The Texas Observer

VOLUME 112, NO. 4 FOUNDING EDITOR Ronnie Dugger EDITOR Tristan Ahtone EXECUTIVE EDITOR Megan Kimble ASSOCIATE EDITORS Christopher Collins, Sophie Novack ENGAGEMENT EDITOR Sunny Sone SENIOR REPORTER AND EDITOR Lise Olsen STAFF WRITERS Michael Barajas,

I agree that maligning the suburbs (“Rocking the Suburbs” March|April issue) is wrong, but as a development model, I don’t think they’re sustainable. Higher density is the future. City life may be expensive, but cities generate the bulk of the tax re

On May 26, the New York Times published a story about how COVID-19 has exacerbated food insecurity in San Antonio, where thousands of people form long lines each day at the San Antonio Food Bank. But the newspaper erroneously described San Antonio as

An estimated 1.6 million Texans have lost their employer-sponsored health coverage during the COVID-19 pandemic. About 30,000 of those newly uninsured would be eligible for Medicaid if Texas—which already has the highest uninsured rate in the country

MAYBE YOU HEARD IT WHEN GOVERNOR GREG abbott critiqued local officials who enforced his pandemic executive orders. Or maybe it was when U.S. Senator John Cornyn said he would support a hypothetical vote on a Supreme Court nominee after spending 2016

WHEN I WAS 20, I WAS arrested by the Houston Police Department. I had taken broken pieces of Sheetrock from a trash pile at a construction site to patch holes in the walls of the house where I lived; it was winter and the dilapidated house my friends

“THERE WASN’T ANYTHING SPECIAL ABOUT US,” SAYS THE COLLECTIVE narrator of the title story in Matthew Baker’s Why Visit America. “We were just an average town. Porch swings, wading pools, split-rail fences, pumpjacks bobbing for oil on the horizon.” ¶

FIRST, SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST WAS CANceled, the canary in the quarantine coal mine. In 2019, the conference had an estimated $356 million impact on Austin’s economy, but with more than 400,000 attendees poised to gather in Central Austin, and with COVID-

Wildflowers bleed yellow and scarlet along the interstate,the sky opens its staring eyes. All is gooduntil the squirrel jumps across the road,and we feel that body’s soft fistunder one wheel. Then the next. A decidedlycompact and visceral death. Next