Headlines

Austin Transportation Department workers install the city's first dockless bike and scooter "parking box" on West Sixth Street. The idea is to corral the free-range vehicles so they don't block sidewalks and impair ADA accessibility; 10 are already installed, and more are planned for the dockless mobility zones Downtown and in West Campus. (Photo by John Anderson)

City Manager Rodeo: City Manager Spencer Cronk announced the names of the finalists for assistant city manager positions for two more "strategic outcomes," safety and mobility. Weeks of interviews to follow. See story.

Not Our Fault: Having distributed and proclaimed as "actionable" a thoroughly bogus list of "noncitizen voters" – only to admit a few days later that the list was indeed grossly inaccurate – the state of Texas defended itself in court this week by blaming those county officials who challenged the citizenship of voters the state had listed. If these guys had brains ...

Spared the Needle: Houston man Bobby James Moore will not be executed. It's been a long legal battle for Moore, who killed 72-year-old James McCarble in 1980 during a botched supermarket robbery, but on Tuesday, Feb. 19, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Moore is intellectually disabled and therefore cannot be put to death.

Ex-Student Sues H-T: A former Huston-Tillotson student has sued the university, its former security company, and security guard Adrian Houston, who the student alleges sexually assaulted her last year when she was a 17-year-old freshman. The civil suit, filed Feb. 14, argues that both the school and the security company G4S Secure Solutions, which H-T has since stopped using, failed to protect her. The Statesman reports she's requesting a jury trial and injury compensation.

Hitting the Wall: As the Trump admini­stra­tion persists in demanding its "emergency" border wall, a coalition of 16 states (unsurprisingly, not including Texas) have sued the feds in San Francisco, arguing that the president is exceeding his constitutional powers by attempting to redirect allocated funding without congressional appropriation. Meanwhile, locally, around 300 Austinites gathered on Presidents Day to protest the national emergency declaration. Similar protests, also organized by MoveOn.org, were held in Denver, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

Our #1 Crush: Everyone's favorite first lady is coming to town. (Seriously, a Feb. 19 poll released by The Hill shows Michelle Obama tying with former veep Joe Biden as the top choice among Democratic voters for who should be the party's nominee in 2020.) The lucky few who have tickets to the sold-out show at the Frank Erwin Center will be able to hear her discuss her memoir Becoming on Thursday, Feb. 28.

No Whiskey, Please: State Rep. Sheryl Cole, D-Austin, has filed a bill to designate Airport Boulevard from I-35 southward to Highway 183 (officially, Texas Loop 111) as the Richard Overton Memorial Highway, after the beloved 112-year-old East Austin resident and World War II veteran who died in December.