Articles tagged: 2020
The Observer’s Best Longform Stories of 2020
We rounded up some of our hardest hitting longform stories from this unprecedented year.
This was a year of reckoning. With our health, of course, but also with our obligations to each other. In 2020, a lot of people were forced to fight—for their...Read More
Texas Tally: Hindsight is 2020
An unprecedented year, in numbers.
More than four years ago, a team of Texas scientists developed a vaccine that may have been effective against COVID-19, but without necessary funding for clinic...Read More
Loon Star: The Year in Cartoons
A diary of this hell year via the inimitable Ben Sargent.
What a year, folks. One for the books. To remember everything that’s happened, we’ve put together a compilation of Ben Sargent’s Loon Star Sta...Read More
Rural Voters Stepped on the Gas for Trump Across the Texas Oil Patch
Even in Democratic strongholds, some voters in the state’s vast shale plays were afraid of Joe Biden’s energy platform.
Once again, rural Texans voted en masse for President Donald Trump in 2020. Joe Biden spent no time campaigning in Texas and thus failed to reach the large swat...Read More
Local Organizers Explain the Republican Surge in South Texas
Democrats have long taken Latino voters for granted, while Republicans have worked to fill that organizing void.
Danny Diaz wasn’t shocked when he heard about the Republican surge along the Texas-Mexico border that confounded so many national pundits last week. The major...Read More
A House Divided
Rogelio Chavira is for Biden. Dolores Chacon is for Trump. The border fence passes through the couple’s backyard.
A House Divided Rogelio Chavira is for Biden. Dolores Chacon is for Trump. The border fence passes through the couple’s backyard. Text and photography by Henr...Read More
Texas Democrats Thought 2020 Would Be a Banner Year. Instead, It Was a Catastrophe.
Republicans will now lock in their majority for years to come.
Headed into election night, Democrats were bullish about their chances of flipping the Texas House, seizing a handful of GOP congressional seats, and maybe even...Read More
Millennials and Gen Zers are Breaking Voter Turnout Records in Texas
By the end of early voting, 1 million voters under the age of 30 had cast their ballot. Will they turn Texas blue?
A little more than a month before early voting started in Texas, a group of 20-somethings and teenagers with the Sunrise Movement drove to Congressman Michael M...Read More
José Garza Redefines ‘Progressive Prosecutor’
José Garza represents a new wave of reform-minded DAs who want to end the war on drugs and prosecute police officers who kill.
“Progressive prosecutor” can sound like a catchall descriptor for any district attorney willing to pack fewer bodies into jails and prisons. But one race th...Read More