I was 7 years old the first time I put on the vestments. White surplice over red cassock, the fabric stiff and foreign against skin that was more accustomed to sweat and South Texas dirt. I had been born on East Hackberry Avenue in the McAllen labor camps. I was delivered at home, not in a hospital. The world I came from smelled of my mother’s handmade flour tortillas and arroz con pollo with little salted shrimp rehydrating in the rice, of honeysuckle and pomegranates growing wild in the back alley, of dust devils spinning in the summer heat. My father drove a GMC truck and hauled oranges for a produce warehouse called Griffin & Brand. We were farmworker people. We were poor. And on Sunday mornings, I carried the cross.

I served at that altar through baptism, catechism, confirmation, and Communion. I believed what I was taught. I rang the bells at the elevation of the host and meant it. But even then, even as a child who did not yet have the language for what he was seeing, I watched my community from that altar and I wondered. The families in those pews—farmworkers, migrants, the working poor of South Texas—came every Sunday carrying burdens the Church preached about but did very little to lift. The suffering around me was concrete. The poverty was concrete. The Church’s response, as best as I could tell, was to pass the collection plate and promise a better world somewhere else.

I always wondered why. Now I know.

The author as a child (Courtesy/Jorge Meave)

I am no longer a believer. After more than 30 years as a bilingual educator, instructional coach, and administrator in the public schools of East Austin serving the children of families not unlike the one I came from, I understand religion as a human social construct. One that’s capable of extraordinary good and profound harm, often at the same time, in the same building, on the same Sunday morning. I hold that view without bitterness. The Church built hospitals. Educated generations. Did genuine good. But I have carried that childhood question with me for nearly seven decades, and I have never received a satisfying answer.

So when Pope Leo XIV released Magnífica Humanitas in May 2026, I read it with the particular attention of someone who learned to read at the feet of this institution and then spent a lifetime watching it fail the people it claimed to serve.

I want to be honest: The  encyclical is serious and it is good. Pope Leo XIV draws an explicit parallel to Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, the 1891 document that addressed factory workers and industrial exploitation, and applies that same moral framework to the age of artificial intelligence. He sees, clearly and without equivocation, how AI-driven automation threatens workers, concentrates wealth, and compounds the suffering of those already at the margins. He defends human dignity. He defends organized labor. He calls for concrete social criteria to govern technological innovation. This is the Church’s social teaching at its best, and this pope appears to mean it.

But I keep coming back to the loaves.

Whether you read it as miracle or metaphor, the story of the loaves and fishes has always struck me as the Gospel at its most honest. Jesus did not look out at a hungry crowd and deliver a homily about the spiritual virtues of hunger. He did not instruct them to pray for bread and trust in divine providence. He fed them, hand to mouth. Bread in hand. Fish on the ground. That is the standard the Church set for itself 2,000 years ago, and it is the standard by which I am measuring this document today.

In post-Citizens United America, words are not enough. The 2010 Supreme Court decision opened the floodgates to unlimited dark money in American politics, and the right has used it with devastating efficiency. From the Koch brothers to the Wilks brothers, the Heritage Foundation to the Chamber of Commerce, a network of ideologically aligned donors has  poured billions into dismantling the very protections—labor rights, social safety nets, public education—that this encyclical claims to defend. And they do this not by writing treatises but by writing checks.

The Vatican holds an estimated $73 billion in assets. The Catholic Church commands the loyalty of nearly one in five American adults. That is not a church that needs to pass the plate; that is an institution with the resources to move policy, fund organizing, and match the moral urgency of its own documents with the kind of financial and political commitment that actually changes the conditions of people’s lives. Progressive institutional investment is just as legal as the right’s dark money. The question is whether the will is there.

I think about the families I taught in East Austin. The kids who came to school hungry. The parents working two jobs at wages that hadn’t kept pace with rent since before their children were born. I think about my own family on East Hackberry Avenue, my mother’s tortillas stretching to feed us. These are the people Magnifica Humanitas is written for. These are the people who have been filling Catholic pews for centuries while the institution sat on wealth that could have built a different world.

I know something about waiting.

