Good morning and congratulations. You made it through the primary elections. Your phone should stop vibrating through your pocket any day now—except for, maybe, the voters who will return to the polls in the May runoff to determine candidates like attorney general. 

The Dallas results came late: The county GOP’s decision to hem voters into their precincts on Election Day led to widespread confusion that prompted a district judge to keep the Democratic polls open until 9 p.m. That decision got shot down by the Texas Supreme Court, which ordered ballots from voters who got in line after 7 p.m. to be held as conditional until a future ruling—it’s still unclear how polling places separated those voters. 

The horserace of politics isn’t necessarily our bag, but policy certainly is. Particularly how that policy manifests in communities of all sizes, whether countywide, a neighborhood, or a single block or apartment complex. So rather than focus on winners and losers, today we’re spotlighting some of the issues most critical for our elected officials to get right.

Some of the people whose names you pressed on that ballot screen will compete in November’s general election. Everyone from a justice of the peace who will dole out judgments from a small North Dallas courtroom in a drab government center to those who will serve in the halls of the U.S. Congress play a role in how government works for you. 

So as the candidates begin pulling up their campaign signs, we invite you to spend some time with these stories from The Lab Report’s first eight months of publication and consider what’s at stake when you vote Nov. 3. — Matt Goodman

The fight over whether to extend tax credits that made Affordable Care Act plans cheaper led to the federal government’s longest shutdown in history last fall. Congress failed to renew those enhanced subsidies, and healthcare affordability debates have only intensified since. In 2026, monthly premiums doubled or tripled for some people. A January poll by KFF, a nonpartisan health research group, found that 66 percent of respondents ranked healthcare affordability as the nation’s top economic concern—above utilities, food, and housing. The Trump administration has proposed new rules for Affordable Care Act plans, but policy experts doubt these changes will meaningfully reduce the cost of care for the most vulnerable.

The uncertainty over funding, coupled with the deepest cuts to Medicaid in 60 years, left some of North Texas’ safety net entities, including Parkland Health, adjusting on the fly. When The Lab Report spoke with Parkland’s top financial officials in the fall, the health system was bracing for a $130 million loss from cuts to a single program (Medicaid DSH) this fiscal year. Early last month, Congress eliminated the scheduled cuts to that program until 2028. While the policy whiplash continues, many families are still contending with higher health insurance costs and economic anxieties that are expected to play a large role in the voting booth this election season. — Kelli Smith

Despite North Texas’ continued economic growth, the cost of goods and services has left many local residents in financial distress. Wages don’t even keep up with the basics; for some families, putting a roof over their children’s heads and food on the table is a weekly struggle. Toni Johnson, a 24-7 volunteer for Roosevelt High School and its families in east Oak Cliff, sees the downstream realities every day. 

She has no time for the affordability debate; she’s busy securing food, clothing, furniture and even medical help for the families who make up “Velt Nation.” Another miracle worker is Family Gateway’s Anastasia Nixon, who meets with families whom her nonprofit has temporarily placed in bare-bones motels and helps them figure out where they go from here. The demand for housing has grown beyond the space Family Gateway can provide in its own buildings, and those in need come not just from Dallas County but increasingly from Collin and Denton counties as well. Amid the growing affordability debate, The Lab Report also interviewed Dallas economist Cullum Clark about the badly outdated formula used to define poverty and what that means for establishing thresholds for benefits. — Sharon Grigsby

In 2023, the Texas Legislature failed to pass legislation that supporters contended would make it easier to build much-needed housing. But things can change fast in Austin. Two years later, the next session ended with new laws that significantly hampered the ability of local governments to restrict housing development by way of zoning and land use rules. Now all commercially zoned land can hold apartments and mixed-use developments. The governor signed laws barring large cities from forcing lots in new subdivisions to be larger than 3,000 square feet; most lots in Dallas are 7,500 square feet. Lawmakers also loosened building codes to allow for smaller apartment buildings and made it more difficult for neighbors to kill housing projects they don’t like.  

Other bills came nowhere near the governor’s pen. One that would allow houses of worship to bypass zoning regulations to build housing on their properties died in committee, swallowed up in the controversy led by the attorney general after a Plano-based Mosque announced plans to build a thousand homes as part of a 402-acre development.

Broader rules allowing smaller lot sizes in already-developed neighborhoods, which detractors say would introduce density to built-out residential neighborhoods of single-family homes, still seemed too radical for the body. And another attempt at allowing accessory dwelling units—a back house, mother-in-law suite, whatever you’d like to call it—didn’t make it through.   

In 2023, Democrats built a coalition to kill those bills in the name of protecting local control. That may have been their last gasp—even the Texas comptroller is sounding the alarm that the state needs to build more places for people to live to accommodate population growth. Expect incoming lawmakers to walk right into this debate once the 90^th legislative session begins next January. — M.G.

