Calls for change are continuing at Texas A&M University a little over a week after a video surfaced online of a student using a series of racist slurs while delivering a fake biology lecture. In the video, the student, who is white, stands in front of a chalkboard, holding a…
Even before it began in earnest, a question-and-answer session about the city of Dallas’ new paid sick leave ordinance grew heated Wednesday afternoon. Before she began a presentation explaining the new ordinance, Hannah Alexander, partnership liaison with the city’s Office of Fair Housing and Human Rights, told a packed auditorium…
The motion filed by former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger’s lawyers asking for her murder trial to be moved out of Dallas is 60 pages long not counting appendices. It raises very tough questions that anybody with a fair mind would have trouble answering thoughtfully right off the bat. They…
In the years before smartphones, self-driving cars and virtual reality headsets, one of the first major technological advances U.S. households got their hands on was, of course, the Roomba. The roundish dust-sucking robots were surely a sign of the future way back in 2002, but by now the novelty of…
The core Achilles’ heel problem, the perennial failing and persistent flaw in the way Dallas City Hall thinks and operates, is its bizarre insularity, almost as if the world outside Dallas city limits does not exist. Maybe the strangest and most wonderful illustration of that problem is the now almost…
Nationwide, Ross Perot was known as an eccentric Texas billionaire who launched two unsuccessful presidential bids. In Dallas, he’s known, among other things, as the man whose name is on one of the city’s better-known museums. Perot died Tuesday after a five-month battle with leukemia, a family spokesman confirmed to…
Hours after the 2016 shooting that ended five police officers’ lives at a rally against police brutality in downtown Dallas, Mark Hughes was making the long walk through the chaos of the night back to his truck with a friend. His friend’s phone rang. “Get away from Mark,” the voice…
If you’ve got a criminal record from Dallas County that you need cleared, now’s the time. The county’s district attorney’s office, public defender’s office and district clerk’s office are holding the county’s annual Expunction Expo, during which attorneys will be helping eligible people have their records expunged, county officials announced…
Attorneys for a fired Dallas police officer who shot and killed a 26-year-old man in his apartment are seeking to have her murder trial moved out of Dallas County. Amber Guyger shot and killed Botham Jean, an accountant from St. Lucia, on Sept. 6.
Colleges and universities nationwide, including in Texas, are seeing a growing number of instances of white supremacist groups recruiting on their campuses, according to a new report from the Anti-Defamation League. The 2018-19 academic year marked the third consecutive year of growth in white supremacist campus recruiting across the country,…
North Texas picked up more new apartment renters than any area in the United States during the second quarter of 2019, according to data released last week by RealPage. As of July 1, DFW has 10,446 more occupied apartments than it did three months ago, the biggest quarterly jump in…
A real debate, sure, I can see that, where we can watch opponents drill down on an issue, but an adolescent, reality-show put-down fight? Really? We’re going to choose our presidents that way? No, c’mon. I can’t believe I’m supposed to take former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro as a…
Texas, for all its grand political history, has had more than its share of bad candidates, ranging from the benign but deluded, like 2002 gubernatorial candidate Tony Sanchez, to the not-so-benign but totally hopeless, like Craig James. Scattered among the political graves are several Texas politicians who got too big for…
Ezekiel Elliott will not be punished for a May incident during which he was briefly handcuffed by Las Vegas police after knocking over a security guard at a music festival, the NFL announced Wednesday afternoon. Elliott met with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to discuss his actions Tuesday. A bystander video…
Last week, right after a Dallas County grand jury indicted him for the murder of Juan Moreno Jr., Farmers Branch Police Department officer Michael Dunn turned himself in, quickly made $150,000 bail and was released from custody. Standard operating procedure as far as North Texas cops are concerned — see…
Barring something truly unforeseen, Texas is officially out of the woods when it comes to a potential citizenship question on the 2020 U.S. census. In an email sent to opposing counsel in the ongoing legal fight over the question, lawyers for the Department of Justice said Tuesday that the “decision…
The crew of a plane that crashed Sunday in Addison talked about a problem with the left engine just seconds before the crash, federal investigators reported Tuesday. The Beechcraft Super King Air 350 struck a hangar at Addison Municipal Airport shortly after 9 a.m. Sunday, killing all 10 people aboard…
Please, deliver us. Before this presidential election is over, is every old white guy in America going to say the not-a-racist-bone thing? If nobody’s got a racist bone in his body, how in the hell did we get here? This whole election is about race. The whole country is about…
It took a little digging through federal court documents and a helpful tweet pointing us in the right direction, but the Observer had the distinct pleasure of witnessing the origin story of Texas’ newest civil rights icon Monday. Turns out, he’s been sitting right in front of us the whole time…
There’s a chance, somewhere between a small- and a medium-sized one, that Tuesday ends up being one of the defining days of the Cowboys’ 2019 season. According to reports from the Cowboys beat reporters at ESPN and The Dallas Morning News, star running back Ezekiel Elliott is meeting with NFL…
Los Angeles Angels starting pitcher Tyler Skaggs died in Texas today, the team announced Monday afternoon. The Rangers and Angels series opener, slated for tonight at 7:05, has been cancelled. “It is with great sorrow that we report Tyler Skaggs passed away earlier today in Texas,” the Angels said in…
For the last two years, colleges and universities nationwide, including in North Texas, have seen fewer international students applying to graduate degree programs. But officials at some North Texas universities say they’re seeing signs that international grad students are beginning to come back. Higher-education officials say a healthy population of international…
