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✅ Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 Musk says robotaxi to launch in Austin, Texas, on Sunday afternoon (Reuters)

🟪 Forget Tesla. Amazon’s Zoox is on track to be Waymo’s biggest robotaxi rival (Forbes)

🟪 Flock CEO responds to Austin backlash as city contract nears expiration (CBS Austin)

🟪 Gov. Greg Abbott vetoes THC ban, calls for regulation instead (Texas Tribune)

🟪 How a Vegas billionaire’s plan to bring casinos to Texas went bust (Texas Monthly)

🟪 On trade, countries don’t know who in Trump’s circle to listen to (Politico)

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

🏛️ City of Austin Org Chart (as of June 2025)

💰 2026 City of Austin Bond - Public Input

ℹ️ 2025 Essential Resources for Navigating the City of Austin

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

✅ Musk says robotaxi to launch in Austin, Texas, on Sunday afternoon (Reuters)

Tesla has started giving rides in driverless Model Y SUVs in Austin, a decade after CEO Elon Musk began making — and breaking — myriad promises about his company’s ability to launch such a service. 

The rollout will become the first big test of Musk’s belief that it’s possible to safely deploy fully autonomous vehicles using just cameras and end-to-end AI – an approach that differs from other players in the space like Waymo.

On Sunday, numerous videos shared on social media as well as sources in the city, confirmed what Musk has been teasing for months: that the rides are finally happening, at a surely coincidental flat fee of $4.20 per ride.

Tesla sent early-access invitations in the past week to vetted customers, who were able to download and use the new robotaxi app on Sunday to hail rides. It’s unclear how many people have received this invitation. But posts on Musk’s social media platform X show that many of them went to Tesla’s loudest online supporters.

The invitations, along with a new robotaxi information page published on Tesla’s website on June 22, confirm the service will operate every day from 6:00 a.m. to 12:00 a.m but “may be limited or unavailable in the event of inclement weather.” And, notably, a Tesla employee will be sitting in the right front passenger seat as a “safety monitor.”…  🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Forget Tesla. Amazon’s Zoox is on track to be Waymo’s biggest robotaxi rival (Forbes)

After 11 years of preparation and billions of investment dollars from Amazon, Zoox intends to launch its commercial robot ride service late this year in Las Vegas, with San Francisco, Austin, Miami, Los Angeles and Atlanta to follow. Rather than loading up existing vehicles with sensors and computers like Waymo has, Zoox’s plan from the outset has revolved around creating a robotaxi service with an electric model unlike any on the road.

There’s no steering wheel, pedals or external mirrors; it has sliding doors reminiscent of transit trains; and it’s designed as a bidirectional vehicle, with an identical front and rear. The Zoox robotaxi has a top speed of 75 miles per hour, though for now it won’t typically exceed 45 mph on urban and suburban runs. It’s also intended to operate for up to 16 hours per charge per day and remain in service for at least five years and 100,000 miles.

The combination of that long service life and ability to provide dozens of rides per day are key to creating a profitable business, even with a vehicle that costs much more than a conventional electric car, said CEO Aicha Evans. “We’re selling rides, not vehicles,” she said, declining to discuss the cost of producing the Zoox-mobile. “We want to offer the best experience at a competitive price.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

🟪 Flock CEO responds to Austin backlash as city contract nears expiration (CBS Austin)

For the first time since national controversy erupted over his company’s license plate readers, the CEO of Flock Safety is publicly defending the technology and directly addressing the City of Austin’s decision to let its contract expire at the end of the month.

In a newly released statement, CEO Garrett Langley emphasized that while Flock provides the tool, it’s up to local police and elected officials to decide how it’s used.

“Public safety does not need to come at the expense of community values,” Langley wrote. “The point is: it is a local decision. Not my decision, and not Flock’s decision.”

Austin City Council opted earlier this year not to renew its contract with Flock, allowing the current agreement to expire by June 30.

The decision followed months of scrutiny from local leaders and privacy advocates, especially after a city audit revealed flaws in the information sharing of the technology… ✅ (READ MORE)

✅ Housing staff suggest ADU pilot program aimed at 80% MFI households (Austin Monitor)

City housing staff say a publicly-funded program to help homeowners build accessory dwelling units would likely see limited uptake and may fall short of the city’s affordability goals, particularly for households most at risk of displacement.

In a recent memo responding to a 2023 resolution from City Council, Interim Housing Director Mandy DeMayo outlined findings that suggest a large-scale accessory dwelling unit (ADU) financing initiative would be difficult to implement effectively. Instead, staff are recommending a small-scale pilot program aimed at moderate-income homeowners, provided that Council allocates roughly $1.5 million to fund loans, staffing and outreach.

