Monday, more than a year after the Texas Legislature, the Dallas City Council and the Dallas Police and Fire Pension Fund struck a deal to give the city some breathing room from the threat posed by a massive shortfall in the retirement system, Dallas residents got a peek at what’s…
Throughout his campaign to unseat U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, El Paso U.S. Representative Beto O’Rourke has remained unrelentingly positive. Cruz and his campaign have, in ads or in person, called him a socialist, insinuated that he supports flag-burning and painted him as an enemy of law enforcement, but O’Rourke has…
Dwaine Caraway’s City Council district is about to do the same thing again: elect somebody who owes her or his soul to outsiders. It’s the tragic flaw in Dallas’ system of city government. Nobody who might really represent a poor district, who might truly stick up for it, can beat…
Over the last 90 days, Democrat Beto O’Rourke raised more cash in a three-month span than any U.S. Senate candidate since there have been U.S. Senate candidates. He raked in $38.1 million, more than three times as much as his Republican rival, incumbent Ted Cruz. Despite the El Paso U.S…
The real, hard news coming out of the U.S. Senate race between Ted Cruz and Beto O’Rourke Friday is hard to read as anything but good for the challenger. Over the last three months, the El Paso U.S. representative raised an astounding $38.1 million, the most ever in a quarter…
Another week, another regulatory change that could hurt millions of Texans proposed by President Donald Trump’s administration. This time around, Kirstjen Nielsen’s Department of Homeland Security is looking to change the way the federal government evaluates immigrants applying for permanent residence in the United States. If a change to the so-called…
As the Observer reported Monday, Resilient Dallas, a plan for building a better city ready to face the future, told us a lot we already know about inequality between Dallas’ northern and southern halves, rich and poor, and white, black and Latino populations. One stark fact it revealed was surprising:…
Just looking at the two candidates’ Facebook pages, it couldn’t be clearer what Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and his challenger, Houston attorney Justin Nelson, are trying to do as they head into the homestretch of their campaigns. Four years after gaining his office as a Tea Party insurgent, Paxton…
I have been writing about Dale Davenport, proprietor of Jim’s Car Wash on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard near Fair Park, for 14 years. Monday for the first time in all those years, I heard him say something I didn’t believe was true. Speaking in reference to a new initiative…
Tomorrow is the last day to register to vote in the Nov. 6 election, so here’s a quick primer on what you need to know. First: Seriously, what’s wrong with you? Too busy? Scored some really good weed and been glued to the couch? Oh sure, we understand. It’s not…
Wednesday morning, President Donald Trump endorsed Rep. Pete Session, the incumbent in Texas’ 32nd Congressional District. On its face, the Trump’s seal of approval was nothing out of the ordinary, just another rote tweet from a president who’s an endless source of them. What was attention grabbing was that this…
Justina Walford says one big reason she is running for the Dallas City Council Dwaine Caraway left in August for a stay in the federal penitentiary was the fact that she wasn’t thrilled with his potential replacements. “I was not noticing people I admire to step up to run,” Walford…
Sen. Ted Cruz has a new initiative up and running in his re-election campaign against U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, blasting his challenger for his supposed animosity toward police and touting Cruz’s own deep ties to law enforcement. One of the cops prominently featured by Cruz has a backstory worth paying…
The timing was just chance, but couldn’t have been more appropriate. As last week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh stirred up talk about teenage sexual assault, blackout drinking and the dangers faced by young people, a group of Dallas teens on Saturday used dramatic performances…
The Observer’s Facebook page, thanks to our thoughtful, engaged readers, is one of the last bastions of civility on the internet. The same can’t be said for the rest of the social network, which remains today, as it ever was, a cesspool. Between the posts from former classmates who, in…
Throughout 2017 and 2018, your good friends here at the Observer have strained to make sense, any sort of sense, out of the Senate race between Sen. Ted Cruz and El Paso U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke. We’ve talked with O’Rourke about Cruz’s plan to have notorious drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman…
The second debate between Texas Senatorial candidates Ted Cruz and Beto O’Rourke, previously set for Sunday night, has been postponed, the University of Houston announced Friday. Rather than taking on his challenger for another hour, Cruz will remain in Washington to participate in Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination process over…
Friday night, for a couple of hours at least, the sideshow will be center stage in Texas politics. After months of the Senate race between incumbent Ted Cruz and U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke sucking all the air out of the room, former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez will get her…
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested nearly 100 people during a recently concluded 10-day sting targeting North Texas and Oklahoma, the agency announced Wednesday, continuing a trend in Texas throughout 2018. According to ICE, its “enforcement action” was intended to sweep up “criminal aliens and immigration violators” in the area…
With the HQ2 announcement still shining in the distance — Jeff Bezos said earlier this month that it would be made by the end of the year — Dallas got a decent-sized chunk of good Amazon-related news Wednesday. By a 14-0 vote, the City Council signed off on a deal…
It took 20 years to kill the plan for a high-speed toll road on top of the river that runs through the center of the city. The reward for that long divisive struggle is a moment of relative calm when we can think about what actually should happen with the…
Monday night, a group of Washington D.C. activists let Texas Senator Ted Cruz and his wife Heidi Cruz know just how unhappy they were about the senator’s strong support for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Protesters surrounded the Cruzes at Fiola, an upscale Italian restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue near the…
