Award-winning journalist and author Nate Blakeslee grew up in Arlington and devoured every book he could find. He majored in political science and joined the University of Texas at Austin’s American Studies graduate program, but then took a detour. In 2000, Blakeslee wrote a story for the Observer about a drug bust in Tulia that reverberated nationwide. His coverage led to more than a dozen criminal exonerations and changed lives and drug task forces. After three years co-editing the Observer, Blakeslee resigned to write a book about Tulia. 

Nate Blakeslee (left) covers the release of the Tulia defendants in 2003. Donnie Smith (right) was one of the defendants featured in Blakeslee’s reporting. (Courtesy/Nate Blakeslee)

TO: You dropped out of grad school to try to write for the Observer. That has to be a first…

I had this idea that grad school was where all the radicals were. I never really quite found them, but I did find the Texas Observer and I found this community of leftists in Austin, which was very vibrant in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

How did you convince them to hire you? 

In those days, the staff was very small, it was like four or five people, and there wasn’t much money. They hired me to do a couple of freelance stories. I was very used to being broke as a graduate student, but now I was even broker. So I tried to convince them that there must be some way to bring me on at least part-time. And they did, as a circulation manager. I had administrative duties and I would also report, on a part-time basis. 

The first big story I did was about this nuclear waste dump that they wanted to build in Sierra Blanca, east of El Paso. My girlfriend at the time was leading the opposition to it, which at most magazines would be a disqualification for you to get that assignment. But at the Observer, at that time, they were like, “Who knows more about it than you?”

They were part of a long tradition of crusading journalism. It wasn’t new and they wore it on their sleeve, even back to Ronnie Dugger days. Ronnie would say, “You see an injustice, it’s one thing to be objective. It doesn’t necessarily mean you need to be impartial.” That was his perspective, and that very much carried forward and still was the perspective when I came to the magazine. 

As you reported, a man once recognized as Texas’ “Outstanding Lawman of the Year” turned out to be quite the fraud. How did the Tulia story unfold? 

Several dozen African Americans had been arrested for allegedly selling cocaine to an undercover police officer. Some locals decided that the bust was unfair and had sort of despaired of getting the Amarillo or Lubbock papers to cover it and started writing to other publications. I had done a couple of drug war stories and so I got the letter, I read it. 

The thing that jumped out at me was that all of the defendants were African American in a town that had a very small African American community. And then the sentences given out were really long for very small amounts of cocaine. Like a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of cocaine sold was resulting in sentences as if they had murdered someone, you know, 50-60 years.

So that’s why I went. But when I got out there, it became evident that it was a very different story. There was no evidence against them other than the word of this one undercover narcotics officer who never wore a wire, never had a second officer to corroborate, no drugs recovered during the roundup of these suspects. And so then the question became, “Were these cases even legitimate to begin with?”

I didn’t realize what a head-slapping story it was until I got out there. And then, I called [my editors] and said, “I don’t think these people actually committed these crimes.” It’s not about their race, and it’s not about their sentences. It’s about the narc and the utter lack of supervision of the narc. 

He was a piece of work. But his dad was a famous Texas Ranger, and he had been living off of that for years and years, getting jobs based on it, trying to live up to his dad’s reputation and utterly failing until apparently he had become the greatest narcotics officer in the state of Texas. But it was all a lie. 

What was the reaction to that first story? 

An amazing amount of bounce. The New York Times and the LA Timesboth re-reported the story for Page 1 on the same day, neither mentioning that they had read it in the Texas Observer. Fortunately, our board chair was Molly Ivins, who knew the editor of the New York Times. She called and said, “What the hell?” And that same reporter was, I assume, made to come down and profile myself and Karen Olsson, who was my co-editor—the young editors of the Texas Observer making a splash with their reporting.

And then once the Times did it, everybody followed, it just became this huge national story. 

How did you leave your imprint as co-editor?

Karen and I found a new layout person,  Julia Austin, who was very creative. There had not been a lot of emphasis on how the magazine looked, it was more about just conveying information. And that was also true for the website, it was really rudimentary. So we redesigned the website too. We wanted to be New Yorker writers. That’s what we’ve read, and we wanted to write that kind of stuff. 

