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Saving Lone Star Literary Life
A literary website that has connected bookish Texans since 2015 nearly closed this year. Then one of its readers saved it. Out in West Texas, a pair of aspiring novelists and enterprising small-town newspaper owners, Barbara Brannon and Kay Ellington, were dismayed by the number of publications that were dropping book sections, cutting critics, and otherwise decimating literary coverage, especially in the Lone Star State. By the 2010s, “93 percent of the state’s newspapers offer no regular books coverage of any kind,” they told the Writers’ League of Texas.
Strangest State: Airplane Etiquette, Australian Octopi, and an Itinerant Police Chief
All of the Texas Observer’s articles are available for free syndication for news sources under the following conditions:. 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...
Water Scarcity and Clean Energy Collide in South Texas
A high-tech chemical company has purchased the last available water in the Nueces River to make hydrogen and ammonia for export. Avina’s Nueces Green Ammonia plant plans to separate the hydrogen from water, convert it to ammonia and export it as a high-tech fuel alternative to oil and gas. It’s one of several such projects currently proposed in Texas, driven by federal subsidies. Governments and scientists say this technology plays an important role in the transition away from fossil fuels.
Is Ted Cruz’s Podcast PAC Payoff Scheme Illegal?
The Texas senator’s iHeartMedia deal, which sent over $600,000 to an aligned super PAC, may have broken campaign finance laws—or exploited a new loophole. Cruz struck a deal in 2022 with San Antonio-based radio giant iHeartMedia to pay for the production, marketing, and distribution of his “Verdict” podcast, where he pontificates about various right-wing grievances several times a week. The sweetheart arrangement has raised myriad ethics concerns ever since.
Loon Star State: Cult of the All-Powerful Orange Czar
To see more political cartoons from Ben Sargent, visit our Loon Star State section, or find Observer political reporting here. All of the Texas Observer’s articles are available for free syndication for news sources under the following conditions:. Articles must link back to the original article and contain the...
TPPF’s Long Love Affair with Ken Paxton
Ken Paxton has spent almost the entirety of his decade leading the Office of the Texas Attorney General while also under felony indictment for alleged securities fraud. Yet, like every other time Paxton has faced allegations of wrongdoing, including misuse of office, retaliatory firings, and criminal misdeeds, he has once again managed to evade real punishment. By no small measure, this has been enabled by Paxton’s masterful use of state resources to court (and to bolster) the influence of extremely well-funded conservative legal organizations and networks, at the expense of the public interests he is supposed to represent, and to defend.
Nine Years, Nine Lives: Paxton’s Latest Legal Escape
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,...
‘TxDOT’s Still Bulldozing Over Our Communities’
Community members say the state transportation agency is violating its agreement with the feds to reduce the discriminatory impact of its plans to expand I-45. Fifth Ward resident Kendra London, 43, helped form the neighborhood organization Our Afrikan Family to serve and educate her community about a major threat: an expansion of Interstate 45 that will wipe out hundreds of Houston homes and businesses and has already forced evictions. For the past five years, she and other advocates have been door-knocking and holding meetings to educate residents about TxDOT’s plans. A little over a year ago, she thought they had made progress when the Federal Highway Administration signed a Voluntary Resolution Agreement with TxDOT ending a two-year civil rights investigation into the discriminatory environmental and economic impact the North Houston Highway Improvement Plan would have on several Black and brown neighborhoods.
Death Trap: ‘We’re Not Going to Open It for Them’
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,...
Some Texas Prisoners Allowed Only Four Hours of Sleep a Night, Lawsuit Says
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with a man incarcerated at the Estelle Unit who has been suing over his sleep schedule for a decade. At 10:30 p.m., it’s time to “rack up.” The men at the Estelle Unit in Huntsville retire to their cells and get into bed, hallway lights streaming in through cell windows. Through the walls, they can hear the occasional heavy door or gate shut, while their neighbors—despite the required quiet hours—often chat or call out from their beds, some falling asleep to radios.
A Roadmap to Rebuilding Communities
A version of this story ran in the March / April 2024 issue. When we think of what our communities need, we usually think of affordable homes, good schools, and grocery stores. Not wide towering highways. Yet, in the past 70-some years, highways have dictated community development in urban centers. They’ve torn through low-income communities of color, displacing families, homes, and businesses. As a result, people move farther away; we languish in traffic, get home from work later, and spend less time with our family. We’ve accepted growing air pollution as the inevitable cost of the lives we’ve built around our cars and the neighborhoods we’ve built around highways. For many of us, we’ve never seen or imagined an alternative.
