This is a weekly feature produced by my friend Ginger. Let us know what you think.
This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth, we have election results; the anniversary of the Allen Premium Outlets shooting; various events at Commissioners’ Court in Tarrant County; the legal troubles of pro athletes in Dallas; Dallas City Manager issues; followups on some previous stories; Habsburg supporters meet in Plano; women’s soccer comes to Fair Park; book reviews by the DMN’s architecture critic; a heartwarming story about college kids helping shelter animals; and more.
This week’s post was brought to you by the music of the Decemberists, who we’re going to see next week at the Majestic.
We’ll start off with election news. The big Dallas bond proposal passed (DMN ; D Magazine; and CultureMap, which is a bit sniffy about the ease of passage). A point of particular celebration is the arts package, which gets special notice in both the Dallas Observer and the DMN.
But into every blithe approval in Dallas a little disapproval from the state government must fall. In this case, because Ken Paxton has to sign off on the loans for the bond, we have to find lenders who will comply with the state’s rules, specifically, the state’s anti-ESG (environment, social and governance) laws. Since we have a smaller pool of lenders to work with, we’ll get less competitive terms. Bottom line: Dallas taxpayers will pay more in the long run to support Ken Paxton’s goals. You know what we have to do to solve this problem.
Franklin Strong has a good review of the statewide races for school boards. Locally, we had good results in Arlington, Denton, Frisco, and Midlothian; mixed or neutral results in Grapevine-Colleyville, Mansfield, and Mesquite; and the bad guys won in Keller ISD. I strongly suggest you click through and read Strong’s analysis if you’re interested in these school board races. And if you’re interested in politics in Texas, you should be, because this is where they’re road-testing candidates and tactics. Related to this, here’s a Nation article about EducateUS, a group founded to counter anti-sex-ed, book-banning groups like Moms for Liberty. This story doesn’t discuss Texas, but it’s about how we fight back against right-wing haters, which we have plenty of here.
We also had those Appraisal District elections. The Dallas Observer has more information about the DCAD races than I heard from any single source before the election, in this story about the victors. For the TCAD winners I had to check out the Fort Worth Report; I didn’t see a story from the Star-Telegram about the victory. It’s unsurprising that all the Tim O’Hare candidates won in Tarrant County because a new political action committee dumped about $70k into the three races. I strongly suggest you click through on that one if you’re interested in Fort Worth/Tarrant County politics, because the story gets into both where that money comes from and Tim O’Hare’s fingerprints on the race. It also makes the point that these positions, like school district trustee positions, are stepping stones to future political offices.
The best source for overall results in the Metroplex continues to be the DMN’s election page and for Tarrant County/Fort Worth area news, the Fort Worth Report’s election page. It gives me no pleasure to say that the Star-Telegram is falling down on its civic responsibility to report the results. It looks like they had a live page on election night but now they just refer you to the county’s web site.
Meanwhile, in case you thought we were done with elections, there are runoffs coming on May 28. The Texas Tribune has an analysis of what’s going on in the HD 33 (Rockwall) Republican primary runoff. There’s not a lot out there about the Dallas County Sheriff runoff in the Democratic Party but I did find this story about a debate between Sheriff Brown and former Sheriff Valdez that said a whole lot of nothing. And the big race outside of Dallas is of course Dade Phelan in Beaumont, where the DMN is covering all the folks dumping money into that race.
And there’s always November to look forward to both nationally and statewide. The Dallas Observer is telling us about Colin Allred’s appeal to bipartisanship as a way to get through to voters in November. On the presidential election front, both the Texas Tribune and the Washington Post have stories about Trump’s appeal to the oil industry and their donations to him and other Republican candidates. The WaPo story characterizes Trump’s pitch for $1 billion from oil executives as “remarkably blunt and transactional”.
And last, but definitely not least, you may or may not have heard about the AI shenanigans in the HD 21 (Dade Phelan) race, but a local state rep has been put in charge of the new House Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies. Click through to check out the fake mailer apparently “made with AI” that features Phelan hugging Nancy Pelosi. Axios has more, and like the folks at Axios, I’m not sure how much you can do with the kind of folks who will just plain lie by making fake photos or making lying robocalls. They’re going to break the law no matter what the law says.
In other news:
- This week saw the first anniversary of the mass shooting in Allen, where eight people were killed at the Allen Premium Outlets on May 6, 2023. There was a memorial service Monday night. (See also: the DMN and the Star-Telegram for more anniversary coverage.) The DMN also answers a question I often have about these tragedies: where does the money raised go?. In this case people and charities have given $3.7 million to the survivors of the deceased, to the wounded, and to first responders and other bystanders for mental health care.
