Politics & Government

A week ago, Texas, and the rest of the country, got their first look at Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s evolving priorities on guns, gun violence and domestic terrorism through a series of executive orders issued by the governor. While there was a decent amount of meat in Abbott’s eight decrees…

Texas, for a week at least, is the center of the Democratic political universe. There have already been a couple of major polls of the state released, a declaration of intent by the state’s Democratic Party, pushback from Texas Republicans and some crowing from national Democrats about their chances of…

Wednesday morning in a clearly written, earnest, heartfelt letter to the editor of The Dallas Morning News, Susan D. Cox conveyed her dismay about a big zoning case at Northwest Highway and the Dallas North Tollway that would go before the City Council later that day. The council member for…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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 visit to the Texas Department of Public Safety, whatever it’s for, is going to suck, at least a little. Thanks to cutbacks and consolidation, there’s less likely to be a DPS location nearby when you have to make your once-every-dozen-years trek to renew your driver’s license or state ID…

The vibe coming from Dallas City Council on Monday morning as they were briefed on the long-awaited Dallas Police Department staffing study was recognizable to anyone who’s ever disappointed someone with a Christmas gift. Council members appreciated what KPMG, one of the United States’ biggest auditing firms, had done for…

Texas’ Planned Parenthood clinics are, as of last week, on the same footing as the organization’s clinics in the rest of the country. That’s not a good thing. A week ago today, the family planning, women’s health and abortion provider announced that it would leave the federal government’s Title X…

Look at it this way. An Italian court has ordered Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava to pay the city of Venice &85,000 just because a bridge he designed there is too slippery. The two gigantic pedestrian bridges Calatrava built for us in Dallas, completed in 2017, have never even been…

If he cares about his public reception at all, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott can’t be happy with his Thursday, the day he convened the first of a series of roundtable discussions he’s called in the wake of the Aug. 3 massacre in El Paso. Gun rights advocates held a rally…

Maybe this would be funny. If it were funny. I mean, the first time the city set up a “Public Improvement District” or PID to fight crime along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in South Dallas, the PID collected property taxes in the six figures, turned all the money over…