BG Reads // July 29, 2025

Author

A.J. Bingham
July 29, 2025

Presented By

www.binghamgp.com

✅ Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 Austin City Council Budget Work Session @9AM // AGENDA + LIVESTREAM

🟪 Updated City of Austin org chart

🟪 Tesla taps Samsung in $16.5B AI chip deal tied to new Austin-area facility (Austin American-Statesman)

🟪 City’s Heritage Preservation Grant program to be retooled for upcoming fiscal year (Austin Monitor)

🟪 Texas House Democrats are fundraising to potentially leave the state to block GOP-backed redistricting (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Avian flu wiped out poultry. Now the screwworm is coming for beef. Texas is ground zero. (New York Times)

🟪 CEOs trumpet smaller workforces as a sign of corporate health (Wall Street Journal)

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

🏛️ Memos:

🏛️ City Manager Executives and Advisors Staff Visual Chart

CMO Executives and Advisors_July 2025.pdf519.20 KB • PDF File

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

✅ Tesla taps Samsung in $16.5B AI chip deal tied to new Austin-area facility (Austin American-Statesman)

Austin-based Tesla Inc. has signed a $16.5 billion deal with Samsung to manufacture its next-generation AI chips at the company’s semiconductor plant in Taylor, a major win for one of the region’s largest tech investments.

The multi-year contract runs through the end of 2033 and will involve Samsung’s new fabrication facility northeast of Austin, which is scheduled to begin operations in 2026.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced the agreement Sunday on X. “Samsung’s giant new Texas fab will be dedicated to making Tesla’s next-generation AI6 chip,” he wrote. The strategic importance of this is hard to overstate.”

Samsung had disclosed the deal in a regulatory filing in South Korea shortly before Musk’s post, describing it as a contract with a “large global company,” though it did not name Tesla.

Musk called the $16.5 billion valuation of the contract “just the bare minimum,” saying the “actual output is likely to be several times higher.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

🟪 City’s Heritage Preservation Grant program to be retooled for upcoming fiscal year (Austin Monitor)

The city’s Heritage Preservation Grant program will look a little different this year, with plans to undergo a “creative reset” under the leadership of Austin’s brand new Office of Arts, Music, Culture, and Entertainment.

Last year, the program awarded $3,590,765 in Hotel Occupancy Tax revenue to 22 select projects at historic sites that ranged in scope from physical rehabilitation to developing new educational materials for visitors. Maintenance and restoration work at venues like the Paramount Theater and Broken Spoke, site planning for a new museum at the Charles Umlauf Sculpture Garden and funding for Mexican heritage events at Republic Square Park are all among those that made the list.

Per state law, projects eligible for the upcoming round of grants must still demonstrate an intent to encourage tourism at sites open to the public. But this year, applicants will see expanded options for capital repairs, more streamlined criteria, and greater flexibility for cultural programming… 🟪 (READ MORE)

🟪 Push is on to bring more business to Florence, Texas (Austin Business Journal)

With coffee shops and restaurants in its downtown core, the small town of Florence about 50 miles north of downtown Austin has an apropos motto — a "Great Place to Gather."

Florence Mayor Ben Daniel said research shows its lunch crowd is predominantly people who work elsewhere. They come to visit the region's new law enforcement hub, consisting of handgun maker Staccato 2011 LLC, the Texas Department of Public Safety's new training facility and handgun and accessories maker Dawson Precision Inc. Or for the Gault, the city's prominent archeological site that has evidence of more than 20,000 years of human habitation. Or the Vineyard at Florence luxury neighborhood and winery.

Locals skew heavily toward the military community, who commute up to Fort Cavazos in nearby Killeen or south to the U.S. Army Futures Command in Austin.

Daniel said the city would like more people who live in Florence to be able to work there too.

"To me, that's an economic indicator. When more of our people are able to live and earn in our city, we believe that economic indicator is working — our city is growing in a very healthy way," he said.

There are other signs that more people are taking interest in the Williamson County city of about 1,200 people. The Florence City Council recently approved its first planned development, which could bring hundreds of homes and some commercial space. The city also is working with downtown businesses to expand seating to strengthen its reputation as a gathering place…..

[TEXAS/US NEWS]

🟪 Texas House Democrats are fundraising to potentially leave the state to block GOP-backed redistricting (Texas Tribune)

As Republicans in Texas move full steam ahead with a plan to redraw the state’s congressional districts, Democrats are privately mulling their options, including an expensive and legally dicey quorum break.

If they go that route, it appears they will have the backing of big-dollar Democratic donors.

By fleeing the state to deprive the Legislature of enough members to function, Democrats would each incur a fine of $500 per day and face the threat of arrest. Deep-pocketed donors within the party appear ready to cover these expenses, according to three people involved in the discussions.

The donors’ willingness to foot the bill eliminates a major deterrent to walking out — the personal financial cost — and could embolden Democrats who might otherwise hesitate...  ✅ (READ MORE)

🟪 Avian flu wiped out poultry. Now the screwworm is coming for beef. Texas is ground zero. (New York Times)

First came bird flu, which led to the culling of large swaths of the nation’s poultry flocks and the soaring egg prices that helped undermine President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s re-election. Now, ranchers in Texas and officials at the Agriculture Department are raising the next alarm: the New World screwworm. Texas livestock producers and ranchers fear the United States is ill-equipped to handle a potential outbreak of screwworm, whose incursion into the country appears increasingly likely. With beef prices already soaring, the screwworm, whose Latin name roughly translates to “man-eater,” is a real threat, to both cows and the cost of living for America’s meat lovers. “If we wait, we lose,” Stephen Diebel, vice president of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, told state lawmakers during a hearing in Austin this week as he pleaded for intervention.

