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- BG Reads 1.22.2025
BG Reads 1.22.2025
🟪 BG Reads - January 22, 2025
Bingham Group Reads
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January 22, 2025
➡️ Today's BG Reads include:
🟪 Memo highlights needs, gaps in achieving city’s climate goals by 2040 (Austin Monitor)
🟪 Austin rents have fallen for nearly two years. Here’s why. (Texas Tribune)
🟪 Office vacancies in Austin at record highs to start 2025 (Austin Business Journal)
🟪 New Texas-led bill would seek to end birthright citizenship, following Trump's lead (Houston Chronicle)
🟪 Trump administration directs all federal diversity, equity and inclusion staff be put on leave (Associated Press)
Read On!
[CITY OF AUSTIN]
ℹ️ Helpful City Links:
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
➡️ Memo highlights needs, gaps in achieving city’s climate goals by 2040 (Austin Monitor)
The city still has to rework or commit more funding and resources toward the majority of the goals involved in implementing its Climate Equity Plan, which aims to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040.
A recent staff memo from Chief Sustainability Officer Zach Baumer outlines the challenges and next steps involved in realizing the plan’s objectives.
A recent analysis by the Office of Sustainability found that 11 of the 17 goals in the plan are considered either “in need of support” or “off track,” with data unavailable for three of the goals. Gaps remain in areas such as sustainable buildings, transportation and land use, and food and product consumption.
The city is working to address these gaps through a comprehensive climate implementation program, a two-year roadmap that is expected to be released in March... 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
➡️ Austin rents have fallen for nearly two years. Here’s why. (Texas Tribune)
Austin rents skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic as tens of thousands of new residents flocked there and the region’s job market boomed.
Now, Austin is one of the only major U.S. cities where rents are falling.
Austin rents have tumbled for 19 straight months, data from Zillow show. The typical asking rent in the capital city sat at $1,645 as of December, according to Zillow — above where rents stood prior to the pandemic but below where they peaked amid the region’s red-hot growth.
Surrounding suburbs like Round Rock, Pflugerville and Georgetown, which saw rents grow by double-digit percentages amid the region’s pandemic boom, also have seen declining rents. Rents aren’t falling as quickly as they rose during the pandemic run-up in costs, but there are few places in the Austin region where rents didn’t fall sometime in the last year… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
➡️ Office vacancies in Austin at record highs to start 2025 (Austin Business Journal)
As Austin's downtown skyline climbed higher and higher in 2024, so too did the city's office vacancy rate. Downtown has seen years of development and expansions that have resulted in glittering high-rise additions — such as the impressive Sail Tower on Lady Bird Lake and Austin’s current tallest tower, Sixth and Guadalupe. But as striking as those additions have been, the Central Business District is having trouble filling up all of its office space and vacancy rates are at an all-time high.
Austin as a whole is experiencing record office vacancy — estimated at 17.6% citywide as of the first quarter this year, according to CoStar — but things are even worse downtown. Office vacancy in the CBD is estimated at 22.3% to start the year, the highest level since it began tracking the data in 2000, CoStar analyst Israel Linares said. Some other real estate analytics firms put the figure even higher.
A recent report from CommercialEdge pegged Austin’s citywide office vacancy as 27.7%, the second-highest in the nation behind only San Francisco. A number of factors are responsible for the elevated vacancy rates, experts say. Part of the trend stems from a rush of development downtown beginning in the 2010s that has resulted in several new towers, which now are drawing tenants away from older towers.
Another major factor is uncertainty regarding office needs in the post-Covid world, in which hybrid and remote work are commonplace. In addition, the large amount of office space in Austin available for sublease has increased competition for tenants, even though space up for sublease isn't reflected in vacancy rates because it's technically leased. The upshot is an overall Austin leasing environment — particularly downtown — that's “difficult” for the owners of office buildings, to say the least… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
➡️ Rodeo Austin announces March 2025 concert lineup with Charley Crockett, Luke Grimes, more (Austin American-Statesman)
On Tuesday, Rodeo Austin announced the 2025 ProRodeo and concert lineup. The concert program launches with Jon Wolfe and Walker Montgomery playing "Kick Open the Chutes" in the Rodeo Austin Arena at the Travis County Expo Center on March 14. The nonprofit will be hosting live country music every day through March 29, with a special performance by five-time Grammy Award-winning Texan band La Mafia for Dia Del Vaquero.
Notable performers include Charley Crockett, an Austin-based troubadour recently interviewed by the Statesman ahead of his New Year's Eve show, taking stage on March 18.
Luke Grimes aka Kayce Dutton on the Paramount Plus show "Yellowstone" is taking stage on March 20, around a year after releasing his self-titled debut album in 2024. Other notable acts playing the 15-day rodeo and fair include Walker Hayes, Ella Langley, Dashboard Confessional, Robert Earl Keen, and Southall (Read Southall Band) closing out the ProRodeo Finals… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
➡️ Trump’s order to limit birthright citizenship could have significant impact on Texas (Dallas Morning News)
President Donald Trump’s bid to restrict birthright citizenship could have significant repercussions for Texas and other border states that have large numbers of immigrants in the country legally and illegally.
Within hours of taking the oath of office, Trump made good on key campaign pledges by signing a series of immigration-related executive orders Monday, including one to end the practice of granting automatic citizenship to those born on U.S. soil to parents who lack citizenship or lawful permanent resident status.
Under the order, children without at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident would be barred from obtaining federal citizenship documents such as passports.
