Month: April 2024

9th & Congress: Winners & Losers – April 26, 2024

Post author By Sherry Sylvester
Post date April 26, 2024

Every Friday morning at 8:30AM, I discuss the week’s Winners & Losers on the Cardle & Woolley show on Austin’s 1370 Talk Radio. It’s a lightning round with Jim Cardle, Lynn Woolley and me that runs the gamut from public policy and political trends to sports and culture in Texas, America and the world. We just finished a jam-packed week in Texas. Here’s list of Winners & Losers for April 26.

The biggest Winner of the week is University of Texas at Austin President Jay Hartzell who showed college presidents across the country how to make it clear to fact-challenged students who is actually in charge of taxpayer funded academic institutions. As soon as the Palestine Solidarity Committee announced they were going to take over the campus, Hartzell said very clearly, “our university will not be occupied.” He followed up with the list of rules governing peaceful protest on campus and warned students if they violated the rules, they would be arrested. They did and they were.

The protests at the 40 Acres also generated the top Losers of the week, including the American Association of University Professors (AAUP at UT) which has petitioned the Faculty Council for a “Vote of No Confidence” against Hartzell. The Faculty Council Executive Committee said they are “gravely concerned.” If the elites at UT go after Hartzell, he should treat it as a badge of honor.

Austin’s uber-progressive State Senator, Sarah Eckhardt, who texted Hartzell to complain the Texas Dept. of Public Safety had been called to the UT campus is also on the Losers List. Hartzell responded that he’d asked for DPS help because the campus police could not manage the protest alone. We know this because the Senator sent copies of their text exchange to the media. Hopefully, Hartzell won’t bother to communicate with the Senator via text going forward.

It’s not fair to pick on the Austin American-Statesman by adding them to the Losers List since, as I wrote earlier this week, pretty much all Texas media is deeply embedded in the left-wing narrative on the war in Gaza and everything else. In case you missed my newsletter, you can read it here.

That said, if you want to see an analysis of the war in Gaza that is completely devoid of the Israeli perspective or any concerns about anti-Semitism, take a look at this Statesman “explainer” on why the students are protesting. The “explainer” also includes no information on the links between UT’s Palestine Solidarity Committee and the Committee for Justice in Palestine and its reported links to Hamas.

Originally, Thursday’s protest at UT Austin was going to focus on the DEI ban, but the Palestine Solidarity Committee convinced whoever decides these things that going after Israel was more important. The protest of the firing of DEI employees at UT who violate the Senate Bill 17 ban against segregating students by race and gender is currently scheduled for April 29 – but who knows.

Another big Winner this week is Texas Governor Greg Abbott who has made it clear for months that every Texas university should make protecting Jewish students a priority. That’s the difference between living in the Lone Star State and living in New York.

Abbott also gets more kudos for Operation Lone Star’s success in shutting down the flow of migrants across our southern border. San Diego is now the top spot in the country for arrests of people entering the country illegally. And for those keeping score on the hypocrisy of so-called “Sanctuary Cities,” officials from Denver visited El Paso this week looking for ways to dissuade illegal migrants from coming to the Mile High City.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis makes the Winners List for telling President Joe Biden that Florida schools will ignore his latest move to expand Title IX, the historic protection for women’s sports. Under Biden, Title IX will now include men who say they are women and vice versa, which is one reason Biden is on this week’s Losers list.

There are a few other policies that also landed the President on the list. First, Biden said he’d repeal the Trump tax cuts if he’s re-elected. Then, while New York City was engulfed in campus riots and House Speaker Mike Johnson showed up to denounce anti-Semitism, Biden went into the Virginia woods and made an Earth Day commercial with Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, praising the Green New Deal. Then, his own press, meaning the New York Times, went after him, for “systematically avoiding interviews and questions from major news outlets”, noting that his refusal to talk to the media sets a very bad historic precedent. Finally, his wacky story that his uncle was eaten by cannibals in World War II has created an international incident and soured relations as New Guinea protests being disparaged by the charge that their country is home to people eaters.

Texas Public Policy Foundation makes the Winners List for bravely going after off-shore wind turbines and making a difference. New York State announced they are shutting down several wind power projects. TPPF made it clear from the beginning that they weren’t just tilting against windmills!

In Sports News, Tyler Guyton was selected by the Dallas Cowboys in the NFL Draft last night. Tyler played at Oklahoma, but we are going to forget that. He’s from Manor.

