Chase Karacostas
Chase Karacostas graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 2020 with degrees in Journalism and Political Communication. He has covered the environment, housing, homelessness, health care and more for media outlets around Texas, including The Texas Tribune, Austin American-Statesman, Community Impact Newspaper and the Dallas Morning News.
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The Austin police chief said officers will no longer arrest or ticket for low level pot offenses.
Six months after the Austin City Council passed a resolution ordering him to do so, police chief Brian Manley announced that officers would not be making arrests or writing tickets for low-level and non-violent marijuana offenses.
<p>"APD will no longer cite or arrest individuals with sufficient identification for Class A or Class B misdemeanor 'possession of marijuana' offenses, unless there is an immediate threat to a person's safety or doing so as part of the investigation of a high priority, felony-level narcotics case or the investigation of a violent felony," according to a memo from Manley to Mayor Steve Adler and City Council shared by Council Member Greg Casar.</p><div class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="e6ddef676e23116f30849bfe57e04d59" id="c74f6"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-partner="rebelmouse" data-twitter-tweet-id="1278762979492798464"><div style="margin:1em 0">BREAKING: Austin has finally (finally!) ended all personal marijuana arrests & tickets.
Details below. [1/4] https://t.co/5C7Hzqf4xf</div> — Gregorio Casar (@Gregorio Casar)<a href="https://twitter.com/GregCasar/statuses/1278762979492798464">1593715827.0</a></blockquote></div><p>The City Council approved the resolution—effectively ending the practice—in defiance of state leaders, in January. While the city did not outrightly ban the police from writing tickets or making arrests, the city voted to no longer pay for marijuana testing except in case of high-priority felonies, making it near impossible to achieve a conviction in the cases.<br/></p><p>But Manley did not follow their orders, saying possession of marijuana was still illegal at the state level.</p><p>"At this point, nothing will change," Manley said in January. "We will handle it as we have."</p><p><span></span>Testing became crucial after the state passed a bill legalizing hemp, a non-psychoactive cousin of marijuana that still contains a minute amount of THC. As a result, law enforcement and prosecutors around the state would need to test any substances found to ensure it was illegal marijuana and not legal hemp. </p><p>As the city moved to effectively decriminalize marijuana over the last year, council members and advocates in support of the measure often cited that fact that Black Austin residents were much more likely to be arrested for possession, despite equivalent use across races—a trend that has gone on <a href="https://www.kut.org/post/austin-police-more-likely-bust-african-americans-pot-updated" target="_blank">for years.</a></p><p>"This victory is a small step compared to the transformational change that we must make this summer to our City's budget and policing practices," Casar tweeted Thursday afternoon.</p>
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Google told employees this week that the company will hold off on reopening its offices until Sept. 7, according to a memo obtained by Bloomberg News.
<p>The company employs more than 1,000 people in Austin and took steps last year to expand its office space both downtown and on the East Side. <a href="https://www.statesman.com/news/20190614/google-says-it-plans-significant-expansion-in-austin" target="_blank">As of last June</a>, Austin was Google's seventh-largest office outside of the San Francisco Bay Area.</p><p>The decision came as both Texas and California, the state where most of the tech giant's employees work, have seen spikes in coronavirus cases. Texas saw nearly 7,000 new cases Tuesday.</p><p>"While conditions do vary from state to state, we need to see that the U.S. outlook as a whole is stable before we move forward," Chris Rackow, vice president of global security, wrote in the memo. "As the recent resurgence of cases demonstrates, Covid-19 is still very much alive in our communities."</p><p>Previously, the company's CEO Sundar Pichai <a href="https://www.blog.google/inside-google/working-google/working-from-home-and-office/" target="_blank">told employees in May</a> that the company would begin slowly returning some workers to the office on July 6. Those plans now appear to be scrapped based on the company memo.</p><p>Google's parent company, Alphabet, sent employees home during the second week of March, weeks ahead of some of the other big tech companies. Indeed, another tech giant with offices in Austin, sent its employees home barely a week earlier, one of the first companies in Austin to do so.</p><p>Even without the recent spikes in coronavirus cases in the U.S., the company planned for most Google employees to work from home through the end of the year. The work from home extension this week also comes on the heels of a host of other tech companies announcing that they would allow some employees to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/22/tech/work-from-home-companies/index.html" target="_blank">work from home "forever" if their job allows.</a></p>
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Ariana Rodriguez, an activist in the field of sex education reform, said she'll never forget her experience with sexual education in high school.
