Editor’s Note: This excerpt is adapted from Loose of Earth: A Memoir (April 2024) with permission from University of Texas Press. The Environmental Protection Agency announced limits on PFAS in drinking water earlier this month. A blade of light glances off my grandparents’ white Lincoln. They park at the curb. A torque of despair turns in my stomach at the way Dad draws his mother into his arms. There’s a tumor in Dad’s colon. That’s all anyone knows. Mom has continued to say they’ve caught it early, and Dad has agreed and recovered his nonchalance. But my grandmother’s hands pass over his ba ..read more

In Travis County, the magistration process—the initial bail hearing after someone is arrested—isn’t cinematic. Arrestees are either led to a small room within the jail’s central booking area, or a Travis County Sheriff’s Office (TCSO) employee might bring a computer to their holding cell. At the end of a short conversation, during which the arrestee can either remain silent or try to plead their case to get released on a personal bond instead of cash or surety bail, a magistrate—a judge who handles pre-trial hearings—determines the conditions of release. These routine hearings can have huge im ..read more

Out in West Texas, a pair of aspiring novelists and enterprising small-town newspaper owners, Barbara Brannon and Kay Ellington, were dismayed by the number of publications that were dropping book sections, cutting critics, and otherwise decimating literary coverage, especially in the Lone Star State. By the 2010s, “93 percent of the state’s newspapers offer no regular books coverage of any kind,” they told the Writers’ League of Texas. Both newswomen worried that Texas authors in particular just weren’t getting enough attention—though plenty deserved it. Out of that gaping hole emerged, fitti ..read more

An Indian chemical company, Avina Clean Hydrogen Inc., has purchased the last available water supply from the Nueces River of South Texas, raising concerns as reservoirs dwindle and drought persists.  Avina’s Nueces Green Ammonia plant plans to separate the hydrogen from water, convert it to ammonia and export it as a high-tech fuel alternative to oil and gas. It’s one of several such projects currently proposed in Texas, driven by federal subsidies. Governments and scientists say this technology plays an important role in the transition away from fossil fuels.  But officials in the ..read more

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz is facing yet another complaint to the Federal Elections Commission that claims he has “brazenly” violated federal campaign finance laws through his podcast deal with one of the nation’s largest media conglomerates.  Cruz struck a deal in 2022 with San Antonio-based radio giant iHeartMedia to pay for the production, marketing, and distribution of his “Verdict” podcast, where he pontificates about various right-wing grievances several times a week. The sweetheart arrangement has raised myriad ethics concerns ever since.  The complaint, filed Tuesday, comes amid r ..read more

Ben Sargent Ben Sargent Ben Sargent To see more political cartoons from Ben Sargent, visit our Loon Star State section, or find Observer political reporting here. The post Loon Star State: Cult of the All-Powerful Orange Czar appeared first on The Texas Observer ..read more

Ken Paxton has spent almost the entirety of his decade leading the Office of the Texas Attorney General while also under felony indictment for alleged securities fraud. Yet, like every other time Paxton has faced allegations of wrongdoing, including misuse of office, retaliatory firings, and criminal misdeeds, he has once again managed to evade real punishment. By no small measure, this has been enabled by Paxton’s masterful use of state resources to court (and to bolster) the influence of extremely well-funded conservative legal organizations and networks, at the expense of the public interes ..read more

Call him Kevlar Ken. Once again, Texas’ attorney general has proven to possess an impenetrable shield of impunity.  Last week, special prosecutors struck a deal to essentially let Ken Paxton off the hook for three felony securities fraud charges just before the nearly decade-old case was set to go to trial in Houston. The charges will get dropped in exchange for Paxton paying his alleged victims a little under $300,000, among other terms.  Thus came the shockingly abrupt end to a legal saga that has hung over Paxton for almost the entirety of his tenure as attorney general. The longe ..read more

Fifth Ward resident Kendra London, 43, helped form the neighborhood organization Our Afrikan Family to serve and educate her community about a major threat: an expansion of Interstate 45 that will wipe out hundreds of Houston homes and businesses and has already forced evictions. For the past five years, she and other advocates have been door-knocking and holding meetings to educate residents about TxDOT’s plans. A little over a year ago, she thought they had made progress when the Federal Highway Administration signed a Voluntary Resolution Agreement with TxDOT ending a two-year civil rights ..read more

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 deaths at a detention center in Ciudad Juárez on March 27, 2023, when 40 migrants died after a fire was set in a locked cell—though the key and fire extinguishers were readily available. Leer en Español Angry shouts came from inside the men’s detention cell at the Mexican National Migration Institute (INM) in Ciudad Juárez on the evening of March 27, 2023. A group of migrants inside the locked room a ..read more