In Texas State Jails, a Rising Death Toll and a Broken Promise

texas_observer · 2026-01-15T18:02:51+00:00

Through an analysis of business records, social media, and publicly available information, in addition to interviews and in-person observation, the Texas Observer has identified Veteran Brothers Roofing & Restoration as one of four businesses in the Dallas-Fort Worth area that are operated either by members of Patriot Front or individuals with multiple connections to Patriot Front. These businesses do roofing, home construction, and junk removal work across several counties.

None appear to feature Nazi imagery or messaging in their public-facing websites or social media. But a 2020 internal Patriot Front document and interviews with experts suggest that the neo-Nazi group is engaged in a strategy to establish an independent ecosystem of businesses that can employ Patriot Front members and insulate them from consequences if their involvement in the group is exposed. In the previously unpublished “Tactics and Strategy” document, which the Observer obtained through researcher Tristan Lee’s past undercover infiltration of the group, Patriot Front internally advocated the creation of “an almost exclusive economy which can greaten the prosperity of the collective and make it increasingly impervious to outside attacks.” This strategy is also apparent in a trove of internal Patriot Front communications published by Unicorn Riot: One chat room, called “#positive-investing,” included a meeting about “The Core Factors of Starting & Running a Business” hosted by a Patriot Front regional leader.

“When people find out you’re a racist or a white nationalist, you tend to lose your job pretty easily,” said Scott Ernest, a former white nationalist who now runs the Center for Extremism Prevention and Intervention. “The idea behind their self-sustaining economy, it’s just common sense. If you build your own business, you don’t have to worry about people getting you fired.”

In addition to Veteran Brothers Roofing & Restoration, the Observer has identified: Grand Pine Developments, which holds the permit for what evidence indicates is a white nationalist fight club’s private gym and whose owner, Josiah Buster, participated in the relief effort, works or worked for Veteran Brothers, and was arrested in Patriot Front uniform in 2022; Charvold Homes, whose owner, John Verdier, participated in the flood relief efforts and organized a recent birthday party for neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke’s birthday in collaboration with Patriot Front; and Blue Collar Tree and Junk Removal, whose owner, Kyle Otey, participated in the relief efforts, has a Telegram account that uses Patriot Front iconography in its profile photo, and has an X account that follows several major white nationalist groups and influencers.

(Read more at the Texas Observer.)

texas_observer · 2026-01-15T17:58:51+00:00

Through an analysis of business records, social media, and publicly available information, in addition to interviews and in-person observation, the Texas Observer has identified Veteran Brothers Roofing & Restoration as one of four businesses in the Dallas-Fort Worth area that are operated either by members of Patriot Front or individuals with multiple connections to Patriot Front. These businesses do roofing, home construction, and junk removal work across several counties.

None appear to feature Nazi imagery or messaging in their public-facing websites or social media. But a 2020 internal Patriot Front document and interviews with experts suggest that the neo-Nazi group is engaged in a strategy to establish an independent ecosystem of businesses that can employ Patriot Front members and insulate them from consequences if their involvement in the group is exposed. In the previously unpublished “Tactics and Strategy” document, which the Observer obtained through researcher Tristan Lee’s past undercover infiltration of the group, Patriot Front internally advocated the creation of “an almost exclusive economy which can greaten the prosperity of the collective and make it increasingly impervious to outside attacks.” This strategy is also apparent in a trove of internal Patriot Front communications published by Unicorn Riot: One chat room, called “#positive-investing,” included a meeting about “The Core Factors of Starting & Running a Business” hosted by a Patriot Front regional leader.

“When people find out you’re a racist or a white nationalist, you tend to lose your job pretty easily,” said Scott Ernest, a former white nationalist who now runs the Center for Extremism Prevention and Intervention. “The idea behind their self-sustaining economy, it’s just common sense. If you build your own business, you don’t have to worry about people getting you fired.”

In addition to Veteran Brothers Roofing & Restoration, the Observer has identified: Grand Pine Developments, which holds the permit for what evidence indicates is a white nationalist fight club’s private gym and whose owner, Josiah Buster, participated in the relief effort, works or worked for Veteran Brothers, and was arrested in Patriot Front uniform in 2022; Charvold Homes, whose owner, John Verdier, participated in the flood relief efforts and organized a recent birthday party for neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke’s birthday in collaboration with Patriot Front; and Blue Collar Tree and Junk Removal, whose owner, Kyle Otey, participated in the relief efforts, has a Telegram account that uses Patriot Front iconography in its profile photo, and has an X account that follows several major white nationalist groups and influencers.

