click here to leave a testimonial sentence.

Happy to credit you by name and title, or keep it anonymous.

Thanks for reading! // A.J.

🟪 TxDOT, APD kick off increased traffic enforcement May 18-May 31 (KXAN)

🟪 3 in custody following weekend crime spree of 12 shootings, multiple car thefts in Austin (KUT)

🟪 Mayor, APD chief talk license plate readers following shootings (KXAN)

🟪 Stream's East Sixth Street properties are ready to be leased (Austin Business Journal)

🟪 Data center duel headed to Texas Legislature (Austin Business Journal)

🟪 Texas summer camps have closed, scaled back operations due to state’s new regulations (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Why the Supreme Court's voting rights ruling could play a big role at the local level (NPR)

🟪 FIFA vs. the State of New Jersey is the World Cup’s biggest grudge match (Wall Street Journal)

✅ TxDOT, APD kick off increased traffic enforcement May 18-May 31 (KXAN)

Austin Police and the Texas Department of Transportation are set to kick off increased traffic enforcement from May 18 through May 31.

APD said the focus of the “Click It or Ticket” campaign will be to “remind drivers and passengers of the importance of wearing seatbelts. There will be additional officers on the roadway during this period, specifically looking for these violations.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ 3 in custody following weekend crime spree of 12 shootings, multiple car thefts in Austin (KUT)

Three people are in police custody in connection with 12 shootings and multiple car thefts across Austin this weekend.

One shooting victim sustained serious injuries and three others have minor injuries, Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said Sunday.

A 15-year-old and a 17-year-old with stolen guns were taken into custody following a car chase in Manor, Davis said, while a third suspect who had also fled the scene remained at large into the evening. The Manor Police Department announced late Sunday that the third suspect had been detained.

The two teenage suspects have not been identified but will be placed in juvenile detention, Davis said. Police were not sure how the third person was involved in the string of shootings.

Several areas in Manor were under a shelter-in-place notice for several hours before authorities lifted it just before 8 p.m. Sunday. Manor police said they were ending an exhaustive search that involved nearly 200 officers, including canine, SWAT, helicopter and drone support… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Mayor, APD chief talk license plate readers following shootings (KXAN)

During Sunday’s press conference over the multiple shootings around Austin, questions were raised about license plate readers, or Flock cameras and if they could have helped. Austin ended its contract last year with Flock, a company that provided license plate reader technology, amid privacy concerns. “I think the conversation is ripe to have, could that have helped? Yes, it could have helped,” said Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis when asked about license plate readers. Mayor Kirk Watson also weighed in on the technology.

“What I will say is this, probably having license plate readers would have been helpful under these circumstances,” said Watson. “So, we need to make sure when we are trying to reach balance and perspective, we take all of that into account.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Stream's East Sixth Street properties are ready to be leased (Austin Business Journal)

The long-awaited renovations that Stream Realty Partners LP did to its Old Sixth Street properties are finished. All of those are now ready to be leased. 

Stream in 2020 began to acquire about 31 buildings and 200,000 square feet of space along East Sixth Street. In 2024, the Dallas-based commercial real estate firm began improving the facades and interiors of the buildings. 

That improvement work hasn’t been rushed as most of the buildings have remained vacant. But Stream does own a few buildings in the East Sixth Street area that are active businesses. Those include Chess Club, Barbarella, Swan Dive and True Blue Tattoo and Piercing, said Paul Bodenman, a senior vice president of investments for Stream. 

Stream is now in a position to make all of its buildings along East Sixth Street available for lease. There is “good momentum” toward getting leases signed, Bodenman said… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Data center duel headed to Texas Legislature (Austin Business Journal)

Caldwell County Judge Hoppy Haden is frustrated about data centers.

He estimated the county near Austin is looking at a $20-plus billion investment across at least four data center campuses coming on its tax rolls in the next five years. Local government constraints in Texas mean he can't do much about it, to the chagrin of his angry constituents, and he's scared of what it means for not only resources but the county's solvency.

"I'm telling you, I'm directing every citizen that comes to me complaining to call the state rep and the state senator. I'm going to do everything I can to fill up their committee chambers with pissed off people cause I'm tired of it – because they're filling my chamber with pissed off people. So I'm directing them where to go," Haden said.

Haden's predicament is emblematic of the growing frustration cities, counties and citizens have as the state continues to explode with data center investment, primarily in suburban and rural areas. Some municipalities have tried to stop – or at least slow – that boom but to little or no avail… 🟪 (READ MORE)

📝⏱️ Q2 2026 Survey: 5 minutes, 9 questions. Click here to share your input.

✅ A Texas town needs Waco’s help to realize its data center dreams. It’s not going well. (Texas Tribune)

In the move-fast-and-break-things world of high tech, a global investment firm and small Central Texas town have joined a global race to build a hyperscale data center — in two years.

