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 a lot of recent stuff but also some catchup from the last month while I was suffering with COVID. Don’t get sick, y’all. It’s not fun. But from the depths of the sofa and the scrolling of news sites and social media I bring you: news from the Lege; Dallas is about to start hiring some of those cops required by Prop U; some ballot news for the May elections in North Texas; short-term rental lawsuits in Dallas and Fort Worth; another inmate has died at the Tarrant County jail; news from the suburbs and exurbs, news about local museums, and environmental news; personnel changes across the metroplex in important offices, including one with a big golden parachute; some awful immigration news; and Dan Patrick does not want to electronically verify your genitals this time. And more!
This week’s post was brought to you by the music of Anonymous 4, the foursome who sang all that awesome medieval music in the 90s and 00s. I was lucky enough to see them live and they were fantastic.
Let’s jump in, starting with some North Texas news from the Lege and moving on from there:
- State Sen. Bob Hall (R-Rockwall) is the Senate half of a duo pushing to end countywide voting along with Rep. Steve Toth (R-The Woodlands) in the House.
- WFAA has an interview with State Senator Royce West (D-Dallas) from the beginning of February.
- KERA has coverage of the fight between DART and certain Dallas suburbs that want to cut back their contributions to the transit agency. You may remember that Plano is against DART and that their representative to DART is an Uber lobbyist.
- After all that fuss about bringing people in to interview for the Dallas City Manager post, unsurprisingly interim City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert got the job at the end of January. She has a 100 day plan, which she should be not quite a third of the way through, and I really wish her luck because she’s going to need it. More from KERA, which also talks about her golden parachute.
- Speaking of managing the city and its troubles, we’ve finally started to talk about adding all those police mandated by Prop U in the November election. City Council seems to have settled on 325 police for this year, per the DMN and the Dallas Observer, but Dallas PD seems to think 300 is the maximum they can add without cutting existing services. The total required by Prop U would be about 900 new officers.
- And speaking of Prop U, Dallas HERO, which sponsored it, has a new Executive Director, per Steven Monacelli on BlueSky. The new guy, Damien LeVeck, is replacing Pete Marocco, who’s now destroying USAID for the current presidential administration.
- I know we’re all still reeling from the last election in November, but local elections are happening again in May. CultureMap has the rundown on who’s running. The Dallas Observer has four takeaways for Dallas. My city council district has an incumbent I’m meh about but her opponent is a repeat offender whom CultureMap refers to as “eccentric litigious” (with reason) so I’m probably going to hold my nose and vote for the incumbent.
- This month an appeals court kept the Dallas short-term rental ordinance on hold on its way to get walloped at the Texas Supreme Court. D Magazine and the Dallas Observer have the story.
- You may have head that the New York Stock Exchange is coming to Dallas, closing its Chicago branch and rebranding as NYSE Texas. This is apparently a move to quash the competition coming in the form of the new Texas Stock Exchange. The Financial Times also has this story.
- Texas Monthly has some ideas about what’s wrong with downtown Dallas that are pretty spot on. Specifically, while the convention center update may improve some things, it won’t make life better for residents of the city center.
- Meanwhile, in Fort Worth, also after a lot of fuss, Jay Chapa was sworn in as the new Fort Worth City Manager. No word on any action about the supposed behind-the-scenes shenanigans around Chapa’s selection.
- And the Fort Worth Report has the lowdown on the candidates for City Council in Fort Worth.
- Fort Worth also has its own separate short-term rental lawsuit, which has been assigned to a new judge this week.
- You probably remember that UNT Health Science Center in Fort Worth had a major scandal over the last couple of years surrounding their use of bodies. Now the head of the Science Center has resigned as of the end of January, and she’s receiving a $560,000 payout. She made $700,000 last year. The DMN and the Star-Telegram also have the story.
- Fort Worth City Council has unanimously approved a resolution cementing the new plans for the Juneteenth Museum, which will now be located at Southside Community Center property. They’ll contribute up to $15 million for the museum. The Fort Worth Report also has the story.
- A museum story I’ve been following is the seizure of photographs from the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. The photographs were from an exhibit that closed at the beginning of February by photographer Sally Mann, and featured her then-young children in the nude. Fort Worth PD seized the photos from the museum after allegations that the images amounted to child pornography, partly riled up by the Dallas Express. Now three civil liberties groups (FIRE, the ACLU, and the National Coalition Against Censorship) have asked Fort Worth PD to return the photos. More on this story from the Fort Worth Report, the DMN, and the Star-Telegram.
- I regret to report that the Tarrant County jail has had its first death in 2025. A 36-year-old man died two days after attempting suicide earlier this month. The Star-Telegram and the DMN both have the story; you should read both, but I suspect you’ll find the DMN story significantly more useful.
- Meanwhile, in proceedings around one of last year’s deaths in the jail, lawyers for the family of former inmate Anthony Johnson Jr. asked the court to reverse a decision to drop Tarrant County as a defendant from the suit. The federal judge presiding over the suit ruled that hat Johnson’s death was not the result of “unsafe conditions of confinement.” earlier this month, even though there is known to be unreleased footage of Johnson’s death. As mentioned in the DMN article above about this year’s first death, Tarrant County spent more than $2 million in 2024 on compensation for in-custody deaths.
- Meanwhile Tarrant County Sherriff Bill Waybourn, who is ultimately responsible for the jail, honored a deputy injured by gunfire in August 2024 but left the building before a briefing about a fatal shooting by a deputy serving a mental health warrant last month. In the Star-Telegram article about this story, we find out that County Judge Tim O’Hare removed family members of Anthony Johnson Jr. from a Commissioners’ Court meeting this week for being frustrated about how this matter was handled.