Tell me about y’all’s notorious happy hours. 

When you work at a magazine, you get a lot of advance copies of books if you do book reviews, which we very occasionally did. You’re probably used to selling your books for $0.50 a piece at Half Price [Books]. But if you have a brand-new hardcover book, you could actually get some money. We would take big boxes of books over there and sell them and buy a keg with them and have these happy hours like once a week. 

We read them, we reviewed some of them, we sold them and we drank them with other people that we knew. A lot of really interesting people were coming around. I won’t say it was glamorous, but it was good company, stimulating company. 

What is the Observer’s legacy? 

For a long time, it was a voice in the wilderness for progressives in Texas when there weren’t that many different places you could turn to for progressive thought and opinion.

The Observer has been willing, in terms of reporting, to tackle subjects that other papers weren’t willing to or simply had overlooked. 

I think it’s a place with really solid reporting, a place that focuses on issues that other newspapers and magazines might miss. And now, alt-weeklies that we used to compete with have died off, and staffs are much smaller now, sadly, at the dailies.

It has become a time when you need a source for good reporting again, maybe as much as we ever have. It still has a wonderful fresh voice, the reporting is really incisive and just as useful and necessary as it as it ever was. 

This interview, which is part of the Observer’s 70th anniversary coverage, has been edited for length and clarity. Support for our 70th anniversary interview series has been provided by KOOP Radio in Austin, which permitted its studios to be used for recordings.

“If it were up to me, all of New York City would be included,” said State Sen. Julia Salazar, who is looking to expand the state’s recently passed basement legalization pathway to more neighborhoods.

Adi Talwar

Homes in the Cypress Hills neighborhood of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is excluded from the state’s recently passed basement legalization plan, despite serving as the city’s testing grounds for an earlier conversion pilot program.

Although the recently passed state budget included a new basement legalization pilot, less than a quarter of the city’s community districts were selected to participate—but a last-minute bill could extend the program to additional neighborhoods prone to flooding.

Of the city’s 59 community districts, only 15 were chosen for the five-year legalization pilot authorized by the state. These encompass four in the Bronx (districts 9, 10, 11, and 12), four in Brooklyn (districts 4, 10, 11, and 17), and six in Manhattan (districts 2, 3, 9, 10, 11, and 12). However, only one district in Queens was included (district 2), and none from Staten Island.

The carve-outs in Queens, despite the area’s vulnerability to flooding and the basement drowning deaths of 11 people in the borough during Hurricane Ida in 2021, compounded with the omission of Brooklyn Community Board 5 (CB5)—the site of the city’s basement conversion pilot launched in 2019—came as a shock and disappointment to some community leaders.

“It’s our communities in Cypress Hills and East New York that demonstrated the need for the state to act,” said State Sen. Julia Salazar, referring to the original pilot that took place in Senate District 18, which she represents. “So it is totally counterintuitive that Brooklyn CB5 would be excluded.”

Salazar and Assemblymember Jessica González-Rojas of Queens introduced a bill earlier this month to expand the pilot to a handful of additional neighborhoods, including Brooklyn CB5 and Queens CB1, 3, and 4. With only a week left in the current session in Albany, they’re hoping to see it move before legislators wrap their work on June 6.

Some city lawmakers have opposed basement legalization, citing concerns about safety and increased residential density. Besides the addition of the four community districts, Salazar’s bill seeks no further changes to the state pilot, which she hopes will allow it to pass more quickly.

“The priority is that we add these community districts to the pilot, and we didn’t want that to be delayed by any other changes that the legislature would have to debate and consider,” said Salazar. “We felt that this should be really easy and really straightforward.” 

Experts estimate that there are tens of thousands of basement or cellar units across the five boroughs, many occupied illegally, leaving tenants—often immigrant and low-income New Yorkers who can’t afford other options—with fewer protections and at particular risk for safety issues.

Their plight has become more urgent in the face of increased rain and flooding caused by climate change, prompting a push for state legislation in recent years that would clear the way for the city to regulate underground units. 

