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The Awful 88th
As the 88th session of the Texas Legislature opened in January, Texas Observer writers scanning the political horizon noted a faint glimmer of hope that, perhaps this time, lawmakers would locate their statesman-like qualities and, at long last, spend the spring giving relief to taxpayers, the environment, electricity-users, public schools, teachers, and other long-neglected government workers.
Texas Republicans Refuse to Condemn Allen Shooter’s Extremist Beliefs
“I think if we substitute Muslim, undocumented ... many of these politicians would leave skid marks in their haste to offer condemnation.”. It has been a month since the mass shooting in Allen that took eight lives and left another six people wounded. According to statements from the Texas Department of Public Safety and media reports, the shooter, Mauricio Garcia, held white supremacist beliefs, had Nazi symbols tattooed on his body, and expressed hypermasculine and misogynist views. Although investigators are still working to identify a precise motive for the killings, it is clear that Garcia had become immersed in an ecosystem of hateful far-right politics prior to the shooting.
A Watchdog in the Water Wars
A version of this story ran in the May / June 2023 issue. But the water rose faster than usual in 2010, killing some of her livestock and ruining thousands of dollars of equipment. “Our sheep were down by the barn, and they got confused. Instead of running to the house and up to high ground, they ran toward the water,” she recalled tearfully. “I still have nightmares about watching the sheep wandering off [into the water] and never coming back up.”
The Legislature Ignores Suffering Pregnant Texans
Eight more women have joined a lawsuit asking the courts to clarify exceptions to Texas abortion law for unviable pregnancies. But just one week later, they received devastating news: Emma had a fatal fetal condition known as anasarca and would not survive. Bernardo also learned that because of her pregnancy, she was at high risk of developing mirror syndrome, a rare condition that could lead to a buildup of liquid in her heart and chest, respiratory distress, and renal failure.
200,000 Steps on the Lone Star Hiking Trail
A version of this story ran in the May / June 2023 issue. I grew up in northwest Austin at the edge of the Texas Hill Country, where hiking through the woods and playing in creeks were daily activities. So, I’ve always been an “outdoors person.” After moving to Houston for a journalism job, I quickly began running and biking along the city’s mostly concrete-lined bayous. Then an environmental activist told me something intriguing: Just an hour north of the traffic and skyscrapers of downtown Houston is the 96-mile Lone Star Hiking Trail, the longest footpath in Texas.
Who Judges the Judges?
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. Sign up for their weekly newsletter, or follow them on Facebook and Twitter.”. Articles cannot be rewritten,...
Paxton Is Burning
Was yesterday’s performance by the Texas House of Representatives intended to restore public faith in the body’s commitment to the rule of law? Separate the good cops in the GOP from the bad cops? Or prove that a legislature that spent a year cravenly ignoring the pleas of Uvalde victims’ relatives for common-sense gun safety laws before rejecting them outright while rushing through an attempt to put the Ten Commandments in every classroom isn’t really the 10th circle of hell? If so, the hearing leading up to a 121-23 vote to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton for corruption was an epic fail.
Oaxaca’s Silk Farmers Seek to Protect Their Way of Life
In 1523, the first Bombyx mori eggs arrived from Spain; 500 years later, artisans in six Zapotec communities continue to raise the offspring of those Spanish silkworms. Moisés Martínez is one of them, a member of Artesanos de Seda de la Sierra Norte, a local manufacturing cooperative, and part of the silkworm sanctuary, a modernist glass-and-concrete structure perched amid the mountains in northern Oaxaca.
Who Gets Mexico’s Missing Money?
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. Sign up for their weekly newsletter, or follow them on Facebook and Twitter.”. Articles cannot be rewritten,...
Charlatans, False Prophets and Flimflammers
A version of this story ran in the May / June 2023 issue. My late father-in-law, an Episcopal priest, had a cartoon taped to his kitchen wall in Sherman that skewers an obnoxious feature of American religion. In the cartoon, a grinning devil, sitting on a throne surrounded by flames, instructs a horned apprentice, suitcase in hand, who is about to head upstairs to torture the human race.