- Some short news from the suburbs:
- The Aryan Nation distributed hate flyers in Prosper over the weekend.
- Feral hogs have been loose in Irving since December. Kudos to the writer of this article for describing the hog invasion as “Hogmageddon” and the electric fence residents are using to fry the hogs as “the Baconator”.
- The fourth rabid bat in six months has been found in Plano. Be careful out there, friends.
- Changes by the Tarrant County Appraisal District means that Arlington faces a $21.5 million budget gap by 2026.
- The city of Grapevine is going after a resident for having an unmowed native grass lawn.
- The latest on the Robert Roberson case: Roberson’s attorneys filed an application for relief asking for the appeals court to overturn his verdict, or if not, to grant him a new trial, or if neither, to send his case back to district court based on new evidence. He does not have a new execution date following the attempt to subpoena him in October. The Texas Tribune also has this story.
- In some good news, Floral Farms, the neighborhood around what used to be Shingle Mountain has been finally been rezoned after the roofing materials were removed in 2021. The rezoning limits heavy industrial uses and will allow area residents to sell or improve their homes more easily. Some noncomforming businesses will be grandfathered in. The DMN also has this story, and be sure to read the comments by Far North Dallas council member Cara Mendelsohn, who was the lone vote against the rezoning (Mayor Johnson was absent). The subtext is pretty bad.
- Johnson County, south of Fort Worth, has declared a state of disaster because of PFAS “forever chemicals” leaching into agricultural land. The chemicals are believed to come from biosolids fertilizer made from Fort Worth sewage sludge. Fish and cattle are dying and testing has confirmed soil, groundwater, surface water, and animal tissue are contaminated. The local declaration allows the county to seek federal assistance; they’re also asking Governor Abbott to declare an emergency to seek reimbursement for affected agricultural producers. This is pretty scary from an environmental point of view, and it’s also scary that the locals don’t want to talk about the environmental effects except as they damage business prospects for farmers and ranchers.
- Fort Worth ISD has named its interim head, Karen Molinar, as permanent superintendent.
- Unsurprisingly, Keller ISD is a big mess for all the reasons we talked about last week. The board has finalized the exit of the superintendent, public interest law group the Brewer Storefront is suing the district for violating the Voting Rights Act (good luck), Hillwood Development, which owns the successful Alliance development in the area, sent a cease and desist to the Keller board to get them to stop calling the proposed new district Alliance ISD, the Tarrant County DA is asking Ken Paxton to weigh in, and the city of Fort Worth is about to rezone Keller ISD properties in city limits so they can’t be sold off for profit.
- A tragedy in Gainsville, north of Fort Worth: an eleven-year-old girl has died by suicide after she was bullied repeatedly over her family’s immigration status. Her classmates had threatened to call ICE on her parents and said she’d be alone when they were deported. Welcome to MAGA America, folks.
- Not directly related, but not unrelated either: The Texas Observer reports that an ICE prosecutor here in Dallas is also running a white supremacist Xitter account. It’s not supposed to happen like this, as the article indicates, but nobody’s going to do anything about it.
- On President’s Day we had protests here in Dallas, led by the 50501 movement (DMN explainer here) and also by local Indivisibles, who were pushing on Facebook to get folks out. D Magazine and the DMN have the story. While I can’t verify any numbers since I wasn’t there (see: COVID recovery), Indivisibles on Facebook suggested that the numbers for the protests in the media were low.
- Also on the subject of not-my-president, the DMN is dropping Doonesbury on Sunday because unsurprisingly Garry Trudeau is down on Trump and DOGE. The opinion people don’t want it because they think it isn’t funny, which is unsurprising. This whole kerfuffle reminded me that I haven’t read it in a while so I added it to my RSS feeds.
- Two items from the mess that is the Mavericks’ decision to trade Luka Donçic: first, the Mavs are not moving to Vegas per Patrick Dumont, Miriam Adelson’s son-in-law. Second, to nobody’s surprise, Mark Cuban was against the trade. I find the Cuban story unsurprising and the news from team Adelson exactly what they’d say whether or not they were moving the team to Vegas. I don’t think that’s their first choice but I do think it could happen.
- Moving on to the lighter side of things: Did you know that the frozen margarita comes from a Dallas Mexican restaurant? I did, because it’s not that far from where I live.
- Neiman Marcus, which sold itself to Saks Fifth Avenue, is closing its downtown flagship March 31. They’re also closing their local headquarters. The NorthPark Center store will remain open.
- Also closing: one of my favorite Design District restaurants, The Meddlesome Moth, is being driven out by rent increases. After it closes in May, the stained glass windows of Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Chuck Berry, which were saved from the Dallas Hard Rock Cafe when it was demolished, will be sold privately.
- One of our fancy Asian restaurants, Musume, is partnering with Booker T. Washington art students for a special omokase experience with a menu illustrated by the kids. I may have to check that out.
- Per the Wall Street Journal, Chili’s is popular again. More for somebody else.
- Last, but not least, a story that made me laugh: somebody put up stickers in the stalls at DFW about so-called electronic genital verification by our only Lt. Governor, Dan Patrick, notorious worrier about trans folks. Reddit has a photo. The phone number to call on the sticker is Dan Patrick’s office. This is not a nice prank, but Dan Patrick’s war on trans kids isn’t nice either.