In the early hours of July 24, someone placed a call to Austin’s 911 dispatch. The male caller told the operator he was looking out of his window and saw a teenager who may have had a gun. He wasn’t certain it was a weapon, but the person was “messing with his waistband,” the caller […]

The post ‘Suicide by Cop’: How a Poorly Defined Term Shifts Accountability for Lost Lives appeared first on The Texas Observer.

I’m proud to announce that the Observer has hired Mary Tuma, a freelance contributor since 2020, as a staff writer covering reproductive rights and politics starting late next month. Mary has been a leading reporter on repro rights in Texas for more than a decade, including during her years on staff at the Austin Chronicle. […]

The post Observer Masthead Additions and a Farewell appeared first on The Texas Observer.

In July 2024, the city-owned electric utility in Georgetown recorded two disconnections for nonpayment for every 10,000 residential accounts it served. In Garland, outside Dallas, the city-owned utility recorded 250, data shows.  Same state, same month. Neither utility was covered by the state rule that restricts cutting off power during a heat advisory. The Public […]

The post What the Data Says About Electricity Shutoffs During Sweltering Texas Summers appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Hope Ngumezi never imagined he would be a single father.  When he met his late wife Porsha at Lamar University in Beaumont, Ngumezi was instantly enamored of her energy, drive, and compassion. Both Ngumezi and Porsha came from large families and were eager to start their own. After getting married in their late 20s, they […]

The post Texas Maternal Mortality Committee’s Next Report Will Skip Post-‘Roe’ Deaths. Lawmakers Suspect Political Influence. appeared first on The Texas Observer.

The People of La Junta for Preservation, a nonprofit founded in 2024 that works to preserve Indigenous sites, and two Indigenous worshippers of Lipan Apache lineage are suing the federal government to stop the highly contentious border barrier construction and surveying activities in Big Bend, the Texas Observer has learned.  The plaintiffs argue that ongoing […]

The post Indigenous Group Sues to Stop Big Bend Border Wall on Religious Grounds appeared first on The Texas Observer.

The State of Texas’s latest takeovers of four school districts, including Fort Worth, Beaumont, Lake Worth, and Connally Independent School Districts (ISDs) have already had a direct cost to local taxpayers. All four districts were forced to negotiate settlements with superintendents ousted by the Texas Education Agency (TEA), in packages totalling more than $1 million.  […]

The post The Takeover Tab: State-Imposed Superintendent Buyouts Cost School Districts Big Bucks appeared first on The Texas Observer.

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here. IMPERIAL, Texas—Many residents of this small town drive long distances to buy bottled water instead of opening up the tap. Pecos County Fresh Water, a county-operated utility, provides drinking […]

The post Permian Basin Community Seeks Fix for Radium in Its Drinking Water appeared first on The Texas Observer.

The true scale of prospective projects that want to plug into the Texas grid is hard to hold in your head. As of August 3, the Texas governor’s office put the figure at more than 474 gigawatts of requests to connect, more than five times the grid’s record peak demand, and said roughly 90 percent […]

The post Who Pays for the High-Powered Grid that Data Centers Need? appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Since August 1, 2016—50 years to the day after the UT Tower shooting—it’s been legal to carry concealed firearms into most public university spaces in Texas, including classrooms.  When the law went into effect despite opposition from students, administrators, and faculty, University of Texas at Austin students reacted by brandishing dildos in a performance-art-style, nonviolent […]

The post ‘Cocks Not Glocks’ at 10 appeared first on The Texas Observer.

I made $7.25 an hour at my first job back in 2015, peddling candles and soaps and other good-smelling baubles at a French boutique near Rice University. It was a good job, as far as first jobs go; I was a junior in high school, and I did my homework behind the counter. I knew […]

The post An Ode to Austin’s Unsung Proletariat appeared first on The Texas Observer.

In 2021, tired of what she said was years of persecution in Latin American countries after being forced out of her home country of Cuba, Maria Luisa Arango Presibal and her husband Nilo Gibert Arencibia decided to come to Florida. They passed through Central America and Mexico, then crossed the border near Del Rio, where […]

The post Cuba’s Government Is in Trump’s Crosshairs, but Political Dissidents Find No Refuge Here appeared first on The Texas Observer.

When Aubrie was a freshman in the Houston Independent School District (ISD), she was assigned to an Algebra I class. On the first day of school, her teacher recognized her talent and moved her into pre-AP Algebra I, where she thrived. Two years later, at the beginning of the last school year, Aubrie was excited […]

The post The ‘Houston Miracle’ Shell Game appeared first on The Texas Observer.

The sexual assault of children. The catcalling and income discrimination your sister faces. The struggles your granddad has connecting emotionally. These are topics explored in gender and sexuality studies classes.  But following Florida, universities in the Lone Star State, including the University of North Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, University of Texas, and now the […]

The post University of Houston Nixed Its Gender and Sexuality Classes. That Won’t Stop Texas’ Crusade Against Higher Ed  appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Between May 2025 and March of this year, I photographed Robinson Gonzalez, a Venezuelan professional skateboarder in his mid-twenties. Three years before I started this work, Gonzalez crossed the Darién Gap, having left his family behind. He was later granted entry into the United States as an asylum-seeker. Back in 2018, during anti-government protests in […]

The post American Skater appeared first on The Texas Observer.

As thousands of people from all over the United States came to the Laguna Madre area this past weekend to watch SpaceX’s latest launch in South Texas, many who live in the nearest towns—Laguna Vista, Port Isabel, Laguna Heights, and South Padre Island—stayed indoors.   Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents had been arresting several people […]

The post ICE Never Stopped Chasing People in Cars in the Rio Grande Valley appeared first on The Texas Observer.

