Editorial
Loon Star: The Paxton Defense
Instead of Building Family-Friendly Jails for Migrants, We Should Just Stop Jailing Them
The processing centers are jails by another name, where men, women and children are kept in large group cells with no access to beds, full meals or even adequate drinking water.
While immigration politics play out on the national stage, El Paso is once again becoming a testing ground for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. As part...Read More
Winning Isn’t Enough. The Next President Needs to be a Doer.
We think what it takes to shake up Washington is an outsider with new ideas, but what’s needed is an insider with strong convictions.
The next president will have a lot to do. Each and every executive agency, down to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will need a deep cleanin...Read More
The Borderlands are a Sacrifice Zone for Our Terrible Politics
In the last year, Democrats agreed to border-wall funding that will fence off much of the Rio Grande Valley from Brownsville to Falcon Lake.
Eugenio del Bosque Gomez/Flickr: Gage Skidmore Trump won’t get his beautiful Mexican-funded concrete wall from sea to sea. The president’s attempt to hold t...Read More
Loon Star: VOTER FRAUD ALERT
Ben Sargent on the voter fraud scandal.
Ben Sargent To see more political cartoons from Ben Sargent, visit our Loon Star State section, or find Observer political reporting here....Read More
As a Citizen Included on Texas’ Fake Voter Fraud List, I Call for the Resignation of Secretary of State David Whitley
Whitley, Ken Paxton and Greg Abbott’s efforts to intimidate me and thousands of other Texans are outrageous, irresponsible and disrespectful to American democracy.
I still remember the day of my citizenship exam. It was a cold Monday in November 2017, at the San Antonio office of U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services (USCI...Read More
New Border Wall Funding for Laredo Would Devastate Our Landscape, Ecology and Heritage
The Border Patrol is prioritizing a wall in Laredo’s urban center, despite the fact that illegal apprehensions are at historic lows.
On Monday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) planners will be in Laredo to begin assessing where to place a border wall within our South Texas community....Read More
Lost in Limbo in the Hays County Jail
For 45 painful, lonely days, I waited and waited to be convicted of a crime.
Mel Westfall for the Texas Observer The cold bit through the thin wool blanket and climbed up the short sleeves of my Women of the World Poetry Slam T-shirt as ...Read More
Loon Star: Bull Pulpit
Ben Sargent on the president's soapbox.
Ben Sargent To see more political cartoons from Ben Sargent, visit our Loon Star State section, or find Observer political reporting here....Read More
As One of the Eleven New Women in the Texas House, We Must Take Sexual Misconduct Seriously
The House has an opportunity to lead the way in creating an environment of accountability and respect in the Capitol and all workplaces across Texas.
On Tuesday, the Texas House will reconvene for our first session since the “Me Too” movement brought the pervasive and persistent sexual misconduct that so ...Read More