Texas Observer

“As the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan in August, the Sadaat family was unsure if they’d ever make it back home to Texas.”

“Across the country, medical boards allow abusive doctors to keep seeing patients. And patients addicted to opioids keep going back.”

“Prior to his arrest, local authorities had dismissed nearly all of those incidents as an unusual spike in natural deaths—a run of bad luck. But public records and interviews reveal that, time after time, investigators in Dallas made critical mistakes and overlooked or ignored signs of foul play.”

“Prison families, researchers, and even TDCJ officials agree that visitation is a critical lifeline for incarcerated people, and integral to their rehabilitation. Research has shown that visits with loved ones can maintain and strengthen social ties that can help prevent criminal behavior during and after incarceration.

“Texas’ health system has been underfunded, understaffed, and unprepared for years. Here, COVID-19 found the perfect place to spread.”

In the Texas Panhandle, which produces a fifth of the U.S. beef supply, communities are being choked by fecal dust from nearby feedlots. The state’s regulatory agency isn’t doing anything about it — and it’s about to get a whole lot worse.

Decades with no personal contact, no way back into the general prison population, cut off from the possibility of parole — solitary confinement is an ongoing experiment in cruelty on human subjects.

Texas’ rural hospitals are closing in record numbers, and without access to medical help in an emergency, Texans’ lives are in danger.

Sophie Novack reports on why residents of the Rio Grande Valley lose limbs and appendages to diabetes-related amputation at a rate 50 percent higher than anywhere else in the United States.

ICE is bad, but as that agency gets the bulk of critics’ ire, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency legally operates within 100 miles of the border, where it needs neither warrents nor explanations to search and detain American citizens. Civil liberties are in danger. How did this happen?