June 2015 - The Texas Observer

Most Recent in Texas Politics:

1Rural Voters Stepped on the Gas for Trump Across the Texas Oil Patch

2Local Organizers Explain the Republican Surge in South Texas

3A House Divided

4As Democrats Divebomb, the Texas Legislature Remains as White and Male as Ever

5Texas Democrats Thought 2020 Would Be a Banner Year. Instead, It Was a Catastrophe.

6Millennials and Gen Zers are Breaking Voter Turnout Records in Texas

Most Recent in Environment:

1Texas Has Elected A Climate Change Denier to the Railroad Commission

2Illegal Air Pollution is Skyrocketing in Texas, But State Regulators are Ignoring Complaints

3Why is Michael Bloomberg Giving $2.6 Million to Elect a Railroad Commissioner in Texas?

4One Texas-Sized Loophole is Letting Lone Star Polluters Off the Hook

5Houston, Let People Walk

6Claiming Major Superfund ‘Success,’ Trump EPA Focused on Completing Cleanups, Not Climate Planning

Most Recent in Border:

1Local Organizers Explain the Republican Surge in South Texas

25,000 People Contract COVID-19 While In ICE Custody, Including This Father Of 5

3Mexico Turns To Television And Radio For Remote Learning

4New Engineering Report Finds Privately Built Border Wall Will Fail

5El ducto del coronavirus

6The Coronavirus Pipeline

Most Recent in Criminal Justice:

1How Texas Jails Avoid Investigations of Inmate Deaths

2I Left My Friends in Prison in a Pandemic. Here’s What It’s Like For Them.

3After the Deaths of Two Soldiers at Fort Hood, the Navajo Nation Wants Answers

4Trump’s Favorite Texas Sheriff Faces Re-Election Amid a Spike in Deaths at His Jail

5Researcher Howard Henderson on Reimagining Policing in the U.S.

6When Asthma in Jail Becomes a Death Sentence

Most Recent in Education:

1Texas Has the Widest Digital Divide in the Nation. What Does that Mean for the School Year?

2The New Ensemble

3Raise a Glass to the Class of COVID-19

4Tough Decisions Ahead for School Leaders in Rural Texas

5‘Almost Akin to a Political Coup’: Houston Teachers Fight Back Against State Takeover of HISD

6The Creature of Martin Creek Lake Won’t Die

Most Recent in Health Care:

1How We Got Here

2A West Texas Nursing Home Sent Its COVID-Positive Residents Elsewhere. Now Two of Them Are Dead.

3The Forgotten Children of Texas

4I Left My Friends in Prison in a Pandemic. Here’s What It’s Like For Them.

5Achieving Vision Zero in Houston Isn’t Going To Happen One Intersection at a Time

6State Officials Tried to Cut Women’s Health Care During a Pandemic. It’s a Clear Reflection of Priorities.

Most Recent in The Interview:

1Researcher Howard Henderson on Reimagining Policing in the U.S.

2Texas Observer Founding Editor Ronnie Dugger Reflects on 65 Years of Publication

3How Katharine Hayhoe Stays Hopeful as the Planet Warms

4Author William Lopez on How Immigration Raids Inflict Long-Lasting Trauma

5Why a Texas Gun Control Activist is Optimistic About the Chances for Reform

6American Health Care is Broken, Especially in Texas. What Can We Do About It?

Most Recent in Books:

1Remembering a Jewish Upbringing in Meyerland, Texas

2How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

3A New Short-Story Collection Imagines a Texas Town’s Secession

4Improbable, Prophetic Houston

5Announcing the 2020 Insider Prize Winners

6‘A Saint From Texas’ Gets the Lone Star State Right

Most Recent in Features:

1Young Texans Keep Spelling Bees Going From Home

3San Antonio Embraces Mandaean Refugees

4The Ghosts of Jefferson

5Little Arthouse on the Prairie

6The Clothes that Make the Man

Most Recent in Essay:

1What the Black Lives Matter Protests Mean for East Texas

2Raise a Glass to the Class of COVID-19

3What’s a Bookstore for?

4Lessons on the Long Game from Goose Island’s Whooping Cranes

5In a Pandemic, Poor Defendants Could Pay With Their Lives

6Loneliness in the Age of Coronavirus

Most Recent in Eye on Texas:

1Eye on Texas: The Essential Women of Austin

2Eye on Texas: The Black Yearbook

3Eye on Texas: Border Tuner

4Eye on Texas: The Broken Wheel Ranch Project

5Eye on Texas: Spike Johnston

6Eye on Texas: Loren Elliott

Most Recent in Poetry:

1Author Saeed Jones on Empathy, the Power of Memoir, and Growing up Gay in North Texas

2Remembering W.S. Merwin, Honorary Texan

3Lost in Limbo in the Hays County Jail

4Houston Poet Analicia Sotelo’s Debut Smashes Latino Stereotypes

5Parallel Planes

The Magazine: June 2015

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March 2015, Texas Observer cover

COVER STORY

Letters from Death Row: The Biology of Trauma

by Alex Hannaford

Mon, Jun 22, 2015 |

Texas executes more of its citizens—almost all of them men—than any other state. New studies show that trauma biologically alters the brains of young boys in ways that affect their adult behavior, raising the moral implications of the death penalty. Read More

In this Issue

Political Intelligence

Dragging the State Board into the Present

by Patrick Michels

Texas Public Policy Foundation as the Underdog?

by Christopher Hooks

Lawmaker Pushes for ‘Liberty Cities’

Detainees Fight for Freedom of Speech

by Melissa del Bosque

News

Strangest State: On the Lookout for Black Helicopters and Falling Prices

by Patrick Michels

A Neighborhood Apart

by Priscila Mosqueda

CULTURE

Zellner Brothers’ Latest Film Explores Fact as Fiction

by Josh Rosenblatt

Direct Quote: Celebrating Gender Diversity Through Art

At Rest in the Fields

by Sarah Wambold

Creatures Great and Small

by Alex Dropkin

The Book Report: Small Town Dreams

by Mónica Teresa Ortiz

Columns

State of the Media: The Scene of the Crimes

by Andrea Grimes

Resurrecting the Legacy of Selena

by Michelle García

State of Texas

State of Texas: Who We Kill

by Joe Cutbirth

Loon Star State

Ben Sargent’s Loon Star State: Greg, Are You Down There?

Eye on Texas

Eye on Texas: Hot Fun in the Summertime