Could go on, but we gotta stop. Listen to Winners & Losers on the Cardle & Woolley show every Friday morning at 8:30 AM on 1370 Talk Radio in Austin. You can listen live online here.

Sherry Sylvester is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and the former Senior Advisor to Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick.

Sign up to receive this in your inbox every week at www.texaspolicy.com/9thandCongress.

Follow me on X @sylvester1630 and follow my podcast, the Sherry Sylvester Show on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Sherry Sylvester Show

The Sherry Sylvester Show | Episode 26: The Making of A Classic with Martin Jones

Post author By Sherry Sylvester
Post date April 25, 2024

TPPF’s Sherry Sylvester sits down with Emmy nominated producer Martin Jones to discuss his recent collaboration with the Texas Public Policy Foundation and our leading filmmaker Stephen Robinson to produce “The Making of a Classic.” The latest episode in the Forging Texas series is about a race film that was filmed in Dallas in 1941 entitled “The Blood of Jesus,” which was written, directed and starred the legendary Spencer Williams. It was the first Texas film to be selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

Listen to the Sherry Sylvester Show on Apple or Spotify.

Subscribe to the 9th & Congress newsletter.

9th & Congress

Texas Media Covers DEI Like NPR

Post author By Sherry Sylvester
Post date April 22, 2024

Conservatives weren’t surprised by National Public Radio (NPR) Senior Editor Uri Berliner’s recent whistle-blowing account showing how NPR is actively involved in pushing a progressive agenda. Berliner detailed how the taxpayer-funded news outlet simply stopped asking questions and instead took a partisan side on most issues. During the pandemic, NPR declared that to suggest that COVID-19 might have started as a lab leak was racist, so it didn’t interview anyone who believed what finally was found to be true—COVID-19 most likely originated in a lab.

NPR did not cover reports that Hunter Biden’s laptop was anything other than Russian misinformation because, as one of his colleagues told Berliner, “it would help Trump.”

And in 2020, after the George Floyd murder, Berliner noted that rather than investigating charges made by Black Lives Matter that so called “systemic racism” drives every aspect of American life, NPR simply accepted the BLM premise as a given and reported on everything from law enforcement to housing to the economy with the assumption that virtually everything is rooted in “systemic racism.”

Such directives are hardly limited to NPR. Systemic racism in higher education has never been questioned by the Texas press, and coverage of Senate Bill 17, the DEI ban, has been predicated on an NPR-like “no questions asked” directive from the beginning.

Immediately after the bill went into effect, the Austin American Statesman’s overview of the implementation allowed the opponents of the bill to define the issue—the Texas House Democratic Caucus, the Senate Democratic Caucus, the NAACP, the Mexican American Legal Caucus, and LGBTQIA+ all agreed that the lack of resources for DEI initiatives creates “a void in addressing systemic inequalities and fostering an inclusive learning environment for all students.” These advocates did not say how DEI addresses such inequalities, and the reporter didn’t ask.

At the end of the news report, she includes a 7-month-old statement from the author of the bill, Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe:

“With this bold, forward-thinking legislation to eliminate DEI programs, Texas is leading the nation, and ensuring our campuses return to focusing on the strength of diversity and promoting a merit-based approach where individuals are judged on their qualifications, skills, and contributions. What sets SB 17 apart from other proposals is that the legislation delivers strong enforcement with mandates to return Texas colleges and universities to their core mission—educate and innovate.”

There’s a lot to unpack there, as Creighton’s statement challenges everyone else who is quoted in the Statesman’s news report—but the reporter doesn’t unpack it.

That’s because she’s following another directive from the NPR playbook. In addition to pursuing stories that focus on “racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse [and] Israel doing something bad,” reporters were directed to put out stories that show “the dire threat of GOP policies” (my italics).

The “Dire Threat of GOP Policies”

Throughout the debate, passage and implementation of the DEI ban in Texas, the press has portrayed it as a malicious Republican initiative.

After the firing of DEI employees at UT, the Texas Tribune makes it clear Republicans are to blame:

“Republicans have become increasingly critical of the culture at higher education institutions. [UT President Jay] Hartzell and other university leaders must balance the concerns of the students and faculty who breathe life into their campuses, and Republican leaders that provide critical funding that keep the lights on.”

An Austin American Statesman editorial screams: “The Harsh Consequences of The Texas GOP fervor to crush DEI.” It follows a previous editorial calling the anti-DEI ban “a Republican war on academic freedom” and still another decrying Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s “attack on diversity politics.”

