🟪 Austin City Council candidates enter fall races with more than $1M on hand; incumbents hold financial leads (Community Impact)

🟪 Austin heat returns as temperatures climb toward 100 this week (Austin American-Statesman)

🟪 Dallas birthed the booming DFW region. It’s now bleeding people, arenas and companies to the suburbs. (Texas Tribune)

🟪 San Antonio council members’ fundraising has dried up — now some want to change the rules (San Antonio Report)

🟪 Houston police report reveals extent of HPD cooperation with ICE (Houston Chronicle)

🟪 FDA says sample of iceberg lettuce supplied by Taylor Farms tested positive for US parasite outbreak (Reuters)

🟪 They were charged with assaulting ICE agents. The cases are crumbling. (New York Times)

READ ON!

🏛️ PRESS RELEASE: Austin's $6.6 billion proposed budget focused on fiscal sustainability to enable high-priority community needs

🏛️ MEMO: Fiscal Year 2026-2027 Budget Adoption Timeline

🏛️ VIDEO: Budget Meeting of the Austin City Council (7.16.26)

💰 Review the Fiscal Year 2026-27 budget documents here

🟪 Wednesday, July 22: Work session (social service contracts will be discussed at this meeting)

🟪 Thursday, July 23: Austin City Council July 23rd Regular Meeting (Agenda)

🟪 Tuesday, July 28: Work session

🟪 Thursday, July 30: Work session

🟪 Thursday, Aug. 6: Work session and bond discussion

🟪 Wednesday, Aug. 12 – Friday, Aug. 14: Final vote approving budget

✅ Austin City Council candidates enter fall races with more than $1M on hand; incumbents hold financial leads (Community Impact)

Candidates for Austin City Council races in this year's November election raised more than $450,000 and had over $1 million available as of this summer, with several council incumbents making up more than half of that cash on hand total.

Five council seats will be on the ballot this fall: East Austin's District 1 and District 3, District 5 in South Austin, Southwest Austin's District 8, and District 9 in Central Austin.

Four of those races are expected to include incumbent council members seeking to defend their seats, while District 1 council member Natasha Harper-Madison is term-limited and leaving office in 2027. Two-term District 8 council member Paige Ellis is also limited and must petition for the support of at least 5% of her voting constituents to allow her to run for a third term this year.

All candidates were required to submit their semiannual financial reports in July covering campaign activity through June 30 only. They were the first reports filed since January, and will be followed by disclosures due in early October, a month ahead of Election Day.

Candidates can officially file for a place on the November ballot from July 18-Aug. 17…🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin heat returns as temperatures climb toward 100 this week (Austin American-Statesman)

Austin's brief break from midsummer heat is ending as sunshine returns, storms fade and temperatures steadily climb back toward 100 degrees this week.

The same weather pattern that fueled days of soaking rain and localized flooding across parts of Central Texas is losing its grip. In its place, a strengthening dome of high pressure will bring a quieter stretch of weather, allowing rivers to slowly recede while afternoon temperatures steadily climb through the week.

By the second half of the week, many communities across the Austin area will be flirting with the century mark for the first time since July 8, when Austin recorded its first 100-degree day of the year… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Dallas birthed the booming DFW region. It’s now bleeding people, arenas and companies to the suburbs. (Texas Tribune)

As big names depart for Dallas’ suburbs and its population stagnates, the city’s status as the region’s economic engine could be in serious jeopardy — and the suburbs once birthed by Dallas now hold the cards.

Dallas has long sustained an outflow of people to the surrounding suburbs, driven by perceptions of better schools, attainable housing, public safety and family friendliness. Officials and experts say that Dallas hasn’t built enough housing, which could stanch the bleed, and without efforts to seriously beef up the city’s population growth, observers warn that the city could wind up hollowed out.

“If you start having population decline, then you’re going to have empty housing,” said Lloyd Potter, the state demographer. “When you have empty housing, the property values start going down. If your tax base starts decreasing, you’re going to be hurting pretty bad especially with the kind of infrastructure demands that Dallas has.”

The string of recent losses has fueled an already impassioned debate over whether Dallas should demolish its iconic-but-divisive City Hall downtown in a moonshot bid to spur redevelopment — a bitter fight that has magnified the stresses of the city’s uncertain future as well as its potential reinvention.

