🟪 Cornyn, Casar spar over DHS funding outside Austin airport (The Hill)

🟪 Austin airport TSA wait times could surge Tuesday as SXSW, spring break travel peak (Austin American-Statesman)

🟪 Corpus Christi’s water woes will be center stage at City Council meeting (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Applications for private school vouchers close today. Demand already exceeds available money. (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Trump administration turns to migrant workers to help farm labor shortage (New York Times)

🟪 'Not our war': U.S. allies balk at Trump's Strait of Hormuz demands (NBC News)

🟪 Oil industry warns Trump administration that fuel crunch will likely worsen (Wall Street Journal)

🟪 The National Park Service race to rewrite history becomes a slog (Politico)

READ ON!

✅ Hugh Forrest, former President and Chief Programming Officer of SXSW, joined our friends on the Austin Era's podcast to discuss the festival's impact on Austin's growth and his role in shaping it.

✅ Cornyn, Casar spar over DHS funding outside Austin airport (The Hill)

Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) crashed a Monday press conference led by Texas Sen. John Cornyn (R), causing the two to spar over the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding lapse.

Cornyn was delivering food from Texas-based fast food chain Whataburger to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers, who missed their first full paycheck last week due to the partial shutdown.

Casar spoke to the group of gathered reporters and told them an “acting award should go to Senator Cornyn, who has refused to fund TSA.” 

“Just last week, the Democrats in the Senate and the House offered a bill to fully fund TSA, and Senator Cornyn and the Republicans blocked it. So, I’m kind of confused about why Senator Cornyn would be here having a press conference at the airport about funding TSA, when it’s him who has blocked the funding,” he added.

Local reporter Rudy Koski pushed back on the statement, outlining Republican support for fully funding DHS, which TSA is housed under. Democrats have refused to pass legislation without significant reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), another DHS sub-agency… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin airport TSA wait times could surge Tuesday as SXSW, spring break travel peak (Austin American-Statesman)

Austin-Bergstrom International Airport officials expect traffic to surge again on Tuesday after security lines stretched out of the terminal and well down the sidewalk several times over the weekend.

The Transportation Security Administration and local airport officials expect more than 32,000 passengers will fly out of Austin on Tuesday — thousands more than on a typical Tuesday. The surge comes during spring break and as the South by Southwest Conference and Festival, which kicked off last Thursday, nears its end.

While Tuesday’s numbers are not expected to break records, the continued influx of travelers could cause longer-than-normal wait times for the fifth consecutive morning. The busiest time for security checkpoints is typically between 3 a.m., when TSA opens, and 7 a.m.

Because of the rush, airport officials are encouraging passengers to show up early — but not too early. They recommend arriving 2 ½ hours early for domestic flights and 3 hours early for international routes… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Get to know Chemise McCain, the local boss of KB Home (Austin Business Journal)

Chemise McCain's decades-long career at KB Home all started with trying to find an apartment near the University of Texas at Austin.

The national builder's Austin Division President remembers searching for housing with the help of a friend slash apartment locator. The experience inspired her to become a locator for other students with shoe-string budgets.

"I decided to go and get my real estate license, and then I did apartment locating for two years and then I started to show new homes," she said. "It wasn't that easy because I went from getting a regular paycheck to being full-blown commission ... I think sometimes people try to overcomplicate sales, but it's really about connecting with people."… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Multifamily developer makes in-house GC available for third-party projects (Austin Business Journal)

As multifamily development in the metro slows to allow tenants to fill the glut of supply on the market, one national developer active throughout Austin and other Texas markets is altering its business plan to turn those market challenges into a growth opportunity.

Minnesota-based Roers Cos. has expanded its in-house general contracting capabilities to take on third-party construction projects. Roers ranked No. 10 on ABJ’s latest list of multifamily developers active in the region, with 795 units under development or delivered in 2024.

The move will keep the firm active during a development slowdown brought on by elevated multifamily vacancies after years of rapid development resulted in a glut of supply. That said, multifamily vacancy rates are declining. As of March, vacancy rates clocked in at 12.6%, compared to around 16% at this time last year, according to ApartmentData.com… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Corpus Christi’s water woes will be center stage at City Council meeting (Texas Tribune)

As drought tightens its grip on South Texas, city leaders in Corpus Christi are expected to deliver what could be the most sobering update yet on the region’s water supply outlook.

At Tuesday’s city council meeting, officials are expected to present new modeling that outlines a range of potential futures for the city’s water supply — including scenarios that could push the city closer to a Level 1 water emergency sooner than previously anticipated. That would force water customers to reduce their overall water use by 25% or face extra fees, according to the city’s March 2025 drought contingency plan.

The meeting comes after a week of escalating political tension and conflicting messages about just how close the region may be to a serious water shortage… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Applications for private school vouchers close today. Demand already exceeds available money. (Texas Tribune)

Texas’ school voucher applications close Tuesday, as early data shows most applicants attended a private school or home-school as of last year. 

The applications for families wanting to use public funds to pay for private school or home-school during the 2026-27 academic year will remain open until 11:59 p.m. Tuesday.

