Free Republic

After approximately eight hours perched atop the Southwest Key building, a protester finally came back to ground level and into police custody Wednesday night. The woman, who garnered national attention in July 2018 by climbing the Statue of Liberty as part of an immigration protest, was spotted in Austin on Wednesday performing another protest. Therese "Patricia" Okoumou, 44, climbed Austin's Southwest Key building surrounded by police and EMS officials. Seventy officers were on the scene throughout the day, straining police resources in the area. Southwest Key is a local contractor that houses immigrant children who are detained at the border....

A man arrested and charged nearly two years ago on one count of invasive visual recording was sentenced by a judge Tuesday to 10 months in state jail. In March 2017, the man used his cell phone to record women changing their clothes in the dressing room at the Forever 21 store in Barton Creek Square Mall. According to the affidavit for his arrest, Martin Ammerman, 42, had more than 60 videos and 100 pictures of women in various stages of undress on his phone when Austin Police encountered him. He bonded out of the Travis County Jail shortly after...

AUSTIN, Texas — Deep in the heart of Texas is an artery that's been clogged for decades. According to the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, the portion of Interstate 35 that runs through downtown Austin is the third-most congested highway in Texas. About a quarter of a million cars in the Austin area use it daily. Gabrielle Guevara, a New Orleans native who works as a nurse at the Austin Cancer Center in Georgetown, drives on I-35 every day. She describes her commute home as "frustrating." "When I first moved here in August, I thought it was going to be about...

Austin police arrested a semi-nude woman who was pleasuring herself at two street-level patios Tuesday afternoon on Congress Avenue in downtown Austin, court documents said. The woman, 26-year-old Dovie Nickels, has been charged with indecent exposure and was in Travis County Jail on Wednesday with bail set at $3,000, court documents say. Two officers, responding to a complaint from the JW Marriott Austin hotel around 5:20 p.m., encountered Nickels across the street, sitting alone at a patio table at Second Bar + Kitchen in the 200 block of Congress Avenue, according to an arrest affidavit. When an officer approached, she...

Georgetown, Texas is a town of about 70,000 residents north of Austin. In 2012, the city committed to moving its energy grid to 100% renewables, a combination of wind and solar. Ever since then it has been touted as a model for the future and was even featured in the sequel to Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth. But it turns out Georgetown residents aren’t thrilled with how things are working out in their town. When Georgetown committed to renewables it bought enough that it could cover peak summer usage plus a little extra for future population growth. It locked in 2012...

Amidst live music, tech startups and Sixth Street revelry, there's another bustling community thriving in the ATX. With a little boost from the mainstream success of "RuPaul's Drag Race," Austin has become a hot spot for another generation of artistry -- drag queens. Now, fans of the art form are hitting the streets in droves to become a part of the Austin drag community. From nightly shows on Fourth Street and Red River all the way to Brunch with the "Boys" at Alamo Drafthouse, now it seems you can find a drag show on any given day. To help you...

The Austin Municipal Court and Downtown Community Court will conduct a Warrant Amnesty Program for those with active warrants from February 1 through 28. People who resolve active warrants will have fees waived, although they must contact the court to take advantage of this program. Under the program, officers will not be sent out to take defendants into custoday and those who come to any municipal court or community court location will not be arrested.

A small wedding business in Austin is taking a huge blow due to the government shutdown. Lorelei Starbuck, owner of "Elope in Austin" says federal employees trying to get married through her company have had to back out because of the lack of money. Starbuck says her business has seen a 50-percent drop in calls and inquiries in the last two weeks. The slow bookings have impacted everyone that takes a part in the wedding including caterers, officiants, photographers, and florists. “It's going to take some time to rebuild the business we've lost. But it will definitely impact our bottom...

Hundreds more jobs -- this time non-tech -- are coming to Austin. Auto insurance company Progressive announced Thursday that it plans to create 1,000 jobs in Austin as part of a national hiring push to add 10,000 workers in 2019. The new Austin positions will be in sales, customer service and claims at Progressive’s contact center, which is off East Ben White Boulevard. The center is the company’s main bilingual service facility, and some of the positions will be for workers who speak English and Spanish.

Recently re-elected in November, 2018, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is taking scofflaw counties and cities to court. The subordinate government entities refuse to conform to a reform of Texas gun law. In 2015, the Texas government passed an open carry statute. The statute went in effect on 1 January, 2016. Part of the statute was to prohibit subordinate units of Texas government, such as cities and counties, from infringing on the carry rights of legally armed Texans.  Specifically, the number of official "gun free zones" were reduced.  Gun free zones were generally forbidden in government buildings. There were...

