This is a weekly feature produced by my friend Ginger. Let us know what you think.
This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth: more about redistricting; the good, bad, and indifferent about the first draft of Dallas’ budget; trouble in Deep Ellum (and not the Deep Ellum Blues kind); the departure of Dallas’ election chief; news from area schools; the latest awfulness from the mouth and keyboard of Bo French; transportation news, including the it-ain’t-dead-yet-honest bullet train; news from the suburbs; the latest on Dr. Phil and his media empire; wildlife gone wild; and the newest smoothie from Coppell-based Smoothie King. And more!
This week’s post was brought to you by the music of Annie-Claude Deschè‚nes, whose French new wave music I found, again, through the algorithm, and Empress Of, whom I knew of and had actually seen at SXSW back when we regularly attended, but hadn’t gone back to in a while.
Let’s start this week with redistricting. Our host has been keeping us all up to date on the statewide issues, but there are always local angles here in the Metroplex. Here are a few stories you might be interested in, mostly from local news outlets:
- The Fort Worth Report talked to State Rep. Chris Turner (D-Arlington) about Ken Paxton’s threats to get him and his colleagues removed from office.
- WFAA talked to State Rep. Shelly Luther (R-Sherman) who told us the Dems who broke quorum might lose seniority, chairmanships, and even their parking spaces! If you’re remembering her name and don’t know why, Luther parlayed her quarantine-breaking haircut for Ted Cruz a few years ago into a term at the statehouse.
- The Dallas Observer talks about the 2003 quorum break and how it compares to the current quorum break. If that’s not enough history for you, Texas Monthly, the Texas Tribune, and even the Atlantic are in on the quorum break discussion.
- And taking the history back even further, KERA tells us about quorum breaking in the wild session of 1870 and how it allegedly got one senator removed from office.
- Beto O’Rourke held a rally in Fort Worth over the weekend. I was unfortunately unable to attend, but KERA and the Star-Telegram both covered it.
- And of course Ken Paxton came to Tarrant County to shop for a favorable judge in his efforts to stop Beto’s Powered by People from supporting the quorum-breakers. He managed to get a TRO from an Abbott-appointed judge in the 348th District Court and after the rally, took some out-of-context quotes from Beto’s remarks to try to get the judge to jail Beto.
Meanwhile, in more local news, we also have some stories for you:
- The biggest thing in Dallas news is the city budget. The Dallas Morning News has seven things you should know about the $5.2 billion budget, which has the shadow of the Dallas HERO propositions hanging over it. We’re going to boost police spending, cut jobs and close pools, pay more for water, cut four library branches, including Skillman, which barely survived last year, and, under certain circumstances, reduce property taxes for some homeowners. City Council has had its first look and we’ll see what happens down the road as the Council’s rubber hits the budget.
- Everybody wants to know what the city is going to do about ICE now that Keller has decided to suck up to the feds. Local residents, the police oversight board, and local Congresswoman Julie Johnson all want to know whether new chief Daniel Comeaux intends to cozy up to ICE, but nobody has any answers yet. My suspicion is that the answer is yes, that it’s a directive from our party-switching mayor, and that Comeaux got the job over interim chief Igo because he wasn’t willing to work with ICE. That’s just me, so take it with a grain of salt until we get actual answers.
- Meanwhile, Dallas is also dealing with the fallout of the federal demand that cities give up their DEI programs if they want federal money. While community leaders want the city to live up to their previous commitments to DEI and equity, Dallas has already begun to review arts and culture grants for the forbidden concepts. This is one of those items where elections have consequences, and here I don’t mean just the federal election, but the votes for our party-switching nonentity of a mayor.
- Deep Ellum is dealing with a lot of violence, and in the absence of police action, landlords are starting to act to preserve their assets. A particularly controversial club, Rodeo, was locked out by its landlord recently. Meanwhile, Dallas PD has released a crime report on Deep Ellum that makes it sound safer than it is: they’re missing a lot of data. This is the kind of story the Dallas Observer does well, so I hope they keep focusing on it it. Also, I’d like to note that this is happening while we’re about to spend a ton of money on the cops in this Republican-led city. Somehow I don’t think Deep Ellum will be where that money goes.
- I was pleased when Dallas County hired Heider Garcia to head elections here after Tim O’Hare forced him out. Now I’m sad that he’s quitting in the runup to the November elections. If they don’t hire a successor in time, which is by the end of the month, the November elections will be run by Garcia’s deputy.
- The Dallas Observer asks why Dallas can’t ban short-term rentals and Fort Worth could. The answer seems to be both slight differences in how the laws were drawn up and bad luck in court.
- Fort Worth is also working on its 2026 budget and homeowners face lower taxes and higher fees with a net loss to taxpayers of about $3 a month.
- Fort Worth City Council also has no imminent plans to partner with ICE, according to council members who spoke to the Fort Worth Report.
- And Council also discussed the application of former Dallas PD chief Eddie Garcia, which arrived “late” after the June 4 deadline. Apparently the deadline wasn’t hard, so technically Garcia’s June 9 application wasn’t late.
- I was wondering about the lawsuit where Tim O’Hare and his cronies on Commissioners’ Court hired that connected lawyer to defend the District Clerk. KERA covered it this week: turns out it’s three angry guys who have divorce cases pending in Tarrant County courts and aren’t happy with how the District Clerk handled their cases. Apparently he’s been doing mean things like deferring to the judge on how evidence should be submitted.
- A late-breaking item: the League of Women Voters and LULAC are suing Tarrant County over their redistricting.
