Late Friday afternoon, the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office issued the first warrant related to the ongoing investigation of potential voter fraud in a recent Dallas City Council race. Allegations of vote tampering dogged the contest between incumbent Monica Alonzo and Dallas County Schools board member Omar Narvaez. Prosecutors charged…
According to multiple reports from Cowboys beat reporters, national outlets and NFL.com, Dallas Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott turned over phone records to NFL investigators last week as the league continues to investigate several allegations of domestic violence against Elliott. The news, first reported by USA Today’s Tom Pelissero, indicates that…
At the close of the 2017 legislative session, marijuana remains illegal to produce, possess, use or sell in Texas. While cities like Dallas have moved to implement cite-and-release policies, which allow police to send people holding marijuana home with a court summons, the state maintains its stiff penalties for drugs…
Anthony Robinson, a longtime employee of the Dallas County district attorney’s office, avoided federal prison Wednesday despite admitting taking a $200,000 bribe from a man attempting to keep his name off the sex offender registry. Robinson rose through the ranks to become District Attorney Craig Watkins’ chief investigator from 2007…
As the 2017 Texas legislative session winds down, the way Texans will vote remains in flux. There’s a new voter identification law headed to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk, but it’s unclear whether it will pass muster in federal court. A bigger voting rights issue, which threatens the state’s entire congressional…
Dallas’ city officials, the city’s representatives in Austin, representatives for the pension and Dallas’ police and fire associations have been praised for coming together and hammering out a plan to kick the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System toward financial stability. Less has been said about the compromise’s costs to…
Irving’s Matt Rinaldi celebrated being named one of the Observer’s worst representatives of the 2017 session with a bang Monday, when he called U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on a group of people protesting Texas’ new anti-sanctuary city law at the state capitol. During an ensuing skirmish on the Texas floor,…
Senate Bill 8, the anti-abortion law sent to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk by the Texas Legislature late Friday afternoon, is a bunch of things rolled into one. It’s a ban on fetal tissue donation. It requires all tissue obtained during an abortion to be buried or cremated, and it…
Nearly three months ago, during the first week of March, the Observer brought you the story of a lonely historical marker in Llano that was targeted by vandals. The state of Texas provides no money to pay for repairs to its historical markers, leaving the costs to the counties where the…
In addition to being Memorial Day, Monday is also the 140th — and last — day of official business for Texas’ 85th Legislature. As the session wound down, the Observer evaluated the performances of representatives throughout North Texas. Here’s our list of the best and worst DFW had to offer this…
The Federal Elections Committee, like many in Washington, is a pretty partisan body, and usually the way it rules reflects this. But FEC issued a unanimous decision Thursday that U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas failed to properly disclose the source of four loans given to his 2012 Senate campaign. In…
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings doesn’t usually cast that long of a shadow on social media. He’s content to let his staff run his Facebook and Twitter feeds, which usually stick to general news posts about city business or mayoral appearances. Thursday afternoon, however, Rawlings decided to mix things up on…
At about 2:30am Thursday, a woman sent a text to 911 in East Texas’ Hunt County saying she’d been shot three times by her husband. About 20 minutes later, a Caddo Mills police officer spotted the recreational vehicle the woman said she was riding in with her husband and two…
Wednesday afternoon, nearly five years after a Collin County jury found her guilty of taking bribes and four days after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed her claims of innocence, Suzanne Wooten walked out of the Collin County Courthouse. Judge Andrea Thompson officially acquitted Wooten of nine charges stemming…
The Dallas Police Department had a press conference Wednesday to tell the public that an intersection south of Fair Park hasn’t been forgotten by police. The reason for this reassurance is a recent Facebook Live video. The video, shot at the intersection of Malcolm X Boulevard and Elsie Faye Heggins Street,…
The whole thing, Jose Barrientos says, comes down to his running his mouth. If he hadn’t shot off about how someone could go about stealing the election for Dallas City Council District 6, he says, he wouldn’t be in the trouble he is now. But he did tell Sidney Williams,…
On Tuesday afternoon — two months before training camp — the Dallas Cowboys 2017 defense suffered a huge blow. The NFL has suspended David Irving, perhaps the Cowboys’ most physically gifted pass rusher, for the first four games of the upcoming season. Irving, according to the league, violated the NFL’s…
Dallas police have arrested Brandon Jordan and Brittany Pollard, both 33, for allegedly shooting and killing a man during a robbery at Oak Cliff’s Dallas Inn early Sunday morning, the department announced Monday afternoon. Police officers responded to the Dallas Inn, near Kiest Boulevard and U.S. 67, just after 8 a.m…
On Monday afternoon, after two more days of debate, the Texas House of Representatives passed a “bathroom bill.” Reps tacked an amendment requiring that public schools ban transgender kids from using multi-occupancy restrooms of their choice onto another public school bill, one that requires schools to draw up plans for…
One of the more telling sets of numbers that comes out before any given NFL season is the list of expected win totals for each NFL team set by, as Brent Musberger calls them, our “friends in the desert” in Las Vegas. This year, most sports books have elected to set…
One thing is clear two weeks after the 2017 Dallas City Council election: Something went wrong with absentee voting in West Dallas. While rumor and innuendo have been plentiful, very little has emerged in the way of fact, especially since many key players in the drama have clammed up because…
Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price’s legal troubles are over. Late Friday afternoon, John Parker, the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, announced that the federal government will not retry Dallas County’s longest serving elected official after a Dallas federal jury acquitted him on bribery and mail…
