In January 2013, U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar and his wife Imelda took an 8-day trip to Istanbul, Turkey, then to Baku, Azerbaijan, where they met with high-level officials in the latter country’s authoritarian regime and dined with executives from the state-owned oil company.  The Cuellars’ foreign tour, which was sponsored by an obscure Houston-based nonprofit called the Turquoise Council of Americans and Eurasians, initially drew little notice. But they made a big impression on officials in Azerbaijan, a former Soviet Republic nation with huge oil and gas reserves that is run by a ..read more

Last weekend, emergency room nurse and community organizer Molly Cook won a special election for Senate District 15 to serve the remaining seven months of John Whitmire’s term, who became Houston mayor after holding the seat for over 40 years. In a very low-turnout affair with 3 percent of registered voters casting ballots, Cook beat State Representative Jarvis Johnson by 14 percentage points. The win could give her a needed boost as she faces off against the frontrunner Johnson in the May 28 runoff for a full four-year term. The Texas Observer met with newly elected Senator Cook to learn abou ..read more

In 1933 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the 21st Amendment ending 13 years of Prohibition, he was not primarily motivated by the hysteria around organized crime, nor the tragedy of the thousands who died ingesting toxic denatured alcohol. It was the Great Depression and the U.S. government needed money.  He and other officials were looking to the alcoholic beverage industry, previously the nation’s fifth largest, for a bailout. Since Prohibition began, they figured they’d lost $3 billion per year in illegal untaxed income from alcoholic beverage commerce. “I think it’s time fo ..read more

It’s been a decade since the pride of Paint Creek, James Richard Perry—yes, that’s Rick—occupied the Texas governor’s mansion. In that time, Perry launched a second failed presidential bid, cha-cha’ed on national TV as a contestant on Dancing with the Stars, served as former President Donald Trump’s energy secretary (after previously calling the same Donald Trump a “cancer on conservatism”), and ducked a congressional subpoena on the Ukraine impeachment investigation. More recently, he’s enjoyed a quiet retirement at his rural estate in Round Top, road-tripping in his vintage Chevelle, lending ..read more

Early one July morning in 2019, Bexar County sheriff’s deputies rolled down the quiet residential streets of Castle Hills with a pair of bombshell arrest warrants. The San Antonio-area bedroom community was in the throes of one of the biggest political scandals in its history. The deputies had warrants to arrest two of its major players. Sylvia Gonzalez, a 72-year-old newcomer to Castle Hills’ city council, was at her eye doctor’s office when she received terrifying news. Her friend and fellow council member, 77-year-old Lesley Wenger, had already been rousted from her bed and carted off to ja ..read more

Nearly 150 members of the new Texas Alliance for History, including university professors and students, community historians, and staff members of historical sites and museums gathered Saturday at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth for the event, “Looking Back, Moving Forward.” Their collective goal: to form a group dedicated to sharing untold stories of Texas history, efforts that seem even more crucial in an era when various efforts to diversify the state’s historical record are under fire.  The Alliance for Texas History arose in response to an attack on academic historians in th ..read more

I was born and raised in Mexico and lived at the Texas-Mexico border for eight years. As a professor at the University of Texas at Brownsville, now the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, I began to research Mexican organized crime groups that operate transnationally. Since 2009, I have studied illicit networks involved in U.S.-bound migration and the drug trade. My interests have to do mainly with the fact that I started my U.S. academic career as an immigrant, some of my relatives arrived here as undocumented immigrants, and because my father and brother were victims of extortion by Los Z ..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