BG Reads // January 19, 2026

Author

A.J. Bingham
January 19, 2026

faustin a

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www.binghamgp.com

January 19, 2026

✅ Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 Austin's light-rail plans get environmental clearance from Trump administration (KUT)

🟪 Austin ISD urges Waymo to halt operations amid increased school bus traffic violations (Community Impact)

🟪 Austin housing market’s slowdown signals ‘healthier, more sustainable’ outlook (Austin Business Journal)

🟪 They wanted a university without cancel culture. Then dissenters were ousted. (Politico)

🟪 As data centers jostle to get on Texas’ grid, ERCOT promises new rules for planning (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Mistakenly deported college student details how her life turned upside down (Associated Press)

🟪 FEMA is getting rid of thousands of workers in areas recovering from disasters (NPR)

🟪 Trump links Greenland threat to Nobel Peace Prize snub, EU eyes trade retaliation (Reuters)

READ ON!

[FROM THE FIRM ]

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

🏛️ City of Austin Memos:

🏛️ Meetings next week:

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

✅ Austin's light-rail plans get environmental clearance from Trump administration (KUT)

Austin's long-delayed light-rail project just got a crucial green light from the Trump administration, clearing a major checkpoint after years of lawsuits and political fights over the city's 9.8-mile starter system. If built, the light-rail line would have 15 stations and all-electric trains arriving as frequently as every five minutes with service estimated to start in 2033.

Federal transportation officials on Friday issued what's known as a Record of Decision, formally signing off on the project's lengthy environmental review.

The approval allows the Austin Transit Partnership to move into more detailed design work, begin relocating utilities and start the process of using eminent domain to acquire property along the rail corridor.

"It's a big milestone from the federal process side," ATP executive vice president Jennifer Pyne said in an interview ahead of the Federal Transit Administration's announcement. "It's a significant hurdle that we're completing and really allows us to get to the next level of work on the project."

The federal approval also locks in several changes to the project's design since last year's draft environmental review… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin ISD urges Waymo to halt operations amid increased school bus traffic violations (Community Impact)

Austin ISD has again asked self-driving car company Waymo to cease its operations during morning and afternoon school bus hours.

The district has reported 24 school bus traffic violations by Waymo vehicles this school year. Four of these incidents occurred after Waymo issued a voluntary software recall in early December amid a federal investigation into the company by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

During the week of Dec. 8, Waymo issued a voluntary software recall for its autonomous vehicles after AISD recorded 20 incidents of Waymo cars illegally passing district buses, averaging 1.5 violations a week, according to a letter from AISD to Waymo.

Texas state law mandates that drivers stop on both sides of the road for a school bus with a stop sign or flashing red lights, unless the bus is stopped on the opposite side of a divided highway, according to the Texas Department of Transportation… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin housing market’s slowdown signals ‘healthier, more sustainable’ outlook (Austin Business Journal)

The Austin metro’s home sales and prices should remain flat this year, which experts say is a welcomed sign as the market normalizes.

Home sales slowed last year in the metro, according to Unlock MLS's year-end market report. In 2025, 29,383 home sales were recorded, marking a 3.2% decrease from the year before, the data shows. Those decreases suggest a move toward predictability in the local housing market, Unlock MLS Research Advisor Vaike O’Grady said in a statement.

“2025 wasn’t a year defined by urgency,” O’Grady said. “It was defined by adjustment.”

Despite retaining the title of Austin’s highest-selling community, the Liberty Hill neighborhood Santa Rita Ranch saw sales slow in 2025. A recent John Burns Real Estate & Consulting report found the North Austin development sold 483 homes compared to 634 in 2024… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ They wanted a university without cancel culture. Then dissenters were ousted. (Politico)

The inaugural year of the University of Austin, or UATX as it’s known, had been marked by the frenzy and occasional chaos that one might expect from a start-up aimed at disrupting American higher education. The audacious experiment — the construction of a new university ostensibly based on principles of free expression and academic freedom — had drawn the interest and participation of a star-studded cast of public intellectuals, academics and tycoons. Even measured against this high bar, however, April 2, 2025, would be a memorable day.