Forging Their Own Way: Kaye Northcott on Texas Observer History
A version of this story ran in the March / April 2024 issue. Kaye Northcott learned from her favorite teacher that journalism was about calling out bullshit, which she began doing with enthusiasm as editor of her high school newspaper in Houston. She continued to do so as editor of the University of Texas at Austin’s Daily Texan and later the Texas Observer, which she co-helmed with Molly Ivins starting in 1970. In 1976, she left the Observer to freelance, writing for magazines and public television. Aside from short stints as a press secretary, Northcott continued to work in journalism for decades, including tenures as a political reporter and then an editor for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and editor of Texas Co-op Power Magazine. Now retired, she lives in Austin.
‘The Hobby’: A Love Letter to Board Gamers like My Son
The documentary reminds us how to revel in creative play and the company of others. My 12-year-old son creates some wacky board games. When he was younger, there was Pillow Fight, where players spin a wheel to collect pillows to smack people, build a fort, or knock down pins. Then there was Chick-fil-A vs. Canes, a game where players collect coins by buying, selling, and promoting menu items from Texas’ favorite fast-food chicken places—but if you get stingy and don’t pay your workers, they’ll go on strike and you’ll find yourself without food. Recently, his creations have turned into more sophisticated battle strategy games, played according to pages and pages of rules.
Dade Phelan’s Efforts to Expand Healthcare Still Leave Many Struggling in His District
The measures, authored by Republicans and Democrats, were applauded by health advocates such as the Texas Medical Association. This month, an updated version of one of the most noteworthy bills took effect, extending postpartum Medicaid coverage for new mothers from two months after giving birth to a year. Phelan toes...
Clearing the Air
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.”
Loon Star State: Utter Fantasies!
A version of this story ran in the March / April 2024 issue. To see more political cartoons from Ben Sargent, visit our Loon Star State section, or find Observer political reporting here. Texas GOP Flirts with Secession —Contributor David Brockman’s reporting from the 2016 Texas GOP convention where a...
An Open Letter to Richard Linklater on Our Texas Death Penalty
Your movie “God Save Texas: Hometown Prison,” which debuted recently on HBO, was joyfully upsetting for me. Kudos to you for loving Huntsville, the complex setting of your formative high school years. Kudos for not moving on, for coming back time and again to the life and culture there in your many films. Kudos for loving the people there but not looking away, bringing your unflinching lens to the things they find hard to see. Spoiler alert: This is a movie review about the human subjects of your film.
A Bittersweet Portrait of a Photographer, Obsessed
Great art has come at a cost for Dan Winters and his family, as an intimate documentary reveals. Good photography and good cinema are cousins. So a new documentary about legendary Austin photographer Dan Winters has a built-in advantage. It can weave Winters’ own striking pictures into the telling of his backstory; it can show us a master of the form arranging and taking a shot, then reveal the photo itself, braiding the moving with the still and exposing the gulf between—where the magic happens.
A New Documentary Reveals the Real Eagle Pass
Robie Flores' "The In Between" is a love letter to la frontera—and a humanizing refutation of GOP fear-mongering. In the wake of her brother’s death, Flores returned home and reexamined her hometown through new eyes. This reappraisal is the basis of her new film, The In Between, an 82-minute feature documentary that premiered at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin on March 9. Using a combination of old footage recovered from Mars’ hard drives along with fresh film recorded by siblings in the wake of his death, The In Between serves as an homage to Mars’ memory, the culture of South Texas, and the Mexican-American youth who grow up there.
Gulf Coast Petrochemical Buildout Draws Billions in Tax Breaks For Polluters
A new report by the Environmental Integrity Project compiled data on every U.S. plastics plant built, expanded or proposed since 2012, revealing massive growth in Texas. The report identified 50 plastics complexes built or expanded in the last 12 years, 33 in Texas. Together they have drawn a total of $1.65 billion in property tax breaks through the state’s Chapter 313 program for energy and manufacturing companies, which the state legislature replaced last year with a new but similar program.
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