“I am really thankful to the leadership of State Sen. Salazar for quickly taking action and trying to fix this situation,” said Councilmember Sandy Nurse, who represents Brooklyn CB5 and adds that its exclusion “should never have been a problem in the first place.”

The pilot included in the budget effectively allows for exceptions to the state’s Multiple Dwelling Law (MDL) for projects in the selected neighborhoods. The MDL dictates the construction, maintenance, and safety standards of buildings with three or more residential units.

It proved the most significant obstacle in the city’s earlier pilot attempt, which connected property owners of one- to three-family homes in East New York with loans and other assistance to facilitate basement conversions. When a two-family home attempted to legally convert to become a three-family home, it became subject to the MDL, with its stricter requirements that significantly raised the construction costs. 

According to testimony from Department of Buildings officials at an executive budget hearing earlier this month, most of the homeowners who applied to the city’s pilot were “overwhelmingly” earning below 80 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI), about $111,840 for a family of three, despite the pilot being open to those earning up to 165 percent of the AMI. 

According to the DOB, the primary reasons applicants said they were interested in making conversions were to house a family member or to improve their financial security. 

“To me, it speaks to the fact that we have a lot of homes where you have multiple generations living together,” Nurse said in response to that testimony. “People do the best they can, and one of the options is basements.”

As the city grapples with high rents and a historic 1.4 percent rental vacancy rate—the lowest in over half a century—Salazar believes legalized basement units can help fill the shortage.

“They can be a valuable part of the affordable housing market in New York City as long as people have proper egress and they have what they need in order for it to be safe and legal,” the lawmaker said. 

For Councilmember Nurse, it’s essential that her community board and others be included, noting that flooding will remain a problem for years to come.

“We were communities that were impacted by Hurricane Ida, and the cloudbursts are going to continue to be part of our future,” said Nurse. “The reality here in New York City, where rain drops so fast and can create flood situations very quickly—we want to make sure people aren’t drowning in their own homes.”

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Chris@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

Want to republish this story? Find City Limits’ reprint policy here.

More than two-thirds of U.S. physicians have changed their minds about generative artificial intelligence and now view the technology as beneficial to health care. But as AI grows more powerful and prevalent in medicine, apprehensions remain high among medical professionals.

For the last 18 months, I’ve examined the potential uses and misuses of generative AI in medicine — research that culminated in my new book, “ChatGPT, MD.” Over that time, I’ve seen the fears of clinicians evolve — from worries over AI’s reliability and, consequently, patient safety, to a new set of fears: Who will be held liable when something goes wrong?

Technology experts have grown increasingly optimistic that next generations of AI technology will prove reliable and safe for patients, especially under expert human oversight. As evidence, recall that Google’s first medical AI model, Med-PaLM, achieved a mere “passing score” (60 percent) on the U.S. medical licensing exam in late 2022. Five months later, its successor, Med-PaLM 2, scored at an “expert” doctor level (85 percent).

Since then, numerous studies have shown that generative AI increasingly outperforms medical professionals in various tasks. These include diagnosis, treatment decisions, data analysis and even empathy.

Despite these advancements, errors in medicine can and will occur, regardless of whether the expertise comes from human clinicians or advanced AI technologies.

Legal experts anticipate that as AI tools become more integrated into health care, determining liability will come down to whether errors result from AI decisions, human oversight or a combination of both.

For instance, if doctors use a generative AI tool in their offices for diagnosing or treating a patient and something goes wrong, the physician would likely be held liable, especially if it’s deemed that clinical judgment should have overridden the AI’s recommendations.

But the scenarios get more complex when generative AI is used without direct physician oversight. As an example, who is liable when patients rely on generative AI’s medical advice without consulting a doctor? Or what if a clinician encourages a patient to use an at-home AI tool for help with interpreting wearable device data, and the AI’s advice leads to a serious health issue?

In a working paper, legal scholars from the University of Michigan, Penn State and Harvard explored these challenges, noting: “Demonstrating the cause of an injury is already often hard in the medical context, where outcomes are frequently probabilistic rather than deterministic. Adding in AI models that are often non intuitive and sometimes inscrutable will likely make causation even more challenging to demonstrate.”

