by Natalia Contreras | Jan 9, 2026 | Department of Justice, elections, National Voter Registration Act, News, Texas, Trump Administration, Voter Disenfranchisement, voter disinfranchisement, Voter Registration, voter roll purges, Voter Rolls, Voters
Texas officials have turned over the state’s voter roll to the U.S. Justice Department, according to a spokesperson for the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, complying with the Trump administration’s demands for access to data on millions of voters across the country. The Justice Department last fall began asking all 50 states for their voter rolls — massive lists containing significant…
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by Adam Mahoney | Jan 7, 2026 | Donald Trump, Environmental Racism, Fossil Fuels, Gulf coast, Louisiana, News, Oil, Oil Refineries, Pollution, Texas, Venezuela
On Saturday morning, John Beard woke up to news that he’d been dreading, but preparing for: A global oil crisis could hit closer to home in Texas. The southeastern part of the state is home to more than a dozen oil refineries, and he’d spent decades working at one of them. But after attending more funerals than he could count for loved ones that died from cancer, he began to feel differently…
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by Salina Arredondo | Dec 31, 2025 | Air Pollution, benzene, Emissions, News Analysis, Petrochemical Industry, petrochemicals, Pollution, Public Health, Regulation, superfund site, Texas, toxic chemicals
SAN JACINTO RIVER, Texas — Over the past 30 years, federal and state agencies in Texas have allowed hundreds of oil and chemical barges to amass in a once-tranquil section of the San Jacinto River, just east of Houston. Only about 100 barges were on the six-mile stretch of water in 1990, according to a Public Health Watch analysis of archival satellite imagery. Today, at least 600 crowd the…
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by Sonali Kolhatkar | Dec 30, 2025 | Alabama, Florida, ICE, immigration, News Analysis, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, red states, Resistance, Tennessee, Texas
Grassroots organizations around the United States, with little to no support from local authorities, have spent much of the past year defending themselves against President Donald Trump’s deployments of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and the National Guard. While community defense efforts in large urban metropolises such as Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago…
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by Lauren Rankin | Dec 27, 2025 | Abortion, health care, medication abortion, mifepristone, News Analysis, Project 2025, Reproductive Rights, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Texas, Trump Administration
With a decidedly anti-choice Trump administration taking office at its start, 2025 was poised to be yet another brutal year for abortion rights. Advocates feared the imminent resurgence of the Comstock Act, an 1873 law that made it a criminal offense to share contraceptives, abortifacients, and information about either across state lines or through the mail. As of now, the last month of this…
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by Francesca D’Annunzio | Dec 19, 2025 | Border, Border Patrol, Border Surveillance, Drones, News, Operation Lone Star, Policing, Surveillance, Texas, US Border Patrol
Texas Republicans have been wary of unmanned aerial vehicles, with some even backing proposed laws to allow the citizenry to gun down invasive airborne drones. Now, thanks to years of Operation Lone Star, Governor Abbott’s multi-billion dollar border mission, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) is ushering in what might fairly be called the Drone Star State with an expansive fleet of…
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