On another night, Alienated Majesty Books near the University of Texas at Austin campus might host a conversation with a novelist or a poetry open mic. But on this Saturday, the shelves and tables holding new releases have been pushed to the side, opening up the large polished cement floor. A drum kit sits in […]

The post A Night at the Screamo Bookstore appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Editor’s Note: This story is a collaboration between Puente News Collaborative and the Texas Observer. As the healthcare workers approach the small collection of makeshift shelters along the train tracks that cut through the northern Mexico industrial hub of Ciudad Juárez, the people who gather in this place to use drugs prepare for their arrival. […]

The post Border Barriers to Harm Reduction appeared first on The Texas Observer.

On September 24, a gunman shot at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office in Dallas, killing two immigrants, Norlan Guzman-Fuentes and Miguel Ángel García-Hernández, and seriously injuring another, Jose Andres Bordones-Molina, who were being detained at the site.  The federal government was quick to blame the attack on the “far left” and the […]

The post In Dallas, Organizers Mourn the Immigrant Victims of Recent ICE Shooting appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Editor’s Note: This story was produced by Agência Pública (Brazil). You can read the original version here. It was late afternoon on June 17 in Newport, Vermont, when six Brazilian carpenters left the house where they were working on a renovation. On the horizon, eight patrol cars appeared at high speed and suddenly stopped near […]

The post A Brazilian Carpenter’s 51-Day Detention Journey from Vermont to Texas appeared first on The Texas Observer.

On a sunny mid-July evening, dozens packed into a community center in Memorial, one of west Houston’s cushier neighborhoods, to meet state Representative James Talarico, the Austin Democrat whose reedy shoulders presently bear the weight of many Texas liberals’ dreams. Before breaking quorum in August with his fellow House Democrats, the 36-year-old former teacher was […]

The post Inside the Rift Between Texas Dems and a Soros-Backed PAC appeared first on The Texas Observer.

What are set to be the final days of Robert Roberson’s life will be busy. He has lots of people to see before his October 16 execution date.  He’ll meet with his pro bono lawyer Gretchen Sween and others on his defense team; facing a ticking clock, his lawyers will be scrambling to save his […]

The post ‘I Got a Lot of People Believing in Me’: Robert Roberson Stares Down Death, Again appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Editor’s Note: This is part 2 of a series on Medicaid Estate Recovery Program collections in Texas. For part 1, see our July/August 2024 issue. In April 2024, Anne-Marie Boyd got a call from her brother, who sounded frantic after opening a letter from Health Management Systems, Inc. (HMS), an Irving company that serves as […]

The post Burden of Proof appeared first on The Texas Observer.

When I saw Marwan Marouf’s face plastered on my Instagram feed, under bright red letters announcing he’d been arrested and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the first thing I remembered was his distinctive, gentle voice. For nearly three decades, Brother Marwan, as we know him, has been a constant presence in our community. […]

The post Trump’s ICE Has Arrested a Pillar of the Dallas Muslim Community. I Grew Up Hearing His Calls for Compassion. appeared first on The Texas Observer.

On September 22, Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 8, Texas’ new “bathroom bill,” into law, marking another escalation in the Republican war on the rights of trans people. What may be less evident on first glance is how the law also represents an attack on public institutions—and on the legal system writ large.  Andrea […]

The post How the Bathroom Bill Weaponizes Transphobia Against Public Institutions appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Early last month, Raunaq Alam, a 32-year-old Bangladeshi American from the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Hurst, was on the verge of spending a decade behind bars for the alleged hate crime of spray-painting the words “Fuck Israel” on the side of a non-denominational Christian church in nearby Euless.  His trial on the trumped-up charge was […]

The post Inside Tarrant County’s Dogged Prosecution of a Pro-Palestine Activist appeared first on The Texas Observer.

BLD PWR (think: build power) Day 2025 was a hectic one. Starting late in the afternoon, many African Americans flocked to the Ion District, a technology park in Midtown Houston affiliated with Rice University, to take part in this pre-Juneteenth gathering. Vendors of color were both inside and outside, selling everything from clothing to comic […]

The post ‘Make Resistance Sexy’ appeared first on The Texas Observer.

In response to last spring’s student protests against Israel’s war on Gaza that roiled college campuses across the country, including in Texas, the state’s Republican Legislature passed a law this spring placing certain conditions on “expressive activities” on campus. University governing boards were given more power to restrict when and how protests could occur, including […]

The post Party Discipline appeared first on The Texas Observer.

When a land forgets its legends,Sees but falsehoods in the past,When a nation views its siresIn the light of fools and liars—’Tis a sign of its decline,And its glories cannot last.Branches that but blight their rootsYield no sap for lasting fruit. During the spring of 2023, members of the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA) gathered […]

The post How Scholars Lost the Culture War over Texas History appeared first on The Texas Observer.

The post Strangest State: Cute Robots, Killer Bugs, and Cloud Conspiracies appeared first on The Texas Observer.

