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“People Are Wiped Out”: Costs Pile Up as Hurricane Season Begins
This story was published in partnership with Southerly. When Chrishelle Palay inherited her great-aunt’s home in Kashmere Gardens, a flood-prone neighborhood in northeast Houston, there was still damage from Hurricane Harvey. Water had seeped into the kitchen and family room floors; the roof was leaky. The house was insured by Allstate, but Palay discovered her aunt’s policy didn’t cover water damage. Then, the company dropped the house, claiming the roof was too old to qualify for coverage.
A Feminist Rewrite of Lot
This story is from the May/June 2021 issue. The story of Lot, the famous one, is a story for men. In it, Lot is given a divine warning that his city, Sodom, and its neighbor, Gomorrah, will be destroyed for their inhabitants’ wickedness and he and his wife and two daughters must flee. Lot is warned not to look back when they do—but his wife and daughters are not. As they leave the city, Lot’s wife, who is not named in the Bible, takes one last look at her home. God transforms her into a pillar of salt. Lot does not look back.
TxO NextGen Program 2021
These articles were produced through the NPR NextGen/Texas Observer Print Scholars program, a new collaboration designed to offer mentorship and hands-on training to student journalists and recent graduates interested in a career in investigative journalism. As the Power Grid Waivers Again, Texans Are Still Recovering From the Winter Storm. Experts...
Entitled To Profit: In Texas, Title Insurance Is a “Total Scam”
In 2004, an attorney named Jason Collins and his wife were buying a house in a master-planned community in the Sunset Valley area of southwest Austin. He was going down the list of closing costs when he noticed a line item for title insurance. The price, about $2,000, gave him pause. “I could not understand,” he recalled recently, “why we needed to pay such a large amount.”
Texas Expands Access to Medical Cannabis—But Advocates Say It’s Not Enough
This article was produced through the NPR NextGen/Texas Observer Print Scholars program, a new collaboration designed to offer mentorship and hands-on training to student journalists and recent graduates interested in a career in investigative journalism. Every morning when Viridiana Edwards wakes up, she says her body feels like a roll...
Threat of Anti-Trans Legislation Makes Gender-Affirming Care Harder To Provide
This article was produced through the NPR NextGen/Texas Observer Print Scholars program, a new collaboration designed to offer mentorship and hands-on training to student journalists and recent graduates interested in a career in investigative journalism. Texas lawmakers did not end up passing any of the record number of anti-trans bills...
Mentally Ill and Sentenced to Death
This article was produced through the NPR NextGen/Texas Observer Print Scholars program, a new collaboration designed to offer mentorship and hands-on training to student journalists and recent graduates interested in a career in investigative journalism. Jennifer Toon is used to sharing intimate glimpses of difficult experiences with Texas lawmakers. A...
As the Power Grid Waivers Again, Texans Are Still Recovering From the Winter Storm
This article was produced through the NPR NextGen/Texas Observer Print Scholars program, a new collaboration designed to offer mentorship and hands-on training to student journalists and recent graduates interested in a career in investigative journalism. Four months after Winter Storm Uri, Carolina Lopez-Herrera is still putting her house back together....
In the Drill Zone, Children’s Health is Looking Bleak
This article was published in partnership with Reveal. When Wanda Vincent looks out the windows of her day care center in Arlington, Texas, past the playground, she sees a row of enormous beige storage tanks. They’re connected to two wells that produce natural gas for Total, one the world’s largest fossil fuel companies. No government agency – city, state or federal – monitors the air here or inspects regularly for emissions. So Vincent has no way of knowing whether dangerous gases are leaking out of all that equipment, potentially harming the children and staff who spend their days so close to those wells.
Loon Star State: Out With Democracy
To see more political cartoons from Ben Sargent, visit our Loon Star State section, or find Observer political reporting here. 2021 Texas Lege in Review: Red Meat, Broken Promises, and More of the Same Old Shit: Texas Republicans proved too busy burnishing their far-right bona fides to attend to minor matters like lethal winter storms and mass incarceration.
