October 2017 Issue - Beto O'Rourke, Excited Delirium, the San Saba River

Most Recent in Politics:

1Casey Gerald’s Memoir Isn’t the Inspirational Tale You Think It Is

2Ted Cruz Won Because of Rural Texas, but Beto Made Small Gains for Democrats

3The Midterms Trigger a Seismic Shift in Harris County’s Courts

4Trump’s Sabotage of ACA Enrollment Is Particularly Dangerous in Texas

5Texas is a Purple State Now. The Proof is in Last Night’s Results.

6Loon Star: Blue Wave

Most Recent in Environment:

1In East Texas, Chicken Plants are Polluting Rivers and Lakes with Oxygen-Sucking Contaminants

2Why Environmental Groups Are Salty on Corpus Christi’s Pricey Desalination Plan

3Despite Trump and Rick Perry’s Best Efforts, Another Coal Plant Eats the Dust in Texas

4Exxon Appears to Mislead State to Secure Tax Break

5After the Flood, the Political Storm?

6Government Asks Court for More Time To Fix Houston’s Decades-Long Sewage Problem

Most Recent in Border:

2Border Residents Protest Trump’s Wall in Hidalgo County

3AUDIO: Melissa del Bosque and Rachel Poser on Border Patrol’s Unchecked Mission Creep

4More Than 150 Families Separated at the Border Remain Locked Up in Texas

5U.S. and Mexican Officials Collaborating to Stop Asylum-Seekers, Attorneys Allege

6Checkpoint Nation

Most Recent in Criminal Justice:

1The Midterms Trigger a Seismic Shift in Harris County’s Courts

2Harris County Judges May Face a Reckoning Over Bail On Election Day

3Dallas County’s Cop-Convicting DA Is Among the Most Vulnerable Down-Ballot Republicans This Election

4Author Shane Bauer on How the Racist Roots of Private Prisons Still Permeate the System

5In Arlington, How Not to Respond to a Police Shooting

6Texas Prisons Lead the Nation in Long-Term Solitary Confinement

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:

1Meet the Scientist and Autism Dad Who’s Fighting the Anti-Vaccine Movement

2Trump’s Sabotage of ACA Enrollment Is Particularly Dangerous in Texas

3In the Rio Grande Valley, New Citizens Turn Out to Vote for the First Time

4We Support Pre-Existing Condition Protections, Say Republicans Who’ve Repeatedly Tried to Eliminate Them

5Meet Mikael Love, the OB-GYN Who Doesn’t Prescribe Birth Control

6Without Planned Parenthood, Almost Half the Providers in Texas’ Women’s Health Program Saw No Patients

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:

1Casey Gerald’s Memoir Isn’t the Inspirational Tale You Think It Is

2‘Beyoncé in Formation’ is a Texas Professor’s Love Letter to Queen B

3Author Shane Bauer on How the Racist Roots of Private Prisons Still Permeate the System

4Best of the 2018 Texas Book Festival: An Observer Staff Guide

5An Evocative New Memoir of Nature and Loss Never Quite Gets Off the Ground

6Listen to Survivors, Urges a New Book of Essays on Injustice

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: October 2017

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March 2015, Texas Observer cover

COVER STORY

Beto Testing

by Christopher Hooks

Tue, Oct 3, 2017 |

Can Beto O’Rourke’s seat-of-the-pants, DIY, break-the-rules campaign succeed against Ted Cruz?Read More

In this Issue

Political Intelligence

How a Texas Mom Fought to Restore Daughter’s Therapy After State Cuts

by Sophie Novack

While Confederate Monuments Fall in Texas’ Big Cities, Others Take a Slower Pace

by Michael Barajas

News

How To Disappear a River

by Naveena Sadasivam

Excited. Delirious. Dead.

by Michael Barajas

by Christopher Hooks

CULTURE

Field Notes from Santa Ana

by Asher Elbein

The Impossible City

by Michael Hardy

Eye on Texas

Eye On Texas: Hurricane Harvey

by Tamir Kalifa