Whichever state and federal lawmakers win the day in November’s general election, how they vote on allocating various funding streams can make or break local projects and nonprofits. For example, while money for Halperin Park, the 3-acre greenspace set to open in late spring over Interstate 35 near the Dallas Zoo, came from a variety of sources, construction wouldn’t have been possible without the $40 million from the North Central Texas Council of Governments. That money, in turn, came from federal and state transportation funds. Or consider the Recovery Resource Council’s overdose response teams, formed in response to the fentanyl crisis and which operate in Dallas, Denton, and McKinney, as well as in towns across Tarrant and Hunt counties. An $11.5 million federal grant to Dallas County in 2023 powered the operation; three years later, the number of fentanyl deaths are dropping. When Washington cut the nonprofit’s budget by about $730,000 last year, local municipalities stepped in to close the gap. — S.G.

Justices of the Peace are decided in the hinterlands of your ballot, below the blizzard of criminal and civil and appellate judges and just above the constables and precinct chairs. Their placement is one of those cruel quirks of such a stacked election; these officials wield immense power, particularly over people who stand to lose their homes, and they often go unnoticed. There are 10 of these courts in Dallas County, where the justice presides over evictions, weddings, small claims, and traffic fines.

Since the pandemic, these elected officials have attracted more attention for their role in evictions—particularly because the judges have so much power over how they interpret and apply the law. The tax attorney Mark Melton has a lot to do with our broader awareness of what these people do. He launched his nonprofit Dallas Eviction Advocacy Center to help tenants while holding these officials accountable. Staffing pro bono attorneys in every JP court helps ensure that landlords have followed the rules before they try to remove a tenant. An expert is watching. Without an attorney to make the legal argument, tenants who represent themselves are often fish food.

They must prove their landlord didn’t follow a very specific set of rules governed by state law around how and when they provide notice. That’s the job of a lawyer. 

Here’s how Stuart Campbell, DEAC’s chief legal officer, described the impact of their work to me last September: “We started with a 96 percent win rate, meaning 96 percent of the clients we represented were not evicted. Now on a good month we’re at 60 percent; on a bad month, it’s in the mid 50s. So we’re still winning over half of our cases but our win rate has significantly decreased, which we see as a benefit. That means the law is being complied with.”

After last night’s primary, four of the 10 Justices of the Peace will be new to the bench. There have been nearly 47,000 evictions filed over the last 12 months, according to Princeton’s Eviction Lab. They will have much to consider. — M.G. 

The problems associated with Dallas County’s overcrowded jail came up repeatedly in local campaign forums. While no one has found a solution, elected leaders and staff as well as the current district attorney’s office remain intent on finding ways to get people with serious mental health conditions away from the jail and toward support services. The county’s only deflection center, near Dallas’ southern border, didn’t break the cycle of repeat trips to the jail; a similar effort has since opened at Austin Street Center where DART officers can shuttle riders who otherwise may have faced a criminal trespass charge. A separate strategy that is paying off is the DA’s Mental Health Division’s with Metrocare, the county’s largest provider of mental health services, to create a critical time intervention team of case workers and peer specialists that allows assistant DAs to offer more offenders pre-trial intervention agreements. When the federal grant ran out in September, commissioners voted to fund the work this year. — S.G.

Dallas, like most big cities across the U.S., reported its lowest homicide tally in a decade in 2025, but the nation’s historic drops in violence haven’t quelled concerns over law and order. Local police are forced to address perceptions of public safety that can be amplified by elected officials, even if the broader narrative isn’t backed by crime data. 

In Dallas, police and specialized city employees continue to target violent crime, but other priorities have also risen to the surface. That includes safety downtown, where police recently deployed an influx of officers after a few high-profile crimes and concern about the central business district’s larger vitality. 

Dallas police Chief Daniel Comeaux has also had to grapple with scrutiny over whether his officers have worked with federal immigration agents as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. Comeaux, who became Dallas’ top cop in April, has said the department is not engaging in immigration enforcement actions because such a partnership could harm his officers’ attempts to build community trust. It also could tie up resources at a time in which the department is trying to lower its high response times. 

Last month, The Lab Report explored the tough decisions regarding resource allocation that top cops like Comeaux have to make when competing priorities and rhetoric can shape perceptions of safety. — K.S.

Matt Goodman is the co-founder and editor of The Lab Report. [email protected]. Sharon Grigsby is the co-founder and senior staff writer. [email protected]. Kelli Smith is the staff writer. [email protected].

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The Lab Report Dallas is a local journalism project published by the Child Poverty Action Lab (CPAL). Its newsroom operates with editorial independence.

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