2021 Texas Lege in Review: Red Meat, Broken Promises, and More of the Same Old Shit
On Tuesday at the state Capitol, Governor Greg Abbott signed into law two bills aimed at strengthening the electric grid and reforming the agencies that regulate it. It was the culmination of the Legislature’s response to a devastating winter storm that crippled the state’s energy system and killed as many as 700 Texans, according to a recent Buzzfeed investigation.
For the First Time, ‘Redeemed’ Texas Parents May Get a Second Chance
Maggie Luna tried to fit all of the love she had for her three children onto a tri-fold poster board a week before her court date. Each section of the plain white board was adorned with a photo timeline dedicated to one of her children, illustrating Luna’s presence in their lives from birth up until the day they were taken from her. It was a desperate attempt to persuade a Harris County judge to let her keep the kids.
‘Forget the Alamo’ Unravels a Texas History Made of Myths, or Rather, Lies
As a former student of Texas public schools, much of what I remember from Texas history class boils down to this: General López de Santa Anna, of Mexico, was evil incarnate—my old friends and I still marvel at how much this was hammered into our heads—and the Texas Revolution was a fight for liberty against the tyrannical Mexican government. The Battle of the Alamo, where Texian fighters held out for 13 days and then were slaughtered by Mexican forces, has long been a central part of that story. Every Texan has been told to “remember the Alamo.”
The Unlikely Demise of Texas’ Biggest Corporate Tax Break
In 2001, state lawmakers and business leaders warned that the state’s high property tax rates were discouraging corporations from locating big projects in Texas. At the time, Site Selection magazine—a trade publication about economic development—showed Texas’ national ranking on new manufacturing plants had plummeted to 37th in the nation, and without a state income tax, the Lone Star State had no choice but to lean on sales and local property tax revenue to fund basic services like public education.
When Your Birth Is a State Secret
Shawna Hodgson, a mother of four who lives in Tomball, learned about her deep Texas roots the hard way: As an adoptee, she couldn’t just pay $22 and get a copy of her own birth certificate like other Texans. Instead, she had to spend more than 10 years and $15,000 on private searches, court and legal fees, and DNA tests. Finally, she connected with a distant cousin in 2014 after submitting a DNA sample to 23andMe, and then traced her birth mother and father, partly by texting that cousin and other complete strangers. Hogson felt elated and proud when at age 40 she met both her birth parents—and tracked her roots back six generations.
An Irreversible Sentence
Editor’s note: This story was originally published in the Texas Observer’s May/June 2021 print edition. Since its publication, prosecutor Ralph Petty has surrendered his license to practice law. A district court judge in Midland has also recommended a new trial for Clinton Young. It’s 2016, and I’m driving north on...
Texas Activists are Working to ‘Free Palestine’ But Obstacles Abound
Five days after the bombs stopped raining down on Gaza in early May, Fadya Risheq still hasn’t heard from her family there. The tiny strip of land is home to nearly 2 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants who were displaced in 1948 by the state of Israel. “They’re still...
Texas Observer Announces Finalists in the 15th Annual MOLLY Journalism Prizes
The Texas Observer, the original reader-supported nonprofit news organization of the Lone Star state, today announced finalists in the 15th annual MOLLY Investigative Journalism Prize, an award of $5,000 recognizing superlative work in the spirit and legacy of the legendary Molly Ivins. The field of extraordinary submissions ranged from coast to coast, featuring industry-leading journalists on the most pressing issues of our time.
Again, Texas Republicans Fail to Gut Local Labor Protections
In the waning hours of Texas’ 87th legislative session, House Democrats staged a walk-out to kill a sweeping Republican effort at voter suppression. Little-noticed in the moment, the dramatic move also nixed a top priority of the business lobby for the last three years: a measure to stop Texas cities from passing virtually any local pro-labor policy.
With a Special Session on Voting Restrictions Looming, Texas Dems Push for Federal Protections
Nearly every legislative session, Texas Republicans cite the myth of widespread, election-swinging voter fraud to try to make voting harder, scarier, and more confusing. This session, they came very close to getting their way, prompting calls for federal intervention before lawmakers get a second chance to pass sweeping voting restrictions later this year.
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The Texas Observer is an Austin-based nonprofit news organization known for fearless investigative reporting, narrative storytelling and sophisticated cultural criticism about all things Texan.