August 2015 - The Texas Observer

Most Recent in Politics:

1Ted Cruz Won Because of Rural Texas, but Beto Made Small Gains for Democrats

2The Midterms Trigger a Seismic Shift in Harris County’s Courts

3Trump’s Sabotage of ACA Enrollment Is Particularly Dangerous in Texas

4Texas is a Purple State Now. The Proof is in Last Night’s Results.

5Loon Star: Blue Wave

6The Disconnect Between Ted Cruz’s Victory Speech and What Actually Happened in Texas

Most Recent in Environment:

1In East Texas, Chicken Plants are Polluting Rivers and Lakes with Oxygen-Sucking Contaminants

2Why Environmental Groups Are Salty on Corpus Christi’s Pricey Desalination Plan

3Despite Trump and Rick Perry’s Best Efforts, Another Coal Plant Eats the Dust in Texas

4Exxon Appears to Mislead State to Secure Tax Break

5After the Flood, the Political Storm?

6Government Asks Court for More Time To Fix Houston’s Decades-Long Sewage Problem

Most Recent in Border:

2Border Residents Protest Trump’s Wall in Hidalgo County

3AUDIO: Melissa del Bosque and Rachel Poser on Border Patrol’s Unchecked Mission Creep

4More Than 150 Families Separated at the Border Remain Locked Up in Texas

5U.S. and Mexican Officials Collaborating to Stop Asylum-Seekers, Attorneys Allege

6Checkpoint Nation

Most Recent in Criminal Justice:

1The Midterms Trigger a Seismic Shift in Harris County’s Courts

2Harris County Judges May Face a Reckoning Over Bail On Election Day

3Dallas County’s Cop-Convicting DA Is Among the Most Vulnerable Down-Ballot Republicans This Election

4Author Shane Bauer on How the Racist Roots of Private Prisons Still Permeate the System

5In Arlington, How Not to Respond to a Police Shooting

6Texas Prisons Lead the Nation in Long-Term Solitary Confinement

Most Recent in Education:

1In Violation of Texas Law, Most High Schools Aren’t Giving Students the Chance to Register to Vote

2Amid Record Youth Suicide Attempts, Texas Lags in Prevention Training for Teachers

3Cash-Strapped Rural Texas Schools Look to Universities for Help

4What’s in a Name? Texas SBOE Tentatively Approves ‘Ethnic Studies: Mexican American Studies’

5SMU Just Lost Its Independent Student Newspaper. Is Your College Next?

6Lawsuit: Texas Art Teacher Suspended Because She Told Students About Her Wife

Most Recent in Health Care:

1Trump’s Sabotage of ACA Enrollment Is Particularly Dangerous in Texas

2In the Rio Grande Valley, New Citizens Turn Out to Vote for the First Time

3We Support Pre-Existing Condition Protections, Say Republicans Who’ve Repeatedly Tried to Eliminate Them

4Meet Mikael Love, the OB-GYN Who Doesn’t Prescribe Birth Control

5Without Planned Parenthood, Almost Half the Providers in Texas’ Women’s Health Program Saw No Patients

6Texas Ends Contracts for Anti-Abortion Group Tapped to Provide Women’s Health Services

Most Recent in The Interview:

1Dolores Huerta is Still Knocking on Doors and Registering Voters at 88

2The Interview: Veronica Escobar is Poised to Make History

3Redistricting Guru Michael Li on Texas’ Gerrymandered Maps

4Senfronia Thompson Says #MeToo: Texas Lawmaker on 45 Years of Sexism, Racism at the Capitol

5Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo on Sanctuary Cities, Police Unions and Tommy Guns

6Meet Nueces County’s New DA, a Self-Professed ‘Mexican Biker Lawyer Covered in Tattoos’

Most Recent in Books:

1‘Beyoncé in Formation’ is a Texas Professor’s Love Letter to Queen B

2Author Shane Bauer on How the Racist Roots of Private Prisons Still Permeate the System

3Best of the 2018 Texas Book Festival: An Observer Staff Guide

4An Evocative New Memoir of Nature and Loss Never Quite Gets Off the Ground

5Listen to Survivors, Urges a New Book of Essays on Injustice

6Burn It All Down

Most Recent in Features:

1Raspa Revolution

2100 Ways to Draw a Line

3Homeward Bound

4The Sisterhood

5The Time-Traveler’s Guide to the Lower Pecos

Most Recent in Essay:

1Heads in the Mud

2The Day the Windows Shook

3Women’s Work

4I Grew Up on the Texas-Mexico Border, but Now I Barely Recognize It

5Somewhere It Hides a Well

6Drinking the Kool-Aid at the Garden of Eden

Most Recent in Eye on Texas:

1Eye on Texas: Fiesta Protesta

2Eye on Texas: Gentrification in East Austin

3Eye on Texas: Transgender Youth in Texas

4Eye On Texas: Hurricane Harvey

5Eye on Texas: Fantastical Taxidermy

6Eye on Texas: Runners Take on 170-Mile Race in Big Bend

Most Recent in Poetry:

1Houston Poet Analicia Sotelo’s Debut Smashes Latino Stereotypes

2Parallel Planes

4Poem: ‘Resistance’

5Poem: ‘Screenplay for a Homemade Movie’

6Poem: ‘To Be One with the All’

The Magazine: August 2015

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March 2015, Texas Observer cover

COVER STORY

The Fight for Fair Housing

by Gayle Reaves

Tue, Aug 4, 2015 |

Two lawsuits are dragging Texas—and maybe the whole country—closer to the goal of integrated neighborhoods.Read More

In this Issue

Political Intelligence

About Those Nondiscrimination Ordinances…

Ghosts of Truancy Laws Past

by Patrick Michels

State Rep. Giovanni Capriglione’s Support for Joe Straus Sparks Backlash

by Christopher Hooks

Immigration Agents Find Common Cause with Hate Groups

by Melissa del Bosque

News

The Truth About How Pregnant Women Are Treated in Texas County Jails

by Alexa Garcia-Ditta

State of Texas: The Future’s So Bright You Gotta Wear Shades

by Forrest Wilder

Strangest State: A Christian Burger Challenge and a Roadside Sign from Jesus

by Patrick Michels

CULTURE

Direct Quote:
Renaissance Woman

Unearthing a Lost World

by Asher Elbein

The Book Report: Loving Day Provides a Contemporary Look at Racial Identity

by Ashley Hope Perez

Poetry: Politics Aside

by Carie Juettner

The Great Mellowing

by Michael Agresta

In the Austin of Andrew Bujalski’s Results, Aimlessness is a Sin

by Josh Rosenblatt

Columns

State of the Media: Small-Town News

by Andrea Grimes

Greater State: The Racism of States’ Rights

by Bob Ray Sanders

Reintroducing Myself

by Forrest Wilder

State of Texas

State of Texas: The Future’s So Bright You Gotta Wear Shades

by Forrest Wilder

Loon Star State

Ben Sargent’s Loon Star State: Ken Paxton, Culture-Warrior-in-Chief

Eye on Texas

Eye on Texas: Bhutanese Refugees