The opening line of a Houston Chronicle story reads, “as Republicans attack diversity, equity and inclusion programs on college campuses…” while the Dallas Morning News makes the partisan divide clear in a February news story noting that DEI bans similar to the Texas law are popping up in dozens of states, while Democrats are standing up against them.

Despite the unshakeable fidelity of the Texas press to the narrative, support for the DEI ban is not particularly partisan. The Texas Public Policy Foundation conducted a statewide survey earlier this month asking voters if Texas universities “should create special programs for black, Hispanic and gay students to help them fit in and succeed in college” or if “all students should be treated the same at Texas universities without special programs for black, Hispanic and gay students.” Almost 70% of voters responded that all students should be treated the same, regardless of race or sexual preference. That included 51% of African Americans, 63% of Hispanics and 73% of Anglos.

The Rise of Feelings Over Facts

When Berliner’s boss, Kathleen Maher, responded to the allegations of bias at NPR, she never said he was wrong. Instead, she said he had hurt everyone’s feelings with his “disrespectful” and “hurtful” comments. The elevation of the relevance of feelings over facts is one of the most frightening things that is happening in journalism today, and Texas media coverage of DEI is riddled with it.

A Texas Public Radio story on the firings at UT reported a student was “devastated” and “felt pretty betrayed” by the actions following the DEI ban. Again, the story provides no clue about why this student’s feelings were newsworthy.

Instead of digging into the facts of DEI programs, some news outlets like KVUE simply found a couple students who said they were sad DEI offices were closing and reported that. One student inexplicably said, “This is just [the state of] Texas … Texas does not want us here. Texas has never wanted us here.”

That is a very strong allegation, but we have no idea what she’s referring to since the reporter asked no follow-up questions.

KXAN reported the feelings of two journalism students at UT who were distraught about losing funding for their student group. One student said she came to UT “with a certain expectation of being, you know, supported and validated and to have spaces where we can be like, fully loved, right?” It is not clear whether that is a realistic expectation for college, even among Generation Z.

The Texas Tribune called UT’s Multicultural Center the “beloved” Multicultural Center so often in news reports that when a national outlet picked up the story they also used the “beloved” adjective before the building’s name. The question “beloved by whom” was not answered by either outlet.

Some outlets garbled hard facts as well as feelings. KVUE reported it was told over a thousand people had protested the firings at UT, but outlets that actually covered the protest gave 200 as the crowd count. For perspective, there are about 51,000 students at UT Austin. The number of people who were let go was also a moving target. News reports ranged from over 40 to almost 60 in a dozen news reports. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) at UT published a list of 62 people, but so far no media outlet as taken the trouble to follow-it up.

The Houston Chronicle pulled in its data team to report that minorities and women were most impacted by the anti-DEI program layoffs at the UT: “Black staffers were disproportionately affected, making up nearly a third of the cuts while accounting for just 7% of the total university staff, excluding tenured faculty. Roughly three-fourths of the employees let go were women, though they make up just 55% of the total staff.”

The Houston Chronicle doesn’t say why it used the official number of 49 from UT instead of the list of 62 of those laid off from AAUP at UT. It also failed to ask any questions about these numbers. For starters, if only 7% of UT staff are black, how many of them are working in DEI programs? If the answer is most of them, isn’t that a red flag that should be addressed? Similarly, if over half the staffers at UT are women, how many of them are relegated to DEI programs, compared to other departments at the university? Also, a quick look at UT’s website from last year indicates that at least 150 people were working on DEI efforts. Why were only 49 (or 62) of them fired?

Of course, those questions just dance around the big one—why has black enrollment continued to stagnate at under 5% at UT despite millions invested in DEI?

Creighton will hold hearings with the leadership of the state’s universities next month where he will undoubtedly ask for answers to some of these questions, although it is not likely the media will report them. Instead, you can bet reporters will characterize the hearings as one more example of the “dire threat of Republican policies.”

Texans of all races oppose DEI on Texas campuses because they understand it is not the evolution of racial integration or the civil rights movement. The ideology of DEI refutes those constructive movements as “oppressive.” DEI’s goal is re-segregation—not equal treatment under the law, but the creation of what’s been called “hyper-race consciousness” that fuels division and distrust. To see exactly how absurd this “hyper race consciousness” looks in action, note that a leader of the opposition to the DEI ban heads what is called the UT Austin’s Queer Trans Black Indigenous People of Color Agency. It’s not clear what kind of “agency.” The reporter didn’t ask.

