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🟪 Austin, Dallas revise police policy allowing more ICE cooperation after Abbott funding cut threat (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Austin voters approved $1 billion in bond projects that still aren't built (Austin American-Statesman)

🟪 Austin mayor proposes economic development policies (Austin Business Journal)

🟪 Council advances incentive deal for nearly $1B Circuit of the Americas resort (Community Impact)

🟪 West Lake Hills moves forward with 9 AI traffic signals (Community Impact)

🟪 Texas legislators investigating July 4 floods to hold first hearings (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Alleged White House Correspondents' Dinner shooter set to appear in federal court (NPR)

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✅ Austin, Dallas revise police policy allowing more ICE cooperation after Abbott funding cut threat (Texas Tribune)

The City of Austin on Friday announced it is updating Austin Police orders to clarify when officers should contact Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents about people they detain. It is the third city in Texas to revise its policy on local law enforcement’s cooperation with federal immigration authorities this week, amid massive funding threats from Gov. Greg Abbott.

On April 16, the governor’s office warned Austin and Dallas that millions in grants — including more than $55 million in World Cup public safety funding for Dallas — could be at risk if city police failed to change their general orders limiting officers’ coordination with ICE. Austin risked $2.5 million in grants for sexual assault evidence testing, victims assistance programming and other public safety initiatives.

A press release about the new orders states that officers should contact ICE “when operationally feasible” if a person detained by an officer is found to have an administrative warrant issued by ICE. The orders also direct Austin police to “not take an unreasonable amount of time assisting” with the warrants… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin voters approved $1 billion in bond projects that still aren't built (Austin American-Statesman)

The bond backlog has become a major political liability as cash-strapped city leaders weigh asking voters to approve another bond package this November. 

Historically, the city has been able to count on Austin voters to approve bond packages, no matter the size or state of the economy. Of the nine elections held since 2006, only one bond has failed in whole — another in part. One selling point is that the impact to tax bills isn't always immediate, with rates rising only after bonds are issued.

But last year, voters overwhelmingly rejected a city tax hike known as Proposition Q. The outcome was a wake-up call for city leaders who are grappling with a budget crisis compounded by a state law that doesn't allow them to raise taxes more than 3.5% per year without voter approval.

Mayor Kirk Watson is trying to get out ahead of the potential backlash as city staff prepare a bond recommendation for City Council consideration in May in large part by blaming past administrations for poor planning. 

“There’s discussion about having a bond election this year,” Watson wrote in his latest newsletter. “I want us to approach the discussion with some sense of past mistakes and pain those mistakes may be causing.”

Experts — and city officials — largely agree on the root problem of the $1 billion bond backlog: projects were approved before they were fully defined.

“An overarching theme," said city spokesperson Andrew Cantu, "is that they were put forward at a concept level that hadn’t been fully vetted for scope, schedule and budget."… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Council advances incentive deal for nearly $1B Circuit of the Americas resort (Community Impact)

Austin leaders advanced a city incentive deal for a $985 million resort project at Circuit of the Americas this spring that's expected to add hundreds of jobs and generate billions of dollars in the local economy.

RIDA Development is planning a 1,000-room hotel with a golf course and 170,000-square-foot conference center on the western portion of the COTA project in Del Valle.

A 30-year economic development agreement between Austin and RIDA proposed this spring would see the city reimburse a portion of the hotel occupancy tax, or HOT, generated by the resort once it's up and running, and carries no other upfront costs to the city.

New tax revenue collections for Austin, Travis County, Del Valle ISD, Austin Community College and Central Health are projected to total hundreds of millions of dollars over the term of the deal. The project's construction is expected to create nearly 4,000 temporary jobs, while the resort will support about 900 permanent jobs and indirectly create hundreds more… 🟪 (READ MORE) 

✅ West Lake Hills moves forward with 9 AI traffic signals (Community Impact)

West Lake Hills City Council moved forward with funding nine AI traffic signals to be located along the Bee Cave Road corridor on April 22.

While the traffic signals along the corridor are the responsibility of the Texas Department of Transportation's Austin District, West Lake Hills’ 2025 strategic plan included an initiative to engage in joint ventures on mobility and infrastructure projects.

The city and TxDOT have been working together to improve traffic efficiency along the corridor.

