North Texas colleges and universities could be receiving big upgrades. On Tuesday morning, state lawmakers reached a last-minute deal on additional funding for higher education construction projects across the state. The bill, which now awaits Gov. Greg Abbott’s signature, will funnel more than $200 million into building and renovating new…
During her years as a Burnet County criminal magistrate judge, Roxanne Nelson was at the jail every Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. She saw how county jails dealt with people with mental illnesses accused of committing crimes. “When I started in March 2010, if I couldn’t get…
In the end, Bruce Bise and Samuel Mendez bilked some 13,000 investors out of about $24 million before pleading guilty to tax evasion earlier this week. Since 2016, Bise and Mendez billed Bitqyck, a Dallas-based cryptocurrency company, as a way for “those individuals who missed out on bitcoin” to still…
She didn’t like it, but in July Melanie Green swallowed her pride and asked the government to help pay her rent. “I’ve always been a Texan, never one to mooch off the system,” she said. “I’m a single parent, but if you were to check the state of Texas’ websites,…
In the months leading up to the November 2020 presidential elections, Fox News recycled then President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of an electoral conspiracy against him. But on Nov. 7, Fox reversed course, declaring Joe Biden the winner. As Trump and his supporters railed against Fox, the most-watched network in the…
With homelessness on the rise and more evictions looming, Texas Housers’ David Wheaton sees both crisis and opportunity looming in the years to come. The crisis is already in motion: about 727,000 Texans have no confidence they can pay their rent for the coming month, according to the U.S. Census…
One day in September 2008, technicians from the local water supplier came out to Crystal Mason’s house in a mostly white neighborhood in Rendon, a small community southeast of Fort Worth. Someone had tried to cut off the water supply to their home, Mason said. Before that, the supplier had…
When around a dozen Dallas County Jail officers gathered on the steps of the Frank Crowley Courthouse Tuesday, they wore street clothes, donned masks and held signs denouncing what they say is a dangerous staffing crisis inside the jail. “What we’ve been seeing recently is people retire, quit or just…
Ellen Magnis fears what’s to come. She leads Family Gateway Inc., an affordable housing nonprofit in Dallas, and says the number of people coming to them for help has skyrocketed in recent months. “Immediately, when we get someone into shelter, the first step is figuring out their exit strategy,” Magnis…
Almost a year ago, former Dallas police Chief U. Renee Hall announced the city’s plans to expand Starlight, an initiative that equips local businesses with high-tech surveillance cameras feeding back to the city’s “fusion center.” The program was so successful in driving down crime in those locations, police claimed, they…
On a balmy evening last November in Tyler, Enus Lewis finally came undone. After dark, Lewis left his mother’s house and staggered into oncoming traffic on the busiest road he could find, hoping an oncoming car would kill him. Months of battling a tidal wave of grief had sharpened Lewis’…
When Raylisa Price was planning to move back to Wolfe City in October 2020, she hoped to build a closer relationship with her half-brother Jonathan Price. Raylisa grew up in Commerce, not far from Wolfe City, and moved with her sister Sabrina and their mother to California before Jonathan was born…
The way he tells it, two weeks had passed since Jonathan Hamilton had been allowed to change his underwear. Hamilton, 39, landed back in Dallas County Jail after violating the terms of his release on bond from a misdemeanor assault charge. Although he’d spent time in the jail the year before,…
A few weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, Dr. Robert Jensen, then a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, decided to bring the campus’ conservative and liberal factions together. “I got tired of all the right-wing events and all the left-wing events, with the…
Late in summer 2020, a group of families from across the country gathered in Washington to discuss police brutality with then-President Donald Trump. Each family had recently had a son, daughter, parent or spouse killed by law enforcement. Also at the table were representatives from a number of national and…
Melinda Gonzales, 65, moved back to Dallas to be close to her family. Gonzalez had lived in San Antonio for years before she returned to her hometown in mid-July. She found a duplex to rent in the Cedar Crest area. On Aug. 9, Gonzales was inside the home when an…
Before a video of a Kaufman County Sheriff’s Deputy pinning her daughter to the ground went viral earlier this month, Antanique Ray was pursuing a career in real estate. The 41-year-old mother supports three kids and one grandchild, and she wanted a better salary than she was making working for…
“Jane Doe,” as the 16-year-old is known in court records, was having family problems, and took to the dating app Tagged to vent.
When Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was running for reelection in 2018, Austin-based real estate developer Nate Paul contributed $25,000 to his campaign. Around a year later, he helped Paxton remodel his house, and hired a woman with whom Paxton allegedly had an extramarital affair as a project manager at…
Texas state Rep. Joan Huffman’s bail bill is facing scrutiny from members of her own party. In a hearing held Saturday at the state capitol in Austin, Huffman’s bill weathered a string of tough questions from fellow Republican and bail reform advocates alike. If passed, Senate Bill 6 will restrict access…
The RIGHT Care program plays a starring role in T.C. Broadnax’s newly proposed city budget, topping the list of highlighted police initiatives. The RIGHT Care pilot program operated a single team in the South Central Dallas Police District starting in January 2018. Officials pegged the pilot’s success to a 20%…
Chris Galt was in line to be bailed out of Dallas County Jail when he realized he could no longer smell. Ten days ago, Galt waited along with a group of fellow detainees outside the jail’s bond division, trying to post bail. An argument broke out between a jailer and…
