In a speech to the Dallas City Council on Wednesday, Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, the longest serving and most influential black elected leader in the city, warned that the most serious threat to racial amity in the city comes from white liberals. It was vintage Price. The 68-year-old…
Texas’ fetal burial law is out, pending appeal, but, oh boy, will there be appeals. U.S. District Judge David Ezra ruled Wednesday afternoon that the Texas Legislature’s requirement that all tissue resulting from an abortion, miscarriage, still birth or ectopic pregnancy be buried or cremated, rather than disposed of as…
Did Zina Bash, a star of Brett Kavanaugh’s U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings, flash a white power symbol while sitting behind Kavanaugh at his Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday? Some people on Twitter think so, but then some people on Twitter think anything. Bash, who until recently worked for Texas…
Here it comes, the 2019 Dallas mayor’s race, and it is going to be a filthy replay of the 2005 “strong mayor” election in which the business oligarchy jammed its thumb down hard on the race button. The preview is playing now on social media. It’s a corny video with…
A federal lawsuit that could end up harming millions of Texans kicks off in earnest this morning in Fort Worth. A coalition of states, led by Texas and its attorney general, Ken Paxton, will argue in front of a federal judge that the Affordable Care Act, despite being ruled constitutional…
You are forgiven if you think it’s too early to talk about the May 2019 mayoral election in Dallas. In fact, I would forgive you if you still felt the same way in May 2019, because maybe you have other fish to fry. Is the next mayoral election going to…
Getting the obvious out of the way first, the NFL should get rid of the preseason or, at the very least, slim it down to one or two games from the four or five each of the league’s 32 teams play now. If the league wants to claim it takes…
The short week that starts today is a big one for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Wednesday in Fort Worth, Paxton will take his first big swing at ending the Affordable Care Act, arguing in front of a federal judge that President Barack Obama’s signature achievement is unconstitutional. Paxton is…
Here’s a big tip ahead of college football’s opening weekend: Don’t sleep on University of North Texas. For the first time since the team’s Hayden Fry-led heyday in the late ’70s, the Mean Green are in position to return to national relevance, thanks to Texas’ best college quarterback, 17 returning…
First Baptist Dallas Pastor Robert Jeffress deserves some credit. Motivations, politics and decency aside, he picked the right horse way back in the summer of 2015 when he decided to back then-candidate Donald Trump’s nascent presidential campaign. For his trouble — Jeffress frequently worked “Make America Great Again” into invocations and…
A Dallas County jury sentenced Roy Oliver to 15 years in prison late Wednesday night. The ex-Balch Springs police officer faced as few as five years, and as many as 99, after being convicted of murdering Mesquite teenager Jordan Edwards in April 2017. The jury also handed Oliver a $10,000…
The GOP has a problem attracting women voters, at least among those women who think uninvited pussy grabbing is a bad thing. And they have a problem with younger voters, a depressingly small group but one that nonetheless tends to be passionate about things like civil liberties, the environment and…
At the very core of the Hurricane Harvey story is a writing problem that has bedeviled me ever since Harvey hit Houston a year ago. When Harvey struck Houston in August 2017, it tied with Katrina in New Orleans a dozen years earlier: Together, they are the two costliest tropical…
Ken Paxton’s political ambitions, at this point, are probably best served by the attorney general staying out of the spotlight, and away from controversy, at least until his November general election contest with Justin Nelson is over. That’s reality for a public official with low name ID and a bunch…
When cops shoot and kill civilians in the United States, they rarely get indicted for anything. It’s rarer still when they get charged with murder and even rarer than that when they are actually convicted of a crime — usually manslaughter, if anything. That’s what makes Tuesday afternoon’s events just…
Roy Oliver killed Jordan Edwards. The ex-Balch Springs police officer fired his rifle into a Chevrolet Impala driving away from a party in the eastern Dallas County town in April 2017 five times. Oliver hit Edwards, 15, in the head, killing the Mesquite High School freshman. None of those facts…
OK, this just in, we’ve got the playbook now for the next Dallas mayor’s race, and it falls somewhere on a line between, “Oh, no, not again,” “Tell me you’re kidding,” “Wait, wait, this might be cool” and “Bring it!” Monday, The Dallas Morning News fired the opening salvo with…
Bureaucracy, not malice, forced activists to wait hours Friday as they attempted to bail 16 people out of Dallas County Jail, sheriff’s office officials said Monday. Organizers with Faith in Texas and the Community Bail Fund of North Texas showed up to Lew Sterrett around 10 a.m. Friday with cashier’s…
Dr. Mark P. Jones is the fellow in political science at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy and the Joseph D. Jamail Chair in Latin American Studies at Rice University and co-author of Texas Politics Today. We asked him to share his opinion on the Sen. Ted…
A Dallas esports player was among those injured when a gunman opened fire at a Jacksonville, Florida, video game tournament, killing two players before taking his own life Sunday afternoon. Player Drini Gjoka of the CompLexity Gaming team based in Dallas was one of the competitors at the Madden NFL…
While the smart money, if such a thing exists among those willing to gamble on the whims of voters, is still on incumbent Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke got his most encouraging polling news yet in his bid to unseat Cruz. According to a new survey from…
Last Friday morning, volunteers arrived at the Lew Sterrett Justice Center, prepared to hand over cashier’s checks to post bail for 16 low-income prisoners. They have done this every Friday in August, lending a hand to inmates accused of minor offenses who can’t afford cash bail or bondsmen’s fees. This…
