🟪 A third victim has died from the Buford's shooting, Austin Police say (KUT)

🟪 Anti-Muslim backlash shadows Austin after downtown shooting (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Work begins on Austin ISD teacher housing project at site of former elementary (Austin American-Statesman)

🟪 Texas wins prestigious Governor's Cup award again (Austin Business Journal)

🟪 Business owners sue comptroller after their removal from state minority business program (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Supreme Court ponders law making it a crime for marijuana users to own guns (NPR)

🟪 The war against PDFs is heating up (The Economist)

READ ON!

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Wonder plans to open more than 100 Texas locations by end of 2027, creating thousands of new jobs statewide through investments in storefront construction, kitchen buildouts, and local infrastructure. Learn more here.

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Meetings:

✅ A third victim has died from the Buford's shooting, Austin Police say (KUT)

Austin Police have identified three people killed in Sunday's shooting at a bar on West Sixth Street as investigators said they were still working to determine why the shooter opened fire.

The shooting at Buford's bar early Sunday left four dead, including the suspected shooter, and as many as 13 others wounded. At a news conference on Monday, Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis named two victims: 19-year-old Ryder Harrington and 21-year-old Savitha Shan.

Late Monday, APD released the name of a third victim who has died: 30-year-old Jorge Pederson. Davis had stated earlier at the press conference that a person hospitalized from the shooting was expected to be taken off life support later that day.

Before APD updated on Pederson's condition, Austin-Travis County EMS had said 14 people were hospitalized and three of those victims were in critical condition.

Police identified 53-year-old Ndiaga Diagne as the man who allegedly fired into the bar from a vehicle before exiting the car and shooting into crowds near the popular bar. Officers responded within a minute of receiving the first 911 call, police said, and fatally shot Diagne early Sunday morning… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Anti-Muslim backlash shadows Austin after downtown shooting (Texas Tribune)

When Austin Councilmember Zo Qadri heard the man accused of killing two people and wounding 14 at Buford’s Sunday morning might be Muslim, three feelings rushed through him.

Disbelief. Shock. Worry.

Disbelief and shock? Expected. Worry? That wasn’t just for Austin as a city. It was also for the Muslim community, who, he feared, would be vilified and blamed for a crime they had nothing to do with.

The downtown shooting and early speculation about the suspect’s religion landed in the middle of an already charged political climate in Texas, where Republican leaders have escalated attacks on Muslim organizations. For Qadri, whose district includes the scene of the attack, the moment underscored how violence can quickly be folded into broader narratives that put Muslim communities on the defensive.

Long before the sun set on Sunday, Texas politicians attacked each other over immigration and gun control laws. Social media users posted tirades against Muslims. Anti-Islamic posts and conspiracy theories filled Qadri’s X timeline.

And the Muslim community feels it… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Travis County early voting reaches highest level for a primary election in almost two decades (KUT)

Early voting turnout in Travis County continued to surpass every primary election since 2008, with nearly 171,000 voters casting their ballots over the past two weeks.

Nearly 19% of all registered voters in the county went to the polls during early voting. That may seem small, but it’s a big win for a county in Texas, which routinely trails behind the rest of the nation in voter turnout, according to the Texas Policy Project.

Out of Travis County's 920,114 registered voters, 14.8% cast a ballot in the Democratic primary, and 3.77% voted Republican.

With Election Day to go, Democrats have already surpassed the voter turnout of the last gubernatorial primary election in 2022. In that election, 13% of Democrats voted; this year, nearly 15% of Democrats have voted so far… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Work begins on Austin ISD teacher housing project at site of former elementary (Austin American-Statesman)

Developers have started work on a housing project at the site of a former Austin Independent School District campus. Once completed, the affordable housing project is expected to provide living space for district staff within the boundaries of an increasingly expensive city.

In Austin, school staff often trade short commutes for affordable housing, so district officials hope the project will help retain educators and ease the burden of commuting for some employees.

The 675-unit housing project will launch with 334 units in fall of 2027 on the site of the Anita Ferrales Coy site in East Austin, where the former Allan Elementary School once sat. Austin ISD owns the property, but leases it on a 99-year term to the NRP Group, which is developing the housing.

About two-thirds of Austin ISD staff are cost-burdened, Superintendent Matias Segura said in a statement.

“Austin ISD educators and staff are facing historic affordability pressures, with rising housing costs forcing many to live far from the students and campuses they serve,” Segura said… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Pflugerville's city manager stepping down (Austin Business Journal)

Pflugerville’s city manager, Sereniah Breland, is retiring from her role leading the city government for the suburb just north of Austin. 

The city announced that Breland’s last day as Pflugerville’s city manager will be July 1. It’s unclear how soon the city would name a permanent replacement for Breland as the retirement announcement didn’t say if an interim city manager would be appointed.

A city spokesperson said the Pflugerville city council still needs to discuss next steps for finding the future city manager.

Breland’s LinkedIn profile shows she’s worked as the Pflugerville city manager since 2018 and previously managed the cities of Alvin, Texas and Guthrie, Oklahoma… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ 11 more P. Terry's locations will stay open 24 hours (Austin Business Journal)

About a year ago, P. Terry’s Burger Stand began filling a demand when it decided to keep some stores open for 24 hours. It worked so well that 11 more stores are going 24/7.

