Water is one of many issues at the forefront of Texas politics this election cycle, no place more so than in Corpus Christi.  Texas’ sparkling city by the sea has received national attention in recent months over ever-worsening conditions for residents deluged by years of drought restrictions. Predictions of an impending water emergency have been […]

The post One of the Top Texas House Races Could Come Down to a Single Issue: Water appeared first on The Texas Observer.

This spring, a Permian Basin pastor got an unpleasant surprise: a geyser of more than 1.5 million gallons of toxic brine gushing up through the parking lot of the First Baptist Church in Grandfalls. It was a “zombie well”—what happens when the plug on one of the state’s hundreds of thousands of old wells fails, […]

The post 1.2 Million Oil Wells Are Buried Underneath Texas. Do You Live on Top of a Dangerous One? appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Editor’s Note: This story is the second part of a two-part series supported by the Law & Justice Journalism Project. See part one in the January/February issue. D’Mitri Davis, 36, met his younger brother Dominique Judge for the first time in 2024, when they were both in prison. The two were living at the French […]

The post Texas Is Trying to Punish Its Way Out of a Prison Overdose Crisis 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 Master of Puppets appeared first on The Texas Observer.

On May 26, former Tarrant County GOP Chairman Bo French eked out a 1-point victory over incumbent Jim Wright in the Republican runoff for a seat on the state’s poorly named oil and gas regulatory agency: the Railroad Commission (RRC). As the Texas Observer has reported, French, a 56-year-old oil-industry nepo baby, received over half […]

The post Who Stands Between Texas and a Fascist Railroad Commission? appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Inside a cluster of windowless tents, detainees describe losing their sense of time as they spend weeks and even months beneath the flicker of industrial lightbulbs.  Camp East Montana—the largest immigrant detention facility in the country—has quickly become a symbol of the second Trump administration’s aggressive approach to immigration enforcement. Located on the Fort Bliss […]

The post ICE Contractor for Controversial Camp East Montana Is Trailed by Fraud Allegations appeared first on The Texas Observer.

By the beginning of the 2024 electoral cycle, I’d spent enough time as a progressive-leaning observer of Texas politics to have developed a certain telltale armor. No one was going to convince me that Colin Allred was about to succeed where Beto O’Rourke had failed, or that Texas was prepared to reject Trump. And, while […]

The post The Year for Magical Thinking appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Just days after United States immigration agents detained Daniel Ramirez last month near his home in Brownsville, the 30-year-old Texas resident found himself shackled to a thinly cushioned seat on a deportation flight with other Mexican nationals. He listened to the pre-flight safety instructions with some skepticism.  “How are we going to put the life […]

The post Mexico’s Deportation Capital appeared first on The Texas Observer.

On his second Saturday as the 63rd mayor of Houston, former state Senator John Whitmire drove to Yale Street Grill, a no-frills diner in the Heights neighborhood, to rendezvous with Bill King, a former Houston Chronicle columnist and current fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute, who, in 2015, had very nearly become mayor himself.  Whitmire’s […]

The post The Last Mayor of Houston appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Editor’s Note: 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. Environmental regulators in Texas issued an emergency order on Tuesday evening suspending requirements for the drought-stricken city of Corpus Christi to release water from its reservoir system […]

The post Corpus Christi Withholds Water to Wetlands While Lifting Restrictions on Lawns appeared first on The Texas Observer.

It’s a Thursday evening, and Kam Franklin is already onstage, prepping for the show she’ll be doing an hour later at Shoeshine Charley’s Big Top Lounge, a dive bar and music venue in Midtown Houston.  With Ed “Blacknintendo” Prevost on the keys, she performs two covers—Joy Oladokun’s “If You Got a Problem” and R.E.M.’s “Everybody […]

The post Kam Franklin Goes Solo appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Last Sunday at a venue in the Austin suburb of Kyle, Merideth Keller delivered a speech to local attendees that took square aim at a man she once voted for back in 2014: Governor Greg Abbott. Over the course of her 12 years on the school board of Hays Consolidated Independent School District, a position […]

The post Will a Coalition of ‘MAGA Moms’ Rally Behind Gina Hinojosa’s Bid for Texas Governor? appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Texas Observer reader, As I write this, Texas families are getting ready to send kids back to school in districts where campuses have been vanishing. As Josephine Lee recently reported, in the first half of this year alone, boards of trustees voted to shutter more than 50 schools around the state. The reasons for this […]

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

Deep in the Rio Grande Valley, Brenda Dumas and her family are adjusting to a new normal.  One family member, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal from the federal government, has a work permit. He has to leave from his home in Olmito, a tiny town off Highway 69 between Harlingen and Brownsville, early […]

The post ‘Living like Vampires’: ICE Surge Fractures Daily Life in Deep South Texas appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Last Wednesday morning, I welcomed students back into my high school library. Perhaps they were trying to escape the sweltering August heat, but regardless of why they walked in, the first-day-of-school energy in Abilene was contagious. I was sleep deprived from the to-do list running through my head the previous evening, but I felt energized […]

The post Come and Take Them, Dan Patrick appeared first on The Texas Observer.

The first time I heard of Alejandra Driskell was in 2014, when the Texas Attorney General’s Office filed a lawsuit in Bexar County accusing her of practicing immigration law without a license. The assistant attorney general who’d filed the lawsuit against Driskell, her then-husband, and others was kind enough to include in the public record […]

The post Immigrants Keep Saying She’s Ripping Them Off. Why Won’t Texas Stop Her? appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Texas is in a state of fiscal crisis. Or, at least many of its school districts and municipalities are. All across Texas, from the biggest urban ISDs and metros to the smallest towns and exurban counties, local governmental bodies are feeling the increasingly painful fiscal pinch—and resorting to rigid austerity measures.  The state’s 10 largest […]

The post A Texas Austerity Crisis Is Playing Out City by City, School by School appeared first on The Texas Observer.

To submit a poem, please send an email with the poem attached to poetry@texasobserver.org. We’re looking for previously unpublished works of no more than 30 lines by Texas poets who have not been published by the Observer in the last two years. Pay is $100 on publication. Poems are selected by Poetry Editor Lupe Mendez, […]

The post Like Zal appeared first on The Texas Observer.

The post Strangest State: Skulls, Shells, Smugglers, and Sheriffs appeared first on The Texas Observer.

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.