Most Recent in Texas Politics:

1Voting Begins in a Month. Here’s What Is at Stake in Texas.

2Joaquin Castro Says He’ll Champion Progressive Foreign Policy

3Historic Runoff Turnout Sets Stage for Texas Democrats in 2020’s ‘Biggest Battleground’

4Amid a National Reckoning Over Racial Injustice, Royce West Seeks to Upset MJ Hegar—and the DSCC

5Doctors Reverse Course, Say Texas GOP Should Cancel In-Person Convention

6The Next Census Could Determine the Future of Port Arthur

Most Recent in Environment:

1Running from the Storm

2A Coral Reef Sanctuary in the Gulf of Mexico Could Triple in Size

3A Battle is Brewing Over a Trump EPA Official’s Confidential Emails

4Marsha Jackson Is Trying to Move Shingle Mountain

5A New Study Finds a Link Between Flaring and an Increase in Premature Births

6Texas Solar Hits a Turning Point

Most Recent in Border:

15,000 People Contract COVID-19 While In ICE Custody, Including This Father Of 5

2Mexico Turns To Television And Radio For Remote Learning

3New Engineering Report Finds Privately Built Border Wall Will Fail

4El ducto del coronavirus

5The Coronavirus Pipeline

6El Paso Remembered

Most Recent in Criminal Justice:

1When Asthma in Jail Becomes a Death Sentence

2In Harris County, A Group is Working to Expand Voting Access in Jails

3Will The Reckoning Over Racist Names Include These Prisons?

4How Long Can You Hide a Dead Body in a Prison Cell?

5Reform vs. Rebuild: Defunding Law Enforcement in Texas

6As COVID-19 Cases Surge, Some Incarcerated People Remain Behind Bars After Making Bail

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:

1Conception Deception

2Portraits of the Pandemic

3El ducto del coronavirus

4The Coronavirus Pipeline

5One of Texas’ Biggest Nursing Home Operators Beset By COVID-19 Cases and Deaths

6Telehealth Could be Great, if Texans Had Access to It

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:

1How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

2A New Short-Story Collection Imagines a Texas Town’s Secession

3Improbable, Prophetic Houston

4Announcing the 2020 Insider Prize Winners

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

6‘After the Last Border’ Reveals the Human Cost of Trump’s Draconian Immigration Policies

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

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