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Capturing the Changing Landscape of Austin’s Airport Boulevard
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,...
The Consequences of Redistricting Without A Safety Net
Judicial blindness to racist election laws has removed critical safeguards for minority voters and emboldened the latest round of GOP gerrymandering in Texas. Redistricting, the political map-making process where officeholders seemingly get to choose their own voters, was a sprint at the Texas Legislature this year. COVID-19 delayed the 2020 census, so it was mid-August, months later than usual, by the time lawmakers received data showing that nearly all of Texas’ population growth over the past decade, the most of any state, occurred in Hispanic, Asian and Black communities. Members of Texas’ biennial, part-time Legislature would normally have retired to their home districts already, but instead they were still in Austin, embroiled in a special session that Governor Greg Abbott had called to ram through new voting restrictions that Democrats in the Texas House had fled the state to try to stop.
Invisible Scars
I was watching TV one night about four years ago when my friend Latrice bounced into the prison common area. She’d just gotten mail and found out her mom had finally saved enough money to bring her five kids to visit from Houston. She could barely contain her excitement. “I haven’t seen them all together in so long!” she exclaimed. Even though I didn’t have children, I understood the joy of visitation. My parents were also coming the same day, I told her. I hadn’t seen them in several months, as the almost four-hour drive from Kilgore to Gatesville was hard on them.
Along the U.S.-Mexico Border, Journalism Is an Act of Resistance
Celeste Gonzalez de Bustamante and Jeannine Relly, journalism professors based at the University of Arizona, spent the last decade collecting dozens of oral histories from journalists working along the U.S.-Mexico border, and in Mexican states hit hard by drug violence. They wanted to learn how reporters, editors, and newspaper owners were surviving and adapting to an unprecedented wave of threats, attacks, and murders perpetrated by cartels and corrupt government officials that have made Mexico one of the world’s most dangerous places to practice journalism. This year, they released a portion of their archives, and produced a book filled with stories of horror—and of hope, Surviving Mexico: Resistance and Resilience among Journalists in the Twenty-first Century (University of Texas Press).
Unchecked and Unbalanced
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,...
The Texas Railroad Commission Is A ‘Captive Agency’
It’s long been an open secret that Texas’ oil and gas regulators are friendly to the industry. A new series of reports shows just how deep their ties go. Before being elected last year to serve as one of three commissioners of the Texas Railroad Agency, Jim Wright was on a crusade to protect some oil businesses from state regulation. The irony should be nearly palpable; the Railroad Commission (RRC) is tasked with overseeing virtually all segments of the state’s oil and gas industry. It permits oil wells and pipelines, inspects drilling sites for compliance with state rules, and fines operators who violate the law. Anyone in the Texas oil and gas business is ultimately answerable to the three commissioners.
Rodney Reed and Texas’ Troubling Reliance on the Death Penalty
A court ruling this week sets up yet another high profile showdown over Texas’ use of the ultimate punishment. Two years ago, Rodney Reed’s impending execution sparked international outrage, prompting widespread calls for reprieve from people ranging from Beyoncé to Ted Cruz. In November 2019, a last-minute court ruling halted Reed’s execution five days before he was scheduled to die. This week, however, a judge dismissed his claims of innocence and rejected his request for a new trial, setting up yet another high profile showdown over Texas’ death penalty.
Special Election Loss in San Antonio Could Spell Trouble for Dems in the Midterms
In a hotly contested special election contest, Republicans trump Democrats on their home turf—securing a seat in a predominantly Hispanic state House district that could be hard to wrest back in 2022. With another special election for an open Democratic seat in San Antonio came another loss for Democrats. In...
Austin Voters Reject Proposal to Super-Fund Police in Victory for Progressives
Fear and propaganda weren’t enough to save an expensive proposal to swell the police department in Texas’ bluest city. In liberal Austin, a two-year wave of conservative backlash appears to have crested. On Tuesday evening, voters in the state’s capital resoundingly rejected a proposal to bloat the city’s police department....