The NoTraffic Intersection Vehicle Detection and Sensing System along with the NoTraffic Mobility OS software will be furnished by Texas Highway Products. The software will provide access to vehicle and bicycle detection, real-time video streams, traffic counts, turning movements and other data analytics… 🟪 (READ MORE) 

✅ Austin mayor proposes economic development policies (Austin Business Journal)

The city of Austin needs to take a more active role in economic development, Mayor Kirk Watson said. 

“The city government has been too passive in recent years, and it's time to play the prominent role that people expect us to play, and that other folks looking to be involved with Austin expect us to play,” Watson told the Austin Business Journal in an interview. 

To spur more economic development, Watson — along with Austin City Council Members Jose “Chito” Vela, Ryan Alter, Paige Ellis and Zohaib “Zo” Qadri — proposed a “progressive economic development policy” for the city. The details of the economic development policy were shared on the Austin City Council’s public message board on April 22. 

The new policy proposal includes a draft resolution and a six-page document outlining Austin’s strategy for economic development. It also names 10 target sectors for growth. While the policy proposal was unveiled April 22, it will still need full approval from City Council. Message board posts indicate it could be considered at a May 7 meeting… 🟪 (READ MORE)  

✅ New study lays out environmental costs of adding toll lanes to MoPac through South Austin (KUT)

A new government review of the proposed MoPac South project lays out the most detailed picture yet of what the long-debated highway expansion would touch.

And it's not just affecting MoPac.

The agency leading the project, the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority (CTRMA), has issued a draft environmental assessment showing how construction would reach into public spaces including Zilker Park, how water quality could be affected and where noise walls could go.

Previous rounds of public feedback offered broader outlines of the proposal. Now, the public can read a 224-page draft environmental assessment, along with a stack of technical studies, spelling out the costs of the project and what CTRMA says drivers would gain in return.

The draft environmental assessment is open to public comment until 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, May 3… 🟪 (READ MORE) 

✅ Lammes Candies to close after 141 years in Austin (KVUE)

Iconic Austin chain Lammes Candies will be shutting down after 141 years in operation.

Customers learned of the news with a sign posted on the business’ Round Rock location, a report from the Austin Business Journal said.

The main store on Airport Boulevard will remain open “a bit longer so that everyone has the opportunity to purchase their favorite Lammes Candies treat,” according to the sign. The Round Rock store closed on April 24, with a sign that read, "we have made the difficult decision to close our business."

The owners cited “changing market conditions and the long-term sustainability of our operations” as the reasons behind the decision to close.

Lammes is Austin’s oldest continuously run family business, according to KVUE’s media partners at the Austin-American Statesman. The business began in 1878 after William Wirt Lamme arrived in Austin from St. Louis in and established the Red Front Candy Factory at 721 Congress Ave. After losing the store in a poker game, his son, David Turner Lamme, repurchased it in 1885 for $800.

The store was renamed Lammes and moved to 919 Congress Ave. Lammes later opened locations in Twin Oaks, on The Drag at 2262 Guadalupe, and at the Delwood Shopping Center in 1951. Its current flagship store at 5330 Airport Blvd. opened in December 1956… 🟪 (READ MORE)

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✅ Texas legislators investigating July 4 floods to hold first hearings (Texas Tribune)

Texas legislators plan to meet Monday and Tuesday to hear testimony about last year’s catastrophic Fourth of July floods, which killed more than 100 people when heavy rains caused the Guadalupe River to surge through homes, RV parks and youth camps in the middle of the night.

The two-day hearing marks the first public session for the joint House and Senate flood investigating committees. It comes as public scrutiny has centered in recent weeks on Camp Mystic, where 27 girls and the camp director died.

Earlier this month in an Austin courtroom, members of the Eastland family that owns and runs the camp testified about what happened in those horrific hours as the disaster unfolded and they couldn’t get girls out of flooding cabins fast enough. They answered questions as part of a suit filed by the parents of an 8-year-old camper whose body has not been found. The Eastlands face multiple other lawsuits from other parents of children who died… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ A new worry for Republicans: Latino Catholics offended by Trump (New York Times)

The Republican Party is struggling to hold onto the support from Hispanic voters who helped propel Mr. Trump back into the White House in 2024. Yet as many party leaders have acknowledged the urgent need to stop the backsliding among Latinos, the president has enraged many of even his strongest supporters by clashing with the pope. On Easter Sunday, Pope Leo, the first U.S.-born pontiff, spoke of the need to “abandon every desire for conflict, domination and power, and implore the Lord to grant his peace to a world ravaged by wars.”