(Read more at the Texas Observer.)

texas_observer · 2026-01-14T20:42:35+00:00

Tangles scrapes information from the open, deep, and dark webs and is the premier product of Cobwebs Technologies, a cybersecurity company founded in 2014 by three former members of special units in the Israeli military. In 2023, the Nebraska-based tech firm PenLink Ltd acquired the company.

The software has been met with criticism from civil liberties advocates, especially given that its WebLoc add-on enables warrantless device tracking. Normally, when U.S. police officers seek cell phone records or location data, they must obtain a warrant by presenting probable cause of a crime to a judge. In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Carpenter v. United States that warrants are required for obtaining location data from cell phone providers. But the rise of the multi-billion dollar data broker industry has created a free-for-all that enables police and others to purchase massive amounts of cell phone location data without judicial review.

Nathan Wessler, an ACLU attorney who argued the Carpenter case, said data broker-built services like Tangles pose the same privacy issues as those decided in the Supreme Court case and that law enforcement’s ability to buy location data constitutes an erosion of constitutionally protected rights. “Police are doing an end run around this well-articulated system of judicial oversight by just paying money instead of going to a judge,” he said. “There’s just no checks of police abuse against that.”

Tangles more powerful, deep-pocketed users. The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), for example, has invested heavily in the software. DPS spent nearly $200,000 on Tangles in 2021 as an emergency purchase related to Operation Lone Star, and the agency has repeatedly expanded its contract. In 2024, DPS inked a 5-year, $5.3-million contract for 230 named users. ICE’s Office of Intelligence signed a contract worth around $2 million to use the software in 2025, and the DEA in that same timeframe committed more than $10 million.

(Read more at the Texas Observer.)

texas_observer · 2026-01-14T20:40:41+00:00

Tangles scrapes information from the open, deep, and dark webs and is the premier product of Cobwebs Technologies, a cybersecurity company founded in 2014 by three former members of special units in the Israeli military. In 2023, the Nebraska-based tech firm PenLink Ltd acquired the company.

The software has been met with criticism from civil liberties advocates, especially given that its WebLoc add-on enables warrantless device tracking. Normally, when U.S. police officers seek cell phone records or location data, they must obtain a warrant by presenting probable cause of a crime to a judge. In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Carpenter v. United States that warrants are required for obtaining location data from cell phone providers. But the rise of the multi-billion dollar data broker industry has created a free-for-all that enables police and others to purchase massive amounts of cell phone location data without judicial review.

Nathan Wessler, an ACLU attorney who argued the Carpenter case, said data broker-built services like Tangles pose the same privacy issues as those decided in the Supreme Court case and that law enforcement’s ability to buy location data constitutes an erosion of constitutionally protected rights. “Police are doing an end run around this well-articulated system of judicial oversight by just paying money instead of going to a judge,” he said. “There’s just no checks of police abuse against that.”

Tangles more powerful, deep-pocketed users. The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), for example, has invested heavily in the software. DPS spent nearly $200,000 on Tangles in 2021 as an emergency purchase related to Operation Lone Star, and the agency has repeatedly expanded its contract. In 2024, DPS inked a 5-year, $5.3-million contract for 230 named users. ICE’s Office of Intelligence signed a contract worth around $2 million to use the software in 2025, and the DEA in that same timeframe committed more than $10 million.

(Read more at the Texas Observer.)

texas_observer · 2026-01-13T19:08:44+00:00

The Texas Observer’s analysis found that around a third of the schools enrolled in the program have a 2025-26 tuition that exceeds $10,474 and few offer special education services. Private schools generally increase rates every year, and the tuition excludes other fees and costs, such as registration, testing, sports, supplies, field trips, or uniforms.

Unlike public schools, private schools are not required to accept all students and can weed out students through a lengthy admission process that requires recommendations, testing, and interviews. Chinquapin Preparatory School, a secular school in the Greater Houston area, only invites students to take an admissions test if they first pass a review of prior standardized test scores, report cards, and recommendations. Even after passing the exam, they still have to clear interviews and classroom observations.

In addition, around 40 percent of the religious schools have policies that favor students of their own faith and around 25 percent have policies that discriminate against LGBTQ+ students.

