BG Reads // January 6, 2025

Author

A.J. Bingham
January 06, 2026

faustin a

Presented By

www.binghamgp.com

January 6, 2026

✅ Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 Expanded sidewalks, fewer car lanes: Austin recommends plan to redesign Sixth Street (KUT)

🟪 Debates over convention center continue following Austin United PAC lawsuit (Austin Chronicle)

🟪 Gov. Abbott directs agencies to increase anti-fraud measures for Texas child care programs (KUT)

🟪 U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz wants legal status for migrant workers in struggling construction industry (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Big Tech won in Texas — but the age-verification fight is just getting started (Politico)

🟪 Pentagon will begin review of 'effectiveness' of women in ground combat positions (NPR)

🟪 Wall Street expects the market to keep rallying in 2026 despite lofty valuations (Wall Street Journal)

READ ON!

[FIRM NEWS]

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

  • Work Session: Tuesday, January 20 @9AM

  • Regular Meeting: Thursday, January 22nd @10AM

🏛️ [New Memos]

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

✅ Expanded sidewalks, fewer car lanes: Austin recommends plan to redesign Sixth Street (KUT)

City of Austin staff have released a recommended plan to redesign Sixth Street in downtown Austin. The popular entertainment district has been undergoing recent changes to improve safety.

The updated design, which stretches from Congress Avenue to Interstate 35, includes expanded sidewalks on both sides and a curbside access lane for deliveries and rideshare drop-offs. It also reduces the number of lanes for vehicles from four to two.

City staff said in a news release that “prioritizing pedestrians doesn’t just improve mobility — it enhances safety, supports local businesses, and strengthens the cultural vibrancy that makes Sixth Street one of Austin’s most iconic destinations.”

The new design comes more than a year after the city announced major changes to try and improve the road's safety… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Debates over convention center continue following Austin United PAC lawsuit (Austin Chronicle)

Austin City Council members Vanessa Fuentes, José Velásquez, and Mike Siegel held a town hall in mid-November, two weeks after the defeat of Proposition Q, the proposal to increase property taxes to pay for public safety, social services, and other city needs. The Council members told the crowd that they had heard the will of the voters. It was time to take a hard look at spending. Robin Rather, an informed citizen who regularly attends meetings of this kind, took the mic to ask a question, hoping to better understand why city leaders can’t move money from some of the ambitious and expensive projects the city has approved over the last five years. The projects she had in mind included the “cap and stitch” plan to beautify I-35, which is expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

They included Project Connect, the plan to bring a metro rail system to Austin, at a cost of between $5.8 billion and $10.3 billion, though much of that figure may be covered by a federal grant. They also included the creation of a new convention center, which is well underway and projected to cost over a billion dollars. Rather said she knew that these endeavors are capital improvement projects – infrastructure projects like a highway, a building, or a train station – and that the funding for such projects comes from its own pot of money.

That money is prohibited, by law, from being used for the city’s ongoing expenses, things like paying its police officers or maintaining its parks. The costs for such ongoing services are paid through the city’s General Fund. “It’s not that we think these projects come from the General Fund,” Rather said. “We know they don’t. But they come from somebody’s money somewhere, and they take time, attention, and somebody’s taxpayer money from the things that we all understand are super important: EMS, public safety, mental health, parks – all the important things that are way, way more on voters’ minds.”

The money to build Austin’s new convention center is coming from revenue received by the recently demolished center and from the state’s Hotel Occupancy Tax, which must, by law, be used to promote tourism. In 2019, Council approved an increase in the Hotel Occupancy Tax to tear down the old convention center and build a new one. In 2023, it approved two contracts worth $1.6 billion for the design and construction of the new facility. In February of this year, the city posted renderings of what the new convention center will look like once it’s complete… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Developer's plan to demolish a downtown building heads to historic landmark commission (Austin Business Journal)

Developers aim to demolish a downtown building to make way for new development, though Austin's Historic Landmark Commission must first determine if the building — which holds longtime bar Shiner’s Saloon — can be torn down.

On Jan. 7, the commission will hear proposals for the demolition of 422 Congress Ave. and 101 W. Fifth St., according to the meeting agenda. City staff have recommended the approval of the sites’ demolition permit, which has already been filed by Los Angeles-based property owner and real estate developer Karlin Real Estate LLC. The proposed demolition could impact Shiner's Saloon, which has a lease until the end of April, according to co-owner and manager David Jalufka.

The building at 101 W. Fifth St. was constructed in 1914, and 422 Congress Ave. was constructed in 1940. Neither property contributes to the Congress Avenue National Register District, according to commission documents… 🟪 (READ MORE)

[TEXAS/US NEWS]

✅ Gov. Abbott directs agencies to increase anti-fraud measures for Texas child care programs (KUT)

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott wants state agencies to implement new "strong anti-fraud measures" to a program designed to help low-income families pay for child care.

The call for increased scrutiny follows the Trump administration's decision to freeze federal funding to Child Care Services programs due to a viral video claiming widespread fraud in Minnesota.

In a letter sent Monday to the heads of the Texas Workforce Commission and Health and Human Services Commission, Abbott directs the agencies to identify "high-risk providers" participating in the program and conduct additional site visits.

"Texas' percentage of improper payment rates is 0.43 percent, compared to Minnesota's approximately 11 percent according to the most recently available federal data," Abbott wrote in the letter. "However, more can be done to protect Texas children and taxpayers."… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz wants legal status for migrant workers in struggling construction industry (Texas Tribune)

U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz promised to explore new ways for migrants to work legally in the construction industry.