While Dallas’ population grew by 2% from 2020 to 2025, the Dallas-Fort Worth region grew by a whopping 10%, driven largely by the suburban explosion, according to Census figures. Six cities in the region — Fort Worth, Celina, McKinney, Frisco, Denton and Princeton — added more residents than Dallas in that span… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Nearly 800 Fort Worth ISD teachers resign after state takeover (Fort Worth Star Telegram)

Nearly 800 teachers in Fort Worth ISD submitted their resignations in the three months after the arrival of the district’s state-appointed leadership — more than in the entire previous school year.

The second-largest district in North Texas is under a state takeover after more than a decade of stagnant academic progress. When incoming Superintendent Peter Licata arrived in the district in March, he pledged that the takeover would mean good things for “excellent teachers,” including better pay, dynamic leadership and the opportunity to be a part of meaningful efforts to turn struggling schools around.

But since then, Fort Worth ISD has seen a sharp surge in the number of teachers leaving the district, records show. Departing teachers cited chaotic leadership, intense micromanagement and difficult working conditions as factors in their decision to leave. Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath announced a takeover of Fort Worth ISD last year after one campus received five consecutive F ratings. By the end of the school year, the district had seen a marked uptick in teacher departures. Fort Worth ISD received 1,026 resignations from teachers by June 28, which was the district’s deadline for employees to resign, according to district data released in response to a Dallas Morning News public records request.

That’s up from 648 teacher resignations by last year’s deadline, an increase of roughly 58%. But the surge in teacher resignations didn’t begin in earnest until after TEA officials announced the district’s new board and superintendent, data suggest. Before March 24, when Licata and the district’s state-appointed board took control, Fort Worth ISD had received just 7% more teacher resignations than the previous year… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ San Antonio council members’ fundraising has dried up — now some want to change the rules (San Antonio Report)

Fundraising for most of San Antonio’s City Council members has slowed to a trickle, with many donors already maxed out and unable to give again until June 2028. That could soon change, however, as the city’s Ethics Review Board faces pressure to increase their contribution cycles leading into the next municipal election. San Antonio currently holds its candidates to far stricter donor limits than those running for county, state and federal offices, capping the amount City Council hopefuls can collect from a single donor at $500 per election cycle, or $1,000 per cycle for mayoral candidates.

While there’s long been grumbling about whether such limits truly level the playing field, complaints appeared to reach a boiling point when the council and mayor moved to four-year terms last year — and many donors were suddenly maxed out still years away from the next election.

Most weeks at City Hall, jockeying for a 2029 mayoral race appears well underway already, with constant clashes between progressive Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones and her more business-centric colleagues. But semi-annual campaign finance reports due this week showed relatively little money raised for such a contest during the first half of 2026, at a time when some council members are eager to start building up their war chests.

Most of the 10-member council raised less than $15,000 between Jan. 1 and June 30. Councilman Marc Whyte (D10), who uses a professional fundraiser to help him raise money, was a major outlier, raising about $68,000. But he said the changes have made it tougher for everyone, and caused concern among some members who want to revisit the issue before they’re on the ballot again… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Houston police report reveals extent of HPD cooperation with ICE (Houston Chronicle)

Houston police encountered 103 people with civil immigration warrants from April through June, releasing most of them and handing 19 people to federal agents, according to the first report police leaders released under a new requirement passed by city council.

The report’s release comes as local advocates are pushing the council and the Houston Police Department to revisit how they cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents after last week’s fatal ICE shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Magnolia Park thrust Houston into the national spotlight. Many have argued the council should renew a fight from earlier this year over a briefly-lived ordinance that restricted how police interact with ICE agents.

Friday’s report is the lone surviving requirement from that ordinance, which passed in a 12-5 vote and then was largely reversed two weeks later, after Gov. Greg Abbott threatened to pull $114 million in grant funding from the city over the issue. The ordinance prohibited officers from extending traffic stops beyond their initial purpose while waiting for ICE agents to reach the scene. Still intact is a requirement that HPD release quarterly reports to city council on officers’ interactions with ICE agents. The one-page report covering April 1 to June 30 shows 57% of the people HPD encountered with civil immigration warrants were released. Another 18% were handed to ICE, and 14% were charged with new crimes and booked into jail. Some warrants could not be confirmed, and two people were transported to a hospital.

