Politics & Government

Fifteen months after deciding that Dallas and its police department needed a study to figure out just how bad the department’s attrition and staffing woes are, the City Council signed off on funding for the survey Wednesday. The cash didn’t come without a fight over one of its sources —…

Let’s look at this just in terms of real life and normal business practice. In late November 2017, two months after Dallas police Chief U. Renee Hall arrived on the job from Detroit, detectives from the department’s intelligence unit “escorted” all of the detectives in the vice unit to their…

The 55th anniversary of the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in Dallas has slipped behind us already. The few reminiscence stories in the daily newspaper this year all seemed like reaches. That really is the miracle of time, is it not, that it can wear, wash and smooth away…

Recently departed Dallas City Attorney Larry Casto is running for mayor, he tells The Dallas Morning News’ Robert Wilonsky. Casto is now the second candidate to officially jump into the race, joining Dallas businessman Albert Black. Mike Ablon, a prominent real estate developer in the Design District and potential candidate, has…

Dallasites gathered at City Hall in solidarity with asylum seekers on Sunday as reports came in about hundreds of migrants from the Central American migrant caravan marching along the U.S.-Mexico border. More than 50 people gathered in the cold in response to a nationwide call for a day of action…

At a town hall in El Paso on Monday, Beto O’Rourke made his first public appearance since losing his Senate race to incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz earlier this month. Given the narrow, and high-profile nature of O’Rourke’s Senate defeat, one might’ve expected the soon-to-be former U.S. House representative to play…

Last week, almost lost in the dense postpartum coverage of the Amazon’s-not-coming-here story, I found what I thought was an utterly fascinating and infuriating vignette. It was something I should have guessed had happened. It was never a secret. It was something I normally would have assumed was happening. But…

About a dozen protesters gathered at Energy Transfer Partners’ office building in Dallas this week, the second anniversary of when police used non-lethal weapons against Dakota Access Pipeline protesters at Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in the Dakotas. This time, the focus was on the Bayou Bridge Pipeline, which is being…

Another flyer from a white supremacist group was found in a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Highland Village near Lewisville last weekend. This time, the flyer, which read “Keep America American” and “Report Any and All Illegal Aliens; They are Criminals” along with a phone number for U.S. Immigration and…

Rickey Callahan will step aside in June rather than seek a fourth term on the Dallas City Council in next year’s municipal elections. Callahan announced his decision at a meeting of the Southeast Dallas Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday, according to The Dallas Morning News’  Robert Wilonsky. Callahan, who did not respond…

Last week I found myself trying to explain Beto to a New Yorker. I didn’t do a good job. I do better with a day to think about it, a desk, a web browser and an editor than I do trying to talk on my feet. I was taken aback…

Earlier this week, as the post-midterm election haze receded and was quickly replaced by pre-primary gossip, we pondered the fate of Beto O’Rourke following his 2.5 point loss to Sen Ted Cruz. The Democrat’s next gig, we surmised, is probably going to be running for president, because many people seem to…

Dallas missed out on so much earlier this week when Amazon decide not to include the city in its HQ2 largess. Had the retail behemoth seen fit to shine its light on us, we could’ve had the thousands of jobs, billions in financial activity and voluminous orange signage that will…

The setup is familiar for those who are, or were once, members of the evangelical community. Pastors from out of town, preaching their version of the good news for four hours, raising the spirits and testing the stamina of the faithful. This weekend, the Red Letter Christians are having a…

You know, maybe things just worked out exactly as they should have in the Amazon HQ2 story. Amazon, of course, made a big deal out of what any city would need to do and to be and to offer and to promise in order to be worthy of becoming the…

Election night was just a week ago. Votes — in Florida, Arizona and California — are still being counted and recounted.The calendar hasn’t even flipped to December and still, among a certain set of political diehards and fan boys, one question dominates the conversation: Is Beto O’Rourke going to run…

Since opening in 2012, Klyde Warren Park has been a pleasant addition to downtown Dallas. The park, filled to the brim on weekends and still busy on weekdays and nights, is a friendly patch of green between downtown and Uptown, a good place to take your dog on the far…

Barring something completely unforeseen between now and January, Dennis Bonnen, a long-serving Republican from the Houston area, is going to be the next speaker of the Texas House of Representatives. “We’re here to let you know that the speaker’s race is over,” Bonnen said at a press conference in Austin…

The nation seems to be splitting in half, so why shouldn’t journalism? Right now we seem to have two camps — the half of the craft that recognizes the kind of lying crooks they’re dealing with and knows what it will take to beat them and the other half, the…

As Beto bumper stickers and yard signs are peeled off of cars and removed from front lawns of O’Rourke supporters who are waking up hung over from the midterms, some millennials are wondering what’s next for O’Rourke and a Texas that’s a little more purple than it was a week…