Headlines / Quote of the Week
Fri., May 23, 2025
Our Tech Hub Might Be Un-Hubbing: Keeping in mind that The Wall Street Journal just loves to write a headline that will piss Austinites off, WSJ posited this week that “Austin’s reign as a tech hub might be coming to an end.” WSJ cites a report from venture-capital firm SignalFire that found a slight decrease in Big Tech employment in the city. It seems that the coasts are making more of the AI boom, due to the existing AI hub in San Francisco and an influx of AI businesses to New York. LinkedIn data shows a 23% and 11% year-over-year decrease in moves from San Francisco to Austin and New York to Austin, respectively. One tech bro who moved from New York to Austin told WSJ he broke his lease after six months because he was disappointed with the vitality of the local tech industry and, in the understatement of a lifetime, “public transit also left something to be desired.”
UT Royally Effed: UT has lost $47 million in research grants under the Trump administration, with 67 projects being terminated or paused, the Statesman reported. Public records obtained by the newspaper show a handful of programs initially cut were able to regain funding, but if they hadn’t, the overall loss to UT would have been upward of $50 million. Danielle Clealand, a UT professor whose historical work on Cuban immigration to the U.S. was defunded, told the Statesman that the university informed her she’d lost funding, but the federal agency did not send her a letter or explanation for the termination. “Definitely at the time of election, I didn’t think about this,” Clealand said. “There’s just a devastating halt in important research across academia and across disciplines, and all of us are trying to figure out how to come back from this.”
$1 Therapy, Woohoo!: Since the engine of Austin’s economy runs largely on tech and the university, this is pretty demoralizing stuff. If you feel more in need of talk therapy than ever before, same. The good news is for National Mental Health Awareness Month, the Greater Austin YMCA is offering $1 counseling sessions. These 50-minute sessions are available in person and virtually. You can secure an appointment within five days of requesting one. To book, visit austinymca.org/programs/counseling.
Gerrymandering Challenge: Texas Republicans’ most recent gerrymandering effort is already 4 years old but a lawsuit challenging it is finally being heard in federal court. Plaintiffs including the League of United Latin American Citizens, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the Texas chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People argue that Republicans illegally drew the congressional, Texas House, and Texas Senate districts to weaken the voting power of Black and Hispanic communities. If judges agree, it wouldn’t be the first time, The Texas Tribune reports. They write, “in every decade since the Voting Rights Act was enacted in 1965, Texas has been found by a federal court to have violated federal law by illegally discriminating against voters of color.”
Data Center Sucking Energy: Lockhart sure has changed in the last decade – it’s hip now, for one thing. But shitty stuff still happens there. Lina Fisher at the Austin Monitor reports that a Colorado-based developer recently announced plans to build a 2-gigawatt data center on 1,500 acres at the edge of town. Data centers threaten Texas’ energy infrastructure, the Monitor reports, because they require huge amounts of energy and water to operate. The centers already in existence account for almost 2% of global energy demand. Their continuing proliferation is one of the reasons, along with cryptomining and population increases, that Texas’ energy demand is projected to double by 2030.
An Opponent for Patrick: One of Austin’s representatives in the Texas House, Vikki Goodwin, announced Tuesday that she will run for lieutenant governor in the 2026 election. In a statement on X, Goodwin put public education at the top of her priority list, followed by clean water, affordable housing, and comprehensive health care. She led the post with an indescribably bad pun: “It’s time for a Good Win.” Please don’t put that on a bumper sticker.
How About People Stay in Jail: Texas’ large cities have moved away from cash bail in recent years because the system is grossly unfair and requires them to spend huge amounts of money locking people up, most of whom are accused of low-level crimes. Republicans, confronted with these changes, have demagogued on the issue throughout the legislative session. This week, with the help of Democrats, they approved a bill in the House asking voters to amend the state Constitution to force judges to deny bail for certain violent offenses. The coalition also approved a bill to stop cities from using public money to bail out defendants.
Prosecutors Sue Paxton: District attorneys in five of Texas’ most populous counties are fighting back against Ken Paxton, suing the attorney general over rules adopted last year that require them to hand over any document or communication the AG requests. In a pair of lawsuits, the D.A.s charge that Paxton’s rule is unconstitutional and would force their offices to process enormous amounts of data, something they say would be expensive, time-consuming, and illegal. Paxton replied to the lawsuits with one of his cartoonish yet ultimately yawn-inducing statements: “It is no surprise that rogue D.A.s who would rather turn violent criminals loose on the streets than do their jobs are afraid of transparency and accountability.”
Austin Prosecutors Missing Deadlines: Speaking of our D.A. and long jail stays, the Statesman reported this week that the District Attorney’s Office has on hundreds of occasions failed to indict or release by the 90-day deadline, leaving more than 180 suspects in jail without a case to fight. Garza told the Statesman that his office found “that the overwhelming majority were appropriate not to be indicted” within 90 days.
More Christianity in Schools: The Earth is only 6,000 years old, any good Christian knows, and yet they divvy up that time strangely, with their “B.C.” and “A.D.” system. The Texas Senate wouldn’t have it any other way. On Monday, senators voted to block the purchase of any school textbook that doesn’t use the B.C. and A.D. nomenclature. It’s the latest in a list of bills focused on prioritizing Christianity in public school classrooms. Academics have moved away from B.C. and A.D. in recent years, preferring to use “Before the Common Era” (B.C.E.) and “Common Era” (C.E.), to show respect for other faiths.
Spring Sprang and Now It’s Hot Time: Can we just talk about the weather, please? It was a strange, lovely spring – perfect temps but practically no rain. Now summer is here and guess what, it’s gonna be hot. KUT reports forecasters predicting the temps won’t be as blistering as summer 2023 but that it will be, in the words of meteorologist Mack Morris of the National Weather Service, “warmer than normal.” Uh, you mean, more “apocalyptically searing, burning, broiling, sizzling, and scorching ... than normal?”
Quote of the Week
“We do not want women to die from medical emergencies.”
– State Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, who voted for the bill to clarify life-saving exceptions to Texas’ abortion ban
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