The memo is the latest in a series of staff responses to Council resolutions calling for new financial tools to support ADU construction, particularly for low- and moderate-income homeowners. Earlier Council actions — including resolutions in 2020, 2021, and last year — have pushed staff to explore a variety of approaches to incentivize infill housing. ADUs, often seen as a lower-impact way to increase housing supply, have remained a central focus in those efforts… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Esports major held at Moody Center expected to boost Austin's economy (KVUE)

Nearly 50,000 esports fans packed the Moody Center this weekend for BLAST.tv's Counter-Strike Major.

The event began on June 3, and featured several moments before culminating in a three-day playoff tournament that wrapped up on Sunday with a final game, with the winners walking away with more than $1 million in prize money.

The event was highly anticipated, as evidenced by tickets selling out in just six hours after going on sale in February. BLAST said at the time that it was a record for one of its live esports events.

Teams from all over the world competed over the last six months for a chance to make a name for themselves at the tournament.

"We've had 95% of the people buying tickets for this travel from outside of sort of a 200 mile radius of Austin, so that is a huge draw," BLAST.tv's Andrew Haworth said. "This is global tickets coming in ... globally, the best players in the world [are] here. This is a huge event, really. The Super Bowl of esports. This is the real pinnacle of the of the industry."

Organizers expect that the event will have a more than $30 million impact on Austin's economy.

The event was held as part of a partnership between BLAST.tv, Live Nation, Austin-based promoter C3 Presents and Visit Austin, the city's tourism and marketing division… 🟪 (READ MORE)

[TEXAS/US NEWS]

✅ Gov. Greg Abbott vetoes THC ban, calls for regulation instead (Texas Tribune)

Gov. Greg Abbott on Sunday vetoed a contentious state ban on THC products and shortly after called a special legislative session asking lawmakers to instead strictly regulate the substance.

The late-night action just minutes before the veto deadline keeps the Texas hemp industry alive for now, while spiking a top priority of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

Senate Bill 3 would have banned consumable hemp products that contained any THC, including delta-8 and delta-9.

Abbott, who had remained quiet about the issue throughout the legislative session, rejected the measure amid immense political pressure from both sides of the aisle, including from conservatives activists typically supportive of Patrick’s priorities.

Soon after midnight, Abbott called lawmakers back to the Capitol for a special session beginning July 21 with consumable hemp regulation at the top of the agenda.

“Texas must enact a regulatory framework that protects public safety, aligns with federal law, has a fully funded enforcement structure and can take effect without delay,” Abbott said.

In a statement explaining his veto, Abbott argued that SB 3 would not have survived “valid constitutional challenges,” and that the bill’s total ban “puts federal and state law on a collision course,” noting that the 2018 federal Farm Bill legalized hemp products… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ How a Vegas billionaire’s plan to bring casinos to Texas went bust (Texas Monthly)

The town hall was proving to be yet another disaster for the Las Vegas Sands Corporation. The Irving Convention Center was jammed with several hundred angry North Texans. They held signs that read “Don’t Vegas My Irving” and circulated flyers warning that “predatory gambling” breeds crime, failed marriages, and addiction. Three days later, on March 17, a city commission was set to consider a contentious zoning change. It would permit Sands to someday build a “destination resort” complex on land adjacent to the site of the demolished Texas Stadium, the home of the Dallas Cowboys until 2008.

The proposal also conspicuously allowed for a casino as part of the resort. It was a peculiar concept. Other than two Native American–owned properties in far-flung parts of the state, casinos are banned in Texas. But Sands was planning for the future, when it hoped the Legislature would ask voters to amend the state constitution to allow for gambling—a future it was furiously trying to make a reality. Sands is one of the biggest casino-and-resort companies in the world, with $11.3 billion in revenue in 2024. It built the Venetian and the Palazzo—glittering italianate megaresorts in Las Vegas—and operates six luxury properties in Asia.

Founder Sheldon Adelson, who died in 2021, was a GOP kingmaker, plowing great sums of money into Republican presidential candidates, from George W. Bush to Donald Trump. Miriam, his widow, picked up where he left off, donating more than $100 million to Trump’s 2024 campaign.

Powerful interests in Austin were closely watching the drama in North Texas, a harbinger of a bigger clash to come. Sands is not the first to try to strong-arm legislators and citizens into legalizing casino gambling. Native American tribes, horse-track owners, and other gambling interests have tried for decades, only to get repeatedly tripped up by their mutually destructive avarice and the enduring power of religious conservatives. But no company has played hardball like Sands. In Austin, the business has 104 lobbyists—43 more than AT&T, the company with the second most.

