Each year, the Dallas City Council meets to plan strategy. At last year’s session in June, council members contemplated “2020 Priorities” scrawled in Sharpie on rolls of butcher paper. They placed stickers next to their favorites, creating a conspicuous cluster. “I think what emerged from this — clearly — is, public…
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…
A new study quantifies what many DFW residents already know: DART service isn’t great. But the transportation agency launched a redesign project, which aims to improve the situation, at least for some.
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…
Texas’ chief lawyer, Ken Paxton, joined attorneys general from across the country last week in urging the Food and Drug Administration to tighten electronic cigarette regulations. In a letter, co-signed by Paxton, the attorneys sharply criticize the agency’s recent efforts to combat the youth vaping epidemic. “The current guidance will not…
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…
Hats off, thank you, sincere gratitude, honest admiration, respect and kudos to WFAA Channel 8 for admitting publicly they were totally full of it Nov. 15 in their story about the famous notorious car wash on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in South Dallas. WFAA reporters David Goins and David…
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 —…
Every now and then, a student walks up to Yazan Naseef in the hallway at Plano East High School and tells him exactly what he thinks of him and his religion. I know how you guys really are, the student says, before railing about how Muslims all want to kill…
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 new federal public charge rule took effect temporarily this week, significantly expanding the number of factors immigration authorities weigh when considering green card applications. While the new regulations will absolutely affect Dallas area green card applicants, immigration advocates caution that the rule applies to a very small number of…
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,…
Dallas Area Rapid Transit has announced plans to expand GoPass, its smartphone ticketing platform, to Tulsa. It will mark the agency’s first such partnership outside North Texas. Mark Enoch, chairman of the agency’s public affairs committee, which reviewed the agreement Tuesday, called it a “great milestone.” The agency has sought to recoup…
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…
Close your eyes, hold your nose, turn around three times, stamp your foot and say “charter schools.” A vision will appear. No, really. I just noticed it, over on my personal Facebook. Personal Facebook is where the action is for me now. Over here on the Dallas Observer, it’s so…
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…
Stacy Bailey and the Mansfield school district have settled a 2018 lawsuit that accused district administrators of suspending her for being gay. The district will pay out $100,000 and train staff members on LGBTQ issues but denies any wrongdoing. It will also scrub Bailey’s record of any reference to the…
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…
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,…
Are you a socialist if you don’t want families to get blown up in gas well explosions? Is it socialism to try to get your city to live within its means? Clearly, the term socialist will get a stiff workout between now and November. I got a wake-up earlier this…
When voters in Dallas County head to the polls for Texas’ March 3 primary, they’ll be using a new electronic system to cast their ballots that’s designed to combine the ease of electronic touch-screen voting with the security of paper ballots. But recent research has shown that the type of…
For months, Parkland Hospital administrators have been touting a new focus on tackling health disparities in Dallas’ poorest ZIP codes. Now, they’ve released details about how they’ll do it. The hospital is hiring community health workers and plans to deploy them in southern Dallas to help fight heightened mortality rates,…