The night before, the campus had hosted a dinner and conversation between the prominent conservative historian Niall Ferguson and Larry Summers, the former Harvard University president and Treasury secretary. Later, that evening, the billionaire entrepreneur Peter Thiel would deliver the first of a series of lectures on the Antichrist. People at UATX had grown accustomed to fast-paced action. But in the afternoon, all of the professors and staff were summoned, quite unusually and mysteriously, to a closed-door meeting.

It had been called by Joe Lonsdale, a billionaire entrepreneur who’d co-founded the data analytics company Palantir Technologies with Thiel. Together with Ferguson and the journalist Bari Weiss, Lonsdale had been a driving force behind the creation of UATX and was a member of the board of trustees. But he wasn’t often present on campus, and it was almost unheard of for a member of the board to summon the staff, as Lonsdale had. The campus was quiet that Wednesday, the first of the spring term. The college, which operates under a quarter system, doesn’t schedule classes on Wednesdays, and so no students would be around to see the staff coming and going from the conference room in the elegant, former department store where UATX had made its home. Through the window, one could see the huge American flag in the atrium, illuminated by a skylight in the ceiling. It was a warm, pleasant day in Austin, but Lonsdale’s mood didn’t match the weather.

“Let’s get right into it,” he said. Then, with heightened affect, Lonsdale explained his vision for UATX — a jingoistic vision with shades of America First rhetoric that contrasted rather sharply with the image UATX had cultivated as a bastion of free speech and open inquiry. “It was like a speech version of the ‘America love it or leave it’ bumper sticker,” one former staffer told me, and if you didn’t share the vision, the message was “there’s the door, you don’t belong here.” Like many of the people I spoke with for this story, the staffer was granted anonymity for fear of reprisal. “It was the most uncomfortable 35-to-40ish minutes I’ve ever experienced. People were shifting uncomfortably in their seats.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

[TEXAS/US NEWS]

✅ As data centers jostle to get on Texas’ grid, ERCOT promises new rules for planning (Texas Tribune)

Texas’ main electric grid operator is developing a new process to evaluate multiple large-load interconnection requests at the same time. The question for cryptocurrency miners and data center developers that are already in line is: Who gets to go first? 

That should hopefully be sorted out by month’s end. That’s when the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, hopes to have criteria announced for which energy-intensive projects could be considered for “Batch Zero,” the first group to go through ERCOT’s revised planning process. 

At a Public Utility Commission of Texas, PUC, meeting on Thursday, Jeff Billo, ERCOT’s vice president of interconnection and grid analysis, said that for “Batch Zero,” the grid operator will consider proposed large load interconnection requests from projects that have been in the queue for some time and don’t need to be restudied. Projects that are less far along will be studied in a later batch, Billo said.

These requests primarily come from data centers, crypto mines, industrial sites and hydrogen projects. Billo also said that just because some existing projects in ERCOT’s queue might warrant another transmission study doesn’t mean they couldn’t still be considered for “Batch Zero.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Why Houston now has one of the largest supplies of homes for sale in the US (Houston Chronicle)

The Houston housing market entered 2026 with one of the largest supplies of for-sale homes in the country, giving buyers leverage like they haven’t had in years. With roughly 40,000 single-family homes, townhomes and condominiums for sale, Houston had more active listings than any other major U.S. metro for at least the third consecutive month as of November, according to Homes.com. Houston ranked ahead of similarly sized metros such as Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta, Miami and Philadelphia.

While Homes.com hasn’t yet released national data yet for December, local figures suggest Houston ended 2025 with historically high levels of inventory. It’s a dramatic shift from the pandemic-era days of tight supply and bidding wars. Now,sellers face a very different reality: far fewer buyers willing to take the plunge. Redfin estimates there are roughly 20,000 more sellers than buyers in the Houston market.

