September 2015 - The Texas Observer

Most Recent in Politics:

1Rick Perry Exports His Pay-to-Play Politics to Ukraine

2‘Nobody’s Beating You,’ Trump Assures John Cornyn

3State Investigators Identify ‘Serious Contractual Violations’ by the Heidi Group

4Governor Launches Camp, Backs ‘Mega-Tent’ for Austin’s Homeless, Surprising Advocates

5Will a High-Stakes Suburban Houston State House Race Give Texas Dems 2020 Vision?

6‘El Paso Will Never Heal’: Three Months Later, the Border Town Still Reels

Most Recent in Environment:

1The Long Battle to Stop the Kinder Morgan Pipeline

2Landowners Got One Hill Country Oil Pipeline Moved. But Can They Do It Again?

3Beautiful Ruins: ‘Anthropocene’ Is a Sobering Ecological Prophecy

4Tropical Storm Imelda Will Likely Be Southeast Texas’ Fifth 500-Year Flood in Five Years

5The Green New Deal Can Exist in Texas

6How BP Oil Spill Fines Could Help Protect the Texas Coast

Most Recent in Border:

1When ICE Emptied Out an All-Women Detention Center in Texas, Chaos Ensued

2The Fear—and Hope—of Living in Sanctuary

3Editorial: Reckoning with El Paso

4If DACA Ends, It Would Be a ‘Catastrophe’ For Dreamers

5Author William Lopez on How Immigration Raids Inflict Long-Lasting Trauma

6Federal Judges Temporarily Block Public Charge Rule, but Public Health Worries Persist

Most Recent in Criminal Justice:

1Having My Period in Prison Was Awful. In Texas, That May Finally Change.

2The Movement to Free Rodney Reed Illustrates the Growing Unease Over Texas’ Use of the Death Penalty

3Potter County Criminal Defense System is Lambasted in a New Report

4Watch: ‘Life and Death in a Carceral State’

5Dallas Is What Happens When People Can’t Trust Police

6Death in Solitary

Most Recent in Education:

1The Creature of Martin Creek Lake Won’t Die

2The Cost of Carve-Outs

3Texas Legislature Improves Suicide Prevention in Schools, but Makes Little Progress for Adults

4Texas House Considers Free College For Students Experiencing Homelessness

5‘The Wolf is in the Henhouse’

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

Most Recent in Health Care:

1Scenes from a Rural Hospital’s Final Day

2State Investigators Identify ‘Serious Contractual Violations’ by the Heidi Group

3Critical Condition

4A Dying Town

5The Supreme Court Taking Up Louisiana’s Abortion Case ‘Flies in the Face of Precedent’

6Some Small Texas Towns Are Declaring Themselves ‘Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn’

Most Recent in The Interview:

1If a Glacier Melts in the Arctic, the Texas Coast Feels It

2Without Transmission Lines, Renewable Energy Still has a Long Way to Go — Literally

3The Dissenter

4The Interview: Mass Resistance

5Meet Jim Allison, Texas’ Newest Nobel Laureate (and Three-Time Cancer Survivor)

6Dolores Huerta is Still Knocking on Doors and Registering Voters at 88

Most Recent in Books:

1American Cities Weren’t Revitalized by the White ‘Creative Class.’ Immigrants Made Them Great.

2Short Story Contest Winner: ‘Dear Mr. Gottlieb’

3Author William Lopez on How Immigration Raids Inflict Long-Lasting Trauma

4An Observer Staff Guide to the 2019 Texas Book Festival

5A Bold New Memoir Struggles to Reconcile Faith and Feminism

6Janis Joplin’s Inimitable Voice

Most Recent in Features:

1The Ghosts of Jefferson

2Little Arthouse on the Prairie

3The Clothes that Make the Man

4Washington Crossing the Rio Grande

5Ghosts of the Baker Hotel

6At Home in the World

Most Recent in Essay:

1Having My Period in Prison Was Awful. In Texas, That May Finally Change.

2Up From the Desert

3To Understand the El Paso Massacre, Look to the Long Legacy of Anti-Mexican Violence at the Border

4Lost in Limbo in the Hays County Jail

5The Trouble with Yoga

6Heads in the Mud

Most Recent in Eye on Texas:

1Eye on Texas: The Broken Wheel Ranch Project

2Eye on Texas: Spike Johnston

3Eye on Texas: Loren Elliott

4Eye on Texas: Charlotte Moore

5Eye on Texas: ‘My Joyful Dance’

6Eye on Texas: Ghosts of the City

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

6Options

The Magazine: September 2015

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March 2015, Texas Observer cover

COVER STORY

That Sinking Feeling

by Christopher Hooks

Mon, Aug 31, 2015 |

Ken Paxton’s rapid ascent from state representative to state senator and then to the attorney general’s office in the span of just three years has been an object lesson in the dysfunctions of contemporary Texas politics.Read More

In this Issue

Political Intelligence

McAllen Catholic Church Continues to Open Its Doors to Central American Migrants

by Melissa del Bosque

Progreso ISD Fights State Over Students’ Residency

by Patrick Michels

Dallas Ranks No. 3 in Nation for Rate of Fatal Police Shootings

by John Wright

News

King’s Gambit

by Patrick Michels

That Sinking Feeling

by Christopher Hooks

CULTURE

‘Deep Web’ Probes Mastermind Behind Online Black Market

by Josh Rosenblatt

Insurgent Medicine

by Daniel Blue Tyx

Columns

State of the Media: Joining the GOP Circus

by Andrea Grimes

The Borderlands, So Far from Austin

by Forrest Wilder

Greater State: Rick Perry Emerges as GOP’s Voice of Reason

by Jason Stanford

State of Texas

State of Texas: Behind Bars with a Mental Illness

by Alexa Garcia-Ditta and Teresa Mioli

Loon Star State

Loon Star State: Ken Paxton Wants a Piece of the Action

by Ben Sargent

Eye on Texas

Eye on Texas: Bastrop Wildfires

by Spencer Selvidge

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