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September 10, 2025

✅ Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 Austin eying affordable housing fund similar to city of Dallas (KXAN)

🟪 Alpha School showcases expedited student learning through artificial intelligence alongside state, federal leaders (Community Impact)

🟪 In Texas, a Senate race turns brutal before it’s even declared (New York Times)

🟪 Hilton Americas-Houston workers extend ‘historic’ strike by 11 days, rally at city hall (Houston Public Media)

🟪 US judge temporarily blocks Trump from removing Fed Governor Cook (Reuters)

🟪 BLS revision shows annual hiring was overstated by 911,000 jobs (NPR)

READ ON!

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

🏛️ [NEW] City Memo: Short-Term Rental Regulations – Upcoming Action Item (Development Services Department)

🏛️ City Manager Executives and Advisors Staff Visual Chart

🏛️ City of Austin Org Chart (as of July 2025)

💰 2026 City of Austin Bond - Public Input

ℹ️ 2025 Essential Resources for Navigating the City of Austin

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

✅ Austin eying affordable housing fund similar to city of Dallas (KXAN)

On Thursday, Austin City Council is expected to kickstart the process of creating a housing fund intended to attract philanthropic resources to our city to pay for preservation of naturally occurring affordable housing.

“Really the genesis of this is recognizing that we still need more tools to address the displacement and gentrification issues that the city and the council are still dealing with,” Austin City Council Member Marc Duchen said.

The idea was pitched first by Duchen after Austin leaders realized they had loopholes in affordable housing incentive programs — specifically, DB 90, which allows developers to build taller in exchange for affordable units.

But in the case of at least one Austin apartment complex, Acacia Cliffs, it meant allowing the demolition of affordable housing that already existed, and building a new complex that was taller and (while it met the DB 90 affordability requirements) resulted in a net loss of affordable units… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Alpha School showcases expedited student learning through artificial intelligence alongside state, federal leaders (Community Impact)

Austin-based private school Alpha School is aiming to expedite learning for more students using artificial intelligence at new academies opening across the country.

On Sept. 9, U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon visited Alpha School in Austin alongside Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath. Alpha School co-founder MacKenzie Price highlighted how the school is using AI to personalize and improve students’ education.

“It's the most exciting thing I've seen in education in a long time,” McMahon said about Alpha School. “I'm incredibly enthusiastic about this.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ 2025 Austin-San Antonio Growth Summit on horizon (Austin Business Journal)

The booming cities between Austin and San Antonio will be on display soon.

The annual Austin-San Antonio Growth Summit is scheduled to take place over lunch on Oct. 8 in San Marcos. The event typically attracts more than 500 business and civic leaders eager to network and is co-hosted by the Austin and San Antonio business journals.

This year, after a keynote presentation by ABJ Editor Colin Pope, economic development leaders up and down the I-35 corridor will sit down with SABJ Editor Ed Arnold to discuss the economic growth pipeline and how they attract and retain businesses… 🟪 (READ MORE)

[TEXAS/US NEWS]

✅ Video of clash over gender-identity content in Texas A&M children’s lit class leads to firing, removals (Texas Tribune)

Facing growing political pressure, Texas A&M University President Mark A. Welsh III announced Tuesday evening that a professor teaching a children’s literature course at the center of a viral recording was fired and that the university would conduct a full audit of its courses.

The announcement came after a video circulated online Monday showing a student confronting a professor over LGBTQ-related content in the class, sparking backlash from Republican lawmakers and calls for investigations, a response from the U.S. Department of Justice, and a statement from the Texas A&M System chancellor pledging to discipline the professor. A university spokesperson on Tuesday confirmed the professor was senior lecturer Melissa McCoul.

In his statement Tuesday, Welsh said changes were made over the summer to ensure that content not aligned within "reasonable expectation" of curriculum would not be taught after issues with the course were raised to university officials. Welsh later learned Monday night another course was continuing to teach material inconsistent with the published course description, resulting in the teacher's removal.

"This isn’t about academic freedom; it’s about academic responsibility," Welsh said. "Our degree programs and courses go through extensive approval processes, and we must ensure that what we ultimately deliver to students is consistent with what was approved."… 🟪 (READ MORE) 

✅ In Texas, a Senate race turns brutal before it’s even declared (New York Times)

For the past month, two Texas political titans — the attorney general Ken Paxton and the former congressman Beto O’Rourke — have been locked in an escalating legal drama, complete with threats of jail time, courtroom showdowns and the possible bankrupting of a Texas voter registration effort. The clashes have direct implications for the 2026 Senate race, given that Mr. Paxton is already a Republican candidate in the primary against Senator John Cornyn, and Mr. O’Rourke has been openly mulling a run as a Democrat. It has also served as an unusually direct example of how President Trump’s unapologetic use of government powers to pursue partisan ends has spread to political conflicts in the rest of the country.

