This is a weekly feature produced by my friend Ginger. Let us know what you think.
This week in DFW-area news, some big stories: Colin Allred is running against Ted Cruz, the City of Dallas is under a ransomware attack, and of course, more Harlan Crow & Clarence Thomas news. Plus various election items, Greg Abbott’s dog-whistles about the Cleveland mass shooting, whether it’s worth it for a band to play SXSW, and an exhibit about Bass Reeves in Fort Worth.
Also: don’t forget to vote tomorrow in the May elections in your area, Texans! I voted early but if you didn’t, polls are open Saturday. Please read up on your local elections and vote, particularly in your school board elections. That’s one of the ways extremists funnel their people into politics and their cases into the legal system.
First, as you know, Colin Allred’s possible Senate run has been in the news for a while now. If you haven’t seen his opening pitch video yet, you should spend those three minutes. It’s both wholesome and a bit of a firecracker (not hard; Ted Cruz is an easy target). The announcement story in the DMN is nothing you haven’t already read, but Ted Cruz’s response is kind of funny (Archive link). We all know Cruz is full of ego, but I think most readers of this blog can think of good reasons why Allred might not spend time getting to know Cruz in person.
The Dallas Observer has a good roundup of local and state reaction. The real news from Dallas, though, will come in the reshuffle of candidates now that Allred’s seat (CD-32) is open. The DMN has some potentials on the Democratic side lined up (Archive link) and they’re collectively a good group. I hope to see a solid reshuffle upwards out of this and wish Allred and whoever wins the Dem nomination for CD-32 the best.
Note: I’m not in Allred’s district though I probably would be in a world where Dallas wasn’t gerrymandered so thoroughly. Instead I was in CD-5 (Lance Gooden of Terrell) until the recent reshuffle and now Beth Van Duyne of Denton and a bunch of other mid-DFW suburbs (CD-24) is my representative, even though I live in northeast Dallas. The only one of my electeds mentioned in the DMN’s potential shuffle is my state Senator, Nathan Johnson, who’s not running.
Next up, in Six Degrees of Clarence Thomas, ProPublica has dropped another bomb: Clarence Thomas Had a Child in Private School. Harlan Crow Paid the Tuition. The kid is Thomas’ grand-nephew whom he and his wife are raising. The one year we know the cost of for sure was $6,000/month. Propublica’s sources indicate that if Crow was paying for all four high school years of the young man’s education, the cost could have been more than $150,000. Thomas failed to report any of these gifts on his disclosure forms. Our only senators have weighed in (Archive link) and they just don’t care.
I’ve come to the conclusion that every time we talk about Thomas’ corruption I’m going to have to go all Cicero: Thomas must be impeached.
Related, in case you were wondering: Here’s how much Harlan Crow donated to Dallas elections this year (Archive link). My house is in council district 10 and I’m pleased to report that I knew better than to vote for the candidate Crow backed before I read this story. It’s interesting to see that in local races (District 1) Crow’s secret funding of Clarence Thomas is a campaign issue worth including on third-party attack mailers.
Also related, nationally: Graham falsely claims all nine justices signed Roberts’s letter expressing ethics hearing “concerns”. I was indignant when I initially read the news about Roberts’ letter but it turns out Lindsey Graham was just flat-out lying that the rest of the Court had signed on to the letter. Apparently there was a separate statement of the current standards of ethics. I think most of you will agree that the current standards are insufficient (as this TAP article describes), but as the linked newsletter explains, what the justices signed was a lot less upsetting than what Graham said they signed on to.
Last, but not least, in big stories, the City of Dallas is under a ransomware attack. Charles pointed me at this Bleeping Computer rundown which tells me where my tax dollars are going when they pay the ransom, and now the city has confirmed (Archive link) the identity of the ransomware.
