Those who believe that Dallas state Rep. Eric Johnson is a stalking horse candidate, the tool of a cabal of wealthy people opposed to Scott Griggs as mayor, might be called paranoid — if they weren’t so damned right. We have audio to prove it, thanks to an anonymous source…
Just as quickly as it came onto the scene in January, the 86th Texas Legislature faded into the background Monday night, closing up shop for the next two years. With Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s tweeted promise that he would not call a special session, Texans can rest easy knowing that…
Dallas City Council member Philip Kingston did nothing wrong when he advocated for zoning changes to make building and renting garage apartments easier in Dallas before building a garage apartment on his own property, Dallas’ Ethics Advisory Commission decided Tuesday. Kingston was under fire after an anonymous member of the…
Tuesday morning, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a mixed judgment on one of the most controversial abortion laws to reach the court since it heard Hellerstedt v. Texas in 2016. Indiana’s rule that all aborted fetuses in the state must be buried or cremated is back in effect, thanks to…
There have been times, during the five years that I’ve spent at the Observer, that I’ve been surprised when a subject provoked hate mail or Facebook comments from you, our lovely readers. The ad hominems, for instance, fly far more frequently than I ever would’ve thought after articles about the…
One could be forgiven for not noticing that Texas Secretary of State David Whitley, the man behind the attempted voter purge that drew so much local, state and national media attention during the first half of 2019, exited the political stage Monday afternoon. It was Memorial Day, after all, and…
David Blewett is not Philip Kingston. If you aren’t Blewett’s wife, one of his seven kids or The Dallas Morning News editorial board, that’s probably all you know about him, but Blewett wants people to know he’s more than that. To that end, and in the interest of pulling together as…
More than 25% of Texas women between ages 18 and 44 don’t have health insurance coverage. That’s one of the biggest takeaways from a new study into the effects of Medicaid expansion on maternal health from the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute. Texas’ uninsured rate for women of child-bearing age…
DFW cities and suburbs are booming, according to numbers released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau. Three of the 15 fastest-growing large cities — defined by the bureau as having populations of more than 50,000 — are in North Texas, as is the city with the third-highest numeric population growth…
Texas’ big three — Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dennis Bonnen — effectively ended the state’s 2019 legislative session Thursday, announcing that the Legislature had reached a deal on school finance reform. With the agreement, the Legislature has settled its three biggest priorities for 2019:…
Attention all Dallas Lost Cause fetishists: Dallas’ Robert E. Lee statue, the same one you so desperately tried to keep on its pedestal in Oak Lawn, can now be yours, assuming you win an auction with a low, low opening bid of $450,000. That’s right, thanks to a 12-3 Dallas…
Texas’ bare-minimum medical THC program, 2015’s Compassionate Use Act, appears set to get a little more robust this spring after the Texas Senate followed the Texas House in approving a new list of conditions eligible for the program. When Gov. Greg Abbott signed the Compassionate Use Act four years ago,…
Last week, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a piece of anti-abortion legislation that left Texas, one of the pro-life movement’s biggest hotbeds, in the dust. Thanks to Kemp’s signature, Georgia law now bans any abortion occurring more than six weeks into a pregnancy, creating an almost impossible window for women…
Last weekend’s murder of Muhlaysia Booker was the third killing or assault of a Dallas transgender woman since October, Dallas police said Tuesday afternoon. Police found Booker shot to death early Saturday morning in Far East Dallas. “These cases, although not directly related at this time, do have similarities the…
All this because San Antonio didn’t want a Chick-fil-A in its airport. The Texas House of Representatives signed off on Texas Senate Bill 1978 on Monday, saving Texas Republicans from their worst fears about religious discrimination or opening the state’s LGBTQ community up to further discrimination, depending on who’s talking…
It’s almost summer in Dallas, which means a couple of things: unbearable heat is just around the corner and Cowboys star running back Ezekiel Elliott has gotten himself involved in a situation he had no business getting himself involved in. This time Elliott didn’t commit an unforced error at the…
Texas likely won’t have to wait on the courts to fix its 4-year-old revenge porn law. Sunday afternoon, the Texas Senate voted unanimously to support a change to the law that attempts to protect third parties’ free-speech rights while allowing the statute to retain its teeth. “One out of every…
Muhlaysia Booker, the Dallas transgender woman brutally attacked on video last month in South Dallas, was shot and killed Saturday, Dallas police confirmed Sunday afternoon. Police found Booker, 23, laying face down on Valley Glen Drive near Ferguson Road just before 7 a.m. Saturday. Booker wasn’t carrying ID, leading to…
Sometimes, Texas laws address real problems, like the state’s soon-to-be dead poverty trap, the Driver Responsibility Program, or its unconscionable rape kit testing backlog. Other times, they’re drafted and passed for purely political purposes. The “born-alive” act, now passed by both the Texas House and Senate, is one of those…
Last week, the Texas Senate threw the state’s Confederate fetishists a bone. Spurred in part by Dallas’ votes to get rid of the Robert E. Lee statue from the park that used to be named after the treasonous general and remove the towering Confederate war memorial from Pioneer Park near…
Wednesday night, two days after having an instantly vilified quickie hearing just to get it to the floor, the Texas Senate signed off on a religious protection bill that opponents fear could open the door to discrimination against Texas’ LGBTQ community. Prior to its hearing on the Senate floor, Senate…
After more than a year of investigation, the charges against suspected North Texas serial killer Billy Chemirmir are starting to come in. Already this week, a Dallas County grand jury has indicted Chemirmir for six murders, according to court documents. Multiple media outlets report than Chemirmir will soon be indictment…
