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Before he toured the operation at Bonton Farms on Thursday, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn met with local nonprofits to discuss what happens after an inmate leaves the prison system.

He’s repeated this with varying backdrops across the state since January, when he announced he would advance the Workforce Reentry Act. This act seeks to make permanent Labor Department grants that provide job support to federally incarcerated people, including job training and housing upon release. 

A similar act was introduced in the House last November, but is currently in the earliest stages of the legislative process. Cornyn says he plans to introduce legislation in the Senate in the next few months. Bonton Farms, which provides jobs for formerly incarcerated people and tiny homes for those who need housing, is an exemplar of the kind of programs he’d like to see receive those federal dollars. 

“The legislation we’re working on is based on a pilot program that’s evidence-based,” he said. “It’s not based on wishful thinking or a pie in the sky. It’s based on things that actually work and have been proven to work.”

Cornyn says that about 78,000 inmates in Texas are released from prison each year. Federal research shows that those who engage in job training and housing programs are 43 percent less likely to return to prison.

“They can’t get a job, and they can’t find a place to live, well, that’s two strikes against the person,” he said Thursday.

Rangers Get Rings. After an extra-innings win against the Cubs to start the season, Your 2023 World Champions received their championship rings in a pregame ceremony on Saturday (followed by another win). They couldn’t finish off the sweep Sunday, but still: pretty nice little start to a title defense.

Luka Doncic Scores 47 in Mavs Win. The NBA’s leading scorer hit two ridiculous shots—one pregame, one during. The latter helped take down the streaking Houston Rockets and nudged the Mavs up the Western Conference standings.

Stars Also Rolling. That is seven straight for the Western Conference leaders.

Eclipse-Viewing Conditions ‘Not Looking Good.’ According to the National Weather Service, there is a 15 percent likelihood Dallas-Fort Worth will have favorable conditions to view the coming total solar eclipse, thanks to storms and cloudy skies and so on. “If [the weather] were to pan out the way the models are showing right now, it doesn’t look like there would be anywhere in the path of totality in Texas that people could not be affected by the cloud cover associated with this system,” said Steve Fano, a meteorologist with NWS Fort Worth. That is, of course, subject to change.

Major Prostitution Sting in Northwest Dallas Nets 30. They ranged in age from 21 to 62, and Dallas police scooped them up as part of a sting targeting “people soliciting prostitutes” in northwest Dallas. It follows a similar effort earlier in the month that ended with 29 arrests in the Northwest Patrol Division, home to the city’s “main corridor for sex work.”

Avoid Westbound Interstate 30 This Morning. The incident occurred between Country Club and Bridge Street at the eastern edge of Fort Worth, near Arlington. A driver struck a pedestrian who was apparently on the highway, but officials haven’t provided an official narrative. The westbound lanes are closed while police investigate.

Appeals Court Acquits Woman of Illegal Voting. Crystal Mason is the Tarrant County woman who submitted a provisional ballot in the 2016 election despite being on supervised release for a tax fraud conviction. Her ballot was rejected, and she said she was unaware that she was ineligible to vote. Mason got caught up in the hysteria over voter fraud, and was charged, tried, and convicted of a second degree felony despite maintaining that she didn’t know she couldn’t vote. An appeals court has now agreed with her, overturning her conviction two years after initially upholding it. It was ordered to review the evidence and found nothing that contradicted her prior statements.

Programming Note. The D Magazine offices are closed today, so the content will be flowing a little slower than usual.

Depending on the poll, Colin Allred is either the 6-point underdog in his U.S. Senate race against incumbent Republican Ted Cruz, or he’s neck and neck. 

The attorney and former NFL player has been here before, he argues. In 2018, he bested incumbent Pete Sessions for the District 32 congressional seat. Sessions had been in Congress since 1997, first in District 5, and moving to the then newly created D-32 in 2003. When Allred kicked off his campaign to represent his hometown, Sessions was one of the most powerful Republican members of Congress, running the National Republican Congressional Committee for two successive campaign seasons and leading the House Rules Committee.

Sessions was expected to win, as usual. (He drew 71 percent of the vote in the 2016 election, and Allred had to escape a runoff election with Lillian Salerno in the 2018 Democratic primary.) Instead, Allred would beat Sessions, 52.2 percent to 45.9 percent.

“You believed in us when all the pundits didn’t, when the experts said it wasn’t possible,” Allred told his watch party gathered at Dallas’ Magnolia Hotel Park Cities that night.

Last May, Allred announced his candidacy for Senate with a video that highlighted some of Cruz’s actions in the past couple of years, including the junior senator’s infamous flight to Cancun while most of the state sat in the cold thanks to power outages from Winter Storm Uri.

“We don’t have to be embarrassed by our senator,” he said. “We can get a new one.”

In the March Democratic primary, he faced eight opponents, including state Sen. Roland Gutierrez and state Rep. Carl Sherman. Allred avoided a runoff with 60 percent of the vote, placing him directly in the path of Cruz in November. The last time the Democrats won a statewide race was 30 years ago, in 1994, when Bob Bullock won the lieutenant governor seat with 61 percent of the vote.

