Corpus Christi water crisis collides with mayor recall effort

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court-appointed special advocates, making a difference for children and foster care.

I'm David Brown, after last year's deadly floods, how plans to reopen Camp Mystic

or tearing friends apart will hear more. Also, a confusing and chaotic primary in one

central Texas County leads election officials to look back to the future.

Plus, how to defend against a parasite moving north from Mexico that could devastate Texas

ranches, researchers testing a new idea, virtual fences, all that, and then some coming up today

on the Texas Standard. No matter where you are, Texas Standard time on this 26th

day of March, I'm David Brown, great to have you with us. It was about this time last week.

I was eastbound and down, making tracks to our partner station KEDT in Corpus Christi,

where we did a live broadcast last Friday. And let me tell you, once you start to see

those palm trees along the road, it's easy to slip into those permanent vacation vibes.

Look, there's a whole lot of something very special happening in Corpus Christi right now,

and as always, it's that proximity to the Gulf, one can credit for much of its good fortune.

But there's the people too. We met literally hundreds of them, very much invested in the future of

the city, who make a point of staying connected with a community and with current events.

But there is one current event that overshadows all the rest right now, and not only

may it be an existential threat to the city's future, but a harbinger for the rest of Texas.

And that is a water crisis we've been telling you about now for several weeks.

At its heart, it's a crisis that's been largely foreseeable, but which, according to published

reports, has been mismanaged for years, for decades, leading the city to where it is today,

on the verge of declaring a water emergency within months. Now facing a threat from the governor,

take control of the city, and now comes another political wrinkle, which has some people

there feeling like officials are fiddling around with petty politics while Rome burns.

Here to tell us more, Kirsten Crowe, who reports for the Corpus Christi color times.

Kirsten, welcome.

Hi, thanks for having me.

Bottom line here is that there's been rapid industrialization and ongoing drought,

now reservoirs, or at single-digit levels, and the curbs on water use aren't cutting it.

What's the latest with a water crisis? Anything change over the past few days?

Well, some of it has remained the same. Our main reservoirs are below 10%, which is the lowest

in history. The city is currently relying on some other water supplies sources that's going to be

like Texana and the Colorado River, and it's believed that a water emergency, which is basically

when the city is within 180 days of our supply, not meeting demand, it's still believe that that may

arrive within a few months, or I shouldn't even say a few months within months.

I was hearing something like May or June, something like that. It could be that close.

That may not be the case anymore. Because of the governor's orders,

there are some water supply projects coming online sooner than expected, and that may change

the city's projections, but there will likely still be projections showing it within

months into this year. Of course, Corpus Christi does not have a desalination plant, a city desalination

plant, and that has been the focus of a lot of attention. Even if one were to somehow magically

come online tomorrow, it's not clear that it would stave off a crisis, the size of which

Corpus faces. What is the latest on desalination, by the way, because that's been an on-again,

off-again conversation? The status of the interharbor desalination plant is that the city council

is going to be considering a new proposal in April. Isn't there some talk, there had been some talk

about trying to buy a commercial desalination plant from a company called Corpus Christi

Polymers? Am I wrong? That is correct. There were talks last year that the city might

purchase this desalination plant at Corpus Christi Polymers. However, that was taken off the table,

and now there is a proposal to purchase desalinated water from that plant.

Through a third party, is I understand it, right? Correct. They would be a third party who is

handling negotiations between Corpus Christi Polymers and the city of Corpus Christi.

Any other solutions, possible solutions on the table right now being actively pursued?

The biggest projects that the city is pursuing right now is groundwater or related to groundwater.

And currently there are two well fields that are operating and there are two under development.

It's my understanding that there's a lot of concern that the city may be distracted by a

political, what is it, a removal petition against the mayor? Is that related to the water crisis

or just a completely different thing? Technically, the petition is accusing the mayor of

malfeasance or misconduct related to a controversy on tax incentives for development of a downtown

hotel. She has denied the allegations in this petition, and while the petition doesn't mention

any of the water supply projects or desalination, there are residents and council members who

feel that there is a connection to that. Obviously a very complicated story, further

complicated by the political goings on. We're going to link to Kirsten Crow's excellent reporting

for the Corpus Christi caller times at our own website, texistandard.org. We encourage you to check

it out. Kirsten, thanks so much. Thank you.

Looks like Williamson County in central Texas is going to return to county wide voting for the

primary election runoff on May 26th. Kaylee Hunt of KUT in Austin reports that the change comes

after widespread confusion and frustration among voters on primary election day.