As of Monday afternoon, families had submitted applications for more than 200,000 students, more than what $1 billion in available state funding can pay for. More than 2,200 private schools have opted in to accept voucher students, according to the Texas comptroller’s office — the state’s chief financial officer who manages the program… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Trump administration turns to migrant workers to help farm labor shortage (New York Times)

For years, the agricultural sector has faced a tight labor market as farmworkers age and fewer new immigrants and younger Americans are willing to toil in the fields. Top Trump administration officials vowed that mass deportations would help, leading to “higher wages with better benefits” and a “100 percent American work force.”

But the administration has quietly acknowledged in recent months that its immigration raids and crackdown on the border have aggravated the issue. So it has instead turned to an alternative source, making it cheaper for farmers to hire immigrant farmworkers on temporary visas. Many farmers have celebrated those changes, made to an increasingly popular visa program known as H-2A, noting the difficulty in hiring American workers and tough economic conditions for the industry.

But immigration hawks and labor unions alike are opposed, arguing the move will only increase the share of foreign workers and hurt native workers and suppress their wages. The simmering debate underscores how some of the administration’s top goals of reducing immigration, keeping food prices low and helping American workers may inevitably conflict. The competing interests at play also show the spillover effects of Mr. Trump’s hard-line approach to legal and illegal immigration. Brooke L. Rollins, the agriculture secretary, said in a statement that the administration was enacting “real reforms to ease regulatory burdens and lower labor costs.”

“The farm economy is in a difficult situation, and President Trump is utilizing all the tools available to ensure farmers have what they need to be successful,” she said. Only 0.4 percent of farmers in California reported losing workers directly to farm raids, according to a new survey by the California Farm Bureau and Michigan State University. But more than 14 percent said the raids and general anxiety surrounding enhanced immigration enforcement caused worker shortages. Among labor-intensive crops like fruit and vegetables, that number was nearly 20 percent… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ 'Not our war': U.S. allies balk at Trump's Strait of Hormuz demands (NBC News)

President Donald Trump has berated and threatened America’s NATO allies. Now he wants these same countries to help unblock the Strait of Hormuz — and their response has not exactly been enthusiastic.

“This is not our war, we have not started it,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told reporters Monday.

That appeared to sum up the mood among U.S. allies, with leaders from Berlin to London expressing reservations about Trump’s demands and indicating they had no immediate plans to provide military support to reopen the crucial waterway.

Iran effectively closed the trade route in response to the American-Israeli assault launched last month. This sent global oil prices surging and threatened an international economic shock, something economists had warned about before the war began… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Oil industry warns Trump administration that fuel crunch will likely worsen (Wall Street Journal)

American oil executives delivered a bleak message to Trump officials in recent days: The energy crisis the Iran war has unleashed is likely to get worse. In a series of White House meetings Wednesday and recent conversations with Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, the CEOs of Exxon Mobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips warned that the disruption to energy flows out of the vital Strait of Hormuz waterway would continue to create volatility in global energy markets, according to people familiar with the matter. In response to questions from the officials, Exxon CEO Darren Woods said that oil prices could rise past current elevated levels if speculators unexpectedly bid up prices and that markets could see a supply crunch of refined products.

Chevron CEO Mike Wirth and ConocoPhillips CEO Ryan Lance also conveyed their concerns about the scale of the disruption, these people said. President Trump didn’t attend the Wednesday meetings. U.S. oil prices have climbed from $87 a barrel that day to $99 a barrel Friday. The White House has implemented or is considering several measures it hopes will lower oil prices—including further easing sanctions on Russian oil, a massive release of emergency energy reserves and possibly waiving a statute that limits crude flows between U.S. ports.

Administration officials have also told oil chief executives that they are hoping to increase the flow of oil between Venezuela and the U.S., a White House official said. Burgum said the administration has been “working around the clock” with energy companies to stabilize global energy markets. Wright and the Trump administration will continue to take action to minimize disruptions to energy supplies, Energy Department spokesman Ben Dietderich said… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ The National Park Service race to rewrite history becomes a slog (Politico)

The Trump administration’s campaign to remove National Park Service exhibits that “inappropriately disparage” historical figures is bogged down more than nine months after Interior Secretary Doug Burgum set it in motion. The sheer volume of park signs, panels and museum exhibits flagged by park rangers because they mentioned topics like slavery, climate change or violence against Native Americans overwhelmed the Trump administration from the beginning, said three people familiar with the process used to evaluate potential changes, granted anonymity because they feared retribution. “They bit off way more than they could chew,” one of those people said.

But even as parks rushed to meet Interior deadlines, NPS last year dissolved in just a few months a team of experts created to decide if the material flagged by parks had violated President Donald Trump’s prohibition on excessively “negative” portrayals of U.S. history, said two of the people familiar with the process. Many park personnel on the ground now are unsure if NPS will soon demand changes at many parks or leave things as they are, said a park superintendent, who was granted anonymity because they are not allowed to speak to the media.

The effort has reached a “nebulous” phase, the superintendent said, with some parks moving forward with edits and others still waiting for changes to be approved. While some exhibits have been altered or removed — most dramatically when NPS in January abruptly took down an exhibit about former President George Washington’s slaves at a Philadelphia site — the vast majority of parks have blown past several Interior Department deadlines to remove material or put up new content, said the superintendent and one of the people familiar with the internal NPS process… 🟪 (READ MORE)