Sunday
September 27, 2026
Today at a glance
- Weather 100° / 76°Triple digits again. Water bottle, shade, and an early start.
- Air quality 53 · ModerateFine for most of us. If your lungs are touchy, take it a little easy.
- Lake Travis 89.7% fullComfortably full, but every dry week takes a little. Down a touch from last week.
- Allergies HighElm and ragweed and grasses are heavy today. Windows closed, meds early.
- Power grid NormalA busy afternoon: demand near 81,800 megawatts, with 104,700 on hand.
- Sunrise 7:22 a.m.The sun is up for 11 hours and 59 minutes today, and down by 7:21 p.m.
Good morning, Austin. A hundred again today, heat index near 104, which is a strange thing to be reading on the last Sunday in September. Sun up at 7:22, down at 7:21, the year's tidy little balance point. Ragweed and elm are still running high, so take the porch coffee at your own risk. The lake is holding near full. Hold on until Wednesday: there is a Pacific low coming and real rain behind it, and by Thursday the high is 89.
The Briefing
The warrant came from the videos, six days later
Misael Ramos was walking his dog on Manor Road on Saturday morning when Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) troopers stopped him. He is 40, a community organizer, and one of six candidates for the District 1 seat on the Austin City Council. By 9:31 a.m. he was booked into the Travis County Jail on a Class B misdemeanor charge of riot participation. Ramos denies wrongdoing.
The charge dates to Sept. 20, when a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer shot Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez in North Austin and a protest followed. DPS said Ramos "was captured on camera taking construction barricades, sandbags, and other items and attempting to obstruct traffic." The arrest affidavit says troopers identified him using "open-source social media videos." His attorney, Edmund "Skip" Davis, told supporters outside the jail that he had seen no footage resembling a riot, and that the method troubled him: "It strikes me that they're probably relying on artificial intelligence and facial recognition to identify people."
The same Saturday, Austin's Office of Police Oversight held its second community expo at City Hall. Director Gail McCant said what residents tell her office they want is accountability in policing. That office reviews the Austin Police Department (APD). It has no authority over state troopers.
What's next: More protests over the shooting and detention of Garcés Pérez were planned across Austin for Sunday, KUT reported; no court date has been set in the Ramos case. The rest of the week's arrests and oversight are in Public safety & courts, and the Nov. 3 ballot in City Hall & county.
Sources: KUT (the arrest and release), Austin Chronicle (the affidavit and the defense), CBS Austin (the DPS statement), KXAN (the oversight expo)
City Desk
Public safety & courts
State troopers arrested a council candidate six days after the protest
DPS troopers stopped Misael Ramos, 40, in the 2400 block of Manor Road at about 8:45 a.m. Saturday and booked him at 9:31 on a riot participation charge. He was released just after 5 p.m. on a $1,000 bond. DPS said he was filmed moving barricades and sandbags to obstruct traffic. His campaign called the arrest political retribution. KUT
Also
One condition of Ramos's release bars him from further protests, and bond conditions in related cases order people to stay 200 yards from the shooting site and the Texas Capitol. Austin Chronicle
Overheard on Bluesky
EMERGENCY PRESS CONFERENCE - 4 PM, OUTSIDE OF TRAVIS COUNTY JAIL, 500 W 10TH ST. AUSTIN, TX
Speaking out for our immigrant neighbors is not a crime. Misael has always shown up for our community, and now we need to show up for him.
Overheard on X
No respect for the rule of law. Ramos is well aware that there will be no consequence in Travis County for such behavior. https://t.co/2xKUimqaBK
Austin Lawyers Guild attorney Paul Quinzi told the Chronicle that as many as 20 more warrants from the Sept. 20 protest may exist, based on affidavit language in his possession. Austin Chronicle
APD said at least four people were arrested at the Sept. 20 demonstration on charges including riot, resisting arrest and assault on a peace officer; DPS reported one more. CBS Austin
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, responding to Ramos's remarks about ICE, said such rhetoric is fueling large increases in assaults and threats against federal officers. KXAN
Austin's Office of Police Oversight, now approaching its 25th anniversary, held its second community expo at City Hall on Saturday, showing residents how complaints and compliments about police are filed. KXAN
Director Gail McCant said the office launched three programs this year: a know-your-rights effort, a mediation program and a dashboard tracking officer-involved shootings. KXAN
Benefits were held Saturday in south Austin for the family of Desiree Gauna, 27, a mother of four found dead this month; APD detective Mendall Edwards said the case remains open. KXAN
Growth & infrastructure
No new closures or openings today. Austin's roadway work-zone records list no zone starting or ending this week, and no outlet reported a new one. Roadway Work Zones (qyfh-gwei)
City Hall & county
Seven counties have now counted the registrations the state lost track of
Travis County received about 32,000 backlogged applications this week, part of a statewide DPS failure that Harris County put at roughly 108,000 records. Registration for the Nov. 3 election closes Oct. 5. The Secretary of State says all the applications will be backdated to when they were submitted, and that they reached counties in time to be processed. KXAN