The March 3rd primary election marked the first time and more than a decade that voters in

Williamson County had to cast their ballots at a precinct-based polling location. That's because

the county's Republican Party chose not to offer county wide voting, and according to state law,

the county's Democratic Party had no choice but to follow. More than two dozen people testified

at a special commissioners court meeting on Tuesday that the change led to widespread confusion.

Some voters waited two to three hours to cast their ballots on election day. Blair Pania is a

former Republican candidate for Texas House District 52. I talked to several Republicans who had

been to two or three different sites on election day, partly because the election locations were

changed out at the last minute, and there was no notification that you might need to go and

check again. Michelle Evans is the chair of the Williamson County GOP. She acknowledged her

party's decision to not offer county wide voting, had resulted in, quote, consequences.

Failing voters and candidates is inexcusable, and for my part in that, I am truly sorry.

Evans blamed some of the issues on the Williamson County Democratic Party's decision to not share

polling locations on election day. We tried several times to encourage sharing wherever possible,

because it would help minimize voter confusion and save on scarce resources.

Kim Gilby is the chair of the Williamson County Democratic Party. She defended the decision,

which she says was made by not just her, but also the party's executive committee.

I had real concerns about sharing locations with them because they were using different

voting systems than we were. So I felt like I was protecting our voters and our workers.

Unlike Democrats, Republicans used pre-printed paper ballots, which were then stored

in plastic tubs after voters filled them out by hand. Gilby did acknowledge the Democratic

Party could have done a better job staffing polling locations. We did not do enough,

we didn't have enough poll workers. Bridgete Escobedo is Williamson County's elections administrator.

She told commissioners both political parties had difficulty recruiting enough election workers

for the primary. Despite extensive outreach, the political parties weren't able to fully staff

every location at the optimal levels, which contributed to longer wait times at certain sites.

Travis County pays its workers over $20 an hour, but a Williamson County only pays its workers

$15 to $17 an hour. Escobedo noted that others encountered this issue as well, including

Tarant and Dallas counties. Tarant offered countywide voting. Dallas used precinct-based voting

like Williamson. She says while the shift to precinct-based voting likely contributed to the issue,

the fact remains that with the current political environment, it is difficult to find qualified

people willing to work at the pay rates that are offered. Escobedo says both political parties

failed to meet her department's standards for counting votes. She says several boxes containing

ballots from the Republican primary had incorrect or missing paperwork. Altogether,

Escobedo says it took her staff 30 hours to count all of the votes.

This election was less secure than I've ever seen in my career, and this cannot be repeated.

Williamson County's precinct-for-commissioner Russ Bulls also criticized the behavior of a member

of the Williamson County Republican Party's Election Integrity Committee. The member allegedly

posted a doctored video and false claims about the county's elections administrator on social media.

Bulls says Escobedo and her staff received death threats as a result of the social media post.

Escobedo confirmed the threats at Tuesday's meeting.

This conduct is truly unacceptable. My staff are dedicated public servants who work long hours

under difficult conditions to administer elections in accordance with the law.

I urge this court and the public to recognize that elections administration is a nonpartisan

function and that men and women who carry out deserve to perform their duties free from fear and

harassment. County commissioners, including all four Republicans, express support for Escobedo

and the wake of the threats. They also said they hope the upcoming primary runoff on May 26th

would run more smoothly now that countywide voting has been reinstated. I'm Kayleigh Hunt and Williamson

County. Joining us now audience and engagement editor Wells Dunnbar with the talk of Texas

Sillo Wells County David immigration and customs enforcement ICE agents in American airports. It's

the talk of Texas as we've been discussing on the show this week. The controversial agency sent

out to airports across the country. Texas included on behalf of the Trump administration purportedly

in response to the partial government shutdown that has most TSA workers on the job without pay.

Differing stories over their purpose in the nation's airports some lawmakers have tried to emphasize

that they are there in a capacity to support TSA staff. Meanwhile news website The Hill reports

that some ICE officers have been seen checking travelers identification documents after receiving

some TSA training of this per officials from ICE. So how is it playing out in the nation's airports?

We want to hear as part of our talk of Texas initiative go to texestandard.org slash talk

and record us a voicemail that we can play on the show. We're already getting plenty of comments

David including this one from Mitch Fengman who says he just went through a two hour line at IAH in

Houston and there are numerous ICE agents just standing around doing absolutely nothing. Meanwhile

Daniel Benco says that their deployment to airports is being done to normalize ICE's presence.

