Politics & Government

The Observer promises it will no longer act as if things can’t get any stupider, no matter how stupid they get. We’ve been chastened, having watched East Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert storm a secure deposition room at the U.S. Capitol last week and initiating one of the dumbest political standoffs…

Fresh from having pushed House Speaker Dennis Bonnen halfway out the door, Texas conservative activists are looking to rerun the 2019 legislative session in which the speaker played such a big part. Wednesday afternoon in Dallas, representatives from Empower Texans, Texas Right to Life and the Texas Eagle Forum, among…

Just in case you didn’t have sufficient reason to be suspicious of your neighbors, a new report from RentHop, a New York-based apartment listing firm, has hit your friendly Observer news vertical’s inbox this week, breaking down North Texas’ 2019 presidential donations by ZIP code. No longer must anyone wonder just…

In Dallas there are large gaps in access to resources and opportunities depending on your income, where you live and racial and socioeconomic background, according to a new report released by the city in partnership with the Center for Public Policy and Priorities.

Amid the pomp and fervor at President Donald Trump’s latest Dallas revival on Oct. 17, there was, among many other emotions, an undertone of worry, possibly even sincere, from the event’s public speakers. Whether it was Prestonwood Baptist Church Pastor Jack Graham, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan…

Nationwide, college student voter turnout doubled between 2014 and 2018, according to a new study by Tufts University. But in Texas and elsewhere, new efforts by Republican lawmakers are making it harder for students to vote this year. Critics say these moves are designed to suppress liberal votes. About 67%…

As a part of his ongoing spat with Austin over homelessness, Gov. Greg Abbott held Dallas up last week as an example of how cities should tackle the problem. But Dallas has problems of its own. As the number of people who spend their nights on city streets and under…

This can’t be what the Republican Party wanted. With the party facing a seemingly unending string of negative media coverage and scandal, East Texas U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, basically /r/the_Donald, were the subreddit given breath and a seat in the House of Representatives, has led the news twice this week,…

In the midst of what was a busy Wednesday at the U.S. Capitol, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn joined his fellow Texas politicians, rolling out his own plan — called the Restoring, Enhancing, Strengthening, and Promoting Our Nation’s Safety Efforts (RESPONSE) Act — to stop the mass shootings that have plagued Texas in…

Something stupid happened at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. That’s all you need to know, to know that East Texas U.S. House Rep. Louie Gohmert was right in the middle of it. Gohmert, along with several fellow acolytes of President Donald Trump, decided that the best way for them to…

In a state where everyone’s blind, the one-eyed cities are kings, or something like that. That’s the big takeaway from a new study from the National Institute for Reproductive Health. Texas’ cities, the only places in the state where women can actually seek out a legal abortion, lag behind cities…

When the Texas Legislature convenes for its next session in 2021, it will have a new speaker. Tuesday morning, the current speaker, Angleton Republican Dennis Bonnen, announced that, after two decades in the House and one term as speaker, he would not seek reelection. “It is with the deepest love,…

Until Friday morning, anyone looking to report police misconduct to Dallas’ new Office of Community Police Oversight would have had a hard time figuring out how. Instructions on a Dallas police website for submitting complaints led callers to a disconnected number. A link to the office responsible for collecting complaints…

The least interesting person at Thursday night’s rally at the American Airlines Center was the man of the hour himself, who spent his 90 minutes predictably: trumpeting his alleged successes and condemning his perceived rivals. Outside, J.C. Cook of Cedar Creek Lake was promoting a dark horse candidate with promises…

Beto O’Rourke held a counter rally to Trump’s campaign stop in Dallas. Supporters packed the event where he called for unity.

Thursday night, in as much trouble as he’s been since his inauguration, President Donald Trump returned to Dallas’ American Airlines Center a little more than four years after his first visit to the place that Ron Kirk built. On a day in which his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney,…

President Donald Trump will be in town this evening, and dozens of his supporters have already lined up in anticipation, some having arrived days in advance. The doors open at 3 p.m., but attendees were not allowed on the grounds until this morning. So on Wednesday afternoon, they waited on…

One thing you can’t say about President Donald Trump, and there aren’t many, is that he’s never taken North Texas for granted. Unlike basically every national politician in Texas’ blood-red era, the real estate developer turned reality TV star turned political sideshow turned legitimate candidate turned president has shown up…

The bomb, such as it was, has been detonated. Now comes the time to figure out the size of the fallout and, more important, its half-life. Tuesday, everyone who’d been waiting for months to hear Chekov’s smartphone recording — otherwise known as Texas conservative gadfly Michael Quinn Sullivan’s record of…

Tuesday morning, Michael Quinn Sullivan finally released the long-awaited tape of his summer meeting with Dennis Bonnen, the speaker of the Texas House. At first listen, the recording appears to back up the basics of what Sullivan, a conservative activist and blogger, has been saying for months: In exchange for…

Like many anti-abortion activists, Mark Lee Dixon left the 2019 Texas legislative session unsatisfied. Sure, the Legislature, deep red for at least one more election, had passed the “born-alive bill,” which mimics a federal law that requires doctors to care for a baby born during an attempted abortion, and another…