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 another grab bag thanks to the long holiday weekend. This update includes: news from the upcoming Lege session; the word on the problems with voting in DeSoto during the November election; various federal initiatives from the incoming administration and how they’ll affect North Texas; school district news; North Texas’ ties to some big-time terrible people on Xitter; the latest on those Arlington nuns; some good news in Dallas in 2024; and more.
This week’s post was brought to you by the Apple Classicaltronics music playlist, which Austin composer Graham Reynolds recommended in a recent newsletter.
It’s been something of a short news week, so let’s dive right into the news:
- LoneStarLeft has a roundup of early bills filed for the next Lege session, including a number we’ve covered here. North Texas House Reps like Mike Olcott (HD60, west of Fort Worth), Mitch Little (HD65, a band across the northern DFW suburbs), David Spiller (HD68, a semicircle around the west side of DFW), Jeff Leach (HD67, Plano & McKinney), and, worst of all, Brian Harrison (HD10, south of Dallas) have all filed awful bills. Let’s hope most of them end up dead in the rush at the close of the session, if not sooner.
- A DMN editorial is complaining about a bill in the upcoming Lege session to limit the storage of license plate data by Brian Harrison. Unlike Harrison, who is clearly a Republican crank but may be right on the stopped clock principle this time, the DMN is fine with the surveillance state, which is a necessary consequence of using the public roads, I suppose.
- Speaking of the Lege, Mavericks owner Miriam Adelson has been shoveling money into the pockets of politicians in an effort to get her casino here in north Texas. She spent $13.7 million, of which $8.2 million went to Republicans.
- Dallas County elections administrator Heider Garcia blamed a bug in Election Systems & Software’s poll book software for voting problems in DeSoto in the November elections. Dallas County commissioners authorized $500,000 more of ES&S software in August.
- And in the upcoming 2026 elections, we have Gromer Jeffers of the Dallas Morning News opining on the Paxton vs Cornyn primary we all know is coming.
- Our host has been talking about fluoride and the incoming Secretary of Health and Human Services in the upcoming presidential administration. Here in Dallas, D Magazine is covering the assault on fluoridation from local billionaire Monty Bennett. Nice to see actual local media calling out the Dallas Express for the pink slime/personal grudge machine it is.
- If you’re interested in knowing how the sausage is made on City Council, D Magazine also has you covered with an item on the sidewalk kiosks littering downtown. We have one of these on the sidewalk in front of a shopping center near me. I don’t know that they do much more than add to visual clutter; I couldn’t tell you what the one near me is advertising right now if you paid me.
- I expect to see more stories like this one as the budget problems Prop U is about to cause sink in: City Council seeks to squeeze more money from rowing clubs on White Rock, Bachman lakes. Come for the DMN’s headline, stay for the tussling between the Park Board and City Council.
- Fort Worth, like Dallas, is hiring a City Manager. Five unnamed finalists were interviewed by City Council this week, and at least one Council member seems to think the fix is in. I’ll be keeping an eye on this story.
- Tarrant County Commissioners want to ask the state for a mental health facility in Tarrant County. Good luck with that.
- An eighth person (in 2024) has died in the Tarrant County jail. KERA, the DMN, and the Star-Telegram all have the story. All of the headlines note that the office of recently re-elected Sheriff Bill Waybourn reported the inmate felt ill and he was taken to the hospital.
- The Dallas Morning News has an interactive series on “Meth: The Prison Pipeline”. Apparently the sentencing for meth is harsher than sentencing for other drugs, the longest sentences are handed out in federal court in DFW, and of course, part of the issue is the cost to taxpayers.
- The DMN also has an editorial about how statements from Trump ring-kissing Mayor Eric Johnson and our most progressive Council Member, Adam Bazaldua have confused folks about what Dallas’ policy about helping the new administration enforce immigration laws and deportation plans will be. Of course the DMN has an opinion in the middle.
- Grand Prairie ISD has finally voted in a closed-door session to fire Superintendent Jorge Arredondo after six months in the job. Nobody knows exactly what Arredondo is supposed to have done. The matter is expected to play out in federal court, and good luck to the employees and students in Grand Prairie ISD while the fight over the superintendent’s job is going on.
- Declining enrollment across the district means Lewisville ISD may close five elementary schools next year, one from each high school’s feeder pattern.
- You probably have heard about the investigation into fraudulent teacher certification because it started in Harris County. It’s not staying there, though: dozens of teachers in DFW districts may have been fraudulently certified. DISD, FWISD, and some suburban districts are all looking into the problem.
- The Texas Tribune has a piece on New Heights High School, an adult-focused charter school in Fort Worth’s Stop Six neighborhood. Stop Six is a historically Black neighborhood and according to the city, has “an unemployment rate two-and-a-half times the city average, 78 percent of the population categorized as low-to-moderate income, and a crime rate where 65 per 1,000 people are victims of crime”.
- I found the school vaccination data in in this article about the incoming federal Health and Human Services nominee pretty interesting. Maybe you will too.
- The DMN explains why Texas’ water infrastructure is struggling to keep up. The issues boil down to unmaintained and aging infrastructure, population growth, and “climate stress”, which seems to be a euphemism for climate change.
- It’s official: there are a lot of overcrowded freeways in the Metroplex. The sections of Central Expressway (75) between Woodall-Rogers to the south and 635 to the north are on this list, and while I avoid all Dallas freeways when I can, they don’t seem that bad to me comparatively.
- D Magazine has an item on the upcoming Texas Commission on Environmental Quality rulings on new federal guidelines on air quality that we talked about last week. Their conclusion is, again, nobody knows what’s going to happen.
- The Dallas Morning News has editorial opinions about University Park’s brothel laws and how they’re being (inconsistently) enforced on SMU students living in off-campus housing in University Park.
- If you’re wondering what experts expect to happen to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA or “Dreamers”) recipients in north Texas under the new administration, the Dallas Observer has a depressing update.
- It looked like Fairview and the Mormons had settled on how they were going to handle the temple that the church wanted to build, but now residents aren’t happy with the settlement.
- The public editor at the Dallas Morning News explains the paper’s use of the term “gender-affirming care”. Apparently that language is controversial.
- The Texas Observer has identified the operators of four big-time neo-nazi accounts on Xitter. Two of them have north Texas connections, and one is, or maybe now was, a VP at JP Morgan Chase in Plano.
- The Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center here in Dallas is on tap to be the international broadcast center for FIFA in 2026 but first we need to put in about $6 million in repairs.
- The latest update on the Arlington nun situation is that the Vatican now considers the Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity in Arlington extinct. The Fort Worth Report also has the story.
- You may remember the brouhaha surrounding the Dallas Black Dance Theater, which fired all its dancers when they unionized and hired a bunch of scabs. It looks like that move will cost them their city funding to the tune of $250,000.
- A documentary about Dallas by a Black filmmaker is coming to PBS in January. I’m putting Dallas, 2019 on my watchlist.
- The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth has an immersive show called Sunset Corridor that sounds just like the thing for my Gen X, Cold War remembering, gamer self. It’s on through January 5.
- Last, but not least, because we all want some good news: the Dallas Observer’s positive news stories for 2024.