James Guevara has ridden out three hurricanes sheltered in-place in Texas prisons. Hurricane Beryl, which blew into Texas on July 8, knocked out power at the prison where he lives, among several other Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) facilities. The lights went off at Ramsey, a maximum-security prison in Brazoria County where Guevara lives, […] The post Waiting Out the Storm in Prison appeared first on The Texas Observer ..read more

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: ‘Hail to the…’ appeared first on The Texas Observer ..read more

In a speech Tuesday to attendees at the Sheriffs’ Association of Texas’ 146th annual training conference and expo in Fort Worth, Governor Greg Abbott compared attacks on Israel by Hamas—the militant group that killed around 1,200 Israelis on October 7—to crime and immigration in Texas. “Long before even the war began, Israel was suffering challenges from daily missile launches by Hamas, by Hezbollah, by some others, and now you can add the Houthis to the mix, and it’s the kind of thing where we see,” Abbott said, pivoting to connect the issue to his Texas law enforcement audience. “You can use ..read more

William Hanson is not your typical biographical subject. Dead for nearly a century now, Hanson was never famous, nor did he ever hold elected office. He was not an underappreciated artist or a forgotten do-gooder. He was a corrupt mid-level bureaucrat—less a mover of history than a man moved by it, ever pursuing his own narrow self-interest, yielding mixed results for himself and significant harm for others. In his most influential roles, he was a captain and inspector of the Texas Rangers in the late 1910s and, in the 1920s, a San Antonio district director of what was then called the U.S. Imm ..read more

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 v. Wade. For Texans like me, that would mean already-tight restrictions would turn into a near total ban on abortion. Though it wasn’t a surprise, I still felt shocked when the ruling became reality. Thousands marched on the streets that day and for weeks after.  In the years following, I’ve met and photographed fellow Texans who were denied abortions despite lethal fetal anomalies that enda ..read more

(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: ‘Demolition Man’ appeared first on The Texas Observer ..read more

Editor’s Note: Harris, the author of this essay, is incarcerated at the Lane Murray Unit in Gatesville. The following piece is drawn from her memory of events in approximately 2010 at another unit. Before being released into the general prison population this May, she spent over eight years in solitary confinement. One hundred and five nude women stand in alphabetical order, forming a huge oval. We silently scan each other’s bodies, looking for flaws.  To my right is Lindsay, a 40-something redhead with splotches of psoriasis on her limbs. She whispers that it’s not contagious. She says t ..read more

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 coast, relief organizations are scrambling to ensure people stay fed in the wake of Hurricane Beryl. Ever since the storm made landfall near Matagorda, causing millions to lose power, local churches and supermarkets have given away meals, and soccer stadiums have become grocery distribution points.  The hurricane, which caused catastrophic damage as it roared across the Caribbean and ..read more

Houston Independent School District (HISD) Superintendent Mike Miles claims to be a financial wizard. But controversy has followed the former military man-turned-school administrator to nearly every Texas school district he’s served. In 2012, he was hired by the Dallas Independent School District (DISD), only to be ousted by a majority of the school board three years later after an investigation showed Miles violated district policies. In June 2023, the Texas Education Agency took over HISD and Commissioner Mike Morath, a former DISD board member who had supported Miles, tapped Miles to serve ..read more

Less than a week after an NPR investigation revealed glaring problems with the previously secret supplier of Texas’ lethal injection drugs, the state plans to execute a man on Tuesday evening who has maintained his innocence for more than 20 years.  Ruben Gutierrez was convicted under Texas’ so-called law of parties for the 1998 murder of 85-year-old Escolastica Harrison. Harrison was killed during a robbery of the Brownsville home she shared with her nephew. Shortly after, three men were arrested in connection with the crime: Pedro Gracia, Rene Garcia, and Ruben Gutierrez, who was friend ..read more