Most Recent in Politics:

1Will Texas Keep Fighting Foster Care Reform?

2Book Review: Scapegoating the Media Ignores Other Major Problems in American Politics

3How Julián Castro’s ‘Decade of Downtown’ Reshaped San Antonio

4‘A Mockery of Public Trust’: Bexar Sheriff Cleans House, Angers Deputies’ Union

5Loon Star: Trump University, Department of Mendacity

6Shelter Director Ruben Garcia on How Struggling Nonprofits Carry the Load of the Migrant ‘Crisis’

Most Recent in Environment:

1TCEQ Report Could Pave the Way for Chemical Plants to Emit More Hazardous Air Pollutants

2Eye on Texas: Spike Johnston

3Mosquitoes Are Bad. So Are the Chemicals Some Texas Cities Are Using to Kill Them.

4Without Transmission Lines, Renewable Energy Still has a Long Way to Go — Literally

5Nurdle by Nurdle, Citizens Took on A Billion-Dollar Plastic Company — and Won

6Nearly 500,000 Texans Live in Communities with Contaminated Groundwater. Lawmakers Aren’t Doing Much About It.

Most Recent in Border:

1From Crystal City to Carrizo Springs, When Will We Stop Locking Up Kids?

2Loon Star: The Huddled Masses

3In Matamoros, Asylum-Seekers Wait, and Wait and Wait

4Migrant Children are Our Children

5Forgotten in the Fields

6Doctor Details ‘Insane,’ ‘Demoralizing’ Conditions for Kids at Texas Migrant Detention Center

Most Recent in Criminal Justice:

1The High Cost of Hays County’s Decision to Keep Prosecuting Low-Level Marijuana Cases

2A Poor Defense

3Texas’ New Medical Marijuana Law Doesn’t Cover Veterans Suffering from PTSD

4Death of Dog Trainer Highlights Strenuous Heat and Working Conditions at Texas Prisons

5Doctor Details ‘Insane,’ ‘Demoralizing’ Conditions for Kids at Texas Migrant Detention Center

6‘A Mockery of Public Trust’: Bexar Sheriff Cleans House, Angers Deputies’ Union

Most Recent in Education:

1The Cost of Carve-Outs

2Texas Legislature Improves Suicide Prevention in Schools, but Makes Little Progress for Adults

3Texas House Considers Free College For Students Experiencing Homelessness

4‘The Wolf is in the Henhouse’

5‘We’re Not Stupid’: Texas Teachers Take on Dan Patrick and the Legislature over Dismal Education Funding

6In Violation of Texas Law, Most High Schools Aren’t Giving Students the Chance to Register to Vote

Most Recent in Health Care:

1Meet the ‘Abortion Abolitionists’ Shaping Policy in the Texas GOP

2Texas’ New Medical Marijuana Law Doesn’t Cover Veterans Suffering from PTSD

3Yet Another Rural Texas Hospital is in Jeopardy After Anti-Tax Activists Kill Funding Proposal

4Texas Legislature Improves Suicide Prevention in Schools, but Makes Little Progress for Adults

5Inside Texas’ Failed Experiment to Replace Planned Parenthood with an Anti-Abortion Group

Most Recent in The Interview:

1Without Transmission Lines, Renewable Energy Still has a Long Way to Go — Literally

3The Interview: Mass Resistance

4Meet Jim Allison, Texas’ Newest Nobel Laureate (and Three-Time Cancer Survivor)

5Dolores Huerta is Still Knocking on Doors and Registering Voters at 88

6The Interview: Veronica Escobar is Poised to Make History

Most Recent in Books:

1Book Review: Scapegoating the Media Ignores Other Major Problems in American Politics

2Without Transmission Lines, Renewable Energy Still has a Long Way to Go — Literally

4Announcing the Ninth Annual Texas Observer Short Story Contest

5‘Human Matter’ Dredges up the Dark History of the Guatemalan Civil War

6With Sprawl and Serial Killers, Houston Noir Packs a Mean Punch

Most Recent in Features:

1The Clothes that Make the Man

2Washington Crossing the Rio Grande

3Ghosts of the Baker Hotel

4At Home in the World

5Plight at the Museum

6The Texas Observer’s Best Features of 2018

Most Recent in Essay:

1Lost in Limbo in the Hays County Jail

2The Trouble with Yoga

3Heads in the Mud

4The Day the Windows Shook

5Women’s Work

6I Grew Up on the Texas-Mexico Border, but Now I Barely Recognize It

Most Recent in Eye on Texas:

1Eye on Texas: Spike Johnston

2Eye on Texas: Loren Elliott

3Eye on Texas: Charlotte Moore

4Eye on Texas: ‘My Joyful Dance’

5Eye on Texas: Ghosts of the City

6Eye on Texas: Fiesta Protesta

Most Recent in Poetry:

1Remembering W.S. Merwin, Honorary Texan

2Lost in Limbo in the Hays County Jail

3Houston Poet Analicia Sotelo’s Debut Smashes Latino Stereotypes

4Parallel Planes

6Poem: ‘Resistance’

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.

By Stephen Paulsen:

Stories

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

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