On Wednesday evening, the Texas Senate approved an extreme bill that, pending the governor’s signature, will empower citizens to sue anyone who “manufactures, distributes, mails, transports, delivers, prescribes, or provides” abortion pills to Texans for at least $100,000 in damages. While Texas already broadly bans abortion, with House Bill 7 Republicans aim to halt the […]

The post Texas Legislature Passes ‘Bounty Hunter’ Ban on Abortion Pills appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Every time Texas Democrats have a bad election (read: every two years), blame reasonably finds its way to a person whose title suggests quite a lot of culpability—the chair of something called the Texas Democratic Party.  In reality, this person has little control over what most critics are likely focused on: the selection of individual […]

The post 🎶It’s His Party and He’ll…🎶 appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Editor’s Note: This photo essay is published in partnership with The Texas Tribune. I walked into an apartment slipping and stumbling on mud so thick I couldn’t see the floor underneath. The table in the dining room was set, decorated with charger plates, flowers, and napkins nicely folded. The mud and debris covered everything. On […]

The post Where the Water Reached appeared first on The Texas Observer.

After two weeks spent outside state lines—marked by a surge of national media attention and, then, a struggle to keep their fight in the limelight—Texas House Democrats ended their quorum break as abruptly as a second special session began. Within a few days, the Republicans’ scheme to engineer a rare mid-decade redistricting of the state’s […]

The post New Texas Maps Start Game of Political Musical Chairs appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Texas Observer reader, Gall. We live in a state whose top leaders have entirely, vastly, monumentally too much goddamn gall.  Just five days after the deadliest Texas flood in 104 years, Governor Greg Abbott announced a special legislative session not narrowly focused on the disaster but rather covering a Christmas list of far-right pet political […]

The post Editor’s Letter: Introducing Our September/October 2025 Issue appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Since it was signed into law on July 4, West Texas Republican Congressman Jodey Arrington has been broadly praised by allies for his stewardship of the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson called Arrington, who chairs the powerful House Budget Committee, “one of the most effective and consequential members […]

The post West Texas Congressman’s ‘Big Beautiful’ Cuts Could Harm Rural Hospitals in His District appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Rural Texas wears a friendly facade. You know everyone, and everyone treats each other so kindly, but, if you’re Black, you just ignore the stares when you walk into the local steakhouse for fish fry night. I was 7 or 8 when I realized I would always be treated differently than my white friends. It […]

The post Racism Wrapped in Rural Warmth appeared first on The Texas Observer.

At least a dozen Democratic members of Congress have been denied entry to federal immigration facilities this year when they showed up to conduct oversight as President Donald Trump has ramped up his mass deportation efforts—and now they are suing the Trump administration. The lawsuit was filed in the federal district court for the District […]

The post Dems in Congress Are Being Denied Access to ICE Facilities. Now They’re Suing. appeared first on The Texas Observer.

I insist on survival every day I stay in Texas. Let me explain. A friend came over today & boom: joy shone from our fingertips. While the moon transitioned from waxing to waning, my bro got a top surgery letter. We get by with bitterness & rage. Home is no refuge from pain. Home is […]

The post Texas, No Exodus appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Jesús Escalona Mújicas, a 48-year-old Venezuelan asylum-seeker, says he was en route to work at a construction site on the morning of April 9 when a group of immigration agents and state and federal police officers stopped his car in a rural area near Bryan—an event that led to him being arrested, publicly accused of […]

The post A Venezuelan Was Detained as a “Documented” Gang Member by ICE, Which Refused to Provide Proof appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Nearly a year after Cy-Fair Independent School District (CFISD) omitted more than a dozen chapters from our textbooks, the discourse continues over the future of the school district.  As a student in Texas, I’ve lived through the drastic changes that have come over the last few years. From removing librarians on campuses to requiring teachers […]

The post The Future of Public Education is on the Ballot in Cy-Fair ISD and Beyond appeared first on The Texas Observer.

In his East Texas hometown, James Beathard was known as an unconventional thinker—an outspoken peacenik who marched in the high school band and sometimes played chess during lunch breaks. His student body was unapologetically pro-2nd Amendment and, in those pre-mass shooting days, the parking lot in Rusk held plenty of pickups with gun racks full […]

The post The Innocent and the Executed: James Beathard’s Long-Forgotten Story appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Thirteen years ago, a young mayor of San Antonio gave the keynote speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention in North Carolina. At that point, the largely unknown Julián Castro became an instantaneous political phenom and a seemingly inevitable rising party star.  The press and politicos dubbed him the “Hispanic Obama,” a rather reductive moniker […]

The post Is a Strong Latino Candidate Texas Democrats’ Only Hope? appeared first on The Texas Observer.

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

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

Governor Greg Abbott’s first special session is coming to an abrupt end after House Democrats’ fled the state to protest the Texas GOP’s cynical exploitation of the deadly Fourth of July Hill Country floods to enact redistricting that would, at President Donald Trump’s orders, rig the maps to deliver Republicans up to five new seats […]

The post Texas GOP Say Flood Relief is Priority. Here’s the Climate Policy They Won’t Pass. appeared first on The Texas Observer.