<p>"My school brought in a couple who explained to students that we're all roses. As roses, every time we have premarital sex, we lost a petal," Rodriguez said at a State Board of Education hearing Monday morning. "They ended the presentation stating that no one wants a rose without any petals and, therefore, no one wants a person who has had many partners. The students around me sobbed as they heard they were unworthy of love simply because of their sexual activity."</p><p>That experience drove Rodriguez—as well as others with similar tales, sexual education leaders and parents—to testify Monday morning before the State Board of Education to ask that the state expand its sex education curriculum to include more information about contraception, STI prevention, abortion access and sexual health for LGBTQ+ people. The hearing came as part of the state's plan to update its sex-ed curriculum for the first time in 23 years.</p><p>By the start of the meeting, more than 260 had signed up to speak. No vote was taken Monday, but the state board will hold another meeting in September for a preliminary vote on the new curriculum, with a final vote to come in November.</p><p><strong>Adding new topics, keeping others in place</strong></p><p><a href="https://tea.texas.gov/sites/default/files/Health_Education_TEKS_Review_Work_Group_E_Draft_Recommendations.pdf" target="_blank">The proposed changes to the existing curriculum, released ahead of the meeting</a>, center primarily around teaching information about sexual violence and sex trafficking. The state board is also considering a new requirement that contraception, such as condoms and birth control, be discussed in seventh and eighth grades, where previously it was only required in high school.</p><p>The rest of the curriculum still heavily focuses on abstinence until marriage. But many speakers at the hearing Monday pushed the state to adopt a more comprehensive and inclusive curriculum, attacking the lack of sex education on abortions and contraception, which some experts in attendance said contributed to the high rate of teen pregnancy in the state.</p><p>Texas ranked as the fourth highest state in the U.S. (including the District of Columbia) for teen pregnancy in 2016, according to data from the federal Department of Health and Human Services. </p><p><strong>A more inclusive curriculum</strong></p><p>Other speakers primarily focused on the benefits of providing inclusive sex education for LGBTQ+ people, saying it could help make a safer and fairer learning environment for them and even reduce absenteeism, a common result of bullying against the queer community. </p><p><span></span>"Sex education is long overdue," in Texas, said University of Houston law student Emma Brockway. Brockway was one of many people who told the board Monday that the state's curriculum failed LGBTQ+ people, including herself—she said she learned nothing that could help her as a lesbian when she was in public school growing up.</p><p>"The importance of inclusion of the LGBTQ community in sex education cannot be overstated," said Heather Frederick, OutYouth's Texas Gender and Sexuality Alliance Coordinator.</p><p>Some conservative groups were ready ahead of the meeting to fight back against the push to create an LGBTQ+-inclusive sexual education curriculum.</p><p>"Leftist LGBT advocacy groups are calling this a 'once in-a-generation opportunity' to attack Texas' abstinence focused approach and teach highly sexualized LGBT propaganda starting in kindergarten," an email from the conservative advocacy group Texas Values said on Friday, <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2020/06/29/Texas-schools-sex-education-policy/" target="_blank">according to the Texas Tribune.</a></p>
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Gov. Greg Abbott's announcement that he would pause the reopening process for Texas at its current Phase 3 may not be enough to slow the spread of the coronavirus, according to University of Texas Health epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina.
"You're going to have to go back" to Phase 1, Jetelina said, if the state hopes to get a hold of the rapidly spreading virus.
