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Strangest State: A UFO in Austin and a Rare Cloned Horse
AMARILLO // A rare cloned horse raised in Amarillo is heading to its forever home at the San Diego Zoo, KAMR reports. The endangered Przewalski horse named Kurt was born after his father’s DNA was frozen for 40 years. The veterinarian who raised Kurt hopes that the horse will be able to boost his species’ numbers in California.
In Travis County, Black Children More Likely to be Taken from Parents
Aurora Martinez Jones says that if it hadn’t all happened on the same day, she might never have made the connection. At the time, Martinez Jones was the associate judge assisting with Travis County’s child welfare cases. She presided over a case in which a white mother had been arrested during a traffic stop for having drugs in her possession. Her child was in the vehicle with her; officers allowed the woman to call the grandmother to come take the child. In court, Child Protective Services (CPS), the state agency responsible for responding to the abuse and neglect of children, requested the judge order supervision for the mother, but the child would be able to continue living with the mother and grandmother.
The Next Trans Griot
On an overcast day in late october, Dee Dee Watters stood on the stage at the University of Houston’s Cullen Performance Hall. She had forgone the traditional black of mourning for a purple flowered dress and large gold hoop earrings. She clasped her hands, adorned with her signature long, painted nails, around a black pillow as she peered out at the masked crowd spread throughout the auditorium. To commemorate the death of fellow Black transgender activist Monica Roberts, Watters, who organized the memorial, performed an original spoken-word piece that Roberts had held dear, told from the perspective of a Black mother recalling her trans child’s baptism and murder, wishing she could hold her daughter one last time. “You can tell your child that you love them. You can tell yourself that you love yourself. You can tell God that, ‘I thank you for blessing me with something that was ohhh so different,’” said Watters. She closed: “Ashé. And so it is.”
The Lege This Week: Bitterness and Brinkmanship
Welcome to the 87th Legislative Session. Since the last session came to a close in June 2019, Texas has been hit by an unrestrained pandemic and a crippling economic crisis—and now the fallout from deadly blackouts. Under unprecedented circumstances, lawmakers are faced with a number of urgent challenges. The Texas Observer is following along every step of the way.
Texas Educators Worry Bill Limiting the Teaching of Current Events and Historic Racism Would “Whitewash History”
This article 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, the Tribune‘s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.
The Western’s Long Glorification of Oppression
“It just so happens we be Texicans,” says Mrs. Jorgensen, an older woman wearing her blond hair in a tight bun, to rough-and-tumble cowboy Ethan Edwards in the 1956 film The Searchers. Mrs. Jorgensen, played by Olive Carey, and Edwards, played by John Wayne, sit on a porch facing the settling dusk sky, alone in a landscape that is empty as far as the eye can see: a sweeping desert vista painted with bright orange Technicolor. Set in 1868, the film lays out a particular telling of Texas history, one in which the land isn’t a fine or good place yet. But, with the help of white settlers willing to sacrifice everything, it’s a place where civilization will take root. Nearly 90 years after the events depicted in the film, audiences would come to theaters and celebrate those sacrifices.
As Homeless Camping Drama Rages, Protestors Camp Outside Austin City Hall
Samantha “Sunshine” Conley was homeless before Austin rolled back its citywide camping ban in 2019. She was homeless for the brief interim that the repeal lasted, and—if nothing changes soon—she’ll still be homeless when the police begin arresting the city’s unhoused for camping again. Over the years, she’s pitched a tent all over the city, sometimes in the open and sometimes hiding in the woods. Now, she’s joined a different sort of camp: A protest occupation of some 50 tents lining the perimeter of Austin City Hall since early this month.
How the Alabama-Coushatta Use Fire to Save the Longleaf Pine
On a Wednesday in March, a cool, northerly breeze rustled through the pines. It was a good day for a fire. Gesse Bullock, a 16-year woodlands firefighter and burn boss for the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas, had prepared for weeks to run a controlled burn on 250 acres of forest just outside the town of Livingston, home to some of the last remaining longleaf pine trees in the state.
The Lege This Week: Behind Closed Doors
Welcome to the 87th Legislative Session. Since the last session came to a close in June 2019, Texas has been hit by an unrestrained pandemic and a crippling economic crisis—and now the fallout from deadly blackouts. Under unprecedented circumstances, lawmakers are faced with a number of urgent challenges. The Texas Observer is following along every step of the way.
Fighting Anti-Trans Legislation Takes a Toll on Texas Kids and Families
In 2015, after coming out as transgender at the start of 7th grade, 12-year-old Landon Richie traveled to Austin from Houston with his parents to speak to his representatives about the obstacles he faced as a trans kid. An onslaught of anti-LGBTQ bills had been filed, including ones that would allow businesses to refuse service to LGBTQ people on the basis of religion. “It’s a daunting thing to be so open and vulnerable with your story in front of people you’ve never met, and that are in positions of power,” says Richie, now 18.
Yet Again, Texas Lawmakers Face Crisis Conditions in Texas Prisons
Lovinah Igbani feels lucky for surviving six Texas summers confined to a prison cell without air conditioning. During a House Corrections Committee hearing in late April, Igbani described desperately trying to cool down by covering herself with a wet sheet, only to find it dry 30 minutes later. Sweat from a cellmate sleeping on the top bunk dripped onto Igbani. “I’ll never forget being in my cell, and the officers coming around to check the temperature and sometimes it was 125 degrees,” Igbani told lawmakers. She also described seeing women collapse from the heat and wheeled out on stretchers and never returned. “We saw them passing out, not having water, begging, waiting for officers to bring water around, and it just didn’t happen,” she said.