In 1998, the San Antonio Police Department (SAPD) began requiring officers to fill out reports any time they had to use force, a big step toward tracking when and why police resorted to strong-arming residents of the state’s then-third largest city. Members of the public, including reporters, could already access incident reports and offense reports—which […]

The post Texas Lawmakers Push ‘Massive Secrecy Grab’ to Shield Police Files appeared first on The Texas Observer.

When the one-two punch of Senate Bill 8—a 2021 Texas law that barred nearly all abortion care —and the U.S. Supreme Court’s subsequent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade befell Texans, Blanca Murillo felt like she was on the brink of hopelessness. Murillo had spent her entire career in the reproductive rights movement in Texas, […]

The post Abortion Funds See Dwindling Donations as Demand and Cost Rise appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Claudia de Leon describes her son Diego’s kindergarten class at Houston’s Helms Elementary School as “magical.” His teacher taught the students to examine each feature of their faces and then sketch them one by one to create life-like self-portraits. Another teacher played songs on the guitar to aid the kids’ learning. Diego’s next two years […]

The post Will a STAAR-Crossed Legislature Finally Enact Real Testing Reform?  appeared first on The Texas Observer.

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The post Strangest State: Toilet Seats, Cowboys, and a Sea of Dimes appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Even lifelong Texans may not have heard of my hometown of Lindale. With just under 5,000 people while I lived there, Lindale sits roughly 90 miles east of Dallas and bears many hallmarks of a small Texas town: more than three churches per square mile, roads dominated by trucks, and packed football stadiums on Friday […]

The post I Came from Rural Texas to Harvard’s MD-PhD program. Now, Trump Defunded that Program. appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Just across the Texas border, in cities like Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo, criminal networks are strengthening their hold on drug routes despite increased enforcement efforts by the United States and Mexico.  Rather than rely on individual smugglers crossing unmanned sections of the border, cartels specializing in fentanyl and other synthetic drugs use legal ports of […]

The post U.S.-Mexico Border Militarization Fails to Stop Modern Drug Smuggling Industry appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Manning the main switchboard for the Central Texas Veterans Health Care System requires skills akin to a symphony conductor. Beginning in 2006, Marlon Askew, who spent 15 years in the armed forces and saw combat in Desert Storm, worked as the system’s central teleoperator and then supervisor, connecting thousands of veterans who call each day […]

The post Veterans Who Work in Texas VA Health System: ‘The Dam’s Gonna Break’ appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Late Sunday afternoon, dozens of Texas House Democrats boarded a charter flight at the Austin airport and absconded to the Land of Lincoln in an attempt to halt, if not stop altogether, Republicans’ heavy-handed scheme to redraw the state’s congressional map to increase the GOP advantage by as many as five seats.  Backed by Illinois […]

The post Can Anything Halt the Gerrymandering Arms Race? appeared first on The Texas Observer.

“Everything collapses in the ripping sound of great manifestations,” wrote Suzanne Césaire in 1945. The line purportedly described an immense hurricane in the Caribbean Sea, but knowing Césaire—a formidable theorist, postcolonial and feminist activist, and surrealist from Martinique—“great manifestations” also referred to seismic shifts in history and decolonization. A critic who wrote with the revolutionary […]

The post Recovering Suzanne Césaire’s Legacy appeared first on The Texas Observer.

There are many words you could use to describe Nicole Tompkins, the disabled protagonist of “Shaky,” Audible’s recent 9-part comedy audio series: passionate, wild, talented, messy. But she’s also kind of an asshole.  That’s not a role that disabled people have often been able to play in fiction—neither pure nor villainous, just a regular messed-up […]

The post ‘Shaky’ Audio Series Is a Messy, Real Look at Disabled Life appeared first on The Texas Observer.

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

The post Loon Star State: Render unto Trump… appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Nearly 1.5 million Texans now live in jurisdictions where sheriffs or police chiefs have agreed to train some of their officers to act as immigration agents in the streets of their communities. These agreements currently cover around 30 Texas law enforcement agencies including: the sheriff’s departments in the populous counties of Jefferson and Smith, home […]

The post ICE ‘Task Force’ Agreements Expand to Galveston, Beaumont appeared first on The Texas Observer.

The opening pages of José Skinner’s new novel The Search Committee seem to promise readers a merciless academic satire set in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. The first character introduced is a cringey assistant professor, William Quigley, originally from Minnesota and presently decked out in what he calls “his best tierra caliente outfit”—linen pants, guayabera, Panama […]

The post ‘The Search Committee’ Is a Subtle Rebuke of the Border Literary Canon appeared first on The Texas Observer.

M ichael Van Deelen’s home office, on the second floor of his neat two-story house in a north Harris County suburb, sprawls across two studies, each equipped with desks and computers. One contains a library chock full of books, including Black’s Law Dictionary and hefty volumes of state and federal statutes. A sunken room, a […]

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