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…
Texas’ mandatory end-of-year tests are canceled this year, but state education officials have come up with a way for parents to make their kids take them anyway. The Texas Education Agency is rolling out an optional online end-of-year test that school districts and parents across the state can use to…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Dallas County reported 253 additional cases of the novel coronavirus on Monday, tying its single-day record for new confirmed cases of the disease. The county also reported two new coronavirus-related deaths. Both people died at long-term care facilities where they were residents. The first, a woman in her 60s, lived…
This is a story about the dangers posed by spunky people. In these terrible times, this story should offer comic relief. But, uh … nah. Probably not too comic. The Trinity Park Conservancy, a very spunky private group charged with raising money for a fancy new city park on the…
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…
During normal times, when schools aren’t shut down, Patricia Tamayo’s office is just off a busy hallway at O.D. Wyatt High School in Fort Worth. It could get noisy, said Tamayo, the school’s junior class counselor, but the location helped her build relationships with students. She could stand in the…
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…
Gov. Greg Abbott modified his executive order outlining the state’s coronavirus pandemic response to bar counties from jailing those who violate those orders. The move comes a day after a Dallas County judge ordered Shelley Luther, the owner of a North Dallas hair salon, jailed for seven days after she…
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…
This is what drives me crazy about a lot of the public discourse on coronavirus. When did people get the idea that science is a democracy? For the last many weeks I have been writing about the coronavirus pandemic, and, because everything that goes up online these days leaks out…
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…
The number of confirmed new cases of COVID-19 in Dallas County continued its upward march Tuesday, as county officials announced yet another record-breaking total. County officials confirmed 253 new cases of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus Tuesday, as well as seven new coronavirus-related deaths. Tuesday’s new case total…
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…
Since the COVID-19 pandemic reached Texas, many shelters that serve Dallas’ homeless population have shut their doors, diverting their clients to hotels or motels as they did when faced with overflow before the pandemic. Those who are sleeping in shelters or motel rooms are subject to stringent social distancing regulations,…