My water bill was paid just before the attack hit, so I haven’t tried to use the billing interface (which is supposedly affected) but I can get into it. What I immediately noticed was that the library’s database was down, which probably means I don’t have to finish the book I’m reading that’s due by Saturday after all. Other areas that have seen some problems include city courts (closed) and DPD (significantly impacted per Chief Garcia), and the notes system that emergency dispatchers use with 911. Here’s the official city statement about the attack, which is updated daily but doesn’t say much. I hope next week’s dispatch includes news that the attack is over.
In other news, mostly election-related:
- One for Charles: 8-Day Campaign Finance Reports for RISD. This comes from a new-to-me local blog that covers Richardson, the suburb nearest to my house (I’m zoned to RISD but live in Dallas city limits). I’ll be keeping an eye on Mr Steger’s work from here on in.
- Christian activists are fighting to glorify God in a suburban Texas school district. This is Grapevine-Colleyville ISD, and the article is a good primer on the Christian nationalist push into local school districts and the Patriot Mobile funding connection. One piece of information that’s new to me in this article but doesn’t surprise me in the least is that Ted Cruz’s pastor father is involved in Patriot Mobile. One more reason to get Cruz out of the Senate.
- Related: This first-person account of the ongoing problems in GCISD. “We’re all out here voting for Republicans and being told a leftist takeover is happening in our schools.” I found this via Frankin Strong’s substack, which I once again commend to your attention.
- Also in education news, but not about the election: Dallas ISD Superintendent Declares ‘State of Emergency’ on School Pay. “The appeal comes from roughly a dozen districts in the North Texas area, including Mesquite, Richardson, Frisco and Plano ISDs.” These are the suburban districts that kids get out of DISD to attend, so they’re better off than DISD. All of our public schools need more money; please keep that in mind as you vote, and particularly in races where the candidates favor vouchers and other means of putting public money into private schools.
- Nonpartisan no more? PACs and donors shift the scales on fundraising power in Fort Worth. Some interesting numbers and detail on PAC donations for folks following Tarrant County. It’s easy to be nonpartisan when most everyone is a member of the same party, but things don’t work that way in 2023 and certainly not in the last reddish urban area in Texas.
- In stories I thought might take the lead in today’s Dispatches, the DMN had an editorial about our only governor’s recent foot-in-mouth handling of the recent mass shooting in Cleveland: Texas’ latest mass shooting is about guns, not immigration (Archive link). In addition to how bad he looks to Texans, Abbott is a national embarrassment with respect to immigration policy (WaPo) on top of his many other bad policy takes. We have to vote him out.
- Noting here that the latest on Bryan Slaton having sex with an intern too young to drink, mentioned by Charles earlier this week, got no traction with local news in Dallas.
- The Lege is really Charles’ beat but I wanted to note this piece from the DMN: Electric vehicle owners would pay $200 annual fees under Texas bill sent to Gov. Abbott (Archive link). We’re currently considering a new car at our house, and while an additional $200 a year will just be part of the cost consideration if we decide on an EV, it’s enough to make a difference for a lot of people.
- The Dallas Observer asks an important question: Where Do Newer Acts Fit Into SXSW Today? The answer is that SXSW is and has always been about exposure. When we lived in Austin (2007-2018), we were regular SXSW music-goers. One year we fell in love with a band called Katzenjammer that was playing in the street (Sixth is closed to vehicle traffic during the festival). We got their list of gigs and saw them several times during the festival, the last time at the late, lamented Threadgill’s, where I was interviewed by Norwegian TV. David Byrne also saw them at SXSW and they were at Bonnaroo that summer on a stage Byrne curated. (They never hit it really big in the US, alas, and broke up in 2016.) It’s not the norm, but it does happen, so some bands feel it’s worth it to work for the exposure. I’m not a musician, so I don’t have a dog in that hunt, but I can see both sides.
- Exhibit on legendary Black lawman Bass Reeves opens at Fort Worth museum. I didn’t know about the National Multicultural Western Heritage Museum in Fort Worth but I’m going to have to check this exhibit out.
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