Last week, just days after President Joe Biden told Dallas supporters to “elect Colin your next senator,” Allred sat down for a quick chat about his campaign so far. Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below.

It’s Opening Day For Your Texas Rangers. The World Series champs will face the Chicago Cubs this evening. The weather will be pretty perfect for watching the World Series champions play, too, with the high expected to be in the low 70s. Before you go see the Rangers (who happen to be the World Series champions) play, go read what Jamey Newberg wrote about opening day.

SMU (Possibly) Hires New Basketball Coach. It looks like SMU, who will head to the ACC next year, will hire USC head coach Andy Enfield. SMU finished fifth in the AAC under head coach Rob Lanier last year, and hasn’t made an NCAA tournament since 2017.

Dallas Morning News Provides Nightmare Fodder. After a ship crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore on Tuesday, the paper reviewed all the structurally deficient bridges in Dallas. There are five of them. Ignorance is probably bliss in this situation unless you’re a fan of white-knuckling portions of your commute.

Fort Worth Businesses Struggle After Hotel Explosion. On Tuesday, the city approved $250,000 in assistance for five struggling small businesses adjacent to the Sandman Hotel, which suffered a gas explosion in January. Each business can apply for a grant of up to $50,000.

In early February, FIFA announced that North Texas would not host the 2026 World Cup final, but it did land nine games—the most matches of any North American city. On Tuesday, two Dallas City Council committees were briefed by city staff on what Dallas-proper can expect from the month-long event. Though the games will be played in Arlington, the region’s largest city is preparing to host tens of thousands of fans, if not more, for two weeks in June.

AT&T Stadium will host nine games over the 56-day tournament: Match 11 on June 14, Match 22 on June 17, Match 43 on June 22, Match 57 on June 25, and Match 70 on June 27. The stadium will also be home to two round-of-32 matches, one quarterfinal matchup, and one semifinal matchup.

The joint meeting of the Dallas City Council’s Ad Hoc Committee on Professional Sports Recruitment and Retention and the Economic Development Committee on Tuesday reviewed the scope of the area’s World Cup involvement. 

Monica Paul, the executive director of the Dallas Sports Commission, told the Council that economic projections are still being massaged by FIFA and are due by summer. However, early estimates for four matches predicted a boon for the region of $415 million. With nine matches and additional activities, Paul suspects that number could more than double.

“What I can tell you is that in 1994, I still hear about Dallas hosting the World Cup at the Cotton Bowl—we hosted six matches,” Paul said. “So to go from six matches to nine is a huge increase from an economic standpoint.”

Paul outlined where events would happen. In addition to AT&T Stadium, teams will be able to choose from four base camp sites: Dallas Baptist University, Toyota Stadium in Frisco, University of Dallas, and TCU. They will train in either the Cotton Bowl Stadium or at SMU. A multi-week fan festival will be held at Fair Park, and additional fan gathering opportunities are in the works across Dallas-Fort Worth.

Should Dallas be picked to host the tournament’s International Broadcast Center, Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center will be its headquarters, pending contract negotiations. If Dallas does get picked, Paul says that the center would bring an additional estimated 5,000 broadcasters to the city. 

Paul said that in 2006, Germany had 50,000 people a day attending their fan festivals. Qatar, which hosted the World Cup in 2022, had an average of 70,000 attendees at its festivals and a maximum attendance of 98,000. One of Russia’s largest days drew 160,000 to its fan festival.

“Even people that may not have tickets to the matches taking place here will go to the fan fest,” she said. Additional fan events could be held at places like Klyde Warren Park, Southern Gateway deck park, the Arlington Entertainment District, and potentially the Soccer Hall of Fame or the Star in Frisco.

Commission Rebuffs Effort to Remove Parks’ Independence. The charter review commission will soon hand its recommendations to the City Council for discussion, and it denied one of the most significant alterations: making the Council the boss of the parks director instead of the park board. The independence of the Parks and Recreation Department was viewed as a major asset by a majority of the commission. Former Councilman Adam Medrano was one of the two pushing the initiative, ostensibly still upset by the attempted privatization of the ball field at Reverchon Park in 2019.

Firefighters Put Out 3-Alarm Fire at Vacant Church Near Love Field. The two structures in the 7700 block of Denton Drive were completely destroyed, but there were no injuries. It took about 90 minutes for the fire to be extinguished, and the flames were too heavy to combat from the inside.

Cool Wednesday, Storms Possible This Afternoon. It’ll be in the 40s for your morning commute, but we’ll get up to the 60s through mid-day. Storms will develop to our west and begin moving east around 4 p.m., and it’s possible some of that rain could reach Dallas. It seems like most of the concern is to our west, which is where meteorologists are warning of “a few storms” that could include hail and heavy winds.

Austin Mayor Kirk Watson told the Austin City Council Tuesday evening that outgoing Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax is its search committee’s lone finalist for the same job in the capitol city.