The screwworm, like the measles, may have been forgotten by many, but it’s not new. And like the measles, which has cropped up in Texas recently, screwworm was once all but eradicated from the United States. Infestations occur when a female fly lays eggs, between 10 and 400 at a time, on a fresh animal wound. Within a few hours, the eggs hatch into larvae that burrow and feed on the flesh. As the wound worsens, it attracts more flies, which lay more eggs. After about a week, adult screwworm flies can reproduce and begin the cycle all over again. The parasitic infection can kill a cow within two weeks if left untreated. There is currently no approved treatment. “It’s like something out of a horror movie,” the Texas agriculture commissioner, Sid Miller, said in an interview. He saw distressed cattle infested with screwworm when he was a child in the early 1960s before it was nearly eradicated.

“It’s quite a putrid sight,” he said. Livestock, wildlife, pets and in rare cases, humans, can be affected. In the 1950s, scientists discovered that radiation effectively sterilizes screwworm flies, and the federal government began an eradication program. A small outbreak in a deer population in the Florida Keys was snuffed out in 2017. Now, a potentially bigger threat is approaching, migrating north from South America, where screwworm is endemic. It has been detected as close as 370 miles from Texas’ border, carried by the surge of animals coming through the Darién Gap, a once largely impenetrable jungle area that separates South and Central America. A joint eradication effort between the United States and Panama has largely kept screwworm south of Central America for decades. Illegal livestock transport and warm weather patterns have also contributed to the worm’s climb north, a spokesman for the Agriculture Department said… ✅ (READ MORE)

🟪 CEOs trumpet smaller workforces as a sign of corporate health (Wall Street Journal)

Big companies are getting smaller—and their CEOs want everyone to know it. The careful, coded corporate language executives once used in describing staff cuts is giving way to blunt boasts about ever-shrinking workforces. Gone are the days when trimming head count signaled retrenchment or trouble. Bosses are showing off to Wall Street that they are embracing artificial intelligence and serious about becoming lean. After all, it is no easy feat to cut head count for 20 consecutive quarters, an accomplishment Wells Fargo’s chief executive officer touted this month. The bank is using attrition “as our friend,” Charlie Scharf said on the bank’s quarterly earnings call as he told investors that its head count had fallen every quarter over the past five years—by a total of 23% over the period. Loomis, the Swedish cash-handling company, said it is managing to grow while reducing the number of employees, while Union Pacific, the rail operator, said its labor productivity had reached a record quarterly high as its staff size shrank by 3%.

Last week, Verizon’s CEO told investors that the company had been “very, very good” on head count. Translation? “It’s going down all the time,” Verizon’s Hans Vestberg said. The shift reflects a cooling labor market, in which bosses are gaining an ever-stronger upper hand, and a new mindset on how best to run a company.

Pointing to startups that command millions of dollars in revenue with only a handful of employees, many executives see large workforces as an impediment, not an asset, according to management specialists. Some are taking their cues from companies such as Amazon.com, which recently told staff that AI would likely lead to a smaller workforce. Now there is almost a “moral neutrality” to head-count reductions, said Zack Mukewa, head of capital markets and strategic advisory at the communications firm Sloane & Co. “Being honest about cost and head count isn’t just allowed—it’s rewarded” by investors, Mukewa said. Companies are used to discussing cuts, even human ones, in dollars-and-cents terms with investors. What is different is how more corporate bosses are recasting the head-count reductions as accomplishments that position their businesses for change, he said. “It’s a powerful kind of reframing device,” Mukewa said… ✅ (READ MORE)

✅ Trump fumes as Epstein scandal dominates headlines, overshadows agenda (Washington Post)

President Donald Trump is increasingly frustrated with how his administration’s handling of the furor around the Jeffrey Epstein files has dominated the news and overshadowed his agenda, said two people familiar with his thinking. His exasperation follows weeks of missteps and no clear strategy among top officials who underestimated the outrage, especially from the president’s base, and hoped the country would forget about the unreleased Epstein files and move on, according to nearly a dozen people close to the situation, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal deliberations. “This is a pretty substantial distraction,” said one person close to the situation. “While many are trying to keep the unity, in many ways, the DOJ and the FBI are breaking at the seams. Many are wondering how sustainable this is going to be for all the parties involved — be it the FBI director or attorney general.” Despite his frustration, Trump has been hesitant to make personnel changes, according to another person close to the president: “He does not want to create a bigger spectacle by firing anyone,” this person said.

At the center of the storm is Attorney General Pam Bondi, who for months made releasing the FBI’s Epstein files one of her signature initiatives. Her pledge intensified the clamor among members of Trump’s right-wing base to release the files amid speculation that the undisclosed evidence could implicate the financier and sex offender’s rich and powerful friends. But over the July Fourth holiday weekend, Bondi, her top deputy and FBI leaders gave final approval to an unsigned memo about the Epstein files that ignited a whole new furor.

The memo said the Trump administration had found no evidence to dispute that Epstein died by suicide in jail in 2019 and said there was no “client list” that would lead them to prosecute anyone else. Additionally, the memo said, no more documents would be released in order to protect the privacy of victims. A firestorm of criticism has since consumed all three branches of government, given the Democrats a powerful new line of attack and left Trump struggling to respond to the most intractable political crisis he’s faced since his return to the White House. “They completely miscalculated the fever pitch to which they built this up,” said Stephen A. Saltzburg, a former Justice Department official in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations who teaches at George Washington University’s law school. “Now, they seem to be in full-bore panic mode, trying to change the subject and flailing in an effort to make sense of what makes no sense.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

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