4 Aug 2026

University of Houston Nixed Its Gender and Sexuality Classes. That Won’t Stop Texas’ Crusade Against Higher Ed 

by | posted in: All news | 0

The sexual assault of children. The catcalling and income discrimination your sister faces. The struggles your granddad has connecting emotionally. These are topics explored in gender and sexuality studies classes. 

But following Florida, universities in the Lone Star State, including the University of North Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, University of Texas, and now the University of Houston (UH), where I have taught in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program for a decade, are eliminating such classroom spaces.

Starting this month, according to a surprise July 7 memo, UH will remove Introduction to Women’s Studies and Introduction to LGBT Studies as courses that students may elect to take to fulfill Texas’ “language, culture, philosophy” requirement. That means they will no longer be options in the 42-credit state-mandated core curriculum for a four-year degree, with categories ranging from communication, history, life and physical science, and creative arts. All told, UH is set to remove roughly 100 courses, including Introduction to Global Climate Change and Black Liberation Theology.

At UH, the introductory courses in gender and sexuality are popular: 700 students enroll each semester, with business, education, pre-med, psychology, and other majors represented. Students, for example, might learn that some interpretations of the Bible (the word “homosexuality” first entered the collection of ancient texts we call the Bible in 1946) find no conflict with some women marrying another woman and some men marrying another man. Along with all classes, these courses provide a breadth of foundational knowledge and prepare students to engage civically, professionally, and personally.  

An important value of being in the core is that it gives students a kind of permission to embrace curiosity and explore various subjects. Removing important classes sends a message that studying such is inappropriate. And if introductory gender and sexuality classes no longer count toward graduation requirements, enrollment will plummet. The reason UH is making this change isn’t because the classes fail to provide meaningful education. It’s because UH has overinterpreted current law, as have other universities across Texas. 

Institutions especially point to Senate Bill 37. Enacted in 2025, the law prohibits faculty senates, creates a state-level office where people can file complaints if they believe a university has violated state law, and shifts control of the curriculum from educators to the university’s board of regents. Regents at public universities in Texas are appointed by the governor, currently Republican Greg Abbott, for their economic and political clout. They are not educators. Because draft versions of SB 37 included language that would have prohibited conversations about sex and race and because it’s anticipated that lawmakers will resurrect such restrictions in the coming session, administrators hope that anticipatory obedience will satisfy a Texas Legislature that is often hostile toward education.

This all flies against what our state celebrates: small government and personal freedom. We say that people should be able to form their own opinions. This right to form one’s own opinion should extend to a student’s opinion that studying gender and sexuality, variables that impact everyone, is worth their investment. And while some are quick to judge the younger generations as being coddled and sensitive, these same people want to censor conversations about gender and sexuality. 

Testimonial data supports that gender and sexuality studies courses are impactful. On an anonymous evaluation for my Introduction to LGBT Studies class an enrollee shared, “Students felt safe sharing their identities, experiences, and perspectives. The course offered a strong foundation in LGBTQ history, theory, and contemporary issues. … Overall, the class created a space that was intellectually engaging, socially aware, and personally meaningful.”

Gracie Rivera, who is now a UH alumni in graduate school studying library science, wrote to me sharing: “As a Latina woman, Introduction to Women’s Studies, Introduction to LGBT Studies, and Intersectionalities and Disability Studies gave me the confidence to advocate for myself—including successfully negotiating a $4 per hour raise at work and helping close my gender pay gap.”

After teaching 73 class sections of Introduction to Women’s Studies and Introduction to LGBT Studies, I can attest that they are life changing for students and professors alike. Until recently when some politicians started targeting transgender people and ignoring the complexities of biology, these classroom spaces weren’t controversial. These classes encourage students to be who they want to be, whether that’s having children, modifying their body with tattoos, or striving to be the first woman president.

Andrew Joseph Pegoda, Ph.D. teaches at the University of Houston and is a member of the university’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors. This op-ed reflects Pegoda’s ideas as a private individual.

The post University of Houston Nixed Its Gender and Sexuality Classes. That Won’t Stop Texas’ Crusade Against Higher Ed  appeared first on The Texas Observer.

3 Aug 2026

American Skater

by | posted in: All news | 0

Between May 2025 and March of this year, I photographed Robinson Gonzalez, a Venezuelan professional skateboarder in his mid-twenties.

