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After Kelcy Warren’s Energy Transfer Partners Made Billions from the Deadly Texas Blackouts, He Gave $1 Million to Greg Abbott
The Texas electric grid collapse during the February winter storm killed hundreds of Texans and caused an estimated $295 billion in damages, while generating seismic gains for a small and powerful few. The natural gas industry was by far the biggest winner, collecting $11 billion in profit by selling fuel at unprecedented prices to desperate power generators and utilities during the state’s energy crisis. No one won bigger than Dallas pipeline tycoon Kelcy Warren: Energy Transfer Partners—the energy empire Warren founded and now is executive chairman of—raked in $2.4 billion during the blackouts.
Emily Grace Spydell died in adoptive care. Her biological family says the Indian Child Welfare Act could have saved her—but her tribe’s legal code prevented it.
From the July/August 2021 issue. On April 18, 2020, at 9:14 a.m., three officers with the Randall County Sheriff’s Office arrived at the home of Jaclyn Spydell in Amarillo. When they entered, they were greeted with an overpowering smell of garbage, urine, and dog feces. “I noticed my duty boots would stick to the floor as I would walk back and forth down the hallway,” officer Blake Wilson wrote in his report. “My boots did not stick on other portions of the floors, like in the living room.”
Strangest State: A Lovestruck Alligator and Headless Goats
CONROE // A 10-foot alligator was killed and a driver hospitalized after the animal was struck by a car on Texas Highway 99 in Montgomery County. The Houston Chronicle reports that spring is peak gator mating season; the animal was likely moving from pond to pond looking for love when it was hit.
In ‘Al Norte,’ a Through Line of Transience That Is Still True Today
Every summer, Juan Palomo squeezed into the backseat of his father’s ’52 Plymouth for his family’s annual migration. “Like birds,” his people knew “shiny fruit beckoned” in northern fields where they harvested beets and cucumbers. The youngest of seven children, Palomo traveled with his parents, who were migrant Mexican farm workers, to Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Utah, California, and North Dakota where he was born.
Home, But Not Free: NSA Whistleblower Reality Winner Adjusts to Her Release From Prison
By Taylor Barnes. Originally published on July 10, 2021. Republished with permission from The Intercept, an award-winning nonprofit news organization dedicated to holding the powerful accountable through fearless, adversarial journalism. Sign up for The Intercept’s Newsletter. In the latest phase of her record sentence for whistleblowing, former National Security Agency...
Editorial: It’s Time for Texas Police to Ban Bean Bag Rounds at Protests
In late May of 2020, Anthony Evans says he was “walking down the street with [his] hands in the air” when a bean bag round fired by Austin police shattered his jaw bone. His injuries required surgery, and he had to have his mouth wired shut while he healed. Sareneka “Nemo” Martin was pregnant when bean bag rounds struck her in the back and stomach, knocking her to the ground. Luckily, she did not lose her baby. Levi Ayala, a 16-year-old with interests ranging from math and science to boxing and music, was shot in the head with bean bag rounds as he watched protests from a nearby embankment. According to his brother, Ayala suffers permanent brain damage, has trouble regulating his emotions, and will require long-term therapy.
Texas House Republicans Vote to Track Down Absent Democrats and Arrest Them If Necessary
“Texas House Republicans vote to track down absent Democrats and arrest them if necessary” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues. Sign up for The Brief, our daily...
Communities of Color in Houston Will Face Another Hurricane Season Without Adequate Flood Control
Doris Brown’s home in Scenic Woods, a neighborhood in northeast Houston, flooded four years ago during Hurricane Harvey when water rose over the banks of Halls Bayou. In the aftermath, local officials promised to build much-needed flood control infrastructure in the neighborhood, but the projects didn’t get built in time to stop Brown’s house from flooding again two years later in 2019, during Tropical Storm Imelda. In 2020, she finally finished repairing her home from Harvey damage, but this spring, when heavy rains hung over the city, it flooded again. Now, if a hurricane forms in the Gulf of Mexico and barrels towards Texas, Brown’s home, and others in her neighborhood, will likely flood for the fourth time. No new flood control projects have been built along the bayou since Harvey hit in 2017.
Greg Abbott’s Summer Special Session Sideshow
Governor Greg Abbott’s 30-day special session, which he called after Texas Republicans failed to pass legislation that cracks down on state voting laws in May, is on track to be a partisan circus. In addition to restrictive new elections legislation, Abbott has also revived an assortment of other red-meat entrails that the GOP failed to get through in the regular session, which featured a slew of conservative victories, from a near-ban on abortions to permitless gun carry.
