May/June 2022

The Texas Observer

Observing Texas since 1954

The Texas Observer1 min read
The Texas Observer
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Gabriel Arana CREATIVE DIRECTOR Ivan Armando Flores SENIOR WRITER & EDITOR Lise Olsen SENIOR WRITER & ASSISTANT EDITOR Gus Bova SENIOR WRITER Justin Miller STAFF WRITER Delger Erdenesanaa EDITORIAL FELLOW Laura Morales POETRY EDITOR N
The Texas Observer2 min read
Editor’s Note
This is my first issue as editor-in chief, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to call Texas my newly adopted home. I hail from Nogales, Arizona, a town of five square miles on the U.S.-Mexico border with too many Border Patrol agents and, now, a 20-foot
The Texas Observer5 min read
Greg Abbott’s Wasteful Border War
When Governor Greg Abbott announced the launch of Operation Lone Star in March of last year, it seemed to be just the latest in a long string of state-sanctioned border security theatrics. First, in 2005, there was former Governor Rick Perry’s Operat
The Texas Observer5 min readCrime & Violence
The Pain Belongs To Us
There’s a scene from Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls that crosses my mind when I think about the power of collections of stories and materials from victims and survivors of state violence, which we have been building into an “archive of su
The Texas Observer5 min readLGBTQIA+ Studies
The Consequences Of Attacks On Gender-affirming Care
Transgender kids have become the latest target of the far right’s moral ire. Last year, Arkansas became the first state to make it a felony for doctors to provide gender-affirming care—which can include puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgery—
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Strangest State
It’s batty. A real bat was spotted swooping around in an Austin theater, forcing a pause in the screening of “The Batman” movie while managers called animal control in an unsuccessful attempt to evict the creature, KXAN reported. No one was bitten, a
The Texas Observer5 min readDiscrimination & Race Relations
Texting For Reproductive Justice
From her kitchen table in McKinney just north of Dallas, Mohini Lal spends a good portion of her weekends intently pouring over case files and answering Slack messages as her young children play on the floor beneath her. “It looks like what I think a
The Texas Observer15 min read
Greg Casar Superstar?
Twenty-three days after effectively securing a seat for himself in Congress, Greg Casar, a 32-year-old ex-Austin City Council member, strode up to a gray strip-mall Starbucks in north San Antonio carrying a black bullhorn. It was his first public eve
The Texas Observer18 min readCrime & Violence
Mexico’s Repo Man
Editor’s Note: This is Part 4 of the series Follow the Money. In the first year of the Trump administration, one of Houston’s most prominent—and flamboyant—trial lawyers came up with an unusual litigation strategy with the potential to rake in tens o
The Texas Observer16 min read
Labeled hispanic
The moment seemed to call for drastic action. Lucille Contreras’ youngest son was on his own, ranching buffalo on the Pine Ridge Lakota Reservation in South Dakota where both lived. Her other kids were financially stable. For the first time, this mot
The Texas Observer2 min readCrime & Violence
Say His Name: Marvin Scott III
LaSandra Scott received a text message from the Collin County Medical Examiner’s Office at 2:23 p.m. on March 15, 2021. She immediately knew what it meant. The Allen Police Department had arrested her son, Marvin Scott III, a day prior for possessing
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A Lexicon Of The Border Wars
Julián Cardona fearlessly roamed the streets with his camera in tow, photographing corpses and listening to wailing survivors as one of the great chroniclers of an undeclared war between cartels and the Mexican military that has cost thousands of liv
The Texas Observer6 min read
The San Antonio Border Security Expo Is Decadent And Depraved
In late March, hundreds of attendees assembled at San Antonio’s down town convention center for the 15th annual Border Security Expo, a three-day gathering of the government agents who police immigration and the private-sector vendors who love to sel
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Poetry
When everyone has a rope To hold and balance our big Country high above our heads, We walk together like nothing is In our hands or above us at all. But if we have to march because There is no rope for us to hold (See it now starting to float away, S
The Texas Observer1 min read
Support
An El Paso member gives. A Caddo Lake reader explores our climate change coverage. A whistleblower in Austin leaks proof of corruption. A Molly fan in Mesquite names us in her estate plans. A Houston student peruses at the library. A San Marcos activ

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