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March 20, 2023

What’s next as pandemic-era housing assistance winds down

By: David Brown

Several bills are aimed at building more homes, but what about Texas renters, many reeling from the end of assistance programs? State lawmakers are being urged to take action on housing affordability, or more precisely, the lack thereof.

What’s an education savings program? Critics say it’s just another spin on school vouchers. Sergio Martínez-Beltrán of the Texas Newsroom previews Senate committee hearings on the measure.

Is there really such a thing as “too low” when it comes to unemployment rates? The Standard’s Sean Saldana explains.

And remembering El Rey de la Cumbia, Fito Olivares.


Episodes

April 21, 2023

An Earth Day appreciation for the Texas Hill Country

What’s behind a bill that would remove Texans from voter rolls if they miss two federal elections? We’ll hear from a UT Law voting rights expert on what’s behind the push for a law that proponents say is designed to clean up messy voting registration lists, and what opponents see as voter suppression. After five […]

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April 20, 2023

Astronaut Christina Koch on NASA’s upcoming Artemis 2 mission

Tensions are growing in Austin over the use of DPS officers to augment local police. Facing resistance to a plan similar to school vouchers, an alteration getting attention at the state Capitol is focused on students with disabilities. Talia Richman of the Dallas Morning News Education Lab has more. NASA’s plans to return to the […]

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April 19, 2023

How two Uvalde survivors are rebuilding their lives

Almost a year after the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, two injured fourth graders are still trying to recover. Edgar Sandoval of the New York Times talks with us about his profile of two children injured in the shooting – and the months since. Yesterday’s half-hour grounding of Southwest Airlines departures was […]

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April 18, 2023

Expanded telehealth is coming to an end

A Texas couple chose midwife care over a hospital, and now their baby is in foster care. Why this story is sounding alarm bells for many across the state. Changes are coming to telehealth with the end of a federal pandemic order – and some patients will have to return to in-person medical care. A […]

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April 17, 2023

TxDOT wants to bury a highway. The Dallas City Council wants to get rid of it.

Tenure is on the agenda in the Texas Senate this week, as lawmakers weigh a bill that would end the practice for the new faculty at public colleges and universities. The Texas Department of Transportation wants to bury Interstate 345, a 1.4-mile stretch of highway that connects Dallas to its Deep Ellum neighborhood. But the […]

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April 14, 2023

What’s in San Antonio’s ‘justice charter’?

Yes and no signs proliferate in San Antonio over Prop A. What’s behind the city’s so-called justice charter? In Kyle, a corrections officer indicted in the shooting death of a person awaiting trial, and a family’s struggle to find answers. Taking the STAAR tests online. Should there still be a paper option? A push for […]

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April 13, 2023

Texas county may shutter its library before it returns banned books to the stacks

Attorneys for a man convicted of fatally shooting a Black Lives Matter protester in Austin in 2020 are asking for a retrial – a request that comes after Gov. Greg Abbott asked the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to review the conviction. The debate over school vouchers, or a variation called education savings accounts, […]

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April 12, 2023

What more electric vehicles mean for the Texas electric grid

Momentum is growing among Republicans to use the U.S. military to take on drug cartels in Mexico in the fight against fentanyl. How serious is such talk? More ripple effects following a ruling by a federal judge in Amarillo that would effectively ban the abortion drug mifepristone. The Dallas Federal Reserve finds young adults feel […]

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