Austin-based P. Terry’s announced that it will add 11 stores into its 24-hour, seven days a week operation. Nine of these stores will be in the Austin metro and two are in the San Antonio metro. It will also extend hours at another five locations. The burger chain, which has 37 locations across Central Texas, San Antonio and Houston, grew sales by about 27% in 2025 and increased guest traffic by 12% last year, the company recently reported. It attributed much of that success to the additional hours, alongside providing value and consistency to consumers. 

Effective March 2, these are the Austin metro locations that will open 24 hours, seven days a week: Round Rock, Tech Ridge, Burnet, Koenig, Cap Plaza, East Seventh Street, Airport, Slaughter and in Kyle. New Braunfels and Broadway are the two San Antonio area locations that will shift to the 24-hour model.

This puts the company at 15 locations operating 24 hours. Co-founder and CEO of P. Terry's, Patrick Terry, also said the company will continue exploring this model as it grows… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Texas wins prestigious Governor's Cup award again (Austin Business Journal)

In what is becoming an annual tradition, Gov. Greg Abbott gathered Texas economic development leaders to celebrate the state leading the nation for capital investment projects. 

Abbott celebrated Texas winning the Governor’s Cup award from Site Selection magazine that goes to the state with the most capital investment projects in the past year. Texas is on a dynastic run in competing for the Governor’s Cup as the state has won the award for 14 years in a row. 

Ron Starner, the executive vice president of Site Selection magazine, said that Texas “obliterated” its competition as the state totaled more than 1,400 projects in the last year, which is more than double the second-place state, Illinois, which had 680 projects and more than triple the third place state, Ohio, which had 467 projects. 

“Being a dynasty means that you show longevity in winning and that you live consistently in dominant fashion. By that message, no other state comes close to Texas,” Starner said, noting the Governor’s Cup has been awarded 26 times and Texas has won it 16 times… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Business owners sue comptroller after their removal from state minority business program (Texas Tribune)

Four business owners and a trade association sued the state of Texas on Monday, seeking to reverse acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock’s emergency rules altering a state program intended to give additional exposure to economically disadvantaged groups in government contracting.

During an afternoon news conference in Austin, the business owners said they are suing because they all lost out on government contracts after Hancock stripped their Historically Underutilized Business Program certification in December.

“In this country, the legislature passes the laws, not the comptroller, and Texas is no different,” Alphonso David, president & CEO of the Global Black Economic Forum, and lead counsel for the plaintiffs, wrote in a statement. “The HUB case highlights a fundamental American principle — members of the executive branch cannot rewrite laws passed by the state legislature. They cannot deny citizens of their legal rights without a court order, legislative approval, or due process... 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ The war against PDFs is heating up (The Economist)

When Adobe introduced the portable document format (PDF) in 1993, a consultant from Gartner called it “the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard in my life”. Users would have to twiddle their thumbs waiting for the megabyte-sized files to download over their dial-up internet, then wait again for their PCs to render them. The software-maker’s board wanted to kill the project. But as sharing digital files became essential, the PDF triumphed—particularly after the Internal Revenue Service, America’s tax authority, started using it for its forms. Today more than 2.5trn PDFs float in the ether. But will the format survive the ai revolution?

PDFs still have drawbacks. They are a pain to view on a smartphone. Copying data from them is fiddly. Software tools that read screens for blind people struggle with PDFs. The file type, which Adobe relinquished control over in 2008, is also a vehicle for malware: a fifth of email-based cyber-attacks utilise PDF attachments, according to Check Point, a cyber-security firm. Lately another source of criticism has emerged. The large language models underpinning generative AI are often bamboozled by PDFs, reading a page set in columns from left to right rather than top to bottom, say, or getting confused by headers and footers. Trouble parsing PDFs is one of the reasons AI chatbots occasionally “hallucinate”, generating nonsense.

Enter the disrupters. Startups such as Factify are on a mission to build a new file type that is better suited to the technology. Matan Gavish, its boss, talks of his “megalomaniac” vision of displacing the PDF. Yet Duff Johnson, head of the PDF Association, protector of the format, argues that the fault lies not in the file type but in ourselves. He contends that there is no reason developers cannot build bots that are able to use PDFs. The AI assistant embedded in Acrobat, Adobe’s PDF reader, is designed to do precisely that, notes Leonard Rosenthol, the software firm’s PDF guru. Google, a leader in AI, has rolled out a tool for developers using its Gemini models that makes it easier to ingest PDFs. The format’s reign is not over yet… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Supreme Court ponders law making it a crime for marijuana users to own guns (NPR)

The Supreme Court hears arguments Monday in an important gun case that has united an array of strange bedfellows, from conservative gun rights groups to liberal civil liberties groups. At issue is a federal law making it a crime for drug users to possess a firearm. It's the same law that was used to prosecute then-President Joe Biden's son for illegal gun possession — only this case involves marijuana use and gun ownership.

The briefs in the case present diametrically different versions of the facts. On one side, the Trump administration portrays Ali Danial Hemani as a drug dealer and someone with terrorist ties and a marijuana habit. Importantly, he is not being prosecuted for any of those offenses, however. Rather, the government has charged Hemani with violating a federal gun law that bars people with drug addiction from possession of firearms, a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison… 🟪 (READ MORE)