• The Border Patrol Serial Killer Is Part of a Long, Troubled History
   
• Civil Rights Groups are Changing Bail Practices in Texas, One City at a Time

• Pete Gallego and Texas Democrats Once Again Snatch Defeat from Jaws of Victory
   
• Short Story Contest Winner: ‘Ink Upon the Furrows’

The Lede
Dan Patrick’s Cloistered Culture War

• In late July, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick made a trip to Washington, D.C., to beg White House officials to send President Trump to Texas to shore up support for Ted Cruz’s embattled re-election campaign, which has quickly become one of the most-watched races in the country.
   
• Meanwhile, Patrick has gone to great lengths to ensure that his own campaign flies under the radar. His re-election effort is just a rote red-meat operation that hinges more on stoking fear about immigrants on Fox News and boycotting Nike than, say, talking to Texas voters in public.
   
• With nearly a month until early voting begins and a 9-point lead in one recent poll, Patrick remains cloistered in the safe confines of his reactionary conservative base — unwilling to have a real conversation about the dismal state of public school finance, ballooning property taxes and gun violence, among a long list of other pressing policy matters.

• Inside the Coordinated Attack on a North Texas Wind Farm
   
• A San Antonio Art Show Quietly Foregrounds Migrants’ Stories

• Heartland is an Honest, Poetic Meditation on Class in America

From the archives
Eminent Disaster

• A cabal of politicians and profiteers targets an El Paso barrio in this feature from 2007.
   
• From the story: “On late Sunday afternoons, when shadows grow long in the Segundo Barrio, the crowds finally begin to thin on El Paso and Stanton streets. Cashiers sit patiently on high stools, watching shoppers navigate seas of brilliantly colored merchandise. After pesos or dollars change hands, the customers pack their last-minute bargains, perhaps a 12-pack of underwear for $3.99, into voluminous plastic bags or suitcases. Then the stragglers head back across the international bridges to Mexico, and the barrio’s streets and alleys are enveloped by a blue dusk, as they have been for more than a century. Sitting in a U-shaped curve of the Rio Grande, the Segundo is one of the oldest and most important Mexican-American neighborhoods in the United States.”

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