After Abortion Ban, Texas Teen Birth Rate Rises
A 15-year decline in Texas teen birth rates slid to a stop—and converted into a modest increase in 2022, the year after the state Legislature implemented what was the nation’s strongest ban on...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Palestinian American Was Stabbed in ‘Bias-Motivated’ Attack in Austin
Around 7 p.m. on Sunday, a group of young men drove through Austin’s West Campus neighborhood, near the University of Texas. They’d attended a large pro-Palestine rally that afternoon, where several...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Austin Officials Condemn Anti-Palestinian Hate Crime but Remain Divided over...
Last week, police determined that the stabbing of 23-year-old Zacharia Doar on February 4 following his attendance at a pro-Palestine rally in Austin qualified as a hate crime. It’s now up to the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Parker County ‘White Nationalist Fight Club’ Leader Exposed
This article was published in partnership with Bellingcat, a nonprofit investigative outlet that specializes in open source research. The Texas Observer and Bellingcat have identified the leader of a...
View ArticlePregnant Workers’ Health and Livelihoods Face a New Threat
In an appalling decision that took effect in March, a federal court in Texas took away the right of Texas state employees to protect women’s health, and enable them to keep their jobs, during...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘Puro Pinche Palestina’
On a three-dog January night in southside San Antonio, a brightly painted coffee-and-beer joint burbles to life with a bundled-up crowd, chiefly young and hip, many sporting black-and-white...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Death Trap: ‘We’re Not Going to Open It for Them’
Editor’s Note: This cross-border investigation by La Verdad Juárez in collaboration with Lighthouse Reports and El Paso Matters, republished here by the Texas Observer, reveals new details of mass...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘There Have to Be Limits’: Lawsuit Urges Scorching Prisons to Cool Down
Last June, Bernhardt Tiede suffered a likely stroke while living in a prison cell that regularly got up to around 110 degrees Fahrenheit. The 65-year-old—whose story inspired the 2011 Richard...
View ArticleSuspending Asylum
Originally published by Houston Landing; republished with permission. JUÁREZ – Dayana staked out a spot in the shade at marker 36 along the Juárez border Tuesday afternoon to try to cross into the...
View ArticleDisplaced to Death
This article was originally published by Deceleration, a nonprofit environmental justice newsroom based in San Antonio. During the seemingly endless slog that is summer in South Texas, the smell of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Going to See the Volcanos
Editor’s Note: This story—produced in collaboration between palabra, a multimedia initiative of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and the Texas Observer—was edited in Spanish and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Texas’ Plantation Prisons: Inside a 200-Year History of Forced Labor Shrouded...
Frank Pinkard stood before six legislators from the Texas Penitentiary Investigating Committee at the Clemens State Prison Farm in Brazoria County, revealing scars left from 39 lashes. Even after a...
View ArticleHunger Was Already Bad Enough. Then Beryl Hit.
Editor’s Note: This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here. Amid the widespread destruction, brutal heat, heavy rains, and ongoing outages along the Gulf...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Their Laws. Our Bodies.
On the morning of June 24, 2022, the federal courthouse in downtown Dallas was reinforced with boards and fences. Protests were anticipated to follow the news that the Supreme Court had overturned Roe...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Rancher Who Leads a Paramilitary-Style Group Sues Biden over Border Policies
Rancher Michael Vickers, Kinney County Sheriff Brad Coe, and the governments of Kinney and Atascosa counties filed a lawsuit in federal court on July 31 claiming that the Biden administration’s...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The ‘Untranslatable Palestinian Flesh’
Mahmoud Darwish died in Houston. The Palestinian poet, as monumental to his nation’s literature as Gabriel García Márquez is to Colombia or Anna Akhmatova to Russia, had flown to the city to have open...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Far Right Wants to End Out-of-State Abortion. Amarillo Is in the Way.
When Amarillo resident Courtney Brown came across a social media post last July that announced anti-abortion activists would be bringing their “sanctuary cities for the unborn” campaign before her...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Clik here to view.
Reclaiming ‘Friendship’ Across Borders
A friend will help you move; a best friend will help you move a body. This was the favorite quip of J, my best friend from youth, who died in a car accident in our last semester at the University of...
View Article