Sherry Sylvester is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the former Senior Advisor to Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick.

Winners & Losers

9th & Congress: Winners & Losers – April 19, 2024

Post author By Sherry Sylvester
Post date April 19, 2024

We have to shift the focus off Texas for a minute to declare that the week’s big winner is Israel. The weekend attack on Israel directly from Iran finally made it clear to foggy thinkers in both America and the world that what is going on in the Middle East is a war against Western Civilization. Israel didn’t “take the win” as the U.S. administration advised after it fended off the weekend attack. Instead, it fired back last night.

Shortly after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, two of my colleagues at TPPF, Chuck DeVore and Erin Valdez, along with Rabbi Dan Ain, discussed Iran’s role in the conflict and other issues. Six months later, almost nothing has changed. You can view the panel here.

The biggest losers of the week are Texas kids, who will continue to be able to find pornography in public school libraries after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a Texas law that would have required booksellers to rate books for sexual and violent content—just as movies are rated. The American Library Association, along with Texas librarian groups, falsely called the law a “book ban.” They celebrated the ruling and recently announced support for the most banned books in the country which include “All Boys Aren’t Blue” and “This Book is Gay.” “Gender Queer” is at the top of the list. If you haven’t read it and wonder if it belongs in a public school library, read my review here.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott is a winner for being named to Time’s list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. Although the left-leaning magazine called it a “stunt,” they could not ignore the fact that Abbott showed the country and the world the true impact of an open border when he began busing illegal immigrants to so-called “sanctuary cities” in the north. Abbott successfully changed the narrative on illegal immigration from a border state concern to a top priority in many of the nation’s largest cities.

Former President Donald Trump also made it to the winners list for his visit to a Harlem bodega after his court date in New York City this week that drew crowds and cheers. Following up on his successful visit to a Chick-fil-A in Atlanta last week, Trump again demonstrated that he knows more about how the media works than almost anyone—including the media.

There’s lots for conservatives not to like about Google, but it made the Winners List this week for firing 28 employees who staged a sit-in at Google’s New York and Sunnyvale, California offices to protest a Google computer contract with Israel. A great quote from Google CEO said Googlers need to be “more focused in how we work, collaborate, discuss and even disagree.”

Texas property taxpayers continue to be big losers as they bankroll the cushy salaries of public school superintendents. Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, outside Houston, always tops the list. Their superintendent hauls in $546,000 a year, one of eight Texas superintendents who make close to a half million annually. Another 81 make more than $300,000. It might be easier to swallow if these same superintendents didn’t constantly show up at the Texas Legislature, hat in hand, insisting their schools are underfunded.

University of Texas at Austin students and faculty also made the Losers List for demanding that UT officials roll back the firing of almost 60 DEI officers by staging a campus protest. Fewer than 200 people out of 52,000 students showed up for the protest. The spokesperson was the head of UT Austin’s Queer Trans Black Indigenous People of Color Agency who said her group was not happy with the direction the university is going. But I’m betting the taxpayers of Texas who put $53 billion into higher education last session are ok with it.

Two more winners. Uri Berliner, a Senior Editor at National Public Radio, resigned this week after being sanctioned by NPR for pointing out that the outlet is biased and has lost the public’s trust. Berliner’s expose was not really news. NPR hasn’t had the public’s trust for years. In fact, I admit I giggled when Berliner reported that he took the time to check the voter registration of almost 100 of his colleagues in Washington, D.C. and was shocked to learn that all of them were registered Democrats. NPR’s CEO Katherine Maher, apparently no fan of free speech, didn’t try to make a case that NPR is unbiased. Instead, she called Berliner’s expose “hurtful and demeaning.” U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., is pushing to defund NPR so taxpayers don’t have to fund this nonsense.

Finally, Shaquille O’Neal makes the Winners List for refusing to join the grievance chorus lamenting that women’s basketball stars including Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, who were just drafted into the WNBA, make only a fraction of what NBA players do. Shaq rightly says that fans need to show their support. The bottom line is that men’s basketball makes lots more money than women’s basketball. When that changes, salaries will change. Want to support the WNBA? Buy tickets, buy fan gear, watch the games!

Listen to Winners & Losers on the Cardle & Woolley show every Friday morning at 8:30 AM on 1370 Talk Radio in Austin. Listen live online here.