- Not related at all: AG Ken Paxton is suing the Biden administration to stop the closure of the “gun show loophole”. The shooter in Allen bought his weapons from a private dealer and didn’t have to undergo a background check because of the loophole.
- Also not related: Here’s a DMN editorial on school shootings called Texas can’t stop school shootings just by hardening buildings. Their concern also applies to malls and anywhere else that people gather. The DMN is right to say, “We have to send our children out into the world, and we cannot enclose them in a protective bubble. We’ll continue to fail them as long as we focus on hardening schools while leaving untouched this country’s culture of violence and a gun-rights absolutism that enable each other in a nasty loop.”
- As our host has noted, the Tarrant County DA is going back after Crystal Mason, whose conviction for illegal voting was recently overturned. He briefed the Tarrant County commissioners on his decision to continue the case. DA Sorrells, a Republican elected in 2023, is a part of Tim O’Hare’s election integrity unit. He’s quoted: “I want would be illegal voters to know that we’re watching … We’ll follow the law and we would prosecute illegal voting.”
- While we’re talking about the Tarrant County Commissioners, here’s the next round of Tim O’Hare v Alisa Simmons at a heated commissioners’ meeting that resulted in one speaker being removed from the room by deputies for speaking over time.
- We don’t have to worry about bird flu in North Texas yet, the experts say. If you’re interested in the science of the transmission of bird flu, this Reuters article with good graphics has you covered. The gist: don’t hang out with infected birds and don’t drink raw (unpasteurized) milk.
- You’ll be shocked to learn that the Department of Education found that Southlake schools violated the civil rights of students on the basis of race, gender and sexual orientation. This means things like calling Black students the n-word. No comment from the Superintendent or the board.
- Hillcrest High School is going to be working with the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum to provide training about antisemitism after a Jewish student filed a federal human rights complaint. This time the kids were calling the student “dirty”, praising Hitler, and making swastika drawings.
- At the beginning of the school year, FWISD pulled 118 books from its school libraries. Now that we’re at the end of the year, they’ve announced they’re bringing back 90, or just over three-quarters. Too late for this year’s students but at least next year’s students will probably get to read Sherman Alexie, Kurt Vonnegut, Toni Morrison, and Margaret Atwood, among others.
- You may remember the Sherman ISD superintendent who got in trouble last year for gender-policing a production of the musical Oklahoma! and had been suspended since early March. This story has come to the expected conclusion: the board approved a voluntary separation agreement with the superintendent. It wasn’t just his handling of Oklahoma!, which seems to have been merely the last and best-publicized straw in a difficult tenure.
- Changes at City Hall in Dallas: Interim City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert has already shaken up the city’s org chart, making one interim director permanent and hiring another. She’s going to have another job, maybe two, to fill in the near future now that Assistant City Manager Robert Perez is moving to Topeka and his colleague Majed Al-Ghafry is on the short list for city manager in De Soto. We may also be about to lose our police chief because the city charter doesn’t allow the city of Dallas to make a contract with the chief so he’s at-will. (The city charter changes on the ballot in November don’t address this concern.) There’s also a survey about what Dallasites want in the next City Manager that I haven’t looked at yet but plan to read and take. And, just for grins, here’s the DMN’s Sharon Grigsby on Johnson v Broadnax: Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, I see your charade of a fond farewell for the city manager. I don’t agree with everything she has to say, but also, don’t piss on my boot and tell me it’s raining, Mayor.
- You may remember from two weeks ago that Tarrant County had two more deaths in its jail. Here’s the latest, which is Republican commissioner Manny Ramirez wants more transparency from the Sheriff’s office but unlike the family of one of the deceased, who died after being pepper-sprayed, he’s not calling for the release of video from the incident. The Star-Telegram also has a reality check on whether releasing the video would compromise the investigation into the death, which boils down to the ACLU says no and the CEO of a “research, training and consulting firm that focuses on police use of force” says it might. They report, you decide.
- Also on the subject of county jails, you may remember that two weeks ago, we discussed a case where Dallas County kept a prisoner too long and had to settle for $100k. This week there’s another story about that case and another one with another five-figure settlement. The DMN has an editorial on this titled Dallas County Jail population is swelling and it’s for the dumbest reason. They’re not wrong. Sheriff Brown and County Judge Jenkins need to get this fixed.
- A second follow-up on old news: State Rep Frederick Frazier (HD 61) served his deferred adjudication for impersonating a public servant to remove some of his opponent’s campaign signs back in 2022. The charges have now been dismissed and Frazier is no longer under supervision. I can’t help but compare the outcome of this case to Crystal Mason’s.