A Downtown Austin alleyway along Red River known to attract crime will be getting a physical barrier to keep people out of it. On Wednesday, city staff with the Economic Development Department presented the Downtown Commission with some of the complaints about the alley from business owners. The city is now searching for a contractor to put up a fence that’s “at least 10 feet” high at the front end of the alley way along Red River and at the back end along Waller Creek... “That alleyway needs to be shut down, it should have been shut down over five...

On Thursday, the Travis County District Court ruled that the City of Austin, Texas, violated the law by barring handguns in City Hall and assessed a nine thousand dollar penalty against the city for the violation. The concealed carry of handguns has been legal in Texas for decades and open carry for Texas’ concealed handgun license holders became legal on January 1, 2016. In the January 17, 2019, ruling, Judge Lora J. Livingston explained that the Plaintiff was able to show that open carry was refused on April 4, 2016, April 6, 2016, April 12, 2016, July 1, 2016, July 29,...

Republicans claim a secret document reveals a Hillary Clinton plot "worse than Watergate" – and they're getting a big boost from Russian bots On a day like Friday, with a shutdown looming and DACA in the balance and Chuck Schumer huddling with President Trump in the White House, you might logically expect right-wing Twitter to be blowing up – but not, necessarily, with the seemingly unaccountable hashtag that's dominated the platform since Thursday evening: #ReleaseTheMemo. But then again, you might not logically expect American conservatives to work in concert with Russian state propagandists and Twitter bots – though by now,...

An Austin woman who collects litter along central Texas trails and streets hits a milestone on Saturday, when she'll log her 500th "trash hike" in a year and a half. Julie Sondecker started her mission in May 2017 after a trip to the Barton Creek Greenbelt. "Basically just found a bunch of trash, and it just kind of got me fired up," Sondecker said. "It really irritated me to find so much trash in one of my favorite places." The hiker talked to KXAN Thursday, completing her 499th hike around Lady Bird Lake, reusable mesh trash bag in hand. That...

Williamson County commissioners are set to vote Tuesday on an incentive deal that would pay back 65 percent of property taxes to Apple over 15 years so that the tech giant could expand its operations in north Austin. Apple announced Thursday that it would spend $1 billion to build a second campus in Austin and create 5,000 new jobs. The proposed site for the 133-acre building is located on the Williamson County side of the city on an undeveloped property near Parmer Lane and McNeil Road. According to the proposed contract shared by Williamson County Friday, the incentive deal would...

27-year-old Zachariah James Gonzales is charged with arson... The residents said Gonzales' brother was currently in jail and is the boyfriend of the current renter of the B unit. They said Gonzales had become increasingly difficult over his stay there, and would "babble on" about people trying to "get him."... The woman renting the B unit also stated that Gonzales' had been "talking crazy...jibberish."... He told officers he was in the living room with two men cutting up firewood and "talking about sacrificing souls." He told investigators he didn't want any part of that, so he left. He also told...

Now that three men have been found dead near water in Downtown Austin in recent months, social media posts have speculated the deaths could be related, but Austin Police say there’s no evidence of that... Police are still awaiting toxicology reports on some cases but confirmed none of the recent deaths have been connected, stating some were simply just accidents or overdoses. Recently, 25-year-old Martin Gutierrez was found dead near Lady Bird Lake after disappearing on Nov. 19. He was last seen during a night out on Rainey Street. In October, 25-year-old Christopher White was found dead in the Colorado...

Apple announced Thursday that it will open a new campus in Austin, Texas, where it estimates about 15,000 jobs will be created across a variety of fields including engineering and finance. The tech giant said in a statement that it would spend $1 billion to build the campus in north Austin, at a location less than a mile from existing Apple facilities. A 133-acre facility will initially employ 5,000 workers, the company said, adding that the planned expansion is predicted to make Apple the largest employer in the city. “Apple is among the world’s most innovative companies and an avid...

An Ecstasy pill found in a child’s hamburger wrapper lead to the arrest of three Sonic Drive-In employees. On Friday, a manager of the SONIC in Taylor is facing charges of Possession of a Controlled Substance, Delivery of a Controlled Substance, and Endangering a Child.According to the Taylor Police Department, the pill was discovered during a family outing to pick up dinner at the SONIC Drive-In located at 1700 N. Main. “The 11-year-old daughter was opening the hamburger for her 4-year-old brother. It was a kid’s meal,” said Henry Fluck, Chief of Police in Taylor. But within seconds, the girl...

Capital Metro voted on Wednesday to continue offering students free rides on the transit system. The summer pilot program, Kids Ride Free, is now permanent. Students from kindergarten to 12th grade can ride by bus or rail at no charge... The estimated lost fare revenue is $250,000 to $300,000. But Capital Metro thinks building lifelong transit habits will pay-off in the long run.