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.

The 3-year-old has barely slept in six months. She wakes up in the middle of the night calling for her father. The mother rises, gives the girl milk to calm her down, and lies, saying her daddy is driving his truck farther away than ever, but he’s coming back soon.  The girl settles. A while […]

The post Ruptured Families: The U.S. Citizen Children Left Behind by Deportations appeared first on The Texas Observer.

The United States Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais did not surprise anyone who has been paying attention. The 6-3 ruling on April 29 effectively gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, allowing states to dismantle majority-minority districts and clearing the way for a wave of mid-decade redistricting already underway in Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, and […]

The post The Response We Really Need to the Supreme Court’s Gutting of the VRA appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Former Tarrant County GOP Chairman Bo French is running what can fairly be called a fossil fascist campaign in his bid to unseat incumbent Railroad Commissioner Jim Wright in the May 26 runoffs. A victory for French would secure him the GOP nomination for a six-year term atop the agency that oversees, and is generally […]

The post Bo French’s Blood-and-Oil Bid for Railroad Commissioner appeared first on The Texas Observer.

In their book released this January, Fair Game: Trans Athletes and the Future of Sports, authors Ellie Roscher and Anna Baeth offer a distressing encapsulation of the extent to which recent laws and policies have severely limited and even denied transgender athletes access to sports. “When we started this project in 2023, we interviewed twenty […]

The post Let Them Play appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Wearing worn black jeans and a professorial tweed jacket, Rich Levy hoisted his fist into the air in the spotlight at the Alley Theatre, doing what he’s done so well for decades: Welcoming another bestselling author to Houston Inprint’s Margarett Root Brown Reading Series—the Bayou City’s sprawling nine-month-long book festival.  Levy, both a ham and […]

The post Leaving His Mark On Houston’s Inprint appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Just a few months ago, the smart home device company Ring paid millions of dollars to run a seemingly innocuous Super Bowl advertisement about finding lost dogs. Using the app’s now-defunct “Search Party” function, the ad showed how users could share a picture of their lost dog with Ring, which would access customer camera feeds […]

The post Why My Texas Town Took Action Against Flock Cameras appeared first on The Texas Observer.

For decades, March 31 was marked with civil rights marches, school commemorations, and community celebrations honoring Cesar Chavez and the labor leader’s championing of better working conditions for farmworkers. In California and Texas, his birthday was a state holiday. But when The New York Times published its investigation earlier this year on how Chavez groomed […]

The post Reckoning with History: What Should Become of the Cesar Chavez National Monument? appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Ken Paxton wants you to join him on his high horse.  Since announcing his run for the U.S. Senate seat held by four-term incumbent Senator John Cornyn last April, Paxton has held two roles: Texas Attorney General and firebrand candidate. Using the official trappings of the powerful AG’s office, Paxton has spent the past year […]

The post Ken Paxton’s Glass House appeared first on The Texas Observer.

It’s 3 a.m. in Austin and Rodríguez is still awake, the glow of his phone illuminating his face in the darkness. He refreshes the page again. A painting job appears—$150 for a day’s work. His finger hovers over the screen for just a second. Too long. By the time he taps, it’s already gone. He’s […]

The post ‘What Kind of Life Is This?’: Five Desperate Cubans Weigh Their Odds in Texas appeared first on The Texas Observer.

On February 19, two days after the death of the reverend and civil rights icon Jesse Jackson, the Observer’s longtime contributing photographer Alan Pogue emailed me a shot of Jackson shaking hands with Molly Ivins, our onetime co-editor and unofficial patron saint. In the moments following the photo, Pogue said, Ivins injected some of her […]

The post Jesse Jackson Comes to Town appeared first on The Texas Observer.

At an office tucked in the corner of the Universal Shopping Center in Houston’s Alief area, among Vietnamese restaurants and immigration service offices, I met Democratic state Representative Hubert Vo to talk about the runoff election for House District 149. Instead of meeting at his district office a few streets away, we met at the […]

The post In Diverse Southwest Houston, Longtime Incumbent Hubert Vo Forced into Runoff Row appeared first on The Texas Observer.

The ironies that affix themselves to the life and literature of Larry McMurtry are best exemplified by the title of his autobiographical meditation on storytelling, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, wherein the eponymous German cultural critic, who warned of the dehumanizing dangers of mechanical reproduction, is imagined at the fast-food eatery beloved by Texans […]

The post The Aesthete from Archer appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Three years ago, at the outset of the 88th session of the Texas Legislature, Salman Bhojani placed his hand atop a 19th-century Quran in the state House chamber and became one of the first two Muslims ever sworn in to craft Texas laws. The then-42-year-old lawyer, who was raised in Pakistan and Canada before coming […]

The post ‘McCarthyism with a Texas Accent’ appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Nota del editor: Esta es la segunda parte de una serie de dos partes respaldada por el Pulitzer Center y la Beca de Periodismo de Investigación de la Ida B. Wells Society. Vea la primera parte aquí. (Read in English here). En una tarde templada y nublada de finales de marzo de 2025, una multitud […]

The post Brownsville bajo la influencia appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Editor’s Note: This is part two of a two-part series supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Ida B. Wells Society Investigative Reporting Fellowship. See part one here. (Leer en español aquí.) On a balmy, overcast afternoon in late March 2025, a crowd gathered outside Texas Southmost College’s auditorium in downtown Brownsville. With them came […]

The post The Gas Peddle appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Texas Observer reader,  Thus, it ends as it began as it begins as it ended. Or something like that. The state, and to some extent the nation, waits to see who prevails between John Cornyn and Ken Paxton in the May 26 runoffs. Trump could still endorse (and may indeed do so in the gap […]

The post Editor’s Letter: Introducing Our May/June 2026 Issue appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Last week the City of Kyle, a fast-growing Austin suburb, interrupted a string of recent victories won by local activists to thwart the further expansion of police surveillance technology across Central Texas.  On April 21, council members overwhelmingly voted 6-1 to authorize the Kyle Police Department to apply for another state grant—worth up to $381,200—to […]

The post As License Plate Readers Expand in Texas, Privacy Advocates Are Fighting Back  appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Eight years before their heated congressional runoff, Colin Allred and Julie Johnson both rode into political office on the blue wave of the 2018 midterms.  Allred, an NFL linebacker-turned-lawyer, ousted the powerful Dallas Republican Congressman Pete Sessions. Johnson, an attorney from Farmers Branch, toppled the divisive firebrand Matt Rinaldi en route to the Texas House. […]

The post What Does the Allred-Johnson Runoff Tell Us About Texas Dems?  appeared first on The Texas Observer.

In 1999, a Dallas County jury sentenced Charles Flores to death for capital murder after a burglary turned deadly in Farmers Branch. He had been placed at the scene of the crime by an eyewitness who identified him in court—but this was after an officer from the Farmers Branch Police Department hypnotized that witness during […]

The post Texas’ Top Criminal Court Has Stymied the State’s ‘Junk Science’ Law. Will SCOTUS Intervene? appeared first on The Texas Observer.

As President Donald Trump’s second administration rushes to wall off the Texas border, landowners along the Rio Grande are being pushed to let construction begin on their property before the federal government purchases or condemns it. Owners of real estate on the border are receiving letters from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) offering a […]

The post Trump’s New Tool to Speed Up Wall Construction May Be a Trap for Texas Landowners appeared first on The Texas Observer.