Global:

Closed AI
The race to innovate new artificial intelligence (AI) continues to ramp up, but a new market has emerged: private defense and security. While previous iterations were immediately made available to the general public as chatbots, new strides like Anthropic’s Mythos model are being restricted to private use out of concern over their newfound ability to discover and exploit cracks in other sites’ security. AI has already been deployed in physical warfare, and this development could extend its use to cyber attacks and other hacks.

War and a Piece of the Japanese Constitution
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi may be trying to revise the country’s constitution to remove Article 9, which prohibits Japan from resorting to military force against other countries. Created by American authorities during the post-World War II occupation, the “pacifist” constitution was intended to prevent Japan from engaging in further warfare. Now, some members of the majority Liberal Democratic Party want to remove Article 9, one of a number of proposed changes to the governing document that Japan’s legislature is considering.

National:

Galaga?
This year’s annual White House Correspondent’s Dinner was interrupted by an armed intruder with plans to assassinate President Donald Trump. Cole Allen, an engineer from Los Angeles, charged past security in an attempt to reach the press gala, which the president was attending. After firing at Allen but missing, Secret Service agents tackled and arrested the perpetrator. Security evacuated top officials as the event disbanded.

Canvas Hackers Triumph
Throughout the first week of May, the crime group ShinyHunters mounted a hacking campaign on the learning management system Canvas. Although Instructure, the company that owns Canvas, initially indicated that the breach was under control, ShinyHunters downed the website for all of its 275 million users on May 7. The URL led only to a ransom message that threatened to release user data without payment. More than 8,000 Canvas clients, including hundreds of American universities and school districts, lost access until Instructure resolved the outage on May 8. Instructure later announced that they agreed to pay ShinyHunters to delete the stolen data.

State:

Jobs Council Gets to Work
On March 16, Governor Greg Abbott launched the Texas Jobs Council to address worker shortages in the state. Brent Taylor, a Teamsters leader, and Megan Mauro, the interim president of the Texas Association of Business, will co-chair the 12-member council. It is made up of union and industry officials and administrators whom Abbott appointed to find ways the state can reduce government regulations that could slow development of the workforce. Abbott, who visited South Texas on a brief speaking tour to promote the advisory board, announced that it was a response to the need for skilled infrastructure workers as business in Texas expands. He specified that the council would pursue training for professions like welding, technician work, and plumbing.

Corpus Christi’s Water Blues
Corpus Christi may be the first Texas city to run out of public water. After seven years of drought, the City of Corpus Christi reports that its reservoirs are diminished to 8% of their full volume, and officials are considering expanding restrictions on home water use, which have been in place since 2023. The port city’s water is strained by the industrial plants who export materials and fuel and consume 60% of municipal water provisions according to KRIS 6 News Corpus Christi.

Local:

Are Our Springs Safe?/The Ideal Spring
A proposed expansion of MoPac Expressway has generated pushback from the environmental group Save Our Springs Alliance (SOS). SOS launched the Better MoPac Coalition to oppose the plan and filed a lawsuit against the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority (CTRMA), which launched the project to ease congestion. The suit challenges CTRMA’s choice to withhold public comments concerning the construction submitted on their website.

Obama Visits Austin
The restaurant Taco Joint now shares one experience with the White House: Barack Obama came, made some people happy, and left. On May 12, former President Barack Obama made a surprise visit to the Tex-Mex venue. He accompanied two Democrats running for statewide office in Texas: State Senator James Talarico, a candidate for the Senate seat, and State Representative Gina Hinojosa, running for governor.

Engulfed in Extinction

Nik Bayer, Staff Writer • May 29, 2026

There may be no winners in war, but it seems certain that endangered species are among the losers of the ongoing Iran conflict. On March...

Autonomous Cars Hit the Streets

Phoenix Gerome, Staff Writer • May 29, 2026

Some people fear a future dominated by technology. Others embrace it. Austin is already living it. Major U.S. cities, including Austin, Chicago,...

KUT Fest a Hit Despite Venue Change

Jack Zipfel, Staff Writer • May 29, 2026

A last-minute change of venue didn’t stop the first KUT Festival from attracting hundreds of visitors to hear speakers, music, and discussions...

Humans of LASA: Ms.Cardona

Tingyu Cao, Commentary Editor

December 15, 2025

Shannon Cardona is a wellness counselor at LASA. While previously working as a counselor at Travis, Johnston, and Lively, as well as a PE teacher and coach, she found that wellness counseling was what her community needed, and became a counselor.

LASA Liberator: What inspired you to be a wellness counselor?

Cardona: I was noticing that the students were coming in, and not just the students, parents, teachers, other members of the campus and community were struggling with mental health in the forms of anxiety or stress or, substance use. I saw a lot of that. And even within the middle schools, I was seeing stuff like that. So I knew that I can only do so much as a teacher, so I wanted to kind of back up and kind of meet them where they needed to be met. Basically, I wanted to see how I could help in the background.

LL: How can wellness counseling help students?

Cardona: It’s hard for a student to function within a school when they’ve got so many other things going on back home in their lives, within their community, or within their family, and for us to expect them to come in and function at a high level or to be on point all the time. We’re all human beings, and that’s difficult to be on all the time because life happens. And sometimes students can’t handle life and so I wanted to be part of the healing process or the learning process.

LL: What is one piece of advice that you commonly give students?

Cardona: One of the biggest ones is to remember that they’re not defined by grades. Your grades and GPAs and what college you go to do not define who you are. It shouldn’t be what makes you. Right? If I could tell the students something, it would be to balance. I understand that there is academic rigor that must be met in academic successes that are part of your academic career. But you also have to balance that with real-life experiences, with socialization, with going out and meeting people, because that is the only true way you’re ever gonna learn how to become a productive member of society. Stuck in your books twenty-four hours a day and just functioning to be an academic success is not a well-balanced lifestyle for anybody, let alone a teenager whose brain and mind [are] developing.

LL: How do you keep your own mental health?

Cardona: So I’ve learned the hard way that if I am not a healthy person myself, then I cannot provide effective counseling for anybody. So I find time to do some self-care. I love to listen to music. I love to watch sci-fi. A lot of horror movies because that helps me calm down and wind down. I also see a therapist so that I can process my job and make sure that I am in a good mental state to help my students.

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