Within days, Mr. Trump, who has led the United States into a war with Iran, said the pope was “catering to the radical left” and posted an AI-generated image portraying himself as a Jesus figure.

Mr. Trump later deleted the image, saying he thought it depicted him as a doctor. “It just isn’t what a president should do,” Mr. Sepulvida said. “The pope speaks for his people. He is beyond politics.” Mr. Trump won 55 percent of Catholic voters in the 2024 election, compared to 43 percent who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris, according to Pew Research Center. The most sizable gains came from Hispanic Catholics. While Joseph R. Biden Jr. won their votes by a 35-point margin in 2020, the Democratic advantage shrunk to 17 points in 2024.

Now, just 18 percent of Hispanic Catholics said they support most or all of President Trump’s agenda, according to a poll from Pew released earlier this year. If the president’s quarrel with the pope sours more Latinos on the Republican Party, it could affect midterm races across the country, including in South Florida and South Texas, where Republicans have notched important victories in predominantly Hispanic districts in recent years… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ The Hormuz billion-barrel oil shock is about to crash demand (Bloomberg)

The Strait of Hormuz oil shock has yet to crash demand as the rich world borrows from its stocks and pays up to secure supply. Traders are now sounding the alarm that a harsh adjustment is coming. The longer the vital oil channel doesn’t reopen, traders say, the more consumption is going to have to recalibrate lower to align with supply that’s dropped at least 10%. And for that to happen, people will have buy less, either through prices they can’t afford, or government intervention to force consumption down.

A billion barrels of supply loss is already all-but guaranteed — more than double the emergency inventories that governments released not long after the conflict began at the end of February. Buffers are being used up fast, helping to keep a lid on oil prices for now. But with the closure now in its ninth week, demand destruction that started in less obvious sectors like petrochemicals in Asia, is quietly spreading to everyday markets the world over.

“Demand destruction is happening in places that are not visible pricing centers,” Saad Rahim, chief economist of trader Trafigura Group, told the FT Commodities Global Summit in Lausanne this week. “That adjustment is already happening, but if this continues, it has to get larger and larger. We’re at a critical inflection point.” The most dependent industries and markets — including petrochemicals plants in Asia and the Middle East, and shipments of liquefied petroleum gas, a vital cooking fuel in India — saw an immediate hit when the US and Israel first attacked Iran on Feb. 28.

Now, with a stalemate between US President Donald Trump and his Iranian adversaries dragging on, the impact is increasingly shifting west — and to products that are central to consumers’ everyday lives. Airlines in Europe and the US are cutting thousands of flights. Analysts are warning of weakness in consumption of gasoline after prices hit $4 a gallon in the US, and diesel — used to power everything from trucks to construction equipment… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ College students wary of the job market are changing course in search of ‘AI-proof’ majors (Associated Press)

The uncertainty appears most concentrated among those pursuing degrees in technology and vocational areas of study, where students feel a need to develop expertise in AI but also fear being replaced by it. A recent Quinnipiac poll found the vast majority of Americans believe it’s “very” or “somewhat” important for college and university students to be taught how to use AI, as Gallup Workforce polling finds AI is getting adopted in technology-related fields at higher rates. Meanwhile, students studying health care and natural sciences may be less impacted by AI overhauls, Gallup found.

“We see students all the time change majors. That’s not new or different. But it’s usually for a ton of different reasons,” said Courtney Brown, a vice president at Lumina, an education nonprofit focused on increasing the number of students who seek education beyond high school. “The fact that so many students say it’s because of AI — that is startling.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Alleged White House Correspondents' Dinner shooter set to appear in federal court (NPR)

The alleged gunman at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, where President Trump and other top administration officials were gathered, is set to make his first appearance in court today.

Cole Allen, 31, is slated to be arraigned in federal court. Police have not formally identified Allen as the suspect, but NPR confirmed his identity with two people familiar with the investigation who aren't authorized to speak publicly.

Allen faces charges including using a firearm during a crime of violence and assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon, according to U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro.

Authorities said Allen charged through a security perimeter at the Washington Hilton, where the annual event was taking place, before being stopped and arrested by law enforcement. One Secret Service agent was shot in his protective vest and not seriously injured.

Video from the event shows Secret Service agents surrounding Trump and Vice President Vance and ushering them out of the room after shots rang out. Journalists and other attendees can be seen crouched under tables as federal officers swarmed the ballroom… 🟪 (READ MORE)