Wednesday
September 23, 2026
Today at a glance
- Weather 99° / 77°Hot, but normal for us. The evening walk is the good one.
- Air quality 57 · ModerateFine for most of us. If your lungs are touchy, take it a little easy.
- Lake Travis 90.5% fullThe lake is close to full — good for boats and for the summer water supply. Down a touch from last week.
- Allergies HighRagweed and elm and grasses are heavy today. Windows closed, meds early.
- Power grid NormalA busy afternoon: demand near 84,800 megawatts, with 108,100 on hand.
- Sunrise 7:20 a.m.Just over twelve hours of daylight now, and the evenings are shortening fast.
Good morning, Austin. Fall started yesterday afternoon and the thermometer has not been told: a high near 99, a heat index that could reach 107, and clouds that will not arrive until tonight. Sun up at 7:20, down at 7:26. Ragweed and elm and the grasses are all heavy, so take the medicine before you leave the house. Lake Travis is holding near full, down a touch from last week. Somebody on the internet spent last night insisting it is not really autumn yet. It is, technically. Bring water anyway.
The Briefing
Twelve days to register, and the state has just found applications it never sent
Texas election officials spent Tuesday learning that an unknown number of people who registered to vote at the driver's license window never reached the rolls. The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) did not pass their applications on to county voter registrars. The records came through incomplete. Nobody has said how many, or since when.
The portal matters more than it sounds. Texas has no online voter registration, so renewing a license or changing an address online is the closest thing to it, and about 6 million Texans used that route between 2020 and 2024.
Then there is the calendar. Registration closes Oct. 5, and the state began pushing the missing applications out to counties overnight, landing them on registrars in the busiest stretch of their year. Alicia Pierce of the secretary of state's office said a voter who registered through DPS and does not appear on the rolls can cast a provisional ballot, and that it will be counted once officials confirm the registration was filed in time.
The stakes arrived the same afternoon. A Texas Southern University poll put the U.S. Senate race between Ken Paxton and James Talarico at essentially a dead heat, with the economy named the top issue and more than a quarter of self-identified moderate Republicans saying they plan to break ranks and vote for the Democrat.
What's next: Registration for the Nov. 3 election closes Oct. 5, and early voting runs Oct. 19 through Oct. 30; the Bulletin's Vote 2026 page carries the official links. More in City Hall & county.
Sources: KXAN (the unsent applications, the portal, Pierce on provisional ballots), FOX 7 Austin (the Texas Southern University poll)
City Desk
Money & bills
CVS agreed to a $20.5 million settlement over sharing website and app data. People who used its digital services before July 27 can claim up to $10 by Nov. 16. FOX 7 Austin
WalletHub ranked Austin the third best city in the country for vegetarians and vegans, and among the cheapest for eggs, frozen corn and sweet peas. CBS Austin
Overheard on Reddit
Is it true Texas doesn’t add sales tax to black coffee?
I heard this from one of my buddies and I’m not sure if it’s true because I’m pretty sure I’ve always paid sales tax and always paid it for black coffee as well. But I don’t know what others think and I tried to Google it and I couldn’t really understand what was being said.
Public safety & courts
Austin police released video of the immigration stop. It stops short of the shooting.
Police Chief Lisa Davis said an off-duty detective's dash camera caught two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) vehicles pulled alongside Wilber Rafael Garces Perez's blue car. The detective then spent 10 to 15 minutes inside a shopping center. A pursuit ran through nearby neighborhoods in that gap. The video covers the stop and the aftermath, not the gunfire. KXAN
A judge ordered ICE not to deport the man its officer shot
Judge Orlando L. Garcia of the federal court in San Antonio signed an order Monday barring removal and directing the warden of the South Texas processing center to bring Garces Perez to a hearing on Sept. 30. The Travis County District Attorney's Office separately asked federal agencies to pause the removal, calling him a material witness. KXAN
Also
Austin police said they have no evidence of a foot chase and are still collecting video from the 10 to 15 minutes nobody has seen. CBS Austin
The officer who fired was not wearing a body camera, FOX 7 Austin reported, citing federal law enforcement sources who spoke to FOX News. FOX 7 Austin
District Attorney José Garza told KUT his prosecutors asked federal investigators for evidence and to interview the officer, and are waiting to hear back. KUT
Homeland Security Investigations leads the federal review with Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) help, while Austin police and the Texas Rangers run their own. KXAN
Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services said it received no 911 call for the shooting and was asked to respond by Austin police, who called at 12:57 p.m. KXAN
Attorney Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch said Garces Perez was returned to the Pearsall detention center after a hospital visit, is in isolation, and is given Tylenol and ibuprofen. KXAN
Gov. Greg Abbott said the details "remain sketchy" and that he was catching up. State Rep. Gina Hinojosa, his Democratic opponent, said she had never seen a man treated so inhumanely. FOX 7 Austin
Austin police found a man shot dead inside a home near the 1000 block of Springdale Road just after 3 a.m. Wednesday, the city's 42nd homicide of 2026. KXAN
The victim and suspect in the Springdale Road killing knew each other, Austin police said, and the suspect left before officers arrived. KXAN
Officers found a man dead outside a home in the 200 block of Virtus Bend around 3:50 a.m. Wednesday and are investigating it as a homicide; the homeowners are cooperating. KXAN
Growth & infrastructure
Waymo's driverless cars can now take Austin freeways
Riders ordering through the Uber app will get freeway routing on selected trips, and the company said it will widen that over time. The change follows months of testing on local highways. Waymo launched its Austin fleet with Uber in the spring of 2025 and has been enlarging its service area since. KXAN
Also
The Great Lawn at Zilker Park closed Tuesday for Austin City Limits (ACL) Festival build-out and reopens in mid-October; Barton Springs Pool, the Butler hike-and-bike trail and the greenbelt stay open. KXAN
Overheard on Reddit
Found wallet on Ground - Pickle & SoCo
Hiya!! Did a deep internet search and can’t find contact info for this person, but they have CapMetro card, so seems like a local! Here’s a pic, if it’s yours DM me your name!