The source of the surge
<p>In barely a week, Gov. Greg Abbott went from saying Texas had <a href="https://austonia.com/Coronavirus/texas-face-masks" target="_self">"abundant" hospital capacity </a>for additional COVID-19 patients to <a href="https://austonia.com/Coronavirus/texas-hospitals" target="_self">"pausing" Texas' reopening and suspending elective surgeries.</a></p><p>The coinciding of Memorial Day and the Black Lives Matter protests with the beginning of Phases 1 and 2 of reopening, respectively, makes it hard to pinpoint the true origin of the recent surge in cases. But cases started growing, based on data Jetelina studied, when the state moved to Phase 2 of reopening and allowed restaurants to open at 50% capacity, bars to reopen at 25% capacity and salons start doing business again.</p><p>"I really think we need to go back on our reopening phases, which is unfortunate, but this growth started way before Phase 3 reopening," she said.</p>A predictable curve
<p>The effects of reducing social distancing on the spread of the virus have been predicted as far back as mid-May, Austin Public Health told Austonia Thursday. Before the state began reopening, Austin stood at a social distancing rate of 95%, but experts at UT predicted that if that reduced to 50%, the city would see the exponential rise in cases happening in June.</p><p>"You can see that so far [the model] has been really, unfortunately, quite accurate," Austin-Travis County Interim Public Health Authority Dr. Mark Escott told the Travis County Commissioners Court earlier this week. "We also have the potential that it could increase faster with projections—now that we have the potential, if we don't change substantially by the middle of July, [we could exceed] our threshold of capacity for our health care system."</p>Additional measures
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzQxODg3Ni9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NTM3NDE4N30.mCuWb8sRaSZL6cS-RIAIPyzrMN2NyYXHbICzwS2Q7AA/img.png?width=980" id="172bd" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="7d230b583f3af9c17f5f144876bfaaf4" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Hospital capacities by region in Texas with the top of the chart, 1, representing full capacity. Each region represents a separate Trauma Service Area, which are used to analyze how different parts of the state are affected by the spread of the coronavirus and other hospitalizations. (Katelyn Jetelina)
<p class="caption"><em>Hospital capacities by region in Texas with the top of the chart, 1, representing full capacity. Each region represents a separate Trauma Service Area, which are used to analyze how different parts of the state are affected by the spread of the coronavirus and other hospitalizations. (UT Health)</em></p><p>Jetelina said suspending elective surgeries, which Abbott did for four large Texas counties—including Travis—on Thursday, will be a huge help to hospitals that have seen beds filled up in recent weeks. </p><p>When hospital capacity cracks 70%, that's when public health officials start to worry, Jetelina said. When it cracks 80%, that's when hospitals begin to need "surge centers." Austin's three main hospital systems <a href="https://austonia.com/Coronavirus/austin-covid-lockdown" target="_self">said Wednesday </a>that together the three networks are at 71% total capacity and 70% ICU capacity.</p><p>But Abbott's decision to pause the state's reopening will not do much to slow the spread of coronavirus, Jetelina said, especially since the governor has yet to release an official Phase 4 plan.</p><p>If Texas wants to truly "flatten the curve" again, Jetelina said, Texas leaders must reinstate protocols that require social distancing, like lowering restaurant capacity to 25% and closing bars and beauty salons.</p><p>"Really anywhere that people are coming together and conversing, especially if face masks are not required or mandated, you're just going to get human-to-human spread so much easier than if these places weren't open," she said, adding later, "if that means bars need to be closed or at least [reduce] capacity, then so be it. It's just a matter of getting as far away from each other as possible."</p>From Your Site Articles
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GoDaddy to close both Austin offices and lay off hundreds of workers as pandemic impacts business
24 June
(GoDaddy)
The tech company GoDaddy announced Wednesday it would be laying off more than 300 workers, including many in Austin, and closing both of its offices there as well.
<p>The change comes as the company, which offers website-hosting services as well as social media management for businesses, has experienced revenue losses in the latter of the two offerings, formally known as GoDaddy Social. The office closings and layoffs were announced in an email to employees from the company's CEO Aman Bhutani.</p><p>Overall, GoDaddy's financial expectations for the second quarter have actually gone up despite the pandemic. This follows a trend seen across many tech companies in recent months, which have been able to maintain a firm economic standing even as other sectors have fallen drastically. Nevertheless, the decline in revenue from GoDaddy Social, which is heavily based in Austin, created the need for steep cuts to that part of the company.</p><p>"Even as our overall business continues to perform well and we are updating our revenue guidance for Q2 as evidence of that, we are still facing challenges in U.S. outbound sales, including GoDaddy Social sales," Bhutani said in the email, which was posted to the company's website. "The outbound sales teams have made many creative efforts over the last three months to reverse the impacts of COVID-19, but the results of these improvements are still far below what we need for the operations to be sustainable."</p><p>Shortly after announcing the layoffs, the company <a href="https://aboutus.godaddy.net/newsroom/news-releases/press-release-details/2020/GoDaddy-Sees-Continued-Strength-in-Overall-Business/default.aspx" target="_blank">issued a statement</a> saying its second-quarter revenue would exceed previous expectations by 1%. Purchases of website domains and marketing services led the rise, the company says.</p><p>The layoffs also come just a year and a half after GoDaddy purchased Main Street Hub, a social media management company based in Austin, for $125 million.</p>
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The number of new cases in Texas for Tuesday, 5,489, broke the previous record set over the weekend by more than 1,000 cases, leading Gov. Greg Abbott to renew calls for Texans to stay home and allow local officials to restrict large outdoor gatherings.
