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🟪 Council advances plan for Austin's economic expansion, business recruitment (Community Impact)

🟪 Austin bar shooter didn’t have international terrorism ties, FBI says (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Vertical construction to start this summer on Austin Convention Center (Austin Business Journal)

🟪 Austin ISD will cut 215 educator salaries for next school year as it faces a $181 million deficit (KUT)

🟪 By threatening public safety grants, Greg Abbott exerts control over Texas cities (Texas Tribune)

🟪 U.S. intelligence says Iran can outlast Trump’s Hormuz blockade for months (Washington Post)

✅ Council advances plan for Austin's economic expansion, business recruitment (Community Impact)

Pushing to sustain local growth in a "new fiscal and competitive reality," City Council voted to craft economic development policies aimed at recruiting new investment and major projects, attracting more international attention and supporting local businesses.

“The best way, the most equitable way and the most likely way of being able to have sufficient revenue to provide the services that the public needs and wants is to grow your economic base," Mayor Kirk Watson said in an interview.

Officials passed a resolution from Watson on May 7 kicking off the creation of what he called an "active, progressive" civic economic development playbook. The council directive was based on an overview of Austin's current situation and proposals for future economic opportunities, including public benefits.

This spring's action was needed in part to address strained city finances by expanding its revenue base, Watson said. After years of seeing new business naturally flow into town, increasing competition is now resulting in lost opportunities, and he said new investment should be pursued more intentionally… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin bar shooter didn’t have international terrorism ties, FBI says (Texas Tribune)

Details from an FBI investigation into the March 1 bar shooting on Austin’s West 6th Street revealed no evidence that the gunman was affiliated with or radicalized by a terrorist group, the agency said. Instead, investigators said the man appeared motivated by “personal triggers” related to ongoing military action in Iran.

The shooter, 53-year-old Ndiaga Diagne, killed 19-year-old Ryder Harrington, 30-year-old Jorge Pederson and 21-year-old Savitha Shanmugasundaram, and injured 15 others at Buford’s bar using weapons he had legally purchased years earlier. The attack is being considered an “impulsive” act, according to an FBI news release issued Thursday.

Diagne, who investigators said acted alone, was shot and killed by police officers about five minutes after he began shooting, the FBI said… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Vertical construction to start this summer on Austin Convention Center (Austin Business Journal)

There are two near constants on the construction site of the Austin Convention Center: noise and movement. 

The Austin Business Journal took a tour of the convention center site on May 6 to see the progress of the project that aims to bring 620,000 square feet of rentable meeting space to downtown Austin. That is about 70% more space than what was available at the old Austin Convention Center. 

The construction of the new convention center is being handled by a joint venture of JE Dunn Construction and Turner Construction Co. Crews are still doing work to break down the foundation of the old Austin Convention Center and remove dirt from the site. There is a near-constant amount of trucks that drive on the convention center site to haul dirt away. 

Excavation work on the site is over 54% done, said a spokesperson for the JE Dunn/Turner joint venture. In total, the construction team has removed about 525,000 cubic yards of rock and dirt which equates to about 850,000 tons… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Leadership shakeup hits Uhland City Hall after mayor, other officials resign (KVUE)

Residents in the small City of Uhland are facing uncertainty about the future of local leadership after multiple city officials, including Mayor Lacee Duke, resigned in recent days. The departures have sparked questions from community members about who will lead the city moving forward and how those vacancies will be filled.

The resignations include Duke, the mayor pro tem, the city attorney and other staff, creating what the city administrator describes as a major transition period for the Hays County community. “I believe it’s a new wind, a new wind of change, and you can feel it right now blow in,” said Yolanda Tobias Romo, who was raised in Uhland.

Romo said she began closely following city developments two years ago because of her family’s ties to the town. “Because I wanted to know what was going on with my community, with my family’s home,” she said. City Administrator Hayden Brodowsky said Texas law lays out how the city can handle multiple vacancies at once. “State law requires that you cannot have two active vacancies at one time,” Brodowsky said. “So the way it works is eight days from the vacancy, the city must either appoint somebody or hold a special election in the future.”

