Every new moon and full moon, a small group of Native American Church members gathers in San Antonio's sprawling Brackenridge Park for a ceremony called Midnight Waters. They meet at a specific bend in the San Antonio River. The slow-flowing river is lined with cypress and live oak trees and attracts herons, egrets and double-crested cormorants.

"The site of what most people know as Yanaguana or the San Antonio River, near the headwaters, starts to take on the shape of a river in the sky," Gary Perez said. Perez is a Native American Church member and the principal chief for the Pakahua/Coahuiltecan Peoples of Mexico and Texas.

When Denise Solis' mother, Rosemary Valdez, was sent home on hospice with stomach cancer in 2003, it was almost time for Easter. It was a tradition for the two of them to make Easter baskets together for the family's younger cousins filled with cascarones — confetti-filled eggs.

"She couldn't do a lot of things at that point," said Solis. "But she could fill eggs with confetti."

Cascarones are most common in Texas and Northern Mexico. When kids find cascarones on Easter Sunday, they playfully break them over each other's heads — filling one another's hair with colorful confetti.

For one afternoon in this suburb of Austin, an 1860s farmhouse was transformed into a Ukrainian cultural center. Vendors sold Ukrainian art and traditional clothing while performers sang Ukrainian pop music. A bake sale featured homemade varenyky, a dumpling similar to the Polish pierogi.

The main attraction at the "Many Faces, One Force" exhibit was artist Iana Nikutina's collection of 77 paintings of Ukrainian and American women from Central Texas. Nikutina said the brightly colored pop art portraits highlight the ways women support Ukrainians.

The Rev. Jim Rigby has one question on his mind these days: What's the plan if immigration officers knock on his church's doors?

"That's what I'm feverishly trying to figure out — I'm trying to talk to lawyers," said Rigby, a pastor of St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas.

Since 2016, St. Andrew's has sheltered Hilda Ramirez and her son Iván, who say they fled Guatemala to escape domestic violence. They reached the U.S. in 2014, when Hilda applied for asylum, but was denied.

Ramirez has talked to NPR in the past, but doesn't feel safe giving interviews since President Donald Trump, who campaigned on promises of mass deportation, took office in January.

Since 1974, the Texas Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) and its local affiliate organizations have worked to address issues such as infrastructure in underserved communities, public school funding, and workforce development and education programs.

Catholic bishops have supported the effort since its inception. And for its members and organizers, the work is perfectly aligned with Catholic social teaching.

"There are all kinds of ways to be Catholic," said Bob Fleming, a leader with Texas IAF affiliate The Metropolitan Organization (TMO) of Houston. "But when I worked with Catholic Charities, and when I worked with TMO, that's when I felt most Catholic."

Austin Vineyard Church doesn’t have a steeple or stained glass depictions of angels and saints. Its beige aluminum siding looks more like a warehouse than a place of worship. But as soon as I entered the building on a Friday night in late July, there was no mistaking where I was.

Smiling churchgoers welcomed me as the smells of a multicultural potluck filled the air. Many congregants wore vibrant textiles from Africa, South Asia and Latin America. Soon after I arrived, the group’s excited chatter was drowned out by the sound of a Nigerian worship band.

The band leader introduced the first song and explained he would be singing in his native language.

“But God understands every language,” he said.

While Abbott continues to claim the Biden administration has “open border policies,” human rights advocates say the Biden administration’s border policy excludes too many asylum seekers.

U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar agrees with those advocates. In late July, he ruled that current border policy is contrary to federal immigration law. All of this while the Biden administration reported 60,000 less border encounters per month from May to June.

But what’s actually changed on the ground?

Pastor Abraham Barberi is no stranger to shifting border policies. He works with One Mission Ministries in Brownsville and has been doing humanitarian work around there and across the border in Matamoros for more than twenty years.

“When I came to Matamoros years ago, my biggest concern or my biggest desire to do something here was the violence,” Barberi said. “The cartels were fighting against each other and there was a lot of violence.”

Jesse Gould joined Texas Standard to provide some context on the potential psychedelics have to help active-duty military and veterans. Gould is an Army Ranger veteran whose own PTSD symptoms disappeared after an ayahuasca retreat in Peru. His non-profit, Heroic Hearts Project, helps veterans find psychedelic therapy programs.

