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Dallas Judge Stuffs Her Docket to Make a Statement. Judge Amber Givens assigned her court over 119 jury trials in a single day, on April 1. The thinking is that doing so will encourage plea deals or a quicker trial, but most defense attorneys are furious and the district attorney says his prosecutors will have no way to prepare for such a workload. The Dallas Morning News reports that both sides have to prepare as if the court would hear these cases, despite the likelihood that the week will see just two trials.

Construction Begins on Opal Lee’s Childhood Home. The grandmother of Juneteenth hasn’t lived in that Fort Worth home since a mob of White racists burned it down in 1930. On Thursday, Trinity Habitat, HistoryMaker Homes, and Texas Capital Bank broke ground on a new home on the same plot, where the 97-year-old will live after it is completed.

Richardson ISD Votes to Close 5 Schools. The district is trying to solve a budget deficit exacerbated by the fact that the state of Texas hasn’t adjusted its funding per student in many years. Closing Greenwood Hills, Springdale, Spring Valley, Thurgood Marshall, and Dobie will save the district about $11 million. The board voted 7-0 in favor of the closures, despite the heckling from parents in the audience.

Biden’s Visit to Dallas Proves Fruitful. ICYMI, President Joe Biden is in town (he’ll be wheels up for Houston soon, though). He attended two private fundraisers last night that organizers tell D Magazine netted more than $3 million. He also cracked this joke about Trump and endorsed Colin Allred for senator. Among the attendees was former Nikki Haley voter Mark Cuban, state senators Royce West and Nathan Johnson, and Dallas County Commissioner Elba Garcia.

Jenkins Now Dad of Twins. County Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins, 59, and his wife Ramsey welcomed twins Wednesday morning. He was reportedly on hand to welcome Biden at the airport, but then went back to the hospital. He also has a teen daughter from his first marriage.

Don’t Go in the Water. The aftermath of Plano’s 1.5 million-gallon raw sewage spill into White Rock Lake continues. Dallas Park and Recreation officials have suspended water-related activities at the lake because of elevated bacteria levels. Fishing, rowing, yachting, and other boating activities are suspended during the suspension.

Four Local Nonprofits Receive Funds from MacKenzie Scott. Yesterday, philanthropist MacKenzie Scott gave roughly $7 million to four local nonprofits. Bonton Farms, the Prison Entrepreneurship Program, and the Epilepsy Foundation of Texas each received $2 million, and Dallas Afterschool received $1 million.

Grab the Umbrella. Showers and thunderstorms are likely by mid-morning, the National Weather Service’s Fort Worth office says. That rain will linger through tonight, and we’re expected to get at least half an inch of rain.

President Joe Biden will be in town today for two fundraisers, and there is a good chance that the security around that visit will impact your commute home. How and where he’ll be is a bit of a secret—the Dallas Police Department referred us to the Secret Service, which told us they’re working to “minimize disruptions.”

“For security reasons, we are unable to release specific motorcade routes in advance but the public can expect intermittent road closures and parking restrictions as part of the visit,” a spokesperson said.

However, we’ve got some guesses that may help you plan for your drive home.

Giant Pothole Takes Out Cars on Interstate 20. It feels like calling this a pothole doesn’t do it justice. A chunk of concrete was missing and the rebar was exposed, and about a dozen vehicles drove over it and popped their tires. The Dallas County Sheriff’s Office closed the lane, and TxDOT crews seemed to struggle to patch it. The lanes appear to still be closed, so take that into account if you’re heading east on I-20.

TCEQ Investigating White Rock Lake After Spill. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is testing the water from the White Rock spillway to Frankford Road after Plano spilled 1.5 million gallons of raw sewage into White Rock Creek. The state will be conducting tests through Friday, but didn’t tell the Morning News what those tests had found so far.

It’s the Second Day of Spring. Expect warm-adjacent weather today, with highs in the 70s and partly sunny skies. Rain returns overnight and will likely linger into your commute tomorrow morning. The stronger storms are expected to be south of Interstate 20.

