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 […]

The post The Eyes of Chihuahua appeared first on The Texas Observer.

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.

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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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

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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 […]

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