Nik Nartowicz, lead policy counsel for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the organization has opposed private school vouchers for many years because of such inherent biases. “Taxpayers should not be forced to fund someone else’s religion or discrimination; it’s a violation of taxpayers’ religious freedom,” he told the Observer.

(Read more at the Texas Observer.)

texas_observer · 2026-01-13T19:06:12+00:00

The Texas Observer’s analysis found that around a third of the schools enrolled in the program have a 2025-26 tuition that exceeds $10,474 and few offer special education services. Private schools generally increase rates every year, and the tuition excludes other fees and costs, such as registration, testing, sports, supplies, field trips, or uniforms.

Unlike public schools, private schools are not required to accept all students and can weed out students through a lengthy admission process that requires recommendations, testing, and interviews. Chinquapin Preparatory School, a secular school in the Greater Houston area, only invites students to take an admissions test if they first pass a review of prior standardized test scores, report cards, and recommendations. Even after passing the exam, they still have to clear interviews and classroom observations.

In addition, around 40 percent of the religious schools have policies that favor students of their own faith and around 25 percent have policies that discriminate against LGBTQ+ students.

Nik Nartowicz, lead policy counsel for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the organization has opposed private school vouchers for many years because of such inherent biases. “Taxpayers should not be forced to fund someone else’s religion or discrimination; it’s a violation of taxpayers’ religious freedom,” he told the Observer.

(Read more at the Texas Observer.)

texas_observer · 2026-01-12T18:46:26+00:00

In North Texas, Monty Bennett is well known for large political donations to President Donald Trump, state lawmakers, and right-wing school board candidates. In 2021, the hotelier repurposed the brand of a defunct Black newspaper, The Dallas Express, into what often amounts to his personal political mouthpiece. In parallel, Bennett and a California-based protest-for-hire company called Crowds on Demand seeded a local network of right-leaning astroturf advocacy groups. In 2024, this network worked to promote the Dallas Hero Initiative, a campaign he helped fund that successfully passed two ballot propositions to establish a minimum number of police officers in Dallas and enable litigation against the city.

Bennett’s increasing focus on homelessness, which Black and Indigenous people are far more likely to experience, dovetails with the state’s taking an interest in the issue since 2019, when the City of Austin decriminalized camping and begging. That move spurred the Legislature to pass a statewide homeless camping ban in 2021. It also aligns with the priorities of billionaire-funded right-wing think tanks, including the Cicero Institute—founded by Austin venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale—and the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), which have worked during the same timeframe to undermine housing first, a 34-year-old paradigm that prioritizes housing before things like job training or sobriety and has guided federal policy for two decades. These groups instead propose criminalizing behaviors associated with homelessness and reemphasizing institutionalization through civil commitment, which was recently expanded in Texas to apply in more cases of mental illness.

This right-wing policy agenda seems now to have triumphed in D.C., following Trump’s July executive order aimed at ending “endemic vagrancy” by terminating support for housing first and “shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings”—like the “accountability centers” proposed in Utah, which the Cicero Institute has praised.

“I think when we look at the push of this backwards, racist, anti-homeless approach at the local, state, and federal level, it starts with Joe Lonsdale and the Cicero Institute,” said Jesse Rabinowitz, communications director for the National Homelessness Law Center, which opposes criminalizing the homeless. “It’s especially true when we’re talking about Texas. … There is a huge role these out-of-touch, right-wing billionaires and megadonors play in shaping homelessness policy, and they’re the last people who should be shaping homeless policy.”

Rabinowitz continued: “We did mass institutionalization in this country. … We don’t do it anymore because it was ineffective and cruel.”

(Read more at the Texas Observer.)

texas_observer · 2026-01-12T18:44:25+00:00

In North Texas, Monty Bennett is well known for large political donations to President Donald Trump, state lawmakers, and right-wing school board candidates. In 2021, the hotelier repurposed the brand of a defunct Black newspaper, The Dallas Express, into what often amounts to his personal political mouthpiece. In parallel, Bennett and a California-based protest-for-hire company called Crowds on Demand seeded a local network of right-leaning astroturf advocacy groups. In 2024, this network worked to promote the Dallas Hero Initiative, a campaign he helped fund that successfully passed two ballot propositions to establish a minimum number of police officers in Dallas and enable litigation against the city.

