The Texas House of Representatives’ Public Education Committee unanimously signed off on the chamber’s education package Tuesday, but not before stripping a Dallas ISD-supported provision that would have allowed school districts to give teachers raises based on student performance. Teachers unions have lobbied hard against the merit-pay portion of the proposed…
With just 15 weeks of development time, limited personnel and only the vaguest sense of an idea, the cohort of SMU Guildhall students known as Think Arcade weren’t planning on much past hitting deadlines. They certainly didn’t expect to create a video game, FrostRunner, that would set university records and…
We don’t even yet know how much of it is true, but the $25 million college admissions bribery scandal described in a federal indictment in Massachusetts last week has already ignited a firestorm of blame-laying, which should fill my heart with joy. The blame game, after all, is my personal…
’Four years ago, the last time Dallas elected a mayor, the anonymous online high jinks were limited and mostly amusing. The dumb/brilliant Mayor Mike Rawlings Twitter parody @fauxmayormike and some enterprising cyber-squatting by opponents of then-candidate Casey Thomas livened things up. Wylie H, the website commenter turned social media soothsayer,…
DeSoto’s Errol Spence Jr. is in a tough spot. Saturday night, the IBF welterweight champion of the world will take the long walk from one of AT&T Stadium’s locker rooms to the stadium’s 50-yard line before stepping into the ring for the biggest fight of his life. Spence is 24-0…
Get ready for another round of text messages from Team Beto O’Rourke. According to social media reports from volunteers for the former El Paso U.S. representative’s senatorial campaign, O’Rourke and his team sent out an email Wednesday afternoon, informing the volunteers that O’Rourke needed help pushing out some text messages…
The City Council campaign in District 13 north of the Park Cities is shaping up to be strangely like a very important chapter in my own past, although it’s also totally different. Former Dallas Mayor Laura Miller (2002-2007) is running to unseat the incumbent, Jennifer Staubach Gates, who has represented…
There are few worse feelings for a North Texas transit commuter than the one that often hits just as they step off of one of DART’s climate-controlled light-rail cars and onto the platform at one of the agency’s more far-flung train stations: “How fricking long is it going to be…
The news didn’t exactly come as a surprise, but it stung nonetheless. Slot receiver Cole Beasley is leaving the Dallas Cowboys for the Buffalo Bills. According to reports, Beasley’s new contract is for four years and $29 million, with $14.4 million guaranteed. In losing Beasley, 29, the Cowboys lost a…
The mayor of Dallas and the editorial page of The Dallas Morning News have revived an incident from 2015 in which Dallas City Councilman Scott Griggs, now a candidate for mayor, was accused of violently threatening a city official, then-Assistant City Secretary Bilirae Johnson. A Dallas County grand jury dismissed…
Second-trimester abortions increased 13 percent in Texas in the aftermath of 2013’s House Bill 2 despite abortions decreasing by 18 percent generally, a study published Tuesday in Obstetrics & Gynecology shows. Overall, women seeking abortions were forced to wait an average of one week more to get an abortion after…
There’s parody, self-parody and then whatever the hell the Dallas County Republican Party is doing with the lineup it’s put together for its annual Reagan Day Dinner next week. The slate of speakers the local GOP has assembled is so absurd that, when first spotted in the wild by the…
The Texas Secretary of State’s Office confirmed late Monday afternoon that multiple Texas counties inadvertently received new names of potential noncitizen voters for possible investigation from the office Monday. A spokesman for the office blamed a vendor for the mix-up. “Just like we told the counties and the court last…
My well-known modesty, one of my many admirable personal traits, won’t allow me to tell The Dallas Morning News how to do its job. But if I had been the editor on that story last week about a suburban mayor and her husband getting convicted on federal bribery charges, the…
If at any point over the last seven years you’ve found yourself on the east side of downtown Dallas, you’ve encountered it — the quagmire of detour signs, potholes and uneven pavement that have accompanied Dallas’ quest to fix up Pearl Expressway and Cesar Chavez Boulevard on the eastern edge…
Last Monday, Observer columnist Jim Schutze wrote a story in which he accused The Dallas Morning News editorial page of telling lies about Dallas City Council member and mayoral candidate Scott Griggs. Schutze suggested this was a deliberate smear campaign aimed at attacking a candidate, Griggs, opposed by the mayor…
Dallas police made two arrests in the string of robberies near Dallas ISD school campuses that have shaken up students, parents and employees over the last month Thursday. Roshun Dixon, 17, and Christopher Wade, 18, both admitted being involved in at least one of the crimes, police said. Beginning Feb…
Sunday morning, the clock on your smart phone, as it does once a year, is going to roll straight from 1:59 a.m. to 3:00 a.m., costing you an hour’s sleep and causing a small to moderate amount of pain as you struggle through Sunday and the beginning of the week…
A federal jury in Sherman found former Richardson Mayor Laura Jordan guilty of corruption related crimes Thursday afternoon. Jordan accepted cash, trips, $24,000 worth of home renovations and a job with a $150,000 annual salary in exchange for supporting for supporting a large mixed-use development near Central Expressway. Jordan, whose…
Rangers general manager Jon Daniels seems to be trying to do two things at once. He’s trying to rebuild a major league roster and farm system that desperately need it, that’s his first priority, but he’s also trying to do so without completely ruining his team’s on-field product for four…
From the outside, it’s hard to know what Texas Secretary of State David Whitley was thinking when he made his quixotic attempt to purge thousands of voters from the state’s rolls late last month. Rather than just doing his job and making sure Texas’ election machinery runs smoothly, Whitley chose…
Back in the 1980s, our own lovable, irascible Jim Schutze wrote a book called The Accommodation: The Politics of Race in an American City, laying out the history of race relations in Dallas in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement. It may now be out of print, but one…
