🟪 Austin may phase in deep cuts to social safety net programs (Austin American-Statesman)

🟪 Taylor invests in programs to spur downtown growth, preserve 'Front Porch' reputation (Austin Business Journal)

🟪 Austin could become a 'Book Safe Harbor' as censorship fights escalate (Austin Current)

🟪 Supreme Court lets Texas restrict minors' access to app stores for the time being (NPR)

🟪 Toyota to move Tacoma production to Texas in $3.6 billion U.S. expansion plan (Wall Street Journal)

🟪 DOGE self-deleted on July 4th. The grand experiment fell apart long before that. (Politico)

READ ON!

As Austin (MSA) continues to grow, more and more development is happening beyond the famed Austin City Limits. This Monthly LinkedGlenn event series highlights a single fast growing Austin suburb and July's stop is all about Hutto.... Hippos, Co-Op, Data Centers, Industrial, Retail, Downtown Redevelopment, Rooftops, Transportation and so much more...All things growth.

Full event details and ticket information here.

✅ Austin may phase in deep cuts to social safety net programs (Austin American-Statesman)

Austin budget officials are proposing to phase in millions in planned cuts to the city’s social safety net spending over two years, with the steepest reductions aimed at programs such as transportation, legal services, basic needs and community planning.

In a Thursday memo to Mayor Kirk Watson and City Council members, Austin Budget and Organizational Excellence Director Kerri Lang said a previously announced $16.8 million reduction to Austin’s $74.2 million social services contract portfolio should be spread out over the next two fiscal years. That would mean a $6 million to $8 million cut in the 2026-27 budget, followed by an additional $8.8 million in the 2027-28 spending plan, according to the memo.

The proposal comes days before City Manager T.C. Broadnax is expected to deliver a pared-down budget proposal to Austin City Council that must account for a $26 million projected deficit. The 11-member council may make amendments to that plan as it sees fit before adopting a final budget in late August.

Broadnax zeroed in on social service spending late last year after Austin voters rejected Proposition Q, the council-backed tax rate election that would have raised property taxes to help fund a slew of initiatives, includingsocial services. In late February, City Council directed his office to develop a standardized rubric to help decide how to spread the cuts across services for Austinites in need… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Taylor invests in programs to spur downtown growth, preserve 'Front Porch' reputation (Austin Business Journal)

Taylor – home to the growing Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. chipmaking factory – is investing $550,000 in its historic downtown. That includes making $200,000 available in grants to support existing businesses and attract new ones.

It continues the wave of suburban cities investing in their downtowns amid the region's boom. Others include Lockhart, Liberty Hill, Hutto, Kyle, Leander, Manor, Buda, Rockdale and Cedar Park.

The city of Taylor announced on July 6 that it is spending $350,000 on downtown improvements like new trash cans and bike racks, upgraded electrical service in Heritage Square Park, street resurfacing on select roadways and restoration and signage that highlights the city's historic wood brick road.

The city is also making $200,000 available in grants to businesses through the following four incentive programs… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin could become a 'Book Safe Harbor' as censorship fights escalate (Austin Current)

As book bans surge across Texas and the country, Austin’s Library Commission is urging the City Council to take a formal stand against censorship by declaring the city a “Book Safe Harbor,” a move supporters say could strengthen protections for what remains on public library shelves.

The proposal lands amid an intensifying political fight over who decides what people, especially children, can read. In Texas, battles over books have transformed school board meetings, county commissioners courts and the state Capitol into recurring flashpoints over race, gender identity and sexuality. That fight reached new ground this year when Texas lawmakers passed SB 13, shifting some power over public school library collections away from librarians and toward elected school board members and parents, a change critics say could accelerate book removals.

While schools have been the front line of the battle, advocates warn public libraries could be next. For example, in 2025, Texas House advanced HB 3225, which would have limited kids’ access to sexually explicit books in public libraries. While the bill didn’t ultimately pass, censorship efforts are driving a growing push for “Book Safe Harbors” local ordinances meant to preserve access to books. Austin’s Library Commission passed their recommendation Monday, urging the Austin City Council to consider designating the city a Book Safe Harbor. The goal is to “defend the right to read at an ordinance level,” said Liz Garton Scanlon, an Austin-based children’s book author who is part of the Texas leadership team of Authors Against Book Bans.

After the organization encouraged the creation of Book Safe Harbors in local municipalities, Garton Scanlon brought the idea to the Library Commission. Book bans weren’t on her radar when she began writing children’s books 20 years ago, but over the past five years, she has observed the issue intensifying dramatically. She said one of her most popular books, All the World, ended up on a Pennsylvania challenge list, though the effort to ban it was ultimately unsuccessful… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Supreme Court lets Texas restrict minors' access to app stores for the time being (NPR)

The Supreme Court on Monday allowed a Texas law prohibiting minors from downloading apps without their parent's consent to go into effect. Multiple organizations had sued the state, arguing that the law violates children's freedom of speech.

But in an unsigned, unexplained order, the high court allowed Texas to enforce the law as lawsuits continue in lower courts. Texas enacted its App Store Accountability Act in 2025. The law requires app stores to verify all users' ages, and it prevents children under age 18 from downloading most apps without parental consent. Texas told a lower court that legislators enacted the law in order to keep minors from seeing "harmful" material.

