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Texas Republicans Fail to Kick a Million People off Food Stamps After Trying for a Year
‘How Can You Do This to People?’: After Rural Hospitals Close in Milam County, Residents Scramble to Find Care
Little River Healthcare shuttered two Milam County hospitals after falling on hard financial times. Now residents are struggling to find care.
Shan Wilson’s surgery will have to wait. The 64-year-old retired Marine was scheduled to have his prostate removed in early January at the only hospital in Ro...Read More
Botham Jean’s Death Could Lead to an Overhaul of Police Oversight in Dallas
The outrageous shooting of a man in his own apartment has triggered calls to reform Dallas’ toothless, decades-old system of police oversight.
In the 1970s, the Dallas Police Department was pressured to diversify after a white cop killed a 12-year-old Mexican-American boy in a game of Russian Roulette....Read More
‘Life Was Her Art’: Nadine Eckhardt Remembered as an Influential Cultural Conduit in Texas and Washington
A lifelong progressive activist, Eckhardt always managed to straddle both the establishment and counterculture.
Nadine Brammer Eckhardt, first wife and muse of novelist Billy Lee Brammer (The Gay Place) and second wife of Texas Democratic Congressman Robert C. Eckhardt, d...Read More
As Speaker of the House, Will Dennis Bonnen be a Menace to the Environment?
Despite his earlier reputation as a hatchet man for environmental regulation bills, activists are cautiously optimistic that they can find common ground with Bonnen as speaker.
As chair of the Texas House Committee on Environmental Regulation from 2003 to 2008, Representative Dennis Bonnen was labeled a “tyrant,” a “Clean Air Vil...Read More
East Texas Photographer Captures 50 Years of Haunting, Ordinary Magic
Over and over, Keith Carter finds transcendence in scenes of everyday East Texas life.
Ordinary Magic Over and over, Keith Carter finds transcendence in scenes of everyday East Texas life. – by Michael Hardy December 12, 2018 Photographer Ke...Read More
Four Texas Abortion Court Cases to Watch in 2019
The lawsuits could eventually end up at the Supreme Court, where the future of Roe v. Wade is now in question.
The Texas Legislature’s zeal for passing anti-abortion legislation has created an endless cycle of court challenges that’s frustrated lawmakers and judg...Read More
When Prison Reform Goes Bad
What happened to the Legislature's two-decade-old attempt to break the cycle of incarceration for low-level felons?
In the early 1990s, the Texas Legislature tried to build something surprisingly progressive amid the state’s tough-on-crime prison boom: an alternative to pri...Read More
Texas GOP Chair: Racism and Bigotry are an ‘Extreme Exception’ in the Party
James Dickey on white nationalists in the Texas GOP, xenophobia and “America First.”
Last week, the Observer reported that Ray Myers — who had a hand in crafting the platform for the most influential state Republican party in the country — ...Read More
Meet Jim Allison, Texas’ Newest Nobel Laureate (and Three-Time Cancer Survivor)
The Houston immunologist talks about growing up in small-town Texas, creationism in public schools and what it means to talk about a cure.
Just a few years ago, Jim Allison was considered something of a “snake oil salesman” by other cancer researchers. The ruddy-faced, scraggly-haired scientist...Read More