Dallas ISD officials hope to return to school at the beginning of the next school year. But even if they do, they won’t be returning to normal. Dallas schools have been closed since March 16. On Friday, Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order closing schools statewide for the rest…
All of a sudden last week I was overcome by an eerie sensation, a feeling that I had been looking in the wrong direction for a month while something far more ominous than disease crept up behind. Hunger. We can withstand a pandemic. We won’t survive serious hunger. Not as…
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sounded like he’d been listening to medical experts Friday afternoon as he announced his initial plans for broadening the state’s economy. As the state tries to get back to the old normal, the new normal will include widely expand COVID-19 testing and tracing, as well as…
The sound of skittering rats was common. Mold would fester, threatening rot. Perhaps worst of all, the plumbing stopped working. “Pretty much everything that could go wrong was going wrong,” Peter Wierenga says of his Fort Worth home. “But the landlord wouldn’t do anything about it.” So Wierenga was not…
Just because something’s obvious doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Or easy to do. Texas House Democrats’ plan to begin bringing the state’s economy out of hibernation is right in line with those trotted out by health experts across the state. It isn’t groundbreaking, but it does extend beyond many of…
Beginning Saturday, anyone going into a Dallas County business or riding public transportation will be required to wear a mask, County Judge Clay Jenkins announced Thursday afternoon. In a tweet, Jenkins said he expected Dallas County residents would comply with the new requirement without law enforcement needing to take action…
Since being drafted in 2016, Dak Prescott has been a rarity among Cowboys players. He’s carefully avoided controversy at all times and maintained a squeaky-clean image when teammates, most notably Ezekiel Elliott, have proved completely unable to keep themselves out of the headlines. Then came the novel coronavirus. Prescott, like…
My name is Jim Schutze. That’s it. Look again. No M.D. after the name, no Ph.D., not even an M.A. or an M.S. I’m working on the basis of a liberal arts bachelor’s degree from about 100 years ago, every syllable of which I have forgotten, gone, zap, sadly no…
Despite a lot of noise Wednesday, the fate of Texans hoping to cast mail-in ballots in 2020’s remaining elections is still up in the air. A state district judge sided with voting rights groups late in the afternoon, saying that he would grant temporary injunction that would allow Texans to…
Thomas Hogue, age 75, my neighbor of 36 years, was a guardian of widows, talented actor and lover of local history. As a younger man, every year he erected a brightly lighted Christmas crèche scene on his front yard populated entirely by pink flamingos. Last Saturday he was found dead…
Tuesday was, by most accounts, a pretty harrowing day for Texas. The day after Gov. Greg Abbott found hope in the state’s dearth of newly reported coronavirus cases and deaths over the weekend, the state got hit with a bevy of bad news. Health authorities across the state reported 31…
Ten more Dallas County residents have died from the novel coronavirus, Dallas County Health and Human Services reported. Tuesday afternoon’s announcement is county’s biggest reported loss of life during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. One of the newly reported deaths was a woman in her 90s, three were county residents in…
Imagine a person — you probably know one — who believes that President Donald Trump is the best person to listen to about how he or she should deal with the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic. That person has gone from never or barely having heard of the coronavirus in January,…
More than 8,000 miles from home with terrible internet, few opportunities to take a walk while practicing social distancing and no reading material, Salman Kazmi tried a Hail Mary. The UT-Dallas graduate tweeted at the State Department. Then he tweeted Mike Pompeo himself. Those tweets went unanswered, as Kazmi tried…
Monday was the tease for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. After saying last week that he intended to offer plans to reopen Texas economy this week, the governor gave only the slightest hint as to what that might entail Monday. The only real news the governor made Monday was helping to…
With a few notable exceptions, Texas politicians haven’t covered themselves in glory during the COVID-19 pandemic. They’ve minimized the risk, called for the elderly to martyr themselves and issued orders so confusing that their constituents have been left to fill in the blanks. This list isn’t about them. We’ve talked…
When WWE chairman and CEO Vince McMahon launched the second iteration of the XFL this year, he sounded confident that the league could outlast the original version, which folded after a single season. As it turns out, the new league didn’t even last that long. The XFL suspended operations Friday…
As the coronavirus crisis gears up to enter its second month in the United States, it’s become increasingly difficult to know on any given day whether abortion remains legal in Texas. Gov. Greg Abbott banned it as part of his emergency order in March. Abortion providers sued and got clinics…
As hospitals in Texas and nationwide face a dire shortage of protective equipment, volunteers are stepping in to try to fill the gap. Volunteers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area are manufacturing plastic face shields to donate to hospitals, senior centers and healthcare workers who are on the front lines in…
Nine Dallas County jail inmates are suing Dallas County Sheriff Marian Brown over conditions at the jail. According to the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, which is representing the inmates, the group is seeking the immediate release of all inmates older than 50, in addition to those who are…
Local officials here are doing a lousy job providing us information about the pandemic. The Dallas County Health Department COVID-19 webpage looks like a DOS-based jigsaw puzzle from the 1990s. You don’t know what DOS was, right? My point exactly. (It was an early and now primitive computer operating system.)…
For many Texans, the coronavirus pandemic and the changes it’s inflicted on their everyday lives are merely a bad inconvenience. They can’t go to restaurants, have to home-school their kids and are facing the physical and mental struggles of indeterminate monotony. Others face more serious consequences, like the loss of…
