BG Reads // June 2, 2025

Author

A.J. Bingham
June 02, 2025

Presented By

✅ Today's BG Reads include:

And more (Read on!)

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

  • On July 18th, 2024, Austin's City Council directed the City Manager to bring a comprehensive bond package for Austinites to approve through an election by November 2026.

  • The 2026 General Obligation (GO) Bond is an opportunity to invest in the future of our city, but it’s important that it reflects the priorities and needs of our community.

  • That’s why we’re asking for your input. Whether you attend a community meeting, fill out a survey, or engage with us online, your feedback will help shape the projects that move forward. Additionally, tell your family and friends to participate too!

We’re growing BG Reads and want to better understand who’s reading. Your quick answers help us shape content and build a stronger community.

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

✅ Can South by Southwest’s London debut recreate Austin’s star-making power? (The Guardian)

South by Southwest London could become a launchpad for “music’s global superstars of the future”, according to the organisers of the event, which starts its inaugural edition on Monday.

SXSW London’s director of programming, Katy Arnander, and the event’s managing director, Randel Bryan said that despite huge competition in the capital, the event, which has been billed as “Olympics of the mind” and is known as SXSW, could become a star-maker.

“We had Amy Winehouse playing in tiny venues back in the day,” says Bryan, referring to the Austin event. “We’ve had Adele and Ed Sheeran, and we’re hoping that South by Southwest in London is the same platform to really launch the global superstars of the future.”

The original event, which launched in the Texas capital of Austin in 1987, has grown to a London-wide festival that attracts hundreds of ­thousands of visitors to the city in March.

A mix of cutting-edge music, tech, talks from business and political figures and a film strand, previous guests to the event including Barack and Michelle Obama, Johnny Cash, Matthew McConaughey, Kelly Rowland, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

The London event has been welcomed with open arms by everyone from music figures to the city’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, who said he was “delighted” to have SXSW in London, where it will take over multiple venues in Shoreditch in the east of the city.

But launching in London is a risk… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Metro's fastest-growing neighborhood to add another 1,000 homes (Austin Business Journal)

Liberty Hill’s Santa Rita Ranch just keeps growing.

The sprawling 3,700-acre development — where more than 4,000 homes have been sold — is already the region’s fastest-growing neighborhood. Now, 1,000 more homes are going to be added to the community, according to an announcement.

Perry Homes will build the new homes in an area called Eldorado Village. They'll rise on 50-, 60- and 70-foot lots, with 66 different floor plans available to buyers. Floor plans will range from 2,100 square feet to 4,891 square feet.

“We’re particularly excited about Eldorado Village because of its location in the community,” stated Santa Rita Ranch developer Ed Horne. “These homesites are situated on some of the highest points in Santa Rita Ranch and offer magnificent Hill Country views. I believe these are among the last lots in Williamson County with views of this magnitude.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Developers use special districts to build in Georgetown (Community Impact)

A growing number of special districts are rapidly reshaping development in Georgetown, which could impact future residents who move into the district boundaries.

In the last five years, seven special districts have been approved in the Georgetown area, Assistant City Manager Nick Woolery said. At a special-called April 1 City Council meeting, elected officials and city staff discussed several potential special districts in various stages in or around the city, including public improvement districts, or PIDs. 

An extraterritorial jurisdiction is an unincorporated area located outside a city’s boundaries. Municipal utility districts are a type of special district used within or outside of an ETJ to create developments and provide utilities for residents in the area.

“Pretty much every larger master-planned development is using MUDs,” Georgetown Mayor Josh Schroeder said… 🟪 (READ MORE)

[TEXAS NEWS]

✅ Texas Legislature approves $338 billion two-year spending plan with a focus on property tax relief (Texas Tribune)

Texas lawmakers signed off Saturday on a $338 billion two-year spending plan that directs billions toward hiking teacher pay, cutting property taxes and shoring up the state’s water infrastructure, after House and Senate budget writers ironed out their differences and won approval from both chambers on their final draft.

The budget now heads to Comptroller Glenn Hegar, who is expected to verify there is enough revenue to cover the Legislature’s planned spending — the last step before the 1,056-page bill reaches Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk.

The spending plan doles out the money to run the state’s business for the next two years, from September through the end of August 2027. It includes the underlying funding for some of the biggest bills passed this session, much of it paid for with general revenue, Texas’ main source of taxpayer funds used to cover core services.