It appears that Dallas will be allowed to continue enforcing a curfew on sexually oriented businesses. The U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday that it would not review an appeals court ruling in favor of the city, which cited crime as a reason to shut down the clubs for four hours after 2 a.m.

In 2022, the Dallas City Council voted to place a curfew on sexually oriented businesses, requiring businesses like strip clubs to close at 2 a.m. and not reopen until 6 a.m. That new ordinance immediately sparked a lawsuit from the Association of Club Executives of Dallas—a trade association—an adult novelty store, and four city strip clubs.

A federal judge ruled for the plaintiffs in May 2022, but that decision was overturned by the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in October 2023. Dallas began enforcement of the curfew in November. Lawyers for the businesses requested a SCOTUS review in February.

Businesses that violate the ordinance could lose their licenses, and could face criminal charges that include up to a year in jail or a $4,000 fine.

Edward Cloutman’s name may not be instantly recognized by many in Dallas, but his life’s work has had an impact on most people who have lived here over the last 50 years. Throughout his decades-long career, his fingerprints are on some of the most important local cases you can find, including some that changed the way Dallas was governed and how its school district taught. Cloutman died on Friday at the age of 78. A cause of death has not been announced.

Roger Albright, who worked with Cloutman at the firm Mullinax, Wells, Babb & Cloutman for a decade, said Monday afternoon that he counted Cloutman as both a friend and mentor. “He wasn’t trying to get his name in lights or do this for fame,” he said. “He wasn’t doing it for money. He was doing it because it was the right thing to do. He was absolutely committed to making the world a better place. He was a great lawyer.”

Judge Ken Molberg, who serves on the state’s Fifth District Court of Appeals, called Cloutman a “quiet civil rights hero of Dallas.”

“Perhaps some of you don’t know his name, but you’ve no doubt heard something about his years-long, valiant efforts to desegregate our school system in what’s commonly referred to as the Tasby case,” Molberg wrote, referring to Tasby v. Estes, the 1970 class action lawsuit that ended with a judicial order to integrate the district. “Brilliant and soft-spoken, Ed was a man of character—a long-serving soldier for justice who battled intolerance in all its embodiments.”

Plano Pooped on Dallas. A mechanical failure at a water station dumped more than 1.5 million gallons of hell into White Rock Creek. It started Thursday and was fixed Saturday. The Corinthian Sailing Club on White Rock Lake moved its annual regatta to Lake Ray Hubbard over the weekend, but officials yesterday said they are monitoring the waterways and haven’t seen damage to aquatic life.

Tyron Smith Bids Us Adieu. The left tackle played for the Cowboys for 13 years. Now he’s a Jet. He took to Instagram to say, “[P]art of my heart will forever be left in Texas.”

Dallas Finally Has a Monument to Racial Violence. A steel sculpture called Shadow Lines near the Sixth Floor Museum will be formally dedicated next Tuesday. You should read Sharon Grigsby’s story about what the monument signifies.

Joy and Kevin met at a homeless shelter in Texarkana. Joy is a registered stockbroker and Kevin is a minister who says he intended to go it alone, but “God had decided to bring Joy into my life—we fell in love.”

The couple assessed their strengths and recently hopped a Greyhound bus for Dallas, spending their first night sleeping outside near The Stewpot.

The two recently sat down with Dallas Public Library staffers to talk about their experiences in a new podcast. Library officials hope it will offer insight into the city’s unhoused population.

“There are a lot of preconceived ideas about people who are experiencing homelessness and why they are in that situation,” said library community relations administrator Melissa Dease. “The podcast is a way to share their stories and hopefully increase understanding and empathy.”

Dease said the new podcast is part of the library’s ongoing homeless engagement initiative, which launched in 2013. Hundreds of members of the city’s homeless community use libraries to access computers and the internet, books, and for a place to escape the heat or cold. The library also offers mentorship and personalized assistance programs.