- Bo French, chair of the Tarrant County GOP, cannot keep his mouth shut. This time he’s spouting bigoted garbage about State Rep. Salman Bhojani (D-Euless), who is in Pakistan for a family emergency. On Xitter, French claimed Bhojani was anti-American and called for his denaturalization and deportation. I don’t expect Dan Patrick to whap French across the muzzle with a newspaper over this set of posts.
- Let’s talk about what’s going on in area schools:
- There are a number of stories about the possible state takeover of Fort Worth ISD. The two I found most important are State Sen Phil King (R-Weatherford) wanting the state to take over and the preview results for FWISD (also in the Star-Telegram). The Fort Worth Report also covered the STAAR results, which are a major factor in school ratings.
- Hurst-Euless-Bedford ISD will ask residents for a slight tax rate increase on the November ballot. If they get the tax increase, that should cover about $12 million of the $20.6 million deficit this year.
- Keller ISD is in the news over the lawsuits about its attempted split earlier this year. The board (a separate entity from the district) is trying to block the release of the latest invoices from their law firm and the plaintiffs in the lawsuit over the Open Meetings Act are trying to have the TEA oversee the district’s meetings so they’ll stop hiding what they’re doing.
- In the Dallas area, parents should expect to spend about $750 this year on clothes and supplies for school. That’s about 1/3 higher than the national average.
- Speaking of money and schools, there’s a ProPublica/Texas Tribune report on how Texas private schools hire family members and enrich insiders and it calls some Dallas-area private schools like Cristo Rey Dallas College Prep and Greenhill School out.
- One of the smaller legislative issues that’s off the table because of the quorum break is the revived attempt by the suburban cities served by DART to cut back on their transit payments. The Dallas Observer explains the problem, which we’ve talked about before, and KERA reports on how mad people who actually use public transit are about the prospective cuts.
- Meanwhile, regional leaders at the 2025 Infrastructure Summit in Irving discussed how to deal with DFW’s booming population in a “Transit 2.0” plan.
- There are also still folks asking whether we can salvage the Dallas to Houston bullet train. Some local leaders are still trying to get the money despite it being explicitly denied funds in the recent federal budget. Meanwhile a Fort Worth businessman is trying to get Donald Trump to take some money away from California and give it to Texas for the “shovel-ready” bullet train project.
- We also have some items from the DFW suburbs:
- There was an oil spill in Arlington back in May, and now that the Environmental Protection Agency is reporting on the cleanup, it turns out the spill was 6,200 barrels instead of the initially reported 2,600.
- Arlington is paying AT&T Stadium construction debt Friday, which is about 10 years earlier than expected.
- Arlington, like every other municipality, is looking at a tax hike. Local residents can say their piece at two town halls.
- Having gotten its hooks into Keller, ICE wants to talk to Denton about partnering with Denton PD.
- After the City of Garland bulldozed part of Spring Creek Forest, it’s working with a local preservation group to restore the damaged area.
- An inmate died in the Garland Detention Center this week. He’d complained of feeling ill, been sent to a local hospital, and returned the day before. This is the second death of a prisoner in Garland police custody in the last month.
- The University of North Texas told DACA students that from Friday forward they would no longer pay in-state tuition. This is a result of federal policy changes around Dreamers. In entirely unrelated news, UNT may lose up to $50 million as foreign students wisely choose not to come to the US under current administration policies. Other schools are also losing foreign students with a resulting decline in income.
- In the long-running lawsuits around Robert Morris, the former pastor of Gateway, the Southlake megachurch, three former elders deny they defamed Cindy Clemishire. Clemishire, in case you’ve forgotten the awful details of this case, was a tween back in the 80s when former pastor Robert Morris started sexually abusing her. When the story initially came out, Morris’ behavior was cast as a consensual extramarital affair: a lapse in judgement on his part. The defamation case will go to trial next June.
- The Dallas Observer has an op-ed from a veterans’ activist on what the federal cuts to the VA will mean for Dallas. It’s not good.
- I saw a couple of interesting stories about local media baron-wannabe Dr. Phil this week. The first one is about the Professional Bull Riders and the bankruptcy of Merit Street Media. The PBR is getting left in the dust by the failure of Merit Street, while Dr. Phil is moving on to his new startup, Envoy Media Co. Meanwhile, the New York Times profiles Dr. Phil and his hard right turn, including his recent embedded “journalism” with ICE.
- North Texas has had 15 ozone alert days so far this summer. Last year we had 43 total.
- Candy’s Dirt talks about subsidence in DFW and its effect on our building boom and house market.
- It looks like we may have a compromise over the Marvin Nichols Reservoir, the subject of a conflict between North Texas and East Texas. They’re going to kick Marvin Nichols out another 20 years and consider a different reservoir, Toledo Bend, on the state border with Louisiana now.
- Tatsu is our only Michelin-starred restaurant in Dallas for now, but it’s also up for a more important award: best restroom in America. I clearly need to move Tatsu up my list of omakase restaurants to try!
- Mark Lamster, the DMN’s architecture critic, reviews the restoration of St. Stephen United Methodist Church in Mesquite, an avant-garde 1960s architectural experiment.
- Texas Parks and Wildlife caught Big Dude, a 10-foot, 300 lb. alligator in Eagle Mountain Lake last week. They measured him, tagged him, and released him further away from people. If that wasn’t enough for you, the Dallas Observer is here to tell you about other local summer critters: snakes (copperheads, rattlesnakes, cottonmouths, and coral snakes), mosquitoes with the potential for giving you West Nile, tarantualas, and bobcats. It’s enough to make a body stay inside all summer.
- Last but not least, local firm Smoothie King has partnered with a national firm for a new smoothie flavor! The partner is Heinz and the smoothie flavor is ketchup. Food and Wine has more, including the sad(?) news that they will be available in Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Miami, and New York, but not here in Texas. I’m not even sure you could sell that at the State Fair!