If we were to be perfectly honest with each other, which we never will be, we would agree on a few things about voting in Texas and in Dallas. Rich white Republicans would prefer to see fewer, rather than more middle class and poor nonwhite Democrats show up at the…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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’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…
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…
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 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…
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…
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…
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,…
Many adults in the United States wrongly believe this year’s census will be about citizenship status, and some worry about participating because of it, according to two recent studies. Dallas-area immigrant and refugee organizations say that concern and confusion are symptomatic of the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce immigration to…
We here in Dallas must reserve some place in our hearts for the old-school white-shoe Republicans, because, after all, their leader and standard-bearer, Bush XLIII, lives quietly here among us. Perhaps it is appropriate that our city’s only daily newspaper is the one that has devised the template for white…
For more than a year, Dallas has been sitting on a report addressing the city’s trash problem. It lays out recommendations for reducing litter and illegal dumping — problems concentrated in historically underserved communities in southern Dallas. Now, according to a top official, the city will be implementing them. The…
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…
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…
“Reform Dallas,” a Facebook group I’m still trying to figure out, lit up for a while this week with a provocative post that started out, “I see a lot of people who despise and rally against gentrification.” The post went on: “My question is how do we organize and improve…