The political turmoil follows Duke’s arrest by the Texas Rangers in December. She was charged with allegedly misusing city money connected to the 2024 Uhland Fall Fest. At the time, Duke told KVUE in a statement she is innocent and is “vigorously working” to prove her innocence. Despite the felony charge, Duke remained in office until submitting her resignation on Monday, shortly after Saturday’s local election in which new council members were elected… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin ISD, UT face cyberattack against software vendor (KUT)

Austin ISD appears to be included in a long list of schools and universities affected by a cyberattack after the platform "BLEND" went down Thursday afternoon and was replaced by a message from a hacker identified as "ShinyHunters." The hacker said affected schools have until Tuesday to negotiate a settlement before internal data is made public.

KUT News received screenshots from parents at McCallum High School and teachers at other schools that show the message sent by the hacker to the the district.

"ShinyHunters has breached Instructure (again). Instead of contacting us to resolve it they ignored us an did some 'security patches,'" the message read.

BLEND is the platform used by teachers and students to view assignments, due dates and course materials. Teachers also use it to communicate with students and parents.

In the message, "ShinyHunters" told schools it is open to negotiating a settlement before May 12. The hacker said if schools want to prevent data leaks, they must consult a cyber advisory firm and contact them privately.

In a statement to parents, AISD officials said the attack is on BLEND’s parent company and not the district itself. District officials said their security teams are confident that the attack will not impact AISD’s systems because of their "proactive investments in added security layers,” including multi-factor authentication… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin ISD will cut 215 educator salaries for next school year as it faces a $181 million deficit (KUT)

Austin ISD is set to cut 215 full-time educator salaries — 85 for elementary schools, 51 for middle schools and 79 for high schools — as it faces a $181 million budget deficit for the 2026-27 school year. These cuts are in relation to newly proposed teacher-student ratios, Superintendent Matias Segura said on Thursday.

“The ability to serve our students in a way that we had a couple years back or even last year is going to be impacted,” Segura said. “We have not been able yet to get the funding we need to ensure that we keep up with the costs that we have. So we have to make these cuts, as hard as they are.”

Segura's update comes just two days after AISD officials said they identified ways to reduce the projected deficit by $152.7 million for next school year, including $73.8 million worth of cuts to the central office, $33.9 million in cuts to campus budgets, and $45 million in revenue from real estate sales and leases.

Earlier this year, Segura said campuses would be impacted.

“It's going to create some disruption because things that have been there in the past won't be there,” he said Thursday.

Segura said it is likely that layoffs will occur, but that doesn't mean 215 teachers will lose their jobs. The district has hundreds of vacancies, he said, and will need to adjust how many educators are at each school based on enrollment, the number of teachers retiring or leaving and the newly proposed teacher-student ratios… 🟪 (READ MORE)

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✅ By threatening public safety grants, Greg Abbott exerts control over Texas cities (Texas Tribune)

For the fourth time in less than four weeks, Gov. Greg Abbott has forced a Texas city to yield to his will by threatening to withdraw public safety grants administered by his office.

In Texas, where Republicans dominate state leadership and Democrats hold sway in many big cities, the GOP governor is turbocharging the use of financial threats to force compliance on matters that typically fall under local control.

The latest state-local clash came earlier this week after Texas conservatives protested plans to hold a Muslim-only celebration at a water park owned by Grand Prairie. Although organizers modified advertising to welcome anybody wearing modest attire to the June 1 Epic Eid event, Abbott weighed in Wednesday to demand the event be scrapped… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ San Antonio City Council approves first contracts for Project Marvel amid brief infighting (Texas Public Radio)

San Antonio’s multi-million-dollar sports and entertainment district proposed for downtown got the green light on its first two contracts to oversee construction and development of the area.

But that decision came after a series of public disagreements during the meeting between Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones and the rest of the city council that left her on the losing side of multiple 10-1 votes.

Ultimately, the council approved a district study contract that will conduct a cost of services assessment with Maryland-based MuniCap Inc., a consulting and professional services firm. That study will cost about $350,000.

The second contract is for $6 million with Accenture Infrastructure and Capital Projects to be the executive program manager for the district, or in other words, an overseer of all projects taking place in the design and construction phase.

The proposals for those contracts each passed by a vote of 10-1.

Since Jones' election last year, she has made several attempts to slow down the project and ask for more time for its development… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ U.S. intelligence says Iran can outlast Trump’s Hormuz blockade for months (Washington Post)

A confidential CIA analysis delivered to administration policymakers this week concludes that Iran can survive the U.S. naval blockade for at least three to four months before facing more severe economic hardship, four people familiar with the document said, a finding that appears to raise new questions about President Donald Trump’s optimism on ending the war.

