🟪 Experts say Austin in 'early innings' of becoming hyperscale data center hub (Austin Business Journal)

🟪 Austin's Stratus Properties dissolving, liquidating all assets (Austin Business Journal)

🟪 Airport bottlenecks ease as TSA workers get paid, but shutdown continues (Associated Press)

🟪 Dan Patrick adds data centers, prediction markets and THC to Senate priorities (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Speaker Dustin Burrows lists data centers, property taxes and annexing slice of New Mexico among 2027 priorities (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Trump says his 'preference' would be to 'take the oil in Iran' (NBC News)

🟪 The Supreme Court will weigh Trump's birthright citizenship order this week. Here's what to know about the case. (CBS News)

READ ON!

✅ Experts say Austin in 'early innings' of becoming hyperscale data center hub (Austin Business Journal)

There's only one other region in the U.S. that one-ups Texas when it comes to the data center boom: Northern Virginia. But the momentum seen in Central Texas and across the Lone Star State is so strong, a lot of experts think Texas could be the largest data center market in the world by the end of this decade.

Locally, "the cloud" is popping up in every corner of the region — from Temple to San Marcos. Elsewhere in the state, areas around Dallas and San Antonio have become a leader due to the defense, federal government and cybersecurity sectors. But some said Austin is on its way to becoming a leader in the artificial intelligence and "hyperscaler" world; think of the gargantuan and growing data needs of companies such as Google and Amazon.

It's due to Austin's connection to the tech world, its generally favorable regulatory authority, power availability and open land in the suburbs suited for industrial space compared to other metro areas, according to Ali Greenwood, vice chair at Cushman and Wakefield Inc. She's part of the real estate giant's data center advisory group, and she points out that Austin is in the "early innings" of data center growth… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin's Stratus Properties dissolving, liquidating all assets (Austin Business Journal)

The board of directors of Austin-based Stratus Properties Inc. (Nasdaq: STRS) have approved a plan to dissolve the commercial real estate firm and liquidate its assets, the company announced March 24.

Stratus has been a player on the local real estate scene since its formation in 1992. The company has been part of developing several major projects such as parts of Southwest Austin’s Circle C Ranch and Barton Creek neighborhoods, among others.

The dissolution plan must still be approved by shareholders. Stratus estimated that aggregate net proceeds from the asset sales could result in stockholder distributions of $29.73 to $37.69 a share.

"We have spent many years successfully executing on our strategy of developing and selling assets, and having substantially achieved the Company’s objectives, we now believe it is the right time to return capital to our shareholders," Stratus CEO and chairman William "Beau" Armstrong III said in an emailed statement. "A shareholder-approved plan of dissolution provides a tax-efficient structure for those distributions and sufficient time to complete our remaining projects — the right outcome for the Company and its investors."… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Liberty Hill to establish city's first engineering department, overhaul design standards (Community Impact)

Liberty Hill will hire its first city engineer and supporting staff after City Council approved funding at its March 25 meeting.

City Council approved an amendment to the fiscal year 2026 budget that would allow the new staff to be brought on board before fiscal year 2027.

The city engineer will lead the engineering department and oversee the design, construction and maintenance of city infrastructure.

Deputy City Manager Brandon Pritchett said the city currently contracts with a third-party engineer to handle most of the duties of the city engineer, but the city is currently lacking certain services that the city engineer would provide, such as reviewing capital improvement projects during construction… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin to shutter South Terminal as airport expansion continues; future Concourse M designs revealed (Community Impact)

The South Terminal at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport is officially shutting down March 31 after less than a decade in operation.

The auxiliary terminal will be demolished to make way for new midfield taxiways as part of the multiyear Journey with AUS campus expansion. That includes the addition of the 26-gate Concourse B with a new connecting tunnel to the existing Barbara Jordan Terminal, and the development of a temporary six-gate southern terminal called Concourse M.

The first flight took off from ABIA's South Terminal, located at 10000 Logistics Lane, on April 13, 2017. Since then, millions of people have traveled through the 30,000-square-foot facility. Austin Aviation didn't have exact flight or passenger totals for the South Terminal as of press time.

Frontier Airlines and Allegiant Air are operating from the South Terminal through its closure this spring. Starting in April, those airlines will move to the Barbara Jordan Terminal. Austin Aviation didn't have more information available about those airlines' addition to the main terminal, such as impacts to airport operations and available flights, as of press time… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Airport bottlenecks ease as TSA workers get paid, but shutdown continues (Associated Press)

Frustrating security lines dwindled at U.S. airports Monday, clearing the worst bottlenecks as Transportation Safety Administration officers began receiving backpay for working during the government shutdown.

Checkpoint lines that at times stretched to four hours at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport shrank to waits of 10 minutes or less on Monday. In other previous trouble spots such as Atlanta and Baltimore-Washington International Airport, travelers were moving smoothly to their flights.

After weeks of airport chaos, there was finally optimism for the beleaguered aviation system.