‘The People’s Lawyer’
Civil rights lawyer Lee Merritt, who represented George Floyd’s family, on running for Texas attorney general and ending “comply or die” policing. This election cycle, the first high-profile Democrat to announce a statewide run in Texas is also one of the nation’s leading civil rights lawyers. Lee Merritt, who this summer announced he would challenge indicted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in 2022, represents families of people killed by law enforcement in Texas and across the country. In recent years, Merritt, who calls himself “the people’s lawyer,” has represented the families of Botham Jean and George Floyd, who were murdered by police; Marvin Scott III, who was killed in the custody of Collin County Jail this year; and others whose tragedies have prompted international outrage. Merritt spoke with the Observer about running for attorney general, the families he represents, and reimagining public safety in Texas.
Small Plant, Big Polluter
This story was jointly produced by Public Health Watch, the Investigative Reporting Workshop, and the Texas Observer. Billionaire William Koch’s industrial plant in Port Arthur, Texas, is small compared to the three sprawling oil refineries that surround it – just 112 acres compared with the 10,000 acres occupied by Motiva, Valero and Total.
Locked Up and Left to Die
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,...
Senator Kel Seliger Becomes the First Victim of Redistricting in Texas
The Republican lawmaker has chosen not to run for re-election in District 31, which has been redrawn to benefit more conservative candidates. Congressional and statehouse maps redrawn by Republicans this year have been widely panned for diluting emerging battleground districts and making it harder for Democrats to get elected even as the state’s nonwhite, urban population skyrockets.
A Group Claiming To Be Cherokee Faces Questions About Authenticity
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,...
‘Code of Silence’ Reveals How Courts Systems Protect Federal Judges Accused of Misconduct
A new book illustrates how complaints are often suppressed—even in the case of a Galveston judge who sexually assaulted employees in his chambers. I was working in the Houston Chronicle newsroom in downtown Houston when I first heard a rumor that seemed too shocking to be true: A federal judge sexually assaulted his top assistant inside a U.S. courthouse and she’d run crying from his chambers. At first, no one would talk. Cathy McBroom’s awful experiences remained locked inside a secret system in which federal judges review complaints about each other. As an investigative reporter and later as an author, I learned a lot about what happened to McBroom and other victims that I could not publish—partly because sources were sworn to secrecy or feared powerful federal judges. After a years-long legal fight, U.S. District Judge Samuel Bristow Kent became the first jurist in the nation’s history to be impeached for sex crimes—against McBroom and another woman—and eventually went to prison.
Texas Is Watering Down Federal Infrastructure Funds
The state needs to invest more than $60 billion in water infrastructure over the next 50 years—instead, the Legislature spent federal money on cops, jailers and cybersecurity. A ticking time bomb lies at the bottom of the Llano River, near a small town called Junction. In 2018, major flooding across...
Dan Patrick’s Critical Erasure
The lieutenant governor continues his crusade against those who challenge the racist mythologies of Texas. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick is heartsick and afraid. He’s scared for his six grandchildren, who may grow up in a country that rejects its greatness in exchange for wokeness and anti-whiteness. Critical race theory and the New York Times’ 1619 Project “not only hurts my heart,” Patrick has said, but also “scares the hell out of me.”
Republicans’ Gerrymandered Maps Turn Back Time in Texas
Once again, Republicans draw the lines of power to protect their incumbents and amplify their white, conservative, rural base—and deny millions of Texans of color their due political representation. With a quick glance at the new redistricting maps that Texas Republicans just rammed into law, you could be forgiven for...
Long Before the Near-Total Ban, Texas Was Home to the Most ‘Abortion Deserts’ in the U.S.
This story was produced in collaboration with Public Health Watch. When Kristen Holcomb faced an unplanned pregnancy in 2017, she felt isolated, scared and confused. The anxiety didn’t stem from grappling with whether to terminate her pregnancy – she was resolute in her decision to do so. Rather, it came from how she could access abortion care. Lubbock, the West Texas city in which she lived, wasn’t home to an abortion provider. In fact, the entirety of West Texas and the Panhandle – a large swath of the state – had no abortion clinic.
In ‘Keeping House,’ the Unseen Is at the Forefront
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,...
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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.