March 2016 - The Texas Observer

Most Recent in Politics:

1Texas Farmers are Fed Up With Trump’s Trade War, but Most Stop Short of Blaming Him

2Tom Steyer’s Impeachment Show Comes to Texas

3Deal Finalized to Revive Notorious 1,000-Bed South Texas Immigrant Detention Facility

4‘Shamed and Stigmatized’: Austin Woman Forced by Hospital to Bury Fetal Remains Testifies Against State Law

5Is the Realm of Possibility Expanding for Texas Democrats Running for Congress?

6Legislation to Abolish ICE Indicates Movement is Gaining Mainstream Traction

Most Recent in Environment:

1As Development Transforms the Hill Country, a Sand Mining Operation Worries Residents

2Report: Oil and Gas Production Is Making People Sick in Rural Texas

3After Decades of Living with Pollution, Relocation Program Offers Corpus Christi Residents a Way Out

4Sinking Land and Climate Change Are Worsening Tidal Floods on the Texas Coast

5How Disaster Recovery Overlooks the Poor

6Industrial Wood Processor Accused of Making East Texans Sick May Get to Pollute Even More

Most Recent in Border:

1Deal Finalized to Revive Notorious 1,000-Bed South Texas Immigrant Detention Facility

2‘Treated Worse than Dogs’: Immigrant Kids in Detention Give Firsthand Accounts of Squalid Conditions

3Legislation to Abolish ICE Indicates Movement is Gaining Mainstream Traction

4‘Recipe for Disaster’: New Family Detention Center Could Open in South Texas

5Loon Star: Due Process

6The Trump Administration Deported up to 12 Parents Without Their Very Young Children

Most Recent in Criminal Justice:

1Zero-Tolerance Policies Meant to Protect Against School Threats May Lead to Misguided Arrests

2Legislation to Abolish ICE Indicates Movement is Gaining Mainstream Traction

3College Degree Options Are Disappearing for Women in Texas Prisons

4After Years of Working with ‘Ritmo’ Detainees, I Know the Inhumane Facility Doesn’t Deserve a Second Chance

5Williamson County Votes to End Contract with Detention Facility Holding Separated Mothers

6Texas Officials Allow 15 Immigrant Shelters to Hold More Kids than Licenses Permit

Most Recent in Education:

1Cash-Strapped Rural Texas Schools Look to Universities for Help

2What’s in a Name? Texas SBOE Tentatively Approves ‘Ethnic Studies: Mexican American Studies’

3SMU Just Lost Its Independent Student Newspaper. Is Your College Next?

4Lawsuit: Texas Art Teacher Suspended Because She Told Students About Her Wife

5Texas Teachers ‘Blow the Whistle’ After Conservatives Accuse Them of (Gasp!) Getting out the Vote

6Nazis Go To School

Most Recent in Health Care:

1‘Shamed and Stigmatized’: Austin Woman Forced by Hospital to Bury Fetal Remains Testifies Against State Law

2As a Pediatrician, I Know There’s No Way to Jail Migrant Families Without Hurting Kids

3New Lawsuit Challenges Dozens of Texas Anti-Abortion Restrictions

4Trump Sides with Ken Paxton to Argue Pre-Existing Conditions Protections are Unconstitutional

5‘We Love Our Neighbors, but It’s a Sin’: A Dispatch from a ‘Sex Ed Sitout’

6What Could Happen if Trump Cuts Family Planning Funds from Planned Parenthood? Look at Texas.

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:

1In ‘Homelands,’ Alfredo Corchado Punctures the Myth of the American Dream

2Announcing the Eighth Annual Observer Short Story Contest

3A Vampire Book That Does Not Suck

4A Strange and Wonderful New Book Celebrates the Often-Ignored Work of Outsider Artists

5‘Driven’ is an Edgy Memoir of Cars, Crises and Coming of Age

6A Feminist Literary Classic Gets a Timely Reissue, and it’s Still Maddeningly Relevant

Most Recent in Postcards:

1The Time-Traveler’s Guide to the Lower Pecos

4Field Notes from Santa Ana

5The King of Pulp

6Ride Like a Girl

Most Recent in Essay:

1Women’s Work

2I Grew Up on the Texas-Mexico Border, but Now I Barely Recognize It

3Somewhere It Hides a Well

4Drinking the Kool-Aid at the Garden of Eden

5The Road to Huntsville

6The Impossible City

Most Recent in Eye on Texas:

1Eye on Texas: Gentrification in East Austin

2Eye on Texas: Transgender Youth in Texas

3Eye On Texas: Hurricane Harvey

4Eye on Texas: Fantastical Taxidermy

5Eye on Texas: Runners Take on 170-Mile Race in Big Bend

6Eye on Texas: Liberty Hill Hosts Texas Firearms Festival

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

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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