Headlines

Fred Lewis, Susana Almanza, Nelson Linder, and Mary Ingle step into City Hall last Thursday with a reported 32,000 signatures on the petition circulated over the past half-year demanding that CodeNEXT be put up to a public vote. The signatures went to the city clerk after a brief press conference and could take a full month to count. (Photo by Sarah Marloff)

No regular City Council meeting this week, but formal budget preparation began with Wednesday's work session featuring the five-year regional forecast and the FY 2019 city budget forecast – morning at City Hall, afternoon at the Central Library. Next regularly scheduled meeting is April 12 – currently a light agenda with several council members expected to be absent.

The Public Safety Commission elected officers for the next year on Monday. Rebecca Webber and Brian Haley return as chair and parliamentarian. Carol Lee assumes vice chair duties from Daniela Nuñez.

Village Idiot Alex Jones is facing a $1 million lawsuit after his "news" website InfoWars used an image of a man depicted as the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting suspect and a communist. The suit was filed in Travis County District Court by Massachusetts man Marcel Fontaine, who claims the photo resulted in "enormous injury and continuing personal harassment."

Callous Policy Reversal: ICE will now detain pregnant women instead of automatically releasing them from detention, as a result of Trump's anti-immigrant January executive order. Under the Obama administration, pregnant women were detained only in "extraordinary circumstances."

Affordable housing investments are in the air, with the city's affordable housing working group initially recommending a $161 million housing bond package for November, while Council Members Delia Garza, Pio Renteria, and Greg Casar announced a "Housing Justice Agenda" and expect to press for a housing bond as high as $300 million.

Among the dozens of Sinclair Broadcast Group local TV stations reciting an Orwellian corporate script denouncing "fake news" over the weekend was Austin CBS affiliate KEYE. When Deadspin compiled a video of numerous news anchors simultaneously reciting the "must-run" script, Sinclair denounced the site's actual journalism as "insidious." Sinclair owns nearly 200 stations, covering much of the country, and often dictates reactionary "must-run" segments to its news readers.

Elsewhere in Media: New Austin Amer­i­can-Statesman overlords GateHouse Media were in Austin on Tuesday to address the paper's staff following Monday's completion of their acquisition. Executive Jason Taylor said the organization, a division of New Media Investment Group, had a desire to make the local daily "a flagship" of its enterprise, and is "doubling down" on its commitment to the city. Austin is already home to GateHouse's Center for News & Design, which employs 240 people.