Three years before I started this work, Gonzalez crossed the Darién Gap, having left his family behind. He was later granted entry into the United States as an asylum-seeker. Back in 2018, during anti-government protests in Caracas, an explosive device had nearly severed his left hand. His political involvement had made his home country unsafe for him. 

After settling in San Antonio in October 2024, he got sponsored by an American skate brand, found work as a food delivery driver, and taught skateboarding to local youth.

Most of these photographs depict him alone, as he struggled to build a life in a new country without a support network. The images depict the emotional cost of migration: missed birthdays, funerals, and everyday moments with loved ones left behind. Routine tasks became major challenges, from healthcare to banking, from finding housing to seeking police help when his car was stolen more than once.

As immigration discourse is increasingly distorted by enforcement and fear, this project focuses on the quiet fight for stability, dignity, and belonging. These 11 months of Gonzalez’s life are a microcosm of the immigrant experience—of resilience in the face of a contradictory system that welcomes your labor but not your full presence. 

(Top) Last June, Gonzalez shows videos from his journey to the United States. (Bottom-left and -right) Gonzalez on one of his daily calls to his mother and siblings in Venezuela

(Top left) Gonzalez makes another DoorDash delivery. (Bottom left) Gonzalez skating at Lady Bird Johnson Park in San Antonio, then driving back home from skating in Pearsall (Top center) Last November, Gonzalez has just moved into a San Antonio apartment previously occupied by two immigrants from Mexico and Honduras who were deported. (Top-right) Gonzalez flicks leaves from a flower. (Bottom-right) Gonzalez teaches skateboarding to local kids.

(Left) Gonzalez skates at Hays Bridge Skate Park in San Antonio. (Right) Gonzalez makes a DoorDash delivery downtown. (Bottom) Gonzalez takes a break from skating in Pearsall.

In late May, Gonzalez was stopped for a traffic violation and booked into jail, where he is subject to an ICE hold. He plans to fight to stay in the country; I have started a GoFundMe to help with his legal costs.

The post American Skater appeared first on The Texas Observer.

30 Jul 2026

ICE Never Stopped Chasing People in Cars in the Rio Grande Valley

by | posted in: All news | 0

As thousands of people from all over the United States came to the Laguna Madre area this past weekend to watch SpaceX’s latest launch in South Texas, many who live in the nearest towns—Laguna Vista, Port Isabel, Laguna Heights, and South Padre Island—stayed indoors.  

Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents had been arresting several people in the area over the last few weeks, likely as part of a new federal directive from earlier this month to increase arrests to 2,000 a day across the country. The agency’s presence has led to residents making their own warning system to inform the community, many of whom are mixed-status, of where agents are at any given time.

Preceding many of these arrests was a car chase through the residential streets of Laguna Vista on July 14, happening the same day that the Trump administration issued a directive to ICE to temporarily halt most traffic stops, following the ICE killings of two people in Houston and Maine, according to reporting early that morning from the New York Times. The pause lasted about a day. 

But that afternoon, ICE agents in Laguna Vista—a town of around 4,000 in the Rio Grande Valley that’s a 20-minute drive from South Padre Island, where ICE agents killed a U.S. citizen, Ruben Ray Martinez, in March last year—sped after a crew of roofers who were on their way back to a job site, according to witnesses. ICE confirmed that agents were in the area on July 14 when asked by the Observer. 

Traveling in two cars, a red Jeep and a dark-colored Ford Escape, the seven roofers were leaving a Stripes convenience store in Laguna Vista after their lunch break, heading back to their work site in town. A black SUV passed them on the two-lane Highway 510. The SUV made a U-turn, then accelerated towards them. The SUV, which was unmarked, did not have sirens on. 

The roofers, at some point, split, the red Jeep going down Fernandez Street and blowing past the four-way intersection at Taylor Street, the unmarked black SUV following close behind. Laguna Vista resident Samantha Weber Alarcón, who was driving with her son, was heading to a movie theater in Brownsville when she saw the Jeep and the black SUV run the stop sign on Fernandez Street in the early afternoon. 

Thinking it was the local police chasing a speeding teenager, she continued onto Fernandez and then onto Mesquite Drive, the end of which leads to Highway 100 toward Brownsville. She had just started driving down the street when a different car, the dark-colored Ford Escape, sped past her on the left, hitting a speedbump, then stopping in the driveway of a home halfway up the street. Close behind were the same black SUV and a white SUV, neither with sirens on, driving side by side trying to make “three lanes of traffic into a two-lane road,” Weber Alarcón told the Observer. 