When I was a boy, after my parents divorced, I decided I wanted to go live with my father. I called him myself, without telling my mother. He said he would come get me. She packed me a suitcase and set it on the sofa and told me to wait.

I waited six or seven days. My father never came.

My mother never said a word against him. She let me find out for myself who he was. That is a particular kind of love, the kind that trusts you with the truth even when the truth is going to hurt.

I have been thinking about that suitcase my whole life without knowing it. The boy on the sofa waiting for someone who promised to come. The community in the pews waiting for an institution that preaches abundance and sits on billions. The workers waiting for the protections the Church endorses in documents and withholds in action.

THE VATICAN HOLDS AN ESTIMATED $73 BILLION IN ASSETS.

Pope Leo XIV is saying the right things. He sees the world clearly. And I give him that credit freely, from a man who no longer prays, who understands religion as a human social construct, and who learned at a very young age that the distance between a promise and a kept promise is where people actually live.

The altar boy from South Texas is still here. He is 68 years old. He has spent his life serving the same communities he watched suffer from behind the Communion rail. He is not asking for a miracle.

He is asking for the concrete thing. He has been asking his whole life.

Holy See, distribute the loaves. 

The post It’s Time for the Catholic Church to Distribute the Loaves appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Austinites who expected overwhelming turnout and chaos on Wednesday for the appearance of the leftist political streamer Hasan Piker at the University of Texas at Austin were met with a lackluster showing: more law enforcement than protesters, and an auditorium only three-quarters full.

Despite efforts by both Democrats and Republicans to spread the message that events would go on as planned, students faced what Piker dubbed essentially a “soft cancelling.” The University Democrats received nearly 2,000 RSVPs to the event, but when the university failed to accommodate them with a larger venue, the group was forced to rescind tickets.

Students who missed out on seeing the commentator—who has built a massive online audience, with over 3 million followers on Twitch—told the Texas Observer that they thought their tickets or the event as a whole had been cancelled, and they were surprised to hear about the empty seats. The Austin Young Republicans also anticipated a contingent of around 150 protesters, but after state troopers surrounded their rally point, only about two dozen protesters arrived. The whole affair encapsulated how the Campus Protection Act, a bill passed in 2025 by the Republican state Legislature to restrict “expressive activities” on college campuses, and a political environment increasingly intolerant of free speech negatively impacts everyone—left and right—on public universities in Texas.

(Eden Shamy)

“I’ve done larger events than this. I’ve never had this much pushback. I’ve never had this much security concerns,” Piker said while streaming in the green room before taking the stage. Beside him sat Nick Escue, a member of the University Democrats who counts himself among Piker’s fans. The student said he was Piker’s driver to and from the event amid the high pressure environment and death threats against the streamer.

“It was super nerve-wracking. Anything could go wrong at any moment,” Escue said. “We were all stressing that if there was a slight incident, they would try to shut it all down.”

In the weeks leading up to the event, everyone from Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton to a number of local pro-Israel groups condemned the University Democrats for hosting the provocative streamer. Piker has been a prominent voice against Israel’s genocide in Gaza and faces rampant accusations of anti-Semitism, among a number of other controversies—although he characterizes himself as a staunch anti-Zionist who views Judaism as separate from Israel. Piker’s recent foray into campaigning with Democratic Socialists and other lefty candidates, such as Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, has swiftly transformed him into the bogeyman of the Republican Party—and of some centrist Democrats.

“He is the future of the left. He’s this collectivist Islamist,” Benjamin Schrader, President of the Austin Young Republicans, told the Observer. “He is not someone to be underestimated. Anyone who would is a fool because he is a serious threat.” (Piker, raised in Turkey, has said he is not religious.)

Students argue about Israel and socialism with members of the Austin Young Republicans protesting the appearance of Hasan Piker at the University of Texas at Austin on September 30. (Eden Shamy)

The day before the event, the university sent out an email to students outlining their free speech restrictions, many of which were established after the passing of the Campus Protection Act. The law passed in 2025, about a year after mass pro-Palestine protests swept across college campuses nationwide, including at UT. It limits free expression on public college campuses by transforming all common outdoor areas into “limited” public forums. That means individuals who are not students, faculty, or staff cannot conduct or even observe expressive activities on campus.

