In this week's issue:

  • Elderly injury offenses in Austin hit an all-time high in 2025 — more than 4x the 2014 level — and the people responsible are named Garza (both of them)
  • Intel just joined Musk's Terafab chip moonshot, and the deal is bigger than it sounds
  • Travis County handed Tesla 91% of its tax rebates and withheld the rest over paperwork — while Giga Texas shed 22% of its workforce
  • Austin's zoning reforms unlocked ~120,000 new homes and rents actually came down — turns out abundance works
  • A BBQ-sushi war is brewing, Casey's is coming for Buc-ee's turf, and a Navy vet from Austin is selling the Army an AI drone-killer

Let's get into it.

Quick Top Stories

Top Stories

Feature #1

Austin's Elderly Are Being Preyed On — And Two Officials Named Garza Are Letting It Happen

Elderly injury offenses in Austin hit an all-time high in 2025 — more than four times the 2014 level, according to city crime data cited by @AustinJustice. That number should be a five-alarm emergency at City Hall. Instead, Austin has two separately elected officials — both named Garza, no known relation — who have spent the past five years making it systematically easier to be a repeat predator in this city. Delia Garza, the Travis County County Attorney (in office since January 2021), handles misdemeanors. Jose Garza, the Travis County District Attorney (in office since January 2021), handles felonies. They are two different people with two different offices. Both have faced sustained criticism for leniency. Together, they've created a catch-and-release environment that is now producing quantifiable harm against Austin's most vulnerable residents.

The most documented case is Richard Muzquiz. After receiving an arson conviction in February 2024, Muzquiz went on to accumulate 15+ new cases — trespass (five times), assault, theft, resisting arrest, meth possession, attacking a cop. Delia Garza's County Attorney office declined to prosecute him at least four separate times after that arson conviction. Three additional cases were dismissed, twice with "diversion to community-based services" — which is bureaucratic language for turning a dangerous, repeat offender loose with a pamphlet. His most recent documented incident: trespassed on a woman's lawn, spat in her face, then injured a cop's arm while resisting arrest. Meanwhile, critics and a report circulating in public discourse allege that Jose Garza's DA office has dropped thousands of felony charges in his tenure — violent cases, sexual assault cases, weapons cases — though the full primary source for that count was not independently verified for this issue. A shelter operating near the Sixth Street entertainment corridor has drawn widespread complaints from residents and visitors about the sidewalks being overrun with people visibly intoxicated on narcotics. One user on X directly tied the drug enforcement failure to Jose Garza's office.

This is not an abstract policy debate. The data is moving in one direction: straight up. Elderly injury offenses, four times higher than a decade ago, are the direct output of a system that processes the same repeat offenders in revolving loops while the people who run that system face no consequences. Austin deserves elected prosecutors who are actually afraid of crime, not afraid of prosecuting it. If you are elderly in Austin right now, the people whose job it is to protect you are choosing not to.

Sources: @AustinJustice on elderly offenses, @AustinJustice on Muzquiz / Delia Garza, @mattforney on Sixth Street shelter, @marlon_brennan on Jose Garza felony dismissals

Upcoming Events

  • Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band at Moody Center. The Boss brings his "Land of Hope and Dreams American Tour" to Austin — Sunday, April 26 at Moody Center, Austin's only Texas stop on the 2026 run.
  • UT Austin Builder's Bullpen — Inaugural Startup Pitch Competition. UT Austin is launching its first-ever Builder's Bullpen pitch event, $5,000 prize on the line for early-stage founders; date and venue details via @UTAustin on X.

Feature #2

Intel Joins Terafab: The Chip Moonshot Just Became a Real Project

Two weeks ago, we covered Musk's Terafab announcement. Now it has a partner — and the story is more interesting than the original headline. Intel officially joined Terafab on April 7, 2026, with Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan hosting Musk at Intel's campus the weekend prior. Intel's stated role: "design, fabricate, and package ultra-high-performance chips" — a full-stack foundry commitment, not a component deal. The target remains 1 terawatt per year of compute capacity, split across two facilities at the Giga Texas North Campus in Austin: one dedicated to powering cars and humanoid robots, one for AI data centers operating in space. Tesla (FSD, Optimus) and SpaceX/xAI (satellite AI infrastructure, model training) are the anchor customers. Intel stock rose more than 2% on the announcement, per Reuters; TechCrunch reported closer to 3%.

The analytical key here is what this partnership resolves. During Tesla's earnings call, Musk openly questioned whether anyone could actually build these fabs — "Can someone else build these things? I mean, it's very hard to build these things." Intel answers that question directly. Intel has the semiconductor fabrication expertise and the existing construction infrastructure (currently building two fabs in Arizona as part of a $20 billion investment) that Musk's companies do not. For Intel's part, this deal is arguably as important as it is for Terafab: Intel Foundry posted a $10.32 billion operating loss in 2025 and has been desperately hunting for the kind of anchor customers that would justify its manufacturing buildout. It just found two of the most consequential ones on the planet. The Tesla North Campus permit — filed March 13 with Travis County — covers 5.2 million square feet of new space, with an initial 2-million-square-foot R&D facility. Ground clearing is already underway north of the existing Gigafactory.

The production targets are ambitious but grounded in specific engineering milestones: 2nm chip production starting in 2027, with initial capacity of 100,000 wafer starts per month. Terafab's own framing — "close the gap between today's chip production and the future's demand — a future among the stars" — is unusually direct about the scope. For context, the entire global high-end chip output today is roughly 20 gigawatts annually; Terafab's 1-terawatt target is a 50x gap, per secondary analysis. Whether Musk and Tan close it is the most important industrial question in Austin right now. SpaceX, which recently merged with xAI, has also confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO — meaning the Terafab anchor customer could be a publicly traded company before the first chip rolls off the line.

Sources: Reuters, TechCrunch, The Verge

Weird Austin

  • BBQ-sushi fusion is apparently a real genre of restaurant now in Austin. Aaron Franklin-caliber technique applied to high-end sushi and Japanese ingredients — either the most inspired idea in Austin food history or a war crime, depending on your priors.
  • Casey's is invading Central Texas with plans to challenge Buc-ee's dominance on its home turf. The Midwest convenience chain is expanding to Killeen and the broader Central Texas corridor, which means Buc-ee's — the spiritual home of Texas road-trip culture — is about to face an actual competitor from someone who takes gas station food seriously.

The Exit

One Thing

The public safety story in today's issue deserves more than one read — elderly injury offenses at record highs, a named repeat offender, two elected officials on the hook. Share it.

  • Forward this to one Austinite who should know about the Garzas and what's happening on the streets
  • Reply with what you think — I read every response and the best ones shape future coverage
  • Share on X or wherever you live online

Thanks for reading The Austin Daily News. Stay sharp out there.

Was this forwarded to you? Subscribe here to get it every day.

Keep Reading