To get a better handle on the risks posed to clinicians when using AI, I spoke with Michelle Mello, professor of law and health policy at Stanford University and lead author of ” Understanding Liability Risk from Using Health Care Artificial Intelligence Tools.”

Her analysis, based on hundreds of tort cases, suggests that current legal precedents around software liability could be adapted to include AI. However, she points out that direct case law on any type of AI model remains “very sparse.” And when it comes to liability implications of using generative AI, specifically, there’s no public record of such cases being litigated.

So, for medical professionals worried about the risks of implementing AI, Mello offers reassurances mixed with warnings.

“At the end of the day, it has almost always been the case that the physician is on the hook when things go wrong in patient care,” she noted, but added: “As long as physicians are using this to inform a decision with other information and not acting like a robot, deciding purely based on the output, I suspect they’ll have a fairly strong defense against most of the claims that might relate to their use of GPTs.”

To minimize the risk, Mello said AI should be implemented as a supportive tool to enhance (not replace) clinical decisions. She also urges health care professionals to negotiate terms of service with major AI developers like Nvidia, OpenAI and Google, whose current disclaimers deny any liability for medical harm.

While concerns about the use of generative AI in health care are understandable, it’s critical to weigh these fears against the existing flaws in medical practice.

Each year, misdiagnoses lead to 371,000 American deaths while another 424,000 patients suffer permanent disabilities. Meanwhile, more than 250,000 deaths occur due to avoidable medical errors in the United States. Half a million people die annually from poorly managed chronic diseases, leading to preventable heart attacks, strokes, cancers, kidney failures and amputations.

Our nation’s health care professionals don’t have the time available in their daily practice to address the totality of patient needs. The demand for medical care is higher than ever at a time when health insurers — with their restrictive policies and bureaucratic requirements — make it harder than ever to provide excellent care.

It is imperative for policymakers, legal experts and health care professionals to collaborate on a framework that promotes the safe and effective use of AI. As part of their work, they’ll need to address concerns over liability. But they must recognize that the risks of not using generative AI to improve care will far outweigh the dangers posed by the technology itself. Only then can our nation reduce the enormous human toll resulting from our current medical failures.

Pearl, the author of “ChatGPT, MD,” teaches at both the Stanford University School of Medicine and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is a former CEO of The Permanente Medical Group. He wrote this column for The Fulcrum, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news platform covering efforts to fix our governing systems.

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Capping its inaugural season, Minnesota’s professional women’s hockey team skated past Boston to take home the first-ever Walter Cup — the league equivalent of the Stanley Cup, which has proved elusive for the Wild for the past quarter-century. How best to mark the championship glory?

The women’s team — which came together so hurriedly the league has yet to christen a name — announced a victory celebration to be held from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday at Rice Park, by the statue of Olympic coach Herb Brooks at 317 Washington St.

But could there also be a secondary event in the offing?

“Championship = Parade,” wrote St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter on Wednesday night on the platform currently known as X and previously known as Twitter, using his personal account. “Them’s the rules.”

The mayor, who did not disclose further details, was no less proud on his professional X account: “We are the State of Hockey; it’s only right that the inaugural Walter Cup resides here. Congratulations @PWHL_Minnesota on a championship finish of an extraordinary season! #WeWonTheCup.”

While mounting security costs have derailed some street festivities over the years, St. Paul hasn’t been shy about throwing together an impromptu parade when a special sporting occasion merits. When renowned St. Paul gymnast Sunisa Lee took home a gold medal in the women’s all-around event at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, the city greeted her with a parade down White Bear Avenue that drew some 20,000 to 25,000 well-wishers, many of them Hmong fans who had come from at least as far away as Arkansas to celebrate.

The inaugural Walter Cup championship of the Professional Women’s Hockey League skated to a finish Wednesday when Minnesota blanked out Boston with a 3-0 win at Tsongas Center in Lowell, Mass. By 9 p.m. Wednesday, the team was marketing pre-orders for championship t-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, hockey pucks and neck chains.

So when and where will the celebratory parade be held?

Wrote the mayor on social media Wednesday night: “Stay tuned.”

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