This is a weekly feature produced by my friend Ginger. Let us know what you think.
This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth, the governor goes full Islamophobe; Dallas gets ready to pick a new police chief; Neiman Marcus in downtown Dallas gets a stay of execution; Tarrant County is about to do a mid-census redistricting; more fallout from the Keller ISD split and other school news; the effort to get Irving to pass the Sands casino plan that failed; the latest on Robert Roberson; is our local gas utility overcharging customers; the world’s richest woman lives in Fort Worth; the Sex Pistols are coming to Dallas (!); some Dallas chefs win big in competitions and awards; and more.
This week’s post was brought to you by the music of Sarah McLachlan, which I was reminded I hadn’t enjoyed in a while by the 1990s playlist of our anniversary dinner earlier this week.
The biggest local story in the Metroplex this week is the sudden but unsurprising attack on the EPIC City development near Josephine in Collin County. It’s a planned development to be built by the East Plano Islamic Center, and the DMN has a timeline of developments between the first announcement back in February and today. The only thing differentiating EPIC City from any number of other planned communities in the area is that it’s explicitly religious, specifically Muslim. EPIC and their for-profit developers have clarified that anyone is welcome to live in their community, in accordance with federal and state law, but that’s not good enough for Greg Abbott. He doesn’t want EPIC City, and to hell with the laws if they permit it.
Local media are pretty clear on what’s going on. The Dallas Observer headlines one story Abbott, Paxton Target Proposed Muslim Development in North Texas (though the URL reads “wage war”). KERA points out that “Abbott did not specify what laws may have been be violated” in his rants about EPIC City and threats against lawbreakers. And a public meeting on Monday to discuss this development, before any plans have been submitted, Collin County residents complained about the development, often on explicitly religious grounds. Lone Star Left has 10 minutes of video of these folks, which I admit I haven’t watched, because MAGA bigots are going to MAGA and life’s too short. Michelle Davis of Lone Star Left throws bombs occasionally, but she’s not wrong here: this is flat out bigotry and Governor Abbott is whistling for dogs to hear.
I wish the folks at EPIC all the luck in the world. They’re not even finished doing flood studies, and the entirety of Collin County’s officialdom and the Governor of Texas are trying to destroy their project. We all know if a church was building this project with a Christian school, the same folks would be praising it to the skies and easing its path. The official response to EPIC City is an embarrassment to the state of Texas.
Let’s look at the rest of the news:
- The City of Dallas is about to pick a new top cop from a field of five candidates. The Dallas Observer and KERA have the details on the five. Two, including Interim Chief Michael Igo, are internal, and three are outsiders. Good luck to them all, and to those of us who live in Dallas.
- We’re going to need that luck, because Dallas HERO is demanding that the city comply with Prop U immediately or they’re going to sue. One of the sections of Prop U, one of the charter amendments that passed last year, requires the city to maintain a level of staffing compared to the population that would currently require about 4,000 officers. Dallas needs to hire about 900 police to get there. To do so with minimal disruption, the city plans to hire 300 this year. My fellow citizens voted to hand the HERO clowns power over the city and they’re about to get what they voted for good and hard.
- A story I’ve been watching is the demise of the downtown Neiman Marcus here in Dallas as part of their merger with Saks. It was supposed to close at the end of March, but the store, and its local favorite Zodiac restaurant, have received a reprieve through the 2025 holiday season. Get the story from KERA, local real estate site Candy’s Dirt, D Magazine, and the ever-optimistic DMN. And if you’re interested in the Zodiac Room, check out the Dallas Observer and some oral history from Eater Dallas.
- Tarrant County County Judge Tim O’Hare gave the State of the County address this week. As one might expect, his big achievement has been cutting taxes. He also wants to steal the Stars and any other business he can get his hands on from Dallas. Things he did not talk about: his reactionary activism.
- Tarrant County has had to hire a new lawyer for one of the jailers in the Anthony Johnson, Jr. case. Johnson died in the Tarrant County Jail last April and the county has to pay for outside counsel since the jailer may also face criminal charges. If the full $30,000 approved for the new lawyer is paid out, the county will have paid $615,000 to defend itself and the jailers.
- Meanwhile, Tarrant County commissioners voted along party lines to look into redistricting and hire an “dedicated to election integrity” to start work on it. Redistricting isn’t required until the 2030 census, but two of the commissioners are up for re-election in 2026 and so is County Judge Tim O’Hare. More on this story from KERA.
- In unrelated news, the Tarrant County Democratic Party laid off all its staff and is “strategically restructuring”. Something I didn’t know until this year is that county Democratic parties in Texas are all independent and the state party doesn’t have a say in their finances, though maybe that will change under the newly elected chair of the state party. So this is bad, but it doesn’t affect any other county party.
- Because he’s not busy enough chasing the supposed crimes of EPIC City, Attorney General Ken Paxton is trying to get Dallas ISD over supposedly violating the state ban on transgender athletes. Technically it’s only a ban on kids playing as anything other than what’s on their birth certificate, but you know what they mean. Pick your source: the Dallas Observer, KERA, or the Texas Tribune.
