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The Latest Breaking News from Texas Observer

Texas Is Taking Back the State Highway 288 Tollway—at a Steep Price

The private firms who have operated the tollway will be paid $1.7 billion by TxDOT, adding to the profit they’ve already made in toll revenues, construction contracts, and sales of shares.

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How Texas Diminished a Once-Rigorous Air Pollution Monitoring Team

Former employees say the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality weakened the unit in the years following the onset of the fracking boom. The operation never returned to what it was before.

Texas Observer

Reclaiming ‘Friendship’ Across Borders

In reading U.S.-Mexico treaties, I trip over the word “friendship.” Ostensibly, it's like saying, “We are friends, so I’m taking your land.”

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Generous Guests: Undocumented Immigrants Subsidize Our Healthcare

While barred from most government healthcare programs, undocumented residents pay more in healthcare taxes than the entire cost of their own care.

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Greg Abbott’s Border ‘Theatrics’ Now Include Acting Like the State Department

Abbott’s latest bid to expand the bounds of his authority might introduce confusion abroad, experts say.

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Can Democrats Keep the Texas House Anti-Voucher?

Four years after a failed attempt to flip the lower chamber, the minority party has set its sights on a more modest objective.

Texas Observer

A Houston Storyteller Finds the Humor in Hard Knocks

Bayou City comic Ali Siddiq turns street life and incarceration into laughs, while challenging stereotypes and provoking the occasional tear.

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A Texas Pipeline Giant Is Backing a Regulatory Disaster

Energy Transfer owns the pipeline that caught fire recently near Houston, and it’s setting another fire at the National Labor Relations Board with the help of right-wing jurists.

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‘This Weird, Messy State We All Love in Spite of Ourselves’

Abby Rapoport continued a family tradition of making the Texas Observer possible—by filling just about every role the organization has.

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Confessions of a Beaumont Vegan

The only justification for animal suffering is that it is necessary or doesn’t matter. I have concluded it is not necessary and does matter.

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Lost in Austin: Climate Change, Displacement, and Race in the Texas Capital

The story of Rainey Street is Austin gentrification in microcosm.

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Solidarity from Solitary and Beyond

Texans are organizing inside and outside of prisons to empower incarcerated workers, who labor in dangerous conditions without pay.

Texas Observer

Bipartisan Legislators Join Calls for Clemency for Robert Roberson

The condemned Texas man was convicted of killing his daughter in 2003 based on an outdated ‘shaken baby syndrome’ diagnostic process.

Texas Observer

Pipeline Explosion in Deer Park Reveals Hidden Hazards Texans Face

The pipeline’s owner is “the same company that got $2.4 billion richer when Texans froze to death during Uri,” one activist points out.

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Texas Observer

Lawmen Above the Law

The sheriff is a position that serves no legitimate purpose in modern America, Jessica Pishko concludes, and the United States should abolish it.

Texas Observer

The Company You Keep

Ken and Angela Paxton have ties to a corporate honcho caught in a tangled web of alleged fraud involving a powerful business clan and a commercial shipping giant.

Texas Observer

Trump Would Doom the U.S. Department of Education and Harm Texas Teachers

Educators are calling for more funding, support, and a system that protects them. Removing the DOE would only perpetuate the problems.

Texas Observer

A Slice of Life in Watermelon Country

The annual Watermelon Thump has been a Central Texas staple for more than 70 years.

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Junk Science, ‘Shaken Baby Syndrome,’ and the Fate of Robert Roberson

An East Texas man could soon become the nation's first person killed by the state based on the controversial hypothesis.

Texas Observer

The Far Right Wants to End Out-of-State Abortion. Amarillo Is in the Way.

Texas' biggest popular vote on abortion post-"Roe" pits local advocates against an abortion travel ban that's part of a scheme to block the path to New Mexico.

Texas Observer

Rice Farmers on the Brink

Limited water, changing weather, skyrocketing costs, and land losses are causing the state's rice farms to slowly disappear.

Texas Observer

The Woman Who Died in the Heat on a San Antonio Sidewalk Was My Friend

After many months of fruitless efforts to get Jessica help, our case was finally moving, and for a couple days we were hopeful. Then the heat dome hit.

Texas Observer

When Will Texas Workers Finally Get Protections from Heat Exposure?

U.S. Representative Greg Casar discusses the timing and impact of a new federal workplace heat safety rule.

Texas Observer

What Trump 2.0 Would Mean for Texas

The state’s ruling conservative class stands to gain bigly, while everyone else will face the fallout of a radical second term.

Texas Observer

The ‘Untranslatable Palestinian Flesh’

What do we owe to language in times of unimaginable violence? Palestinian-Texan verse helps show us the way.

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