The email reiterated this principle, stating “Any participants who are not affiliated with the University will be asked to leave campus.”

The law also prohibited encampments, certain uses of amplified sound, and expressive activity during the last two weeks of school or between the hours of 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. A federal court placed an injunction on some of these clauses in October 2025 because of their broad interpretations that violate the First Amendment. However, the limited public forum still stands, as does another critical requirement: Student organizations must get advance permission from university administrators in order to host a guest speaker.

Escue said University Democrats were forced to jump through the bureaucratic hoops of a speaker approval process. After they finally confirmed the event with Piker, he said the Office of the Dean of Students continued trying “to poke holes in our event.” The burden of securing the event was placed on the University Democrats, who swiftly and successfully launched a fundraiser to cover the $25,000 in required security fees.

Escue pointed out that right-wingers regularly speak on campus, and he felt disappointed that most Democratic politicians didn’t support students amid the media onslaught.

When Piker finally took the stage Wednesday evening, he strayed from his usual stump speech to thank those in attendance and call out the university. “You can’t have an opinion that is outside of the permission structure, and the permission structure year over year seems to swing wildly in the rightward direction,” Piker said. “We have to fight back because, as I’ve seen in my travels all around the country since Trump came into office, our institutions have failed us—and even the national Democratic Party has failed us—but we have not failed one another.”

He went on to participate in a wide-ranging question and answer session with the president of the University Democrats, Adit Raha. They discussed support for the Democratic Socialists of America, turning Texas blue with James Talarico, and holding elected officials accountable.

Outside the auditorium, the Austin Young Republicans faced some issues of their own. Unlike others, Schrader said he didn’t want to cancel Piker’s event with the University Democrats. Instead, he called for both sides to exercise their freedom of speech. And Schrader said for the first time in its history, the Austin Young Republicans planned a protest. They formed a coalition with Reawaken USA, Texas College Republicans, and Young Americans for Liberty. Schrader said he started to learn about community organizing, even taking a thing or two from the left.

“Hey, they’re dang good at it,” Schrader said. “I was watching videos of how to run a protest from these communist groups, and I said, okay, I’m going to steal that. Let’s collectivize it!”

Aside from safety, one of Schrader’s biggest concerns was that his first ever rally would be put down by the university using the Campus Protection Act, so he was careful not to step on the toes of the administration. The group met with administrators and published a statement urging the university not to invoke the Campus Protection Act against its demonstration.

The Republicans arrived on campus Wednesday afternoon, where Schrader said they quickly encountered problems with the UT Police Department. “The campus did kick off our security and told them that if they escorted me and the Austin Young Republicans, they would be charged with criminal trespassing,” Schrader said. Lacking security, they carried on with their plan to meet at the George Washington statue in front of the UT tower and march down to the Student Activity Center.

When they arrived at the monument, it was surrounded by state troopers. They decided it best to avoid law enforcement altogether and went straight to the student center. Schrader said members of his coalition were already hesitant to attend for fear of being arrested. He believes the presence of law enforcement and the change of meeting point may have led to reduced turnout.

Despite the difficulties and the learning curve of putting on his first political protest, Schrader said it was a positive experience for the group. “People had a good time, and I’m grateful to God no one got arrested,” Schrader said. “We got to do more protests!”

The university has not responded to the Observer’s request for comment.

State troopers stand guard outside the Hasan Piker event. (Eden Shamy)

Both Republicans and Democrats told the Observer that they’d like to see the Campus Protection Act repealed because they believe it violates the First Amendment. There has been no movement on the issue since last year’s injunction, and the university Board of Regents—appointed by Abbott—has continued to expand its influence over nearly all aspects of university life. 

Students said that the only way forward is to continue using and demanding their First Amendment rights to the fullest extent.

“Every imaginable roadblock and barrier was put up to stop this event from happening tonight,” Raha of the University Democrats said at the podium. “We still stand for universal health care, an economy that works for all, an end to the genocide in Gaza, our mission to abolish and prosecute ICE, and protecting one of America’s greatest values, the freedom of speech.”

