March 2016 - The Texas Observer

Most Recent in Politics:

1Beto and Ted’s Competing Realities Collide for the First Time

2Dan Patrick’s Cloistered Culture War

3Pete Gallego and Texas Democrats Once Again Snatch Defeat from Jaws of Victory

4Inside the Coordinated Attack on a North Texas Wind Farm

5Ken Paxton Wants to Eliminate the ACA’s Pre-Existing Condition Protections. How Would That Affect Texans?

6Freeport’s East End Began in Segregation and Will End with Displacement

Most Recent in Environment:

1Inside the Coordinated Attack on a North Texas Wind Farm

2How Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court Appointment Would Affect Texans’ Air, Water and Land

3To Bag or Not to Bag: Retailers at a Crossroads after Texas Supreme Court Strikes Bag Ban

4Former TCEQ Employee Files Race and Age Discrimination Lawsuit Against Agency

5Heads in the Mud

6Why is Texas’ Leading GOP Think Tank Suddenly All-In on an Anti-Wind Crusade?

Most Recent in Border:

1The Border Patrol Serial Killer Is Part of a Long, Troubled History

2A San Antonio Art Show Quietly Foregrounds Migrants’ Stories

3Eye on Texas: Fiesta Protesta

4How Texas Cops Turn Mental Health Crises into Deportations

5El Paso is on the Cutting Edge of Water Conservation. It Really Has No Choice.

6Dams and Reservoirs Won’t Save Us. This is the New Future of Water Infrastructure.

Most Recent in Criminal Justice:

1Civil Rights Groups are Changing Bail Practices in Texas, One City at a Time

2The Prosecution Rests

3How the Police Shooting of Botham Jean Disrupted Dallas’ Reputation for Reform

4Waco Immigrant Mom Sues Private Prison Corporation over Alleged Sexual Abuse

5A Houston Art Exhibit Gazes Unflinchingly at the Cruelty of Mass Incarceration

6Videos of Dallas Bail Hearings Show Assembly-Line Justice in Action

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:

1Ken Paxton Wants to Eliminate the ACA’s Pre-Existing Condition Protections. How Would That Affect Texans?

2Judge Blocks Texas’ ‘Near Catastrophic’ Fetal Burial Law

3Reformers Hopeful the 2019 Legislature will Expand Texas’ Medical Marijuana Law

4How Anti-Abortion Activists are Training Their ‘Next Generation of Pro-Life Leaders’

5Professor Trill

6Tinkering with the Human Heart in ‘Ticker’

Most Recent in The Interview:

1The Interview: Veronica Escobar is Poised to Make History

2Redistricting Guru Michael Li on Texas’ Gerrymandered Maps

3Senfronia Thompson Says #MeToo: Texas Lawmaker on 45 Years of Sexism, Racism at the Capitol

4Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo on Sanctuary Cities, Police Unions and Tommy Guns

5Meet Nueces County’s New DA, a Self-Professed ‘Mexican Biker Lawyer Covered in Tattoos’

6The Interview: Joaquin Castro Says Texas Democrats are Poised for a Comeback

Most Recent in Books:

1Heartland is an Honest, Poetic Meditation on Class in America

2Leaving the Gay Place Lights a Candle for the Patron Saint of Austin’s Counterculture

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

4A New History Tears Down the Myth of the Texas Rangers

5Sarah Bird’s Lively New Novel Resurrects a Little-Known Civil War Hero

6‘Presidio’ is a Beautiful, Atmospheric Texas Novel that Doesn’t Cohere

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: March 2016

Subscribers to the bi-monthly print and digital editions of the Texas Observer get the first look at our in-depth, investigative reporting before it’s published online. Subscribe today so you don’t miss out! Visit our archives for more past issues.

March 2015, Texas Observer cover

COVER STORY

Free Lunch

by Patrick Michels

Mon, Mar 14, 2016 |

Texas' largest corporate welfare program lets school districts give away unlimited tax breaks — more than $7 billion so far — with only loose state oversight. What could go wrong?Read More

In this Issue

Political Intelligence

by Alexa Garcia-Ditta

Winds of Change

by Naveena Sadasivam

News

Strangest State: A Ghostly Cat, Recumbent Rudeness and a Turtle on the Lam

by Patrick Michels

Winds of Change

by Naveena Sadasivam

CULTURE

Turning Hard Right

by Christopher Hooks

Poem: ‘Poets And Antidepressants’

by Sally McGreevey Hannay

Photos of Dystopia

by Michael Agresta

The New Migrants

by Sarah Smarsh

Columns

by Andrea Grimes

State of Texas

State of Texas: The Hills Have Allies

by Naveena Sadasivam

Loon Star State

Loon Star State: D.C. Forbids Travelers From Texas