Daniel says it's obvious why they were sent it's a test for their presence at polling places in

the midterms. Meanwhile Joseph Goodman says this about ICE agents that they are quote doing an

amazing job. So whether you're frustrated at their presence think these agents could be doing more

where I think they're doing just fine. We'd like to hear it please go to texestandard.org slash talk

and sound off record a voicemail message telling us what you think about ICE's presence at American

airports because we want to hear respondent's voices on the air. Yeah in fact a New York times

picking up on wide delays at Houston's bus airport seem to be worse than any other place in the

country we'd love to hear from you. Coming up the latest on a worm that poses a grave threat to the

tech Texas ranching industry and how researchers are hoping to round them up that's next as the

standard continues. Support comes from wise an app for international people using money around

the globe allowing users to send spend and receive an up to 40 currencies with a few simple tabs

information at wise.com terms and conditions apply. It's the Texas standard I'm Laura Rice

researchers at Texas A&M University Kingsville are experimenting with virtual fencing technology

to develop a plan for cattle ranchers in case their herds are infected by new world screw worm.

The parasite has been getting closer to the Texas Mexico border and could devastate the cattle

industry. KEDT's Rob Boss Camp reports. Dr. Robert Wells says his team is thinking outside the

box or in this case within the perimeter of a virtual fence. We're just trying to be novel

and innovative and use off-the-shelf technology that's out there that's available to any rancher

right now. Wells, a professor of practice at Texas A&M University Kingsville's King Ranch

Institute for Ranch Management, hopes to utilize existing virtual fencing technology to help

ranchers manage cattle. Ultimately, they want to develop a protocol ranchers can use should the

new world screw worm or NWS reaches the Texas Mexico border. The flesh-eating parasite has not been

reported in Texas since 1982. We don't know when or if the new world screw worm fly gets here.

We hope it never does, but if it does, we want to be ready to be able to have something

that a producer can use. Over 160 cows are fitted with a special collar which uses humane

electrical pulses, sounds, and GPS tracking. A Ford A Training Protocol teaches the cows to

respond to the virtual fences. Wells says it allows ranchers to schedule where they want cattle

at a particular time and saves ranchers time and resources seeking out individual groups.

At the same time, if a cow doesn't show up, ranchers can look up their last known GPS location.

The research began earlier this year and comes at a time when Texas and the U.S. Department of

Agriculture or USDA are stepping up efforts to keep NWS out of the country. In recent months,

the flesh-eating parasite was detected 200 miles from the Texas Mexico border in the state of

Tommalipus, as well as a Florida quarantine facility. If a cow were to be infected by NWS,

the research helps ranchers mitigate the impact of the screw worm and larva on herds,

while a two-year project wells hopes to have a rough draft of a protocol they can advise to

ranchers by the summer. This project won't stop the screw worm getting here, but pretty much

nothing will until we get a large enough production of the sterile flies. Until that happens,

we've got to have ways that we can manage the ranch and manage the cattle and still stay in

business, and that's what this project seems to do. Last month, the U.S. D.A. opened a U.S.

base sterile fly dispersal facility in Edinburgh to help fend off NWS from reaching the border.

In 1976, an outbreak in Texas affected more than 1.4 million cattle in hundreds of thousands

of sheep and goats. A U.S. D.A. analysis suggests such an outbreak today would cost the state economy

$1.8 billion. We have technology that's now available that we can hopefully use in order to

mitigate the impact and the effects of it, and hopefully to be able to keep ranchers in business

rather than having to sell out because of the impacts and the effects of the screw worm.

Welles, a South Texas native who grew up during the 1970s outbreak said another would disheartened

ranchers who've already experienced it. Some of them are telling us that if it gets here,

they're just going to sell out. They just don't have the manpower, they don't have the time,

or the ability to go out and check or heard every day. This will allow them to hopefully be able to

stay in the business. N. Wells believes the research will find an outside-the-box solution

for a problem he hopes will stay outside the country.

On-Rot Boss Camp in Corpus Christi.

And you're listening to the Texas Standard.

Dallas ISD is sending thousands of students on the same field trips this semester.

That's something the district's never done before. KERA's Bill Zebel reports on the new

experiment and what the district hopes it means for STEM education.

582 Dallas ISD fourth graders are off the buses this cloudy morning for today's Dallas

Arboretum visit. The kids are well prepared. When a group from Laila P. Coward Elementary

approaches meat-eating plants, they already know about sun do's and pitcher plants.

Katie Williams is the Arboretum program teacher.

This one is usually one that people have heard of. Does anyone know what this is called?

The insides. Right. It can attract mosquitoes. It can attract insects mostly.

No, I wouldn't put your finger in there because it has kind of this vector stuff that might irritate

your skin. Today's group of Dallas fourth graders may be average size by Arboretum standards,

but over this semester every Dallas ISD fourth grader that's more than 10,200 kids will visit here.

