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Advocates Struggle to Overcome New Voting Barriers in Texas
Provisions in Senate Bill 1 have spurred anxiety in civic engagement groups. Before the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature passed a restrictive new voting measure last year, Molly Broadway was adept at navigating the state’s voting landscape. She had spent six years with Disability Rights Texas, an Austin-based nonprofit, specializing in advising voters on how to cast their ballot (regardless of party affiliation).
Koch-Owned Plant Finds Legal Ways to Pollute
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,...
Stereotypes Could Send An Innocent Texas Woman to the Execution Chamber
On April 27th, Melisa Lucio is scheduled to be executed in Texas for the murder of her daughter, but many are now scrutinizing the evidence used to convict her—including a dubious confession and autopsy—and wondering if any “crime” even occurred. Her case is the subject of the 2020 documentary, “The State of Texas vs. Melissa.” What does psychological science say about the evidence against her?
Lone Star ‘Squad’: AOC Rallies for Texans Greg Casar and Jessica Cisneros
The two progressive candidates would represent a new left edge of the state's congressional delegation if primary voters from Austin to San Antonio to Laredo back them. On Saturday morning, two days before the start of early primary voting, New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to the stage at a music venue in Central San Antonio to deliver a message familiar to Texas liberals. “This state is going to change the country. … That’s why I’m here, for the long game. I don’t care how many cycles it takes, it’s going to happen: Texas turning blue is in-ev-it-ab-le,” she said to uproarious applause from the few hundred in attendance.
‘The Mexican American Experience in Texas’ Takes a Deep Look at Our Sordid State History
At once, the plight of Mexican Americans in Texas is both a figment of distant history and a bloodstain on the current day. It’s just like the old adage: To understand the present, one must look to the past. That’s what inimitable Latina author Martha Menchaca has done in her latest book, The Mexican American Experience in Texas. The title was released last month by The University of Texas Press and serves as a thorough retelling of critical events that have shaped the cultural identity in Texas all the way back to the state’s earliest days. It shouldn’t surprise you that her research is replete with details of discrimination and disinformation—nor should it surprise you that Republican elected officials are still at it today.
A Year After Blackout, Texans Navigate Climate Trauma in a Failing Fossil State
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,...
Hard-Right Megadonors Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks Pump Millions Into GOP Primary Wars
Texas’ biggest right-wing benefactors are—once again—throwing fuel on the fire in contentious Republican primary elections. With dozens of contested races up and down the ballot, the upcoming primary elections pose the biggest opportunity for hard-right insurgents to gain ground in the Texas Republican Party in nearly a decade.
In Texas, County Commissioners Are Free to Harvest Contractor Cash
Loose campaign finance laws permit politicians in Harris County to hide relationships between top campaign donors and the contracting firms paid with public funds. All four of Harris County’s commissioners live high on the hog thanks to campaign cash contributed mostly from employees and leaders of companies that hold no-bid professional contracts to do lucrative work in—you guessed it—Harris County.
The Rio Grande Valley Is at a Political Crossroads
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,...
Indicted Attorney General Ken Paxton Epitomizes Texas’ Exceptionalism on Corruption
Just before assaulting the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, rioters attending the Trump rally near the White House heard these stirring words: “What we have in President Trump is a fighter. We will not quit fighting. We’re Texans, we’re Americans and the fight will go on.”
Rodriguez Goes on Offense Against Homeless Camping in Democratic Primary
The longtime state representative and congressional candidate parrots conservative talking points in wedge-issue mailer. State Representative and congressional hopeful Eddie Rodriguez, D-Austin, has decided to make a political wedge out of a complex issue that’s roiled Texas’ capital since 2019: the city’s back-and-forth battle over whether and how harshly to criminalize homeless camping.
Paxton Targets GOP Judges After They Strike Down His Powers on Election Fraud
The embattled state attorney general is hoping to get by with a little help from his friends. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. That’s been a cornerstone of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s legal strategy in court when combating foes of all stripes—socialists in Washington, tyrants on local school boards, and now, a state court filled entirely with Republican judges.
In El Paso, a Holocaust Museum and a ‘Rebirth’ of Faith
Six months before the Soviet Army liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, they liberated Henry Kellen. It was July 31, 1944. Henry, his wife Julia, and 8-year-old nephew Jerry had been hiding along with five other Jews in a hole beneath a barn near Kovno, Lithuania. “For three months, we didn’t eat a thing. We just had water to drink,” Kellen said. “Knowing that liberation was getting close—that was our food.”
The Omicron Variant Has Ravaged Texas Schools
The newest COVID-19 variant has wreaked havoc on public schools in the state, forcing closures as districts scramble for adequate staff. As Omicron cases surge across Texas, schools from Nacogdoches to Marfa have been laid low. The particularly transmissible strain of COVID-19 has emptied classrooms of both students and teachers, forcing districts to enact last-minute closures. The Dallas suburbs have been hit hard, along with schools stretching along the Texas Gulf Coast and districts dotting the vast landscape of rural Texas. After nearly two years, some Texas schools are finally at their breaking point.
A Texas Mother Could Be Executed in April. Was Her Child’s Death Really a Murder?
Melissa Lucio, whose execution could take place this year, claims her innocence. In 2007, paramedics arrived at a tiny apartment that Melissa Lucio shared with her live-in partner, Robert, and nine of her 14 children in the Rio Grande Valley. They found two-year-old Mariah sprawled on her back in the middle of the floor. The girl wasn’t breathing. The family was in the process of changing apartments, and Lucio said Mariah, her youngest, had gotten hurt after she fell down a set of rickety stairs.
Down the Drain
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...
Democrats Spar to Challenge ‘Trump’s Counselor’ Ken Paxton
Two of Texas’ leading Democratic candidates for attorney general sparred in a debate Thursday hosted by the Texas AFL-CIO, but they were in total agreement on one point: Current Attorney General Ken Paxton must be defeated in the November general election. Civil-rights attorney S. Lee Merritt and former Galveston...
Can Beto Compete With Abbott’s Campaign Cash Machine?
The latest campaign filings show that the Democratic gubernatorial hopeful can still raise lots of money. But the powerful incumbent with a massive political war chest remains on another level. The final state campaign filings from last year are in, and they show that the marquee race in Texas in...
In Bexar County, A Hybrid Program To Help Indigent Defendants
Update: This article has been amended to correct errors regarding the Bexar County managed assigned counsel system. In 2010, Laquita Garcia was wrongfully arrested on a theft charge. Unable to pay the $30,000 bond, she ended up sitting in jail for over a year—longer than the crime’s maximum penalty. Garcia could not afford a private attorney to represent her and was appointed a lawyer by a judge. But Garcia’s lawyer never came to see her while she was in custody. He never called. He never investigated. The first time Garcia saw the attorney, she says, was minutes before she entered a plea deal. She was finally found not guilty of the theft charge by a judge and was released in 2011. After her release, Garcia set about helping those failed by the Bexar County criminal justice system. She’s now the policy coordinator of the Texas Organizing Project (TOP), a nonprofit with bases in San Antonio, Dallas and Houston.
Sinema Reaffirms That No, Congress Probably Won’t Save Democracy in Texas
Hope dwindles for Congress to fix racist Texas voting laws and gerrymandering. On Thursday, a Democratic politician from Arizona may have sounded the death knell for those in Texas still holding out hope that Congress might save them from our state GOP’s crusade against fair voting access and non-white electoral representation.
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