Politics & Government

Do we focus on local things because we can’t stand to think about the big picture? What’s really going on in our heads? This week we learned that an upcoming U.N. report based on 15,000 scientific studies will say one million living species are faced with extinction, some within decades,…

Following months of criticism, VisitDallas President and CEO Phillip Jones is out of a job, following what the organization is calling a “mutual decision.” Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings is expected to announce a new, interim CEO for the agency later this week. Jones came under fire in January after the…

Democrats flexed their newfound muscle in the Texas House on Tuesday, ending a push led by Gov. Greg Abbott to increase Texas’ sales tax, which is already one of the highest in the nation. While there’s a chance a sales tax increase could be shoehorned into another bill already making…

Crazy, goofy and idiotic are not good explanations for people who are hard to understand. I’m going to buy a Cub Scout wood-burning kit that makes engravings on plywood and put that on a plaque. Maybe I’ll hang it from the rearview mirror of my pickup. But for years I…

Texas Senate Republicans are tired of uppity cities like Dallas taking down monuments to the Confederacy. That’s the message from the state Capitol, where the Senate voted 19-12 along strict party lines to require a two-thirds, super majority vote from any municipal government that wants to get rid of their…

If the first round of Dallas’ municipal election taught us anything, it’s that nobody — except D Magazine contributing editor Eric Celeste, who went full-Nostradamus on the mayoral results — knows anything when it comes to low-turnout free-for-alls. Rumor had it before the election that the race between former Mayor…

In 1995, somebody in the business leadership of Dallas figured out that Dallas had a serious amount of catch-up to do to be a contender on the larger stage of history. The answer, brought forward by the city’s business elite, was the city’s first black mayor, a brilliant young lawyer…

A little after 10:30 Saturday night, Dallas City Council member Scott Griggs finally hopped onstage at Trees in Deep Ellum to declare a kind of victory. He’d apparently — because all the precincts hadn’t come in and there’s no Dallas election decision desk — finished second in Dallas’ mayoral election,…

This weekend is about as good as get for Dallas sports fans. The Stars have critical playoff games on Friday night and Sunday afternoon, the Rangers are in town all weekend and the Kentucky Derby is Saturday afternoon. Stir in what should be an entertaining scrap between Canelo Alvarez and…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Dallas’ Citizens Police Review Board got meaningfully stronger Wednesday. The new board won’t be as strong as activists wanted it to be and is probably a little stronger than Dallas’ police associations would’ve preferred. Its creation is a compromise, just as Dallas Police Chief U. Renee Hall said it would…