That's not average, says Michelle Broughton. She's the district's deputy chief of academic

services who helped orchestrate these trips focused on science, technology, engineering, and math.

STEM is the way of our world. The bigger point here is the curriculum alignment and so what we want

is for what students are learning in the classroom to stick. Broughton hopes to reach that goal by

tying lessons learned on these field trips to those lessons taught in class. It's part of the

district's wider goal of unifying curriculum across all of its schools with its many resources.

Until now though, some students haven't been able to visit the Arboretum. Margaret Black,

with light and hill philanthropies, says for many of these fourth graders, it's their first time here.

I think you have to hope that you're in the right zip code at the right school that happens to have

chaperones and all of those things aligned for you. And it was just not happening in an equitable way.

Black is managing directorate light a hill philanthropies. The non-profits quarter million dollar

grant made this one semester pilot possible. The money sending every Dallas first, second, fourth,

fifth, and seventh grader to the same age and great appropriate STEM field trip across Dallas.

That's 48,000 students going to places like the Arboretum, Zoo, or the Perot Museum.

We believe science is the answer to solving the most complex problems in this world,

and we need the next generation solving those problems. When the semester ends,

Michelle Broughton says the district will study the results to see if the material actually is

sticking. This is a pilot. We just started it at the top of the semester. And so we hope or

anticipate that student outcomes will improve, but we have yet to determine that. Back at the Arboretum,

some students have just approached the station about geofites, including bulbs and tubers.

It's plants that store food or nutrients underground.

Salazar, fourth grader, Javier Martinez had barely ever heard of any of these plants.

At first, I didn't really know what tubers aren't until I came here and I started learning more about tubers.

That's why I started understanding more that we eat the tubers and that tubers can grow to other things.

Javier stood near Megan Radezno, who also learned about tubers here.

I learned the nutrients they have and how they grow. I like them because they give them good

nutrients and it tastes good. If educators get their way, Radezno and her fellow fourth graders

will also develop a deeper taste for learning about science on Bill Zebel in Dallas.

Many survivors of last summer's flood want to go back to that place,

camp mystic, many others don't, and this question of whether they should is tearing apart a community.

We're going to be talking about that, but first the Texas News Roundup stay with us.

Support for Texas Standard comes from Half Price Books, a Texas bread, new and news bookstore,

proudly supporting public media and sustainability by keeping books, music, and other media in circulation.

Store locations and more information at hpb.com.

Hey, what's cooking? Make sure to join us as we check in with Texas' top taco journalist to hear

about the latest innovation stories and the people behind many of Texans' favorite go-to.

It's Mando Raya with the Tacos of Texas. Next Thursday, on the Texas Standard.

Support for Tacos of Texas comes from HEB.

From the Texas Newsroom, I'm Alexandra Hart,

the conservative political action conference or CPAC is underway in the Dallas Fort Worth area.

The annual conference is built as the largest and most influential gathering of conservatives in the

world. The Texas Newsroom's Blaise Gainey reports.

On CPAC's schedule is one of the Republican's Senate candidates, Attorney General Ken Paxton.

It could be a big moment for him ahead of May's runoff against a long time incumbent

Senator John Corden. This year, Dallas County GOP Chair Alan West says CPAC serves as a

call to action for the state's conservatives. I think it's just a good thing to, you know, help

people here in Texas remember and across the country that you have to get out and vote.

We saw what happened in the first midterm of President Trump's first term of presidency.

And with the last two years of his presidency was like, and I don't think we want to see that type

of history repeat itself. Other speakers at the conference in North Texas include

Education Secretary Linda McMahon, Informer Trump political strategist Steve Bannon.

I'm Blaise Gainey in Great Vine.

Curvel Mayor Joe Herring wrote on social media that Nimitz Lake is again being searched in an

effort to recover the bodies of eight-year-old Seale Steward and 63-year-old Jeff Ramsey.

They are two of the victims still missing from the July 4th floods.

Crews have already surveyed and mapped the lake.

Hundreds of spots have been identified for divers to search.

Diesel prices are on the rise because of the war in Iran. Patrick DeHon with gas,

but he says that is going to have a trickle-down effect.

Diesel is the fuel that powers the engines that make up the U.S. economy from trains to truckers,

to tractors out in the field. I mean, this is really the fuel of the U.S. economy.

The fact that Diesel now is at its highest since 2022 at 535, a gallon,

you know, that's going to impact you. He says consumers will see the impact at places

like the grocery store as shippers pass on the higher cost of fuel to consumers.

