High vaccination rates, geography and a sense of community in the wake of 2019’s Walmart shootings help keep El Paso’s delta numbers low, experts and locals say.
Health care
In-depth reporting on public health, healthcare policy, hospitals, and wellness issues shaping communities across Texas, from The Texas Tribune.
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Coronavirus in Texas
Texas sues six school districts that issued mask mandates in defiance of Gov. Greg Abbott’s order
Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton have long threatened to sue school districts that defy Abbott’s ban on local mask mandates. On Friday, Paxton made good on that threat.
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Coronavirus in Texas
“Do I or don’t I?” Some Texas hospitals grapple with new mandatory vaccine rule
Stuck between Biden’s and Abbott’s competing vaccine rules for employees, public hospitals consider their next move even as most private systems already require vaccination for employees.
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Texas Abortion Restrictions
We annotated Texas’ near-total abortion ban. Here’s what the law says about enforcement.
The law will be carried out by civilians “deputized” to do what the state cannot: enforce its new restrictive abortion law. Here’s where the process is laid out in the statute and what it means.
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Health care
Justice Stephen Breyer calls Supreme Court decision on Texas abortion law ‘very, very, very wrong’
Breyer has criticized a decision that refused to block a Texas abortion statute, which bans the procedure as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.
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Texas Abortion Restrictions
Texas lawmakers’ novel approach to skirting Roe v. Wade leaves abortion rights advocates without a legal playbook
Most abortions previously performed in the state are now outlawed through a mechanism that makes providers and those who help people get abortions subject to lawsuits. That unique approach has so far allowed Texas to flout Roe v. Wade and other legal rulings, experts say.
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Coronavirus in Texas
Gov. Greg Abbott slams Biden administration over vaccine mandate for employers
Abbott has long resisted making COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory. There may be legal precedent on Biden’s side.
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Economy
Biden administration extends vaccine mandate to large U.S. companies
Sweeping new mandates apply to businesses with more than 100 employees, whose workers would have to be inoculated or face weekly testing. The White House estimates new policies will impact about 80 million workers, or two-thirds of the country’s workforce.
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Criminal Justice
U.S. Justice Department sues Texas over new abortion law that Attorney General Merrick Garland calls unconstitutional
Garland called the law a “scheme to nullify the Constitution of the United States.” It prohibits the procedure before many people know that they are pregnant.
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Coronavirus in Texas
A Houston day care convinced all its workers to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Now it requires a shot.
While some national companies are requiring employees to be vaccinated against the coronavirus, mandates have been the exception for businesses in Texas.