City Hall & county
The city's own consultant says 911 call-taking should stay inside the police department
Mission Critical Partners told a council work session Tuesday that moving call-takers out of Austin police would not by itself fix the problems they found, and recommended keeping them there under a new civilian leader for emergency communications. Council members spent three hours on the report and pressed the consultants on how it was built. KXAN
Also
Council narrowly voted in August to move toward a standalone civilian department, against the advice of city management and public safety officials. Community Impact
The budget council passed this year set aside $1.4 million toward developing the new center. KXAN
DPS began sending counties the voter registration applications it never forwarded, arriving as registrars work toward the Oct. 5 deadline. KXAN
Travis County is taking suggestions for a new name for the 299-acre Southeast Metropolitan Park near Del Valle until 5 p.m. Sept. 28, with public comment set for Sept. 29. KXAN
Schools
Nine Austin campuses now carry four failing years, after the state moved closed schools' records
The Texas Education Agency (TEA) reassigned the rating histories of six recently closed schools to the campuses that took most of their students. Bailey Middle School, rated B, inherited four consecutive F ratings. Three campuses carried four failing years before the decision. Austin Current
Also
In an August letter, the agency criticized the Austin Independent School District (ISD) for closing Paredes Middle School weeks before classes began and for what it did to families. Austin Current
Two Austin ISD middle schools drew a fifth failing rating this year, which under state law requires the education commissioner to close them or replace the elected board. Austin Current
Journalists from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal met at the University of Texas at Austin on Saturday for the 19th Ibero-American Journalism Colloquium. The Daily Texan
Business & street life
Design Austin projects work by 22 artists onto the Seaholm Intake Facility at 8:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, free, with viewing from the water, the Pfluger bridge and Auditorium Shores. KUT
The Vegan Yacht, which closed its South Austin storefront in August after eight years, plans to reopen as a trailer at the Springdale Food Park in East Austin in October. Community Impact
Overheard on Reddit
To the guys at the Weird Al show who held up the "We Love You Daniel Radcliffe" banner...I salute you!
I'd post a picture, but I couldn't get a good one from my angle.
Pebble Onebird opened in Northwest Austin, serving broth-brined fried chicken, breakfast burritos, ramen, rice plates and banh mi. Community Impact
Overheard on Reddit
Fall has arrived! Did you notice it?
It's officialy the first day of fall. Feels bloody hot to me.
Weather
Today: mostly sunny, with a high near 99 and heat index values as high as 107. Northeast wind 0 to 5 miles per hour. Tonight: mostly cloudy, low around 77. No weather alerts are active this morning. National Weather Service
KXAN's forecast team said a few spotty showers and weak storms are likely to mix in by late afternoon, with coverage and accumulation very limited and most of the area staying dry. KXAN
Highs stay in the upper 90s to low 100s through the weekend, though drier air late in the week should bring heat index values back down closer to the actual temperature. KXAN
The Climate Prediction Center's 8-to-14-day outlook raises the odds of a wetter-than-normal pattern next week, with rain chances increasing Tuesday through Thursday. KXAN
The Back Page
9 days until the Austin City Limits Festival's first weekend · The Great Lawn closed Tuesday for build-out; the festival runs Oct. 2-4 and Oct. 9-11.
About a dozen World War II veterans, not one of them under 100 years old, spent Sunday afternoon at the Texas Military Forces Museum on Camp Mabry telling their stories to a few hundred people. Bernard Snyder talked about a promise he and his brother made each other in the Pacific: when they got home to Austin, they were going to do something about the discrimination they had grown up with. They came back and spent their lives on it. The Gathering of World War II Heroes was put on by The War Remembered, an oral history project founded by the historian Patrick Reed. "Looking into their eyes, it's really as close as you can get to being there yourself," Reed said. "It's just a really captivating experience to sit down with them and hear their story, hear about things that happened, at this point, 80 years ago, what it would have felt like to be there." Fewer than 0.2% of the 16.4 million Americans who served in the war are still living, according to the National World War II Museum, and just under 2,000 of them are in Texas. KUT