If you want a preview of the road President Donald Trump intends to take when it comes to reproductive freedom at the federal level, don’t look any further than Texas. Republicans here have already proudly taken the path the president outlined during Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, leading…
Texas Senate Democrats grilled new Secretary of State David Whitley on Thursday over his office’s decision to partner with Attorney General Ken Paxton on an announcement that more than 95,000 noncitizens might be registered to vote in Texas. In the two weeks since the announcement, Whitley and Paxton’s claims have…
Following a Dallas City Council discussion Wednesday, it seems clear that Dallas’ Confederate War Memorial is going to get removed from the park between Dallas City Hall and the convention center at some point. A majority of the council wants it gone, and there is little public resistance to the…
We’ve been here before, but Dallas’ Confederate war memorial, the one that dominates Pioneer Plaza between City Hall and the convention center, appears to be in its final days. Dallas city staff gave City Council members three options Wednesday for what to do with the 60-foot behemoth. The council could…
Today the Dallas City Council, after a year of crass weaseling, will try once more to decide what to do with the huge, lugubrious Confederate War Memorial that stands 400 feet from Dallas City Hall like a very bad billboard for the city. Meanwhile, I’m still trying to decide how…
Former El Paso U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke ended his vagabond run on Tuesday afternoon, emerging from the haze of dentist appointments, morning runs and road trips to sit for an interview with Oprah in Times Square PlayStation Theater. The interview isn’t set to air on the media maven’s Oprah Winfrey Network…
Repeat the words enough times and the message becomes fact: Dallas needs more cops. Ask the mayor. “Dallas needs more cops.” Ask a City Council member. “Dallas needs more cops.” Ask the cop unions. “Dallas definitely needs more cops.” Ask Dallas’ only daily newspaper. “We’re scared, so Dallas needs more…
The bad news for traffic scofflaws and anyone else walking around with a Dallas C misdemeanor warrant is that it’s warrant roundup time. The good news is, this time the city’s offering a discount on your warrant fees, if you’re willing to go through a little trouble. If you’ve got…
Here we go already, off to the slime pits. Bring a towel. Last week mayoral candidate Scott Griggs was one of a handful of City Council members caught with dodgy campaign donations in the past, and you’d have thought he’d shot and killed a child. The donations were dodgy, not…
Someone get Texas Secretary of State David Whitley one sequined glove, please. Last week Whitley dethroned the late Michael Jackson as king of the moonwalk, appearing to move forward while walking backward. On Jan. 25, Whitley and Attorney General Ken Paxton announced that as many as 58,000 noncitizens may have…
D Magazine’s Tim Rogers got the scoop Wednesday afternoon. Three Dallas City Council members — mayoral candidate Scott Griggs, Philip Kingston and Omar Narvaez — received thousands in campaign donations from attorney James Stanton III’s four children, who are ages 5-11, according to the Morning News. The donations don’t violate…
William Barr, nominee to become U.S. attorney general, was right. Unindicted co-conspirators don’t get enough respect. Barr said at his Senate confirmation hearing: “If you’re not going to indict someone, you don’t stand up there and unload negative information about the person. That’s not the way the [Justice] Department does…
It’s still January, a couple of months away from the meat of the 2019 Texas legislative session, and it’s already easy to see the difference in the way Dallas state representatives and senators are representing their city. Wednesday afternoon, Nathan Johnson, the Park Cities and North Dallas state senator who…
Friday afternoon came the breathless proclamation from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Texas Secretary of State David Whitley: Ninety-five thousand noncitizens were on Texas’ voter rolls, and 58,000 of them had cast ballots between 1996 and 2018. Friday night and Saturday, progressive groups and Democrats pushed back, suggesting that…
Texas’ long fight over voter ID, settled just last year, is already old news. The state’s new battlefront in the war for and against voter rights is over citizenship verification, and it looks like Texas could be in for another round of litigation. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and newly…
Cold, quiet weekday afternoon. One of my favorite East Dallas sausage and egg places, Barbec’s on Garland Road, is still as the tomb, empty but for this table, where a waitress hovers over five of us with a pot of hot coffee. Here I am, chatting up a table full…
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton dropped quite the bombshell Friday afternoon: Nearly a year after his office announced an extensive voter fraud initiative, the Texas Secretary of State’s office has discovered that about 95,000 individuals identified as not having documentation of their citizenship on file with the Texas Department of…
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is nothing if not a … well, even we hate to come right out and call someone a hypocrite. We’ll let you decide whether that shoe fits. During his 2016 run for president, he positioned himself first as Donald Trump’s best friend, then called Trump a…
Some things are made for each other: peanut butter and jelly, beef tallow and fried potatoes, Jerry Jones and television cameras. Similarly, some moments are just made for Twitter, scratching the social network right where it itches. Wednesday afternoon, one of those moments fell from the sky, or was at…
Wednesday I decided to go out and check on my two favorite issues in the upcoming mayor’s race. Yup, still there: 1) The trashy mess where the city finally tore out the $6 million never-used fake whitewater feature it built in the Trinity River, and 2) the $115 million never-used…
Late Wednesday afternoon brought another twist for May’s municipal election, as Dallas City Council member Mark Clayton announced he will not seek a third term. Clayton has represented portions of East and northeast Dallas since 2015, when he cruised to an easy victory by winning almost 60 percent of the…
Tuesday brought the first true surprise of the nascent race for Dallas mayor, with state Rep. Eric Johnson announcing that he was making the field an even 10, further muddying an electoral picture that’s still a long way from shaking itself out. Johnson is a serious candidate — even if…
