Two days after the Dallas City Council in a split vote shot down a deal to turn over Reverchon Park to a for-profit sports entity, East Dallas District 14 City Council Member David Blewett, who had voted against the giveaway, filed paperwork with the City Secretary for a re-vote —…
Voters in Dallas and Tarrant counties will continue to be able to vote at any polling place in their counties. The Texas Secretary of State’s office notified both counties last week that they had been granted permission to continue participating in the state’s countywide voting program. The program allows voters…
The Dallas Police Department promised to implement a “data-driven approach to reduce violent crime” and laid out crime-reduction goals for the upcoming year in a report released Thursday. Mayor Eric Johnson demanded the report be released by the end of 2019, a particularly violent year in Dallas. In a statement released…
Julian Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio, ended his presidential campaign Thursday morning. Castro, the only remaining Texan in the race, announced the news Thursday morning on Twitter, pledging to “keep fighting for an America where everyone counts.” In a video posted on Twitter Thursday morning, Castro highlighted several…
We start this new decade in the city with two facts staring us in the face. Fact One: Truly powerful new ideas are on the table right now that will help us take away the sharp bite of social inequity, greatly reduce crime and, most important and valuable, harvest the…
Let’s get this one straight before it rolls away from us. A certain amount of misrepresentation is going on about the meaning of a federal judge’s recent action dismissing the city as a defendant in a civil lawsuit arising from the Amber Guyger/Botham Jean murder case. This is not a…
Given the anti-choice laws being passed around the rest of the country — in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri and elsewhere — there’s a temptation for abortion rights supporters in Texas to take a deep breath. The 2019 edition of the Texas Legislature didn’t pass a total ban on abortion. Neither…
Sunlight seeps into the small commercial kitchen in the Muslim American Society’s Islamic Center as Maissa Alkhadir stirs a steaming pot of rice and potatoes. Reaching to a shelf above the stove, she grabs a plastic canister of dried spices and sprinkles some into the pot. Once it’s done, she…
Texas prosecutors aren’t giving juries the opportunity to put people to death and, even when they do, jurors aren’t going for it. Those are the big takeaways from the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty’s annual roundup of Texas’ death row development. Only nine of the 21 executions scheduled…
A Dallas County grand jury has indicted former Dallas City Council member Kevin Felder. Felder is charged with failure to stop and render aid, a third-degree felony, according to county records. Felder was arrested in February after an altercation with an 18 year old riding a scooter in South Dallas…
In the aftermath of the 2016 election, as everyone scrambled to figure out what a Donald Trump presidency would look like in reality rather than in their worst nightmares or wildest dreams, one thing no one could have predicted was the rise of a certain East Texas congressman. Louie Gohmert,…
The Dallas County Commissioner’s Court unanimously voted in favor of Dallas County continuing to be a place of initial resettlement for refugees. The resolution follows similar support from the city of Dallas and Fort Worth.
Several hundred people rallied outside of Rep. Colin Allred’s offices in Richardson on Tuesday evening in support of the congressman’s planned vote for impeachment. For more than an hour, they chanted anti-Trump slogans and waved signs at passing cars. Some drivers sped off, others laid on their horns in solidarity…
Holiday gift shopping often entails walking the tightrope between creativity and desperation and, occasionally, falling off into one or the other. Companies, too, seem to enjoy threading the thin line in hopes of continuing to sustain our interest long enough that we pony up and buy whatever they’re peddling this…
In a broad sense, this is all Beto O’Rourke’s fault. If the former U.S. representative had just listened — to activists, party insiders, polls or basically anyone not living in his own head — and run for U.S. Senate rather that president, Texas Democrats would already be in general election…
Social media is doing its best to destroy the news industry. Temperamental algorithms shift page views — oxygen for publications like the Observer — up or down, seemingly on a whim. Anonymity means abuse flows freely from trolls to journalists, further wearying reporters working in newsrooms that have already seen their…
On Tuesday morning, three police cruisers shepherded two trucks through the empty streets of South Dallas. Every few blocks, the caravan stopped in front of a homeless encampment and a small army of men in white coveralls jumped out to clear it away. Tommy Renfrow, who had pitched his tent…
Hallelujah, the angels sing, after all. Well, my version of angels. My better angels are those local public officials who have integrity, intelligence and guts. They’re better than the ones who don’t, right? Last week a posse of better angels stepped up, including a few who were unelected citizens, and…
Dallas has the fifth highest rate of traffic fatalities in the country. This week, the City Council approved the creation of a task force to address the issue and adopted goals to reduce fatalities in the future.
East Texas congressman and friend of the Observer Louie Gohmert is, as one might imagine, having himself quite the time during the U.S. House’s impeachment hearings. Several times a day, whether any of his colleagues like it or not, Gohmert gets five minutes alone with the House Judiciary Committee microphone and…
The mayor wants an answer to the city’s astronomical murder rate — twice San Antonio’s, four times Austin’s — right away from the city manager. I can think of a quick way to get there. Release the record of 911 calls from Jim’s Car Wash. Wait. I’m serious. This is about…
There’s a condition, one you’ve probably heard of if you’ve happened on any right-wing media over the last three years or have any acolytes of the president in your social circle, called Trump Derangement Syndrome. The idea is that Democrats and progressives have been driven to the brink by President…
