In case you find yourself this holiday season with a little extra reading time, or maybe time to return to a story you left open in a tab some many months ago, here are 10 of the best Observer longform stories from 2025 (in chronological order). May they enrich you for the now, and steel you for the future.

1. Texas’ War on Drug Users. A mass overdose event in Austin reveals the state’s backward approach to the ongoing crisis spurred by fentanyl and other super-potent substances. By Jason Buch

Two people walk through an alley near the site of many of the overdoses in Austin. (Joseph Rushmore)

2. ‘This Town Has Nothing’: Rural Texas’ Mental Healthcare Crisis. Against long odds, Sweetwater’s public hospital recruited counselors to help address a wave of mental health crises in rural Texas—yet struggles continue. By Daniel Carter

Candi Garrett stands on the spot where her husband died by suicide in 2019. (Shelby Tauber)

3. The Crypto Racket. Public officials at all levels are propping up a Texas Bitcoin mining boom that’s threatening water and energy systems while afflicting locals with noise pollution. By Candice Bernd

(Guillermo Ortego)

4. Texas Already Gives Public Ed Dollars to Private Operators. Here’s How That Worked Out. The state created “Texas Partnership” charter schools to turn around struggling public campuses, but an Observer investigation has uncovered numerous academic and financial issues. By Josephine Lee

(Illustration/Ivan Armando Flores)

5. Wrestling with the American Dream. Afghan refugees find a home on a San Antonio high school athletics team. By Brant deBoer

(Christopher Lee)

6. ‘With What Water?’ The shrinking of a mighty Mexican river has hollowed out the economy of Chihuahua’s Conchos Valley and bred civil unrest as South Texas demands the water it’s owed. By Chilton Tippin

La Boquilla Reservoir (Eduardo Talamantes)

7. The Adoption Trap. Private foster care and adoption agencies in Texas are brokering contracts for moms to turn over their children in a murky legal world, spawning protracted civil custody battles. By Sandy West

(Guillermo Ortego)

8. The Eyes of Chihuahua. The 20-story Torre Centinela looming over Juárez is part of a much larger AI-powered surveillance system that won’t stop at the Texas-Mexico border. By Francesca D’Annunzio

Torre Centinela remains under construction in the heart of Ciudad Juárez. (Omar Ornelas)

9. Pam Perillo’s Sisterhood of the Condemned. She’s a death row survivor, but she doesn’t think she’s really any different from her friends who are still set to die. By Michelle Pitcher

Perillo at the Dominican Sisters of Houston Spirituality Center in August (Michelle Pitcher)

10. Lina Hidalgo Had a Vision. Harris County Won’t See It. Her anti-climactic exit from office caps a saga of waning power and growing discord. But what her rise once promised is worth remembering. By Sam Russek

Hidalgo awaits the arrival of Vice President Kamala Harris in Houston in November 2023. (Reginald Mathalone/NurPhoto via AP)

The post Our Best Longform Stories of 2025 appeared first on The Texas Observer.

GREENBELT, Md. (AP) — A federal judge on Monday will hear arguments about whether Kilmar Abrego Garcia should be returned to immigration custody after being free for just over a week.

Related Articles

Today in History: December 22, French Jewish army captain unjustly convicted of treason

Top Trump administration official defends partial release of Epstein files as Democrats cry foul

Vance refuses to set red lines over bigotry as conservatives feud at Turning Point

Flu season could get a lot worse in the coming weeks, experts say

Today in History: December 21, Pilgrims come ashore for the first time

Abrego Garcia, whose mistaken deportation to El Salvador has become a lightning rod for both sides of the immigration debate, had been in immigration detention since August. In that time, the government has said it planned to deport him to Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana and, most recently, Liberia. However, officials have made no effort to deport him to the one country he has agreed to go to — Costa Rica. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, in Maryland, has even accused the government of misleading her by falsely claiming that Costa Rica was unwilling to take him.

The government’s “persistent refusal to acknowledge Costa Rica as a viable removal option, their threats to send Abrego Garcia to African countries that never agreed to take him, and their misrepresentation to the Court that Liberia is now the only country available to Abrego Garcia, all reflect that whatever purpose was behind his detention, it was not for the ‘basic purpose’ of timely third-country removal,” she wrote.

Xinis’ Dec. 11 order that Abrego Garcia be released from immigration custody also concluded that the immigration judge who heard his case in 2019 had failed to issue an order of removal from the U.S., and he cannot be deported anywhere without a removal order.

Abrego Garcia has an American wife and child and has lived in Maryland for years, but he immigrated to the U.S. illegally from El Salvador as a teenager. In 2019, an immigration judge granted him protection from being deported back to his home country, finding he faced danger there from a gang that had targeted his family. In March, he was mistakenly deported there anyway. U.S. officials resisted calls to bring him back until the Supreme Court weighed in. However, officials have said he cannot stay in the U.S. and have vowed to deport him to a third country.

In filings last week, government attorneys argued that, with or without a final order of removal, they are still working to deport Abrego Garcia, so they can legally detain him during the process.

“If there is no final order of removal, immigration proceedings are ongoing, and Petitioner is subject to pre-final order detention,” they wrote.

Meanwhile, Abrego Garcia’s attorneys cited a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that “because immigration proceedings ‘are civil, not criminal’ detention must be ‘nonpunitive.’” They argued that in Abrego Garcia’s case, detention is punitive because the government wants to be allowed to hold him indefinitely without a viable plan to deport him.

“If immigration detention does not serve the legitimate purpose of effectuating reasonably foreseeable removal, it is punitive, potentially indefinite, and unconstitutional,” they wrote.