- Another matter we’re revisiting this week is the matter of Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Rashee Rice. This time he allegedly lured a photographer to a restaurant in the Harwood district and assaulted him. Again, this case is notable because Royce West is Rice’s lawyer. Similarly, I’d like to note that another football-related criminal case has come to an end now that DPD has found insufficient evidence to prosecute Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott in a 2017 sexual assault case.
- In some good sports news, Dallas is getting a new women’s pro soccer team that will play at the Cotton Bowl. Dallas Trinity FC of the USL Super League will start playing in mid-August and while I am interested, I would like to wait for cooler weather to sit in the bleachers, thanks. Taxpayers are on the hook for $592k over two years.
- Related: Is the CEO of Fair Park in or out? It looks like he’s on paid leave for 45 days while the board evaluates his performance right now, so we’ll see.
- Not related, but interesting: How did Dallas get WNBA’s Wings to move downtown?. The DMN has the scoop.
- I was going to report on this D Magazine saga of an open records request originally made in November 2022, but before I got to show y’all the history in the first article about it, DPD decided to hand over the records. Funny that.
- The Boy Scouts of America are no more. The Irving-based group is rebranding as Scouting America and the DMN has a Q&A that touches on the reasons behind the rename, the history of sexual abuse in scouting, and the tetchy relationship with the Girl Scouts.
- I haven’t had a lot to add to Six Degrees of Clarence Thomas in a while, but I haven’t forgotten it. Neither has the Pulitzer Prize Board, which awarded the Pulitzer for Public Service to the ProPublica team that broke the story. Congratulations!
- In local environmental news, it’s cheers for Floral Farms, the former home of Shingle Mountain, where they are getting zoning changes to protect the neighborhood from industrial pollution. But it’s jeers for Denton, where 14,000 water lines need inspection for lead and copper contamination.
- Also jeers to whoever is responsible for the mess that is the new Development Services Department’s offices, which failed a city inspection as reported in the Dallas Observer.
- D Magazine has a piece on the new advertising kiosks the city wants to put in on Dallas sidewalks. One of the OG kiosks is on a sidewalk near my home; it makes it hard to walk there (it’s on a walking route my spouse and I take). We’ll be glad to see the back of it in 2026. The new ones don’t sound as bad but they don’t sound good either. Nobody seems to like the idea of having more kiosks; here’s a DMN op-ed from a bunch of movers and shakers in Uptown, Downtown, and the Arts District who don’t like the idea either. We’ll see whether the city decides to go ahead anyway.
- The crime is what’s legal: the Star-Telegram has this piece on the developer who gave $35k in donations to Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare and another Republican commissioner a few months before they voted for a $200 million project he was developing. The story details a lot of dodgy dealings by the developer in question in other parts of the Metroplex that should have put up some red flags. As usual, the only way to stop O’Hare and his cronies is to vote them out.
- When I opened up this article about police training in Lewisville and Collin County while writing this post, I was pleased to see an update that the city and county were no longer going to be working with Street Cop Training. The original article sure makes their training sound both illegal and bait for lawsuits from citizens whose rights were violated. Kudos to the Dallas Observer for exposing the training so that it was canceled.
- I thought this piece on a Habsburg gathering in Plano was going to be funny, and it was, but it was also disturbing. Apparently there’s a full on Carlist counterrevolutionary group based in Irving; they’re pre-fascist Catholic authoritarians who think France and Spain should still be governed by Bourbon/Habsburg monarchs. Texas is of interest because it’s part of Spain’s patrimony. If you’re interested in reading up on these guys, you can find out more on their website, but it may be enough to tell you that the most prominent Habsburg is working for Viktor Orbán.
- In happier historical news, Opal Lee received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her efforts in establishing Juneteenth as a national holiday. Congratulations!
- The DMN’s architecture critic Mark Lamster has two reviews for books I now want to read. One is City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America’s Highways, by Megan Kimble, which argues for getting rid of the I-345 spur. The other is Home, Heat, Money, God: Texas and Modern Architecture, by Kathryn E. O’Rourke with photography by Ben Koush. The buildings Lamster shows in his review only make me want to see more.
- Here’s a story about old time crime in Fort Worth: spooning and mashing, which would get you fined or tossed into jail a hundred years and change ago.
- And I have no zoo babies for you, but I do have a heartwarming story about SMU students who are helping with overcrowding at Dallas Animal Services by fostering animals. Also, I am telling myself we do not need another kitten after looking at Animal Services’ Instagram.