Attack on Trans Woman and Good Samaritan: A viral Reddit post this week described and included a video of an attack at the free side of Barton Springs. The poster said two cis women and one trans woman were sitting together when three men started being verbally aggressive, which escalated to “accusing the other two girls of being trans, poking at them near their breasts, etc.” They then started shoving the women, and a man stepped in who the poster said “got his jaw broken, hit with a rock in the head.” The poster asked the community to help identify the attackers. A GoFundMe for the uninsured good Samaritan has raised $55,000 to pay for his medical expenses. One woman commented on the Reddit post: “I’m the Good Samaritan’s mother. I’m in tears seeing the overwhelming support. I cannot believe how many kind people there are out there. I don’t have the words to express how I’m feeling right now, so I’m just crying like a baby.”
Rounding Up Law-Abiding Immigrants: As we mention in this week’s story about Greg Casar’s visit to a San Antonio immigration court, news outlets reported in May that Stephen Miller has set a goal for ICE to arrest at least 3,000 immigrants daily across the country. The challenge of making that number of arrests has led to the agency’s strategy of snatching law-abiding immigrants off the streets and from outside courtrooms. Now, Reuters reports that the Federal Emergency Management Administration is preparing to send $608 million to states to construct detention centers to hold the people arrested. Reminder: Various sources estimate there are between 10 million and 12 million undocumented people living in this country.
But Can ICE Do That: Meanwhile, the legal challenges to such plainly unconstitutional policies continue. On Monday, the Los Angeles Times reported that a federal appeals court is likely to side with a federal judge who blocked ICE from snatching people off the streets in California. Such a decision will provide the Supreme Court an opportunity to issue yet another legally dubious ruling allowing Trump to ignore the law.
GOP Might Be Out, But Gerrymandering Is In: Polls show that ICE’s tactics are not popular, and Trump’s recent giveaway to the rich, the so-called big, beautiful bill, has been a flop too. So Republicans are rightfully worried they will lose control of the U.S. House in the 2026 midterm elections – hence, Trump and Gov. Greg Abbott’s insistence that Texas redraw its congressional maps in the current special session. A map was released Wednesday, and it’s bad. More on that here.
Quorum Break: The attempted power grab has Texas Democrats considering leaving the state to deny Republicans the quorum they need to push the redistricting through the Legislature. The Texas Tribune reported Tuesday that Democrats are raising money to cover the $500-per-day fines that leaving the state would incur. Wealthy donors seem ready to cover the expenses. The Tribune also reports that seven Texas House Democrats recently traveled to New Mexico to confer with Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on the Republicans’ mid-decade redistricting effort. The delegation members included Speaker Pro Tempore Joe Moody; Jon Rosenthal, the vice chair of the committee on redistricting; and Austin’s John Bucy. Two other Austin reps, James Talarico and Gina Hinojosa, have suggested a quorum break is a possibility.
Crisis Mode: And with all this going down, U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries met privately Wednesday with Democratic members of the Legislature to discuss responses to the Republicans’ gerrymandering efforts, the Statesman reports. Democrats said Republicans hadn’t even presented their proposed maps yet.
Police Oversight Overlooked: The city’s Public Safety Commission and its Office of Police Oversight are both supposed to be working toward the same goal – to hold the Austin Police Department to high standards of accountability and transparency. But since the creation of OPO, there have been concerns that the office is overly deferential to police narratives and does not function as an independent overseer. Those concerns got a fresh airing this week as members of the PSC questioned why OPO’s complaint supervisor, Kevin Masters, is a former 27-year police officer. The Austin Monitor reports that PSC Chair Nelly Paulina Ramírez also noted that many citizen complaints to OPO request an APD supervisor to review the case but that such complaints are redirected to APD’s internal investigators.
Shooting Stars: Are you looking up at the heavens? KUT News reports that the next few weeks, and particularly this week, will be good for watching shooting stars. This week is better, because the moon will be a crescent, allowing meteors to be easily seen. The annual Perseid meteor shower will peak around mid-August, but by then the moon will be full. “It might look like this big bright streak across the sky, but those shooting stars are coming from bits of debris as small as pieces of dust,” an astronomy educator told KUT.
Purple Birdies: And check out the birds too! The same local reporters tell us that thousands of purple martins have taken over a Round Rock parking lot. Local birders Travis Audubon will be hosting Purple Martin Parties at the parking lot every Friday and Saturday at 8pm through August 9.
And Give Thanks for Water: The early July rains have filled Jacob’s Well, the spring-fed swimming hole near Wimberley, to levels not seen since 2022, and water is gushing from the hole once more. “There definitely is some hope in the air,” Katherine Sturdivant of the Hays County Parks Department told KUT.
Supporting Flood Survivors: Speaking of the July 4 rain and flooding, flood benefit shows will continue for the next few months, the Statesman reports. On Aug. 12, Lyle Lovett and Michael Martin Murphey play the Paramount, while Miranda Lambert and Parker McCollum hit the Moody Center stage five days later to raise funds for flood relief. In September, the “Deep in the Heart” benefit concert will be staged at ACL Live. And those are just the big shows. Many other smaller events will also generate funds to help those devastated by the flooding.
Genocide Recognized: Finally, there has been widespread reluctance in the media about applying the term “genocide” to what the Israeli government has done to the people of Gaza over the last 20 months. Republicans have been especially sensitive to the use of the term, which, it bears mentioning, has a simple definition: the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group. This widespread sensitivity made it interesting when the far-right Georgian legislator Marjorie Taylor Greene on Monday became the first Republican in Congress to use the term to describe Israel’s war on Gaza. The New York Times reports that other House Republicans have grown concerned about what certainly appears to be Israel’s systematic starvation of Gaza’s men, women, and children.
UK Recognizes Palestine: Meanwhile, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the United Kingdom will recognize Palestine as a state in September unless Israel takes “substantial steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza.” Other conditions include agreeing to a ceasefire and allowing the United Nations to restart supplying aid. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says this is an acceptance of Hamas’ terrorism. And in the U.S., Trump has called for additional aid to Gaza, which both goes against Netanyahu’s wishes and splits the Republican Party on Capitol Hill.
Quote of the Week
“The worst-case scenario of famine is playing out in the Gaza Strip.”
– warning issued by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a global initiative monitoring hunger with the backing of the United Nations
This article appears in August 1 • 2025.