- In the aftermath of its failed attempt to break up, Keller ISD is considering cuts to deal with the $9.4 million budget shortfall it anticipates for the 2025-2026 school year. Meanwhile, the HOA that sued the district over about violations of the Texas Open Meetings Act to develop the split plan has asked a judge to remove the five board members who planned the split, including the board president.
- Libs of Tik Tok found a trans teacher in Red Oak ISD, south of Dallas, and did their thing. She resigned to protect her students after receiving threats and demands for her firing. She’s not the first area teacher forced out by the bullies at Libs of Tik Tok; they also got a teacher who wore a dress for a spirit day in Lewisville.
- The Star-Telegram has noticed that destroying DART will affect the Trinity Railway Express that connects Dallas and Fort Worth and might affect World Cup plans, and they do not like it.
- Apparently a PAC created by the Sands casino juggernaut was behind a massive text spam to get Irving to approve a casino site near the old Texas Stadium site. Also pushing for the casino: Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, which is run by Michael Quinn Sullivan, formerly of Empower Texans. The DMN also has a list of entities against the casino, including The Texas Anti-Predatory Gambling Alliance, Texas Values, and the University of Dallas, which is a Catholic university near the casino site. The casino element was stripped from the plan in an Irving city council meeting last month.
- A tragic story from Frisco this week: on Wednesday, a 17-year-old student was stabbed to death at a UIL track meet. The alleged killer, another 17 year old, was in custody. It’s too soon to know much right now, but of course, consider your mental health if you want to read the link.
- The DMN has an explainer about how the town of Fairfield and the LDS (Mormon) church got into a fight about the size of the local temple’s steeple.
- A Tesla owner whose car was keyed at DFW Airport has sued the alleged culprit for $1 million for property damage, emotional distress, etc. The alleged culprit was booked into the Tarrant County Jail for criminal mischief.
- The DMN has an editorial about parking minimums favoring a new proposal that would eliminate them downtown, near rail stations, and at commercial and industrial sites that aren’t near residences and lowering them elsewhere. Reforming the Dallas parking ordinance has been on the agenda for a while now. I guess this means the Powers That Be have come to a conclusion unless Dallas HERO interferes.
- This week Dallas County approved a $20,000 independent review of the autopsy findings in the Robert Roberson case. When Roberson’s daughter Nikki was found unresponsive, she was airlifted to Dallas and died in a hospital here. It was the Dallas County medical examiner who ruled her death a homicide. D Magazine also has the story.
- The DMN’s watchdog is trying to figure out whether Atmos, our local gas utility, is overcharging its customers. The answer, unsurprisingly to me as a customer, is they’re so damn secretive nobody can tell.
- Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson started the Republican Mayors Association back in 2023 after he switched parties. Now it turns out senior officials and members of the board of the association are also working for companies that receive contracts from it. No comment from Mayor Johnson, of course.
- You may recall that the Texas Observer busted local ICE prosecutor Jim Rodden as the Xitter racist GlomarResponder. Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Forth Worth) demanded that ICE investigate him. He now has ICE’s response and the Observer has the details, which are mostly “we’ll get back to you in six months”. ICE has also stopped emailing the schedule of cases with prosecutors’ names to private attorneys. The DC bar, where Rodden is licensed, won’t confirm whether they’re doing anything about him either.
- Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas has dropped Southwestern Health Resources, which is the umbrella organization for UT Southwestern and Texas Health, from its network. They do this every so often when they can’t agree on fees. Fortunately my doctor’s office confirmed that my BCBS insurance runs through another state so I’m still insured for my appointment. This time, anyway; last time we got the letter after the fact, when our BCBS and Southwestern Health had already kissed and made up.
- Some of the world’s richest people live in the Metroplex, although they’re probably less rich today than they were when these articles were written. D Magazine and the Dallas Observer have the details from the Forbes list, and the Star-Telegram would like to remind you that the richest woman in the world, Alice Walton of Wal-Mart money, chose Fort Worth for her home.
- You’ll probably have the same response to this that I did: the Sex Pistols are coming back to the Longhorn Ballroom. Apparently the three surviving members who aren’t Johnny Rotten are giving it another go with a new lead singer. Tickets are on sale on Friday morning, so probably about the time you’re reading this post.
- Yayoi Kusama’s All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins mirror room is returning to the Dallas Museum of Art in May. It’ll be on view until next January, so you have time to come see it. This is not my favorite mirror room, but they’re all something special even if you don’t want to take a photo for the gram.
- The Dallas wound that never closes: there is yet another congressional task force asking who killed John F. Kennedy after the recent release of documents. Because Congress had nothing better to do this week.
- The tenth Texas State Veterans Home opened in Fort Worth last week. It’s named after the Tuskegee Airmen, the U.S. military’s WWII Black flying unit.
- In Sherman, close to the Oklahoma border, the state has put up a historical marker for the 1930 lynching of George Hughes and the subsequent riot and destruction of the Black business district. The KERA story has an interview with a descendant of a survivor of the events.
- Two food stories to wind things down: the James Beard finalists include some Dallas names. The one that most intrigues me from this list is Mabo, the yakitori omokase; I ate at Teppo, the chef’s previous restaurant, with friends, and it was fantastic. And a Dallas chef took second place at the World Food Championship, after signing up for the vegetarian challenge because it was the only spot left. Congratulations to our local winners!