Editor’s Note: This report is part of “Seeds of Distrust,” an ongoing investigative collaboration between Lighthouse Reports, the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, the Texas Observer, palabra, and Puente News Collaborative. Arvin West is the iconic borderland sheriff in far West Texas’ deeply rural Hudspeth County. His...

In Cruz v. Allred, a few tantalizing polls have Democrats hopeful (again) despite little evidence suggesting an upset is on the way. Last Friday evening, more than 20,000 attendees packed a stadium in downtown Houston for a Kamala Harris campaign rally featuring perhaps the Bayou City’s most famous emissary, Beyoncé, who delivered an endorsement (though not a performance) for the vice president. A Democratic presidential hopeful hadn’t stumped in the Lone Star State this deep into the election since Bill Clinton in 1992. The event was meant to give a national stage to the specter of Donald Trump-fueled abortion bans like those in Texas.

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A version of this story ran in the September / October 2024 issue. Editor’s Note: Jesús Jank Curbelo described his harrowing journey from Cuba to Texas in the Observer’s July/August issue. Here, he follows up on life in the Dallas suburbs. The first thing I learned about...

Across the state, Texans are forced to watch helplessly as our politics devolve into mean-spirited petty grievance and blatant corruption, leaving us unable to act collectively to address pressing issues like gun violence, health-care inaccessibility, and the unsettling rise of “child care deserts.” What it means to be Texan is changing, and it is telling that the Elon Musks and Joe Rogans of the world find refuge within the state to live out their cowboy fantasies and revel in the do-as-thou-wilt, devil-may-care world of unfettered industrial deregulation, little to no taxes on the ultra-wealthy, and fascist resurgence.

Abbott-induced financial crises in public school districts are at the center of key legislative elections in Bexar County and beyond. As Principal Joaquin Hernandez shows me around the sprawling campus of MacArthur High School in San Antonio’s North East ISD, he greets students by name, hurries them to class, and explains how he’s finding ways to cut costs amid a district-wide $62.5 million budget deficit for this school year.

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The Lone Star State is home to millions of undocumented residents and members of mixed-status families critical to the state’s economic success, yet Texas leaders are cheering on Trump anyway. Former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump has promised, if elected, to implement the “largest deportation in the...

(Photo illustration by Ivan Flores/Texas Observer, Image: Ashford website) Articles must link back to the original article and contain the following attribution at the top of the story: “This article was originally published by the Texas Observer, a nonprofit investigative news outlet and magazine. Sign up for their weekly newsletter, or follow them on Facebook and X.”

If efforts fail, Robert Roberson would be the first man executed in America for a murder conviction based on the controversial “shaken baby syndrome” diagnosis. UPDATE: On Thursday, October 17, a Travis County Judge approved a temporary restraining order that blocked Roberson’s scheduled 6 p.m. execution. The Court of Criminal Appeals vacated the judgment hours later, causing lawmakers to appeal to the Texas Supreme Court. The Supreme Court upheld the judge’s restraining order and stayed the execution.

Bipartisan opposition to planned execution highlights power of state’s top criminal appeals court as Paxton-backed candidates and Dem opponents vie for open seats. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice keeps an online log of everyone the state has executed since the 1980s. Each person has multiple numbers associated with them: their age, their prison identification number, and one that notes the cumulative milestone their execution represents for the state. Since 1982, 591 Texans have been executed. Come Thursday October 17, that number will tick up by one if the scheduled killing of Robert Roberson—a man who maintains his innocence in the death of his infant daughter—proceeds.

The Paxton impeachment may have lit the match, but this fight is fueled by a yearslong campaign to incinerate what remains of bipartisan comity in the lower chamber. Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan escaped a May primary runoff defeat by the skin of his teeth, but the Beaumont Republican’s support within his own party is as diminished as ever.

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A version of this story ran in the September / October 2024 issue. Articles must link back to the original article and contain the following attribution at the top of the story: “This article was originally published by the Texas Observer, a nonprofit investigative news outlet and magazine. Sign up for their weekly newsletter, or follow them on Facebook and X.”

The private firms who have operated the tollway will be paid $1.7 billion by TxDOT, adding to the profit they’ve already made in toll revenues, construction contracts, and sales of shares. The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is set to take back ownership of the State Highway 288 tollway,...

(Dylan Baddour/Inside Climate News) Articles must link back to the original article and contain the following attribution at the top of the story: “This article was originally published by the Texas Observer, a nonprofit investigative news outlet and magazine. Sign up for their weekly newsletter, or follow them on Facebook and X.”

Articles must link back to the original article and contain the following attribution at the top of the story: “This article was originally published by the Texas Observer, a nonprofit investigative news outlet and magazine. Sign up for their weekly newsletter, or follow them on Facebook and X.”. Articles...

Former President Donald Trump’s bumbling responses on healthcare in his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris last month earned well-deserved mockery. “Concepts of a plan” to replace the Affordable Care Act has become an instant classic of what not to say on national television. Yet Trump does have a plan to reduce healthcare costs. It’s ugly, won’t really save any money, and is based on a 180-degree reversal of reality, but it’s a plan nonetheless: mass deportation.

Abbott’s latest bid to expand the bounds of his authority might introduce confusion abroad, experts say. Governor Greg Abbott is, once again, using the border to test the bounds of his authority. Last month, Abbott designated Tren de Aragua, a transnational criminal organization with roots in a Venezuelan prison, as a foreign terrorist organization.

Four years after a failed attempt to flip the lower chamber, the minority party has set its sights on a more modest objective. In the last presidential election cycle, four distant years ago, Texas Democrats pursued an ambitious campaign to take control of the state House. Bolstered by millions of dollars that flooded in from the national party apparatus, Dems targeted as many as 22 GOP-held seats across the Texas suburbs. The strategy was built upon Beto O’Rourke’s near-victorious U.S. Senate campaign in 2018, in which he carried a narrow majority of the state’s 154 state House districts.