A. Texas State University professor is suing the school over his firing,

saying his free speech rights were violated. Professor Idris Robinson is seeking to

block his termination at the end of May. He says he's being punished for his pro-Palestinian

remarks at an off-campus anarchist book fair in North Carolina in June 2024.

A recording of the talk was later posted to social media by a pro-Israel activist.

It's the second such lawsuit recently filed against the university over off-campus speech.

The Duke Texas teams and the men's NCAA basketball tournament are back on the court today.

The University of Houston plays Purdue and San Jose, California this evening.

Meanwhile, the University of Houston will be on the court in Houston to take on Illinois.

I'm Alexandra Hart from the Texas Newsroom.

Support for these Texas headlines comes from University Extension at UT Austin,

offering open enrollment to a wide variety of UT's undergraduate credit courses

that can be taken by anyone from anywhere.

More at extension.utexas.edu.

It's the Texas Standard. I'm Angelico Cherga. When 25 campers and two counselors died at

camp Mystic during catastrophic flooding last July 4th, former campers shared their grief.

It happened at a place that so many cherished. Many of the Mystic girls stayed in touch with

their friends over the years. But now the effort to reopen the camp this summer is tearing some

of these close-knit friends apart. Here to tell us more is Peter Holly who wrote about this for

Texas Monthly. Peter, welcome to the Texas Standard. Thank you so much for having me.

Well, tell us a little bit about the girls. Many are now women and they went to camp Mystic. How did

that shape them? You know, this is a community that has generations invested in camp Mystic.

This is a place that their family, their mothers and grandmothers went.

Camp Mystic has always been a source of nostalgia for these women. But it also goes back to their

distant past over the last century. So people have been invested in camp Mystic for decades.

It defines who they are as adults in many ways. These are relationships that they carried from

camp Mystic into high school and college and then professional relationships afterwards.

What are you hearing from those who do not want the camp to reopen?

You know, largely the people who don't want the camp to reopen are members of the heavens 27

community. Those are the parents who lost children on the July 4th flood and many of their

family members and supporters. And what they're asking for is a deeper investigation into how the

flood occurred. Some of them want the camp to close forever, but others merely want to take a year or

two for lawyers and state investigators to go back to the camp, figure out what happened so it

won't happen again. Now you talked to a camper who almost drowned last summer and she wants to

return. What did she say about reopening camp Mystic? Yeah, this is such a complicated issue and

people fall on different sides of this debate about whether to return or whether the camp should

be closed. Many of the children, kids who did survive last summer's flood actually do want to

return. And this can seem pretty shocking from the outside if you don't know how they're thinking.

But when you talk to kids and you talk to parents who want their kids to return, what they generally

tell you is that my daughters were traumatized by this flood and the only people who understand

what that was like was their fellow campers. And the best way for them to heal is to be among one

another. Now whether that needs to happen at camp is another question. Part of what I wanted to

explore with my story was showing that kids are struggling and hurting and many of them have PTSD

symptoms from the flood and there needs to be a discussion surrounding how parents and families

deal with that moving forward. Well, how is this rift impacting this very tight-knit community?

This is a brutal fight. It's painful largely because these are people who've known each other

their whole lives and now they find themselves on opposite sides of this debate. This is painful

for a lot of people but it's also enraging. I think if you think about it, there's nothing more

sensitive and more hurtful than talking about children who've lost their lives. And so if you

fall on that side of the debate, you cannot understand how people would go back to camp mystic.

But if you have children that are hurting and desperately want to go back, you cannot understand

why parents can't necessarily understand that as well. So wherever you look, it's painful,

it's messy. It was a very tragic story to kind of dive into.

Well, and is it ending some of these long-term friendships? Are you hearing that?

I am definitely hearing that people are not talking, people feel like they can't return to this

community, like there's people they can't talk to, like there's people that they

always trusted and now are severed from. I don't think unfortunately that's going to change

anytime soon. We have lawsuits that are here and that are going to be playing out in court for

years. This is just beginning. Well, when will we know whether camp mystic can reopen this summer

and what does that decision depend on? Well, camp mystic is currently on schedule to reopen this

summer. If they they're not yet in possession of a license to reopen, it's my understanding that

they probably will get the license. That will open half of the camp, not the camp that was

affected by the flood. That's not going to be open because that's going to be under investigation.

But the other half of the camp is going to be open and people will be returning to that,

which is about a half mile or so from where the flood actually occurred.

