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The 2026 Pro Swim Series, the first leg of the prestigious swimming competition, is set to begin tomorrow in Austin, Texas. This four-day event will showcase some of the fastest swimmers in the world as they compete in a variety of events, including new semifinal structures and updated prize money. Fans can look forward to comprehensive previews, live results, and multiple ways to watch the action unfold.

Why it matters

The Pro Swim Series is a critical stop on the road to the 2026 Olympics, with swimmers looking to qualify for national teams and secure valuable ranking points. The Austin event will also feature new event formats and prize money structures that could impact the competitive landscape and strategies of the top athletes.

The details

The 2026 Pro Swim Series in Austin will run from January 14-17, with preliminary sessions starting at 9:00 a.m. local time and finals kicking off at 6:00 p.m. local time. All sessions will be streamed live on the USA Swimming Network, and the finals on January 15 and 16 will also be aired on Peacock. The event schedule includes a variety of individual events, with the women’s and men’s 1500m freestyle, 800m freestyle, and 400m individual medley being the highlight distance races.

• The competition will begin on Wednesday, January 14 and run through Saturday, January 17.
• Preliminary sessions will start at 9:00 a.m. local time (CT) each day, with finals beginning at 6:00 p.m. local time.

What’s next

Fans can look forward to additional previews and analysis from leading swimming media outlets in the days leading up to the event, as well as live results and coverage throughout the four-day competition.

AUSTIN, Texas (KVIA) — A new partnership is helping provide revolutionary care for families as they wait in the hospital.

The Ronald McDonald House in Central Texas and Texas Children’s in Austin opened the first in-hospital Ronald McDonald House in the Central Texas region. The house includes nine family suites, a dining area, a lounge, complimentary laundry facilities, and a room for art and activities. Kitchen volunteers also provide meals.

The house provides a place for families to stay while their children receive care at Texas Children’s Hospital in Austin.

The first family to move into the house is from El Paso. Nathan and Yadira are currently waiting for the arrival of their daughter, Amelia. Yadira is currently nine months pregnant, and is set to give birth this week.

The family learned early in their pregnancy their daughter has omphalocele, a rare condition. It’s a birth defect of the abdominal wall, where intestines stick outside of the belly.

Her parents were referred to Texas Children’s Hospital because of the severity of Amelia’s case. After birth, Amelia will need close monitoring, specialized care, and eventually surgery.

The chief of surgery at Texas Children’s, Dr. Matias Burzoni, is in close contact with the family. He said both parents are still in good spirits.

“They have the best attitude I’ve seen in a long time. They’re extremely optimistic,” he told ABC-7 over a Zoom interview.

Following Amelia’s arrival, she will be receiving treatment at Texas Children’s, and her parents will be just steps away.

Dr. Bunzoni said this opportunity will be a game-changer for many families.

“We can chat with them any time during the day. They can come visit their baby any time during the day. And specifically when there are important decisions to be made, they are readily available,” he said.

He adds, the rooms are warm and welcoming. Meals and lodging are free to families.

“The fact that we have them just a few steps away from their kids makes a big difference. And that’s why I think the Ronald McDonald House is just so powerful because it really improves the outcomes of these babies,” he said.

Yadira and Nathan said they are grateful this place is available to them.

“It means a lot for us to be able to stay here because, you know, it takes away the final financial burden as well as the needs that our daughter will be needing,” Yadira said.

Texas is a land that revels in its idiosyncratic history and associated iconography. On bar signs, brand logos, T-shirts, and tattoo sleeves, the Western-outfitted cowboy and land-roping barbed wire feature heavily. These tangled symbols aren’t easily sorted politically, but when it comes to talking about the Texan past, more often than not, that past is associated with conservative, right-leaning political values. 

The resilient trail of leftist ideologies that David Griscom traces through the state’s history in The Myth of Red Texas: Cowboys, Populism, and Class War in the Radical South aim to trouble that assumption. The author’s debut work doesn’t craft an idealized ancestral politic that left-leaning Texans can saunter on home to, but instead lassos the many worker-led movements that’ve impacted Texas history into a traceable path, complicating simple assumptions about the Lone Star State and its people and crafting a loosely tethered intergenerational community of Texas radicals. 

In his pages, Griscom attempts to reassociate cowboy individualism with cowboy solidarity in the strikes of late 1800s, and the rural, tough-living pride of said barbed wire with property-hungry landowners that strangled the open range, despite resistance from fence-cutting cowpokes, farmers, and neighbors. 

Following these fence-cutters through the populist movement, labor unions, and socialists, Griscom drops in on different casts of characters each cut in the rugged shape of Texas who face variations of the same struggle. Though they differ in ideology and approach, these charismatic speakers and movement leaders grapple with the same temptations of political power and infighting. Griscom does not shy away from interrogating the pitfalls of these movements – particularly the racism and misogyny that manage to transcend solidarity more often than not – and the backstabbing dance of courting imagined moderates in a plea for reelection. The Brotherhood of Timber Workers and some German socialists prove to be exceptions to these common drawbacks, Griscom reveals. 

As staunchly as conservatives want to turn the wagon around, liberals can fix their eyes on the horizon too closely. In an introductory analysis of recent Democratic defeats in Texas, the writer argues that colloquial assumptions about history deeply impact contemporary campaigns and grassroots organizing. No modern movement is reinventing the wheel, and moving forward with a knowledge of the successes and missteps that came before could embolden today’s organizers. As Texas once led the country in socialist party sign-ups, the Houston chapter remains the organization’s largest branch and, as Griscom notes, the Texas AFL-CIO was the first statewide labor association to advocate for a ceasefire in Gaza. The legacy of collective movements and outspoken groups persists in Texas, even when the overarching narrative doesn’t celebrate them.

Unique though it may be, Texas is also something of a microcosm, a laboratory, and a weather beacon for the politics and culture that ripple throughout the United States – a fact that Griscom, a writer and podcaster for Jacobin and host of Left Reckoning, knows well. A return to the past has been the great call of the political right in America for the past decade, and its leaders have revised and reshaped that past to suit their current intentions. As Griscom writes, recalling Texas’ rich and undertaught liberalist history makes it “difficult for the GOP to remake the state in its own image completely.” As Texas leads the country in enacting conservative policies in education, reproductive rights, and voting legislation, it stands to reason that muddying its narrative can remind other states to look backward for ideas in imagining a radical future. 

Griscom is clear-eyed in his introduction about this 177-page primer being a cursory introduction to the history of leftist movements in Texas, much less the history of Texas politics as a whole. But for those who have felt excluded by the mythologizing of Texas’ past, it serves as a galvanizing read for further education and collective action. 

This article appears in April 10 • 2026.