A Dallas County grand jury has indicted two Dallas County Sheriff’s Office deputies who are accused of looting a Home Depot on Forest Lane in Dallas following the Oct. 20 tornado that destroyed the home improvement store and much of the surrounding area. Owners of the Home Depot hired Sgt. Rebecca…
A little more than 21 hours after polls closed in Dallas County, Texas’ last major outstanding election result finally came in: Long-serving Dallas state Senator Royce West finished second with 14.5% of the vote in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary, advancing to a May runoff with former Air Force helicopter…
At the very top of the ticket, Texas’ primary felt a lot like the other primaries that were held on Tuesday. Former Vice President Joe Biden, thanks to a lot of help, caught Sen. Bernie Sanders as Sanders headed down the homestretch, trying to turn the Democratic Party on its…
Maybe it was the resounding victory in South Carolina on Saturday night. Maybe it was Amy Klobuchar or Pete Buttigieg dropping out. Maybe it was Beto O’Rourke and Whataburger. Whatever it was, it worked. As late night turned into early morning in Dallas and around Texas, former Vice President Joe…
As polls in some of Texas’ biggest counties closed Tuesday night, the Lone Star State’s 2020 primary is shaping up as a good one for former Vice President Joe Biden. The state’s Democratic Senate race seems destined for a runoff, and Dallas County’s most rancorous state House race, surprisingly, does…
If there was any doubt which presidential candidate Dallas’ elected Democrats prefer, it’s gone. Former Vice President Joe Biden, fresh off clobbering Sen. Bernie Sanders in Saturday’s South Carolina primary, rolled out waves of familiar faces for the crowd at Gilley’s in the Cedars on Monday night, before making the…
If you have any inclination toward preserving your sanity — or prefer a slightly less Trumpy version of Christianity — chances are you missed First Baptist Dallas Pastor Robert Jeffress’ interview with former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders. The interview occurred right in the middle of First Baptist’s Sunday…
If you’ve paid any attention to the coverage of Tuesday’s presidential primary in Texas, you might have noticed a theme. Texas’ prominence on the primary calendar is treated like a novel thing, like this is the first time the state will have played a big role in choosing either party’s presidential…
A Dallas County jury found Desmond Jones guilty Friday afternoon of engaging in criminal activity, a first-degree felony, for his role in the kidnapping and murder of 13-year-old Shavon Randle in 2017. The jury deliberated for about three hours. According to prosecution witnesses, Jones and a trio of associates —…
Shaquana Persley, Shavon Randle’s mother, told jurors Thursday that her daughter had just celebrated her 13th birthday with a hotel pool party, two days before she was kidnapped, shot and killed in an alleged post-drug robbery revenge plot. “They had some fun,” Persley said, smiling as she remembered her daughter,…
The notices began filing into YouTube TV’s subscribers’ inboxes Thursday morning, just after, or just before, the streaming TV service sent out a preemptive tweet. “Starting February 29, 2020,” the email’s third paragraph read, “you will no longer be able to watch live, on demand, or recorded content from your…
The big thing, before we peer down the rabbit hole, is that none of the numbers — none of the polling, none of the early vote totals, nothing — is as important as each and every person who is eligible to vote getting out there and casting a ballot over…
Wednesday afternoon, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation, already passed by the Senate and more than a century in the making, that would designate lynching as a federal crime. The vote was 410-4. One of those four was East Texas’ Louie Gohmert, a frequent subject of the Observer. Gohmert…
The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas made good on a threat it’s been making for months Tuesday, suing seven East Texas towns in federal court over the towns’ decision to declare themselves sanctuary cities for the unborn. Waskom, which kicked the whole sanctuary cities movement off, is a defendant,…
Thanks to federal Food and Drug Administration regulations, finding flavored Juul disposable nicotine pods in Dallas became a chore earlier this year. That doesn’t mean Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is satisfied. Tuesday, Paxton announced that his office is leading a bipartisan, 39-state investigation into Juul Labs, the company behind…
Two years after pushing one of its weekly meetings to the afternoon to better accommodate residents who can’t easily get off work on Wednesday mornings, the Dallas City Council is one step away from moving all of its City Council meetings back to their traditional 9 a.m. start times. Monday,…
The basic outlines of the argument could have been surmised from any number of Dallas City Hall disputes that have gone down the last couple of decades. One faction on the City Council wants to do something that they believe could — maybe, they aren’t really sure — do something…
Jason Witten isn’t ready to retire again. The legendary tight end, a year removed from his return from the Monday Night Football broadcast booth, said last week that he intends to play in 2020, regardless of whether the Cowboys want him back. Which leads us to this list. No matter…
One should be cautious, very cautious, when embarking on the journey upon which we are about to embark. There are few conclusions, legitimate or otherwise, worth drawing from early voting, much less two days’ worth of it. But the data is there, providing as close a facsimile as exists for…
It may be a small step, but Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is putting a little of his money where his mouth is on criminal justice reform. Thursday afternoon, the governor announced a specialized clemency application process for Texas Department of Corrections inmates who were victims of sex trafficking or domestic…
In the next three months plus, Dallas and the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance plan to reduce the city’s count of homeless veterans by 25%. They plan to take the most direct route possible to achieving that goal — getting housing for at least 100 of the city’s estimated 400 former…
Late last year, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, never one to be mistaken for a moderate, struck perhaps the most conciliatory note of his political career when he said he supported closing the so-called “gun show loophole” and mandating background checks for all gun sales between strangers. Wednesday, a coalition…
