The Texas Senate on Tuesday unanimously approved its version of a “landmark” budget bill that includes $9 billion in new money for education and property tax relief. That figure mirrors the one put forward in a budget passed last month by the House of Representatives. But the two houses differ…
You may not believe this. I can’t do anything but tell you. The same people who brought us the absurd and embarrassing $6 million fake kayak rapids fiasco in the Trinity River, the folks who brought us the $115 million bicycle bridge that’s too dangerous to use, the same social…
Josh Pippins expected to be out of college and a few years into his career by now. Instead, he’s just wrapping up his junior year at the University of Texas at Arlington. When he came to UTA three years ago, Pippins, of Arlington, had taken two years of classes at…
By the time he began teaching Japanese at Skyline High School last year, Stephen Arnquist had allegedly been posting his white supremacist views online for years. School districts routinely conduct background checks on prospective teachers and school staff before hiring them. But how likely is it that one of those…
The headlines on reports about last week’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s raid on an electronic repairs plant in Allen were startling. In one day, ICE agents arrested 280 people at CVE Technology Group, making Wednesday’s bust the biggest in a decade. Despite the scale of the operation, however, the way…
U.S. District Judge Barbara Lynn sentenced former Dallas City Council member Dwaine Caraway to a little more than four and a half years in federal prison Friday afternoon. In August, Caraway admitted to taking almost $450,000 in bribes and kickbacks related to Dallas County School’s ill-fated stop-arm camera program. Lynn…
Officials at the Salvation Army will have to wait another month before learning if they can move forward with a planned 20-acre campus in northwest Dallas. The Salvation Army hopes to build the $95 million facility to provide shelter and services to the homeless in an industrial area on North…
Last week, a Denton County grand jury indicted former Dodgers, Rangers, Yankees and Montreal Expos pitcher John Wetteland on three counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child under the age of 14. Wetteland is accused of forcing a child to perform oral sex three times between 2004 and 2006 at…
Friday afternoon, nearly seven months after Dwaine Caraway pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges and resigned from the Dallas City Council, U.S. District Judge Barbara Lynn will tell him just how long he’ll spend in prison for his transgressions. For a while Thursday, it looked like that might not happen…
The Margaret McDermott Bridge over the Trinity River in downtown Dallas is the city’s ne’er-do-well relative who shows up every year or so for yet another handout. Is it a mercy for us to give her more money, or have we just become codependent? Designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava,…
Lawmakers in both houses of the Texas Legislature agree that the state should invest an additional $9 billion into its public school system. Now, they need to reach an agreement on how to spend that money. At a meeting Wednesday morning, the Senate Finance Committee unanimously approved its version of…
The Texas Senate moved the state one step closer to teachers having guns on their hips in class, voting 28-3 Wednesday to end a requirement that all guns belonging to members of the state’s school marshal program be kept in a locked box. Sen. Brian Birdwell, a Republican who represents…
The University of Texas at Arlington is suspending all social activities at its fraternities and sororities, university officials said Wednesday. University officials didn’t make the move in response to a single incident, but because of “concerns regarding the culture of the fraternal community,” said university spokesman Joe Carpenter. Although the…
When Dallas Police Chief U. Renee Hall rolled out her first draft of potential changes to Dallas’ Citizens Police Review Board last month, she took heat from all sides. Supporters of reforming the board felt that Hall’s changes didn’t go far enough, while opponents of the reforms worried that strengthening…
Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot has dropped felony criminal mischief charges against L’Daijohnique Lee, the woman allegedly assaulted by a Deep Ellum bartender in an incident caught on video nearly two weeks ago. Dallas police issued a warrant for Lee’s arrest Tuesday based on her admission that she broke the…
The Texas Senate approved a bill Tuesday that would offer legal protections to those who refuse to provide services on religious grounds. Senate Bill 17 bars state license-granting agencies from denying or stripping professional licenses “based on a sincerely held religious belief” of the applicant or license-holder. Critics say the…
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is celebrating because a Missouri man might choke to death on his own blood. Paxton led a 16-state coalition last year asking the U.S. Supreme Court to deny Russell Bucklew’s death row appeal and uphold Missouri’s lethal injection procedures, claiming that upholding Bucklew’s appeal would…
Probably out of sheer meanness, like bug-killing, I enjoy seeing politicians pitch themselves to really loony audiences. I like to watch them wriggle. There can’t have been any other reason I interrupted a perfectly fine Monday evening and drove north to the Churchill Rec Center to witness the Citizens Matter…
Dallas police charged L’Daijohnique Lee, the woman allegedly beaten by a Deep Ellum bartender in an incident caught on video almost two weeks ago, with felony criminal mischief Thursday afternoon. Lee is accused of knocking out the windows of Austin Shuffield’s car after an altercation in the early morning of…
Maybe Sen. Ted Cruz is just really hard up for $10,000. Otherwise, it’s hard to figure out what he’s trying to achieve with a Monday lawsuit against the federal elections commission, beyond pure campaign-finance nihilism. Broken down to its simplest terms, Cruz’s suit challenges a federal law that bans candidates…
The New York Post broke the news over the weekend as the Mavericks continued to play out the string on the road during a lost season and one of the biggest pieces of their on-court future, star center Kristaps Porzingis, remained in North Texas for injury treatment. A woman who…
North Texas’ municipal elections are just more than a month away. Anyone who’s lived here long enough knows that means a couple of things: 1. Thanks to Texas’ voter-access unfriendly laws, it’s time to register if you aren’t already. Anyone not on the books by a month before the election…