“They speeded right next to me,” she said during a phone interview. “They hit the speed bump so bad that, when they got in front of me at high speed, I had to go to the right. … If not, they would have hit me.”


Advertisement

Now in a ditch on the side of the street, Weber Alarcón called 911. While she was on the phone with a dispatcher, she got out of her truck and started walking toward the SUVs. She could see that men had emerged from the SUVs with t-shirts, jeans, and green vests that said “ICE”—and that one of them was pointing a gun a few feet from the open back window of the Ford. Inside the Ford, a man in the backseat had his hands up, a paper bag with his lunch in one of them. 

“I guess I was in more fear because of what I had just seen happen to the young guy in Maine,” Weber Alarcón said, recounting her thoughts from that day. “I had just seen that in the morning before I left to the movies. So, can you imagine my train of thought when I saw him pull the gun on the kid?” 

The driver and front passenger of the Ford were gone. They had run off behind the house whose driveway they’d driven into, escaping from the agents who chased them on foot. Weber Alarcón began yelling at the agents that they had almost hit her and her son. She pulled out her phone and started taking photos of what she was seeing. She said that when she pulled her phone out, the agent put his gun down, took the man out of the backseat of the car, and put him in handcuffs. 

Weber Alarcón, believing the handcuffed man was a student she knew at Port Isabel High School, was yelling at the agents to let him go. By then, a Laguna Vista Police Department sergeant arrived and started making a report. Weber Alarcón said that the police officer repeatedly told her he could do nothing about what the agents were doing other than report it to the ICE agents’ supervisors. 

Realizing the man they pulled from the backseat was a U.S. citizen, the agents uncuffed him. Weber Alarcón started telling the agents again that their driving could have killed her and her son. She said one agent apologized and had “a million excuses” as to why they drove the way they did. Then one of the agents asked Weber Alarcón if she could take the man from the backseat home because the car he was riding in was now part of an investigation. The agents then sped away down the street, the Laguna Vista police officer yelling at them to slow down.

“I said [to the officer], ‘You see, they almost hit us, and they could care less,’” Weber Alarcón said.

Weber Alarcón then drove the man, who was not actually the student from Port Isabel High School, to his home in Brownsville. In a statement to the Observer, an ICE spokesperson said “officers were conducting targeted enforcement” in the area and “observed a vehicle driving erratically,” before the driver sped up to get away from the officers. “There was no vehicle pursuit or arrest attempt,” the spokesperson said.

The statement continued to say that, after the driver and passenger fled, agents encountered the “abandoned vehicle” with the young man in the backseat, claiming he ignored orders to exit the car and “began reaching into a tool bag”—where the spokesperson said “a knife was later discovered”—causing the officer to draw his gun. After the man exited with hands up, he was identified “as an 18-year-old U.S. citizen” and released.

The man, who spoke to the Observer on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals,  challenged ICE’s account. The alleged knife, he said, was a shingle cutter in his tool bag. He is also in his mid-twenties, not 18, as ICE stated.

“The car was not abandoned. They didn’t just show up to an abandoned vehicle. That’s a lie,” Weber Alarcón said when shown ICE’s statement. “They did a high-speed chase.”

Credit: Courtesy/Samantha Weber Alarcón

Credit: Courtesy/Samantha Weber Alarcón

Credit: Courtesy/Samantha Weber Alarcón

Weber Alarcón’s post about the incident has been shared thousands of times on Facebook. Since then, several other posts on the social media site have documented ICE agents in the Laguna Madre area surrounding vehicles or arresting people. 

ICE has limited authority to stop and question individuals they think are in the country illegally. Before agents stop someone, they must have “reasonable suspicion” that the person is in the U.S. without authorization. The bar is higher for warrantless arrests: Agents must have reason to believe the person may escape before they can get a warrant.

Agents can’t use race, ethnicity, accent, and the type of work someone does alone as motives to detain them, but they can be factors in deciding whether to do so. A Los Angeles federal court temporarily blocked the consideration of those factors last July, but the Supreme Court stayed that decision in an ongoing case.

From the Laguna Madre area, photos and videos collected on social media and sent to the Observer show ICE agents almost exclusively around trucks with construction or lawn care equipment in their beds. 