Texas Labor Organizer Montserrat Garibay Goes to Washington
Twenty-nine years ago, Montserrat Garibay left Mexico City for Texas with her mother and sister. They were undocumented. At a public middle school in Austin, Garibay learned English. Later, she and her sister founded one of the first organizations nationwide of so-called Dreamers, young immigrants pushing for U.S. citizenship. Garibay became a citizen herself in 2012. In Austin, she worked as a pre-K teacher, then as an official in the local teachers union. She then served as the first Latina secretary-treasurer of the Texas AFL-CIO, the state’s major union federation. This spring, she’s on her way to Washington, D.C., where she’ll work for Education Secretary Miguel Cardona as senior adviser for labor relations—a liaison position between unions and the Education Department that was scrapped during the Trump administration and resurrected this year under Joe Biden.
Texas Republicans Are Trying to Protect Trucking Companies from Lawsuits
In March 2019, an 18-wheeler pulled across five lanes of traffic on Washington Street in Amarillo to pick up a load of groceries for delivery. It was early, still dark. The lane-crossing was a routine but dangerous maneuver for drivers of Panhandle Transportation Group, a subsidiary of a national grocery wholesaler. As the truck was blocking the lanes, 28-year-old Laura Almanza’s car struck the 18-wheeler. She died at the scene of the crash. According to a lawsuit filed by the family in a Potter County district court, the driver of the truck had been in multiple crashes leading up to the accident. The crash devastated Almanza’s 11-year-old twin girls, says her father, Aldo Almanza. “It’s rough on them that they don’t have their mother,” he says. “I mean, who doesn’t need their mother?”
The Museum of Fine Arts Houston’s Botched COVID-19 Precautions
The Museum of Fine Arts Houston was one of the first major American art museums to reopen its doors to the public after a month long closure due to the pandemic. As the art world lavished praise on the institution for its bold plans, employees tell a very different story.
The Lege This Week: For Whom the Bill Tolls
Welcome to the 87th Legislative Session. Since the last session came to a close in June 2019, Texas has been hit by an unrestrained pandemic and a crippling economic crisis—and now the fallout from deadly blackouts. Under unprecedented circumstances, lawmakers are faced with a number of urgent challenges. The Texas Observer is following along every step of the way.
In a Rare Show of Accountability, a Texas Attorney Has Surrendered His License
Weldon Ralph Petty Jr., a chain-smoking bespectacled attorney, was a quiet fixture at the Midland County courthouse for two decades. By day, he often appeared before judges as an assistant district attorney in the 11-story brown brick courthouse in the heart of the oil boomtown. But by night, he worked as a paid legal assistant for those same jurists—sometimes advising them how to handle criminal cases he also was prosecuting.
Texas’ Largest Corporate Welfare Program Is Leaving Companies Flush and School Districts Broke
As the United States struggled to meet demands for fuel in the early 2000s, Motiva Enterprises decided to double the capacity of its oil refinery in the Gulf Coast city of Port Arthur on the Texas-Louisiana border. The refinery had been in Port Arthur for as long as Texas has pumped oil; in 1902, a year after the historic Spindletop discovery in nearby Beaumont led to the state’s first oil boom, the company that would later become Texaco built the refinery on 25 acres of land. Over the next century, the region became a central hub for the industry’s refineries and petrochemical plants.
Armed With Lessons From a Dallas Serial Killer, Families Push for Reforms in Texas Law
Shannon Gleason Dion often holds a gold necklace with a guardian angel medallion when she testifies before the Texas Legislature. Her mother, Doris Gleason, wore an identical amulet before she became the ninth of 18 known victims of a man accused of being one of Texas’ most prolific serial killers. But Doris Gleason’s medallion, fashioned by an Italian craftsman with a workshop on Florence’s Ponte Vecchio, is long gone: Her killer, police say, quickly disposed of it, and other victims’ jewelry by selling them to a storefront precious metal buyer.
Over the span of four years, federal investigators estimated millions of dollars stolen from Mexican taxpayers passed through one South Texas bank. When they followed the trail, it led to real estate, cars, and airplanes. But in 2018, those investigations suddenly stopped.
A version of this story ran in the May/June 2021 issue. Lea la historia en español aquí. Luis Carlos Castillo Cervantes’ nickname, “El Dragón,” makes him sound like a ruthless drug trafficker. His alias’ roots, however, are in the fairly mundane business he was known for in Mexico: He had the country’s exclusive license to lease a popular brand of road paving equipment. The machines, which scrape up and shred old asphalt as they pave roads, belch dark clouds of smoke. Hence, “El Dragón,” “the Dragon,” or “the King of Dragons,” as he’s also known.
The Lege This Week: Lurching Rightward
Welcome to the 87th Legislative Session. Since the last session came to a close in June 2019, Texas has been hit by an unrestrained pandemic and a crippling economic crisis—and now the fallout from deadly blackouts. Under unprecedented circumstances, lawmakers are faced with a number of urgent challenges. The Texas Observer is following along every step of the way.
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