Former Dallas County Schools Superintendent Rick Sorrells is going to spend the next seven years in prison. Sixteen months ago, Sorrells, 73, pleaded guilty to taking more than $3 million in cash and other assets from a company that stocked DCS with cameras for a program that ticketed drivers who…
Never fear, those of you who worried Dallas might actually sort out its paid sick leave situation without state intervention. Wednesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton formally thrust his nose into the lawsuit brought against the city over its ordinance, keeping his longstanding record of supporting local control, except all…
It started almost as soon as police arrested the man accused of murdering 22 people at an El Paso Walmart on Saturday morning. Texas’ political leaders got in line and on their marks before turning to one of the most well-worn pages in their hymnals. Thoughts and prayers abounded, as…
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…
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…
Whatever happens over the next 15 months, whether President Donald Trump gets reelected and continues his slow-burn destruction of American political norms or a Democrat wins the White House and immediately begins trying to throw 2017-20 way down the memory hole, one piece of the president’s legacy that will endure…
The 21-year-old man accused of shooting almost 60 people in El Paso Saturday morning has North Texas ties. Patrick Crusius, identified as the suspect by multiple media reports, graduated from Plano Senior High School in 2017 and lived in Allen, according to Collin County state Rep. Jeff Leach. Police received…
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…
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…
Big changes are coming to The Dallas Morning News’ website in September, as the struggling newspaper company teams with the Washington Post in an effort to improve its website. Word of the change came as the Morning News’ parent company A.H. Belo Corp. released its second-quarter financial statement. The good…
The other proverbial shoe finally dropped Tuesday. Two Collin County companies, set to be subject to Dallas’ new paid sick leave ordinance because of the amount of time their employees work in Dallas, sued the city with the help of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Dallas’ ordinance violates the companies’…
The 2019 offseason continues to be about anything but football for the Dallas Cowboys and their star running back, Ezekiel Elliott. Tuesday afternoon, Ronnie Hill sued Elliott and the team for interfering with police during the aftermath of a 2017 crash near the Cowboys headquarters at The Star in Frisco…
Maybe Sen. Ted Cruz’s battle with big tech is more personal than we thought. Sure, he can wail to his heart’s content about supposed anti-conservative bias on the part of Facebook, Twitter and Google. Maybe that’s what he’s worried about. Or maybe Cruz is looking out for No. 1 and…
After having heard Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’ interview with KTVT’s Bill Jones on Monday, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Cowboys not-so-kindly old owner might finally be getting it when it comes to the ongoing drama with running back Ezekiel Elliott. Jones, as children often do, expressed a…
A month ago, there was a legitimate question about what the Rangers should do at Major League Baseball’s July 31 trade deadline. They were solidly in contention for a playoff spot — albeit a wild card — and making fans and media alike wonder whether they’d undervalued what looked, at…
Forget Cowboys training camp in Oxnard. Forget Ezekiel Elliott’s impending holdout, Dak Prescott’s contract worries and Jason Witten’s exhumation from cold storage. Definitely don’t think about Joey Gallo’s injured hamate bone, the trade deadline or how many games in a row the Rangers need to win to get themselves back…
Here at your friendly Observer news vertical, our email inboxes are inundated daily with pitches about this report or that study, which purports to show, usually to some advertising end, something about North Texas. Most of them get ignored, but, occasionally, we’ll get some data that’s interesting enough to pass along…
Wednesday’s decision from a three-judge panel in federal court in San Antonio reads like a really good joke. There’s the buildup, in which they repeatedly blast Texas’ Republican-controlled legislature for its racially discriminatory 2011 redistricting, that gets you leaning in one direction. Then there’s the punchline that nearly gives you…
Mostly, Wednesday’s testimony from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller to the U.S. House Intelligence and Judiciary committees came off exactly as one would’ve suspected. Democratic members of the committees pushed Mueller to make definitive statements about potential crimes committed by President Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign and his first…
A third, previously unidentified domino has fallen in the federal corruption case involving late former City Council member Carolyn Davis and low-income housing developer Ruel Hamilton. According to documents filed in federal court, the go-between for alleged bribery payments between Hamilton and Davis pleaded guilty to misprision of a felony…
There was never any way Dallas was going to make it all the way to Aug. 1 without a legal challenge to its paid sick leave ordinance, but now it’s official: the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the conservative think tank helping represent business groups suing to stop similar ordinances in…