The Sands team includes at least eight former legislators, Karl Rove’s wife, and chiefs of staff to the two previous Speakers of the House, at a cost of between $5 and $10.4 million, according to ethics disclosures. Since January 2024, Adelson has pumped $13.2 million into two political action committees, Texas Sands PAC and Texas Defense PAC, which in turn spent lavishly in recent election cycles. Texas’s political system runs on cash. But the Vegas money seemed less about well-placed bets than about a show of force—a slot machine spewing money all over the casino floor.

When state Representative Matt Shaheen, a right-wing Republican from Plano, publicly swore to kill gambling legislation and linked casinos to sex trafficking, one of Adelson’s PACs began running ads in his district accusing him of being a “moderate” who “voted against 18,000 good jobs.” The aggressive move provoked a behind-the-scenes rebuke from Republicans... 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ This low-key agency is generating one of Texas' hottest GOP primary fights (San Antonio Express-News)

The battle over who will implement Gov. Greg Abbott’s private school voucher plan is suddenly becoming one of the hottest battles in Texas GOP politics. On Thursday, state Sen. Kelly Hancock, R-North Richland Hills, officially resigned his position in the Legislature and announced he would run for Texas Comptroller, a post that will be in charge of developing and administering Abbott’s school voucher program. The office also acts as the state’s chief financial officer in charge of collecting taxes and forecasting the state’s financial condition.

Shortly before announcing his campaign, current State Comptroller Glenn Hegar officially appointed Hancock to be his chief clerk, positioning him to be the acting comptroller when Hegar leaves to become the Texas A&M University System chancellor on July 1. That could give Hancock an edge over other prominent GOP candidates who have been running for the position.

Former state Sen. Don Huffines and Railroad Commissioner Christi Craddick have both been running for comptroller since March. The primary election is set for March 2026. No prominent Democrats have announced a campaign for the position as of Friday. It didn’t take long for Abbott to make clear he wanted Hancock to win the contest. Abbott announced he was endorsing Hancock because he has experience with school choice issues and financial issues to do the job well.

He then added a jab at Huffines, who tried to unseat Abbott in a GOP primary in 2022, saying he wanted a candidate "who will actually win the election, not someone who has already lost an election to a Democrat." Huffines lost his seat in the Texas Senate to Democrat Nathan Johnson in 2018. Huffines didn’t take long to fire back, though he didn’t mention Abbott by name. “The political elite are manipulating the system to install another go-along-to-get-along lap dog as State Comptroller because they know President Trump’s DOGE-style transparency would expose everything,” Huffines wrote on social media 36 minutes after Abbott’s endorsement came out… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ On trade, countries don’t know who in Trump’s circle to listen to (Politico)

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer have all been meeting with foreign officials seeking agreements to stave off the crushing tariffs President Donald Trump has threatened to impose next month.

But Trump’s three-headed negotiating team is often working at cross purposes, or at least that’s how it seems to 11 foreign officials, business leaders and advisers on trade talks, who say they are receiving mixed messages from different departments, in what one person close to the talks described as a contest for Trump’s loyalty.

Their differing approaches have occasionally slowed down progress, the foreign officials say, like when the Commerce Department tightened restrictions on some Chinese technology in May, quickly derailing an agreement with Beijing that was negotiated by Bessent.

“We have been shuffled around, there is no doubt about that,” said one diplomat from a country in Asia, granted anonymity to candidly discuss the state of talks. “There is not a singular voice on this or most things from what’s been observed.”

It underscores the hurdles that remain as the White House hurtles towards a July 8 deadline to achieve its promise of “90 deals in 90 days,” after the president paused a plan to levy tariffs on roughly 60 trading partners… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Heat dome will blanket much of the US, with worrisome temperatures in Midwest (Associated Press)

Summer will make a dramatic entrance in the U.S. this week with a heat dome that will bring stifling temperatures and uncomfortable humidity to millions.

The heat will be particularly worrisome this weekend across wide stretches of Nebraska, Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa, where forecasters are warning of extreme temperature impacts.

This will be the first stretch of true summertime weather for many from Midwest to the East Coast, said Tom Kines, a meteorologist at the private weather company AccuWeather.

“A lot of those folks have been saying, where’s summer? Well, buckle up, because it’s coming,” said Kines. The humid conditions will make places that exceed 90 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius) feel as much as 20 degrees hotter, said Kines… 🟪 (READ MORE)

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