Texas Matters

Some girls in Texas, as young as 12 years old, are being forced to marry men much older than they are. And then they are living a life of servitude and exploitation. It’s sounds like a Margaret Atwood novel but it’s a reality in Texas. In Texas, 6.9 of every 1,000 teens between ages 15 and 17 married in 2014, second only to West Virginia Senate Bill 1705, if passed into law, would make anyone getting married under the age of 18 more difficult. Jeanne Smoot is a legislative counsel with the

Texas is one of the worst states in the nation for women to give birth. Between 2011 and 2012, 189 Texas mothers died less than a year after childbirth. And the question is why? Also – why is this statistic so much worse for African American mothers? HB 2403 is a bill in the Texas legislature that would look for answers. It calls for commissioning a study on how race and socioeconomics affect access and care for pregnant black women. The bill appeared to be on its way to passage but killed

With about two weeks left in the legislative session, lawmakers are entering the phase when bills start to wither and die. Thursday was a critical deadline in the state house which was made all the more deadly when Tea Party-aligned lawmakers, who groused that they were being punished for petty personal politics, engaged in running out the clock maneuvers which would kill lots of bills. Meanwhile, it was the artful parliamentary maneuvers in the Texas Senate that saved a slew of bills that

Bexar County’s Democratic Party Chair is facing criticism over his use of the party’s headquarters during his unsuccessful run for mayor. Critics are also questioning how Manuel Medina controls of the local party and if greater transparency is needed. On Election night, May 6, Manuel Medina’s campaign headquarters was jamming. His supporters are cueing up for food and beer after spending the day getting out the vote. The election watch party is at the headquarters, 3000 IH-10 West at Mulberry,

Do you remember when in grade school being taught Texas history and there’s one sentence in the text book that says Texas impeached one governor, James Ferguson? And then we learned that years later his wife MA Ferguson was elected governor. And that’s about we students got about this very curious event. Well, now the time to fill in the gaps because it was in the summer of 1917 that Farmer Jim Ferguson was impeached and thrown out of office, 100 years ago. The story of the Fergusons rise and

It was in late March that Wilson County Sheriffs' deputies showed up at La Vernia High School and began making arrests. For weeks the community 30 miles south east of San Antonio had seen rumors on social media that hazing rituals with the high school male sports teams had gone too far. That same day the school district’s superintendent Jose Moreno posted a public statement on Facebook. It read: “A complaint was filed in reference to High School Boy’s Athletics. The District is aware of the

Science tells us vaccines are one of the greatest inventions of the last 150 years. They've all but eradicated deadly diseases like smallpox, polio, and measles from most of the world. Vaccines are a treatment designed to arm a person against those viruses and other diseases by providing immunity. They work by exposing you to a weakened version of a pathogen, like a flu virus. Your body's immune system then learns the pathogen's characteristics and develops the necessary antibodies to resist the

President Donald Trump's plan to build a massive wall along the entire U.S. Mexico border has it's supporters and opponents among the residents who live on the Texas southern border. Last Saturday it was the anti-wall forces that wanted to make sure their opinion was heard. They staged a protest on the international bridge that connects Del Rio, Texas and Ciudad Acuna, Mexico. As a Mariachi band played, several hundred people from both side of the Texas Mexico border lined up along the Del Rio

The Southern Poverty Law Center ranks Texas as third in the nation for the most hate group. The state has up to 55 hate groups amid a two-year surge in membership in the so called Alt-right organizations.

Last December Diane Rehm signed off for the last time on NPR. It was the final broadcast for her self-titled program that for nearly 40 years provided public radio listeners civil conversations about the most controversial news stories of the day. The nation's power brokers and policy shapers sat across from Rehm, taking questions from her and her listeners. Rehm was in San Antonio this week for a speaking engagement. I spoke to her about life after the Diane Rehm Show. We talked about her new

Best-selling author Ann Patchett is known for her works of fiction and nonfiction. Her many acclaimed works include Bel Canto , State of Wonder , Truth and Beauty, This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, and many others, including her latest, Commonwealth , her seventh novel, which provides a discerning, sometimes funny, sometimes heart-rending study of sibling and other familial relationships. Ann Patchett also co-owns Parnassus Books and went into the independent booksellers business when two

Texas history is rich with drama, action and bigger than life characters. And there are many significant events that could have gone either way – and greatly changed the Texas that we know today. Wouldn’t it be fascinating to let your imagination explore those pivotal moments? To wonder what really happened, what was said, who shot first, and how did justice prevail, or not? That's the premise of the book “ Eavesdropping on Texas History ,” a collection of essays about these select watershed

In his first week in the Oval Office President Donald Trump fast-tracked his main campaign promise - the Border Wall. At a May 2016 campaign stop in Phoenix Trump joined the crowd in the chant "Build that wall." Now that Trump has won the electoral college and became President, he’s moving forward with building that wall. On Wednesday he signed executive orders to begin construction of the Wall and called for a newly expanded deportation force to arrest, detain and expel unauthorized immigrants

Bleeding Kansas is well known for the violence in the years running up to the Civil War. Here we had the The Texas Troubles. This was a time of panic, hysteria and terror as anti-union vigilante mobs lynched over one hundred whites and blacks who were thought to be forming a slave rebellion. There was no plan for slave rebellion but that didn’t stop newspapers across the state from publishing ginned up news about it. One source of the fake news stories came from Charles R. Pryor the editor of

Segment 1 The Mesquite tree – easy to say it’s not a popular tree for Texas ranchers. It’s thorny – it hogs water – stringy with shade – crowds out grassland – and almost impossible to kill. But there’s another side to the Mesquite. It could be considered a super tree that have many positive attributes that benefits the ecosystem above and below the ground. And the Mesquite is also a super food that’s tasty too. Rodney Bovey is a longtime rangeland scientist with the Agricultural Research