When 18-year-old Melvin Hicks graduates from Moisés E. Molina High School, he wants to work in a restaurant.  He’s a senior in the school’s culinary arts program, which teaches students how to cook, manage a restaurant, and develop other skills required for a career in the hospitality industry. Hicks wants to one day become an executive chef and own a restaurant.

But this spring semester, Hicks is trying to get a food truck up and running with his classmates. In January, Dallas ISD unveiled a new student-operated food truck, the first of its kind in Texas. Hicks—along with DISD high school students from Molina, Bryan Adams, and Skyline—is learning how to start a food truck from the ground up.

“I’ve never operated a food truck before,” Hicks says. “Once I get there, it’s going to humble some people—it’s going to humble me as well. The more I know, the more I realize I don’t know. So, there’s just more to be discovered about it.”

The food truck, which the students named Curbside Delights, was created in partnership with TurboTax parent company Intuit, says Jason Hamilton, the district’s career and technical education coordinator. The financial software giant donated a fully operational food truck with a commercial-grade kitchen, and students will use Intuit products to help them learn the business and finance sides of the operation. Hamilton says he is aiming for Curbside Delights to debut in late April or early May. It’s expected to be fully functional for the 2024-2025 school year. Intuit has entered into similar partnerships with school districts in three other states, but Dallas is pioneering the project in Texas.

Hamilton has more than two decades of hospitality experience, including 18 years as an executive chef. His job with the school district is to manage the food truck initiative. The plan is to start with the three high schools—all of which have culinary arts, business, and graphic design programs—and then expand to another six schools.

Students and teachers within those three career programs have been collaborating on the truck’s design, its business plan, a menu, and the necessary permitting work. (Last September, House Bill 2878 went into effect to make permits easier for food truck operators, and the city of Dallas in 2022 rewrote its code to be more friendly to these operations.) Business students will handle marketing, point-of-sale operations, and budget management. The graphic design students will design the menus and promotional materials, and culinary arts students will come up with the dishes on the menu, manage truck operations, prepare and serve food, and clean.

The money the students make will go back into the program to support the Career and Technical Education pathways that are involved with the project.

People are coming to North Texas, but they are not moving to Dallas. The regional success story told in this week’s Census data dump—8.1 million people now call the region home for the first time—is not actually a tale about the center of our metro area, Dallas County, which charted a meager growth that was outpaced by even Kaufman County.

Dallas County added about 4,300 people in 2023, only because there were about twice as many births as there were deaths. Last year, more people decided to leave Dallas County than those who moved here. The most populous county in North Texas lost more existing residents than all but seven other counties in the nation. The domestic migration numbers are particularly depressing: 34,330 U.S. residents packed up and left. Luckily, about 19,000 people moved here from other countries, making Dallas’ loss 15,057. The 39,000 babies who were born last year is the only reason the county had any population growth.

Compare that to Collin County, which welcomed 28,886 new people. Or Denton County, where 23,090 now have new addresses. Tarrant County added another 14,000. I jabbed at Kaufman, but by percentage, it’s the fastest growing county in the country. It added about 12,000 new people, a 7.6 percent increase. And remember, those numbers do not include births; they are the raw totals of the human beings who made a decision to move to one of those suburban counties.

New Call for Pedestrian Mall on Akard Downtown. A pedestrian’s death at Akard and Commerce streets downtown last year has prompted a push to call for removing cars from Akard. More than 1,000 people have signed a petition. The city, of course, says it’s not that easy.

Denton, Collin Counties Hoarded All the Rain. Severe storms steered clear of Dallas proper, but a small tornado touched down in Collin County and hail pelted our northern neighbors. Little Elm and Frisco reported golf ball-sized hail. Rain is possible today and tomorrow, but the chances are lower. Highs will be in the 60s today.

Jerry Jones Defamation Lawsuit Dismissed. Alexandra Davis has alleged that Jerry Jones is her biological father and sued him for defamation, alleging that he portrayed her as an “extortionist.” A district judge ruled that the 27-year-old Davis did not prove that Jones acted with actual malice. The lawsuit has gone back and forth for months, but the dismissal does not affect a pending paternity suit.