After hitting record high levels in the summer, active listings in Houston eased but remained elevated. Listings were 16.5% higher year-over-year in December, according to the Houston Association of Realtors. “That inventory has piled up, but it’s slowing down in terms of how quickly it’s piling up,” said Chen Zhao, head of economic research at Redfin. Even so, Houston continues to stand out nationally on supply. In December,Houston outpaced other large U.S. metros with about 38,800 single-family homes for sale, according to Redfin. That’s roughly 9,000 more homes than Atlanta, the next biggest market for single-family inventory.

Houston has long been a major market for homebuilders, and some economists have suggested that new home construction could be contributing to the region’s supply surge. Local data, however, suggests the picture is more complex. About 24% of active listings in Houston were newly built homes in December, a smaller share than before the pandemic, according to multiple listings data from HAR. Although MLS data does not capture every new home for sale, the figures still suggest that new homes are not the major driver for high inventory levels. Houston homebuilders did ramp up construction during the pandemic, but not nearly at the rate that builders did in Austin and Dallas, said Lawrence Dean, CEO of Community Builders Advisory Services… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Mistakenly deported college student details how her life turned upside down (Associated Press)

As she sat on a deportation flight headed to Texas, Any Lucia Lopez Belloza kept asking herself why. She was a college student with no criminal record and no reason to believe she was at risk of being sent back to her native Honduras. “It just shocked me. I don’t know, like I was numb,” Lopez Belloza told The Associated Press on Friday in a phone interview from Honduras, where she's staying with her grandparents.

The 19-year-old freshman at Babson College was detained at Boston’s airport on Nov. 20 as she was preparing to fly home to Texas to surprise her family for Thanksgiving. She was deported two days later, returning to Honduras for the first time since she was 8. Although the government has apologized for a federal immigration employee mistakenly deporting her even after a Massachusetts judge ordered that she remain in the U.S., her future is unclear.

Lopez Belloza and he mother were ordered deported several years after arriving in the United States. Although the government says she missed multiple opportunities to appeal, Lopez Belloza said her previous attorney told her there was no removal order, and she never would have tried to fly home in November if she'd known about it. She was able to make a phone call to her family before being loaded onto a plane to Texas, her last stop before leaving the country.

“I was numb the whole plane ride. I was like, ‘If this is it, then this will be it,’ Lopez Belloza said, even as she kept hoping for a reprieve. "Why is this happening to me? I just kept questioning myself. Why is it happening to me?” But as she boarded the flight for Honduras, Lopez Belloza admitted her mood darkened. She started to consider that the life she had — living in a college dorm in a wealthy Massachusetts suburb, earning a business degree so she could open a tailoring shop with her father — might be over. “I guess this is where my dreams are gone," she recalled thinking. "Because in Honduras, if you want to dream big, it’s like you have to have a lot of money. You have to be rich. But in the United States, dreams are possible. You can make them happen.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ FEMA is getting rid of thousands of workers in areas recovering from disasters (NPR)

Thousands of workers across the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will lose their jobs this year, according to multiple people who attended personnel meetings that supervisors held in the last week. FEMA supervisors warned that workers with multiyear contracts that are set to expire this year will not see those contracts extended, even if they are actively working on rebuilding efforts in places that recently suffered disasters.

Some divisions within the agency stand to lose half their workers if current policies stay in place for the rest of the year, those with direct knowledge said. They all requested that NPR not use their names because they were told they would be fired for speaking to the press. FEMA and the White House did not respond to questions about why employees are being let go or how the cuts will affect the agency’s ability to respond to disasters.

President Trump has repeatedly stated that he believes FEMA is ineffective and should be eliminated as it currently exists, although the administration has not released a long-awaited report on specific reforms. “I think it’s irresponsible,” says Michael Coen, who served as FEMA chief of staff under the Biden and Obama administrations. “I think it’s going to adversely affect FEMA’s ability to respond and help communities recover.” The Washington Post originally reported on plans to cut about 50% of the agency’s workforce.