‘May Their Memory Be a Blessing’: Hundreds Gather for Uvalde Anniversary Vigil
A year later, law enforcement has faced nothing approaching systemic accountability for failures at Robb Elementary. On Wednesday evening, precisely one year to the day since our state’s worst-ever school shooting rocked the southwest Texas town of Uvalde, hundreds gathered for a vigil at an outdoor amphitheater sandwiched between the city’s civic center and the Leona River. The crowd, as Uvaldeans have done at a litany of public events since last May 24, wore custom-made shirts depicting the 19 children and two teachers lost in the Robb Elementary shooting, or maroon t-shirts reading “Uvalde Strong.” It was a family affair, with little kids squirming and playing and occasionally running across the stage at inopportune times.
‘American Born Chinese’ and the Limits of Cultural Representation
The young hero in the new Disney+ show follows a familiar journey for colonized people, as predicted by theorist Frantz Fanon. Before the May premiere of his American Born Chinese TV series on Disney+, and following Oscar wins for the movie and actors in Everything Everywhere All At Once, the TV show’s executive producer Kelvin Yu celebrated the strides Asian Americans have made in the film industry at the South by Southwest Festival.
Wrecking Women’s Healthcare
A version of this story ran in the May / June 2023 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. Sign up for their weekly newsletter, or follow them on Facebook and Twitter.”
Loon Star State: Reports of Our Death …
A version of this story ran in the May / June 2023 issue. To see more political cartoons from Ben Sargent, visit our Loon Star State section, or find Observer political reporting here. Do you think free access to journalism like this is important? The Texas Observer is known for...
Fast & Furious XI: Texas’ Transgender Youth
Headed for the governor’s desk, SB 14 shows the Legislature has no idea what healthcare for trans kids even is. According to The New York Times, “The bill … positions Texas to become the largest state to ban transition medical care for minors.” It would have been nice if the Times had made some key distinctions that the bill’s creators mushed all together in their haste to misrepresent what’s really at stake here. Like the fact that there’s virtually no such thing as surgery for transgender children. Or irreversible transitioning.
‘A Man Without a Gun Is Not a Citizen’
Although Jeffrey Toobin’s reputation has recently been tarnished by scandal, in Homegrown he has produced the definitive book on Timothy McVeigh’s continuing legacy. On January 6, 2021, supporters of former President Donald Trump—many toting crosses and Trump flags, some with tactical gear and guns—smashed their way into the U.S. Capitol building, seeking to stop certification of Joe Biden’s victory. As we watched the mayhem on TV, perhaps the question that crossed my mind also occurred to you: How the hell did we get here?
In Houston Schools, It’s the Mike Morath Show
An audio recording of trainings for unelected school managers paints a bleak picture of the Bayou City’s educational future. Since mid-March this year, when the Texas Education Agency (TEA) announced it would be taking over the Houston Independent School District, the state agency has demurred when asked about the district’s future, saying decisions will be made by a 9-member board of managers to be selected from the local community by TEA Commissioner Mike Morath.
Those Who Don’t Know the Past…
The outcome of a fight to control a nonprofit group could shape the teaching of history in Texas. The poem, by English writer J. Fairfax-Blakeborough and pulled from Walter Prescott Webb’s book glorifying the Texas Rangers, reads as a declaration of war to many Texas historians. The TSHA, the 125-year-old nonprofit that puts out widely used publications such as the Handbook of Texas, plus well-regarded periodicals and other materials, has become the latest front in conservatives’ quest to control the teaching of Texas history.
A Postpartum Page-Turner
A version of this story ran in the May / June 2023 issue. Austin author Szilvia Molnar’s debut novel The Nursery, a memoir-looking work about a new mother suppressing baby-harming thoughts, is an engaging experiment in uncomfortable empathy that finds its tonal antecedents in cerebral body horror movies like David Cronenberg’s The Brood and David Lynch’s Eraserhead, and its stylistic sisterhood in the early avant-garde confessionals of French novelist and screen writer Marguerite Duras.
A Postpartum Page-Turner
A version of this story ran in the May / June 2023 issue. Austin author Szilvia Molnar’s debut novel The Nursery, a memoir-looking work about a new mother suppressing baby-harming thoughts, is an engaging experiment in uncomfortable empathy that finds its tonal antecedents in cerebral body horror movies like David Cronenberg’s The Brood and David Lynch’s Eraserhead, and its stylistic sisterhood in the early avant-garde confessionals of French novelist and screen writer Marguerite Duras.
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