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...

Mac Student on the Ballot

Victor Martinez, Editor in Chief

May 29, 2026

Reese Armstrong ran for Travis County Precinct 2 Commissioner against Brigid Shea in the Democratic primary on March 3. They came in fourth place with 2627 votes, representing more than 5% of all ballots cast. Armstrong is a senior at McCallum High School, and formerly attended LASA. Prior to the election, they sat down with editor-in-chief Victor Martinez for an interview about their campaign.

LASA Liberator: If you would like to give an introduction yourself, speak to what you’re doing in your own words.

RA: I’m Reese Ricci Armstrong, a candidate for Travis County Commissioner Precinct 2. I’m running to build the student socialist movement. I was the former co-chair of Students United, the student union representing over 8 percent of the LASA student body. I was the former co-chair of LASA YDSA. Now I’m the co-chair of McCallum YDSA (Young Democratic Socialists of America). I’m running as part of an effort to build a citywide socialist movement, but more importantly, I’m running on very specific policies. I’m running to build social housing so that everybody can have a place to live to stop the takeover of Austin housing by BlackRock and Blackstone, but actually have a publicly owned option that can buoy the market. I’m running to expand our public healthcare, our Central Health and rebuild our county hospital … I’m running to make ambulances free, because nobody should fear calling 9-1-1. A big part of the county [commissioner role] is managing emergency response, and people are scared to call 9-1-1 in an emergency. We really have problems. Those are my priorities. I come from a student organizing background.

LL: Students coming together. I think that’s what a lot of people, at least, who are watching your campaign are thinking: what’s bringing this student, high school senior about to enter college, to the democratic socialist cause? What caused them to even run for public office?

RA: … In terms of running for public office, I called up the secretary of LASA YDSA after I initially had the idea of running. I think this might be the first time I told the story on the record, but I had initially followed the idea of running because I just wanted to challenge the current commissioner (Brigid Shea) from the left. I think she’s done a really bad job. She’s dedicated her career to opposing new housing for working class people. She’s a preservationist, and then greenwashing that by saying it’s good conservation. I think it’s really problematic, so I wanted to run a left-wing challenge to her based on delivering for people … It started as a LASA YDSA campaign in the very, very beginning, and then it became a McCallum campaign that was working, and so we started to have the two chapters working together and start holding events.

LL: In the debate against Cuomo, Mamdani said, “What I lack in experience, I can make up for in integrity, but what you have in experience, you can never make up for in integrity.” What you were saying, speaking to that ageism, reminded me of that.

RA: I think on paper, without looking at my age, I’m not the most qualified candidate, obviously, but I’m not an out-of-nowhere unqualified person. I am a union organizer. I’ve organized many unions. I’ve done lots of community organizing, I’m the co-chair of multiple political organizations. I’ve been doing this a long time. I have a real community organizer background that is not just out of thin air, but it is exhausting to watch all of it be devalued based on how old you were when you do it.

LL: I wanted to ask what the qualities, what the job of a commissioner is for Travis County, and what drew you to running for commissioner specifically?

RA: Travis County Commissioners Court is the governing body of the county, so it handles all your property tax revenue, it handles the jails, it handles the health care districts, it handles all the state special districts … It has this coordinator task role across the region, and then also does emergency response within that. We’ve made a lot of really good progress at the city level, but at the county level, there’s a lot of potential for what we could be doing better. We have a lot of money at the county level that is not being spent in a way that is improving the lives of working class people. … Funding education with our school district because it’s in a massive budget crisis and trying to support our school district with additional property tax revenue from the county is, I think, crucial as schools are closing and TEA is always threatening [AISD] with a takeover. We’ve made a lot of progress at city level with the city council. We’ve seen code reforms that I fought for so long pretty much get past, but the county is still this almost vestigial institution that is run by a lot of the old elite and old interests of Austin that don’t reflect the priorities of working class people today.

LL: Take us into what your tenure as commissioner would be like.

RA: I think it would be one of radical transparency and democratic engagement. This is something I’ve committed myself to. … I really will work to stop evictions through my office, really work with the constables and the courts to try and stop as many evictions as we can. … I think that’s very important and I think having voices that are unafraid to challenge power is crucial and will always represent the people. I don’t think that your ability to represent the people is dependent based on age, it’s dependent on what you’ve done before, how you’ve gone about doing it, and what motivates you, what drives you, what is your core set of values, and whether those are aligned with the people you want to represent. I’ve grown up in this community the vast majority of my life, and I have a set of values that is very laser-focused on fighting for the issues that face ordinary people in Travis County. None of my opponents have that same vision … As commissioner, I have my own ideas on what we should do, but I will have very regular, popular assemblies, town halls, and engagement to really respond quickly to constituent concerns. These aren’t just things I’m saying. These are things that we’ve done as a team, as a union, as a socialist organization, and I think that same commitment to responsiveness and transparency and open government sets us apart from the rest of the field … That will be the way I do policymaking, is by inviting working class people to co-govern through our office.

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