Nearly 220 million American adults turn to their local newspapers regularly for news and information they need to stay informed, feel more connected to their neighbors and improve their lives and communities. That readership number is based on a recent national study...
Bill tightening voting restrictions in Texas passes Senate committee
A Texas Senate committee on Friday passed an elections bill that would tighten the state’s voting rules by limiting extended early voting hours, requiring proof of disability to qualify for mail-in voting and prohibiting drive-thru voting. Senate Bill 7, sponsored...
Texans urged to roll up their sleeves
Gov. Greg Abbott and other Texas leaders are rolling up their sleeves to get the COVID-19 vaccine and to encourage the public to follow suit. “I will never ask any Texan to do something that I’m not willing to do myself,” Abbott said before getting vaccinated at a...
State resumes requiring job searches to get benefits
Texans receiving unemployment benefits will need to show an active effort to find a job starting Nov. 1. The Texas Workforce Commission suspended the requirement in March as the pandemic started. More than 3.6 million have filed for unemployment relief since then,...
Accusations rock Attorney General’s office
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is battling back against seven top aides who accuse him of bribery and abuse of office. The aides delivered the accusations in a letter to the agency’s human resources director. The Austin American-Statesman and KVUE-TV obtained and...
Houston-Dallas bullet train company says it’s on fast track
Texas’ first- and third-largest cities could be in daily commuting distance from each other via the high-speed Texas Central Railroad. Proponents of the proposed bullet train hailed two historic milestones last week: The Federal Railroad Administration released its...
School year brings an Apple for students too
Students across Texas returned to campuses last week as schools and universities scrambled to put into place new lesson plans that best accommodate a pandemic. For many school districts, this meant greatly expanding the technological resources of their students to...
Texas tries nation’s first virtual criminal trial
A Texan’s speeding ticket put her in the legal history books last week. To combat the backlog in criminal cases created by the pandemic, a Travis County justice of the peace conducted the nation’s first virtual criminal trial. The case was livestreamed on YouTube, and...
This is a time of testing for all of us
A few weeks ago, The New York Times ran an article noting that with the U.S. preoccupied by the coronavirus pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests, and massive unemployment, “its competitors are moving to fill the vacuum, and quickly.” Russia, China, North Korea, Iran....