August 2016 - 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 2016

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March 2015, Texas Observer cover

COVER STORY

‘Just Like Every Other Kid’

by Texas Observer Staff

Tue, Aug 2, 2016 |

Meet five Texas families who say they're tired of Dan Patrick, Ken Paxton and other Texas lawmakers targeting their transgender children for harassment.Read More

In this Issue

Political Intelligence

Medical Abortion Becomes More Accessible in Texas (Again)

by Alexa Garcia-Ditta

With Natural Gas Facilities Coming to Brownsville, Shrimpin’ Ain’t Easy

by Naveena Sadasivam

News

The Last Days of Tent City

by Dick J. Reavis

Strangest State: Prayer Drive-Thru, Hillary Hate, and Bong or Cocktail Glass?

by Patrick Michels

CULTURE

by Patrick Michels

In ‘Houston on the Move,’ the Bayou City Wakes Up

by Nancy Nusser

by Michael Agresta

Poem: ‘Whitewashing’

by Gerard Robledo

Columns

Money for Nothing: D.C. Dems View Texas as an ATM

by Christopher Hooks

Abbott’s Back Alley Abortion Politics are a Texas Tradition

by Andrea Grimes

State of Texas

State of Texas: Abortion Access, by the Numbers

by Naveena Sadasivam

Eye on Texas

Eye on Texas: San Antonio Charro Ranch

by Darren Abate