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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
For the fourth time in less than a week, Dallas County Health and Human Services reported a record number of new COVID-19 infections Monday afternoon. After recording 234 new cases Sunday, the agency announced 237 positive tests Wednesday. Dallas County remains at its peak seven-day rolling average as businesses around…
Maybe you know exactly what’s going on and what’s going to happen next. Not me. I don’t know jack. But let’s put down a marker right here at the beginning of the Great Texas Reopening. There will be an answer. It will be math. This isn’t French Impressionism. At a…
The bones of the argument are as familiar as the Cowboys’ underachieving. Texas Democrats want as close to comprehensive voting access as is possible. Texas Republicans, citing the need for election security, want to maintain tight controls over who gets a ballot and who doesn’t, to the chagrin of voting…
For a third time this week, Dallas set a new single-day record for new confirmed cases of COVID-19 Friday. The county reported 187 new cases of the disease Friday. The total tops the county’s previous single-day record of 179 new cases, which it set Thursday. Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins…
Sports fans are desperate. As the coronavirus pandemic has meandered through its second month, we’ve forced ourselves to be excited for remote games of HORSE, 10-part documentaries about a Chicago Bulls season that’s already been covered exhaustively and video game versions of our heroes. Previously played games are plentiful, too,…
Texas is going to offer a little grace to those who would’ve otherwise faced an impossible choice whenever their employer called them back to work amid the ongoing pandemic. And when we say a little, we mean very little. Immediately following Gov. Greg Abbott’s announcement Monday that he would allow…
Students at colleges and universities across North Texas can expect to head back to campus at the beginning of the fall semester. Officials at several universities across the Dallas-Fort Worth area announced Thursday that they expected to be able to reopen their campuses at the end of the summer. Colleges…