The FEMA employees who are set to lose their jobs fill a wide variety of positions. Unlike other federal agencies, FEMA relies on a large number of workers on two-to-four-year contracts. That’s because Congress wanted the agency to be able to dial up the number of workers to meet demand after major events and reduce it during quieter periods… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Is Trump losing Joe Rogan, America’s most important swing voter? (Wall Street Journal)

In February 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson famously lost Walter Cronkite when the renowned news anchor told Americans he could no longer accept the president’s assurances about the war in Vietnam. This week, President Trump may have lost Joe Rogan for the prosecution of his own war—this one on immigration. Outwardly, at least, the “most trusted man in America” may bear little resemblance to Rogan, the world’s most popular podcaster. One is scarcely imaginable without a coat and tie, the other tends toward muscle t-shirts and hoodies.

But in one regard, they overlap: As Cronkite was in his time, Rogan is now an essential barometer of national sentiment in a fractured and suspicious age. “He’s the weathervane,” Doug Schoen, a political consultant who advised Bill Clinton and is now a regular analyst on Fox News, said of Rogan.

The three-hour audience he provided Trump on the eve of the 2024 election, and his subsequent endorsement, is regarded by many as a pivotal moment in that contest. Certainly, Trump seemed to think so, inviting Rogan to the Oval Office. Earlier this week, though, the podcaster recoiled when faced with the particulars of Trump’s signature campaign promise to undertake the largest deportation of illegal immigrants in American history. In particular, Rogan appeared shaken by the death of Renee Nicole Good, a Minneapolis woman who was shot dead by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent under contested circumstances. “It just seemed all kinds of wrong to me,” Rogan told Kentucky Senator Rand Paul during the tail end of a nearly three-hour discussion in his Austin studio that aired on Tuesday.

“She didn’t seem mentally healthy but does that mean she should be shot in the head? Is there no other way to handle this?” Later, Rogan would invoke the Nazis when describing the masked and militarized ICE agents roaming Minneapolis streets. “Are we really going to be the Gestapo? ‘Where’s your papers?’ Is that what we’ve come to?” he asked. It is hard to say whether Rogan’s misgivings will moderate Trump. On Thursday, with Minneapolis’ wintry air clouded with tear gas and the shriek of whistling anti-ICE protesters, the president threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy the military… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Trump links Greenland threat to Nobel Peace Prize snub, EU eyes trade retaliation (Reuters)

U.S. President Donald Trump linked his drive to take control of Greenland to his failure to win the Nobel Peace Prize, saying he no longer thought "purely of Peace" as the row over the Arctic island on Monday threatened to reignite a trade war with Europe. Trump has intensified his push to wrest sovereignty over Greenland from fellow NATO member Denmark, threatening punitive tariffs on countries which stand in his way and prompting the European Union to weigh hitting back with its own measures.

The dispute is threatening to upend the NATO alliance that has underpinned Western security for decades and which was already under strain over the war in Ukraine and Trump's refusal to protect allies which do not spend enough on defence. It has also plunged trade relations between the EU and the U.S., the bloc's biggest export market, into renewed uncertainty after the two sides painstakingly reached a trade deal last year in response to Trump's swingeing tariffs.

In a written message to Norway's Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere that was seen by Reuters, Trump said: "Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America." The Norwegian Nobel Committee annoyed Trump by awarding the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize not to him but to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado. She gave her medal last week to Trump during a White House meeting, though the Nobel Committee said the prize cannot be transferred, shared or revoked.

In his message, Trump also repeated his accusation that Denmark cannot protect Greenland from Russia or China. "... and why do they have a 'right of ownership' anyway?" he wrote, adding: "The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland.” Trump vowed on Saturday to implement a wave of increasing tariffs from February 1 on EU members Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Finland, along with Britain and Norway, until the U.S. is allowed to buy Greenland… 🟪 (READ MORE)

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