Most Recent in Texas Politics:

1Amid a National Reckoning Over Racial Injustice, Royce West Seeks to Upset MJ Hegar—and the DSCC

2Doctors Reverse Course, Say Texas GOP Should Cancel In-Person Convention

3The Next Census Could Determine the Future of Port Arthur

4Texas Had a State Office That Could Have Investigated Racial Disparities in COVID-19 Cases. Lawmakers Defunded it Three Years Ago.

5The COVID-19 Disaster Has Made a Mess of Texas’ Open Government Rules

6‘I’m in Limbo Here’: Texans Are Met with an Overwhelmed and Antiquated State Unemployment System

Most Recent in Environment:

1How Texas Lawmakers and Industry Have Weakened Citizens’ Rights to Fight Pollution

2Texas Relaxed Environmental Enforcement During the Pandemic, State Data Show

3Editorial: Air Pollution Was Already Killing Us. Then Came the Coronavirus. Why Won’t the EPA Act?

4City Nature Challenge Can Help Us Find Resilience and Mindfulness at Home

5Lessons on the Long Game from Goose Island’s Whooping Cranes

6COVID-19 is Buying Time for Gulf Coast Towns Fighting Oil and Gas Projects

Most Recent in Border:

1Between Borders

3Along the Border, Witnesses of Smuggling Crimes Are Being Held in Detention, Despite Coronavirus Concerns

4In Migrants Camps Along the Texas-Mexico Border, Close Quarters and Closing Borders Raise Concerns

5U.S. Supreme Court Sides with Trump Administration on ‘Remain in Mexico’

6Following a Protest, ICE Moves Asylum-Seekers For the Second Time in Two Weeks

Most Recent in Criminal Justice:

1Reform vs. Rebuild: Defunding Law Enforcement in Texas

2As COVID-19 Cases Surge, Some Incarcerated People Remain Behind Bars After Making Bail

3A Major Obstacle to Police Reform: The Whiteness of Their Union Bosses

4COVID-19 Has Delayed Programs That Texas Prisoners Need to Get Out

5Why Is APD Responding to Mental Health Crises like Violent Crimes?

Most Recent in Education:

1The New Ensemble

2Raise a Glass to the Class of COVID-19

3Tough Decisions Ahead for School Leaders in Rural Texas

4‘Almost Akin to a Political Coup’: Houston Teachers Fight Back Against State Takeover of HISD

5The Creature of Martin Creek Lake Won’t Die

6The Cost of Carve-Outs

Most Recent in Health Care:

1Neglected in Care

2COVID-19 is Surging in Rural Texas, Threatening to Overwhelm Local Hospitals

3He Removed Labels That Said ‘Medical Use Prohibited,’ Then Tried to Sell Thousands of Masks to Officials Who Distribute to Hospitals

4Promising Results Reported for COVID-19 Patients Treated with Plasma Therapy in Texas

5The Traveling Midwife

6In Rural Texas, COVID-19 Contact Tracing is Largely Up to Local Officials, If It Happens at All

Most Recent in The Interview:

1Texas Observer Founding Editor Ronnie Dugger Reflects on 65 Years of Publication

2How Katharine Hayhoe Stays Hopeful as the Planet Warms

3Author William Lopez on How Immigration Raids Inflict Long-Lasting Trauma

4Why a Texas Gun Control Activist is Optimistic About the Chances for Reform

5American Health Care is Broken, Especially in Texas. What Can We Do About It?

6Thousands of Rape Kits in Texas Went Untested For Years. Lavinia Masters Is Ending That.

Most Recent in Books:

1In ‘Separated,’ One Journalist’s Close-up View of the Family Separation Crisis

2Lawrence Wright Embraces Pandemic Panic in ‘The End of October’

3Is it Time to Rethink Texas Suburbia?

4What’s a Bookstore for?

5In ‘All I Ever Wanted,’ Kathy Valentine Reclaims Her Narrative

6A New Book on the Sutherland Springs Shooting Explores Resilience, Forgiveness, and Grace

Most Recent in Features:

1Young Texans Keep Spelling Bees Going From Home

3San Antonio Embraces Mandaean Refugees

4The Ghosts of Jefferson

5Little Arthouse on the Prairie

6The Clothes that Make the Man

Most Recent in Essay:

1What the Black Lives Matter Protests Mean for East Texas

2Raise a Glass to the Class of COVID-19

3What’s a Bookstore for?

4Lessons on the Long Game from Goose Island’s Whooping Cranes

5In a Pandemic, Poor Defendants Could Pay With Their Lives

6Loneliness in the Age of Coronavirus

Most Recent in Eye on Texas:

1Eye on Texas: Border Tuner

2Eye on Texas: The Broken Wheel Ranch Project

3Eye on Texas: Spike Johnston

4Eye on Texas: Loren Elliott

5Eye on Texas: Charlotte Moore

6Eye on Texas: ‘My Joyful Dance’

Most Recent in Poetry:

1Author Saeed Jones on Empathy, the Power of Memoir, and Growing up Gay in North Texas

2Remembering W.S. Merwin, Honorary Texan

3Lost in Limbo in the Hays County Jail

4Houston Poet Analicia Sotelo’s Debut Smashes Latino Stereotypes

5Parallel Planes

G.W. Schulz

G.W. Schulz is a journalist of 15 years covering security and criminal justice issues and a recent graduate of the Master's program in journalism at the University of Texas-Austin.

The Eyes Above Texas

by Melissa del Bosque and G.W. Schulz | Wed, May 23, 2018 at 8:00 am CST

dps

News, News, The Issue

Tracking DPS Across the Sky: How We Did It

Wed, May 23, 2018 |

Tracking DPS Across the Sky: How We Did It To find out where the Texas Department of Public Safety flies its two surveillance aircraft, the Texas Observer and the Investigative Fund teamed up to analyze commercially available flight data that … Read More

Border

The Surge

Wed, May 23, 2018 |

How Texas’ decade-long border security operation has turned South Texas into one of the most heavily policed and surveilled places in the nation. Read More

Border

After Observer Story, Congressman Questions DEA’s Secretive Surveillance Partnership with Texas National Guard

“I want to know why a federal law enforcement agency is working with a military unit,” Congressman Joaquin Castro said in an interview.

Tue, Dec 5, 2017 |

Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro is asking the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to explain its role in the use of controversial cellphone spying devices on surveillance aircraft owned by the Texas National Guard, after the Observer first reported on the partnership … Read More

Border

Documents: Texas National Guard Installed Cellphone Spying Devices on Surveillance Planes

“There are really big privacy and constitutional due-process concerns with the use of this technology,” a state lawmaker said.

Mon, Nov 6, 2017 |

The Texas National Guard last year spent more than $373,000 to install controversial cellphone eavesdropping devices in secretive surveillance aircraft. Maryland-based Digital Receiver Technology Inc., or DRT, installed two of its DRT 1301C “portable receiver systems” in National Guard … Read More

Ridehailing, Austin

Culture, Featured Stories, Investigative Projects, The Issue

Fare Game

Lessons I learned from hustling for a living in the brave new ‘gig economy’.

Tue, Jan 17, 2017 |

What one ridehailing driver learned after Austin voters gave Uber and Lyft the boot. Tips are still lousy and passengers are still, well... Read More