Yesterday. I am staring at a Dallas Morning News online story telling me that the Texas Association of Business would start running ads on Texas radio stations today warning that, if the special session of the Texas Legislature passes a bathroom bill, it could cost Texas the NFL draft. I…
Forget all the small-bore stuff like the Trinity toll road, Fair Park and so on. It’s more and more clear that we are at a major crossroads in the city, a place calling for real regime change. Total. In what we in the print business call a full-page “bleed” —…
Over the next couple of days, the special session of the 85th Texas Legislature will get rolling. On Friday, Texas Senate committees will hear testimony on the state’s two proposed “bathroom bills,” which would regulate which restrooms Texans are allowed to use, and several anti-abortion bills. On Saturday, the upper…
I’m a Democrat. I’m anti-Trump. The only things more depressing to me than President Donald Trump are Democrats. If it’s still like this in 2018, I may have to vote for the vegan, even though I have never really been totally sure what that is. Maybe for a change and…
Every once in a while, somebody says something so wholly at odds with evident truth, so totally contrary to known facts, so diametrically opposed to obvious reality that we just have to stop and do big, loud forehead slaps on ourselves. Last week, Dallas City Secretary Rosa Rios, bristling at…
Construction crews were putting finishing touches on the new Uplift Pinnacle Secondary school at Camp Wisdom Road and Interstate 35E when I toured it last week with architect Brian L. Nelson of HKS, school director Rachel Harris and Uplift chief development officer Deborah Bigham. I tried to imagine the throngs…
On Thursday night, the George W. Bush Presidential library hosted a throwback to a kinder, gentler, political universe, where two ex-presidents from opposing parties got along like old friends. George W. Bush and Bill Clinton spoke to the graduating class of the Presidential Leadership Scholars program about the need for bipartisanship,…
Earlier this week, as part of the ongoing process to select Dallas’ next police chief, the seven remaining finalists for the job met with community members selected by City Manager T.C. Broadnax. Among those selected to participate in the panel interviews was Dominique Alexander, the leader of the Next Generation…
Texas’ state leadership, led by Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, may be set on passing legislation telling transgender Texans which bathroom to use during the upcoming special session, but Dallas ISD board members Miguel Solis and Dan Micciche aren’t having any of it. Ahead of the special session,…
If people who write about and think about affordable housing on a national level ever look at Dallas — and they do, from time to time — surely they will find the Dallas citizen who was just commended by the recent national convention of the League of United Latin American…
This week is the beginning of the end for one of Texas’ longstanding political fights. Over the course of at least five days in a San Antonio courthouse, a three-judge federal panel will hear arguments over whether Texas illegally discriminated against the state’s minority population when it drew its current…
The state of Texas, thanks to its new, slightly weaker voter ID law, is no longer discriminating against minority voters. At least that’s the case if you listen to the U.S. Department of Justice. Late Wednesday, John Gore, the deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division,…
I understand why leaks in Washington about Trump are a big deal and my leaks about things like drainage problems in Dallas, not so much. I think I have a pretty good working sense of proportion. But leaks are still leaks, and I have my reasons to make sure people…
The view I give you here sometimes of City Hall is depressing, and yet some twinge of conscience provokes me now and then to tell you how optimistic I am about the city. According to the surveys, I think you are, too. Between City Hall and the city, a strange…
The greatest challenge in the thing we call vaguely “The Trinity River project” is sheer size. The full project area along the river through downtown is 10,000 acres. That’s 15.6 square miles. You could put New York City’s Central Park in it 12 times. It’s two-thirds the size of Manhattan,…
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Thursday that he and a 10-state coalition will sue the federal government over Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals protections if the U.S. Department of Homeland Security refuses to phase out the program. DACA, established by President Barack Obama in 2012, protects certain undocumented individuals…
The Dallas City Council turned over the city’s seats on DART’s board of directors Wednesday, dumping three board members who defied the City Council in 2016. The council move is in direct defiance of the stated goal of DART’s leadership to build the suburb-friendly Cotton Belt rail line from Plano…
Unlike Sean Spicer and Sarah Hauckabee Sanders, the usual suspects sent to the White House Press Room podium, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, the former Texas governor, looked like he was having fun, at least. Perry, given the mic to promote the Trump administration’s energy week, regaled the press corps for…
On Thursday afternoon, the Observer had the chance to sit down for the better part of an hour with Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings. Rawlings, fresh off losses by several of his allies in this spring’s City Council election, talked with us about the changing council, a changing city and the challenges…
By no means is it all bad news at Dallas City Hall. At least we learn from our mistakes. I offer in evidence an idea that popped up in the most recent City Council briefing on the upcoming bond program, which I call the new rule of “no money, no…
Dallas’ next police chief, no matter who he or she might be, faces a tough task right off the bat. Rank-and-file Dallas police officers are frustrated with pension cuts and ongoing attrition issues, crime rates have ticked up slightly after reaching historic lows earlier this decade and the Dallas Police…