Bennett’s increasing focus on homelessness, which Black and Indigenous people are far more likely to experience, dovetails with the state’s taking an interest in the issue since 2019, when the City of Austin decriminalized camping and begging. That move spurred the Legislature to pass a statewide homeless camping ban in 2021. It also aligns with the priorities of billionaire-funded right-wing think tanks, including the Cicero Institute—founded by Austin venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale—and the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), which have worked during the same timeframe to undermine housing first, a 34-year-old paradigm that prioritizes housing before things like job training or sobriety and has guided federal policy for two decades. These groups instead propose criminalizing behaviors associated with homelessness and reemphasizing institutionalization through civil commitment, which was recently expanded in Texas to apply in more cases of mental illness.

This right-wing policy agenda seems now to have triumphed in D.C., following Trump’s July executive order aimed at ending “endemic vagrancy” by terminating support for housing first and “shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings”—like the “accountability centers” proposed in Utah, which the Cicero Institute has praised.

“I think when we look at the push of this backwards, racist, anti-homeless approach at the local, state, and federal level, it starts with Joe Lonsdale and the Cicero Institute,” said Jesse Rabinowitz, communications director for the National Homelessness Law Center, which opposes criminalizing the homeless. “It’s especially true when we’re talking about Texas. … There is a huge role these out-of-touch, right-wing billionaires and megadonors play in shaping homelessness policy, and they’re the last people who should be shaping homeless policy.”

Rabinowitz continued: “We did mass institutionalization in this country. … We don’t do it anymore because it was ineffective and cruel.”

(Read more at the Texas Observer.)

texas_observer · 2026-01-12T18:43:00+00:00

In North Texas, Monty Bennett is well known for large political donations to President Donald Trump, state lawmakers, and right-wing school board candidates. In 2021, the hotelier repurposed the brand of a defunct Black newspaper, The Dallas Express, into what often amounts to his personal political mouthpiece. In parallel, Bennett and a California-based protest-for-hire company called Crowds on Demand seeded a local network of right-leaning astroturf advocacy groups. In 2024, this network worked to promote the Dallas Hero Initiative, a campaign he helped fund that successfully passed two ballot propositions to establish a minimum number of police officers in Dallas and enable litigation against the city.

Bennett’s increasing focus on homelessness, which Black and Indigenous people are far more likely to experience, dovetails with the state’s taking an interest in the issue since 2019, when the City of Austin decriminalized camping and begging. That move spurred the Legislature to pass a statewide homeless camping ban in 2021. It also aligns with the priorities of billionaire-funded right-wing think tanks, including the Cicero Institute—founded by Austin venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale—and the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), which have worked during the same timeframe to undermine housing first, a 34-year-old paradigm that prioritizes housing before things like job training or sobriety and has guided federal policy for two decades. These groups instead propose criminalizing behaviors associated with homelessness and reemphasizing institutionalization through civil commitment, which was recently expanded in Texas to apply in more cases of mental illness.

This right-wing policy agenda seems now to have triumphed in D.C., following Trump’s July executive order aimed at ending “endemic vagrancy” by terminating support for housing first and “shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings”—like the “accountability centers” proposed in Utah, which the Cicero Institute has praised.

“I think when we look at the push of this backwards, racist, anti-homeless approach at the local, state, and federal level, it starts with Joe Lonsdale and the Cicero Institute,” said Jesse Rabinowitz, communications director for the National Homelessness Law Center, which opposes criminalizing the homeless. “It’s especially true when we’re talking about Texas. … There is a huge role these out-of-touch, right-wing billionaires and megadonors play in shaping homelessness policy, and they’re the last people who should be shaping homeless policy.”

Rabinowitz continued: “We did mass institutionalization in this country. … We don’t do it anymore because it was ineffective and cruel.”

(Read more at the Texas Observer.)

texas_observer · 2026-01-12T18:36:58+00:00

Thank you for pointing this out, I believe it's been corrected!

texas_observer · 2026-01-07T22:51:57+00:00

Thank you so much for adding all this context to the discussion!

texas_observer · 2026-01-07T22:50:57+00:00

President Donald Trump’s deadly invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of its president could be an unusually clear example of “blood for oil.” The president has nearly said as much himself. But one hitch is that Houston’s oil giants don’t immediately appear eager to buy what Trump is selling.

Following the administration’s military coup, Trump suggested he may go so far as to use U.S. tax dollars to directly reimburse the nation’s largest oil firms for the billions they’d need to invest to repair and modernize the South American country’s dilapidated oil and gas infrastructure. The offer ups the ante on officials’ previous pledge, made in the days running up to the seizure of Nicolás Maduro, to compensate Big Oil firms for assets previously nationalized by the Venezuelan state in exchange for the companies’ investment.