<p>"These are just some of the steps Texas will take to contain the rise in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations," Abbott said in a statement. "As we face this challenge, there is no substitute for personal responsibility. I urge all Texans to do everything in their power to reduce the transmission of the coronavirus by wearing a face mask, washing their hands often, and staying six-feet apart from others."</p><p>The order allows mayors and county judges to ban or restrict public gatherings with more than 100 people. Previously, officials could only restrict gatherings of more than 500. Abbott also directed the Texas Health and Human Services Commission to issue stricter emergency rules for health and safety at child care centers, some of which have become hotspots for the viruses spread in the state.</p><p>Prior to Tuesday's order, Abbott refrained from giving local officials greater authority to restrict the movement and actions of residents, ignoring calls from the leaders of most large cities in the state. </p><p>"We want to make sure everyone reinforces the best safe practices of wearing a mask, hand sanitation, maintaining safe distance, but importantly, because the spread is so rampant right now, there's never a reason for you to have to leave your home unless you need to go out," Abbott said during an interview with KBTX in College Station via satellite. "The safest place for you is at your home." <br/></p><p>Abbott hinted at the coming expansion of local authority ahead of the July 4 weekend. He also warned Monday that he might have to reissue restrictions to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus if case counts keep rising. But he did not say what that would entail, nor did he say what the restrictions would look like for the upcoming holiday.</p><p>"We did see an increase after Memorial Day," Abbott said. "We saw an increase in the early part of June. We need to make sure that we do have the flexibility to reduce crowds in ways that will reduce the spread of COVID-19."</p><p>In the meantime, Abbott mentioned an increasing crackdown on bars violating social distancing and other restrictions intended to fight the viruses spread. </p><p>"There are measures that are being taken to make sure that we are immediately responding to this, as well as additional announcements that may be coming later today and later tomorrow, as well as during the course of the week," he told KBTX.</p><p>Abbott's comments come as a new set of mask-requirement orders are coming down from the city of Austin and Travis County. The new orders mandate face coverings at businesses for all employees and visitors—the city's order goes a step further in additionally requiring businesses that do not interact with the public to follow the guidelines, too. </p>
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Even as new case counts for COVID-19 reach all-time highs around the state—5,000 today—the Texas Education Agency posted documents to its website Tuesday with safety suggestions, but few requirements, for what schools must do when they reopen this fall.