For $8 an hour, B.O., a Kenyan immigrant who asked the Texas Observer to use only her initials for fear of workplace retaliation, once cared for six elderly patients in a Houston group home for as many as 90 hours a week—without any overtime pay. Every day from 6 p.m. to 7 a.m., she fed, […]

The post Texas Domestic Workers Face Trump Attack on Minimum Wage appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Earlier this month, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) announced that 12 Austin-area schools with an “F” rating could be closed. For many families, this isn’t just a policy decision—it’s a direct threat to thousands of children’s educational stability and their communities’ future.  The affected schools, all part of Austin Independent School District (AISD) received three […]

The post Austin’s Children Deserve More than a Test Score appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Every day that classes are held at the University of Texas at Austin, a procession of students enter Homer Rainey Hall, which houses the Department of French and Italian. How many of them know who Rainey was? He is certainly not a saint in the pantheon of Texas history—a diverse bunch that includes, depending on […]

The post Texas History Offers Warnings amid Rash of Faculty Firings appeared first on The Texas Observer.

On the night of March 31, María, a 40-year-old Venezuelan mother of four who asked that her last name not be published for fear of government retaliation, was home alone in her two-bedroom Austin apartment. Around 9 p.m., her adult son and daughter, along with her teenage son, had left for a birthday party at […]

The post Officials Said They Busted a Tren de Aragua Party. Attendees Beg to Differ. appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Recently released state school ratings reveal that five Texas school districts are at risk of a takeover by the Texas Education Agency (TEA)—the most since a 2017 state law expanded the state’s takeover powers. The new ratings cover the 2022-23 school year, released in April following legal delays, and the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years, […]

The post A Wave of School District Takeovers Could Be Coming. Some Past Interventions Ended with More Failing Schools. appeared first on The Texas Observer.

This article was first co-published by The Texas Newsroom and ProPublica. A group of state and national media organizations, including The Texas Newsroom, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, are arguing in court that records in Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s divorce case should be made available to the public. The organizations filed their plea to intervene with the Collin County district court […]

The post News Orgs Fight to Unseal Records in the Paxtons’ Divorce Case appeared first on The Texas Observer.

In the coming years, Texas is set to receive billions of dollars to address the ongoing opioid crisis that has taken the lives of more than 10,000 Texans between 2020 and 2023, per state data. Already, the state has allocated over $100 million in funds to cities and counties. Some local governments have begun to […]

The post How Texas Localities Have (and Haven’t) Spent Settlement Funds to Fight the Opioid Crisis  appeared first on The Texas Observer.

The following is excerpted from I Am Not Your Enemy: A Memoir, out September 16 from Spiegel & Grau. It is reprinted with permission of the publisher, © 2025. It began like any other day. I woke around 4:30 a.m., took Mickey outside for a few minutes, and, no later than 5:30, drove to work […]

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The year Charles Sullivan finally started the treatment that helped manage his agonizing digestive disorder was also the year he was arrested for the crime that would send him to prison for life. Now, 31 years and several surgeries later, he’s still struggling to find relief within the medical system that operates behind Texas prison […]

The post The Health Penalty appeared first on The Texas Observer.

On a late-April weekend, I went down to Eagle Pass to look at Operation Lone Star (OLS), Governor Greg Abbott’s multibillion-dollar piece of political theater that has targeted immigrants at the Texas-Mexico border. I went with a group that I’m a member of called Never Again Action, a national Jewish organization opposing the deportation machine. […]

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Editor’s Note: The following is excerpted from the first chapter of Life in the Time of Hurricanes by Rod Davis, out this month from TCU Press. It is republished here with permission. “And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be […]

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Editor’s Note: The following is adapted from the introduction to The Texas Civil Rights Project: How We Built a Social Justice Movement by Jim Harrington, who in 1990 founded the groundbreaking nonprofit from which the book takes its title and led the group for the next 25 years. © 2025, published with permission from the […]

The post The Arc Doesn’t Bend Itself appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Editor’s Note: Join us Wednesday evening for a joint event sponsored by Mother Jones, the Texas Observer, and Capital B. “The Lingering Storm” will revisit one of the nation’s deadliest storms and how to prepare for the future—in downtown Houston or online via motherjones.com/stream. Twenty years ago, when the nation’s most deadly modern hurricane approached […]

The post Twenty Years Later, Katrina Still Haunts the Gulf from New Orleans to Houston appeared first on The Texas Observer.

For three years, Luis Mendoza has periodically gone to the same construction site in downtown Ciudad Juárez to check on the progress of a 20-story tower that will serve as the home base of a vast state surveillance project.  On one visit in early May, Mendoza, a 37-year-old activist with the Juárez group El Frente […]

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Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared at Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here. By the time emergency medical providers reached McBride Operating in Waskom, Texas, a small town near the Louisiana border, it was too late. Pedro Julian Garcia, […]

The post Embattled Texas Oilfield Waste Company Fined After Worker’s Death appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Efforts to limit police transparency by shielding some complaints from public view have failed multiple times during the 2025 legislative season—most recently in the form of House Bill 15, which died this week—fueled ultimately by proponents’ unwillingness to alter the sweeping language of the proposed bills in any substantial way.  Republican state Senator Phil King […]

The post Police ‘Secrecy Grab’ Dies After Senate Refuses Uvalde Compromise appeared first on The Texas Observer.