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DALLAS – D Magazine reports that in a statement shared with press just before 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Saks Global reiterated that it still plans to close the downtown Dallas Neiman Marcus store at the end of March, calling any claims to the contrary “misleading.” That comes despite an announcement from Dallas leaders yesterday that the slice of land at the center of a ground lease snafu would be donated to the city. Saks initially said it would leave downtown after “a landlord” terminated Neiman Marcus’ occupancy. In today’s statement, Saks Global confirmed the landlord’s identity as Slaughter Partners.

“From as early as 2011 and as recently as December 2024, there have been several attempts to come to a commercially reasonable agreement with one of the Downtown store landlords, Slaughter Partners (Slaughter),” the statement reads. “In November 2024, previous NMG leadership contacted the City of Dallas requesting assistance in the lease negotiations, during which city officials expressed concern about the store and its continued operation. Before this meeting, previous NMG leadership also discussed purchasing a portion of the land with Slaughter’s broker; however, Slaughter would not offer a price. Despite these efforts and engaging the city, all attempts to come to a commercially reasonable agreement were rejected by Slaughter, who terminated Neiman Marcus’ occupancy upon expiration of the lease.” Saks also says it hasn’t received any documentation regarding the agreement between Slaughter and the city and feels it is unclear how the new agreement would affect the property and its other owners. The company alleges that the whole thing only became an option “after Slaughter’s attempts to increase rent were unsuccessful.” Slaughter, Saks says, continued to demand above-market rate rents. “Saks Global inherited this lease issue from Neiman Marcus’ previous owners and worked in good faith to come to an agreement with the landlord,” Saks Global Properties CEO Ian Putnam said. The company acknowledges the city leaders’ desire to keep the store open and is willing to hear them out, but it ultimately needs to make decisions based on “what’s best for the future and our long-term success.”

AUSTIN – The Dallas Morning News reports that the Texas Senate on Thursday passed a bill to ban the use of courier services that facilitate the sale of Texas Lottery tickets. Senate Bill 28 by Republican Sen. Bob Hall of Edgewood was approved 31-0 amid concerns that couriers have hurt the lottery’s reputation. Courier services take orders online or through an app, buy lottery tickets from a retailer and send a scanned copy to the buyer, holding the ticket until the drawing is held. Couriers charge a fee to buy and manage the tickets, according to the Lottery Commission. The legislation next goes to the House, where state Rep. Matt Shaheen, R-Prosper, has a companion bill. Shaheen also has a bill to abolish the lottery.

Speaking Thursday to the Senate, Hall said the Lottery Commission “created loopholes specifically to allow the use of telephone and internet group purchases, resulting in underage gambling and other changes to open the door wide for what the Legislature intended to be illegal gambling practices.” “This bill is intended to send a strong message, not just to the Lottery Commission, but to all state agencies … that have taken it upon themselves to defy legislation and create rules that clearly violate the word and the intent of legislation,” Hall said as he introduced his proposal. “SB 28 will not restore integrity to the Texas lottery. I don’t even know if that’s possible. But it will reiterate the responsibility we have given the commission to ensure lottery couriers and their licensed retail outlets are no longer able to operate in the state in language even they should be able to understand,” he said. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick hailed the unanimous vote as a step in protecting the lottery’s integrity, saying Texans must have “faith the game is not rigged.” “Today, the Senate made it clear that the first step in restoring public trust in the commission, if even possible, is to ban lottery couriers. The decision on whether the lottery will continue will be made in the coming days and weeks of the legislative session,” he said in a statement. The Coalition of Texas Lottery Couriers lamented passage of the bill. “We are disappointed that a pro-business state like Texas would consider shutting down companies that have for years followed the guidance and instruction of the Texas Lottery and honored the trust of millions of Texas customers,” the group said in a statement.

EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) — An 1842 U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning the kidnapping conviction of a white man who seized a Black family and forced them into slavery south of the Mason-Dixon line is still being cited in American jurisprudence, 160 years after enslaved people throughout the U.S. were freed.

Prigg v. Pennsylvania has been cited in 274 other rulings since then, according to the Citing Slavery Project at Michigan State University. They are among more than 7,000 direct citations of slavery-law precedents that continue to guide lawyers and judges, said the project’s director, law professor Justin Simard.

This research into the lasting impact of legal principles related to the ownership of other humans is a counterpoint to efforts by the Trump administration and elected officials in Republican-led states to remove references to America’s racial history and dictate what teachers can discuss in classrooms.

“Because people are invested in trying to pretend that our history of slavery didn’t happen and that its effects are not still with us,” Simard told The Associated Press, “I thought, what better way to prove that slavery had an influence on our legal system than using official legal sources?”
Citations show American jurisprudence is founded on slavery

Most of the slavery precedents concern how property rights were protected by the U.S. Constitution, which was written by wealthy property owners in an era when much of the young nation’s economy was powered by the buying and selling and sweat of enslaved people.

The Supreme Court made slavery’s importance to the America’s founding clear when it ruled that Pennsylvania’s anti-slavery law was an unconstitutional affront to the federal Fugitive Slave Act, and ruled in favor of Edward Prigg, who had forced Margaret Morgan and her children into slavery in Maryland.