Texans With Disabilities Fear Voting Will Get Harder for Them as Special Session on GOP Restrictions Nears
“Texans with disabilities fear voting will get harder for them as special session on GOP restrictions nears” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues. Sign up for The...
The People’s Scientist
This spring, as supply of COVID-19 vaccines began to exceed demand in the United States, Maria Elena Bottazzi fielded texts from people in Honduras, where she grew up. There, many were desperately seeking the kind of immunizations that sat unused in Houston, where Bottazzi is co-director of Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development.
Moments From the Reopening of Balmorhea Pool
The popular West Texas swimming spot has been closed since 2019 for repairs. Swimming in the spring-fed pool at Balmorhea State Park was part of Ezra Varela’s childhood growing up in Pecos. “It’s just good for the community,” says Varela. “It’s a place for us to go when it’s hot.”
Mapping Indigenous Communities of Texas: Wichita and Affiliated Tribes (kirikir?i:s)
Before contact with settlers, the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes were composed of multiple, autonomous bands that shared a similar culture and language, collectively known as Kitikiti’sh or kirikir?i:s. Each band had its own name, but many of these names have been lost over time due to colonization. The remaining bands are the Waco, Tawakoni, Wichita, Taovaya, and Kichai. They built townsites and cities scattered across what is currently Oklahoma and Texas. They were skilled farmers with extensive fields of corn, beans, squash, melon, and tobacco. The tribe traded with other tribes like the Caddo and Comanche.
Undocumented Immigrants Continue to Be Expelled From the U.S. Under Title 42 COVID-19 Measures
This story was originally published by The Big Bend Sentinel. When Alejandro left Honduras on April 15, it was out of desperation. Dire economic conditions in his country had left the 25-year-old migrant unable to afford medical treatment for his 18-month-old daughter who was born with a clubfoot. “In Honduras...
A Place Where Two Things Can be True at Once
On a Sunday in June, Michael Tongkeamha wears a casual outfit, all black from head to toe. He stands tall at the pulpit next to Pastor JB Jackson at the Dallas Indian Mission United Methodist Church, the raised platform they share decorated with purple fleece blankets covered in a Native-inspired design, similar to ones sold at any powwow. Before them, some 40 congregants from at least 15 different Indigenous nations fill the wooden pews. Tongkeamha, the chair for the church’s board of trustees, is helping to lead service as a lay speaker, a member of the local church who is ready to serve—one of many that rotate at the church.
A Wrongful Execution in Texas Points to the Fallability of the Death Penalty
After years studying errors in death penalty cases, Columbia University law professor James Liebman wondered whether he could prove someone had been executed for a crime they didn’t commit. To test the theory, Liebman turned to Texas, the epicenter of the modern death penalty. In 2004, he and a team of students stumbled upon the case of Carlos DeLuna, who was sentenced to death in 1983 for the murder of a young gas station attendant named Wanda Lopez in Corpus Christi. From the time of his trial to his execution in 1989, DeLuna professed his innocence and claimed another Carlos, Carlos Hernandez, killed Lopez. Prosecutors mocked DeLuna’s defense, calling Hernandez a “phantom” and claiming police had searched for but couldn’t find the other Carlos.
Austin Performer p1nkstar Is Creating New Worlds as a Trans Musician
“Here we are in my dreams,” sings a figure in glowing, purple light. Her voice, lilting over a chorus of low electronic tones, is filtered through vocal effects that tune her voice to an uber-high octave, like an angelic bionic woman. She’s dressed in all white, wearing a leather corset, lace-up platform boots, a petticoat, and a visor face shield with metal points. Androgynous dancers wearing medical masks and precious little else revolve around her. “Here we are in my dreams. Nothing ever as it seems. I can be who I want here.”
Resignation Letter
I became a teacher in the Fort Worth Independent School District with a single goal: to give students what I was so lucky to receive. After emigrating to Texas from India in 2000, I graduated from Fort Worth’s R.L. Paschal High School in 2008. But Paschal’s best resources—teachers with more than 20 years of experience, weekend and summer SAT/PSAT prep classes, AP exam prep—are reserved for its small white and Asian student population, not the Black and brown students who comprise over 60 percent of the school body. I benefited from an educational apartheid that persists to this day. When I became a teacher, I vowed to help bridge this gap.
Profit Before Patient
This story was originally published by Searchlight New Mexico, a non-partisan, nonprofit news organization dedicated to investigative reporting in New Mexico. Sometimes, it hits Kae Barnes in the most mundane situations, like when she’s taking a shower. She shaves her right leg first, then moves over to her left — and stops. Even just riding in the car where she lives near Phoenix, Arizona, can be disconcerting. “Everything’s normal, it’s fine, and then I happen to look down, and it’s like, oh my gosh, I really don’t have a leg.”
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