Lawmakers approved $149 billion in general revenue spending, with the rest drawn from federal funds and other state revenue earmarked for specific uses… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Texas lawmakers to allow smaller homes on smaller lots (Texas Tribune)

Texas lawmakers have sent a scaled-back zoning proposal to allow smaller homes on smaller lots to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk — a bid to put a dent in the state’s high home prices.

Lawmakers in the Texas House and Senate passed Senate Bill 15 this weekend after the proposal to give builders the flexibility to build smaller houses in the state’s largest cities kicked up heat from House Democrats, who repeatedly tried to kill the bill.

The Senate approved the bill by a unanimous vote Saturday. The bill was more controversial in the House, where lawmakers endorsed the latest version by a slimmer 78-57 vote Sunday. The bill found bipartisan support in the House, where a majority of Democrats and Republicans voted in favor.

“These are homes your employees, your kids and grandkids can afford,” said state Rep. Gary Gates, a Richmond Republican who carried the bill in the House.

B 15’s passage caps off a session in which lawmakers passed an array of bills intended to tackle the state’s high housing costs, primarily by cutting local regulations and red tape in order to allow more homes to be built. Texas needs hundreds of thousands more homes than it has, according to one estimate. That shortage, housing advocates and experts have argued, played a key role in driving up Texas home prices and rents as the state boomed.

This year, state lawmakers sought to mitigate that shortage with a package of bills that would supersede local zoning ordinances and reduce other hurdles to building homes. Among the most far-reaching proposals they sent to Abbott would make it harder for residents to stop new homes from being built and allow apartments and mixed-use developments in more places, like retail and commercial corridors, in the state’s largest cities… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Texas high schools may require financial literacy to graduate (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)

High school students in Texas may be required to take a personal financial literacy course staring in the 2026-2027 school year. The Texas Legislature has approved House Bill 27, which updates the graduation requirement. The bill is headed to Gov. Greg Abbott, who can sign the bill into law or veto it. Requiring the course is a “no-brainer,” said Rep. Linda Garcia, a Mesquite Democrat, joint author on the bill and the author of a book about the stock market. “We need money for everything in life, and so why are we not centering that in schools?” Garcia said. According to the legislation, the foundation high school program — the default graduation program for students that outlines what courses must be taken in high school — would be updated to include at least one semester of personal financial literacy.

Students would need three social study credits total to graduate, made up of one year of U.S. History, a semester of government, a semester of personal financial literacy and a year of either either economics, world geography or world history. Students could also take an equivalent advanced placement class designed by the State Board of Education for the personal finance credit. “I hope that they take away confidence in understanding how to navigate money moving forward, as they begin their careers and as they begin earning money,” Garcia said. The legislature passed a bill in 2021 offering the option of a course that combines economics and financial literacy, but students aren’t required to take it.

Texas also offers a personal financial literacy elective. The bill doesn’t outline what the course should entail, but Garcia said she’d like to see it give students an understanding of things like credit scores and tax refunds. She used college students racking up debt after getting a credit card from a predatory credit card company as they begin their higher education as an example of why the class is needed. As of May 23, there are 28 states that require a personal financial literacy course for high school students to graduate, according to Next Gen Personal Finance, a non-profit that advocates across the nation for personal finances in schools and pushed for the course in Texas this legislative session. The group has curriculum available for use for no cost, Garcia said. Some of the lessons are about budgeting, banking, filing taxes, credit cards and loans… 🟪 (READ MORE)

[US and World News]

✅ Inside Trump and Musk’s complicated relationship (Wall Street Journal)

President Trump recently posed an evocative question to his advisers about billionaire Elon Musk’s promise to slash $1 trillion in government spending. “Was it all bullshit?” Trump asked, according to administration officials, wondering whether Musk could have ever come close to the cuts he promised to carry out through the Department of Government Efficiency.

The episode captured the flashes of skepticism and frustration from Trump and his senior aides over Musk’s rocky four-month tenure in government, with spats spilling out in the Middle East, cabinet meetings and occasionally in the Oval Office, according to people familiar with the matter. A

nd they reflected the broader exasperation over roadblocks that have slowed Musk’s efforts, from court challenges to bureaucratic delays. Trump continues to maintain a fondness for Musk and plans to see him in the future (they had dinner last week). He asked aides to organize a friendly farewell on Friday in the Oval Office, where the two men heaped praise on one another.

