January 2015 - The Texas Observer

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Most Recent in Politics:

1The System Works for Attorney General Ken Paxton. Again.

2Is the Texas House Violating the Americans with Disabilities Act by Refusing to Caption Legislative Hearings?

3The Cost of Carve-Outs

4Yet Another Rural Texas Hospital is in Jeopardy After Anti-Tax Activists Kill Funding Proposal

5Meet Maria Espinoza, the Texan Elevating ‘Angel Moms’ to the National Stage

6Democrats Finally Play Hardball on the Border Wall

Most Recent in Environment:

1Nearly 500,000 Texans Live in Communities with Contaminated Groundwater. Lawmakers Aren’t Doing Much About It.

2‘All it Took was 25 Years’: Legislature Ponies Up Cash for Underfunded Texas Parks

3Carbon Sequestration Isn’t The Long-Term Solution. Is it a Short-Term One?

4Report: Oil and Gas Producers May Be Pushing the Permian Basin Past Federal Air Quality Limits

5The EPA Told Texas to Crack Down on Dangerous Air Emissions in 2015. The State Never Did, and Now It Won’t Have to.

6The Flood Next Time

Most Recent in Border:

1In the Rio Grande Valley, a Fight to Bring Back NPR

2Meet Maria Espinoza, the Texan Elevating ‘Angel Moms’ to the National Stage

3Democrats Finally Play Hardball on the Border Wall

4Washington Crossing the Rio Grande

5With Proposed Tariffs on Mexico, Trump Attacks Texas

6When Crossing Over Becomes a Deadly Game

Most Recent in Criminal Justice:

1The System Works for Attorney General Ken Paxton. Again.

2Death Penalty Reform Bill Gets Watered Down to ‘Nothing’ Before Passing Senate

3With a Bizarre Assist by Democrats, Police Groups Kill Bill to Limit Arrests for Fine-Only Offenses

5‘The Penal System Today is Slavery’: Lawmakers Finally Start to Talk About Unpaid Labor in Texas Prisons

6Four Years Later, Sandra Bland’s Arrest Continues to Sow Distrust in Law Enforcement

Most Recent in Education:

1The Cost of Carve-Outs

2Texas Legislature Improves Suicide Prevention in Schools, but Makes Little Progress for Adults

3Texas House Considers Free College For Students Experiencing Homelessness

4‘The Wolf is in the Henhouse’

5‘We’re Not Stupid’: Texas Teachers Take on Dan Patrick and the Legislature over Dismal Education Funding

6In Violation of Texas Law, Most High Schools Aren’t Giving Students the Chance to Register to Vote

Most Recent in Health Care:

1Yet Another Rural Texas Hospital is in Jeopardy After Anti-Tax Activists Kill Funding Proposal

2Texas Legislature Improves Suicide Prevention in Schools, but Makes Little Progress for Adults

3Inside Texas’ Failed Experiment to Replace Planned Parenthood with an Anti-Abortion Group

5Texans with Disabilities are Struggling to Find Health Care Attendants. Lawmakers Didn’t Do Much to Help.

6Texas Legislature Set to (Slightly) Expand Medical Marijuana Access

Most Recent in The Interview:

2The Interview: Mass Resistance

3Meet Jim Allison, Texas’ Newest Nobel Laureate (and Three-Time Cancer Survivor)

4Dolores Huerta is Still Knocking on Doors and Registering Voters at 88

5The Interview: Veronica Escobar is Poised to Make History

6Redistricting Guru Michael Li on Texas’ Gerrymandered Maps

Most Recent in Books:

1Announcing the Ninth Annual Texas Observer Short Story Contest

2‘Human Matter’ Dredges up the Dark History of the Guatemalan Civil War

3With Sprawl and Serial Killers, Houston Noir Packs a Mean Punch

4When Crossing Over Becomes a Deadly Game

5Beasts of the Border

6Invasive Species Have Reshaped Texas. Now What?

Most Recent in Features:

1Washington Crossing the Rio Grande

2Ghosts of the Baker Hotel

3At Home in the World

4Plight at the Museum

5The Texas Observer’s Best Features of 2018

6East Texas Photographer Captures 50 Years of Haunting, Ordinary Magic

Most Recent in Essay:

1Lost in Limbo in the Hays County Jail

2The Trouble with Yoga

3Heads in the Mud

4The Day the Windows Shook

5Women’s Work

6I Grew Up on the Texas-Mexico Border, but Now I Barely Recognize It

Most Recent in Eye on Texas:

1Eye on Texas: Loren Elliott

2Eye on Texas: Charlotte Moore

3Eye on Texas: ‘My Joyful Dance’

4Eye on Texas: Ghosts of the City

5Eye on Texas: Fiesta Protesta

6Eye on Texas: Remembering Draylen Mason

Most Recent in Poetry:

1Remembering W.S. Merwin, Honorary Texan

2Lost in Limbo in the Hays County Jail

3Houston Poet Analicia Sotelo’s Debut Smashes Latino Stereotypes

4Parallel Planes

6Poem: ‘Resistance’

The Magazine: January 2015

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March 2015, Texas Observer cover

COVER STORY

What to Expect Now That Dan Patrick’s Tea Party Rules the Senate

by Christopher Hooks

Thu, Jan 8, 2015 |

The new lieutenant governor and his tea party revolutionaries have an ambitious agenda that could overhaul the state's school systems, tax policies and immigration laws.Read More

In this Issue

State of Texas

State of Texas: Medicaid, Obamacare and the Uninsured of Texas

by Melissa del Bosque

Loon Star State

Ben Sargent’s Loon Star State: No Reservations

Eye on Texas

Eye on Texas: Flex Time

by Laura Buckman