The people were detained for 39 minutes, on average, during those 103 calls, the report shows. Councilmember Alejandra Salinas said the report's findings concerned her, and she has asked Chief Noe Diaz to come before council to explain the data. "HPD's average rate of monthly calls to ICE doubled, with more than 100 calls in three months, some detentions lasting nearly two hours and 19 Houstonians turned over to ICE custody," she said. Diaz needs to explain the upticks, along with any changes HPD has planned in response, Salinas said… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ FDA says sample of iceberg lettuce supplied by Taylor Farms tested positive for US parasite outbreak (Reuters)

The Food and Drug Administration said on Saturday ?a sample of shredded iceberg lettuce supplied by ?Taylor Farms has tested positive for a parasitic illness that has sickened thousands of people in the U.S. Taylor Farms has confirmed ?that this product is not part of ?its current recall, the FDA said in the statement ?as it seeks to curtail the largest foodborne illness ?outbreak in the United States in recent years. The California-based ?lettuce supplier is working to identify whether any part of the sample that tested positive is available in commerce or ?in consumers' homes, the FDA said in its most ?recent update.

Earlier in the day, the supplier posted a list of ?lettuce ?products that had been recalled following investigations that it was a potential source of contamination. Taylor Farms was not immediately available for comment.

The FDA said the sample was collected during targeted surveillance while investigating the ongoing outbreak and that the positive lot has been detained. Taco Bell restaurants in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia has so far resulted in ?around ?100 hospitalizations and no deaths, ?according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ They were charged with assaulting ICE agents. The cases are crumbling. (New York Times)

In its nationwide immigration crackdown, the Trump administration has charged hundreds of people with assaulting or impeding federal agents. President Trump has branded them “insurrectionists,” “animals” and “thugs,” part of a broader effort by his administration to cast protesters and immigrants as violent criminals. But a close examination of those cases reveals that in its rush to meet White House demands for deportations, federal law enforcement has engaged in extensive misconduct — ranging from attacking protesters to destroying evidence and misrepresenting facts in court.

The New York Times found that the Trump administration has filed assault charges against more than 550 people who were caught in its immigration dragnet — far more than previously known.

Of the more than 400 cases resolved so far, nearly half have unraveled: Juries acquitted defendants, judges threw out charges, or prosecutors withdrew them. The record is abysmal by the typical standards of federal prosecutions: The Justice Department seldom loses criminal cases, with more than 90 percent of defendants pleading guilty or being convicted at trial. The Times obtained court filings for every assault case and reviewed hearing transcripts, interviewed witnesses and federal officials and watched videos of dozens of encounters that led to criminal charges.

The review, the most comprehensive to date, suggests that the administration’s use of the law has often been less about protecting federal agents than about providing legal cover to cow protesters and immigrants into submission. “There seems to be a pattern of charges being filed without any merit,” said Jimmy L. Arce, a former federal prosecutor in Chicago who served on a commission that investigated immigration raids in the city last year. He added that some defendants were “having their speech criminalized by the U.S. attorney’s office.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ White House teleprompter operator made more than $100K betting on Trump's speeches: Sources (ABC News)

President Donald Trump's longtime teleprompter operator is believed to have made tens of thousands of dollars by placing bets on more than a dozen of Trump's speeches on the prediction market Kalshi, federal investigators with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission found, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News. Gabriel Perez, a technical assistant to the president who has been operating Trump's teleprompter since 2016, is in talks with federal regulators to settle allegations he used his inside knowledge of the president's speeches to win more than $100,000, the sources said.

According to the sources, Kalshi alerted its regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), to the suspicious activity on its "Mentions" market, where users can bet on whether specific words, phrases or topics are uttered during a public speech.

"Our surveillance team promptly flagged and referred these trades to the CFTC, and we are cooperating and assisting regulators," Kalshi's head of enforcement, Bobby DeNault, said in a statement provided to ABC News.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Thursday afternoon, following ABC News' report, that Perez has been put on unpaid administrative leave. Leavitt said she spoke with President Trump about it, and he thought it was a "disgrace" and made the decision himself to put Perez on unpaid leave. Leavitt said she was unaware of any other White House staffers who have made such trades. "The White House has strict ethics guidelines that we expect all staffers and officials to follow," said White House spokesperson Davis Ingle when contacted by ABC News… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Views of the U.S. have worsened while opinions of China have improved in many surveyed countries (Pew Research Center)

Across 24 countries Pew Research Center surveyed this spring, more people have a positive view of the United States than of China. However, this gap is closing, as views of the U.S. have become more negative while views of China have turned more positive.

In the sections below, we compare international public opinion of the two superpowers, their leaders, their economies and more. All findings are based on surveys of more than 28,000 adults conducted Jan. 8-April 26, 2025… 🟪 (READ MORE)