Trump has described Musk to aides as “50% genius, 50% boy,” according to White House staffers who heard his comments. Another White House aide said they heard Trump call Musk “90% genius, 10% boy.” The two would have long, discursive conversations over dinners at Trump’s club, but Musk sometimes confuses Trump with his eccentric humor, White House officials said.

“Elon is not really leaving,” Trump said on Friday. “He’s going to be back and forth.” Musk didn’t respond to requests for comment. The relationship—for a time—had been among the most consequential in modern American politics. Musk spent nearly $300 million to get Trump elected, helping clinch his return to the White House. And Trump gave Musk unprecedented access to the government, granting him far-reaching authority over the vast federal bureaucracy on the promise that he could reshape it.

Musk’s defenders said the billionaire made changes across the government—from slashing foreign aid to cutting the size of the workforce—that likely wouldn’t have been carried out without his fierce commitment to DOGE... 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Ending parole for 500,000 migrants creates new headaches for employers (Wall Street Journal)

The Supreme Court’s decision allowing the Trump administration to revoke temporary protections for half a million migrants brings the U.S. economy closer to labor shortages in industries and regions that rely on foreign workers. The impact will take time to unfold, but could be far-reaching.

The potential departure of hundreds of thousands of people from the labor force is creating anxiety for employers and adding a fresh dose of uncertainty for an economy already grappling with the administration’s tariff policies.

Friday’s ruling halts a lower-court injunction that stopped the government from removing temporary parole from migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. It follows a May 19 ruling allowing the Trump administration to strip protections for about 350,000 Venezuelans living in the U.S. under a different program called Temporary Legal Status.

No data exists to show where the migrants affected by Friday’s ruling live and work. But Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, Haitians and Cubans are heavily concentrated in South Florida, according to Census Bureau data gathered in 2023.

Immigrants from those countries make up an outsize share of employment, relative to their population, in industries such as taxis and ride-shares, construction, hotels, janitorial services, home health services and trucking. LeadingAge, a group representing nonprofit aging-care providers, said the court ruling means many members will lose workers.

“The sudden loss of these employees will have repercussions,” the group said. Lower-court cases over both forms of temporary protection continue, but the Supreme Court rulings enable the Department of Homeland Security to begin revoking workers’ employment authorization meanwhile. Friday’s decision also gives the Trump administration a legal window to arrest and deport newly unprotected migrants. Their names and addresses are already known to the government, potentially making them easier to target than migrants with no documentation at all… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Unease at F.B.I. intensifies as Patel ousts top officials (New York Times)

Before being confirmed as the director of the F.B.I., Kash Patel made clear his intent to remake it in his own image, reflecting a larger desire by the White House to bend the agency to its will. “The F.B.I. has become so thoroughly compromised that it will remain a threat to the people unless drastic measures are taken,” he wrote in his book “Government Gangsters,” asserting that the top ranks of the bureau should be eliminated. Behind the scenes, his vision of an F.B.I. under President Trump is quietly taking shape. Agents have been forced out. Others have been demoted or put on leave with no explanation. And in an effort to hunt down the sources of news leaks, Mr. Patel is forcing employees to take polygraph tests.

Taken together, the moves are causing worrisome upheaval at the F.B.I., eliciting fear and uncertainty as Mr. Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino, quickly restock senior ranks with agents and turn the agency’s attention to immigration. Their persistent claims that the bureau was politicized under previous directors, in addition to their swift actions against colleagues, have left employees to wonder whether they, too, will be ousted, either because they worked on an investigation vilified by Trump supporters or had ties to the previous administration. The actions have obliterated decades of experience in national security and criminal matters at the F.B.I. and raised questions about whether the agents taking over such critical posts have the institutional knowledge to pursue cornerstones of its work.

“The director and I will have most of our incoming reform teams in place by next week,” Mr. Bongino wrote on social media last week. “The hiring process can take a little bit of time, but we are approaching that finish line. This will help us both in doubling down on our reform agenda.” He added that the agency would revisit past investigations, like the 2022 leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion on abortion, cocaine found two years ago at the White House and the pipe bombs found near the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Two of the cases were not the F.B.I.’s to start — the Secret Service investigated the cocaine and the Supreme Court marshal the leak of the draft opinion.)

“The director and I evaluated a number of cases of potential public corruption that, understandably, have garnered public interest,” Mr. Bongino said, oddly referring to the pipe bombs as a potential act of public corruption rather than domestic terrorism. In his previous role as a podcast host, he insisted, without offering evidence, that the pipe bombs were “an inside job” and that “the F.B.I. knows who this person is.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

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