Dispatches from Dallas, October 20 edition

This is a weekly feature produced by my friend Ginger. Let us know what you think.

This week we have a long entry after a respiratory bug bit me last week. (The RAT said it wasn’t COVID and I’m recovering now.) Big news in the Metroplex includes Nazis in Fort Worth and the fallout from it; local news about the special session on vouchers; a shooting at the State Fair here in Dallas; a not-so-new face to take over Dallas County elections; local representatives involved in the House Speaker elections; Sidney Powell flips; and more.

This week’s post has been brought to you by the music of Peter Gabriel, whose show I am going to see tonight if it kills me.

We’ll start with the Nazis in Fort Worth a couple of weeks ago. A bunch of men wearing swastikas had lunch in a Torchy’s Tacos near the Fort Worth medical center where they were recorded in a viral video. The Torchy’s is in walking distance from several hotels; we stay in the area for Fort Worth concerts and museum trips. And we’ve walked down to that Torchy’s for dinner ourselves.

Then it turned out the same characters had also been thrown out of a gun show at the nearby Will Rogers Memorial Center and spread flyers in the nearby Botanic Gardens. Another bunch of haters, possibly the same ones, also showed up to protest at a queer church in Oak Lawn here in Dallas. The Observer has a rundown of their activities along with other recent hate incidents in the Metroplex. (Note: The SPLC says 72 hate and extremist groups call Texas home.)

It turns out that at the same time, hatemonger Nick Fuentes, was in Fort Worth meeting for seven hours with former state Rep. Jonathan Stickland, whose name will be familiar to longtime readers of this blog. These days, Stickland is (or rather was up until this incident) running Pale Horse Strategies and Defend Texas Liberty. The latter group is deeply tied up with the successful effort to keep AG Ken Paxton in office.

When the news broke, some Republicans donated the money Defend Texas Liberty sent them to Jewish causes; others did not, most prominently Lite Guv Dan Patrick, who had received $3 million from Defend Texas Liberty back in June. The scandal even got national attention from Popular Information’s Judd Legum.

The bad publicity was too much for the folks financing Defend Texas Liberty (Tim Dunn and the Wilks brothers, Farris and Dan). Stickland got the sack and was replaced by another GOP operative whose name we’ll come to recognize unless he makes the same mistake.

Two good pieces with the implications for the Legislature come from the Texas Tribune, which focuses on following the money and Texas Monthly, which focuses on the (lack of) morals and GOP infighting. The Tribune piece features a lot of familiar North Texas names in addition to Stickland, like Shelley Luther (the anti-lockdown hairdresser), former Rep. Bryan Slaton (the one who got himself expelled), and Phillip Huffines, whose twin brother Don, the former state rep and later gubernatorial candidate, will be more familiar to readers.

Related to all this is Defend Texas Liberty’s threat to primary anyone who voted to convict Ken Paxton in the Senate or to impeach him in the House. You can pick your sources for the general coverage: the DMN; the Dallas Observer; or the Texas Tribune. Most recently Mitch Little, who was part of Paxton’s senate defense team, filed to run in HD65, where he used to work for Rep. Kronda Thimesch until she voted to impeach. The Texas Tribune has more on this one. We can expect more internecine filing as we get closer to the deadline.

From the Lege wrangling over Nazis, we move to the Lege wrangling over vouchers. (Explainer about special sessions from KERA.) Business Republicans are against Abbott’s voucher plans, per this DMN op-ed “written with” a list of area Chambers of Commerce as long as my arm. D Magazine has a “who benefits” explainer that I like, and they quote my state senator, Nathan Johnson. They also refer you to a number of sources, including this this DMN map of private schools in Texas. To be fair, there are definitely pro-voucher voices in Metroplex media, represented here by this Star-Telegram op-ed and this DMN op-ed. The Star-Telegram also hosted a debate this week between voucher advocates and public school supporters.

