In 1863, Betty Simmons was about 20 years old, and her 3-year-old son, Charlie, would soon be made to work in the field.  In her 1938 interview with the Federal Writers’ Project, Simmons said: “[They take them young].” (These interviews were rendered by government workers in an excessively heavy dialect—in this case, for example, “Dey […]

The post Betty Simmons, a Texan in Slavery’s Last Years appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Early this year, a delegation of officials from the City of Laredo traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with federal representatives about the Trump administration’s plans to completely wall off the Texans’ border community from the Rio Grande. The Laredoans returned using language that dismayed opponents of the president’s beloved border barrier. When City Manager […]

The post In Laredo’s Last Stand Against Trump’s Border Wall, Are City Leaders Making a Deal with the Devil? appeared first on The Texas Observer.

As thousands of visitors from around the country pour into Dallas for the opening matches of the 2026 World Cup, a group of faith leaders and immigrant rights organizers are addressing the elephant on the field–the city’s relationship with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The coalition, made up of members from El Movimiento DFW, Clergy […]

The post As World Cup Unfolds, Immigrant Rights Organizers Seek a Reckoning over Dallas’ Relationship with ICE appeared first on The Texas Observer.

After spending four decades in exile south of the Rio Grande, the New World screwworm has finally wriggled its way back into Texas. The return of the parasitic worm has been splashed across national, state, and local headlines for the past couple weeks with equal measures of trepidation and disgust, prompting alarm and pledges of […]

The post Texas’ Fight Against the Screwworm Will Be Nasty and Brutish appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Ernesto Gonzales liked to hold court in the morning from a corner booth of El Rancho in Harlingen, a busy local eatery festooned with multicolored papel picado party banners—one of several spots he frequented after rising at dawn and reading the Bible. Between slurps of coffee—he drank it like water—and bites of breakfast taco, he […]

The post The Troubling Disappearance of ‘El Gallito’ appeared first on The Texas Observer.

President Donald Trump’s poorly planned war with Iran has paralyzed global shipping routes and spiked the average price of gas by about $1 per gallon nationwide. For three months, Americans have struggled to rationalize both the conflict and the painful prices at the pump, as many work several jobs and side hustles to survive the […]

The post Why Are Texas Dems Pushing a Gas Tax Holiday? appeared first on The Texas Observer.

The drought-stricken City of Corpus Christi is withholding how much water a controversial cryptocurrency mine is siphoning away from surrounding residents. The Texas Observer reported on the facility’s water burden last year in a series examining the cryptomine and artificial intelligence data center boom unfolding across the state. From May to August last year, the […]

The post Last Year, a Corpus Christi Cryptomine Guzzled Over 11 Million Gallons. Now Its Water Usage Is Being Kept Secret. appeared first on The Texas Observer.

To best trace the thread of Carlyn Ray’s ascent through the Texas glassblowing scene, you must first consider the lowly silkworm.  At the ripe young age of 10, Ray raised the caterpillars in cardboard boxes in her Dallas home, fattening them up on mulberry leaves until they spun cocoons and began to pupate. It was […]

The post Abilene, Through the Looking Glass appeared first on The Texas Observer.

This March marked one year since veteran Dallas journalist Robert Wilonsky returned to the Dallas Morning News as a city columnist. He didn’t have to come back. Journalism itself has been taking a pummeling of late. Our current administration regularly vilifies news outlets that drop stories that make our Cheeto-in-Chief look bad, however accurate or […]

The post The Great Wilonsky Returns to the Newsroom appeared first on The Texas Observer.

In the Trump administration’s war on immigrants—adults and children alike—South Texas is a nexus. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have arrested 33,583 people in the San Antonio and Harlingen areas of responsibility between Trump’s first day in office and March 10 of this year, according to the agency’s data. In Minneapolis, three ICE agents […]

The post A Texas Immigration Lawyer Breaks Down Family Detention, Habeas Corpus, and Senate Bill 4 appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Caldwell County Judge Hoppy Haden, a stout 63-year-old who sports a cowboy hat and a white handlebar mustache, is hoppin’ mad about the artificial intelligence-fueled data center boom in his backyard.  Like so many other rural Republican county officials across the state, Haden is staring down several energy- and water-sucking data center projects that he […]

The post Data Center Boom Exposes GOP Faultlines over Local Control appeared first on The Texas Observer.

On May 24, 2022, a Border Patrol Tactical Unit fatally shot 18-year-old Salvador Ramos inside a classroom in Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, 77 minutes after Ramos had entered the building to commit the third-deadliest school shooting in American history. Ramos, a former student at Robb, had purchased two high-powered rifles and hundreds of rounds […]

The post How a Gun-Rights Extremist Could Soon Represent Uvalde in Congress appeared first on The Texas Observer.

The post Strangest State: Balloons, Bodies, Rockets, and Rodeo appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Rock band logos stickered the walls and railings in the dim light of the Paper Tiger, the grungy San Antonio venue with a 1,000-person capacity that was packed wall to wall for U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico last Friday evening.  It was night three of The People vs. Ken Paxton tour, as the Austin Democrat […]

The post Can James Talarico Do Better than Beto?  appeared first on The Texas Observer.

What connects a mosque shooting in San Diego, California to a Muslim community development in Plano, Texas? The answer is Islamophobia. While many mainstream news outlets have yet to call the May 18, 2026, shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego a hate crime, there is evidence that it is, including weapons covered in […]

The post From San Diego, California to Plano, Texas, Islamophobia Has Consequences  appeared first on The Texas Observer.