Sherry Sylvester is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and the former Senior Advisor to Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick.

Sign up to receive this in your inbox every week at www.texaspolicy.com/9thandCongress.

Follow me on X @sylvester1630 and follow my podcast, the Sherry Sylvester Show on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

In The Media

Texas Holding Universities Accountable on DEI

Post author By Sherry Sylvester
Post date April 15, 2024

This commentary was originally published in Townhall.

Texas Longhorns were stunned when the news broke that the University of Texas at Austin had fired as many as 60 employees connected to so-called “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” programs. A week prior to the firing, Texas Senate Education Committee Chairman Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, had alerted Texas universities that he would be calling them to the Capitol in May to provide an update on their progress in ridding Texas campuses of DEI.

With the support of Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Creighton wrote the strongest anti-DEI legislation in the nation, and his letter reminded university leaders that failure to comply with the law could ultimately affect their funding.

DEI is the acronym for “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” a deceptively named race-based ideology that divides people into two groups—oppressors, who are mostly white people, although increasingly Jews and Asians are included in the oppressor group—and victims, who are African American, Hispanic or gay. Sometimes women are included in the victim group, though rarely white women. Victims also include those who are suffering from gender dysphoria.

DEI advocates have been working for more than a decade to re-segregate university campuses in Texas and across the country so “victims” aren’t required to interact with “oppressors” in classes and activities. Many Texas universities have segregated graduations for Black students and Hispanic students. “Lavender graduations” are held for gay students.

Arguing in favor of DEI programs, a student at the University of Texas at Austin, where only 5.5 percent of students are African-American despite two decades of DEI programs, said, “I don’t feel like I go to a (predominately white institution) because I’m always around my Black friends”

Imagine if a white student boasted, “I don’t feel like I go to a racially integrated university because I only hang out with my white friends.”

There has been massive blowback on Texas campuses following the passage of Senate Bill 17. The Austin-American Statesman reported that both students and faculty are rattled, exhausted and confused. DEI has infiltrated every aspect of university life, because it seems administrators have been allowed to put forward almost anything in the name of DEI without assessing the impact on students or its relevance to the educational mission of the academic institution.

For example, in a move that harkens back to the “Whites Only” signs before the Civil Rights Act, in the name of DEI, at least one flagship university established separate study rooms in the library for only LGBTQ students. When the library was crowded, other students were required to sit on the floor—whether the separate study rooms had people in them or not.

Students at Texas A&M lamented that when the so-called “Pride Center” closed down, there would be no place for women students to get binders to smash down their breasts so they looked like men. But administrators at the University of Texas at Dallas bragged that they were able to keep their “transition closet” open to provide cross-dressing outfits and supplies for students who believe they are the other gender. The officials insist they are now using “transition” as a broader term.

When the University of Texas announced that it would change the name of the Gender and Sexuality Center to the “Women’s Community Center,” it stated its mission was to provide “a place for Longhorns of all genders to connect, find resources, and get support around experiences of intersectionality, community, and gender solidarity.”

“Longhorns of all genders?” Clearly, they just didn’t get it. Leaders of the Women’s Community Center are among those who are being let go. Other campuses have also been slow to respond.

An official at Texas A&M was caught on tape saying that DEI programs were simply being “rebranded.” At the University of Texas at Tyler, an administrator said they were getting around SB 17 by “being creative.” At Texas Tech, an administrator said DEI programs were now all operating under the Campus Access and Engagement program.

Sen. Creighton made clear in his letter to university leaders that none of this is permissible under the law.

These frantic administrators who are clinging to DEI seem unaware that the biggest indictment against it is that it doesn’t work. A British study is the latest to reveal what we have seen in Texas—DEI makes no difference in increasing the recruitment of minority and marginalized students or improving their academic outcomes or career opportunities. In Texas, shutting down racially divisive and ineffective DEI policies wasn’t a suggestion—it is Texas law that could cost them their funding.

Winners & Losers

9th & Congress: Winners & Losers – April 12, 2024

Post author By Sherry Sylvester
Post date April 12, 2024

Every Friday morning at 8:30 a.m., I discuss the week’s Winners & Losers on the Cardle & Woolley show on Austin’s 1370 Talk Radio. It’s a lightning round with Jim Cardle, Lynn Woolley and me that runs the gambit from public policy and political trends to sports and culture in Texas, America and the world. You can listen to the segment with everybody’s comments by clicking the 8:30 a.m. segment here.

