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Texas Observer
The ‘Remnant Alliance’ Is Coming for a School Board Near You
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,...
Small-Town Politics, National Consequences
A version of this story ran in the May / June 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. Sign up for their weekly newsletter, or follow them on Facebook and Twitter.”
Standing Up for All Texans’ Stories
The new Alliance for Texas History calls for working everyone’s stories “into the fabric of Texas history.”. Nearly 150 members of the new Texas Alliance for History, including university professors and students, community historians, and staff members of historical sites and museums gathered Saturday at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth for the event, “Looking Back, Moving Forward.” Their collective goal: to form a group dedicated to sharing untold stories of Texas history, efforts that seem even more crucial in an era when various efforts to diversify the state’s historical record are under fire.
Editor’s Letter: Introducing Our May/June Issue
A version of this story ran in the May / June 2024 issue. This is my first time writing to you in this space, though I’ve been writing for y’all for the last eight years. I started my journalism career as an intern here at the Observer in 2016. My only qualification then was that I worked at a migrant shelter and spoke Spanish, and the hiring editor found that intriguing. For months, I struggled to find my footing. But one day the Observer found itself in need of a series about federal immigrant detention, perhaps the only topic for which I had sources and was qualified to cover. I wrote that series and was rewarded with a cub reporter job assisting our former border and immigration ace Melissa del Bosque. Later, I graduated to full-fledged staff writer, then assistant editor, and today I write to you as the Observer’s interim editor-in-chief.
An East Texas County Fights a Bitter Battle Over a Reborn Hospital
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,...
70 Years of Skewering
A version of this story ran in the March / April 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. Sign up for their weekly newsletter, or follow them on Facebook and Twitter.”
Did Texas Police Violate First Amendment Rights of Pro-Palestine Protesters?
A UT professor and expert on freedom of expression weighs in on the controversial arrests of 57 individuals, including a journalist, at a campus demonstration. In a statement to the Observer, a UT-Austin spokesperson said that about half of those arrested were unaffiliated with the university. “Thirteen pro-Palestinian free speech events have taken place at the University largely without incident since October,” wrote Brian Davis, the spokesperson. “In contrast, this one in particular expressed an intent to disrupt the campus and directed participants to break Institutional Rules and occupy the University.”
Texas Exotic Hunts Are Dangerously Unregulated
Addax antelope for $8,000, scimitar-horned oryx for $7,500—both endangered species advertised as available to hunt at a private game reserve in Texas as of April 2024. The scimitar-horned oryx, a species declared “Extinct in the Wild” 24 years ago, was reintroduced into Chad’s Ouadi Achim Faunal Reserve in February 2023 thanks to conservation breeding programs but is still listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Another species currently listed as “Extinct in the Wild” (the Pére David’s deer, originally native to China) is also available to hunt, according to information posted online by Greystone Castle Sporting Club in Mingus.
The SpaceX Land Swap Is Only the Latest Texas Public Park Giveaway
(Ivan Armando Flores/Texas Observer) 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.”
‘There Have to Be Limits’: Lawsuit Urges Scorching Prisons to Cool Down
New plaintiffs have expanded a 2023 lawsuit against TDCJ, accusing the agency of “cooking [prisoners] to death." Last June, Bernhardt Tiede suffered a likely stroke while living in a prison cell that regularly got up to around 110 degrees Fahrenheit. The 65-year-old—whose story inspired the 2011 Richard Linklater film “Bernie”—is housed at the Estelle Unit in Huntsville. Now, several new parties have joined and expanded a lawsuit Tiede filed last year against the prison system and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton related to its inadequate heat safety measures.
The Epic Texas Panhandle Fire Is Just a Preview
Texas officials go to bat for oil and gas while the climate-fueled Smokehouse Creek Fire still rages. On February 26, a tiny flame sparked a mile north of the ranching community of Stinnett, Texas. This part of the Texas Panhandle is sparsely populated—Hutchinson County has 20,000 people and roughly the same number of cows—so no one saw the smoldering patch of tall, dry grass where two county roads intersect. By the time area residents took notice of the smoke, it was too late: The fire had already spread into fallow fields and untamed barrow ditches, morphing into a monster in mere hours. By evening, the blaze—soon dubbed the Smokehouse Creek Fire—had reached 62 square miles. Firefighters were dispatched from all over Texas and beyond to try to prevent the entire Panhandle from going up in smoke.
In Travis County, a Fight over Bail Hearings Has Big Stakes for Criminal Defendants
Some arrestees in Austin lack legal representation at a stage that can determine their cases’ outcome. The ACLU and some officials want to change that. In Travis County, the magistration process—the initial bail hearing after someone is arrested—isn’t cinematic. Arrestees are either led to a small room within the jail’s central booking area, or a Travis County Sheriff’s Office (TCSO) employee might bring a computer to their holding cell. At the end of a short conversation, during which the arrestee can either remain silent or try to plead their case to get released on a personal bond instead of cash or surety bail, a magistrate—a judge who handles pre-trial hearings—determines the conditions of release.
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