Zach Despart is a politics reporter at the Texas Tribune. He investigates power — who wields it, how & to what ends— through the lens of Texas government.
He reported extensively on the 2022 Uvalde school shooting, collaborating with ProPublica and the Washington Post, including a groundbreaking investigation on the role the gunman’s rifle played in the disastrous police response. For that work his team were named Pulitzer Prize finalists and winners of the Collier Prize.
Previously, he covered politics and policy for the Houston Chronicle. His work revealed the death toll from the Texas blackout crisis was far higher than initially reported, how missed warning signs led to the Astroworld Festival disaster and how state officials ensured Houston would receive none of $1 billion in Hurricane Harvey aid.
He is interested in deeply reported stories that marry narrative storytelling with data, especially on the topics of corruption, threats to democracy, campaign finance, emergency planning and government recovery programs.
The latest
“He Has a Battle Rifle”: Uvalde Police Waited to Enter Classroom, Fearing Firepower From Gunman’s AR-15
In previously unreleased interviews, police told investigators they were cowed by the Uvalde shooter’s military-style rifle. This drove their decision to wait for a Border Patrol SWAT team to engage him, which took more than an hour.