Gould said that current federal drug laws make psychedelics difficult to study and illegal to prescribe. Ocasio-Cortez spoke to that issue at the press conference with Crenshaw. “Right now our hands are tied in terms of getting the science we need,” she said.

Allowing these treatments for active-duty military could serve as a gateway to psychedelic therapy for veterans and the general public.

Targeting active-duty military will also help alleviate PTSD in soldiers as soon as it arises, hopefully reducing suicide rates. “Let’s get ahead of the problem, resolve the trauma as it comes up and lead to a healthier military population as well as healthier military family populations,” Gould said.

The American Civil Liberties Union has sent a letter to Texas school districts and charter schools warning them about a bill that allows school counselors to be replaced by religious chaplains.

Gov. Greg Abbott recently signed this bill, SB 763, into law. The bill requires school districts to vote by March 1 of next year on whether they will allow schools to have chaplains on staff.

Rev. Erin Walter is the executive director of the Texas Unitarian Universalist Justice Ministry and has written about this bill for ACLU Texas. She joined Texas Standard to discuss the bill and its implications.

Texas Standard: First, can you describe the typical duties of a chaplain?

Erin Walter: That’s a good question. I have served as a chaplain in a hospital setting and in the YMCA community center and I love the work of chaplaincy. It can involve being present for people, being present to whatever their spiritual practice or religious background is, and being with them in prayer or just in listening or sitting with them and holding their hand in the hospital.

But there are others. I’ve heard many occasions where a chaplain may proselytize in one of those settings, which is not the kind of chaplaincy that we’d like to see, but we know that does happen. So it kind of depends on who the chaplain is with what they might see as their role.

Tina Cannon wears many hats as the president and CEO of the Austin LGBT Chamber of Commerce.

A typical day could include everything from emptying the trash to organizing fundraising events. No matter what the task may be, Cannon’s work is always aimed at promoting local LGBT businesses. Or, as she calls them, “mom and mom and pop and pop shops.”

“Everything that we do is around trying to elevate their experience and leading them to prosperity, whatever their definition of prosperity may be,” Cannon said.

In 2020, Cannon added another role to her job description: music festival organizer. She created Pride in Local Music as a way to help local queer musicians who were out of work due to pandemic shutdowns.

It’s quite the spectacle, and an unsettling one at that: Thousands of dead fish washed up on Gulf Coast beaches in Southeast Texas last week. What was going on? And what do experts say might be the cause of all of this?

Katie St. Clair, manager of the Sea Life facility at Texas A&M University at Galveston, joined the Texas Standard to discuss this phenomenon. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.

Texas Standard: I understand these were mostly one species. Tell us a little bit about this species of fish and why they seem to be washing up on the shores.

Katie St. Clair: Yes. So these were Gulf menhaden, which belong to the Clupeid family of fishes – this also includes species such as the herrings and shad. And these are small bait fishes that form large aggregations in the thousands to hundreds of thousands. And they are often seen swimming close to our water surface. That makes them extremely susceptible to these low dissolved oxygen or hypoxic events.

Don’t believe Dale Watson when he calls himself lazy. In addition to writing and recording his own music and keeping a busy tour schedule, he works tirelessly to promote other artists with his Ameripolitan Music Awards. As if that weren’t enough, he revitalized the legendary Memphis juke joint Hernando’s Hideaway in 2019 and continues to own and operate the venue.

Leti Garza’s latest release is more than musical entertainment or artistic self-expression. The five-song EP, Borderland, tells the story of Garza’s involvement in the 2018 Christmas at Tornillo protest near El Paso. Borderland’s minimalist instrumentation and poetic, bilingual lyrics allow Garza to connect directly and deeply with listeners. By sharing her story, she hopes to encourage others to reflect on the tragic, complex situation at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Garza’s path to Tornillo started when she learned of the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” border policy. The policy meant some immigrants were being deported while their children were detained in the U.S. Although President Trump rescinded the family separation policy in June 2018, the damage had been done. Many children remained at the makeshift Tornillo tent city until January 2019.