FEATURED Work

At least 11 states have agreed to distribute fingerprinting kits sold by Kenny Hansmire’s National Child Identification Program. Some are spending millions even though similar kits are available for free.

Nobody told Yaneli Ortiz’s family that the factory they lived near emitted ethylene oxide. Not when the EPA found it causes cancer. Not when she was diagnosed with leukemia. And not when Texas moved to allow polluters to emit more of the chemical.

A monthslong investigation revealed that Oportun Inc., which was founded to help Latino immigrants build credit, routinely uses lawsuits to intimidate a vulnerable population into keeping up with high-interest loan payments — even amid COVID-19.

Houston is the fourth-largest city in the country. It's home to the nation’s largest refining and petrochemical complex, where billions of gallons of oil and chemicals are stored. And it’s a sitting duck for the next big hurricane. Why isn’t Texas ready?

A decade ago, many border Texans got a raw deal when the federal government seized land for a barrier — while others pushed up the price. Will the government's rushed, haphazard process be repeated as it pushes for a border wall?

Texas regulators have helped struggling coal companies avoid expensive land restoration costs by allowing them to do the bare minimum. The result: potentially thousands of acres across Texas are contaminated with toxic chemicals. 

How a new oil boom is transforming West Texas, sending U.S. oil around the world and threatening the planet.

How the state of Texas allows industrial facilities to repeatedly spew unauthorized air pollution — with few consequences

Court reformers say bad judges are a fact of life in Texas, one of only eight states that uses partisan elections to pick its arbiters of justice. 

What became known on Twitter as the "HouAirWar" may seem unprecedented to those unfamiliar with the background of Southwest, which flies out of Dallas Love Field and uses "LUV" as its stock ticker.

For as long as a decade, the crime analysts and law enforcement officers in the Texas attorney general’s office have dreaded the rain. The roof over their state-owned office building in downtown Austin leaks so severely that expensive computers in the forensics laboratory have been destroyed.

As West Texas' reservoirs run dry, cities scour the region for their next water supply and farmers become more desperate for rainfall, oil companies here and elsewhere are pumping millions of gallons of freshwater from underground aquifers.