Weary travelers hope the overdue paychecks will end the seemingly endless security lines and missed flights many experienced. It remains unknown how long federal immigration officers will maintain a visible presence in airport terminals as the busy spring break travel season continues… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Dan Patrick adds data centers, prediction markets and THC to Senate priorities (Texas Tribune)

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick on Friday instructed state senators to study a broad range of policy issues ahead of next year’s legislative session, including prediction markets, data centers, THC and more, expanding on an initial list of priorities that included “preventing Sharia law” and investigating Medicaid fraud.

Patrick’s latest list of interim charges corresponded with many of the priorities House Speaker Dustin Burrows laid out Thursday.

Data centers appeared three times on Patrick’s priorities, with the lieutenant governor — who leads the state Senate — instructing various committees to assess the water demands of “energy-intensive technologies,” including data centers; to consider how to meet electricity demands of data centers but also “balance economic development benefits of this growth against the impacts on landowners, private property rights, water infrastructure, and community integrity;” and evaluate the costs of the sales tax exemption granted to data centers… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Speaker Dustin Burrows lists data centers, property taxes and annexing slice of New Mexico among 2027 priorities (Texas Tribune)

Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows directed lawmakers to study the secession of New Mexico counties to Texas, the development of data centers in the state, property tax relief and more in a list of his priorities for next year’s legislative session released Thursday.

The Lubbock Republican’s interim charges overlap with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s initial to-do list in their shared focuses on reducing property taxes, securing Texas from potential foreign threats and homing in on potential fraud and abuse in government spending.

But Burrows’ priorities cover a broader range of policy issues for House committees to tackle in preparation for the 2027 legislative session. Burrows also created three new committees on governmental oversight, health care affordability and general aviation.

He instructed the governmental oversight committee to study the implications of adding to Texas “one or more contiguous counties of New Mexico” and the process to do so, after welcoming a proposal out of New Mexico to allow its counties to band together and secede. While the Texas-New Mexico boundary is unlikely to shift next year, the proposal will likely appeal to pro-secessionists in Texas, some of whom are among Burrows’ conservative skeptics… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ The Supreme Court will weigh Trump's birthright citizenship order this week. Here's what to know about the case. (CBS News)

The Supreme Court is set to convene Wednesday to consider the legality of President Trump's executive order that seeks to end birthright citizenship.

The case is a major test of a key pillar of Mr. Trump's immigration agenda and is the first in which the high court will weigh the legal merits of one of the president's immigration policies. 

The question before the Supreme Court is whether the president's executive order on birthright citizenship violates the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment and a provision of federal law that codified that clause. That statute was first enacted through the Nationality Act in 1940 and then reenacted in the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1952. 

The Citizenship Clause states that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."

A decision in the case is expected by the end of June or early July. If the high court rules against the Trump administration, it would mark the second major loss for the president in his second term. In a 6-3 decision in February, the Supreme Court struck down many of his tariffs issued under an emergency powers law.

Ahead of the arguments, President Trump claimed that other countries are "selling citizenships" to the U.S., and attacked the federal court system as "stupid."… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Trump says his 'preference' would be to 'take the oil in Iran' (NBC News)

President Donald Trump said Sunday that he would like to "take the oil in Iran" and is considering seizing the export hub of Kharg Island, which is responsible for more than90% of Iran's oil exports. In an interview with the Financial Times, Trump said his "preference would be to take the oil." "To be honest with you, my favorite thing is to take the oil in Iran but some stupid people back in the U.S. say: ‘Why are you doing that?’ But they’re stupid people," he said. The interview marks some of Trump's most direct comments about his thinking on what to do with Iran's oil. In an interview with NBC News this month, Trump sidestepped answering whether he had plans to try to take Iran’s oil.

“You look at Venezuela,” he said. “People have thought about it, but it’s too soon to talk about that.” In January, the U.S. captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and proceeded to take more control over the country's oil industry. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday night. Trump told the Financial Times on Sunday that the U.S. has "a lot of options," including potentially taking Kharg Island, a rare island made of hard coral off Iran. “Maybe we take Kharg Island, maybe we don’t. We have a lot of options,” Trump said. “It would also mean we had to be there [in Kharg Island] for a while.” Oil prices have skyrocketed around the globe as the war continues, with U.S. crude oil costing over $100 a barrel Sunday.

Thousands more U.S. troops are heading to the Middle East, with the USS Tripoli arriving on Saturday as part of a complement of 3,500 troops. But Trump and his administration continue to signal that they are working to negotiate a 15-point proposal to end the war. Trump declined Sunday to offer specific details about whether a ceasefire deal could be reached in the coming days to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway used to move about 20% of the world's oil exports. “We’ve got about 3,000 targets left — we’ve bombed 13,000 targets — and another couple of thousand targets to go,” Trump said in the Financial Times interview. “A deal could be made fairly quickly.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)