Shortly after entering a tiny closet-turned-viewing room, Trinidad Gonzales saw something he still struggles to describe 20 years later. The doctoral candidate had a couple hours of microfilm to review, and toward the end his eyes ached so much that he almost missed it. Almost. He scrolled past the paragraph,…
Angela Smith says her husband will not be happy about this story. She launched a GoFundMe, too, and he wasn’t too keen on that. “We both have a hard time asking for help,” she says. “He doesn’t want our burdens to become anyone else’s.” But the 55-year-old says she felt…
All too often, Dr. Amite Dominick receives letters containing some variation of the sentence, “I don’t think I’m going to make it.” Dominick, the founder and director of Texas Prisons Community Advocates, is in frequent contact with incarcerated people, their families and beleaguered corrections officers. Each of these groups has…
It would be accurate to say that being a fan of the Texas Rangers baseball club is like being Charlie Brown, hoping that maybe, just maybe, Lucy won’t pull the football away this time. But there’s a better way to sum up the existence we Rangers fans have endured for…
With religious jingoism on the rise, progressive faith leaders must navigate money, politics and the occasional “underground work” to support their flock
The Lavinia Masters Act helped clear much of the state’s inordinate backlog, but the fight for delayed justice is far from over
Advocates say it’s impossible to know the true number of people who have died from heat-related illnesses in Texas prisons.
It started with a sticker. About four years ago, baker Haley Popp slapped a sticker on the front of her shop that declared she and her team affirm LGBTQ rights …
When Jerome Van Zandt was booked into Harris County Jail in November 2020, he was optimistic. “There’s no way I’ll be here more than three months,” he told himself. A Navy veteran with 20 years of service, he had been caught with less than a gram of crack cocaine and…
The man and his weapons were both from out of town. That’s one of the first things many Killeen residents, both past and present, will remind you: He wasn’t one of them. George Hennard was from Pennsylvania, and he was living in Belton, a city about 25 minutes away from…
Finis Prendergast passed nearly three years in what he calls “the depths of hell.” Some days were spent “literally starv ing on the floor.” At other times, his surroundings became so rancid Prendergast could barely breathe. “The air smells like urine,” he told Vice in February. “I think they counted…
For people locked up in Dallas County Jail, the coronavirus has made life even tougher.
Bill Maher loves red states. Not their politicians, necessarily, and certainly not laws like the Heartbeat Bill (“You can have an abortion as long as you know you don’t need one” he says. “That is so Texas”).
Erica Pipes had a sore throat. Normally, this wouldn’t bother her; she’s in a band, after all, and she worked as a bartender. When you have those kinds of gigs, you get used to germs and their consequences. But this was March 14, 2020 …
For the last year or so, Andrew Holmes has been working on a van. So far, the singer-songwriter has added an AC unit, some nice shelving, a bed and a kitchenette, among many other things that make his soon-to-be home quite homey.
One day, roughly 10 years ago, Tori Jensen was lying on the floor of a dorm room in Cincinnati with her sobbing girlfriend, Michelle.
As you might’ve heard, esteemed U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert recently had a novel idea for addressing global warming.
As soon as Zac Crain got copies of his new book, he gave one to his son Isaac. Isaac hadn’t read any of the manuscript while it was in progress, but Crain knew he needed to be one of the first people to see it in print. I See You…
If you think Olivia Rodrigo is just the voice of millennials, zillennials and/or xennials or whatever comes after Gen Z, think again, you ageist jerk. OK, You’re probably not ageist, you just don’t know my grandma.
Have you heard of the television program Schitt’s Creek? It’s a little-known Canadian comedy that introduced the world to newfound international sex symbol Dan Levy whilst reminding us that his father, Eugene, is a certified DILF.
It’s noon on a sunny Monday when Elena Davies calls the father of one of her Very Important Titty Seers (VITs). “Hello?” answers the dad from what sounds like a gas station.
Baseball is back, and nothing can stop us from being happy about it. Apart from the pandemic. And the All-Star Game controversy. And the Rangers being mediocre at best. OK, so this season probably won’t be one we tell our grandkids about. Nevertheless, the cookware company Le Creuset has given…
