The Texas Legislature passed 1,429 bills in 2019. Lawmakers took swipes at problems that have plagued the state for decades, like Texas’ public school finance system, and problems that don’t exist, like doctors who regularly get away with committing infanticide. They passed many bills, the effects of which won’t be…
First Baptist Dallas Pastor Robert Jeffress took to the airwaves Friday to make one thing clear: He and the rest of President Donald Trump’s evangelical backers aren’t being used by the president. “I agree 100 percent that no pastor should be a stooge for a political party or for a…
This may come as a shock to those unfamiliar with East Texas, but the people there, especially those in many of its small towns, really, really don’t like abortion — so much so that they’re willing to make national spectacles of themselves just to show everyone how much they hate…
Dallas ended up paying dearly for banning porn conventions from the city in 2016. On Wednesday, the City Council signed off on paying J. Handy $650,000 to settle the suit he brought against the city in February 2016. Handy, founder of the Exxxotica pornography and adult industry expo, sued the…
Thanks to an addendum to the Dallas City Council’s agenda Wednesday, we now know who felt flush enough to pay a million-and-a-half for Dallas’ recently toppled tribute to the treasonous Confederate general, Robert E. Lee. According to council documents, the high bidder in the city’s online auction for the statue,…
If he’s anything, Dallas mayor-elect Eric Johnson is an ambitious guy. He’s got degrees from Harvard, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania, and took his seat in the Texas House of Representatives before turning 40. In the legislature, he’s sought out high-profile fights, sparring over things like criminal justice reform,…
Watching the results roll in Saturday night in Dallas’ municipal election, one would be excused for being a little surprised, especially if she’d been paying attention to what the Observer reported over the last couple of weeks. State Rep. Eric Johnson was almost 20 points ahead of Dallas City Council…
You know who you are. If I’m talking to you, you know how I feel. I know how you feel. This is like a mini version of the week after Donald Trump got elected. Oh, Canada! And then, “Oh, no! I don’t have a job in Canada.” So let’s take…
The brand-new mayor elected Saturday is in for a tough initiation. During the campaign, Eric Johnson, a lawyer, gave the legally correct answer to questions about loose dogs and other knotty day-to-day problems: not the mayor’s job. And he’s right, legally and on paper. The day-to-day operation of city government…
The lights went out twice on Dallas progressives Saturday night. First figuratively, when state Rep. Eric Johnson took a lead he wouldn’t come close to relinquishing in the city’s mayoral race, and then again a half hour or so later, when the power and Dallas City Council member Scott Griggs’…
Saturday night, mercifully if you ask us, Dallas’ 2019 municipal election is finally going to be over. The recordings, petty fighting and near-meltdowns that have characterized the last 10 days or so of the campaign will have finally run their course, and Dallas can get back to its most pressing…
Dallas racked up its second big win over the Confederacy in recent years Wednesday when a person known only as LawDude made the winning $1,435,000 bid to buy the city’s Robert E. Lee statue, which has been sitting at Henley Field in Grand Prairie since 2017. The purchase price will…
Dallas had 41 homicides in May, compared with 15 homicides in the same month the previous year. People are talking about why. Is it poverty? Is it meanness? Last Sunday evening, a woman was shot to death and four others injured in what police called a gun battle at Jim’s…
For the moment, at least, Texas sure does look a lot like a purple state. According to a poll from Quinnipiac University released Wednesday, President Donald Trump would have a significant fight on his hands with many of the top challengers for the Democratic nomination. Digging into the poll, the…
Last week a few readers posed a fair challenge to a Dallas Observer story by Stephen Young. The story confirmed that mayoral candidate Eric Johnson was anointed by a wealthy Dallas oilman looking for somebody to stop four-term City Council member Scott Griggs from getting elected mayor. The challenge posed…
Turns out there may have been a third Texas official who had more than a little to do with the state’s recently failed attempt to purge about 100,000 people from its voter rolls. According to emails made public Tuesday and first brought to light by San Antonio Express-News reporter Guillermo Contreras,…
For the literally hundreds of Dallas voters who are tuned in to the city’s municipal politics, Saturday’s mayoral and City Council runoffs have turned into entertaining scraps over the last week or so. There have been secret tapes, accusations of illegal electioneering and more Facebook fights than one could count. Scott…
Beto O’Rourke is starting to look a lot like a presidential also-ran. The former U.S. representative from El Paso, the darling of Texas liberals and national political media during his ultimately unsuccessful bid to take down Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018, has been relegated to the chasing pack for…
Through the first week of May, the Dallas City Council race in downtown, Uptown and Oak Lawn was relatively quiet. Incumbent Philip Kingston had easily won reelection in 2015 and 2017. The Dallas Morning News had endorsed one of his opponents, David Blewett, but that was hardly a shock. The paper’s…
Texas’ state government is still, just as it has been for a couple of decades, dominated by Republicans. The GOP holds every statewide elected office and big majorities in both chambers of the Legislature. Twenty-three of the state’s 36 U.S. House representatives are Republicans. Texas is still severely conservative, no…
Just as quickly as it came onto the scene in January, the 86th Texas Legislature faded into the background Monday night, closing up shop for the next two years. With Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s tweeted promise that he would not call a special session, Texans can rest easy knowing that…
Victor Vital, the lawyer who represented Dallas City Council member Philip Kingston before the city’s ethics advisory commission this week, won a victory even harder to achieve than a favorable verdict in court. In court you have the rule of law. The ethics commission, on the other hand, is sort…
