Dear Observer Community, Short-term rentals—for which companies like Airbnb serve as brokers—are sucking up housing inventory across Texas, driving up prices for renters and home buyers alike. For longterm residents whose neighborhoods have been take

The forthcoming impeachment trial of Attorney General Ken Paxton is guaranteed to provide a colorful show and a lesson on how Texans occasionally confront the corrupt through a highly anachronistic political tool. Many Americans may only recall the i

Heading into the desert sun,I tail an enthusiastic storm.Tires zing on sizzling pavement,slash through puddleson the rain-darkened highway, Like a guardian flanking the roadto El Paso, a muscular mountainheaves up, sable master of the horizon,his hea

My great-grandfather, José-María Arana, was a racist. After the United States barred Chinese men from immigrating under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, tens of thousands sought a new life in Mexico, where they faced no warmer a welcome as they est

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 Joseph

America is undergoing an identity crisis, author Robert P. Jones writes. As revealed in recent studies by Jones’s research organization, Public Religion Research Institute, dramatic demographic shifts have rendered once-dominant white Christians a mi

The following is an excerpt from Forgotten Girls: A Memoir about Friendship and Lost Promise in America. The fortunes of rural towns like Clinton, Arkansas collapsed during my young adulthood, from 2000 to 2010. The period was marked by recessions—th

Republicans like to say they believe in limited government and oppose wasteful spending. But as Senior Writer Justin Miller’s cover story argues, Governor Greg Abbott’s $20 billion border wall puts the lie to this myth. It is not the job of states to

To the Texas Observer Community, I’m writing to you as chair of the Texas Democracy Foundation, the nonprofit publisher of the Texas Observer, to update you on our status. I am happy to report that, today, the Observer is in a far better position tha

The United States has the worst maternal mortality rates of any wealthy country, by a lot, and the rates are increasing. The rate of Black mothers dying is more than twice as high as that for white women. Texas’ rate is about the 12th worst among Ame

On the south banks of the Llano River, the Castell General Store hosts its bimonthly “Drinking with Jesus” church service. Even with dogged Sunday morning rain, around 70 people recently gathered in the back room, singing “Count Your Blessings” while

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