About a dozen protesters gathered at Energy Transfer Partners’ office building in Dallas this week, the second anniversary of when police used non-lethal weapons against Dakota Access Pipeline protesters at Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in the Dakotas. This time, the focus was on the Bayou Bridge Pipeline, which is being…
Another flyer from a white supremacist group was found in a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Highland Village near Lewisville last weekend. This time, the flyer, which read “Keep America American” and “Report Any and All Illegal Aliens; They are Criminals” along with a phone number for U.S. Immigration and…
Rickey Callahan will step aside in June rather than seek a fourth term on the Dallas City Council in next year’s municipal elections. Callahan announced his decision at a meeting of the Southeast Dallas Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday, according to The Dallas Morning News’ Robert Wilonsky. Callahan, who did not respond…
Last week I found myself trying to explain Beto to a New Yorker. I didn’t do a good job. I do better with a day to think about it, a desk, a web browser and an editor than I do trying to talk on my feet. I was taken aback…
Dallas County Family Court Judge and former county Democratic Party Chair Darlene Ewing died Friday. Ewing was 64. Prior to being elected to preside over the 254th Family District Court, Ewing led Dallas County Democrats for a decade from 2005-2015. During her tenure Democrats largely took over the county, losing only…
Earlier this week, as the post-midterm election haze receded and was quickly replaced by pre-primary gossip, we pondered the fate of Beto O’Rourke following his 2.5 point loss to Sen Ted Cruz. The Democrat’s next gig, we surmised, is probably going to be running for president, because many people seem to…
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton tried his best to extend his voter suppression efforts outside Texas’ borders Thursday. He failed. Thursday afternoon, Paxton, one of the strongest advocates for restrictive voter ID laws in Texas, proudly touted his intervention, along with three fellow Republican attorneys general, in Florida’s ongoing recounts…
Dallas missed out on so much earlier this week when Amazon decide not to include the city in its HQ2 largess. Had the retail behemoth seen fit to shine its light on us, we could’ve had the thousands of jobs, billions in financial activity and voluminous orange signage that will…
The setup is familiar for those who are, or were once, members of the evangelical community. Pastors from out of town, preaching their version of the good news for four hours, raising the spirits and testing the stamina of the faithful. This weekend, the Red Letter Christians are having a…
You know, maybe things just worked out exactly as they should have in the Amazon HQ2 story. Amazon, of course, made a big deal out of what any city would need to do and to be and to offer and to promise in order to be worthy of becoming the…
Election night was just a week ago. Votes — in Florida, Arizona and California — are still being counted and recounted.The calendar hasn’t even flipped to December and still, among a certain set of political diehards and fan boys, one question dominates the conversation: Is Beto O’Rourke going to run…
Since opening in 2012, Klyde Warren Park has been a pleasant addition to downtown Dallas. The park, filled to the brim on weekends and still busy on weekdays and nights, is a friendly patch of green between downtown and Uptown, a good place to take your dog on the far…
Barring something completely unforeseen between now and January, Dennis Bonnen, a long-serving Republican from the Houston area, is going to be the next speaker of the Texas House of Representatives. “We’re here to let you know that the speaker’s race is over,” Bonnen said at a press conference in Austin…
The nation seems to be splitting in half, so why shouldn’t journalism? Right now we seem to have two camps — the half of the craft that recognizes the kind of lying crooks they’re dealing with and knows what it will take to beat them and the other half, the…
As Beto bumper stickers and yard signs are peeled off of cars and removed from front lawns of O’Rourke supporters who are waking up hung over from the midterms, some millennials are wondering what’s next for O’Rourke and a Texas that’s a little more purple than it was a week…
Like a lot of things that have happened over the last two years, the idea sounded like a joke at first. President Donald Trump had just forced the resignation of U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and, ha-ha, wouldn’t it be funny if he named still-indicted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton…
Despite clear Democratic gains, much will be the same when the Texas Legislature convenes for the 2019 session. Republicans will still hold clear majorities in both the Senate and the House and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, thanks to his 4-point win in his re-election race with Mike Collier, will preside…
Last week I wrote about Dallas City Council member Jennifer Gates, who is white, appearing on her own Facebook page dressed in a Halloween costume as a caricatured Mexican man in a sombrero with a black mustache. Later Sharon Grigsby at The Dallas Morning News wrote a thoughtful column taking…
Significant local and statewide races remained in the balance Tuesday night as polls closed at 7 p.m. in Dallas County and much of the rest of Texas. Results of the approximately 5 million early votes cast around the state are trickling in. In Dallas County at least, the so-called blue…
At 7 p.m. Tuesday when polls close throughout the state of Texas — with one notable exception, but we’ll get to that — only one thing will be left to do if you’re the slightest bit politically inclined. No more doors to knock on, texts to send or votes to…
Heather Hacker, Texas’ assistant solicitor general, made it clear from the start Monday that one of the most controversial provisions of Senate Bill 8, Texas’ latest and greatest piece of sweeping anti-abortion legislation, isn’t about protecting women’s health, as Texas Republicans have so often argued when they’ve defended anti-choice laws in…
Of all the races on Texas’ midterm ballot Tuesday, the one that’s built up the greatest disparity between the attention paid to it by the media, the Observer included, and its potential effect on the lives of everyone who lives in the state is the battle between incumbent Lieutenant Governor Dan…
