• Documents: CBP Ignored Federal Biologists’ Input on Border Wall
   
• Dallas County DA John Creuzot Calls New Reforms ‘A Step Forward in Ending Mass Incarceration’
   
• Progressives Scramble to Fight Back Against Texas Republicans’ Attacks on Local Control 

• ‘Democracy at its Best’: Texas Regulators Approve Gig Economy Rule Written by Unregistered Lobbyists 
   
• What the Texas Observer Has Taught Me

The Lede
At Home in the World

• Houston artist Prince Varughese Thomas can seem as if he is coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. He’s a third-culture kid who grew up with an affinity for anyone caught on the wrong side of power, as well as a desire to start deep conversations about differences of all kinds.
   
• But Thomas is at the same time distinctively Houstonian. Houston is, after all, a proudly international city, by some measures the most diverse in the nation, with a relentlessly forward-looking attitude and a fraught relationship with both U.S.-oil-driven foreign policy and climate change.
   
• Thomas has also shared in the city’s recent hard luck, losing about one-quarter of his work when his storage space flooded during Hurricane Harvey. Though the loss was brutal, he has recovered with help from the local arts community and a can-do attitude that matches that of his adopted hometown.
   
• Thomas’ practice includes documentary photography, sculpture, installation, video art and digital art. His themes are equally wide-ranging, from memorials of misguided U.S. militarism to critiques of news media and personal investigations into family history and mourning. “I’m moved and affected by those places and cultures where injustices happen, separations happen, the demarcations that are based in privilege happen,” he says. “Because of my own life experience, that’s where the antenna goes up for me.” 

From the archives
‘It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way’

• A young Texas abortion provider speaks out amid threats of violence and dangerous political rhetoric.
   
• From the 2015 interview conducted by Alexa Garcia-Ditta: “Knowing that most of the folks and politicians that are responsible for these laws are men, and often times don’t connect with how these policies affect real people, how an unwanted pregnancy might feel or what somebody may go through when they have an unwanted pregnancy, it’s frustrating. Given my medical training and years of experience, and having a grasp of what’s like and seeing hundreds of patients, at this point, I have a better understanding. I have to check what I’m thinking and feeling and help patients get through what they need to through. Provide compassionate health care. Sometimes, patients are curious, [asking] ‘I had an abortion five years ago, what’s going on?’ And that’s an opportunity to say, ‘This is what’s happening in the state, this is what has passed, this is why you have to go through this. We’re going to help. If you can vote, or you can talk about what you’re experiencing…’ That’s sometimes hope for change, so that people can understand what’s going on, know that it is different, that it doesn’t have to be this way.”

What’s Happening at the Observer

• Some of you may have noticed a lag in delivery of your magazine, or a delay in customer service — perhaps you’ve received multiple magazines in the mail. We’re aware of these issues and are making a change in the vendor that provides some of our mailing services this month. We’ve also created a customer service form on our web site that’ll take you directly to us, should you run into any issues about… well, anything. That’s here. Thanks so much for bearing with us as we move to build y’all a better customer service experience.
   
• From the amputation crisis in the Rio Grande Valley to how Texans may be loving their state parks to death — find all of the audio versions of our investigative longform features in one place, via Audm: https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-observer-audm-audio-stories/