For the week of April 8 to 12, unfortunately my list begins with the powers that be in Washington, D.C.

The U.S.’s ever-weakening support for Israel escalated this week when President Joe Biden put out his own call to Hamas for a six-week ceasefire. Not sure what happened to the “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” principle, but whatever. The president’s bid to give Hamas a chance to reload didn’t even pretend to be linked to the release of any hostages. Hamas rejected the U.S. offer and America is now busy making it clear to the world that our support for Israel is more than a little mushy. Add that to the news that administration-induced inflation that continues to trend upward at 3.5% impacting not just food and basic necessities, but insurance and car repairs. Mortgage rates are at 7%! Then there’s the administration’s continuing attempts to pander to younger people with a student loan bailout that has a floating price tag of somewhere between $76 billion and $500 billion. The cost to every taxpayer is estimated at over $3,500.

Well, maybe not every taxpayer if Dallas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, R-Dallas, gets her way. She suggested this week that Black people be exempted from paying taxes as a back door to racial reparations. That really terrible idea has earned her a place on the Losers List.

But let’s not plunge into a negative spiral. There were lots of winners this week, including Texas, where the number of millionaires in the state has increased 47% since 2021. Texas’ conservative formula of low taxes, reasonable regulation and fair courts continues to make our great state ground central for prosperity.

In a related win, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick issued his interim charges for the next legislative session, which include a number of initiatives that underscore our conservative principles and ensure that Texas will continue to lead the nation in job creation, business innovation, productivity and growth.

Chick-fil-A was a big winner this week when it became a visual confirmation of the latest findings of a new Wall Street Journal poll showing former President Donald Trump’s continued increasing support among African Americans. Amidst a flurry of Trump’s buying free milkshakes for the house, an African American woman proudly told the former president, “I don’t care what the media tells you, we support you.”

Another big winner this week was Pope Francis, who declared transgender surgery a violation of human dignity, making the moral high ground official, for anyone who had doubts. The Pontiff’s move comes as the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) announced that it is banning men from women’s sports—a big win for women athletes at smaller schools. In what should be a new spirit of inclusivity, the NAIA announced that anybody can play in men’s sports—real men, fake men, even women who think they are men.

Of course, South Carolina won the NCAA Women’s Basketball championship on Sunday, drawing millions more viewers for the big game than the men’s final. It was marred only by its coach, Dawn Staley, who earned a spot on the Losers List by saying before the game that anyone who “feels like a woman” should be able to play in women’s sports. South Carolina Congresswoman Nancy Mace called Staley out on it, asking how she would feel if she’d been beaten by a team that had a male player on it. Perhaps Mace was thinking that some guy could block Staley’s MVP, the 6’7” Kamilla Cardoso. The average height in the NBA is 6’6”. The WNBA height average is 6’. Mace rightly called Staley’s statement “absolute lunacy,” earning her a spot on the Winners List.

Other Weekly Winners:

Dan Crenshaw who called out Tucker Carlson for his latest insistence that the U.S. should stop helping Israel because it is killing Christians in Gaza.

Uri Berliner, a long time editor at National Public Radio (NPR), who reported in the Free Press this week how NPR went woke and lost its audience. Similar to James Bennet’s piece in the Economist on the New York Times late last year, Berliner details the process of journalists going from reporters to activists who push a politically correct ideology instead of facts. He talks of being ignored when he suggested NPR should stop calling Florida’s ban on sex education for preschoolers the “Don’t Say Gay” law since the legislation doesn’t even include the word gay. He said a respected NPR reporter told his colleagues they should not cover the Hunter Biden laptop story because it would “help Trump.”

Finally—Eclipse Losers

Central Texans only got a bit of an eclipse view because of the cloud cover, but Houston Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee shone a whole new light on the celestial phenomenon. Jackson explained to students at Booker T. Washington High School that the moon is a planet made up of gases. She has thoughts on the sun too, but her astronomical theories are too complex to explain. I encourage you to read the news report and then listen to her entire theory on the solar system here.

Meanwhile, Sunny Hostin, on The View, blamed the eclipse, the New Jersey earthquake and cicadas on global warming.

Sherry Sylvester is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and the former Senior Advisor to Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick.

Sign up to receive this in your inbox every week at www.texaspolicy.com/9thandCongress.

