If you were a time traveler from all the way back in 2018, there’s a good chance the noise emanating from Austin this week would have made your head spin. Following a pair of mass murders in El Paso and the Permian Basin, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov…
Let’s play a game called, “What is Dallas so worried about?” The city has ordered all of its cops not to take time off beginning this week for the duration of the trial of former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger. Guyger, who is white, is accused of murder in the…
CNN hosted a series of climate-focused town halls Wednesday, starring 10 Democratic presidential candidates. You’re forgiven if you didn’t tune in. The forums ran seven hours, were moderated by CNN’s less-than-stellar anchor staff and had way more talk about banning plastic straws than anyone needs to listen to. One person…
Wednesday, Texas House Democrats made a show of force, or as close to a show of force as a party out of power can make, around the state. At a series of media events, dozens of Democrats laid into Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, calling on him to convene a special…
As you know, shortly after Eric Johnson took a job as mayor of Dallas, he took another job as an attorney with the Locke Lord law firm. He said he could do both jobs at the same time, no problem, and that he would keep a sharp eye out for…
Dallas’ property tax rate, the subject of several weeks of municipal drama, appears set to stay the same or lower than it was in 2018, despite Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax proposing a small tax rate increase in his initial draft of the city budget. Despite the decrease in expected…
Texas House Democrats are totally united. Sixty-three of the 66 members of the party’s House caucus signed a letter Wednesday calling on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to call a special session of the Legislature to address the rash of gun violence that’s marred Texas’ summer. As they repeated at news…
Despite July’s agitation and August’s frustration, it’s hard to imagine now, at the beginning of September, that anyone’s going to remember Ezekiel Elliott’s holdout even six months from now. Wednesday morning, just as the Cowboys began game-week preparations for the New York Giants in earnest, the team announced that it’s…
It’s a familiar sight, and a sad one, for anyone who’s spent enough time at a Dallas County polling place on Election Day: Some poor sap, armed with his best intentions but the wrong address on his voter registration card, gets pulled off to the side as poll workers desperately…
To the drumbeat of blue-balls fans tortured by a quarter-century of frustrating foreplay, and the backbeat of construction clangabang violently serenading the team’s annual state-of-the-union address, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones set the tone for the 2019 season by … pretending to be deaf. Eschewing traditional softball questions for a…
Soaring property values in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods should not have to be bad news. Especially when we take into account the decades of racial oppression and red-lining that have kept a neighborhood poor, we ought to rejoice when it rebounds. Unless. Unless the people who live there…
At least Rafael Rubi is a bad shot. That’s the best that can be said after Rubi, a 24-year-old Dallas resident, pleaded guilty last week to participating in four separate drive-by shootings over a two-month span in Dallas during the spring of 2018. Tuesday, federal officials announced that they’d tied…
Postpartum depression — more properly known as perinatal mood and anxiety disorder — affects one in seven new mothers. And yet not many parents or doctors know how to recognize symptoms or treat it. A new Texas law, which takes effect on September 1, will put in place some steps to make treatment easier.
The big, macro takeaway from Dallas’ long-awaited police staffing study was pretty clear, if you read the report itself, decided to bore yourself with the City Council’s briefing on the subject or read any of the media coverage last week: The Dallas Police Department can’t hire its way out of…
Last week, I wrote about some astonishing trends in property values in what has long been one of the city’s poorest, most racially segregated neighborhoods. Old South Dallas, which extends about a mile south from Fair Park, is seeing increases of almost 100% in as little as a year. After…
Two new Texas laws aiming to protect sexual assault victims will go into effect on September 1st. One law establishes stricter guidelines for testing and sharing information about rape kits and the other expands the definition of sexual assault by a fertility doctor.
It took forever in political time — about a week in normal human time, but who’s counting — but Texas Gov. Greg Abbott finally addressed the anti-illegal immigration fundraising letter he sent out the day before Patrick Crusius allegedly murdered 22 people in an El Paso Walmart. “Address” is the…
A Dallas County Grand Jury has indicted a 22-year-old man for the murder of a woman pulled out of White Rock Lake on June 1, according to court documents. Ruben Alvarado is set to stand trial for killing Chynal Lindsey, 26. At the time of her death, Lindsey was the…
In 2017, Texas lawmakers passed a bill barring school districts across the state from placing their youngest students in out-of-school suspension. But the following year, a handful of North Texas schools continued suspending those students, according to a new report from Texans Care for Children, a nonpartisan policy organization. Fort…
Just because something is below my radar doesn’t mean it’s below yours. Maybe you knew all about this, but I was astonished, mainly because it has been right in front of my nose for so long. The part of South Dallas I’ve been writing about for years, near Jim’s Car…
Dallas Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott’s holdout situation — perched in the purgatory between “Don’t worry about it” and “Hey, maybe this is going to be a thing” for most of the offseason — is officially a thing. When the Cowboys wake up Friday morning, there’s going to be nothing…
Dallas is taking its next best shot at solving the food desert crisis that has plagued southern Dallas for years. Wednesday, the City Council unanimously signed off on handing $5.7 million in tax incentives and city bond funds to Kroger and grocery-delivery company Ocado Solutions if the grocery giant builds…
