This is a weekly feature produced by my friend Ginger. Let us know what you think.
This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth: one of our state senators is going for AG; more about the sale of the DMN to Hearst; Dallas police and court news; Robert Roberson gets another date with the death chamber; Eddie Garcia may be headed to Fort Worth; the latest on the Prairieland ICE detention center attack; Metroplex media on the special session redistricting effort; defunding DART may be back on the menu; the latest on EPIC; Black rodeo; King of the Hill; Dallas’ lack of culture; and more!
This week’s post was brought to you by the music of Lorde.
A short list this week:
- As our host mentioned, local State Senator (from my district) Nathan Johnson is running for Attorney General on the Democratic ticket. I’ve been pretty happy with Johnson. He hasn’t always been as far to the left as I’d like, but he doesn’t seem to be opposed to working with the left, which you can’t say about a lot of centrists. You’ve probably already read the announcement, or as much news about it as you need to, so I’ll point you at Johnson’s conversation with Dallas Morning News political reporter Gromer Jeffers, Jr. and if you need the overview, at KERA, the Dallas Observer, and the Texas Tribune.
- D Magazine drops an important detail about the DMN’s sale to Hearst: DallasNews Corp. was trading at $4.39 before the sale, had been as low as $2.98, and Hearst bought it at $14. Hard to argue with that. The Dallas Observer also has some opinions about the sale in an article titled What The Dallas Morning News Sale Means to a Dallas Times Herald Staffer. The subhead is “Revenge served cold still tastes pretty damned good.” It’s worth reading for an analysis of power in Dallas and the DMN’s editorial agenda.
- A number of items from the Dallas area police and courts:
- A suspect in a robbery died over the weekend in Dallas PD custody. Per the DMN, the deceased had been released from a hospital for a drug overdose. As noted in the DMN, this is the second in-custody death DPD has had this year.
- Kansas City Chiefs received Rashee Rice got 30 days in jail and 5 years’ probation for a drag racing hit-and-run on Central Expressway in the spring of 2024. I’m sure he’s learned his lesson. The Dallas Observer has a timeline if you don’t remember this case. Rice was an SMU player and is still on the Chiefs’ roster.
- D Magazine explains how Dallas may be able to hire enough cops to get us up to the 4,000 required by Prop U in four years. As they note, though, we’re still going to spend an arm and a leg paying for these cops.
- Over in Fort Worth, former DPD Chief Eddie Garcia is apparently up for the top cop job, per WFAA, the DMN, the Dallas Observer, and KERA. Another local outlet that I won’t link to directly because it’s a pink-slime right-wing sewer, the Dallas Express, announced early and incorrectly that the fix was in for Garcia (Bluesky link).
- In other court news, and not good news, we have a new execution date of October 16 for Robert Roberson, the East Texas man convicted in 2003 for killing his child based on now-discredited shaken-baby science. I don’t know why AG Ken Paxton is bound and determined to kill Roberson, but he is. More from KERA, the Texas Tribune, the Dallas Observer, and the Texas Observer.
- You remember when we talked about how Bo French had finally gone too far and had Dan Patrick bop him in the nose with a rolled up Xitter printout on the nose? Local GOP leaders are unsurprisingly standing by their man and the whole thing has basically blown over.
- A federal judge has dismissed another lawsuit over the death of a Tarrant County jail inmate. This time it’s the death of Trelynn Wormley, who died in 2022 of a fentanyl overdose. The Star-Telegram’s coverage of the dismissal is headlined “Federal judge dismisses lawsuit alleging ‘drugs run rampant’ in Tarrant jail”, which is an interesting choice.
- The bizarre case surrounding the shooting at ICE’s Prarieland Detention Center continues, with a twelfth suspect, Benjamin Hanil Song, arrested in Dallas. Fourteen people have been arrested in total; the last two were charged with helping the twelfth suspect, a former Marine reservist, escape arrest. Song has been charged with three federal counts of attempted murder; three federal counts of discharging a firearm during a violent act; and state charges of engaging in organized criminal activity, aggravated assault on a public servant, and aiding in commission of terrorism. More from the DMN.