“One of the few openly Christian politicians in the United States who acts like a Christian.”  That’s how conservative New York Times columnist David French recently characterized James Talarico and the Texas Democrat’s “faith-forward” campaign for the U.S. Senate. It should come as no surprise that Talarico walks the Christian walk: He’s currently on leave […]

The post ‘Fake’ Christian? Or Faithful? appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Editor’s Note: This article is co-published with ProPublica as part of an initiative to report on state and federal efforts to restrict local control. No state has taken over as many local public school districts as Texas. Just since 2020, the state education agency has installed its own hand-picked leaders in eight districts. Four of […]

The post Will New School District Takeovers Follow the Model—and ‘Chaos’—of Houston ISD? appeared first on The Texas Observer.

For four years, I’d driven school buses and 18-wheelers for the Lamar Consolidated Independent School District, one of the Houston area’s largest and fastest-growing districts. I transported more than 100 students safely to and from school each day. Before every route, I walked the vehicle—checking tires, brakes, lights, and mirrors. Parents trusted me with what […]

The post Texas Is Cracking Down on Essential Immigrant Drivers appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Texas is heading into summer 2026 with a power grid under pressure from two directions. Data centers and large computing facilities are adding enormous, continuous electricity demand. At the same time, summer nights are getting warmer, reducing the overnight cooling the grid once relied on, keeping residential air conditioners running long after dark. Regulators are […]

The post Texas Nights Are Getting Hotter, and the Power Grid Isn’t Ready appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Like everyone else, the César Chávez revelations shocked us, maybe more so than others since we had worked with him for almost two decades.  The stunning news did not just deliver a gut-punch betrayal but also immediate anxiety about the damage that the exposé of his dark side would do to the movement, to all […]

The post ‘La Causa’ Continues in South Texas appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Larry Callies ambles through the Black Cowboy Museum in downtown Rosenberg, southwest of Houston, sporting his straw Stetson and a pair of worn work boots. The founder and CEO of the museum, he’s spinning stories in his compelling, though perennially strained, voice. He leads visitors young and old—from Texas and across the globe—through this 900-square-foot […]

The post A Black Cowboy Museum, Rebooted appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Heading into what is expected to be one of the most favorable cycles for Democrats in Texas in nearly a decade, the statewide Republican ticket retains two key anchors, Governor Greg Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, both of whom faced no real primary opposition this year.  But the Republican primary electorate had plenty of […]

The post Did Texas Republicans’ Restive Runoffs Imperil Their November Ballot?  appeared first on The Texas Observer.

At long last, Texas Democrats have their statewide slate. On Tuesday, the easy victories of Austin state Representative Vikki Goodwin for the lieutenant governor nomination and Dallas state Senator Nathan Johnson for attorney general completed the team that will attempt to take advantage in November of what seems to be the most promising year for […]

The post They’re Mostly Anglo. They’re Largely from Austin. And They Just Might Have a Shot. appeared first on The Texas Observer.

It’s only fitting that the last campaign video Congressman Al Green posted to Facebook—far and away the most-used social media platform among senior citizens—featured “Let’s Stay Together,” the greatest hit by the other Al Green, the last of the great soul singers, about a smooth talker imploring his lover to stay by his side, “whether […]

The post Christian Menefee’s Win Foreshadows Fights to Come Across the South appeared first on The Texas Observer.

And so Colin Allred’s three-year journey through the wilderness of ambition ends more or less where it began. In May 2023, the NFL player-turned-civil rights attorney announced he was leaving behind a deep-blue U.S. House seat composed largely of Dallas County residents. On Tuesday night, he effectively won a deep-blue U.S. House district composed entirely […]

The post The Eternal Recurrence of Colin Allred appeared first on The Texas Observer.

The Democratic establishment successfully thwarted Maureen Galindo and her increasingly unhinged and conspiratorial tirades against American Zionists—which were roundly denounced as antisemitic—in the runoff for the newly redrawn 35th Congressional District in South Texas. Johnny Garcia, an official with the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office, easily beat Galindo by around 20 points Tuesday night.  Galindo, a […]

The post Blue Dog Dem Fends Off Maureen Galindo in Wake of Anti-Zionist Tirades appeared first on The Texas Observer.

The highly dramatic—if not as thoroughly entertaining as advertised—U.S. Senate Republican runoff between Ken Paxton and John Cornyn ended about as soon as counties started reporting their early vote totals Tuesday night, with the attorney general challenger leading by around 20 points—effectively skunking the incumbent.  This, of course, was little surprise by the time it […]

The post Judgement Day Comes for John Cornyn appeared first on The Texas Observer.

To see more political cartoons from Ben Sargent, visit our Loon Star State section. Find Observer political reporting here.

The post Loon Star State: Shredded appeared first on The Texas Observer.

For as long as his hair has been silver (going back to his 20s), John Cornyn has been winning elections.  Among those victories seemed, perhaps, to be the 74-year-old U.S. senator’s surprising first-place finish in the March primary—over expected frontrunner Attorney General Ken Paxton—which set up next week’s decisive runoff. On primary night, Cornyn called […]

The post Not with a Bang but with a ‘Truth’ appeared first on The Texas Observer.

A close and contentious Democratic runoff is coming to a head this week in South Texas, pitting  young progressive Julio Salinas, a former legislative staffer who hails from Mission, against moderate Victor “Seby” Haddad, a local banker and McAllen city commissioner. The MAGA wave that washed through the Rio Grande Valley in 2024 has both […]

The post In South Texas House Runoff, It’s a Progressive Insurgent Versus the Establishment appeared first on The Texas Observer.