December 2015 - The Texas Observer

Most Recent in Politics:

1The Anti-Vaccine Lobby’s Revenge Candidate is Running in North Dallas

2Republican Deanna Maria Metzger Hopes Hispanics Will Turn on Victoria Neave

3Election 2018: Races to Watch

4Why Democrats Could Lose in a Texas Congressional District That’s 70 Percent Latino

5#TXSen: Ted Cruz and Beto O’Rourke

6Cruz Stuck to the Script. Beto Stuck it to Cruz. Which Tactic Will Work?

Most Recent in Environment:

1Why Environmental Groups Are Salty on Corpus Christi’s Pricey Desalination Plan

2Despite Trump and Rick Perry’s Best Efforts, Another Coal Plant Eats the Dust in Texas

3Exxon Appears to Mislead State to Secure Tax Break

4After the Flood, the Political Storm?

5Government Asks Court for More Time To Fix Houston’s Decades-Long Sewage Problem

6Inside the Coordinated Attack on a North Texas Wind Farm

Most Recent in Border:

1U.S. and Mexican Officials Collaborating to Stop Asylum-Seekers, Attorneys Allege

2Checkpoint Nation

3The Border Patrol Serial Killer Is Part of a Long, Troubled History

4A San Antonio Art Show Quietly Foregrounds Migrants’ Stories

5Eye on Texas: Fiesta Protesta

6How Texas Cops Turn Mental Health Crises into Deportations

Most Recent in Criminal Justice:

1Texas Prisons Lead the Nation in Long-Term Solitary Confinement

2Stand By Your Man

3Cruz’s Reaction to ‘New Jim Crow’ Comments Ignores the Racist Roots of Mass Incarceration

4Civil Rights Groups are Changing Bail Practices in Texas, One City at a Time

5The Prosecution Rests

6How the Police Shooting of Botham Jean Disrupted Dallas’ Reputation for Reform

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:

1Without Planned Parenthood, Almost Half the Providers in Texas’ Women’s Health Program Saw No Patients

2Texas Ends Contracts for Anti-Abortion Group Tapped to Provide Women’s Health Services

3Texas Anti-Abortion Family Planning Group Promised to Serve 70,000 Women. It Served 3,300.

4Ken Paxton Wants to Eliminate the ACA’s Pre-Existing Condition Protections. How Would That Affect Texans?

5Judge Blocks Texas’ ‘Near Catastrophic’ Fetal Burial Law

6Reformers Hopeful the 2019 Legislature will Expand Texas’ Medical Marijuana Law

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:

1An Evocative New Memoir of Nature and Loss Never Quite Gets Off the Ground

2Listen to Survivors, Urges a New Book of Essays on Injustice

3Burn It All Down

4Heartland is an Honest, Poetic Meditation on Class in America

5Leaving the Gay Place Lights a Candle for the Patron Saint of Austin’s Counterculture

6‘Trinity’ Offers a Beautifully Fragmented Portrait of the Inventor of the Nuclear Bomb

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: December 2015

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March 2015, Texas Observer cover

COVER STORY

Homeland Insecurity

by Melissa del Bosque and Patrick Michels

Mon, Dec 7, 2015 |

What good are more boots on the ground if the men and women wearing them also work for the cartels? What benefit is an 18-foot wall when criminals can bribe their way through the gate?Read More

In this Issue

Political Intelligence

Dan Patrick Finds The One

by Christopher Hooks

WilCo Candidate Won’t Settle ‘Religious Test’ Lawsuit

Bonding Behind Bars

by Alexa Garcia-Ditta

News

State of Texas: What Obamacare Has Done for Texas

by Alexa Garcia-Ditta and Hannah McBride

Strangest State: Errant Emus, a Reading Dog and a Giant Chair

by Patrick Michels

CULTURE

Our Blue Period

Postcard from the Incredible Electric Oyster Reef

by Hannah McBride

Eye on Texas: Family Detention

by Ilana Panich-Linsman

Poem: Chris Yan’s ‘How I Love You In This House Today’

Dramas of Family and State Unfold in ‘All the Houses’

Columns

What California Can Teach Us About Texas

by Christopher Hooks

Greg Shames the Sheriff

by Andrea Grimes

State of Texas

State of Texas: What Obamacare Has Done for Texas

by Alexa Garcia-Ditta and Hannah McBride

Eye on Texas

Eye on Texas: Family Detention

by Ilana Panich-Linsman