There is little legal recourse for people who are lawful permanent residents or U.S. citizens and are detained or arrested by ICE, even if their rights were likely violated.

“Just the experience of having a gun pointed at you, having agents aggressively approach your car, endangering people on the road, coming into your yard or home, obviously, that is an extremely traumatic event for anyone who has to experience it,” Michelle Lapointe, legal director for the American Immigration Council, told the Observer. “So even if those folks don’t end up being put in proceedings because they can’t be deported, and the government knows that, it’s still an extremely humiliating and traumatic experience.” 

Laguna Vista City Manager Victor Trevino told the Observer he had heard of the ICE chase but didn’t know any details. No Laguna Vista elected official responded to a request for comment, nor did the police chief, Daniel Holland. 

Unlike in larger cities across the country, where ICE made large shows of their descents into neighborhoods, the agency’s movement in the Valley is usually documented by community members on social media, as Weber Alarcón did. She says it was to warn other residents of the agency’s impunity.

“I sent it to everyone that I could, because I saw the disrespect that was given to our local police officers,” Weber Alarcón said. “That’s what I was so in fear of, myself. I was like, ‘Then that means we’re not safe at all. If our police officers here can’t help us, who’s going to help us?’” 

The post ICE Never Stopped Chasing People in Cars in the Rio Grande Valley appeared first on The Texas Observer.

29 Jul 2026

In Congress, Christian Menefee Says He’s Fighting for ‘The Least, the Last, and the Lost’

by | posted in: All news | 0

In May, Christian Menefee won the Democratic primary for Texas’ historically Black 18th Congressional District after Governor Greg Abbott and Republican legislators redrew the state’s congressional map, forcing him to compete against Congressman Al Green, who represented Texas’ 9th Congressional District—another historically Black seat that was redrawn into a majority-white conservative seat—for more than 20 years. Before this, he defeated Amanda Edwards in a long-delayed special election to fill the seat following the deaths of longtime Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee and then, her successor, former Houston mayor Sylvester Turner.  

From 2021 to 2026, Menefee served as Harris County Attorney, the first Black person and the youngest, at 32 years old, to hold that post. While in county office, Menefee fought President Donald Trump’s mandates, including successfully suing Trump for withholding healthcare funds for refugees. He fended off the state’s challenges to the county election results and has sued companies responsible for creosote and concrete batch contamination in the low-income and predominantly Black communities in Houston.

Now that he’s formally in Congress, the Texas Observer spoke with Menefee about how he plans to continue fighting for his community, the ideological fights within the Democratic Party, and ICE’s killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston’s East End. 

TO: Can you tell our readers more about the district you represent? 

Texas 18 has the largest number of SNAP recipients of any district in the state of Texas. We have a high number who are uninsured. We have communities where kids are walking in the middle of the street to go to a gas station or a Dollar General to get groceries. They’re walking in the middle of the street because there are no sidewalks. And they’re getting groceries at a gas station because there aren’t any grocery stores. We have a beautiful cultural diversity in our district. We have areas that are underserved. 

People want to make enough money to be able to take care of their family. People want to be able to make enough money to have money in the bank if something happens to their health. They can get the treatment that they need. People want to make enough money to send their kids to do better than they did. They want to make enough money to retire with dignity at a reasonable age, and they want to make enough money to have a good time on Friday night. And so, my job in Congress has been to advocate for them. 

You were forced to compete against Congressman Al Green in a primary after Governor Greg Abbott pushed to redraw congressional districts. How do you plan to fight the continued erosion of voting rights?

Having to run against an icon in Texas politics and in the national fight against corruption was something I would not have chosen. Greg Abbott forced that on our communities, and I think it’s a travesty. Both Congressman Green and I should be coming back to Congress next January. But I plan to be very active in holding the Trump administration accountable for how they’re trying to make it so that, in every state it’s politicians picking their voters instead of the other way around. So that means trying to get comprehensive voting rights legislation passed so that we can ban partisan gerrymandering in this country, restore the Voting Rights Act so that we can stop the far right’s attacks on our voting rights. Texas was ground zero for this stealing of districts across the country. But the goal is for us to get back a majority in the House, in the Senate, and to win the White House so that we can pass real reform to our electoral processes in this country.