The order also prohibits the federal government from recognizing citizenship-related documents issued to those individuals by state and local authorities.
The order takes effect Feb. 19 and is not retroactive, meaning it would not apply to anyone born before that date. Because it applies to people not yet born, it is difficult to predict how many people the order will affect.
About 891,900 U.S. citizen children in Texas live with at least one undocumented parent, according to 2022 Census Bureau data compiled by the American Immigration Council.
Though those children would not be affected by Trump’s order, the number indicates its potential scope. Muzaffar Chishti, Migration Policy Institute senior fellow and director of the organization’s office at the NYU School of Law, said documents such as birth certificates are typically issued by local authorities.
If a state or local government refuses to issue documents based on the executive order, that would likely prompt additional legal challenges, he said Tuesday.
Chishti highlighted practical challenges to implementing the order, saying parents are typically not required to provide documentation of their citizenship or legal status before their child receives a birth certificate. Enforcing the order would require that of all parents, he said.
“The challenge of implementation may itself be an impediment for this becoming sort of effective anytime soon,” Chishti said… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
➡️ New Texas-led bill would seek to end birthright citizenship, following Trump's lead (Houston Chronicle)
A Texas congressman is pushing legislation to end birthright citizenship — an effort that comes as President Donald Trump’s attempt to cut off the longstanding constitutional right through an executive order drew immediate legal challenges this week. U.S. Rep. Brian Babin, a Woodville Republican, filed a bill Tuesday that would limit automatic citizenship to those born in the U.S. with at least one parent who is a citizen, a lawful permanent resident or an immigrant serving in the military. “America’s citizenship laws should reflect fairness and respect for the rule of law,” Babin said in a statement.
“This common-sense legislation corrects decades of misuse and closes the loophole that incentivizes illegal immigration and exploits U.S. citizenship through birth tourism.” At least nine other Texas Republicans had signed on as cosponsors by Tuesday afternoon, according to Babin’s office. They included U.S. Reps. Dan Crenshaw of Houston, Troy Nehls of Richmond, Chip Roy of Austin, Brandon Gill of Flower Mound, Randy Weber of Friendswood, Morgan Luttrell of Magnolia, Nathaniel Moran of Whitehouse, Jodey Arrington of Lubbock, Ronny Jackson of Amarillo and Keith Self of McKinney.
Trump on Monday signed an executive order directing federal agencies to stop recognizing the citizenship of future children born to undocumented immigrants. The order would cut off access to social security numbers, passports and more for those children. It was set to take effect in 30 days, but it drew immediate lawsuits from the American Civil Liberties Union and 18 Democratic-led states.
Legal scholars have said the president likely does not have the authority to end citizenship granted to those born in the U.S. And it’s unclear if Babin’s bill would accomplish it either.
That’s because the right has long been enshrined in the Constitution through the 14th Amendment, a view that has held since a Supreme Court ruling in 1898. Removing it from the Constitution would require a two-thirds vote in the House and Senate, as well as the support of three-fourths of the country’s state legislatures. Babin’s bill does not seek to overturn the amendment.
“Most legal scholars in the country believe that to end that will require a constitutional amendment,” said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute.
The Trump administration, however, has argued the 14th Amendment extends citizenship only to those both born in and “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.” Trump officials argue those born to undocumented parents are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. — a distinction that historically has only applied to the children of diplomats living in the U.S... 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[US and World News]
➡️ Trump administration directs all federal diversity, equity and inclusion staff be put on leave (Associated Press)
President Donald Trump ‘s administration moved Tuesday to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off. The moves follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs that could touch on everything from anti-bias training to funding for minority farmers and homeowners.
Trump has called the programs “discrimination” and insisted on restoring strictly “merit-based” hiring. The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by President Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. It’s using one of the key tools utilized by the Biden administration to promote DEI programs across the private sector — pushing their use by federal contractors — to now eradicate them.
The Office of Personnel Management in a Tuesday memo directed agencies to place DEI office staffers on paid leave by 5 p.m. Wednesday and take down all public DEI-focused webpages by the same deadline. Several federal departments had removed the webpages even before the memorandum.
Agencies must also cancel any DEI-related training and end any related contracts, and federal workers are being asked to report to Trump’s Office of Personnel Management if they suspect any DEI-related program has been renamed to obfuscate its purpose within 10 days or face “adverse consequences.” By Thursday, federal agencies are directed to compile a list of federal DEI offices and workers as of Election Day.
By next Friday, they are expected to develop a plan to execute a “reduction-in-force action” against those federal workers. The memo was first reported by CBS News. The move comes after Monday’s executive order accused former President Joe Biden of forcing “discrimination” programs into “virtually all aspects of the federal government” through “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs, known as DEI... 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
➡️ Trump pardons Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht for online drug scheme (Reuters)
U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday pardoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, who was sentenced to life in prison for running an underground online marketplace where drug dealers and others conducted more than $200 million in illicit trade using bitcoin. The Republican president made good on a campaign pledge to free Ulbricht, 40, who was arrested in 2013 and sentenced in 2015 in what became a landmark U.S. prosecution launched only a few years after the emergence of the popular cryptocurrency.
"The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me," Trump said in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.
Trump said the pardon was "full and unconditional" and said he called Ulbricht's mother to break the news to her. Ulbricht was released from a federal prison in Arizona late on Tuesday following Trump's announcement, according to federal Bureau of Prisons records… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
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