But that race may put them on a collision course with neighboring Waco, which holds power over infrastructure needed for the $10 billion project pushed by Infrakey and Lacy Lakeview.

Top Lacy Lakeview officials say there’s good reason for the haste.

Potential investors don’t want to wait. And city officials don’t want to lose the chance to lasso $50 million a year in tax revenue for this suburb of 8,000 just north of Waco.

That urgency is creating sparks with Waco officials, who say they have been kept in the dark about the project. It has also fueled the flames of opposition in the Ross area, where the 520-acre data center is proposed… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Texas summer camps have closed, scaled back operations due to state’s new regulations (Texas Tribune)

After the deadly July 4 Hill Country floods that killed 27 children and counselors at Camp Mystic, Texas lawmakers required youth camps to implement a slew of new safety requirements, including weather warning systems and having fiber optic internet, and pay thousands of dollars more in licensing fees.

While the state has pulled back on the internet requirement for now, the regulations have shaken up the industry, according to multiple camp directors. Previously licensed camps have reduced their hours of operation, so the state no longer has to license them and they can avoid paying higher licensing fees. Urban camps are scaling back activities for children due to burdensome safety plan requirements, and rural camps are closing due to uncertainty… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Texas nuclear energy boom faces a worker shortage as data centers push industry rebound (Austin American-Statesman)

When nuclear energy leaders gathered in Austin last month for the Texas Nuclear Symposium, they were faced with a stark reality: Their industry, which has languished for decades, is in the midst of a boom its workforce isn’t ready to meet.

It comes amid a surge of construction of the power-hungry data centers needed to support rapidly increasing demand for artificial intelligence — and broad concerns about how the energy industry is going to serve them. 

The solution increasingly includes nuclear.

“We’re trying to build all these data centers, but we need the power,” said Danielle Zigon, director of strategic initiatives for the University of Texas’ nuclear and radiation engineering program. “I’m not just selling nuclear energy. I’m selling solutions to a power problem in this state. I am selling solutions to the water problem. We need it, and it’s happening fast.”

The industry is trying to make a rapid turnaround from the doldrums it’s faced since the early 1980s.

After major expansion in the 1960s and 1970s, public skepticism after high-profile reactor accidents, concerns about waste management, high construction costs and rapid growth of less-expensive renewable sources have cut nuclear’s share of global energy generation to about 9% last year… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Why the Supreme Court's voting rights ruling could play a big role at the local level (NPR)

While Republican-led Southern states race to redo their congressional maps after the U.S. Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act's protections against racial discrimination, the decision's effects may be felt most notably on the local level.

There are active legal fights over at least 17 voting maps or election systems for state and local governments that are now reckoning with the court's ruling, an NPR analysis of federal court records has found.

In the weeks since the high court released its landmark decision in Louisiana v. Callais, many lawyers in these lawsuits have been working on briefs about how they think the ruling's reinterpretation of the Voting Rights Act's Section 2 provisions in redistricting should be applied… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ FIFA vs. the State of New Jersey is the World Cup’s biggest grudge match (Wall Street Journal)

A highhanded international organization with a reputation for skulduggery and cozy relationships with autocrats may have finally met its match: the state of New Jersey.

FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, will stage eight World Cup matches—including the final—at the Garden State’s MetLife Stadium. But just as the extravaganza is set to kick off, many New Jerseyans are viewing their hosting duties less as an honor and more as a costly burden they could do without.

The tension came to a boil when NJ Transit announced last month it would charge fans $150 for a round-trip ticket from Manhattan to the Meadowlands, a ride that typically costs around $13. Such charges would have “a chilling effect,” FIFA’s chief operating officer, Heimo Schirgi, warned—which struck some New Jersey officials as rich, coming from a body that touts the inclusive nature of the games while charging nearly $33,000 for top tickets.

NJ Transit has since reduced the train fare to $98, thanks to contributions from corporate sponsors. Still, New Jersey’s new Democratic governor, Mikie Sherrill, shows no sign of bending further to an organization that expects to generate at least $14 billion from the quadrennial soccer-fest.

“My number one concern is to make sure that this isn’t put on the back of New Jerseyans,” Sherrill said of an estimated $62 million in World Cup-related transit costs at a time when she is trying to pass her first budget. “We still strongly feel like they need to throw in more for some of these expenses.”

Others are less diplomatic. In a recent budget hearing, Declan O’Scanlon, a Republican state senator and fiscal hawk, gave voice to a nativist suspicion about the world’s game. O’Scanlon dismissed predictions of a World Cup bonanza “because soccer sucks,” he said. The clash between FIFA and New Jersey features the familiar rage of this populist era—namely, a public beaten down by rising costs snarling at global elites. It is fodder for the debate about the economic merits of hosting big sporting events. Underlying all that is the fragile ego of a state whose outward brassiness is often a cover for an inferiority complex stoked by its glittering neighbor… 🟪 (READ MORE)