The Austin Daily News - May 23, 2026

In this week's issue: Austin just annexed 2,614 acres east of downtown — twice the size of downtown itself — in a 45-year deal with a mystery Fortune 100 tenant who's building something big and isn't allowed to tell you what it is The same council session that did the annexation also green-lit $1 billion in new gas peaker plants — voted on in secret, announced in confusion, confirmed only by one Statesman reporter Texas Supreme Court ruled 8-0 today, calling out a trial judge's "deliberate effort to frustrate the State's appellate rights" — and the $8.2B Project Connect light rail just got a lot cloudier Waymo suspended all Austin service yesterday — flooding incidents, a robotaxi chased by police through traffic cones, and now eight cities down in a single week Tom Brady is opening a sports card store downtown next Tuesday and that's just a sentence that exists Let's get into it.