Whether reconditioned football helmets sufficiently protect young players from concussions and other serious injuries has become a subject of fierce debate. Texas parents are torn between the desire of their kids to play and increasingly hard-to-ignore studies about the relationship between football and long-term brain damage. Coaches struggle to balance safety with fans’ cries for harder hits, bigger players and crushing wins. And at least one upstart manufacturer is contributing to the public’s unease by challenging the industry’s long-standing practice of refurbishing old helmets.
Emily Ramshaw
Emily Ramshaw was the editor-in-chief of The Texas Tribune from 2016 to 2020. During her tenure, the Tribune — billed “one of the nonprofit news sector’s runaway success stories” — won a Peabody Award, several national Murrow Awards and top honors from the Online News Association.
Before joining the Tribune in 2010 as one of its founding reporters, Ramshaw spent six years at The Dallas Morning News, where she broke national stories about sexual abuse inside Texas’ youth lock-ups, reported from inside a West Texas polygamist compound and uncovered “fight clubs” inside state institutions for the disabled. The Texas APME named Ramshaw its 2008 star reporter of the year. In 2016, she was named to the board of the Pulitzer Prizes.
A native of Washington, D.C., and the product of two journalist parents, Ramshaw graduated from Northwestern University in 2003 with dual degrees in journalism and American history.
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State Government
A Death at Daystar
The same Houston-area residential treatment center where staffers forced disabled girls to fight each other — prompting child welfare officials to halt admissions and hire a safety monitor — is now under fire for the asphyxiation of a 16-year-old boy who died Friday after a restraint was applied by a staffer in a closet.
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Health care
TribBlog: Medicaid Madness
Now hitting airwaves on whether Texas should drop out of the federal Medicaid program: Gov. Rick Perry and Dallas’ Parkland Hospital CEO Ron Anderson.
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Health care
Parkland CEO on Medicaid
Parkland CEO on MedicaidTexas Tribune donors or members may be quoted or mentioned in our stories, or may be the subject of them. For a complete list of contributors, click here.
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Health care
TribBlog: A Death At Daystar
A 16-year-old boy has died of an apparent restraint-related asphyxiation at the Daystar Residential Treatment Center, the same facility where children with disabilities were forced to fight each other a couple of years ago.
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Health care
No More Medicaid?
Some Republican lawmakers are proposing an unprecedented solution to the state’s massive budget shortfall: opting out of the federal Medicaid program. But experts say the rhetoric may be more of a middle finger to Washington than sound public policy.
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State Government
TribBlog: Ethics Reform a Nudge at Hodge?
Embattled former Dallas state Rep. Terri Hodge hasn’t even finished serving her year in prison for lying on her tax returns. But her successor, freshman Democratic Rep. Eric Johnson, is already pledging to file legislation that would prohibit lawmakers who commit felonies from receiving state pension benefits.
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State Government
People You Should Know
When the Legislature convenes in January, more than three-dozen new members will take their seats in the Texas House — almost all of them Republicans, and many as surprised to be there as you’ll be to see them. Here’s a freshman facebook to help you keep them straight.
Posted inState Government
2010: Neil Waiting For Final Vote Tally
Republican Dan Neil, who lost to Democratic Rep. Donna Howard in Tuesday’s HD-48 election by a mere 15 votes, released a statement tonight saying he’s going to wait for every legal vote to be “received and counted” before he decides his next course of action — namely, whether to ask for a recount.
Posted inState Government
Red November
Rick Perry won his third full term as governor of Texas on Tuesday, defeating former Houston Mayor Bill White by a convincing double-digit margin and positioning himself for a role on the national stage. And he led a Republican army that swept all statewide offices for the fourth election in a row, took out three Democratic U.S. congressmen and was on its way to a nearly two-thirds majority in the Texas House — a mark the GOP hasn’t seen since the days following the Civil War.