The announcement comes one day after Broadnax and the other finalist, Denton City Manager Sara Hensley, traveled to Austin for a town hall to answer questions from residents. It also comes roughly 21 days after Austin named Broadnax a finalist. Early documents from the city’s search firm indicated that Broadnax was ranked as the most qualified of the applicants.

“I give great thanks to both of our excellent candidates,” Watson wrote on the city’s message board Tuesday night. “I know this has been a daunting process, but they’ve demonstrated their professionalism. Austin would do well with either person.”

Broadnax announced his resignation last month after running Dallas for seven years. His last day at 1500 Marilla is slated to be June 3. A majority of the City Council asked him to resign, arguing that the fractured relationship between Broadnax and Mayor Eric Johnson made doing city business more difficult than it should be. 

We aren’t saying today’s mysterious agenda item is related to the City Council discussing a way to keep the Dallas Mavericks in Dallas, but we’re not not saying it’s about retaining the Mavs.

At 3:30 p.m. today, a special called joint meeting of the Dallas City Council’s Ad Hoc Committee on Professional Sports Recruitment and Retention and the Council Economic Development Committee (apologies for the mouthful) will be updated on the 2026 FIFA World Cup activities in North Texas. If you recall, the region is hosting nine matches and will also be the site of referee headquarters and an international broadcast center.

That’s interesting enough. But there is a real mystery in an agenda item slated for closed session, where the two committees will be meeting privately with attorneys. Here’s how the matter is described in the agenda:

“Discuss or deliberate the commercial or financial information that the city has received from a business prospect (“Project X”) that the city seeks to have locate, stay or expand in or near the city and with which the city is conducting economic development negotiations; and deliberate the offer of a financial or other incentive to such business prospect.”

It’s no secret that Dallas Sports Commission executive director Monica Paul has been working to bring all kinds of events to Dallas and North Texas, so this could literally be anything. But the broad language may be a clue (“stay or expand in or near the city”). And given the speculation around the new owners of the Dallas Mavericks and their suburban land acquisitions ahead of the team’s lease with the American Airlines Center expiring in 2031, perhaps Dallas is trying to get ahead of its competition.

Two historical notes before we let you go: in our D Magazine office library, we have a copy of 2004 DVD titled “Project X.” It contains computer-generated imagery produced by Halff Associates on behalf of the Dallas Cowboys. It shows a stadium complex built near downtown Dallas on the banks of the Trinity River. Is this Project X a sly callback to that Project X?

Finally, Project X was also a pretty good Todd Phillips movie from 2012. Is Dallas considering throwing a totally out-of-control party at City Hall?

Bridge Collapses in Baltimore. We normally keep things local on Leading Off, but this is what everyone will be talking about this morning. A cargo ship appears to have lost power before it crashed into the 1.6-mile Francis Scott Key Bridge and caused it to collapse. Here’s video.

North Texas City Managers Jockey for Austin Job. The two finalists for the city manager gig in the Capital are Denton City Manager Sara Hensley and Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax. Yesterday they made their pitches at a public forum. Broadnax described Dallas as “the city I had dreamed of leading” but said, “I would love to have an opportunity to lead [Austin] so that we can be the beacon for any other city in this great nation, let alone in the [state] of Texas.”

E. Coli Levels Spiked at White Rock Lake. A Dallas city memo says that after 1.5-million gallons of sewage from Plano flowed into the lake, levels of E. coli were still high a week later—though the memo didn’t provide any specifics, and the city hasn’t yet provided them to the Morning News.

North Texas Expected to Get $689.7 Million From Eclipse. That’s the economic impact according to research by The Perryman Group. My own personal analysis is that if it’s cloudy on April 8, people are gonna be pissed.

Development Fees Too Low in Dallas. This story in the paper makes it sound like everything is going to hell. As in: “The cost to build and renovate in Dallas will rise this year … . [I]t’s the everyday Dallasite that will pick up the bill in the end. The Dallas City Council is slated to consider an ordinance to amend and add fees tied to permitting, engineering, inspections and other items … . One fee will increase more than 2,400% on certain projects … .” But then, when you keep reading, you come to understand that it’s been way too long since Dallas raised its fees, so right now we’re way cheaper than everyone else. To build a $33 million apartment complex, it would cost $38,000 in Dallas, while Plano would charge $228,000.

The city released—finally, on Friday—the wish list of projects for the 2024 bond election in May. That’s just a month before we head to the polls; it’s three weeks later than most City Hall watchers expected.

The list includes nearly 800 items. (You can see a map of the projects here.) They range from replacing streets and playgrounds to acquiring land for parks. The list includes money for dredging White Rock Lake and funds to replace two libraries in North Dallas (Preston Royal and Park Forest) and one in Oak Cliff. 

It also includes $50 million for a new police academy at UNT Dallas. Officials say that the academy will help the city recruit more officers. The current academy has been located in an industrial space in the Red Bird neighborhood since 1990. Last month, the $150 million project received $10 million from the Communities Foundation of Texas, and the state Legislature allocated $20 million in the last legislative session. Should the proposition get voter approval, funding for the project would be over the halfway mark.