If someone trying to stop this from happening, is there a challenge to prevent even that

section of the camp that wasn't damaged from reopening? There has been a court case that is

challenging the reopening of the camp. A judge recently ruled that the other half of the camp that

wasn't affected by the flood can reopen at this point. It's a matter of whether the camp is going to

get their license to continue operations. We've been speaking to Peter Holley who writes for Texas

monthly. Pete, thank you for your time. Thank you so much for having me.

So what are you, iPhone person? Samsung Galaxy? What about Amazon? Our go-to tech expert,

Omar Guyaga says after a big fail on the smartphone front, Amazon may be added again. But who can

afford a new phone these days? Rising inflation got you down. A new project aimed at understanding

just how affordable it is to live in Texas and the impact thereof. All that and more as the standard

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If the Texas Standard, I'm David Brown. There are certain words folks in the news

business use frequently that seem to carry a certain moral, social, or political weight,

yet are in truth remarkably pliable. Words like sustainability applied to everything from budgets

to climate, accessibility, sounds concrete, rarely is. What about affordability? Everyone talks

about it, but what's really being said? Affordable to whom? At what income? What percentage of income?

Where exactly? Now our partners in the Texas newsroom, which is made up of reporters and news

departments across the state, are undertaking an ambitious project to nail down that affordability

concept through a particular lens, exploring the cost of living for Texans today. For more on this

project, we're joined by Anna Campbell, she's audience editor for the Texas newsroom. Anna,

good to talk with you. Thanks for having me. So this is a statewide effort. Tell us more about how

it's being organized. Yeah, you're right about that. It is statewide. So we are basically serving

people across the state to find out how they're making it by. Maybe people are working a couple of

jobs. Maybe people are trying to build up their savings. Maybe people are having to make cuts because

of things like daycare or the increasing cost of gas. We want to hear really from people and so we're

sending out surveys that people can fill out and just let us know all of those things. How did this

idea come about? Because of course tackling affordability is an issue. That's that's that's

tough thing to do. Right. And I think you did a good job of describing it at the top, David. You

know, it's subjective, right? What's affordable to me might not be affordable to you. So we wanted to

hear from people not try to put a number on anything, not try to qualify anything. We just want to hear,

you know, how it is impacting affordability. That question, that big question of affordability

is impacting, you know, regular people like me knew. Regular people, I mean, Texas has been taking

off in terms of business and by one lens, our economy is going strong. That seems like that would

depends on what the what the yardstick is and where you are too, whether you're out in, you know,

parts of rural Texas or in the big city. Yep, 100%. And so that's exactly why, you know, we we want

to tell individual stories of people who live in Corpus Christi, El Paso, Houston, Austin,

you know, some of these cities used to be affordable, right? And now it's becoming increasingly hard

for, you know, people who make a certain amount of money to just make it by. So yeah. What sort

what sort of questions are the reporters asking? Well, we want to know how much you make. We want to

know how you make it, right? What kind of income streams you have. And we want to know how you

spend it, what your monthly expenses are. And we want to know what your big goals are. Are you

trying to save for something? We're asking very specific questions. So yeah, hopefully, hopefully

people will want to tell us those things. I'm sure there are a lot of listeners who would like

to weigh in on this. Is there any way they can do that? Sure. So just go to wherever you are in

the state, just go to your local NPR website and you'll find the survey there that you can just

fill out. You can go to the TexasStandard.org website as well and and find the survey there.

On a Campbell, audience editor for the Texas Newsroom looking forward to this to this reporting

effort. Sounds like a lot of interesting stories to come. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks David.

I'm Angelico Cherga. Amazon may be set to re-enter the phone business. Yes, the company sold

phones about 10 years ago. And the giant retailer announced this week that it will expand its same day

delivery offerings in some areas also. Our tech expert Omar Gallagher has been keeping up with

Amazon's latest moves and he joins us now. Omar, thank you for being with us. And thanks for

having me. I appreciate it. Well, so CNET, you wrote this article saying that Amazon wants to sell

phones. The company tried that before. Tell us what happened. Yeah, I did not go well. I don't know

if you remember, but in 2014, they introduced the fire phone, which was sort of Amazon's take on

the smartphone. This was when, you know, we'd only had iPhones and Samsung phones for about, I guess,

about five, six, seven years at that point. So this was still kind of early in the evolution of

app stores and phones. I think even Microsoft was in the business for a little while with its own

phones. But yes, the Amazon has tried this before and it did not go well. They pulled the phone

after about a year from sales and then kind of just went away. Meanwhile, there are other hardware

products, you know, there are Alexa products, there are fire TV sticks, you know, those are still

around and doing well. But phones was a market they just were not able to crack. Well, what's different

now? What do we know about Amazon's possible phone plans? Well, some of it is that ecosystem of

hardware that they've developed. Lots of people have the smart speakers in their home. Lots of people

have the fire TV products on their TVs as set top boxes or just TVs that are branded that way.

