Politics & Government

Dallas didn’t get left at the altar this time. After nine months of licking its Amazon-inflicted wounds, the city landed its own big-tech big fish, thanks to nearly $36 million in economic incentives from the city, county and state. Tuesday, Dallas County Commissioners approved the final piece of the incentive…

In the new mayor’s laughably pusillanimous response to the city’s murder problem, we are seeing the first symptoms of the last election. Pulling a page, poorly, from the previous mayor, Eric Johnson this week tried to take on murder with some grandstand speechifying. It was not grand. At a scripted…

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is taking the first step toward memory-holing his ill-fated nomination of former Texas Secretary of State David Whitley. Abbott announced Monday that he’s appointed the chairwoman of the Texas Workforce Commission to the post. Ruth Ruggero Hughs, also a former associate in the Texas Attorney General’s…

The first shoe in the case of Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen, the Tea Party activists and the secret meeting has officially dropped. State Rep. Dustin Burrows, a Republican from Lubbock, is no longer the chairman of the Texas House’s GOP caucus. Burrows, the third man in the meeting between…

Forty-six years ago, Dallas Police Department Officer Darrell Cain murdered Santos Rodriguez. Dallas is finally getting closer to building a permanent memorial to the slain 12-year-old. Cain killed Rodriguez in the back of a police car on July 24, 1973. He’d picked up the preteen, along with his brother David…

This is a bit of a personal crisis for me, but I guess it’s gravy for you. Based on their budget hearing Tuesday, the new Dallas City Council seems to be a pretty sharp group. I’m thinking of going into the landscaping business. Even the new mayor looked good. Knock…

Dallas got a peek at how its new City Council is going to work Tuesday afternoon. The results, giving bonus points for about half the members being new on the job and all the members being freshly returned from vacation, were a mixed bag. The council didn’t hamstring its budgeting…

Well, I think I just submitted the dumbest open records request of my 100-year career as a journalist. I sent it to the city. This was a tough decision. I swore I would not do this. Then I did it. My open records request was, “Where is the police chief?”…

An activist who became one of the biggest stars of Texas’ 2018 election is seeking office herself. Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, the co-founder and former executive director of Jolt and the Workers Defense Project, is running for U.S. Senate, joining a Democratic primary field that includes Dallas state Sen. Royce West, Houston…

A proposed apartment complex in Denton threatens the character of the neighborhood, residents say.

For the better part of two decades now, Texas has been Lucy with the football and Democrats have been Charlie Brown, thinking, “If we just target these voters, moderate on these issues or raise this much money, maybe we’ll have a chance.” It hasn’t happened. However much hype a candidate…

First question. Who gives a damn? This very weird story keeps bouncing around the mediaverse about Dennis Bonnen, who is speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, and an audio recording that a guy says he made of Bonnen making dirty remarks about other politicians. And we care about this…

At this point, it seems like everyone’s going to be disappointed either way. If Empower Texans activist Michael Q. Sullivan’s tape of his June meeting with Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen never gets released, we’ll always wonder what might have been, given the gnashing of teeth over the recording’s alleged…

Allen, Texas, where the El Paso shooter lived, is one of several affluent suburban communities in the Dallas area served by a commercial online calendar called “Bubblelife.” The name is a play on what used to be a disparaging term for the Park Cities area, a rich, almost all-white enclave…

Finally Tuesday afternoon, Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen made a real apology for whatever he said during a meeting with conservative activist Michael Q. Sullivan and Dustin Burrows, the head of the Texas House Republican caucus, on June 16. We still don’t know what’s on the surreptitious recording of the meeting…

If the people who walk their dogs off the leash in my neighborhood have children at home, I feel sorry for the children. How you train your dog is how you train your kid. So the way they must train their kids is, “Go ahead and play in traffic, little…

Native son Beto O’Rourke has plenty of catching up to do if he hopes to win his home state’s Democratic presidential primary, according to a new poll from Emerson College and The Dallas Morning News. Texas’ Democrats would prefer O’Rourke ran for U.S Senate against John Cornyn rather than president,…

Texas 2020 just got even weirder. Late Monday afternoon, former Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne, an Observer and tea party favorite, announced she is running for Congress. Van Duyne, most recently an appointee of President Donald Trump to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, will seek the Republican nomination…

Last week, NBC5 television handed our new mayor, Eric Johnson, his first easy home run pitch to show he can be a leader. A news host asked the mayor to talk about the roiling controversy in heavily poor and minority South Dallas over intensive patrolling of city streets by state…

The Dallas Police Department needs help. Whether it’s 600 more police officers, better staffing policies, higher salaries or some mix of all three, no one at the department, on the City Council or in the community would dispute that something’s got to give, given the public perception that the city…

Texas Speaker of the House Dennis Bonnen danced with the devil. Now it seems like he might get burned. For the better part of a week, Bonnen has been dealing with the fallout of a totally unforced error that could lead to his losing his role as the third most…