Sometimes, Texas laws address real problems, like the state’s soon-to-be dead poverty trap, the Driver Responsibility Program, or its unconscionable rape kit testing backlog. Other times, they’re drafted and passed for purely political purposes. The “born-alive” act, now passed by both the Texas House and Senate, is one of those…
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…
After more than a year of investigation, the charges against suspected North Texas serial killer Billy Chemirmir are starting to come in. Already this week, a Dallas County grand jury has indicted Chemirmir for six murders, according to court documents. Multiple media outlets report than Chemirmir will soon be indictment…
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…
Dallas Police Department officers searched Catholic Diocese of Dallas properties across the city Wednesday as part of a continuing investigation into alleged abuse by Dallas priests. According to DPD Maj. Max Geron, police searched Diocese headquarters in Oak Lawn, St. Cecilia Catholic Church in North Oak Cliff and a storage…
Every spring in Dallas, one of two things happens: The Dallas Mavericks either play a couple of weeks of playoff basketball or lose the NBA Draft Lottery. No matter how bad the previous season or how good their odds are, the Mavericks never, ever move up so much as a…
The short-term rental industry has become the latest “internet-based service firm” to arouse the ire of citizens and local governments nationwide. Here in North Texas, Arlington has recently joined the growing number of cities to restrict or even ban the practice of renting or operating short-term rentals as offered by…
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…
Barring an upset, Texas looks poised to become the 14th state to raise its smoking age, after the Texas House passed an amended version of a Senate bill raising the state’s tobacco-use age on Tuesday. Under the bill, the purchasing age for all tobacco products in the state would be…
The last time Chris Mullins saw his girlfriend alive, she was leaving for work early on a Monday morning in late November 2018. Maria Ezquerro had recently returned home from visiting her parents in Mexico and spent the night with Mullins in Denton. Partially asleep, he walked her to the…
Nearly five months after his arrest, John Wetteland made his first court appearance on child sex abuse charges Monday. Though he didn’t enter a plea at the Denton County Courthouse, his attorney made it clear to reporters how he and his client plan to fight the accusations against the former…
Turns out the “Save Chick-fil-A” bill wasn’t dead after all. Monday afternoon, the Texas Senate went tit-for-tat with the Texas House’s LGBTQ caucus, executing a maneuver to advance the upper chamber version of one of this legislative session’s most controversial bills without a committee hearing. Thursday night, Sen. Julie Johnson,…
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…
Last week, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a piece of anti-abortion legislation that left Texas, one of the pro-life movement’s biggest hotbeds, in the dust. Thanks to Kemp’s signature, Georgia law now bans any abortion occurring more than six weeks into a pregnancy, creating an almost impossible window for women…
Sam Coats, named last week to take over as the interim leader of the scandal-plagued Dallas convention and visitors bureau, called VisitDallas, is the perfect guy. He has a deep international résumé as a fixer of broken companies and a turnaround artist. He has experience as an elected official and mayoral…
Two years ago, Texas got in line with many of its conservative sibling states and passed a law addressing one of its most pressing concerns — preventing any companies that participate in the boycott, divest and sanction movement from doing business with the state. This week, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott…
Texas House Democrats banded together with some of the chamber’s most conservative members Thursday to pass legislation that would stop Texas juries from sentencing killers with severe mental illnesses to death. Dallas Rep. Toni Rose’s bill would require juries who find that a defendant convicted of capital murder was suffering…
After months of back-and-forth between neighborhood groups and those pushing for expanded homeless services outside of downtown Dallas, the Dallas City Council signed off unanimously on a zoning change that will a new campus for the Salvation Army to be built in northwest Dallas. The new campus, located on North Stemmons…
Dallas’ parents, its dads specifically, got a leg up from the City Council on Wednesday afternoon. From now forward, any newly built or renovated city-owned building, privately owned restaurant, theater or retail store will have to provide at least one “safe, sanitary and convenient diaper changing accommodation” in each restroom…
