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Texas Observer
Abbott’s Border Standoff Fueled by a Climate Crisis He Helped to Create
Above: A group of migrants seeking U.S. asylum walk down a road beside the Rio Grande River to turn themselves in to the Border Patrol. Earlier this month, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas took to MSNBC to discuss the border crisis. As video of the unprecedented press of refugees and migrants at Eagle Pass, Texas, flashed on the screen, he was asked what was behind the record-setting surge of desperate humanity at the border. He stressed three intersecting forces: climate, poverty, and rising authoritarianism.
After Abortion Ban, Texas Teen Birth Rate Rises
The increase reverses a 15-year trend. And unwanted pregnancies will rise, researchers predict. A 15-year decline in Texas teen birth rates slid to a stop—and converted into a modest increase in 2022, the year after the state Legislature implemented what was the nation’s strongest ban on abortion, according to new report from the University of Houston’s Institute for Research on Women, Gender & Sexuality.
Abbott Appointee Slams Breaks on K-12 Native Studies Course
The curriculum was getting a first read after years of review. Then, the chair of the state Board of Education said he needed more time to assess it without “drama or controversy.”. According to Texas’ fourth-grade social studies standards, Indigenous peoples from Texas, including the Lipan Apache, Comanches, and...
San Fernando: The Last Stop
Editor’s note: Marcela Turati, one of Mexico’s finest investigative journalists, a winner of the Maria Moors Cabot Prize, and cofounder of the investigative nonprofit Quinto Elemento Lab, has spent more than a dozen years documenting the stories of Mexico’s disappeared and of its more than 2,000 narcofosas, a shocking series of recently-discovered hidden graves. Her first encounter with one of the most notorious mass graves came in 2011 at a crossroads called San Fernando, a picturesque community known, among other things, for its shrimp cocktail.
Border Angels and Magic Moments
Above: A lightning strike crackles at the edge of a storm cloud above State Route 80 in Arizona. Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera and I met when she was a political science professor at the University of Texas at Brownsville. She was studying drug cartel violence in the war-torn Mexican border state of Tamaulipas, and I was covering the same topic as a journalist for KGBT-TV in the Rio Grande Valley. We bonded over our work—and our mutual desire to “see the entire border.”
Texas Counties Try to Fight Poverty with Cash
A program intended to put money in the pockets of the poor faces a challenge from a state senator. More than one out of every 10 Texans still struggle. Despite the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of Texans living in poverty remained at an average of 13.9 percent between 2018 to 2022, only a slight improvement over prior years. Rural poverty has grown and evictions in urban centers like Houston and Austin remain higher than before 2020, according to the nonprofit Eviction Lab.
Anti-LGBTQ+ Laws in Texas May Violate Human Rights Treaties
Four nonprofits are urging the United Nations to pressure the federal government to protect queer residents of the Lone Star state. A January 22 letter sent from Equality Texas, ACLU of Texas, GLAAD, and Human Rights Campaign to over a dozen independent experts, working groups, and special rapporteurs at the U.N. asks the international body to intercede in what the nonprofits called a “human rights crisis” in our state. The letter specifically highlights seven laws passed during the last legislative session which infringe on the rights of trans and queer residents, which the authors argue violate human rights treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), originally adopted in 1966.
The Judges Who Ruled Against La Gordiloca Are Criminalizing Watchdog Journalism
Above: Online journalist Priscilla Villarreal and her attorney, J.T. Morris, stand outside a federal courthouse in New Orleans. In a blow to First Amendment advocates, a majority of the judges on the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decided Tuesday not just to throw out a lawsuit by the Laredo citizen journalist and provocateur Priscilla Villarreal, who goes by the name La Gordiloca, but to endorse an expansive view of government power that permits police to arrest reporters for seeking basic information through backchannels.
Will Texas Cities Stay Silent on Gaza?
From Austin to San Antonio and Dallas to Houston, pro-Palestine advocates are pleading with recalcitrant local officials to take a stand for Gazans. “I am a Jewish mother; I am also the descendant of survivors of the Holocaust in Germany and the pogroms in Russia. I have been devastated every day watching this genocide unfold,” said Abigail Mallick, one of a series of Jewish speakers who addressed the council that day to oppose Israel’s recent military actions. “We must pass a ceasefire resolution. … We must join the growing chorus of voices saying ‘never again’—‘never again’ for anyone.”
Women’s Lives Are on the Ballot This November
Representative Jasmine Crockett warns of another Trump presidency on the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Above: College students and abortion rights activists hold signs during a rally on the steps of the Texas Capitol in February 2015. Fifty-one years ago on January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court issued its...
Another Hot, Dry Summer May Push Parts of Texas to the Brink
Some areas are starting the year with low water reserves, and forecasters don’t expect substantial relief from the weather. Above: A bridge crosses the dry bed of Falcon Lake in Zapata, Texas, 60 miles south of Laredo. That’s bad news for places like far South Texas, where big reservoirs...
What Does the United States Owe Central America?
A version of this story ran in the January / February 2024 issue. The heart of Jonathan Blitzer’s new book about Central America is a heart doctor. Born in the 1950s in El Salvador, Juan Romagoza was drawn to medicine by something like a religious calling. By the time he finished his education, his tiny but storied nation was drowning in state violence. In 1980, he witnessed a patient, a student activist, coolly executed in a hospital bed by national security forces. He made a mission of treating activists and campesinos brutalized by blood-crazed soldiers—a choice that set him on a path to being brutally tortured, followed by forced emigration and a life of activism in the United States. Romagoza’s biography is the story of an era, a region, and a great debt that remains unpaid. He is history in the flesh.
The Lost Promise of Refuge Ranch
A version of this story ran in the January / February 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...
Ivan Cantu Is Set to Be Executed. But Did He Get a Fair Trial?
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,...
Tense Elections in Mexico and U.S. Endanger Democracy
Tense presidential elections could bring upheaval to both nations, according to a recent report. Above: Former Mexico City mayor, and current presidential candidate Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, shows her thumb after voting. This year Mexico and the United States expect particularly tense presidential elections—and for the first time in decades, experts...
Greg Abbott’s New Year’s Resolution: Sow Chaos at the Border
The governor plants hints of a constitutional crisis in Eagle Pass after discussing shooting migrants. Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of America’s second-largest state, has kicked off the New Year by escalating his ongoing war against immigrants to fresh heights of recklessness. In both deed and word, Texas’ top executive has chosen not just to lob cheap political barbs but to court chaos and foment hate.
Partisans Are Politicizing Our Schools
A version of this story ran in the January / February 2024 issue. But others questioned why a politically connected attorney had been quietly hired to help craft that proposal: Tim Davis. Davis isn’t just any lawyer—he also serves as the general counsel of the Tarrant County GOP. The district had previously worked with a different firm. Trustee Becky St. John now wanted to know why a new firm had been hired without her knowledge or any public vote.
Naomi Shihab Nye: Life As a Palestinian-American Poet
"Palestinians are all haunted. We’re haunted by what used to be, what could have been." Naomi Shihab Nye is the Texas Observer’s poetry editor emeritus. She is Palestinian-American and grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and San Antonio. She frequently visited family in Palestine throughout her lifetime, including as a child. Amid Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza, the Observer asked her about how growing up Palestinian influenced her writing.
Immigrants in Ciudad Juárez Struggle for Survival
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,...
La Gordiloca Goes to Court
A version of this story ran in the January / February 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...
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