More tangibly, the attorney general’s attacks threaten the future of Mr. O’Rourke’s political organization, Powered by People, which has spent nearly $400,000, about $100,000 a week, on litigation so far. “He may very well be able to bankrupt the most successful voter registration program in the state,” Mr. O’Rourke said in a telephone interview. “This is weaponizing the political system to persecute your political enemies.”

It started last month as an offshoot of Mr. Trump’s push to have Republicans redraw congressional lines in Texas. Mr. Paxton directed his office to investigate Mr. O’Rourke’s political organization over its role in raising money for Democratic state lawmakers who had staged a walkout to stymie the redistricting push. It quickly escalated to Mr. Paxton asking a Texas court to throw Mr. O’Rourke in jail. The legal wrangling has sprawled across the state to courtrooms in El Paso, Fort Worth and Austin. “No matter how much Beto and Powered by People try and take us down in court, I will continue to wage legal war,” Mr. Paxton said in a news release last month.

Mr. Paxton was not made available for an interview, but his office provided a statement: “Beto’s desperate, unprecedented legal maneuvers will not stand, and there will be accountability for the Beto Buyoff of Texas politicians,” he said. That was on top of at least 10 news releases his office has posted in four weeks related to the litigation with Mr. O’Rourke, not to mention the attorney general’s blustery social media posts. Though Mr. O’Rourke has not yet declared whether he’s going to run for Senate, he insisted the Paxton legal attacks were political. Mr. Paxton is “doing this because I’m a potential political opponent of his in the contest for the U.S. Senate seat in Texas,” he said… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Hilton Americas-Houston workers extend ‘historic’ strike by 11 days, rally at city hall (Houston Public Media)

Hundreds of striking hotel workers at the Hilton Americas-Houston will remain on the picket line through Sept. 20, union officials announced Tuesday, marking an eleven-day extension of a “historic” strike. Speaking to the Houston City Council on Tuesday, UNITE HERE Local 23 union official Willy Gonzalez said the workers are seeking a $23 hourly wage — a significant raise from the current base rate of $16.50. He said management so far has offered an immediate one-dollar raise to $17.50, followed by a 75-cent increase in January and additional 50-cent raises every six months. "No one can deny that hotel is extremely profitable," Gonzalez said.

"It’s doing well, but the people who have made that hotel a success — that hotel that was built with public money, that hotel that was entrusted to do right by the people of Houston, has betrayed these people and the city of Houston."

The union's collective bargaining contract with the hotel expired on June 30, and the strike began on Sept. 1 with an original end date of Tuesday. According to organizers, this is the first hospitality workers’ strike of its kind in modern Texas history. A Hilton Americas corporate spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the extension or Gonzalez's remarks about the ongoing negotiations. A Hilton spokesperson previously said the hotel's management "makes every effort to maintain a cooperative and productive relationship with UNITE HERE Local 23, a union that represents some of the team members at the hotel."

"We remain committed to negotiating in good faith to reach a fair and reasonable agreement that is beneficial to both our valued team members and to the hotel," the spokesperson said when the strike began. Workers filled the Houston City Hall on Tuesday as some union members spoke about their grievances during the city council's public comment session. They spoke about not receiving enough money to keep up with their bills or take care of their family… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ US judge temporarily blocks Trump from removing Fed Governor Cook (Reuters)

A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked President Donald Trump from removing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, an early setback for the White House in an unprecedented legal battle that could upend the central bank's long-held independence.

The preliminary ruling by U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb in Washington, D.C. found that the Trump administration's claims that Cook committed mortgage fraud prior to taking office were likely not sufficient grounds for her removal.

Cook denies any wrongdoing.

"President Trump has not identified anything related to Cook’s conduct or job performance as a Board member that would indicate that she is harming the Board or the public interest by executing her duties unfaithfully or ineffectively," Cobb wrote in her ruling.

Trump moved to fire Cook in late August, but the Fed has said she remains in her position. The Fed declined to comment on the decision.

The White House spokesman Kush Desai on Wednesday defended Trump's actions, saying that the president had "lawfully removed" Cook for cause over the mortgage allegations and that "this ruling will not be the last say on the matter."… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ BLS revision shows annual hiring was overstated by 911,000 jobs (NPR)

U.S. employers are adding far fewer jobs than initially tallied, in the latest sign that the labor market may be weaker than expected, according to a preliminary report from the Labor Department on Tuesday.

The report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows hiring for the 12 months ending in March was overstated by an estimated 911,000 jobs. It was the largest such preliminary revision on record, going back to 2000.

The revision comes at a time when President Trump is politicizing the BLS and casting doubt on its data, as part of his wider efforts to exert more control over all aspects of the U.S. government.

Last month, he fired the previous BLS head after a weaker-than-expected jobs report, claiming without evidence that the agency was manipulating the numbers to make the economy under his term look bad. 

Tuesday's revision does more to make the economy under President Biden look bad: It tracks hiring data through the 12 months ending in March, after Trump had only been back in office for weeks... 🟪 (READ MORE)

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