It’s hard to find anyone who likes Texas’ Driver Responsibility Program. Civil rights groups hate it. The Texas Tea Party hates it. The Observer’s readers, judging from the number of emails we’ve received about it, hate it. With a unanimous vote Thursday, the Texas House of Representatives showed that it…
Dallas’ final early-voting numbers are in, and while they don’t show a wave of new voters like the one that hit Texas’ polls in 2018, they do reflect an electorate that seems at least a little more engaged than it was during city elections in 2015 and 2017. According to…
All nine candidates on the ballot for mayor of Dallas in the election Saturday have come out officially in opposition to corruption. Several have offered specific plans for combating corruption. Most of those proposals are aimed at catching people in the act of being corrupt. We could do that all…
A Tarrant County grand jury has indicted an Arlington Police Department officer in the shooting death of a 24-year-old man who tried to drive away from a traffic stop in September 2018. Arlington police Officer Julie Herlihy pulled O’Shea Terry over because he had expired temporary tags on his SUV…
On Wednesday, a Dallas County jury answered the only questioned that remained about a gruesome 2015 murder on White Rock Creek jogging trail. Thomas Johnson, a former football star at Texas A&M and Dallas’ Skyline High School, will spend the rest of his life in prison for murdering Dave Stevens…
The Texas Legislature’s latest attempt to reform the state’s marijuana laws appears to have gone out not with a bang or a whimper but with a tweet. Monday night, the Texas House of Representatives passed a landmark bill that, if it becomes law, would reduce Texas’ penalty for possessing an…
For more than a year, Dallas officials and others have struggled to come up with a plan for offering shelter to homeless people on nights when it’s too cold to sleep outdoors. It’s a problem many other communities have already solved. Across the region and nationwide, other cities offer examples…
The good news for Dallas City Council member Philip Kingston is that he and his attorney are going to have more time to prepare their defense to an anonymous ethics complaint filed against the downtown and East Dallas representative filed earlier this year. That’s thanks to an extension handed down…
At least in terms of the public process, if not the legal one, the release of the audio recording of the 911 call in the Botham Jean killing finally takes us down to the fine point of what has been the public question from the beginning: If a white cop…
Immediately after shooting Botham Jean, former Dallas Police Department officer Amber Guyger told a city 911 dispatcher that she’d made a horrible mistake. “I’m an off-duty officer. I thought I was in my apartment and I shot a guy thinking he was, thinking it was my apartment,” Guyger said. “I…
The news was enough to make one check the calendar and make sure it wasn’t April 1. Monday morning, former Republican Texas state Sen. Konni Burton, fresh off her November 2018 loss to Democrat Beverly Powell, announced that she’s starting a news outlet “dedicated to shedding light on the stories…
It’s not decriminalization, but it’s a start. Late Monday afternoon, the Texas House of Representatives signed off on a bill that would reduce Texas’ penalty for possessing less than one ounce of marijuana to a Class C misdemeanor, the same criminal penalty reserved for traffic tickets and driving with an…
One of DFW’s longest running true-crime soap operas took another turn Friday as Tarrant County authorities arrested Tonya Couch, the mother of “affluenza” drunk driver Ethan Couch, for yet another alleged bail violation. Couch is accused of failing a urinalysis, violating the portion of her bail agreement that requires that…
Bedford Republican Jonathan Stickland has long been the court jester of Texas’ House of Representatives. Since his election in 2012, he’s positioned himself as a darling of the Tea Party and antagonistic right, never shying away from a political stunt or a chance to hear his voice projected from the House…
The political flap over Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot’s recently announced policy of reduced prosecution for certain offenses opens a window on a really interesting question in these tumultuous times: What does somebody mean when he says he’s a conservative on crime? Or a liberal? I admit, one reason…
For the Dallas Cowboys, the NFL draft went a lot like the rest of their offseason. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and the rest of the front office made eight picks on Friday and Saturday, buying a few lottery tickets, getting cute in spots and working around the edges of a…
Texas Secretary of State David Whitley’s push to purge nearly 100,000 registered voters from the state’s rolls is over. Friday afternoon, a coalition of voting rights groups announced they’d reached a $450,000 settlement with the state. The groups sued Whitley earlier this year over his order that counties across the…
Turns out Texas state Sen. Angela Paxton’s hands may not have been quite as clean as she claimed they were during a February ethics flare-up over a bill she filed that would’ve changed the securities law her husband is currently accused of breaking. Paxton’s Senate Bill 860 would allow the…
A citizens subcommittee tasked with finding short-term help for homeless people in Dallas struggled Thursday to work out a plan for what to do with those people when it’s dangerously cold outside. Ultimately, the Citizens Homeless Commission’s short-term solutions committee settled on a plan to solicit proposals from groups that…
Texas’ law banning government agencies from doing business with people or other businesses that support the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel is on hold Thursday night after a federal judge issued an injunction against it, ruling that it is likely unconstitutional. The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement calls for…
The Dallas City Council voted Wednesday to require all employers in the city to provide paid sick time to their employees, starting in August. Whether any Dallas worker ever benefits from the new policy remains up in the air. Austin passed a similar ordinance in 2018 but still hasn’t been…
The Texas Senate unanimously approved a bill Wednesday that is designed to make sure college students lose fewer credits when they transfer from one school to another. Senate Bill 25 reorganizes lower-division courses that many students take at community colleges, making it easier for them to predict which ones will…
