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...

The Line

Leah Lashus and Ellington Tough

December 16, 2025

Global:

AWS Outage

An Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage downed thousands of websites on Oct. 20. For a few hours, Snapchat, Reddit, Duolingo, Canvas, and other major sites the platform hosts fell dark. This was due to an issue in its automated database system for a datacentre region covering the eastern United States disconnected AWS from its customers. The lapse shined a light on the internet’s reliance on a small number of providers. Since then, Amazon has been beefing up their servers.

Trump Continues Pressure on Venezuela

President Trump has been mounting a military campaign against the regime of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth ordered a second lethal strike on boats suspected of carrying drugs through the Caribbean. As tensions escalate, Trump is increasing pressure on the divisive socialist leader, having demanded that Maduro step down after he claimed a dubious election victory in the oil state’s 2024 election.

National:

It’s Not Making Cents

The United States mint printed its last penny this past November. After 232 years of inflation, the cost of producing the mostly copper coins outweighed their purchasing power, prompting President Trump to announce the end of their printing, although the Treasury Department estimates 300 billion pennies are still in circulation. The mint also set up an online auction for the last several pennies printed, which are going in the tens of thousands of dollars, even more than the approximately four cents each penny cost the agency to make.

Additional Epstein Files Released

6 years after his death, Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes continue to make headlines. After Trump promised to release files pertaining to his associates during his presidential campaign, Congress pushed for the documents, including thousands of emails to royalty, politicians and millionaires, to be released. The files offered insight into the private world of the elite, including the billionaire sex offender’s lasting interest in pulling Trump into his sphere.

State:

Some Rights More Equal Than Others

Texas Governor Greg Abbott branded the Council on American-Islamic Relations a terrorist organization this November. The Washington-based group states that its mission is to promote civil rights for American Muslims and mutual understanding between them and their non-Muslim peers. CAIR directors Corey Saylor and Imran Ghani wrote an editorial in the Austin American-Statesman against the decision, criticizing Abbott for targeting Muslims and inciting paranoia. They pointed to another investigation he directed into informal Shariah courts he accused of trying to practice official law.

Camp Mystic Sued

After an initial outpouring of sympathy for the stricken organization, favor has turned against Camp Mystic in light of recent discoveries and decisions. The families of 18 of the 27 children who died in the July floods filed four separate lawsuits, accusing the summer camp of negligence. The camp also chose to reopen in 2026, as other organizations like the Kerr County Marathon canceled their events for the year, prompting online vitriol.

Local:

Road Bumps for Musk’s Robotaxis

After promises Elon Musk made of Tesla launching self-driving taxis in Austin drove the company’s stock price higher, the billionaire seemed to offer even loftier claims about the new technology. However, his robotaxis have dragged behind Waymo and Zoox cars, the other two autonomous vehicles operating commercially in the city. Most recently, he announced the fleet size would double from 30 to 60 vehicles with human safety monitors in December 2025, still short of the goal of 500 fully functional cars by the end of the year.

Yuletide Victory

Despite its perennial lack of snow, Austin has been titled the most festive city in the U.S. for the fourth consecutive year. The home services marketplace Thumbtack published its 2025 ranking of a number of U.S. cities, basing placement off of the frequency of requests for holiday light installation. It was followed by fellow Texas metropolis Dallas and Seattle, Washington.

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