I’m not going into how the voucher debate is further tied into the rivalry between Dade Phelan and Dan Patrick, nor how Governor Abbott has used vouchers as a bully club against legislation sponsored by legislators who voted against them. Our host has those angles covered. I will add a few pieces to the larger puzzle, though: A DMN editorial on how school districts should stop fighting the new TEA ratings scheme on the grounds they should have seen it coming and prepared (during COVID, I guess). And one on a favorite beat of mine: DISD has more teachers on H-1B visas than any other district in the country, with 232. HISD is second, with only 60. And last, but not least, here’s an editorial from the Star-Telegram where the board would like the Lege to get its act together and Phelan and Patrick to stop fighting. Good luck with that, y’all.

Meanwhile, here in Dallas, a big ongoing story is the shooting at the State Fair. Here’s an (updated) explainer about what happened. The gist of it is some folks had guns, they had previous beef, and somebody starting shooting. Three people were injured, one of whom was a Fair worker, but nobody died. One shooter was arrested and claimed self-defense; the Fair was evacuated for the evening (Saturday) and started late the next day (Sunday). The big question seems to be “is the Fair safe?” which, given the money that the Fair brings to the city, is important. I know I’ve decided we’re passing on the Fair this year and social media chatter in my circle suggests I’m not alone.

Specific safety questions about the Fair include its contradictory gun policies (which I’ve linked news about before) and its new-this-year metal detectors. D Magazine, the Star-Telegram, and the Observer have more. But the important thing is that we don’t blame the Fair (when the problem is people with guns, not the Fair, thanks DMN). And the the Fair will not change its gun policies. As you may remember, the State Fair doesn’t allow unsupervised teens in the evenings because they make trouble, but the Fair will not ban guns.

And last, but not least, welcome news: Dallas County elections administrator Michael Scarpello announced last week he was quitting at the end of the year, leaving everybody worried about who was going to lead the county’s elections through the 2024 primaries and the presidential election. It turns out Fort Worth’s loss is Dallas’ gain: Heider Garcia is moving across the Metroplex to take the Dallas County job. More coverage here from KERA, the DMN, the Star-Telegram, and the Texas Tribune. I for one welcome my new election overlord and wish him well (and many fewer threats) in his new position.

In other, but no less important, stories:

• In national news, Dallas lawyer Sidney Powell flipped on Donald Trump in the Georgia RICO case. She pled guilty to six misdemeanors, accepted six years of probation, a $6000 fine, and agreed to write a letter of apology to Georgia and her citizens in addition to her future testimony. This story is everywhere, but here are the DMN and the Star-Telegram on it. Couldn’t happen to a nicer.
• Also on the national beat, Fort Worth Rep. Kay Granger is in trouble with MAGA types for voting for Steve Scalise instead of Jim Jordan for Speaker of the House. She’s not the only one: at least two other House reps have had death threats plus other threats for voting for Scalise and Granger herself. Unsurprisingly the Star-Telegram has an op-ed supporting their homegirl. I would also like to point out how wrong and terrible it is that death threats against elected representatives are a normal and expected part of political discourse.
• Popping back to the Lege and Nazis, Sen. Bob Hall of Edgewood, in Van Zandt County, compared COVID vaccine requirements to Nazi experimentation. This was in the context of SB7, which would forbid private companies requiring the vaccine for their workers. If you want the no-Nazi version of that argument, the Star-Telegram has that. As a person with chronic autoimmune problems, I’m against this legislation, particularly as it applies to health care workers. Vaccines work and herd immunity works, and they work because everyone gets vaccinated. But as our host likes to say, this isn’t going to change until we vote the terrible people out of office.
• On the book banning beat: it’s now in jails, too, through a program that limits folks buying books for prisoners to approved vendors. Except nobody knows what that means or how to get approved. Back in the schools, Plano ISD still has naughty books on its shelves so they have to get rid of them. Need to catch up on statewide news about the bans? You can do that with this Texas Tribune/ProPublica piece. Nationally, the 19th News reports that book bans in public schools rose by a third in the 2022-2023 school year compared to the previous year. But the kids are all right even so: Southlake Carroll students are forming a banned books club, which is the best response to the adults telling them they can’t.
• In the DMN, Gromer Jeffers speculates that Mayor Johnson’s decision to switch parties will make Dallas government more partisan. This is worth reading for the careful description of finding business-minded candidates in north Dallas and making them acceptable in south Dallas without mentioning how this arrangement or, er, accommodation is all about white Republicans and Black votes.
• On the heat beat, Rep. Jasmine Crockett is asking the USPS to look into the heat-related death of postal carrier Eugene Gates this summer. And the Dallas Fed reports that climate change and super-hot summers are bad for the Texas economy to the tune of $24 billion this year. Read up at the Texas Tribune. Also, the DMN reports on a new climate vulnerability map. Unsurprisingly, a lot of how climate change affects you depends on how wealthy your area is.
• We have two items from Six Degrees of Clarence Thomas this week. First, ProPublica is back on Clarence Thomas’ trips to the Koch network events, where it looks like he violated even his own narrow interpretation of disclosure requirements. And closer to home, turns out our old friend Harlan Crow donated to Cornell West’s presidential campaign and also to Chris Christie, plus a million to Christie’s PAC.
• Here’s a ranking where Dallas doesn’t want to be number one: expensive homes. Housing is less affordable in Dallas than it is in Chicago and almost as expensive as New York.
• On the higher education beat, we have a couple of stories. First, Texas’ only journalism school, at UNT, may be downgraded to a department. Second, TCU students and professors are complaining that the university doesn’t support its queer community after conservative fundraisers used a course on drag taught at TCU to raise money and cause a ruckus. Apparently the harassment was so bad that the professor who taught the course was advised to leave campus, but TCU did and said nothing to protect the professor or students.
• In no way related: JPS, the private health network that runs Fort Worth’s biggest hospital, pulled funding for a UNT Health Science Center conference a day before it was to be held because the conference had sessions discussing abortion and gender-affirming surgery. The conference, which offered continuing education for medical professionals, was cancelled.
• Homegrown Democratic Senate candidate Colin Allred is ahead of rival Roland Gutierrez 20 to 1 in fundraising. Per the DMN, part of Gutierrez’s problem is that he’s had to spend time in the Lege this summer. Allred has also beaten out Ted Cruz and the numbers Beto O’Rourke was posting at the comparable period in his 2018 campaign.
• A good question: How is the city of Dallas going to regulate autonomous cars when they show up here? KERA looked into this and it’s not clear, not least because state law says cities can’t regulate them.
• Here’s a good-news story about the Lege and public education: DISD is now putting all kids who score well on fifth-grad math exams in advanced math the next year after a bipartisan law mandated the change. Unsurprisingly, it was Black and Hispanic kids who were missing out on honors classes. One student mentioned in the article is an immigrant kid from Myanmar who had no idea honors classes even existed.
• If you’re interested in canon law and its intersection with civil law, you may want to read this explainer about the ongoing legal dispute between those nuns in Fort Worth and the bishop. As someone who studied medieval legal history, I’m fascinated.
• Today I learned about the history of Mormon temples in Fort Worth. It’s mentioned in passing in the article, but the church will break ground for an LDS temple in Burleson next week.
• The Dallas Symphony has a concert truck and it’s back! If you want to catch it, the orchestra’s web site tells you when and where you can find the moving music.
• The Modern in Fort Worth has a large-scale exhibit of the art of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, a citizen of Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation. This is the museum’s first major show focusing on a Native American artist and and her first retrospective. The Fort Worth Report’s story makes it sound fun as well as interesting, so I’m putting it on our list between now and when it closes in late January.
• Last but not least, the estate auction of visual effects artist Greg Jein in Irving included an original X-Wing prop from Star Wars in 1977 that sold for $3.1 million. The auction included other props and effects pieces and brought in $13.6 million for props including an original Stormtrooper costume, a spacesuit from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and a model of the Starfleet Galileo shuttlecraft from the original Star Trek series. All the good stuff was well out of my price range, but I wish I’d been able to see it.

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