Also
DPS said an outside vendor's October 2025 software update cut off parts of each record, leaving them incomplete; the Secretary of State confirmed receiving corrected files on Sept. 18. KXAN
A voter who registered through the DPS portal but does not appear on the rolls can cast a provisional ballot, the Secretary of State's office said, and officials can check the transaction afterward. KXAN
Early voting in Travis County runs Oct. 19 through Oct. 30; the Bulletin's Vote 2026 page carries the official registration and polling links. Travis County Elections
Two other District 1 candidates responded to the arrest: Amber K. Goodwin called it an attempt to silence protected speech, and Mike Nahas said non-violent demonstrators should not be arrested. KXAN
Schools
University workers rallied near campus over who decides what UT teaches
Members of the Texas State Employees Union gathered near the University of Texas at Austin on Friday as their General Assembly opened. Organizer Tom Alter, a former Texas State University professor, said entire departments have been consolidated and eliminated. A university spokesperson said faculty were asked to justify courses for core status and that about half of those reviewed were accepted. KVUE
A billion-dollar school voucher program is on the ballot through the comptroller's race
Acting Comptroller Don Huffines, who says Texas Education Freedom Accounts funded 101,600 students and wants the program marketed to every family, faces state Sen. Sarah Eckhardt of Austin on Nov. 3. Eckhardt says she would audit the program vigorously, calling it "in all probability, going to become a runaway subsidy." The comptroller administers the money. KXAN
Also
Women's and gender studies courses stop counting toward UT's core graduation requirements next semester and will be offered as electives; the new core phases in from spring 2027. KVUE
Dozens of Anderson High School students walked out of class Friday afternoon over immigration enforcement. "It's important to show that we actually care about these issues," senior Belle Robinson said. CBS Austin
Asked at the Texas Tribune Festival to grade his two years running Austin Independent School District (AISD), Superintendent Matias Segura said he is "probably a B-minus." The Daily Texan
Business & street life
Ballet Austin opens its season with Stephen Mills's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the Long Center, with the Austin Symphony Orchestra playing live; the last performance is at 3 p.m. Sunday. CBS Austin
Overheard on X
Woke up and ran 26.2
Impromptu decision. Didn’t check my pace once, pure vibes only. Lady bird lake was bumping
Need another race on the calendar asap pic.twitter.com/wl1e0xCstO
Komé, the Japanese restaurant Takehiro and Kayo Asazu opened on Airport Boulevard in October 2011, marks 15 years next month. "Austin has given us so much support," they said. Community Impact
Overheard on Bluesky
Austin next weekend I think we might skip ACL day 3 and get day drunk at barton springs
Mid-Autumn Festival events at OMG Squee and Kaiju Cut and Sew are pairing mooncakes with mahjong and local vendors this weekend. CBS Austin
Weather
Today: mostly sunny, high near 100, heat index values as high as 104, south southeast wind 0 to 5 miles per hour. Tonight: mostly cloudy, low around 76. No alerts are active this morning. National Weather Service
Saturday topped out at 94, the coolest high Austin has seen since Aug. 1. The normal high for today is 89. KXAN
Monday and Tuesday stay in the upper 90s, with gusts to 25 miles per hour Tuesday ahead of a 20% rain chance after 1 a.m. Wednesday. National Weather Service
A slow-moving Pacific low, carrying tropical remnant moisture, brings a level 2 of 4 flood threat across the KXAN viewing area Wednesday, with an inch or more of rain likely through the week. KXAN
Thursday is the turn: showers and thunderstorms, an 80% chance of rain, and a high near 89. National Weather Service
KVUE's forecasters describe hot afternoons to start the week, followed by heavy tropical rains. KVUE
The Back Page
5 days until the Austin City Limits (ACL) Festival's first weekend · The Great Lawn at Zilker Park is closed for build-out; the festival runs Oct. 2-4 and Oct. 9-11.
Sunday Paper: Three longer reads from the week. The Austin Chronicle went through the monitoring reports and found what changed at Travis County bail hearings after a settlement with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas, and where the county still falls short. KUT visited the country's biggest Braille transcription center, which is inside a Texas prison. And KXAN's weather team laid out how the Atlantic got this far into a season without a hurricane, which has happened twice since satellites started watching.
There is a nonprofit that started in Austin in 1995 on a simple bet: that if you let a kid chip away at a marathon over a whole school year, twenty minutes at a time, they will finish it. On Friday the students at Patton Elementary in Southwest Austin started this year's, with music and cowbells and pom-poms in the yard, and the mile counter back at zero. They have until May. Last school year more than 20,600 AISD students at 96 campuses ran or walked their way through the program, logging over 364,000 miles between them. "Ultimately, what we want the kids to say is 'I get to run' instead of 'I have to run,'" said Marathon Kids CEO Jason Daniel. The program is free to the schools. Community Impact