And I think Amazon thinks that a phone now would be a better fit within that ecosystem. They want

to, they would have a phone that would have AI features that would make it easier to buy things

obviously from them and would have, you know, the features like Amazon music and Amazon Prime

video incorporated, which were not really as much of a thing back then. So I think Amazon feels like

maybe the timing was off that maybe 10 years ago wasn't wasn't so good. But now that people might

be ready for an Amazon phone device, which I'm skeptical. I know people think people actually want

that. But I think Amazon feels it'll make it easier for people to buy more things from them,

which is kind of their main business. So turning to the company's best known business,

dropping packages on doorsteps, Amazon has announced some new delivery options in some areas.

Tell us about their new one to three hour shipping offers. Yeah, I remember when we were impressed

that it could be one day or even even two day shipping was a was a was a miracle. And now they've

got it down to one to three hours now. I we should say this is limited to certain areas. I tried it

for my home, which is in New Braunfels in Nogo, you know, they did not offer that. But in 2000

areas across the country, you will be able to order from about 90,000 products, which is not

every product, but a lot of products. And you do have the option for a three hour delivery window

or a one hour delivery window. Of course, this is not free. Even if you have Amazon Prime,

you'd still be paying an extra 10 to $5 for those options. If you have prime or 15 to $20 extra,

if you don't have prime. So you must really want and need that almost immediately. Well,

Amazon is pretty straightforward about why they're doing these faster shipping offers. They don't

want customers to have a chance to change their minds after choosing a product. Tell us more about

that. Yeah, I spoke to my friend Stephanie Carl's at retail me not who's an expert in retail insights

and she was telling me something I hadn't thought of as I was reporting the story till I talk to her

was this is a way for them to get you to not change your mind about a purchase. You're going to

get it so fast that you don't have time to kind of second guess or kind of say, oh, you know what?

Maybe I'll cancel that order. I don't really need it. No, it's already a tour ready for you. So

I thought that was kind of a brilliant insight that that yeah, I'd like that to prove moving

the hesitation element the the window you have between the time you order and the next day or two

where you could say, maybe I'll go to the store and get it instead and just cancel it. They don't

want you to do that. And also just to kind of bolster their their network and they have so many

so many points of delivery, you know, warehouse centers and ways of getting stuff to you that it

really kind of flexes those muscles against other retailers like your Wal-Mart's and your targets that

are just not there yet as far as this type of fast delivery. Yeah, very interesting. What else

should people know about Amazon? What's on your horizon as you're watching this company?

Well, you know, they're still looking at robots. Robots is still a big, you know, they they're

definitely robots are part of this this fast delivery. I mean, they're doing more robots within the

warehouses and within the distribution centers. And, you know, we're going to start to see, you know,

these robots show up at your doorstep to deliver packages, whether they're in kind of humanoid form

or these little kind of cart-looking robots out of Star Wars. So I think you're going to see a

lot more robotics from Amazon. Fascinating. Well, as you heard, Omar Gayaga can't get one hour

shipping where he lives, but he writes about it for CNET and he joins us here each week on the

standard. Thank you, Omar. I sure appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

Support comes from Wise, an app for international people using money around the globe,

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It's the Texas standard. I'm Angela Cocharega. Elon Musk says he intends to create a massive

venture to provide the chips needed for the cars, robots, and AI data centers, his company's plan

to build. Musk calls the project TerraFab and says it will be, quote, the most epic chip building

exercise in history. TerraFab is a joint venture of Tesla's SpaceX and XAI, and it's expected to

cost $25 billion. A large part of the project will be based in Austin near the Tesla Gigafactory.

To learn more about what TerraFab could mean for Musk and for Texas were joined by David Lammers.

He's contributing editor at semi-conductor digest and has covered the chip making industry for decades.

Dave, welcome to the Texas standard. Yeah, thank you.

Well, why do Elon Musk's companies need so many chips and why does he want to build them himself?

Yeah, I think one of the key phrases of his announcement the other day was when he said that

the existing suppliers of Samsung, TSMC, and micron he called out are not expanding their capacity

at the maximum rate needed by Tesla. So he is happy that he has outside suppliers, but he feels

like the quantity and the type of chips that he needs are going to be way more than they can supply.