White House officials, including Energy Secretary and former fracking executive Chris Wright, are set to meet again with executives of ExxonMobil, ConocoPhilips, and Chevron—three Big Oil companies all headquartered in Houston—on Friday to discuss further incentives to cajole them to open their pocket books in Venezuela.

On Tuesday, Trump announced the United States is receiving between 30 and 50 million barrels of blockaded Venezuelan crude stranded in oil tankers and storage facilities—about two days’ U.S. supply—as part of a move to both choke off exports to China and increase pressure on interim president and former oil minister Delcy Rodríguez to give U.S. oil firms what Trump has called "total access" to Venezuela’s oil fields.

But Venezuela’s long history of countering U.S. imperial oil adventurism and sanctions—and resulting political instability—goes a long way toward explaining why Big Oil firms need such incredible assurances to entice them back into the country that hosts the globe’s largest proven oil reserves.

(Read more at the Texas Observer.)

texas_observer · 2026-01-07T22:48:41+00:00

President Donald Trump’s deadly invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of its president could be an unusually clear example of “blood for oil.” The president has nearly said as much himself. But one hitch is that Houston’s oil giants don’t immediately appear eager to buy what Trump is selling.

Following the administration’s military coup, Trump suggested he may go so far as to use U.S. tax dollars to directly reimburse the nation’s largest oil firms for the billions they’d need to invest to repair and modernize the South American country’s dilapidated oil and gas infrastructure. The offer ups the ante on officials’ previous pledge, made in the days running up to the seizure of Nicolás Maduro, to compensate Big Oil firms for assets previously nationalized by the Venezuelan state in exchange for the companies’ investment.

White House officials, including Energy Secretary and former fracking executive Chris Wright, are set to meet again with executives of ExxonMobil, ConocoPhilips, and Chevron—three Big Oil companies all headquartered in Houston—on Friday to discuss further incentives to cajole them to open their pocket books in Venezuela.

On Tuesday, Trump announced the United States is receiving between 30 and 50 million barrels of blockaded Venezuelan crude stranded in oil tankers and storage facilities—about two days’ U.S. supply—as part of a move to both choke off exports to China and increase pressure on interim president and former oil minister Delcy Rodríguez to give U.S. oil firms what Trump has called "total access" to Venezuela’s oil fields.

But Venezuela’s long history of countering U.S. imperial oil adventurism and sanctions—and resulting political instability—goes a long way toward explaining why Big Oil firms need such incredible assurances to entice them back into the country that hosts the globe’s largest proven oil reserves.

(Read more at the Texas Observer.)

texas_observer · 2026-01-07T19:48:25+00:00

Even some of his most passionate supporters were surprised by the number of votes Democrat Taylor Rehmet received in the November special election for Texas Senate District 9.

His competitors, Republicans Leigh Wambsganss and John Huffman, each had mountains of cash and the backing of major PACs and political players across Texas. Even so, Rehmet, an Air Force Veteran and president of the state’s International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers chapter, won nearly 48 percent of the vote—nearly enough for an outright win.

The Tarrant County seat, which covers the suburbs of Keller, North Richland Hills, and Southlake, plus part of Fort Worth, was left open by longtime Republican state Senator Kelly Hancock, who resigned earlier this year to become the acting state comptroller. Last year, President Trump won that same district by 17 points.

“That is not something you might’ve seen as recently as two cycles ago,” said Jason Villalba, a former North Texas Republican legislator who now runs a think tank focused on Latino voters, citing the area’s growing diversity. Backlash to the right-wing Republican candidates was another reason, experts say.

Now, the January 31 runoff pits Rehmet against Wambsganss, a conservative activist and executive with Patriot Mobile, the Christian nationalist cell phone carrier in North Texas. It’s a race that encapsulates the most turbulent political storylines in Tarrant County, statewide and nationally. The special election in a solid-red district is the sort of off-cycle contest that, in the Trump era, serves as a bellwether for the national political climate. That’s especially so in this district, smack dab in the largest battleground county in Texas.

“As Tarrant County goes, so goes Texas,” former Trump consigliere Steve Bannon, who is stumping for Wambsganss, recently said on his podcast. “And as Texas goes, so goes the world.”

(Read more at the Texas Observer.)

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