Multiple Dallas City Council members decided not to show up to Tuesday’s scheduled meeting of the city’s ad hoc COVID-19 economic recovery committee. Without a quorum, the meeting couldn’t go on, so it adjourned without getting a briefing on “Dallas First,” an initiative favored by Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, which…
Jerry Jones is off his yacht and back at the office. Video released Tuesday afternoon by the Cowboys from The Star revealed the team’s owner carefully abiding by physical distancing and face covering guidelines as he reopened his team’s headquarters. Being the owner of one of the world’s richest sports…
Vote-by-mail for all Texans who want it is back on after a U.S. District Court Judge ruled Tuesday night that fear of the coronavirus is reason enough to ask for an absentee ballot. The Texas Attorney General’s Office and plaintiffs including the Texas Democratic Party have gone back and forth…
Texas has been mixing results from test results for active COVID-19 infections with numbers from another test for antibodies that shows whether those tested had the disease anytime in the past, according to a news report. The result is further muddying of the flood of numbers used to measure how…
Daycare centers, bars, professional sports and summer camps are the headliners of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s newly announced plans to continuing reopening the state as it navigates its way through the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Childcare facilities and personal care businesses like massage parlors and tattoo shops can open immediately. Bars…
Mail-in voting, at least for the time being, is once again limited to Texans over the age of 65, those with physical disabilities or illnesses and those who will be out of the county in which they are registered to vote for the duration of early voting and election day…
Let’s take a moment, as we start week 39 or so of COVID-related quarantine, to mourn the brain power we’ve collectively wasted worrying, hoping and strategizing about the potential return of sports. It turns out the key to getting baseball, basketball, hockey and soccer back on our TVs and back…
Thanks to the design of the American healthcare system and Texas’ failure to expand access to Medicaid, the results of a new Kaiser Family Foundation study into COVID-19’s effects on access to health insurance aren’t surprising. It doesn’t make them any less of a crisis or Texas Sen. John Cornyn’s…
Wednesday’s twist in Texas’ ongoing, coronavirus-inspired battle over mail-in voting was Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton attempting to enlist the help of the Texas Supreme Court to stop counties who want to expand ballot access. In Thursday’s turn in the same sage, a state appeals court affirmed that, during the…
Not content fighting just one legal battle against expanding access to mail-in ballots during the coronavirus pandemic, Texas Attorney Ken Paxton wants the state’s Supreme Court to help him force people to the polls during July’s primary runoffs and November’s general election. As the pandemic has continued and the elections have…
There’s reopening and then there’s reopening, Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson told reporters Tuesday afternoon. It’s one thing for businesses and other public facilities to be open. It’s another for Dallas residents to have the confidence to use them. Dallas’ economy, in traction thanks to COVID-19, won’t get going again until…
The tug-of-war between Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins and Texas’ state leadership is getting rougher. Monday, Jenkins introduced the county’s own system for determining when it’s safe for residents to get back to their daily lives, thumbing his nose at Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who is opening up the state…
Four months into 2020, the year Dallas Police Chief U. Renee Hall was supposed to address the city’s violent crime problem, and violent crime is still up in Dallas over the same period in 2019. Things aren’t all bad, according to the chief, but Dallas’ multi-faceted plan to drive down…
As if things weren’t bad enough, get ready to have some intense Global War on Terror flashbacks. Monday afternoon, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins unveiled the county’s new, color-coded COVID-19 threat level chart. It’s a look, and a format, that should be familiar to anyone who remembers the days and…
There may be no crying in baseball, but a lot of us are getting close to tears without it. May isn’t the same without the building, or fading, hope of a nascent season, and there is growing uncertainty about whether the summer, or fall, will be anything close to normal…
About 500 Dallas employees have been furloughed as the city continues to fight its coronavirus budget crunch, Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson and City Manager TC Broadnax announced Friday. The furloughs have been handed out across 10 departments, according to a letter from Broadnax to city employees. “The city manager notified…
The Mavericks may be on indefinite hiatus, but Mark Cuban, the team’s owner, is still finding interesting ways to make news during the coronavirus pandemic. Cuban’s still paying the Mavericks’ hourly employees, even though the American Airlines Center’s empty. He’s been one of the leading voices on how the NBA…
Tuesday afternoon, Dallas County Civil District Court Judge Eric Moye sent Shelley Luther to jail for seven days. Despite the paltry sentence, Luther’s case drew national attention because, over the past couple of weeks, she’s become a patron saint for the movement to free Texas from novel coronavirus-inspired restrictions. Luther…
The Dallas City Council got its first significant look at the havoc the novel coronavirus pandemic is likely to wreak on Dallas’ budget Wednesday. The short-term outlook for the city isn’t great. The long-term could be even worse. Here’s the big takeaway: According to city staff, Dallas’ budget for fiscal…
There’s an idea that’s been going around among some of Dallas’ conservative politicians over the last month or so that goes something like this: If all flattening the curve does is spread the number of COVID-19 cases over a longer time period, thereby ensuring that the healthcare system isn’t overrun, and…
It looks like we’re just going to go for it. Tuesday afternoon, after a week that included Texas’ highest ever COVID-19 death total and Dallas County’s five highest reports of novel coronavirus infections, Gov. Greg Abbott announced plans to reopen even more of the state’s businesses. Under new orders from…
When Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced his plans to reopen the state eight days ago, he led his press conference with a powerful anecdote. Texas’ COVID-19 infection rate — the rate at which tests for the disease come back positive — had declined over the last 17 days, he said…