A lot of the problems with this is that the technology for making a chip, the way the transistor is

architected and the materials, they call it the recipe in the semiconductor industry, that is all

really closely guarded IP, Samsung, TSMC, Intel. They all have their own secret sauce about how they

make chips and that is changing. Every two or three years, they have to come up with some new

knob to turn to get to the faster technology that Nvidia and others are asking for.

So Tesla and his other companies, SpaceX and XAI, they don't have this basic technology.

So I think they will have to license it or come up with some kind of IP sharing arrangement with

one of the established semiconductor companies. And then the other thing that has been going on

in the last few years as we tried to bring manufacturing back to the States and rightly so,

is that there is a huge manpower shortage. You know, semiconductor engineers, people that know how

to build and operate fabs, it takes a long time for them to learn what they need to know to be a

contributor. So TSMC brought in several hundred Taiwan engineers to Arizona, Samsung has got several

hundred Korean engineers here in the Austin area. And not the mention of the fact that Samsung has

a fab in Austin where they have got a couple thousand people and some of those people can transfer

up to the new Taylor fab that is expected to make the Tesla chips.

Let's talk about that a little bit. So Musk says his new venture will be vertically integrated,

meaning that the chip design, manufacturing and testing are all under one roof.

Is that unusual in the semiconductor world and what challenges could that create?

Oh yeah, it completely goes against the tide of the last 40 years. You know, in 1986, TSMC started

the Foundry which meant that fabulous companies like Qualcomm and Apple and others could design

chips and have thousands of design engineers. And then they would ship it over to Taiwan, they would

make it. TSMC would ship it to Malaysia and other places for the packaging. And so that

disaggregation of the semiconductor industry has really moved at a rapid pace the last 20 years or so.

By trying to integrate everything, Musk is completely going against the tide of the semiconductor

industry for the last 40 years. Well, elaborate little. How would a successful Terra fab change the

game for the rest of the semiconductor industry? You mentioned Musk buys a lot of chips from other

companies and he plans to get more from Samsung. And of course, you know, how would that affect

even just the industry in the Austin area? Well, yeah, it throws a wrench into Samsung's plans,

I think, because for the last few years, they would openly say, we don't have a customer for our

new Taylor fab. And then along comes Musk and Tesla saying that they were going to make their

AI processor at the Samsung fab in Taylor. I talked to some people in the industry just a few days

ago. And they said that the fear of an AI bubble is very real. And these semiconductor

companies don't want to leave their customers short, but they don't want to over-invest either.

Musk is saying he's forced to build the Terra fab. And I think that if it works, it's going to take

at least five years before it gets meaningful quantities of chips. So you anticipate my next question.

Musk says Terra fab could begin producing chips by 2027. That's next year. Does that sound like

a realistic timeline? And does Musk's tendency to over-promise on its projects cause you any concern?

Oh, yeah, I think that's one of the things that is not realistic at all.

Especially given the things we just talked about, the shortage of expertise within Tesla to build fabs,

what I think he might need to do is prove out his master plan, which is to use his reusable rockets

to the starships to go up in space. That's what I find interesting about his presentation here in

Austin last Saturday was that he said that doing AI processing up in space will take advantage of

the fact that the solar power in space is five times what it is here on Earth. And it always

shines. You don't need a battery. And so go up to space and take advantage of the lower cost

of energy. So he says within two years, it'll be cheaper to do AI processing in space than it

will be here on Earth. And if he can demonstrate that with chips that are made by other companies,

then I think the enthusiasm for his project will build and people will be attracted to it.

You know, workers, engineers will want to be part of that. Fascinating story that we will

continue to follow with your help. David Lammers is a contributing editor at Semiconductor Digest.

He's based in Round Rock and David, thank you so much for joining us here on the Texas standard.

Well, thank you, Angela. I learned a lot from that. Thank you.

Well, you heard about that ruling in a California courtroom this week against meta and YouTube.

It could reshape the internet as we know it. Now the spotlights turning on Texas.

The Lone Star States pushed some of the nation's toughest restrictions on minors' access to social media.

But what comes next and what could it mean on the home front? That the week in politics with

the Texas Tribune and a whole lot more on tomorrow's edition of the Texas Standard. We'll be here.

We hope you can join us. Filentropic support for Texas Standard comes from Casey and Scotto Hair,

the Winkler Family Foundation, Lynn Dopson and Greg Waldrich, Adrian Kellham,

the George Huntington Family, and the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation.

Thanks so much for listening to the Texas Standard, KUT and the Texas Standard are members

of the NPR Network. It's an independent coalition of public media podcasters.

You can find more shows in the network wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm David Brown. We'll see you tomorrow.

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allowing users to send, spend, and receive in up to 40 currencies with a few simple taps.

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