Politics & Government

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…

Dallas City Council member Philip Kingston did nothing wrong when he advocated for zoning changes to make building and renting garage apartments easier in Dallas before building a garage apartment on his own property, Dallas’ Ethics Advisory Commission decided Tuesday. Kingston was under fire after an anonymous member of the…

One could be forgiven for not noticing that Texas Secretary of State David Whitley, the man behind the attempted voter purge that drew so much local, state and national media attention during the first half of 2019, exited the political stage Monday afternoon. It was Memorial Day, after all, and…

There have been times, during the five years that I’ve spent at the Observer, that I’ve been surprised when a subject provoked hate mail or Facebook comments from you, our lovely readers. The ad hominems, for instance, fly far more frequently than I ever would’ve thought after articles about the…

David Blewett is not Philip Kingston. If you aren’t Blewett’s wife, one of his seven kids or The Dallas Morning News editorial board, that’s probably all you know about him, but Blewett wants people to know he’s more than that. To that end, and in the interest of pulling together as…

The runoff campaign in the District 14 East Dallas City Council race is a mirror of the citywide runoff for mayor. In both contests, a challenger backed by the business community accuses a long-term City Hall incumbent of being a jackass. It’s the jackass question that I have a particular…

First I was confused. Too many great Democrats running for president. But then I saw the Fox poll: Biden beats Trump by 11 points. I said that’s it. Biden’s my man. Then I watched Beto O’Rourke’s town hall the other night on CNN. Now I’m confused again. I do have…

Attention all Dallas Lost Cause fetishists: Dallas’ Robert E. Lee statue, the same one you so desperately tried to keep on its pedestal in Oak Lawn, can now be yours, assuming you win an auction with a low, low opening bid of $450,000. That’s right, thanks to a 12-3 Dallas…

George Hale is a journalist, an occupation that confers on him no special legal status beyond what any American citizen enjoys and may even, on any given day, rate him a little lower. Being a reporter has taught him that somebody at some point will always want to shut him…

All this because San Antonio didn’t want a Chick-fil-A in its airport. The Texas House of Representatives signed off on Texas Senate Bill 1978 on Monday, saving Texas Republicans from their worst fears about religious discrimination or opening the state’s LGBTQ community up to further discrimination, depending on who’s talking…

Texas likely won’t have to wait on the courts to fix its 4-year-old revenge porn law. Sunday afternoon, the Texas Senate voted unanimously to support a change to the law that attempts to protect third parties’ free-speech rights while allowing the statute to retain its teeth. “One out of every…

Last week, the Texas Senate threw the state’s Confederate fetishists a bone. Spurred in part by Dallas’ votes to get rid of the Robert E. Lee statue from the park that used to be named after the treasonous general and remove the towering Confederate war memorial from Pioneer Park near…

More than a year after a group of Dallas churches and outreach groups began organizing a system for offering shelter to homeless people on nights when it’s too cold to be outdoors, the Dallas City Council considered the latest version of a plan to allow those groups to do the…

Wednesday night, two days after having an instantly vilified quickie hearing just to get it to the floor, the Texas Senate signed off on a religious protection bill that opponents fear could open the door to discrimination against Texas’ LGBTQ community. Prior to its hearing on the Senate floor, Senate…

Wow, Eric Johnson, candidate for mayor in the June 8 runoff election, really has a lot of endorsements. I mean, a ton of endorsements. The list is so long, I can’t even reproduce a screen grab of all the names here. I would need three screen grabs. So why is…

Texas’ loathed Driver Responsibility Program is hanging on by a thread. Wednesday afternoon, the Texas Senate voted 31-0 to kill the long-standing program, leaving it one Gov. Greg Abbott signature from death. The program imposes surcharges on those drivers who do things like driving without a licence or driving under…

A majority of mayoral candidate Scott Griggs’ colleagues on the Dallas City Council, including Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings, endorsed his opponent in the mayor’s race Tuesday afternoon. State Rep. Eric Johnson is the best choice to lead the city, Rawlings and the council members said, because he will unite Dallas…

In two mayoral runoff election debates so far between Dallas City Council member Scott Griggs and state Rep. Eric Johnson, half of Johnson’s entire pitch has been that he will bring an end to snarkiness, personal attacks and divisiveness at City Hall. The other half of Johnson’s pitch has been…

There’s a little more than two weeks left in Texas’ regular legislative session. Dozens of bills will pass the Texas House and Senate and make their way to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk between now and May 27. But thanks to an annual Texas House deadline, hundreds more died as Thursday…