The U.S. Constitution clearly granted “to the citizens of the slaveholding states the complete right and title of ownership in their slaves, as property, in every state in the Union, into which they might escape from the state where they were held in servitude,” the court wrote.

The slaveowner’s right to “this species of property” was so fundamental to the framers of the Constitution that without it, “the Union could not have been formed,” the justices added.

Slavery became illegal when the 13th Amendment was adopted in 1865, but Prigg has been most often cited in the decades thereafter, mostly in cases involving property law, as guidance regarding the boundaries between state and federal power, Simard said.
How rulings are still shaped by slavery laws

The continuing use of such citations shows that slavery wasn’t just a historic stain that the 13th Amendment cleaned up — these precedents have an insidious effect on jurisprudence even today, said Leonard Mungo, a Michigan-based civil rights and employment discrimination attorney.

“The unashamed use of human beings as property and as the foundation for the development of jurisprudence regarding property law is the same reason courts across this country rarely find violations of civil rights in employment and other contexts in its rulings and decisions,” Mungo said.

And it’s not like only minorities are affected: Prigg was cited in a 1989 Supreme Court decision overruling most of the $850,000 judgment awarded by a Texas jury to a white football coach who alleged that he was reassigned and demoted from a mostly Black high school because of his race.

Sometimes, slavery precedents are invoked in efforts to reaffirm civil rights. In a 2016 Iowa Supreme Court opinion, dissenting justices said people arrested but not yet formally charged with a crime must be allowed private in-person attorney consultations. Citing how Fugitive Slave Act enforcement shaped the Iowa Constitution, these justices said enslaved people were given the right of counsel — and so should an Iowa man accused of driving under the influence. They were outvoted, 4-3.
‘Digging and digging’

Simard was doing research for his dissertation when he began compiling evidence that northern judges had cited slave cases in the 19th century. He discovered that these citations were more numerous, widespread and recent than he imagined.

“I kept digging and digging and digging and realizing that this wasn’t something just one judge did or some very racist judge or something,” Simard said. “This was just a basic feature of the legal system and it really shocked me, really surprised me.”

More than 12,000 slavery rulings have been identified to date by Simard’s team, which then searches for citations.

And yet many lawyers and judges are either unaware of these origins or don’t think it matters that enslaved humans were the property in question, and consider them “just like regular law,” Simard said. “Not only are we ratifying their treatment as property in the past but also continuing to treat them as property in the present.”
Noting how to move forward

Simard’s team successfully lobbied the editors of The Bluebook, a guide to citations used by the legal profession, to require case notations such as “enslaved party” or “enslaved person at issue.”

“I think just eliminating these cases is impossible,” Simard said. “I think the best approach that lawyers and judges can take is to be thoughtful when they find these cases and cite these cases and to consider whether the law that these cases stand for is still good or not.”

Dylan Penningroth, a professor of law and history at the University of California-Berkeley, agreed.

“These slavery cases are everywhere,” Penningroth said. “How are we ever going to get them all off the book? One answer is you don’t really have to. If lawyers stop relying on these cases, they lose their power.”

Identifying those cases should keep their origins and intents on the minds of judges and litigators, according to Michigan Appeals Court Judge Adrienne Young. She said, “the real harm is in failing to acknowledge the horrific history.”

BANGKOK (AP) — The U.S. registered its first death from measles since 2015 this week, as a child who wasn’t vaccinated died in a measles outbreak in Texas.

Normally, most U.S. cases are brought into the country by people who have traveled overseas. So far, Texas officials have reported 124 cases. New Mexico has reported nine.

Experts point to declining measles vaccination rates worldwide since the COVID-19 pandemic. In the United States, most states now are below the 95% vaccination threshold for kindergartners — the level needed to protect communities against measles outbreaks.

Britain reported 2,911 confirmed measles cases in 2024, the highest number of cases recorded annually, since 2012.

Measles cases in the United States last year were nearly double the total for all of 2023, raising concerns about the preventable, once-common childhood virus. Health officials confirmed measles cases in at least 18 states in 2024, including in New York City, Philadelphia and Chicago.

“Measles anywhere is a threat everywhere,” the U.S. Centers for Disease Control say on their website.

Here’s a brief look at the global measles situation.
Are measles outbreaks common outside the U.S?

According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 10.3 million people were infected with measles in 2023 and 107,500 died. Most were unvaccinated people or children younger than 5. Cases were most common in parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia where incomes are low and health services insufficient.

In places where measles have largely been eradicated, cases have been spread by travelers from other countries.

While measles-related deaths declined slightly in 2023, the number of outbreaks increased. Major outbreaks took place in 57 countries in 2023, including India and Indonesia, Russia, Yemen and Iraq. The largest number of cases in 2023 was 311,500 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
What is the impact of vaccinations?

The worldwide rate of childhood vaccinations has fallen in recent years, to 83% in 2023 from 86% in 2019, partly due to disruptions in immunization and health care due to the pandemic.

