Most Recent in Texas Politics:

1Rural Voters Stepped on the Gas for Trump Across the Texas Oil Patch

2Local Organizers Explain the Republican Surge in South Texas

3A House Divided

4As Democrats Divebomb, the Texas Legislature Remains as White and Male as Ever

5Texas Democrats Thought 2020 Would Be a Banner Year. Instead, It Was a Catastrophe.

6Millennials and Gen Zers are Breaking Voter Turnout Records in Texas

Most Recent in Environment:

1Texas Has Elected A Climate Change Denier to the Railroad Commission

2Illegal Air Pollution is Skyrocketing in Texas, But State Regulators are Ignoring Complaints

3Why is Michael Bloomberg Giving $2.6 Million to Elect a Railroad Commissioner in Texas?

4One Texas-Sized Loophole is Letting Lone Star Polluters Off the Hook

5Houston, Let People Walk

6Claiming Major Superfund ‘Success,’ Trump EPA Focused on Completing Cleanups, Not Climate Planning

Most Recent in Border:

1Local Organizers Explain the Republican Surge in South Texas

25,000 People Contract COVID-19 While In ICE Custody, Including This Father Of 5

3Mexico Turns To Television And Radio For Remote Learning

4New Engineering Report Finds Privately Built Border Wall Will Fail

5El ducto del coronavirus

6The Coronavirus Pipeline

Most Recent in Criminal Justice:

1Fort Bend County Will Soon Have Its First Black Sheriff Since Reconstruction

2How Texas Jails Avoid Investigations of Inmate Deaths

3I Left My Friends in Prison in a Pandemic. Here’s What It’s Like For Them.

4After the Deaths of Two Soldiers at Fort Hood, the Navajo Nation Wants Answers

5Trump’s Favorite Texas Sheriff Faces Re-Election Amid a Spike in Deaths at His Jail

6Researcher Howard Henderson on Reimagining Policing in the U.S.

Most Recent in Education:

1Efforts to Save What’s Left of Mary Allen Seminary Reveal The Challenges of Preserving Black Placemaking in Texas

2Texas Has the Widest Digital Divide in the Nation. What Does that Mean for the School Year?

3The New Ensemble

4Raise a Glass to the Class of COVID-19

5Tough Decisions Ahead for School Leaders in Rural Texas

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

Most Recent in Health Care:

1For Families That Lost Loved Ones or Jobs to the Pandemic, Thanksgiving Carries an Extra Weight This Year

2How We Got Here

3A West Texas Nursing Home Sent Its COVID-Positive Residents Elsewhere. Now Two of Them Are Dead.

4The Forgotten Children of Texas

5I Left My Friends in Prison in a Pandemic. Here’s What It’s Like For Them.

6Achieving Vision Zero in Houston Isn’t Going To Happen One Intersection at a Time

Most Recent in The Interview:

1Researcher Howard Henderson on Reimagining Policing in the U.S.

2Texas Observer Founding Editor Ronnie Dugger Reflects on 65 Years of Publication

3How Katharine Hayhoe Stays Hopeful as the Planet Warms

4Author William Lopez on How Immigration Raids Inflict Long-Lasting Trauma

5Why a Texas Gun Control Activist is Optimistic About the Chances for Reform

6American Health Care is Broken, Especially in Texas. What Can We Do About It?

Most Recent in Books:

1Remembering a Jewish Upbringing in Meyerland, Texas

2How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

3A New Short-Story Collection Imagines a Texas Town’s Secession

4Improbable, Prophetic Houston

5Announcing the 2020 Insider Prize Winners

6‘A Saint From Texas’ Gets the Lone Star State Right

Most Recent in Features:

1How to Die in Texas

2Young Texans Keep Spelling Bees Going From Home

4San Antonio Embraces Mandaean Refugees

5The Ghosts of Jefferson

6Little Arthouse on the Prairie

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: The Essential Women of Austin

2Eye on Texas: The Black Yearbook

3Eye on Texas: Border Tuner

4Eye on Texas: The Broken Wheel Ranch Project

5Eye on Texas: Spike Johnston

6Eye on Texas: Loren Elliott

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

Stephen Paulsen

Stephen Paulsen is a freelance writer and journalist based in Houston, Texas. He likes to write about pretty much everything, especially cannabis, urban planning and the court system. His reporting has appeared in Houston Press, Mother Jones, Texas Monthly and beyond.

Texas’ New Medical Marijuana Law Doesn’t Cover Veterans Suffering from PTSD

by Stephen Paulsen | Tue, Jul 2, 2019 at 12:41 pm CST

Criminal Justice

Citing the Bible, Federal Lawsuit Challenges Houston’s Ban on Feeding the Homeless

A local ordinance that prohibits providing free food to more than five people is an infringement on free speech and religious liberties, the lawsuit alleges.

Mon, May 6, 2019 |

On a recent evening in April, a few dozen people experiencing homelessness lined up outside Central Library in downtown Houston for a free — and illegal — meal of vegetarian chili, macaroni, rice and fruit salad. Volunteers with Food Not … Read More

ice, houston, immigration

Criminal Justice

A Catch-22 in the Crimmigration System in Harris County

In Houston, a lack of transparency and poor communication between immigration and criminal courts has created a civil rights nightmare and a clog in the system.

Tue, May 8, 2018 |

Abysmal record-keeping and an increasingly secretive immigration force have created a catch-22 for undocumented defendants accused of low-level crimes in Houston. After being arrested and meeting bail conditions set by Harris County magistrates, these defendants are often transferred to federal … Read More