The Edinburg Republican announced on Monday her plans to meet with the U.S. Department of Labor, after South Texas builders voiced frustration with how immigration arrests at construction sites were negatively impacting their industry. De La Cruz suggested the U.S. should create a special visa program for construction workers, similar to the H-2A visa program that allows foreign nationals to work in the agriculture sector.

“We’d like to see where the construction industry would fit,” De La Cruz said.

President Donald Trump won reelection after promising to step up deportations. During the last year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have arrested more than 9,100 people in South Texas alone... 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ North Texas’ largest public transit system may come undone in 2026 (Texas Tribune)

A suburban mutiny against North Texas’ largest public transit agency threatens to upend how tens of thousands of Texans get around in the state’s most populated urban area — at a time state transportation planners say the state needs more public transit.

A quartet of Dallas suburbs — Plano, Irving, Farmers Branch and Highland Park — plan to vote in May on whether to leave Dallas Area Rapid Transit, or DART, following years of tensions between the suburbs and the North Texas region’s transit agency. Suburban officials complain that for how much they shell out to fund buses and light rail, their residents hardly use it. Among the four cities looking to pull out from DART, most kick in more sales tax dollars than they receive in bus service, rail and other forms of transit service, according to a consultant’s report last year.

“We have just been dissatisfied with the service, the safety and certainly the ridership that is woefully low,” Plano Mayor John Muns said in an interview. “We’re paying an extraordinary amount for the service that we’re getting back.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Big Tech won in Texas — but the age-verification fight is just getting started (Politico)

A legal setback for Texas’ attempt to impose age restrictions on app stores has kicked off a 2026 showdown over free speech and parental consent that seems destined for the Supreme Court. Alongside artificial intelligence, the effort to keep kids away from harmful online content is shaping up to be a pivotal conflict for Big Tech in 2026. The issue is increasingly intertwined with efforts to regulate AI, amid rising concerns over cases of chatbot-induced psychosis in children.

A federal judge on Dec. 23 moved to pause a Texas law that forces app stores and developers to verify the age of their users and require parental consent for each purchase, explaining that it likely violates the First Amendment. Despite the ruling, Silicon Valley giants, including Google and Apple, are expected to fight hard against similar legislation in Republican-led states around the country because of the vast legal liability it imposes on app stores and developers.

In Texas, Utah and Louisiana, parent advocates have linked up with conservative “pro-family” groups to pass laws forcing mobile app stores to verify user ages and require parental sign-off. If those rules hold up in court, companies like Google and Apple, which run the two largest app stores, would face massive legal liability — and speech advocates fear the First Amendment rights of children would be undermined, especially for LGBTQ youth seeking online resources.

California has taken a different approach, passing its own age-verification law last year that puts liability on device manufacturers instead of app stores. That model has been better received by the tech lobby, and is now competing with the app-based approach in states like Ohio. In Washington D.C., a GOP-led bill modeled off of Texas’ law is wending its way through Capitol Hill. And more states are expected to join the fray, including Michigan and South Carolina… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Pentagon will begin review of 'effectiveness' of women in ground combat positions (NPR)

The Pentagon is mounting a six-month review of women in ground combat jobs, to ensure what it calls the military "effectiveness" of having several thousand female soldiers and Marines in infantry, armor and artillery, according to a memo obtained by NPR.

Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel Anthony Tata wrote in a memo last month that the effort is to determine the "operational effectiveness of ground combat units 10 years after the Department lifted all remaining restrictions on women serving in combat roles."

Tata requested Army and Marine leaders to provide data on the readiness, training, performance, casualties and command climate of ground combat units and personnel. The services are to provide points of contact no later than January 15th to the Institute for Defense Analyses, a non-profit corporation that assists the government on national security issues. The memo says the data should include "all available metrics describing that individual's readiness and ability to deploy (including physical, medical, and other measures of ability to deploy.)"… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Wall Street expects the market to keep rallying in 2026 despite lofty valuations (Wall Street Journal)

Wall Street is betting that falling interest rates and strong corporate earnings will be enough to eke out yet one more year of stock-market gains. It’s going to be close. After posting double-digit percentage increases for three straight years, from 2023 through 2025, the S&P 500 and other major U.S. indexes enter year four of their rally with stretched valuations on many big stocks and a cloudier economic picture. There are enough positives to give investors and analysts hope, but some worry there isn’t enough to keep up the pace of 2025.

“We probably have an OK market, but certainly not what we’ve seen in the last couple years,” said Mark Hackett, chief market strategist at Nationwide. The S&P 500 surged 16% last year, with a resilient economy, renewed interest-rate cuts and artificial-intelligence fervor propelling the benchmark index to 39 records. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 13% while the Nasdaq composite jumped 20%.

Wall Street analysts and strategists have predicted the party will continue in 2026. Bank of America expects the S&P 500 to reach 7,100 by the end of this year, a 3.7% gain from the 2025 closing level. JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs expect the benchmark index to reach 7,500 and 7,600, respectively. Their bullishness, in light of the past gains, is reason enough to be cautious, some investors said. The S&P 500 surged roughly 80% from the start of 2023 through New Year’s Eve, a torrid pace that will be hard to maintain under most circumstances, they said.

“It behooves investors to at least offer a little skepticism when there is such a broad consensus that everything will go well,” said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers. The current rally is getting old, at least compared with past market cycles. Should the S&P 500 rise in 2026 for a fourth-consecutive year, it would be the longest such streak since 2007, when the benchmark completed a five-year run. In the index’s history, there have only been five streaks of four or more consecutive years of gains, according to Dow Jones Market Data… 🟪 (READ MORE)

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