The Texas Observer

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Gabriel Arana CREATIVE DIRECTOR Ivan Armando Flores SENIOR WRITER & EDITOR Lise Olsen EDITOR-AT-LARGE Gayle Reaves DIGITAL EDITOR Kit O’Connell SENIOR WRITER & ASSISTANT EDITOR Gus Bova SENIOR WRITER Justin Miller STAFF WRITERS Delger

On the last Sunday of March, I was playing hide-and-seek with our golden retriever when I got a call from the editor-in-chief of the Texas Tribune: “Gabe, we have a 2,300-word story coming out.” Our board, he told me, had voted to lay off the Texas O

It’s become an inside joke among Capitol watchers that the best way to figure out what Governor Greg Abbott and the Republican Legislature are gonna do next is to read the Miami Herald—or better yet, follow Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Twitter. W

My late father-in-law, an Episcopal priest, had a cartoon taped to his kitchen wall in Sherman that skewers an obnoxious feature of American religion. In the cartoon, a grinning devil, sitting on a throne surrounded by flames, instructs a horned appr

Now in his sixth regular legislative session as a member of a largely powerless minority caucus, state Representative Gene Wu, a 45-year-old Houstonian, has cultivated a number of strategies for a Texas Democrat to stay busy. He battles trolls on Twi

Mary Kelleher knew she was moving to a floodplain when she bought a farm on Fort Worth’s east side in 2003. But the risk was worth it. “I just fell in love with it because there was still so much country over here,” she said. She did not expect that,

The antics of Attorney General Ken “I’m still under indictment” Paxton could often earn a mention here doing his part to retain Texas’s tile as the “Strangest State.” But things got weirder than usual when Paxton asked lawmakers to fork over $3.3 mil

I want to livein the negative spaceof your landscapes, recede intoshadows on the horizon soft likean echo,a ghost note. Desert mother,I see you cloistered inyour Model Ain a swarm of bees,painting fever dreams ingold and ochre— I want to be still. I

The staff of the Texas Observer would like to extend our biggest high five and our utmost gratitude to the 4,800 (!) people who donated to our GoFundMe. You saved the day and helped make this issue and our ongoing reboot of this muckraking, truth-tel

I grew up in northwest Austin at the edge of the Texas Hill Country, where hiking through the woods and playing in creeks were daily activities. So, I’ve always been an “outdoors person.” After moving to Houston for a journalism job, I quickly began

Austin author Szilvia Molnar’s debut novel The Nursery, a memoir-looking work about a new mother suppressing baby-harming thoughts, is an engaging experiment in uncomfortable empathy that finds its tonal antecedents in cerebral body horror movies lik

I think of it as a bloodline, clean thread stretching west,mind emptying so gently as it ranged farther from billboards,chains, farther from access roads, exits, deeper into sky,that road is why I love this state, despite politics, pronouncements,the

The Solid Rock Church of Kerrvillehas moved to another location.It says so on the sign underits name – Solid Rock. Also the entire town of Comfortappears to be for sale.this does not feel comforting at all. How many times we drove these curves,pale f

An El Paso member gives. 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 activist appreciates investigative journalism. An RGV member or