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- BG Reads Weekend Edition (7.20.2025)
BG Reads Weekend Edition (7.20.2025)
A.J. Bingham
July 20, 2025
PRESENTED BY
[TOP CLICKS OF THE WEEK]
[WEEKEND NEWS]
🟪 Appeals court upholds Texas 'Death Star' law limiting cities' enforcement of local ordinances (KUT)
Two years after a district court declared that a new state law diluting the policymaking power of blue urban areas was unconstitutional, an appeals court on Friday overruled that decision.
Texas lawmakers in 2023 passed House Bill 2127, dubbed the “Death Star” bill by opponents, which aims to overturn cities’ progressive policies and prevent them from enacting future ordinances that aren’t aligned with broad swaths of state law.
The law prevents cities and counties from creating local ordinances that overstep state laws, such as those passed in Dallas and Austin mandating water breaks for construction workers.
The bill, long sought by Gov. Greg Abbott, marks Texas Republicans’ biggest attempt to undercut the power of the state’s largest metropolitan areas, home to the most Democratic-leaning constituents and leaders… ✅ (READ MORE)
🟪 Austin NPR, PBS stations would be impacted by recission package (KVUE)
he U.S. House voted along party lines Friday morning to approve a recission package that includes cuts to outlets like National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).
The package would cut $1.1 billion from public broadcasting over the next two years. The money helps fund more than 1,500 local public TV and radio stations across the country, including Austin's NPR station, KUTX/KUT, and the city's PBS station, KLRU.
The recission package, which also cuts $8 billion in foreign aid programs, is now headed to President Donald Trump's desk… ✅ (READ MORE)
🟪 Austin considers options for two-way traffic on 6th Street (KXAN)
ould Austin’s iconic Sixth Street open to two-way traffic?
The City of Austin highlighted the possibility in a Friday memo. Spokesperson Jack Flagler said the city’s goal is to make Sixth Street a safer and more connected part of downtown.
The memo included an analysis of Sixth Street, if it were to become two ways between Brazos Street and IH-35, plus a “6th Street Preliminary Engineering Report (PER).”… ✅ (READ MORE)
🟪 ChatGPT helps prepare this mayor’s talking points. Now he wants a thousand city workers using AI (Associated Press)
Before the mayor of San Jose, California, arrives at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new business, his aides ask ChatGPT to help draft some talking points.
“Elected officials do a tremendous amount of public speaking,” said Mayor Matt Mahan, whose recent itinerary has taken him from new restaurant and semiconductor startup openings to a festival of lowriding car culture.
Other politicians might be skittish admitting a chatbot co-wrote their speech or that it helped draft a $5.6 billion budget for the new fiscal year, but Mahan is trying to lead by example, pushing a growing number of the nearly 7,000 government workers running Silicon Valley’s biggest city to embrace artificial intelligence technology.
Mahan said adopting AI tools will eliminate drudge work and help the city better serve its roughly 1 million residents.
He’s hardly the only public or private sector executive directing an AI-or-bust strategy, though in some cases, workers have found that the costly technology can add hassles or mistakes… ✅ (READ MORE)