<p>The documents, posted accidentally and then removed, include recommendations for <a href="https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/2a599efa6176b07606b12f27ea1c586d/covid-19-SY-20-21-Public-Health-Guidance.pdf?_ga=2.260368077.1508401568.1592943461-408696185.1583014955" target="_blank">mask-wearing, increasing the availability of hand sanitizer, and social distancing for in-person learning</a>, but also provide flexibility for students who want to continue remote learning in the fall. </p><p>"These are draft documents. They were posted in the staging portion of the TEA website by mistake as part of an internal document review," the agency said in a statement to The Texas Tribune. "As we continue to closely monitor the public health situation, we are, in fact, still soliciting feedback on this guidance. No final decisions have yet been made. Additional guidance will be provided soon."</p><p>Documents wound up on TEA's website the same day state education leaders<a href="https://www.fox4news.com/news/tea-medical-experts-release-guidelines-for-reopening-texas-schools" target="_blank"> were expected to </a>announce more detailed guidelines for what school will look like in the fall. Gov. Greg Abbott said last week that <a href="https://austonia.com/education/texas-schools" target="_blank">he expects in-person learning to resume.</a> Despite suggesting that students and staff wear masks, the guidelines leave it up to the schools to decide whether to require this. AISD said last week that a <a href="https://www.austinisd.org/announcements/2020/06/17/aisd-reopening-update-actualizacion-de-reapertura-de-aisd" target="_blank">mask requirement was under consideration.</a></p><p>One major change to the proposed rules regarding remote learning will be the requirement that schools regularly monitor engagement by students learning from home, the documents show. If students are not up to date on watching lessons or completing assignments, for example, the school risks losing funding. Schools typically receive funding from the state based on the number of students in class each day. </p><p><span></span>The guidelines say the state will <a href="https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/17b577568cb472a9b4878e40c186af9a/SY-20-21-Attendance-and-Enrollment-FAQ.pdf?_ga=2.193908717.1508401568.1592943461-408696185.1583014955" target="_blank">require schools to offer in-person learning as an option to students.</a> For those who do attend class, the documents say schools should require self-screening and temperature checks for COVID-19, and that school leaders should also screen students and employees once a week by asking if they have symptoms or come into contact with someone infected with the virus.<br/></p><p>School districts will also be required to post detailed plans for how they plan to reduce the spread of the new coronavirus. However, the plans do not need to receive government approval, reducing the potential for oversight. </p><p>If a student comes to school showing symptoms, they must be isolated until they can be picked up by a parent or guardian and all areas they came into contact with must be cleaned.</p>
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The Supreme Court permanently barred the Trump administration from abruptly rescinding DACA, the program that has protected Dreamers from deportation for the last eight years.
<p>Chief Justice John Roberts, who has recently taken up the mantle as the court's swing vote, sided with the four liberal justices and <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-587_5ifl.pdf?utm_content=&utm_medium=email&utm_name=&utm_source=govdelivery&utm_term=" target="_blank">authored the majority opinion.</a> However, the court did not make a decision on the legality of DACA but instead focused on whether the way the Trump administration chose to do it violated federal law. </p><p>"We address only whether the agency complied with the procedural requirement that it provide a reasoned explanation for its action," Roberts wrote. "Here the agency failed to consider the conspicuous issues of whether to retain forbearance and what if anything to do about the hardship to DACA recipients. That dual failure raises doubts about whether the agency appreciated the scope of its discretion or exercised that discretion in a reasonable manner."</p><p>Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is litigating a battle over the program's legality in the federal court for the Southern District of Texas, swiftly attacked the decision on Twitter.</p><p><br/></p><div class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="6a551754fba4018b7216cacd01c45b06" id="22b14"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-partner="rebelmouse" data-twitter-tweet-id="1273629678054621187"><div style="margin:1em 0">Attorney General Ken Paxton Issues Statement on #SCOTUS Upholding DACA Program | Read a copy of the opinion here ➡️… https://t.co/lP8FiKPmPJ</div> — Texas Attorney General (@Texas Attorney General)<a href="https://twitter.com/TXAG/statuses/1273629678054621187">1592491952.0</a></blockquote></div><p><br/></p><p>The decision ended a nearly three-year battle over whether the Trump administration's move to abruptly end the program was "arbitrary and capricious" and therefore violating federal administrative law.</p><p>However, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in dissent that the decision gave a "green light" for fighting future legislative and policy battles in the courts rather than "where they rightfully belong"—Congress and the executive branch.</p><p>"Today's decision must be recognized for what it is: an effort to avoid a politically controversial but legally correct decision," Thomas wrote. "The court could have made clear that the solution respondents seek must come from the legislative branch."</p><p>The Obama administration created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program by executive order after giving up on Congress' ability to do so via legislation. The program allows people brought to the U.S. illegally as children to apply for temporary protection from deportation and issues them a temporary work permit. The protections last for two years and are renewable.</p><p>Around 700,000 people in the U.S. are currently protected by DACA, but it does not offer a path to citizenship. According to <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/Reports%20and%20Studies/Immigration%20Forms%20Data/All%20Form%20Types/DACA/DACA_Population_Receipts_since_Injunction_Dec_31_2019.pdf" target="_blank">federal statistics</a>, approximately 107,000 DACA recipients currently live in Texas.</p><p>The Supreme Court's decision eliminates almost any chance that a decision on the program's legality would be made before the November election.</p>
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