- The Star-Telegram ran an op-ed on Paxton divorce won’t matter in his Senate primary and why it should. I agree that Paxton’s “private” conduct (to the extent that it’s still private after the impeachment and trial two years ago) reflects a pattern that should disturb voters. But I also think there’s plenty of evidence in his public life that should be disqualifying. Republican voters in this state clearly disagree. I’m not keen on sealing the Paxton divorce records more for reasons of privilege than because of any prurient interest in what’s in there. That said, I’m pretty sure that whatever recent discovery prompted Angela Paxton to finally kick Ken’s sorry ass to the curb is also relevant to this pattern. It doesn’t mean the voters would listen this time around even if they could hear what he’s (alleged to have) done.
- I have three items on the upcoming redistricting effort in the special session from the Metroplex’s papers for your review. First, the DMN would like you to know that experts say that redistricting might backfire on the GOP. This story has some good maps of the Houston and Fort Worth maps that are due for reconfiguration and explains that the effort is also aimed at changing boundaries in South Texas, where Republicans have been trying to grab seats for a while. Second, the Dallas Observer says “duh” to the observation that Texas has a gerrymandering problem and how the state’s agreement to the Trump DOJ’s complaints about minority coalition districts contradicts its stance in the recent lawsuit by LULAC and the NAACP. And the Star-Telegram, whose headline on its article is the much blander “Texas redrawing congressional district after feds say maps unconstitutional”, focuses on CD 33, which includes parts of Fort Worth and is currently held by Democrat Marc Veasey. Tarrant County Commissioner Alisa Simmons, the Arlington Democrat who was the chief target of the recent Tarrant County redistricting, says Tarrant County was the test run for the state’s plan.
- Speaking of the special session, five cities in the DART service area, led by Plano, want to revive the bills from the regular session to cut DART’s funding and reconstitute its board with less influence from Dallas.
- Just when we thought we’d gotten rid of Dr. Phil with the bankruptcy of Merit Street Media, he’s back with a new company, Envoy Media. Envoy will be headquartered somewhere in the Dallas area, and combine news, entertainment, and “citizen journalism”. More from the Hollywood Reporter.
- Longtime readers of Dallas-area news may remember the scandal in the University of North Texas music department over the Journal of Schenkerian Studies and racism some years ago. The professor whose statements set the incident off back in 2020 sued the school and has just been awarded $725K in a settlement over the whole thing. Of interest to readers here: one of Professor Timothy Jackson’s attorneys was former Texas Solicitor General Jonathan Mitchell.
- In the latest on EPIC City, the Texas Funeral Service Commission is permitting the East Plano Islamic Center to perform burial rites again, two weeks after EPIC sued the commission.
- This week I learned that the 36th annual Texas Black Invitational Rodeo will be held in Fair Park on July 26. It celebrates the historical legacy of Black cowboys, which most people don’t know much about. The DMN has the story.
- King of the Hill is coming back: a new trailer dropped this week for the revival, which will be season 14 of the show. I learned from the DMN article that the fictional town of Arlen is based on Richardson, which makes it even more interesting to me. Also fascinating to me as an oil brat who lived abroad as a teen: Hank and Peggy have been living in “the compound” in Saudi Arabia.
- Last, but not least, the DMN isn’t immune to the lure of hanging a Reddit link out there as a story source. This time it’s about Dallas’ lack of culture. I read the Reddit post and the overwhelming votes for Dallas as the city with no culture in the comments. I think what they’re getting at is that Dallas has no unifying points in its culture other than money and status. Its arts and music scenes aren’t united around anything and the city is pretty blandly white where there are east and south Asian cultural hubs in the suburbs. Houston has some of the same problems but the people are friendlier, which makes up for a lot.