Economy
No News is Bad News
The Poor in Texas Have Been Vastly Undercounted, New Report Finds
The federal poverty level fails to take into account 2.6 million struggling Texas households.
It ain’t cheap living in the oil boomtown of Midland, where the fracking frenzy sweeping through West Texas has led to an eyeball-popping spike in rent. In 20...Read More
Six Stories About Rural Texas You Should Read Before 2018 Ends
From the shuttering of Dairy Queens, driver's license offices and rural hospitals across the state to an only-in-Texas alligator tale, you may have missed this great reporting.
I understand if the wild and weird news cycle of 2018 has got your head spinning. This rollercoaster ride of state and national politics has some reporters near...Read More
Trump Administration Report: Climate Change Is Hurting Texas
If greenhouse gasses aren’t curbed, the Texas economy will likely face devastating consequences from climate change.
Sea levels along the Texas coast could rise by as much as 8 feet by 2100, submerging parts of the Galveston and Corpus Christi shoreline. Temperatures may incre...Read More
Dolores Huerta is Still Knocking on Doors and Registering Voters at 88
The iconic labor activist talks about the Latino vote, Howard Zinn and the ‘year of the woman.’
At 88, Dolores Huerta is still making you look bad. In 1962, Huerta and César Chávez co-founded the organization that would become the United Farm Workers, th...Read More
To Bag or Not to Bag: Retailers at a Crossroads after Texas Supreme Court Strikes Bag Ban
Since a court ruling nullified plastic bag bans in 11 Texas cities, some retailers have continued to voluntarily observe the law, while others are handing out bags again.
Nine-year-old Mauricio Treviño is every retailer’s worst nightmare. On a field trip that included a walk along the Rio Grande recently, his grandmother, Lare...Read More
A New Documentary on Texas Labor History Offers a Much-Needed Infusion of Hope
“A Strike and an Uprising” chronicles two big wins for labor activists facing long odds.
There’s a scene in A Strike and an Uprising (in Texas), a new documentary on labor history, in which three cafeteria workers sit in an empty classroom at Step...Read More
Texas Farmers are Fed Up With Trump’s Trade War, but Most Stop Short of Blaming Him
The state’s dominant ag products, valued at $18 billion, are in the crosshairs of retaliatory tariffs. Still, most farmers here are hesitant to criticize Trump.
Russell Boening, a Texas farmer and rancher who’s also president of the Texas Farm Bureau, is starting to feel the effects of escalating trade conflicts betwe...Read More
Wage Wars
Activists have won citywide wage theft laws in El Paso and Houston. But local and state bureaucracies have ensured that the problem persists.
by Gus Bova @bova_gus June 13, 2018 For seven years, Paola Hernandez cleaned a city-run health clinic on Houston’s Northside for $8 to $9 an hour. It was a ro...Read More
Trump’s Trade Disputes with NAFTA Partners Imperil Texas Ag Exports
The president has levied tariffs on aluminum and steel from Canada and Mexico, and they’ve responded in kind. Texas farmers and ranchers worry the dust-up could endanger ag exports to the NAFTA partners.
Update: The Mexican government officially struck back at the United States on Tuesday afternoon by imposing 20 percent duties on imports of certain American po...Read More