Challengers argued that such a broad law is plainly unconstitutional under a variety of Supreme Court precedents, holding that children do have substantial free speech rights. Texas responded in its filings that the law regulates only "commercial speech" and so is less constitutionally protected. Nonetheless, the law has only a few exceptions for apps made by emergency services and the companies that oversee college entrance exams.

Children must get parental approval before downloading all other apps, such as Instagram, library apps, and the apps of news organizations. A lower court initially blocked the law from going into effect, writing that the law "prohibits minors from participating in the democratic exchange of views online." But in June, a panel of judges on the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the law. On Monday, the Supreme Court left the law in place, at least for now. The law now returns to the lower courts for further litigation Utah, Louisiana, and Alabama have passed similar laws. This is not the first time the Supreme Court has dealt with a law banning children from accessing content online.

Last year, the court upheld a Texas law that requires pornographic websites to verify users' ages. But the court has long treated children's access to pornography differently than other access questions. Monday's app store ruling does not necessarily mean that the law is constitutional — only that the law can be enforced while lawsuits make their way through the lower courts. That said, the court's refusal to intervene at this point is at least a tentative signal that favors the law… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Toyota to move Tacoma production to Texas in $3.6 billion U.S. expansion plan (Wall Street Journal)

Toyota will spend $3.6 billion to bring production of its top-selling midsize pickup, the Tacoma, back to the U.S. by 2030, the Japanese automaker said Monday. The company plans to build a second assembly line for the Tacoma at the San Antonio plant where it currently assembles larger pickups and SUVs, adding 2,000 jobs, it said. Making more vehicles in the U.S. will help Toyota, the world’s top-selling automaker, defray a hefty tariff bill in its largest market.

The company also needs more domestic capacity as it struggles to keep its U.S. dealers stocked with vehicles, said John Murphy, founder of advisory firm Murphy Automotive Partners. Toyota currently builds the Tacoma in roughly equal numbers at plants in Guanajuato and Baja California in Mexico. The Baja plant’s production will move to San Antonio when the expansion is complete in 2030, while the Guanajuato plant’s output will continue unaffected, the company said.

Toyota declined to comment on its plans for the Baja plant following the Tacoma’s exit. The Tacoma, launched in the mid-1990s, has long been the dominant seller in the midsize truck space. Its sales consistently dwarf those of competitors like the Ford Ranger and Chevrolet Colorado. The San Antonio plant previously assembled the Tacoma from 2010 to 2021, when the truck was fully moved to Mexico. The company already assembles its larger Tundra full-size pickup truck and Sequoia SUV in San Antonio, producing just shy of 200,000 vehicles annually.

The plant currently employs about 3,700 people. The Tacoma line will add about 150,000 trucks to the plant’s annual output. Despite its extensive U.S. manufacturing presence—its popular models like the Camry, Corolla and RAV4 are made in America, among other locations—tariffs on parts, components and vehicles imported from Japan have sent Toyota’s profits sliding. The company’s North American division swung to a loss in the year ended in March after taking a 1.38 trillion yen, or about $8.5 billion, hit to operating income from U.S. tariffs. Murphy, the auto industry analyst, called that “bonkers.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ DOGE self-deleted on July 4th. The grand experiment fell apart long before that. (Politico)

When the U.S. men's national soccer team steps on the field Monday to face President Donald Trump’s cost-cutting commission that once plunged the government into chaos is nearing its destiny — becoming a former federal initiative. Up for debate: how and when the end will truly come for the Department of Government Efficiency, which triggered thousands of federal employees to leave their jobs and voided billions of dollars in government contracts. Trump’s January 2025 executive order creating DOGE also established a July 4, 2026, sunset.

“A smaller Government, with more efficiency and less bureaucracy, will be the perfect gift” to America on its semiquincentennial birthday, the president said when he announced the commission.

But DOGE didn’t really deliver on that promise, said Elizabeth Linos, a Harvard Kennedy School public policy and management professor, as did others who spoke to POLITICO about DOGE’s dramatic efforts over the past 18 months. Instead, it resulted in a near-immediate loss of expertise and live-saving programs but cost savings nowhere near the $2 trillion once promised.

Looking long term, Linos said that “effectively, DOGE told the American people that they can’t trust government to protect their data, to use their data and technology for good.”

“That has really long-lasting effects on our ability to rebuild trust in government or even convince the next generation of talent to enter government to begin with,” she said. DOGE claims it saved $215 billion, or $1,335.40 per taxpayer, with its cuts, which included slashing duplicative software licenses, canceling diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, grants as well as ending leases for underused office space. That’s a pittance to the federal budget, which is now about $7 trillion each year.

The effort faded relatively early too as tech mogul Elon Musk clashed with government officials and left DOGE in May last year. What comes next is not clear. “President Trump was given a clear mandate to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse from the federal government,” said White House spokesperson Davis Ingle. “He has made significant progress in making the federal government more efficient to better serve the American taxpayer.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)