Over the last couple of weeks, Sen. Ted Cruz has traveled Texas, coming home to answer the campaign challenge issued by Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic U.S. House member from El Paso facing the incumbent in November. Cruz hasn’t, as O’Rourke has, visited each of Texas’ 254 counties, but he’s made…
Beginning Saturday, riding Dallas Area Rapid Transit is going to be a little bit more expensive. Day passes are going up $1, monthly passes are going up $16 and DART’s two-hour pass is going away. The bump isn’t all bad news, though, as the transit system is also set to…
Former Balch Springs cop Roy Oliver’s murder trial began, finally, on Thursday. Oliver’s trial, the most anticipated of a Dallas County police officer in decades, will close the loop on more than a year of investigations, protests and delays. On April 29, 2017, Oliver shot and killed Jordan Edwards as…
Dallas City Attorney Larry Casto is resigning effective Aug. 31. Casto took over as city attorney from Warren Ernst in October 2016. During his time as Dallas’ top lawyer, he helped dig the city out of two legal holes, working with the Texas Legislature on a compromise to keep the…
Almost every school and every school district in Texas got a report card Wednesday, spelling out for parents, students and anyone else paying attention how the Texas Education Agency believes the institutions it oversees are performing. The new, Legislature-approved measures are easy to read and make it easier to compare…
Plano City Council member Tom Harrison, facing a recall effort for sharing anti-Muslim messages on the internet, appears set to serve out his term after all. Late Tuesday, state District Judge Mark Rusch ruled that the petition filed to recall Harrison earlier this year was insufficient.
The one thing everybody agreed on Tuesday is that the Dallas Police Department needs more cops. The fight, as Dallas goes through its annual budget process, is going to be over how to keep the officers already on DPD’s rolls in the city and how to add new officers at…
Longtime Dallas tea-partier and President Donald Trump supporter Katrina Pierson has found herself in the middle of this week’s presidential mini-scandal, thanks to allegations made by former White House adviser Omarosa Manigault-Newman. According to Manigault-Newman, tapes exist of Trump using the racial slur “n——-.” In a taped conversation provided by Manigault-Newman to CBS…
Two percent. Not a big number if you’re talking about, say, the rain chances on your average Tuesday. A really big number, however, if you’re talking about the number of cables that could fail on a suspension bridge. If they aren’t repaired or replaced, about 2 percent of the cables…
Eight months into cite-and-release and not much has changed for Dallas or its police department. The overwhelming majority of those being cited-and-released for possessing less than 4 ounces of marijuana — a policy approved by the City Council in 2017 — are black and Latino and in southern Dallas when…
In the unlikely event that you actually get busted by Dallas police for riding an electric scooter somewhere you shouldn’t, chances are you’ll walk, or glide, away with a warning and a stern talking to rather than a ticket, Dallas Police Department brass said Monday. Giving out citations to scooter…
Thursday night, the Cowboys kicked off the preseason against the 49ers. For Dallas sports fans, at least those capable of looking past the issues that make watching the NFL problematic, it was a good thing. The Cowboys’ first-team offense was ruthlessly efficient in a first-quarter cameo. The starting defense looked…
Unless you’re lucky enough to spend a healthy, limited amount of time on the internet, you’ve surely run into QAnon. Spawned by an off-the-cuff aside about a coming storm by President Donald Trump in 2017, QAnon, ostensibly the mother of all conspiracies, is the unified theory of pro-Trump, anti-Clinton, anti-left…
Despite the clear and convincing evidence, not to mention the guilty plea, showing that now-former Dallas City Council member Dwaine Caraway took about $450,000 in cash to push the City Council to pass Dallas County Schools’ bus stop-arm ticketing scam scheme scam, the Observer is going to miss the guy. For…
For further proof that the underlying code of the simulation in which we all live is fraying, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, still under multiple felony indictments, hung out with the president of the United States in Bedminster, New Jersey, Thursday, ostensibly to discuss reform in America’s prisons. In introducing…
Dallas City Council member Dwaine Caraway has agreed to plead guilty to two federal corruption charges, according to documents filed Thursday morning. Caraway, now serving his fifth non-consecutive term on the Council, accepted $450,000 from Robert Leonard and Slater Smartwood Sr., both former executives with Force Multiplier Solutions.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is about to find out if the Affordable Care Act covers cutting off your nose to spite your face. Last month, as filings in the Paxton-led lawsuit against President Barack Obama’s signature achievement piled up in federal court, the Texas attorney general slipped a new…
Let it never be said that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is incapable of reaction. Since the election of President Donald Trump, he’s molded his priorities in the shape of the president, focusing on issues like “sanctuary cities,” a term we’re still waiting for him to define. After eight students and…
A Northwest Dallas resident is the first person to die from West Nile Virus in Dallas County in 2018, Dallas County Health and Human Services said Tuesday. The patient lived in the 75229 ZIP code area north of Love Field Airport. DCHHS did not disclose any additional details in order…
Texas’ Senate Select Committee on Violence in Schools and School Security closed up shop Monday. Its final report follows the lead of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott by urging more guns in the state’s schools and better mental health services for students who might become shooters. It shies away from recommending any…
Dallas state Sen. Don Huffines, along with his twin brother and former Dallas County GOP Chairman Phillip, spent much of Monday in Russia. It wasn’t a well-publicized trip — both brothers’ social media accounts are bereft of any mention of the excursion — but as photos and stories began to…
It took a couple of weeks, but we finally know the fate of the remaining ofo bikes in Dallas. Sunday afternoon, photos of hundreds of the company’s bikes, stacked up for recycling in South Dallas, began circulating on social media.