The post Hasan Piker’s UT Appearance Put Campus Protection Act to the Test appeared first on The Texas Observer.

In Texas’ most populous county, the judges who preside over the roughly 50 felony and misdemeanor criminal courts have been riding a political tiger for a decade now. Back in 2016, Republicans dominated these criminal judgeships, but starting with that year’s elections Democrats took control of most of the judicial positions that oversee the fates of accused Houstonians and other Harris County residents. Then, in 2024, Republican voters flipped one of those criminal courts along with a number of other local courts in an election that fueled GOP hopes of regaining a county once thought lost to the left. These criminal court judges control how everything from marijuana possession to murders make their way through the court system. 

This year, though a blue wave seems to loom, Governor Greg Abbott has promised to use his massive campaign warchest to create a “dark red” Harris County, which would mean a swing back to a judiciary led by Republicans, a party that is consistently hostile to criminal justice reform—though experts say partisan affiliation is not always a reliable indicator of how judges run their courts. 

Damon Parrish II, president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, said that once judges are in place partisan affiliation is less important than fealty to the law. “I think the judges people are perceiving as being nice or defense-friendly or amenable are really judges that are more concerned with the law,” Parrish said.

Greg Abbott speaks during an election night campaign event in November 2022. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

Texas is one of only nine states with partisan judicial elections. In other states, “it doesn’t mean that the judge doesn’t have a political ideology, but it feels like you’re voting for someone who would rule independent of political ideology,” said Miltonette Craig, criminal justice professor at Sam Houston State University. 

Among the most animating political issues in Harris County—at least prior to this cycle—has been defendants’ access to bail. The issue’s local salience has stemmed in part from a 2019 federal consent decree, limiting the ability of misdemeanor court judges to require cash bail from the poor, and in part from a brew of some high-profile criminal incidents, local public-safety agitators, and long-running controversy around a politically mercurial Democratic district attorney. That, plus bail remains a big business—and therefore local interest group—in Harris County: In 2026 alone, judges in Harris County have required more than half a billion dollars in bail from defendants pre-trial, about 90 percent of that in felony cases. 

In recent years, even some Democrats in charge soured on bail reform. That former DA, Kim Ogg, called bond hearings “the new battleground for public safety” in 2022, decrying what she called “low, insufficient bonds.” And Houston Mayor John Whitmire, also a Democrat, publicly inflated the number of people out on bail in discussions with city council last year. In 2022, the Houston Chronicle editorial board based its judicial endorsements almost entirely on the judges’ record on bail. They interrogated candidates about specific cases in which someone was presumably let off easy. 

In one high-profile 2025 incident in Houston, Austin Collette allegedly killed his girlfriend and himself while out on a $250,000 bond related to a 2019 murder. In Collette’s case, the judge had granted bail after the defense and prosecution both agreed.

“These horrifying cases can drive political pushes for tougher pretrial policies, even though they’re abnormal,” Craig said.

Over recent election cycles and legislative sessions, Abbott and other state leaders joined wholeheartedly in bail-related fearmongering and bashing Harris County and Houston Democratic leadership. In January, a constitutional amendment passed by the Legislature and approved by voters last year took effect that allows judges to deny bail for more types of crimes. Previously, judges could only deny bail to people charged with capital murder or who had violated their bond conditions. This means anyone accused of a crime like murder—who are presumed innocent under the law—can be held without bail for months or years before they ever get to plead their case to a jury. 

But even in this new context, judges retain discretion in most bail decisions, and the judge in charge of a court determines how quickly cases move.

“Having a judge that is attuned not just to keeping the public safe, but also safeguarding the defendant’s constitutional rights is really, really important,” said Travis Fife, an attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project. He added, “Public safety and constitutional rights are not mutually exclusive choices.” 

In November, 17 Harris County criminal district judges are up for election. These are the judges who handle felony cases and therefore decide whether to issue bail or even dismiss cases. Currently, 11 of these seats are held by Democrats and six by Republicans—all six of whom were appointed by Abbott, as seats were left vacant by judges who resigned, got promoted, or died. 