In May, Christian Menefee won the Democratic primary for Texas’ historically Black 18th Congressional District after Governor Greg Abbott and Republican legislators redrew the state’s congressional map, forcing him to compete against Congressman Al Green, who represented Texas’ 9th Congressional District—another historically Black seat that was redrawn into a majority-white conservative seat—for more than 20 […]

The post In Congress, Christian Menefee Says He’s Fighting for ‘the Least, the Last, and the Lost’ appeared first on The Texas Observer.

The usual worry about Texas’ data center boom is that the state is flying partly blind. It does not yet know how much electricity these projects will actually need, how much water they will take, or whether the tax breaks offered in the name of growth will return enough to justify their cost.  That sounds, […]

The post With Texas’ Data Center Boom, Uncertainty Is the Business Plan appeared first on The Texas Observer.

The morning after a still-unnamed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent shot and killed 52-year-old Houston resident Lorenzo Salgado Araujo on Tuesday, July 7, investigators from the Harris County District Attorney’s Office were on the scene. They hadn’t received an invitation from the federal agency, which was slightly unusual, but this wasn’t an oversight. It […]

The post Houston Is Testing Whether Trump’s ICE Is Above Texas Law appeared first on The Texas Observer.

When Michelle Wright Rhame was asked to be a foster mother, she saw it as a divine calling. She had always wanted to be a mom, but she couldn’t have children of her own—a heartbreak that contributed to the demise of her marriage.  She got her opportunity through Hope Rising, a Brenham-based child placement agency […]

The post The Fall of Hope Rising appeared first on The Texas Observer.

The sun is low over Nuevo Laredo as David Patricio and three friends start unloading gravel and mountain bikes for their evening ride along the Rio Grande, but the weather is still in the 90s and the humidity stifling. In the early 2000s, the City of Laredo began buying up land to create a series […]

The post Cycling the Rio Grande as Trump’s Wall Looms appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Bobby Pulido descended a staircase bedecked in flowers to face the quinceañara in her shimmering blue ball gown. Her magnificent hoop skirt swayed as the Tejano star-turned-South Texas Democratic congressional candidate launched into a rendition of “Hermoso Cariño.” It was Pulido’s second quince of four that night, part of a marathon run of birthdays, weddings, […]

The post Can a Tejano Star Restore Dems’ Power in South Texas?  appeared first on The Texas Observer.

My parents lived through Jim Crow. Around our dinner table, they told stories that sounded impossible to me as a child. They talked about not being allowed to eat in certain restaurants, or even to try on clothes or shoes before buying them. My father often spoke about growing up in a sharecropping family. At […]

The post ‘Where Do We Go from Here’: Forward or Backward? appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Editor’s Note: The following is excerpted with permission from How to Close a Camp: Dispatches from the Fight Against Immigrant Detention, out from Haymarket Books this July. The Prison-Immigration Knot By the late 1980s, thanks to over a decade of laws criminalizing immigrants and expanding the camp system, prison and immigration detention industries were operating […]

The post Excerpt: How to Close a Camp appeared first on The Texas Observer.

In 2022, longtime Tarrant County Judge R. Glen Whitley, a consummate moderate Republican, opted to retire after a nearly 30-year reign.  Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price, another moderate GOPer, was his most likely successor. But the county’s conservative movement rallied instead behind Tim O’Hare, a right-wing activist backed by West Texas oil billionaires Tim Dunn […]

The post The Tides of Tarrant appeared first on The Texas Observer.

When you were 8, you could control the wind. The trees would listen, waving their long branches at you. The leaves would applaud as you made your way down Marcus Street. That was when the birds called your name and the squirrels followed you. Back then, imagining was easy. Secret hidden treehouse sanctuaries that rivaled […]

The post A Love Letter to the Black Woodswomen of Deep East Texas appeared first on The Texas Observer.

In late June, the Texas State Board of Education set controversial new curriculum requirements for the state’s public schools, which educate approximately 5.5 million students. Alongside further curtailing of cultural, ethnic, and geographic diversity, the new requirements mandate the teaching of Bible passages in Texas public schools. Though widely discussed in various media outlets, coverage […]

The post The Real Lesson Behind Texas’ New Bible Curriculum Requirements appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Amanda Eyre Ward is an Austin writer and author of 13 novels—three of which are set in Texas and the rest scattered all over the world. Her latest book, Arrivals and Departures, out June 16, delves deep into the dark world of international romance scammers and how they masquerade as lovers by employing deepfake videos, […]

The post Inside the Dark World of Romance Scammers appeared first on The Texas Observer.

We have a plan for the day you are born and the day you die.  We can make you breathe—or at least try to—when your lungs fail and your blood can no longer clot. At the Texas Medical Center (TMC) in central Houston, we repair spinal defects before birth and replace hearts after a mother’s […]

The post A Birth Plan for the Dying appeared first on The Texas Observer.

In 2015, a 25-year-old flooring installer named Roendy Granillo collapsed and died of heat stroke on a construction job in Melissa, a small town northeast of Dallas, after his family said he was denied a water break. They carried his story to Dallas City Hall, and the council passed an ordinance on a 10-5 vote, […]

The post The Hard Ceiling Over Texas Cities’ Climate Plans appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Paul Skalnik was a con artist, passing bad checks, role-playing as a successful businessman, and racking up a series of sometimes overlapping marriages. Over the years, he bilked numerous people out of their savings with hollow promises and half-cocked schemes, which often ended with him fleeing town.  That in itself would make him a compelling […]

The post A Jailhouse Snitch and the System that Made Him appeared first on The Texas Observer.