All this because San Antonio didn’t want a Chick-fil-A in its airport. The Texas House of Representatives signed off on Texas Senate Bill 1978 on Monday, saving Texas Republicans from their worst fears about religious discrimination or opening the state’s LGBTQ community up to further discrimination, depending on who’s talking…
Texas likely won’t have to wait on the courts to fix its 4-year-old revenge porn law. Sunday afternoon, the Texas Senate voted unanimously to support a change to the law that attempts to protect third parties’ free-speech rights while allowing the statute to retain its teeth. “One out of every…
Muhlaysia Booker, the Dallas transgender woman brutally attacked on video last month in South Dallas, was shot and killed Saturday, Dallas police confirmed Sunday afternoon. Police found Booker, 23, laying face down on Valley Glen Drive near Ferguson Road just before 7 a.m. Saturday. Booker wasn’t carrying ID, leading to…
When the University of Texas at Arlington announced last month that it would prohibit its fraternities and sororities from holding social events on campus, it joined a growing list of colleges and universities that are taking action against their Greek organizations. Over the last several years, a number of colleges…
The whole business about the Catholic Diocese of Dallas in January publishing a list of 31 so-called “credibly accused” priests seemed weird at the time. Credibly, who says so? Now as the story grows only darker, we have to wonder how the diocese, which is the regional headquarters of the…
While Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro spoke with Dallas business leaders Thursday at the Old Parkland hospital campus, dozens of demonstrators lined the street outside, some denouncing him as a fascist despot and others welcoming him to Texas. The far-right head of state was in Dallas to meet with members of…
Last week, the Texas Senate threw the state’s Confederate fetishists a bone. Spurred in part by Dallas’ votes to get rid of the Robert E. Lee statue from the park that used to be named after the treasonous general and remove the towering Confederate war memorial from Pioneer Park near…
Sometimes, Texas laws address real problems, like the state’s soon-to-be dead poverty trap, the Driver Responsibility Program, or its unconscionable rape kit testing backlog. Other times, they’re drafted and passed for purely political purposes. The “born-alive” act, now passed by both the Texas House and Senate, is one of those…
More than a year after a group of Dallas churches and outreach groups began organizing a system for offering shelter to homeless people on nights when it’s too cold to be outdoors, the Dallas City Council considered the latest version of a plan to allow those groups to do the…
Wednesday night, two days after having an instantly vilified quickie hearing just to get it to the floor, the Texas Senate signed off on a religious protection bill that opponents fear could open the door to discrimination against Texas’ LGBTQ community. Prior to its hearing on the Senate floor, Senate…
After more than a year of investigation, the charges against suspected North Texas serial killer Billy Chemirmir are starting to come in. Already this week, a Dallas County grand jury has indicted Chemirmir for six murders, according to court documents. Multiple media outlets report than Chemirmir will soon be indictment…
Wow, Eric Johnson, candidate for mayor in the June 8 runoff election, really has a lot of endorsements. I mean, a ton of endorsements. The list is so long, I can’t even reproduce a screen grab of all the names here. I would need three screen grabs. So why is…
Texas’ loathed Driver Responsibility Program is hanging on by a thread. Wednesday afternoon, the Texas Senate voted 31-0 to kill the long-standing program, leaving it one Gov. Greg Abbott signature from death. The program imposes surcharges on those drivers who do things like driving without a licence or driving under…
Dallas Police Department officers searched Catholic Diocese of Dallas properties across the city Wednesday as part of a continuing investigation into alleged abuse by Dallas priests. According to DPD Maj. Max Geron, police searched Diocese headquarters in Oak Lawn, St. Cecilia Catholic Church in North Oak Cliff and a storage…
Every spring in Dallas, one of two things happens: The Dallas Mavericks either play a couple of weeks of playoff basketball or lose the NBA Draft Lottery. No matter how bad the previous season or how good their odds are, the Mavericks never, ever move up so much as a…
The short-term rental industry has become the latest “internet-based service firm” to arouse the ire of citizens and local governments nationwide. Here in North Texas, Arlington has recently joined the growing number of cities to restrict or even ban the practice of renting or operating short-term rentals as offered by…
A majority of mayoral candidate Scott Griggs’ colleagues on the Dallas City Council, including Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings, endorsed his opponent in the mayor’s race Tuesday afternoon. State Rep. Eric Johnson is the best choice to lead the city, Rawlings and the council members said, because he will unite Dallas…
In two mayoral runoff election debates so far between Dallas City Council member Scott Griggs and state Rep. Eric Johnson, half of Johnson’s entire pitch has been that he will bring an end to snarkiness, personal attacks and divisiveness at City Hall. The other half of Johnson’s pitch has been…
Barring an upset, Texas looks poised to become the 14th state to raise its smoking age, after the Texas House passed an amended version of a Senate bill raising the state’s tobacco-use age on Tuesday. Under the bill, the purchasing age for all tobacco products in the state would be…
The last time Chris Mullins saw his girlfriend alive, she was leaving for work early on a Monday morning in late November 2018. Maria Ezquerro had recently returned home from visiting her parents in Mexico and spent the night with Mullins in Denton. Partially asleep, he walked her to the…
Nearly five months after his arrest, John Wetteland made his first court appearance on child sex abuse charges Monday. Though he didn’t enter a plea at the Denton County Courthouse, his attorney made it clear to reporters how he and his client plan to fight the accusations against the former…
Turns out the “Save Chick-fil-A” bill wasn’t dead after all. Monday afternoon, the Texas Senate went tit-for-tat with the Texas House’s LGBTQ caucus, executing a maneuver to advance the upper chamber version of one of this legislative session’s most controversial bills without a committee hearing. Thursday night, Sen. Julie Johnson,…