The analysis by the U.S. intelligence community, whose secret assessments on Iran have often been more sober than the administration’s public statements, also found that Tehran retains significant ballistic missile capabilities despite weeks of intense U.S. and Israeli bombardment, three of the people familiar with it said. Iran retains about 75 percent of its prewar inventories of mobile launchers and about 70 percent of its prewar stockpiles of missiles, a U.S. official said. The official said there is evidence that the regime has been able to recover and reopen almost all of its underground storage facilities, repair some damaged missiles and even assemble some new missiles that were nearly complete when the war began.

Trump painted a rosier picture in Oval Office remarks on Wednesday, saying of Iran: “Their missiles are mostly decimated, they have probably 18, 19 percent, but not a lot by comparison to what they had.” Three current and one former U.S. official confirmed the outlines of the intelligence analysis, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter. Asked for comment, a senior U.S. intelligence official emphasized the blockade’s impact.

“The President’s blockade is inflicting real, compounding damage — severing trade, crushing revenue, and accelerating systemic economic collapse. Iran’s military has been badly degraded, its navy destroyed, and its leaders are in hiding,” the official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, said in a statement. “What’s left is the regime’s appetite for civilian suffering — starving its own people to prolong a war it has already lost.” Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other officials have consistently presented the war as an overwhelming U.S. military victory, despite Iran’s rejection of Washington’s demands that it abandon nuclear enrichment, surrender its uranium stockpiles, reopen the Strait of Hormuz and take other steps… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ How the Trump administration became an activist investor (Wall Street Journal)

There is free-market capitalism and state capitalism. Now, there’s Trump capitalism. In recent months, the president has extended his hand into American business in unorthodox and, to some corporate leaders, alarming ways—from progressive-style demands to cap credit-card rates to assertive deals grabbing government shares in private companies.

Some executives are so worried Trump will ask for a stake in their company that they have prepared for Oval Office meetings by rehearsing what they would say to fend off the president’s advances, lobbyists involved in the preparations said. Others welcome Trump’s attention. United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby appealed to Trump with the idea of creating a “national champion” airline during meetings with Trump and top officials at the White House, people familiar with the discussions said. United asked for regulatory permission to merge with American Airlines, and top Trump aides discussed whether the U.S. should take a stake in what would be one of the biggest airlines in the world, according to people familiar with the meetings.

Trump later said he didn’t support a merger, American Airlines was resistant and United abandoned its bid. The administration talked with Spirit Airlines about providing a loan of up to $500 million in return for warrants that would have given the U.S. a significant stake in the low-cost carrier, The Wall Street Journal reported last month. When the company offered 80% in exchange for the government bailout, Trump suggested 90%, according to people familiar with the matter. But Spirit bondholders didn’t want to subordinate their claims to the federal government, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The government pulled out of negotiations, and Spirit shut down Saturday. Administration officials are stoking the president’s instinct to shift more authority over private-sector industries to Trump and his team. The Trump administration has announced direct investment stakes in at least 10 companies, including a 10% equity stake in Intel and a “golden share” of U.S. Steel, which grants the government power to influence company decisions.

“We’re seeing the government get more involved in different aspects of the economy, which is a pivot off the more traditional Republican approach of the last century,” said Kelly Ann Shaw, deputy assistant to the president for international economic affairs in Trump’s first term… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Ted Turner’s vision of news as global and continuous changed both the industry and society itself (Associated Press)

When the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986, Beth Knobel, a future TV news correspondent, was in graduate school. Emerging from class, she saw TV sets had been set up in the lobby. They were tuned to CNN, the 24/7 news channel that Ted Turner had launched about five years earlier, which was carrying the launch live.

“Shuttle launches were just kind of routine and the broadcast networks weren’t even covering them anymore,” says Knobel, who worked for CBS News in the 1990s and now teaches journalism at Fordham University. “CNN did. So when things went so tragically wrong, there they were on top of the story like no one else.”

That, says Knobel, who now teaches a class on TV’s biggest innovators, is just one example of why Turner was the biggest of them all — huge steps ahead of anyone else in his understanding of how news needed to be delivered.

Turner’s death Wednesday comes at a fraught time for cable news, which has struggled to retain viewership in an era of countless media choices and abundant streaming video. CNN has not been immune; changes in the media ecosystem, the company’s financial picture and multiple editorial resets over the years have left it a markedly different entity than the one Turner built… 🟪 (READ MORE)