea for a crime involving what the state calls “moral turpitude” all raise concerns about his suitability for the role of a court appointed defense attorney — particularly one representing clients who are people of color.

“That’s a major concern and it should raise a red flag,” said Gabriel Rosales, state director of Texas LULAC — the nation’s oldest civil rights volunteer-based organization, which “empowers Hispanic Americans and builds strong Latino communities.” 

“Someone should go in and investigate these cases,” Rosales told The Barbed Wire.  

For his part, Van Dyke dismissed the concerns.

“You could pull as many cases as you want,” Van Dyke told The Barbed Wire in an hour-and-a-half-long interview by phone on Wednesday. “You could try to figure out which ones are white and which ones are not. I guarantee you’re not going to find me treating those clients any bit differently than how I treat everybody else, because it doesn’t matter.”

In fact, Van Dyke told The Barbed Wire he’s working as a court appointed attorney in multiple counties — not just Denton — though he would not identify which others, and we were not able to independently verify his claim by press time.

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