MOSCOW (AP) — A car bomb killed a Russian general on Monday, the third such killing of a senior military officer in a year. Investigators said Ukraine may be behind the attack.

Lt. Gen. Fanil Sarvarov, head of the Operational Training Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces’ General Staff, died from his injuries, said Svetlana Petrenko, the spokesperson for Russia’s Investigative Committee, the nation’s top criminal investigation agency.

This undated image provided by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Monday, Dec. 22, 2025, shows Lt. Gen. Fanil Sarvarov, head of the Operational Training Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff, who was killed Monday morning after an explosive device detonated under his car in southern Moscow. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)

“Investigators are pursuing numerous lines of inquiry regarding the murder. One of these is that the crime was orchestrated by Ukrainian intelligence services,” Petrenko said.

Since Moscow sent troops into Ukraine nearly four years ago, Russian authorities have blamed Ukraine for several assassinations of military officers and public figures in Russia. Ukraine has claimed responsibility for some of them. It has not yet commented on Monday’s death.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that President Vladimir Putin had been immediately informed about Sarvarov’s killing.

Related Articles

Denmark and Greenland vow that the US won’t take over Greenland after Trump appoints envoy

Today in History: December 22, French Jewish army captain unjustly convicted of treason

Today in History: December 21, Pilgrims come ashore for the first time

Today in History: December 20, Howard Beach racial murder

Rubio fields questions on Russia-Ukraine, Gaza and Venezuela at wide-ranging news conference

The Defense Ministry said that Sarvarov had previously fought in Chechnya and taken part in Moscow’s military campaign in Syria.

Just over a year ago, Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the chief of the military’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces, was killed by a bomb hidden on an electric scooter outside his apartment building. Kirillov’s assistant also died. Ukraine’s security service claimed responsibility for the attack.

An Uzbek man was quickly arrested and charged with killing Kirillov on behalf of the Ukrainian security service.

Putin described Kirillov’s killing as a “major blunder” by Russia’s security agencies, noting they should learn from it and improve their efficiency.

In April, another senior Russian military officer, Lt. Gen. Yaroslav Moskalik, a deputy head of the main operational department in the General Staff, was killed by an explosive device placed in his car parked near his apartment building just outside Moscow. A suspected perpetrator was quickly arrested.

Days after Moskalik’s killing, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he received a report from the head of Ukraine’s foreign intelligence agency on the “liquidation” of top Russian military figures, adding that “justice inevitably comes” although he didn’t mention Moskalik’s name.

By GEIR MOULSON, Associated Press

The leaders of Denmark and Greenland insisted Monday that the U.S. won’t take over Greenland and demanded respect for their territorial integrity after President Donald Trump announced the appointment of a special envoy to Greenland.

Related Articles

Top Trump administration official defends partial release of Epstein files as Democrats cry foul

Vance refuses to set red lines over bigotry as conservatives feud at Turning Point

Michael Jackson, other celebrities included in Epstein photo dump

Head of group suing over White House ballroom says she trusts Trump-picked chairman to do his job

Photos of Bill Clinton included in newly released Epstein files

Trump’s announcement on Sunday that Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry would be the U.S. special envoy prompted a new flare-up of tensions over Washington’s interest in the vast, semi-autonomous territory of Denmark, a NATO ally. Denmark’s foreign minister said in comments to Danish broadcasters that he plans to summon the U.S. ambassador.

”We have said it before. Now, we say it again. National borders and the sovereignty of states are rooted in international law,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and her Greenlandic counterpart, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said in a joint statement. “They are fundamental principles. You cannot annex another country. Not even with an argument about international security.”

“Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders and the U.S. shall not take over Greenland,” they added in the statement, emailed by Frederiksen’s office. “We expect respect for our joint territorial integrity.”

Trump called repeatedly during his presidential transition and the early months of his second term for U.S. jurisdiction over Greenland, and has not ruled out military force to take control of the mineral-rich, strategically located Arctic island. In March, Vice President JD Vance visited a remote U.S. military base in Greenland and accused Denmark of underinvesting there.

The issue gradually drifted out of the headlines, but in August, Danish officials summoned the top U.S. diplomat in Copenhagen following a report that at least three people with connections to Trump had carried out covert influence operations in Greenland. Denmark is a NATO ally of the United States.

On Sunday, Trump announced Landry’s appointment as special envoy, saying that “Jeff understands how essential Greenland is to our National Security, and will strongly advance our Country’s Interests for the Safety, Security, and Survival of our Allies, and indeed, the World.”

Landry wrote in a post on X that “it’s an honor to serve you in this volunteer position to make Greenland a part of the U.S.”

FILE – Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry speaks to reporters at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, La., Sept. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said in a brief statement that “the appointment confirms the continued American interest in Greenland.”

“However, we insist that everyone — including the U.S. — must show respect for the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark,” he added.

Danish broadcasters TV2 and DR reported that in comments from the Faroe Islands later Monday, Løkke Rasmussen said he will call in the U.S. ambassador in Copenhagen, Kenneth Howery, for a meeting at the ministry.

Before issuing the joint statement with Frederiksen, Nielsen wrote on Facebook that Denmark had again woken up to a new announcement from the U.S. president, but it “does not change anything for us at home.”

Earlier this month, the Danish Defense Intelligence Service said in an annual report that the U.S. is using its economic power to “assert its will” and threaten military force against friend and foe alike.

Denmark is a member of the European Union as well as NATO.

Anouar El Anouni, a spokesperson for the EU’s executive Commission, told reporters in Brussels Monday that it wasn’t for him to comment on U.S. decisions. But he underlined the bloc’s position that “preserving the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark, its sovereignty and the inviolability of its borders is essential for the European Union.”