Perhaps the most noteworthy battle featuring an Abbott appointee is taking place in the 496th District Court. Democrat Ramona Franklin—dubbed “one of the county’s worst judges”—handily lost her reelection bid for the 338th District Court in 2024. During her tenure, she racked up complaints from lawyers, kept people in jail awaiting court-appointed defenders, and even went 15 months without presiding over a single case. 

She’s vying for another shot on the bench, after she surprisingly prevailed in the Democratic primary. In July, the Houston Chronicle editorial board published an early endorsement of Franklin’s opponent, with the headline: “Hey Houston Democrats, please vote for this Republican judge.” That judge is Dan Simons, who narrowly lost to Sean Teare in the 2024 race for Harris County district attorney. In January 2025, Abbott appointed Simons to his position, and in that time he’s developed a good reputation as a jurist, per the Chronicle. 

In the 232nd District Court, Democrat incumbent Josh Hill—who has weathered conservative opposition campaigns in the past—is up against a former judge (and former Dem) Chuck Silverman. Silverman led the 183rd District Court starting in 2019, but he lost his primary in 2022. He developed a reputation for detaining “hundreds of pretrial defendants on high bond,” before supporting a 2020 lawsuit aimed at reining in felony cash bail. 

Incumbent Judge Hilary Unger, the democrat in charge of the 248th District Court, found herself in the middle of bail-related controversy in recent years, after some defendants she granted bond to went on to commit other crimes. Unger is up against Republican David Overhuls, a former prosecutor-turned-defense attorney who has never run for office before. 

Meanwhile, all but one of the county’s 16 criminal courts at law, which handle misdemeanors, are up as well. The one position not up for election is Criminal Court at Law 16, led by Republican Judge Linda Garcia. Among the other 15, 12 are currently held by Democrats and three by Republicans, and all are contested this November. 

These misdemeanor courts are subject to the federal consent decree that has kept Harris County’s misdemeanor bail reform in place since 2019, which followed a lawsuit against the county for unconstitutional practices. Under the decree and a local rule, most people charged with misdemeanors are released on personal bonds, meaning they didn’t put up any bail money, after being arrested. According to the most recent report from the court-appointed independent monitor for the agreement, the number of people arrested for misdemeanors has decreased under the decree.

But the agreement is being challenged. Texas Attorney General and U.S. Senate candidate Ken Paxton says that new state laws requiring cash bail for certain misdemeanor crimes invalidate the consent decree. His efforts to get the decree overturned are making their way through the courts with minimal roadblocks, but Harris County is still operating in compliance with the agreement.

While judges operate within the confines of the consent decree, they can make decisions regarding whether a defendant may pose a risk to public safety, and they have control over extra bail requirements. Currently, all of the sitting Republican misdemeanor court judges, and none of the Democratic ones, have joined in Paxton’s challenge to the decree. 

Harris County’s Baker Street Jail (Shutterstock)

But, despite the historical salience and ongoing relevance, as November’s elections near, judicial candidates today are not as vocal about bail as they have been in previous cycles. Perhaps because politics has belatedly caught up to the fact that violent crime is down in Houston, or because reformers have been scared away from the issue, or because the Legislature has steadily decreased local control of the matter altogether.

Doshie Piper, coordinator with the Texas Organizing Project, thinks some judges are “too scared to talk about” the problems with cash bail for fear of being blamed for anything that goes wrong while a person is out on bond. 

“People are intimidated. They don’t want to be seen as soft on crime,” Piper said. “Campaign attacks or an accusation can really get people not to vote for you, so they don’t want that smoke.”

Brandon Rottinghaus, political science professor at the University of Houston, pointed to the other explanations: that crime rates are down and the state “effectively took ownership of the bail issues” that had been such a flashpoint in local politics. 

This could mean that these downballot races, which always fly under the radar compared to top-ballot elections for the other branches of government, will be even further from voters’ minds than usual—a possible gift to Democrats in this particular midterm. “The quiet paradox of judicial elections is the less voters’ attention paid to individual judges, the more important the county’s overall partisan environment is,” Rottinghaus said. 

The post A Blue Wave Could Sweep Greg Abbott’s Handpicked Houston Judges Out of Office appeared first on The Texas Observer.