As Restaurant Week – the hugely popular foodie fundraiser – gets underway across North Texas, industry experts are reminding diners that year‑round support for local restaurants remains critical as operators face rising costs and work to stay afloat.

“We talk to restaurant operators every day,” said Emily Williams Knight, president and CEO of the Texas Restaurant Association. “It is so hard right now. And really, the risk is, they won’t be here when you decide to dine out again.”

The association represents thousands of restaurants statewide and says the economic landscape is increasingly complicated. Operators are confronting rising costs across the board.

“Labor cost is up double digits, food cost is up, credit card swipe fees are up, insurance is up. Anything you input… we can’t even talk about beef, because it’s up so much,” Knight said. “You may see a big dining room that’s packed, but it may not be profitable because they have so many costs they’re trying to cover.”

According to Knight, only about 60% of restaurants turned a profit last year – meaning roughly four in 10 did not. Competition is also intensifying.

“In the Dallas-Fort Worth area alone, we actually opened more new restaurants than any part of the country in June,” Knight said. “And you have folks now coming from LA, Miami, Chicago, New York. Their next stop is Dallas for the first time, really, in recent history.”

Still, with every new opening comes news of a closure. Reasons range from retirement and owner health challenges to rent increases that have more than doubled. Even without those pressures, experts say the environment remains difficult. 

According to analysis from Restaurantdata.com, Texas led the nation in restaurant closures during the first six months of the year.

The message from industry advocates is clear: support your favorites now, or they may not be open when you try to visit them again.

“There’s no doubt,” Knight said. “The independent restaurant doesn’t have the big ecosystem, the economies of scale, the supply chain that so many of our large chain operators do. And so you’ve got to get in there and support them.”

The TRA is also urging lawmakers to acknowledge the economic connection between the immigrant workforce and rising food costs.

“You can’t really talk about the cost of food without talking about the impact that the immigrant workforce has on that entire food supply,” Knight said. “When that supply chain starts to be disrupted, that is where the cost comes in and gets more excessive. 

“And so what we’re really saying to lawmakers is: do the right thing, provide work permits for this population that is keeping food on the table and can help bring the price of food down.”

Texas schools receive their state report cards Friday, providing families a glimpse of how well schools educate students. Those who consistently get low grades inch toward state takeovers.

This year’s ratings come as at least five school districts sit on the brink of state intervention — Austin, Waco, Greenville, Ector County and Ralls.

Preliminary ratings released by Austin ISD officials Thursday showed two middle schools each failed state standards for a fifth consecutive year, while the district as a whole earned a B. Meanwhile, Ector County and Greenville district officials said their campuses made gains in the ratings this year.

AISD Superintendent Matias Segura told the Austin Current he has not been in communication with state officials regarding the education commissioner’s plans for the district.

“I understand there is an anxiousness and concern in the community,” Segura told the Current. “We are going to be here tomorrow, the teachers are going to show up, we are going to do the work to ensure their student gets what they need, regardless of what that looks like for that specific family, for that specific school. AISD will continue to be here; we have been here for 145 years.”

The letter grades campuses receive can shape community perceptions. Often, parents use the scores to pick a school for their kids. Businesses may also weigh the ratings when choosing which regions to invest in or move to, as they anticipate that schools labeled high-performing will graduate more students prepared for the workforce.

Meanwhile, Texas leaders are leaning on state intervention to fix chronic academic underperformance as five years of failing grades brings bruising state sanctions. The education commissioner must close a persistently failing campus when it reaches that threshold or replace a district’s locally elected school board with appointees he selects.

Ratings for schools and districts largely depend on three primary metrics: how students perform on STAAR and meet college and career readiness benchmarks; how results on state tests improve over time; and how well schools are educating underserved children.

Texas schools that trigger state takeovers tend to serve predominantly Black, Latino and low-income students, while majority-Black schools last year received more Fs than A ratings. Critics of the state’s accountability system say school ratings fail to account for the challenges facing high-poverty schools, which often work with fewer resources to serve children with higher needs.

Proponents of the grades say Texas families deserve transparency about how well schools educate their children. State leaders also say the ratings allow them to identify which districts fail to concentrate on student learning.

Parents face a changing education landscape with more access to schooling options outside of traditional neighborhood campuses. This school year marks the first time Texas families can use public taxpayer dollars to fund their children’s private schooling or home-school education.

Districts have until Sept. 11 to appeal their grades to the Texas Education Agency.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals restored key parts of Texas’ election law Wednesday, handing the state a major win after repeatedly reversing the lower court during a five-year legal fight.

The 11-page ruling overturned a lower court decision that blocked nine parts of Senate Bill 1, a 2021 law that changed Texas’ rules for mail-in voting and voter assistance.

The appeals court pointed to its repeated reversals in the case, noting that it has “reversed the district court on everything” during roughly five years of litigation.

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“The bulk of the plaintiffs’ claims fail for lack of standing. One fails on the merits. But none justifies interference with the State Legislature’s efforts to prevent voter fraud and to protect election integrity,” Judge Andrew Oldham wrote in the opinion.

The restored rules include requirements for Texans voting by mail to provide an identification number or Social Security number on ballot applications and for that information to match state records. The law also lays out a process for voters to fix defective ballots and requires voters and people helping them fill out ballots to sign an oath stating they did not coerce the voter.

A district judge blocked the rules in March 2025 after several lawsuits challenging the law over accessibility concerns were combined. The plaintiffs argued the requirements made voting too difficult for some voters with disabilities and violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Texas allows several groups to vote by mail, including voters who are 65 or older and those who qualify because of a disability.

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The appeals court found the groups did not have legal standing to bring most of their challenges and rejected another challenge outright.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a defendant in the lawsuit, celebrated the ruling on social media, calling it a “major victory.”

Fox News Digital reached out to attorneys and organizations representing the plaintiffs for comment.

Texas lawmakers passed Senate Bill 1 in 2021 after a contentious fight over election rules. The law targeted in part voting initiatives Harris County used during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Democratic lawmakers, civil rights organizations and voting advocacy groups opposed the measure, and Texas House Democrats broke quorum in an unsuccessful attempt to stop it.

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The appeals court also noted that the share of mail-in ballot applications or ballots rejected because of identification-number errors fell from 11% to 2.7% after the law took effect.