With incidents like the killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by federal immigration agents, more and more Democrats including yourself have called to Abolish ICE. What would abolishing ICE actually look like?

I think you need to rip ICE down to the studs. When you tear a house down to the studs, it’s to the frame and build it back up in an image of immigration enforcement that is humane and reflects the dignity of the immigrant folks in our community. … I think immigration enforcement should focus on folks who have committed violent crimes, and it should focus on ensuring that our laws are upheld at our border. It should not be a get-out-of-jail-free card for agents to wear masks, to terrorize communities, to shoot at vehicles, and to murder people in broad daylight. 

Rethinking the way that we do immigration enforcement in this country means taking it away from this militarized police force, and instead turning it into an enforcement agency that acts with good judgment, that has independent investigations, that wears body cameras, that adheres to warrant requirements, and that treats people with the dignity that they deserve as fellow human beings.

Right now, in Democratic primaries around the country, there’s a battle unfolding between the left and the center. Where do you fall in that spectrum? And is there room in the Democratic Party tent for both a Darializa Avila Chevalier and a Henry Cuellar?

I’m a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. I’m very proud of that. But I’m a person who believes in getting stuff done. If you go talk to the underserved communities in Texas 18, they don’t use words like moderate and progressive—they’re looking for someone who’s going to help them keep the lights on and be able to pay the bills and bring gas prices down. 

So if you are in the Democratic Party, and you’re about making life better for the working class and underserved people in this country, then I’m here to work with you. But the only way that we’re going to continue to be successful as a party is if we accept truly being a big tent. … Being a big tent party means we have our red lines, but we also understand we’re not going to agree on every single thing. And I am perfectly fine with that because I wasn’t sent to Congress to agree with every single person from Seattle, Washington, to Miami, Florida, to upstate New York, but instead I was sent to Congress to advocate for the people of the 18th Congressional District in the Houston area, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. 

Houston has longstanding environmental justice problems, like creosote pollution in the Fifth Ward and Kashmere Gardens. Under this current Trump administration, what’s your strategy to get federal help in these areas?

Democrats will have to win the House back and then start the hearings on the EPA to hold them accountable. The Trump administration has slashed the EPA’s budget. They have eliminated the Office of Environmental Justice and Civil Rights, completely zeroed out the budget for that office, and laid off every single staff member. And they are now approaching environmental regulation through the lens of what’s most helpful to industry, as opposed to what’s going to help these communities, like in Fifth Ward and Kashmere Gardens, where there’s been a legacy of contamination that has gotten people sick. 

Recently, Democratic U.S. Senate nominee James Talarico had a tense town hall with Black Houstonians. Is he doing enough to earn their votes, and what do you think of Jasmine Crockett’s posture toward his campaign? 

That is exactly what public servants should be doing: going to communities, asking them about their issues, and hearing from them about their issues. And there are going to be times where those conversations are collegial, and there are going to be times where those conversations are more tense. But there’s only one person in the race for United States Senate in Texas right now who is going to Black communities and asking them about their issues, and that is James Talarico, not his opponent. And in fact, neither Greg Abbott nor none of the folks on the Republican side out in Austin would ever be caught dead doing a town hall in a Black community for Black voters. It will never happen. So I think James is doing a great job. He’s continuing to work to earn the support of Black communities.

You represent a district that has experienced significant political turnover following the deaths of Sheila U.S. Representatives Sheila Jackson Lee and Sylvester Turner, along with the recent redistricting. Al Green, who you beat, also served for more than 20 years in Congress. How do you plan to build your own identity while honoring the legacies of the leaders who came before you? 

I served as Harris County Attorney for five years and transformed that office into a democratic fighting force that stood up for people’s rights, for voting rights to protect communities, and make sure that they have clean air and clean water and clean land. Fighting back against large corporations and pollution. So my approach and brand in this isn’t being built overnight. This is work that I’ve been doing since I first got into politics, and the throughline between all the giants who served in Texas 18 is they were fighters, and they weren’t afraid to say the truth when it needed to be said, and to advocate for the communities and put the communities above themselves. So I plan to continue in that vein and uphold their legacy by just being who I am, which is somebody who is fighting for the least, the last, and the lost, and not for myself. Not for the wealthy, not for the well-connected, but for the average person in Texas 18.

The post In Congress, Christian Menefee Says He’s Fighting for ‘The Least, the Last, and the Lost’ appeared first on The Texas Observer.