• Under Mindy Brashears’ Leadership, USDA Will Let Swine Slaughter Facilities Go Hog Wild
   
• Texas House Considers Free College For Students Experiencing Homelessness
   
• Congressional Democrats are Investigating Texas’ Targeting of Naturalized Citizen Voters

• A Tale of Two Prison Systems
   
• How Silicon Valley Lobbyists Secretly Pushed Texas Regulators to Rewrite the Rules of the Gig Economy

The Lede
‘The Wolf is in the Henhouse’

• Texas City Independent School District Superintendent Rodney Cavness hired Mike Matranga, a decorated former U.S. Secret Service agent who grew up in the area, to serve as the district’s first school security czar after the shooting at Santa Fe High School last year. Matranga had one condition: He would only answer to Cavness.
   
• Almost one year into the experiment, Cavness still has no qualms about his security director. The district gave Matranga the discretion to spend $6.5 million that voters had recently earmarked for district security upgrades as he saw fit. At Matranga’s direction, the 9,000-student district has already spent more than $5 million on a facial recognition camera surveillance system; AR-15s; real-time student tracking devices; eight additional Galveston County sheriff’s deputies (for a total of 19), who work as school liaison officers; and state-of-the art hardware to secure entryways and automatically lock classroom doors.
   
• Texas City ISD is putting forth a distinctly aggressive model of school security, one that has drawn national attention on Fox News, in The Wall Street Journal and even on Dana Loesch’s NRATV. Now, zealous state lawmakers are pointing to this Gulf Coast district as a potential model on which to base statewide school safety policy. But how far should we go to secure schools from the threat of a mass shooting?

I met Montana in Corpus Christi when I stopped to take some pictures in a field of flowers next to a strip mall. He introduced himself and explained that he lived in a corner behind the mall. We walked to his makeshift home and talked a bit; I promised to send this photo to his sister. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, more than 25,000 Texans were homeless on a single night in January 2018. - Charlotte Moore

From the archives
The Holdouts

• The fracking boom has transformed vast parts of Texas, pumping money into local economies while raising fears about groundwater and air pollution. The boom has caused increased crime and truck traffic, and has likely spawned earthquakes. But the oil and gas bonanza has also brought more subtle, but no less significant, social changes. This is the story of three families who took a pass on money from the fracking boom — and what it cost them.
   
• From Priscila Mosqueda's 2015 feature: “Almost everyone takes the money. You’d be crazy not to. According to industry estimates, oil and gas companies paid more than $15 million in royalties to Texans across the state in 2012. That doesn’t include initial signing bonuses, which can be enormous. Houston-area oil and gas heir Daniel Harrison III collected $1 billion in cash in 2013 when Shell Oil Co. leased his 100,000-acre ranch in the Eagle Ford. But across the shale plays — primarily the Barnett in the north and the Eagle Ford in the south — there are some who reject the landmen’s offers. Known in the industry as ‘holdouts,’ these mineral rights owners dare to challenge Big Oil in Texas. It’s a kind of principled madness that often baffles neighbors, family members and the industry itself. Unlike many fracking foes, the holdouts stand to benefit personally from oil and gas drilling. Yet they risk much more than money fighting to keep the fossil fuels in the ground.” 

What’s Happening at the Observer

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