Dwaine Caraway’s fifth term on the Dallas City Council was just a blip on the radar. Tuesday night, Carolyn King Arnold, the former high school teacher Caraway deposed to regain the District 4 seat on the Council, won the seat back, picking up more than 59 percent of the vote…
Whatever one wants to call the thing that’s going on in presidential politics right now — the money primary, the silly season or the greatest trick Iowa and New Hampshire ever pulled — Texas finds itself squarely in the thick of things, apparently for the long haul. Julian Castro, the…
As the Dallas Police Department continues to fight high attrition rates and low staffing levels, department officials said Monday they want to get rid of one of DPD’s most onerous requirements for new recruits. Assuming the Dallas City Council signs off on the change, the department will take on recruits…
For about a half-hour Sunday afternoon, it looked like the Cowboys were going to be playing three huge games to close out the 2018 regular season. Less than 15 minutes of game time later, however, those contests in Indianapolis, Arlington and New Jersey had been rendered effectively meaningless, setting up…
The final numbers are in and, stop us if you’ve heard this one before, Texas still had one of the United States’ worst voter participation rates in 2018, despite an 18 percentage point increase in voter participation over 2014. This November, 46.3 percent of Texas’ voting-eligible population cast ballots, according…
The Observer owes a lot to those who just come out and say it. Whether it’s the outgoing congressman lamenting that new Texas residents cost him his office because they just don’t understand the state, or the leader of one of the city’s biggest churches explaining why it’s perfectly OK…
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton continues to do everything in his power to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, which allows undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children to live and work in the United States without fear of deportation. Thursday afternoon, Paxton announced he’s leading a…
Anyone renting or looking to rent in Dallas won’t be surprised by this news, but the confirmation is nice at least: Apartments across DFW have gotten smaller and significantly more expensive over the last 10 years, according to new analysis from RENTCafé, a rental listing website. Between 2008 and 2018, the…
There aren’t many things, or people, capable of making Fox News apologize. The network is happy to let its on-air personalities and guests shill for conspiracies about the migrant caravan, Benghazi or Robert Mueller’s witch hunt. Thursday morning, however, the Observer’s favorite Republican, East Texas U.S House Rep. Louie Gohmert,…
A national civil rights nonprofit sued Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and four Texas Department of Public Safety officials Wednesday in an effort to kill a controversial Texas program that the group says has caused the suspension of 1.4 million Texans’ driver’s licenses. Texas’ Driver Responsibility Program imposes surcharges on those…
Major League Baseball is seriously considering banning infield shifts that put more than two players on either side of second base as early as the 2019 season, according to a lengthy new report from The Athletic’s Jayson Stark. While banning the shift would be the most significant change to MLB…
Bains Brothers LLC, owner and operator of gas stations across North Texas, will pay more than $26,000 to drivers it admitted gouging in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in 2017, the Texas Attorney General’s Office announced Tuesday afternoon. The company, owned by Kuldip Bains, overcharged customers at its stations in…
The Dallas County Commissioners Court on Tuesday approved a $120,000 payment to settle a lawsuit brought against the former head of Dallas County Health and Human Services. The vote came 11 months after the county fired longtime health department chief Zach Thompson following sexual harassment allegations by a subordinate employee…
The long journey traveled by Dallas’ CW33 TV station appears to be nearing its end. Monday, the massive media conglomerate that owns the station agreed to merge with another massive media conglomerate. This comes after a merger deal between the first media conglomerate and a third media conglomerate fell though…
Do their job Sunday afternoon in Arlington and the Cowboys can make the rest of their 2018 regular season pretty simple. They won’t have to worry, as they did last year, about results in Detroit, Seattle or Carolina, nor will they face the pressure of having to win out merely…
It turns out the nearly decade-long fight over Texas’ legislative districts didn’t actually end with the Supreme Court’s ruling against the plaintiffs in June. Late Friday afternoon, the coalition of voting rights groups that have fought the state for fairer legislative districts since the last round of redistricting in 2010…
A Dallas County Grand Jury indicted former Dallas Police Department Officer Amber Guyger on murder charges related to her shooting and killing her neighbor, Botham Jean, in early September. Guyger shot Jean in his apartment, believing he was a burglar. Guyger entered Jean’s apartment on Sept. 6 after completing her…
More adult Texans, and a higher percentage of them, are without health insurance than anywhere else in the United States, the Observer reported in September. A new report from the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families shows that kids in the state are no better off. More than 835,000 Texas…
A 32-year-old Dallas Police Department senior corporal has been arrested on revenge porn charges, DPD announced in a brief statement Thursday. Tarrant County authorities have charged Alexander Cleland with Unlawful Disclosure or Promotion of Intimate Visual Material, a Class A misdemeanor. Cleland turned himself in to Tarrant County officials in Keller…
Thursday night’s setup should be familiar for Cowboys fans. Their heroes are in the midst of a mixed bag season. They’re talented, but imperfect, getting ready to face one of the NFL’s gatekeepers. A loss wouldn’t destroy their season, and a win won’t make it, but the result of the…
Fifteen months after deciding that Dallas and its police department needed a study to figure out just how bad the department’s attrition and staffing woes are, the City Council signed off on funding for the survey Wednesday. The cash didn’t come without a fight over one of its sources —…
Recently departed Dallas City Attorney Larry Casto is running for mayor, he tells The Dallas Morning News’ Robert Wilonsky. Casto is now the second candidate to officially jump into the race, joining Dallas businessman Albert Black. Mike Ablon, a prominent real estate developer in the Design District and potential candidate, has…