The WHO estimates that vaccination helped to prevent more than 60 million deaths worldwide between 2000 and 2023, as efforts to get the shots to more people ramped up. In 2000, 800,062 people are estimated to have died of measles. Before the vaccine was introduced in 1963, major epidemics caused about 2.6 million deaths a year.

Measles is so highly infectious that 95% immunity is required to prevent epidemics, the WHO says. Put another way, it infects about 9 of 10 people exposed if they lack immunity.
What international efforts are underway to prevent epidemics?

The WHO and others are backing an effort called “Immunization Agenda 2021-2030,” to push for elimination of measles.

Independent experts declared the Americas free of endemic measles in 2016 but that status was lost in 2018 due to measles outbreaks in Brazil and Venezuela. Reduced vaccination rates are undermining efforts to fully eradicate the disease, experts say.

Global health organizations and other groups have increased their efforts to speed up immunization programs and close the gaps in prevention.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — For most people in Florida, misdemeanor theft can result in up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine. For an immigrant illegally in Florida, that same crime now carries a felony punishment of up to five years behind bars and a $5,000 fine.

The new laws in Florida come as President Donald Trump cracks down on illegal immigration. They impose harsher penalties for offenses committed by people illegally in the U.S. than for everyone else. The consequences are particularly stiff for first-degree murder, which now carries an automatic death sentence for anyone who is in the U.S. illegally.

While Florida is more aggressive than most, there are other states considering similar measures to enhance criminal penalties based on immigration status.
A deterrence, but is it constitutional?

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis says “Florida will be safer and securer,” and a model for other states, because of its sweeping immigration laws.

The stiffer penalties are meant to be a deterrent, Republican state Rep. Lawrence McClure said.

“Don’t come to the state of Florida illegally,” he said. “That’s the premise.”

Some civil rights advocates and legal experts are raising alarm.

The laws are “leading into a head-on collision with the constitutional guarantee of equal protection to everyone who is in the United States,” said César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, a law professor at Ohio State University who specializes in immigration and criminal law.
Are mandatory death sentences allowed?

On his first day in office, Trump ordered a renewed emphasis on the death penalty. His executive order highlighted two particular grounds for it: murdering a law enforcement officer or committing any capital offense while in the U.S. illegally. But jurors and federal judges would still decide whether to impose the death sentence.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 ruled North Carolina’s mandatory death sentence for first-degree murder violated the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. States since then have generally used court proceedings in which jurors first decide guilt, then weigh aggravating and mitigating factors when deciding whether defendants should be sentenced to death.

“There is longstanding precedent making clear that mandatory death penalty laws are unconstitutional,” said Kara Gross, legislative director and senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.

But Florida’s new laws eliminate judicial discretion in certain cases. They require courts to impose a death sentence on defendants in the U.S. illegally who are found guilty of capital offenses such as first-degree murder or child rape.

Republican state Sen. Randy Fine acknowledged the legislation he co-sponsored will likely face a legal challenge, but he expects the Supreme Court to overturn its prior ruling.

“It’s almost 50 years later,” Fine said, adding, “The Supreme Court changes its mind on things.”
More time for the same crime

Last year, DeSantis signed a law enhancing penalties for people who commit state felonies after being previously deported and convicted of illegal reentry under federal law. The measure increased sentences by one classification, meaning someone convicted of a third-degree felony typically punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine would instead be sentenced for a second-degree felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

The latest Florida laws apply similar sentencing enhancements to anyone in the U.S. illegally, regardless of any convictions for reentering, and apply the enhanced penalties to misdemeanors.

If the new laws get challenged, García Hernández said, a court would likely look to a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. The justices said Texas failed to show a substantial state interest for a law barring state school funding for children not “legally admitted” to the U.S. The high court cited the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which says a state shall not “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

To defend Florida’s law, state attorneys would probably have to answer a similar question: “What is your compelling justification for treating individuals who are accused of a crime — the same crime — differently based solely on their citizenship status?” García Hernández said.
Other states may follow Florida’s lead

Legislation pending in several states — including Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, Minnesota, South Carolina and Texas — would allow enhanced penalties for some state crimes committed by immigrants illegally in the U.S., according to an Associated Press analysis using the bill-tracking software Plural.

A bill by Texas state Sen. Pete Flores would raise penalties one notch for most felonies committed by people in the U.S. illegally.

Flores, who is chair of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee and co-founder of the Texas Hispanic Republican Caucus, described the legislation as “a common-sense, tough-on-crime response to enforce the rule of law and better protect Texans.”

Legislation that passed the Utah Senate and is now pending in the House takes a more narrow approach focused on theft and drug dealing. It would impose mandatory jail sentences, without the potential for early release, for repeat offenders who are lawful U.S. residents or for any offenders who were previously deported and then convicted in federal court of illegally reentering the U.S.

Republican state Sen. Cal Musselman said his legislation targets “a small group of individuals.” Law enforcement officers have told him they see “a clear connection between being deported multiple times, coming in, and committing crimes within the state.”

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Lieb reported from Jefferson City, Missouri.

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Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.