Follow me on X @sylvester1630 and follow my podcast, the Sherry Sylvester Show on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Sherry Sylvester Show

The Sherry Sylvester Show | Episode 25: A New Generation of Leadership with Caroline Fairly

Post author By Sherry Sylvester
Post date April 11, 2024

TPPF’s Sherry Sylvester sits down with Caroline Fairly, the GOP Nominee for Texas House District 87 (centered in Amarillo and encompassing Potter and seven surrounding counties) to discuss the issues facing Gen Z and possible solutions… if they have the courage to pursue them!

Listen to the Sherry Sylvester Show on Apple or Spotify.

Sherry Sylvester Show

The Sherry Sylvester Show | Episode 24: Women’s Rights Champion, Sen. Lois Kolkhorst

Post author By Sherry Sylvester
Post date April 8, 2024

“Live from TPS,” TPPF’s Sherry Sylvester sits down with Texas Senator Lois Kolkhorst to discuss the battles fought to protect female athletes in the state, and the new forces rising up against those efforts in the name of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

Listen to the Sherry Sylvester Show on Apple or Spotify.

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Winners & Losers

9th & Congress: Winners & Losers – April 5, 2024

Post author By Sherry Sylvester
Post date April 5, 2024

Here’s the highlights from my Winners & Losers list for the week of March 30 to April 5:

Big Winner of the Week: The University of Texas at Austin for firing an estimated 60 employees who worked in so-called “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (DEI) programs and projects at UT. Following up on a letter from State Senator Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, the Longhorns took the most visible action of any college or university in the state so far to follow the state’s anti-DEI law, Senate Bill 17 which requires that DEI be ended at taxpayer-funded universities.

Big Loser of the Week: The $20 an hour minimum wage requirement that kicked in in California. This job-killing (and likely small business-killing) proposal will hit young workers particularly hard and is another demonstration that the big blue state on the West Coast hasn’t a clue how the economy actually works.

Other Big Winners:

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak backed Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling’s pushing back on Scotland’s new expanded hate speech laws. The laws make it a crime to “misgender” a man who insists he is a woman but has no protections for actual women. Rowling has shined a spotlight on transgender criminals who have raped and assaulted women when they insist on being detained in women’s prisons. Sunak said it was not a crime to state the “actual facts of biology” and that his Conservative Party supports free speech.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott gets a big thumbs up for his trip to the Big Apple to speak to the New York GOP Gala. Abbott continues to get accolades for busing illegal migrants to sanctuary cities—exposing them as simply “sanctimonious cities” —and showing the rest of the country what it is like to be overrun at our southern border.

Fort Worth is now the home of Texas’ newest TV station, Merit Street, a national outlet that is anchored by Dr. Phil. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and State Sen. Tan Parker, R-Flower Mound, were on hand for the ribbon cutting.

More DEI Losers:

The NAACP is a big loser for urging black athletes to boycott the state of Florida because of Florida’s laws banning DEI. Florida also bans teaching gender and sexuality studies to young children. Early reports indicate most black athletes are ignoring the boycott. More than 35 African-American football stars have recently announced they are committed to Florida teams. If you recall, when the NAACP first issued its “travel warning” to African Americans for Florida last year, it was revealed that several of its executives actually lived in the Sunshine State. Here’s part of the NAACP’s statement:

“Please be advised that Florida is openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals. Before traveling to Florida, please understand that the State of Florida devalues and marginalizes the contributions of and the challenges faced by African Americans and other minorities.”

Another DEI loser is Harvard’s Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging which announced more segregated graduation ceremonies this week including a “Disability Celebration,” a “Global Indigenous Celebration,” an “Asian American, Pacific Islander, Desi-American (APIDA) Celebration,” a “First Generation-Low Income Celebration,” a “Jewish Celebration,” a “Latinx Celebration,” a “Lavender Celebration”—which refers to LGBT students—a “Black Celebration,” a “Veterans Celebration,” and an “Arab Celebration.” If diversity is the goal, why is everybody being segregated into homogeneous groups?

NCAA Final Four is the Final Big Winner of the Week – Both the men’s and women’s bracket have been full of really great games. There have been lots of busted brackets and no Texas teams made it to the final round, but this weekend’s lineup of men and women from both NC State and UConn, along with Alabama and South Carolina, will be big fun!

Sherry Sylvester is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and the former Senior Advisor to Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick.

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9th & Congress

State Sen. Brandon Creighton’s Bill Ending DEI Was Not a Suggestion

Post author By Sherry Sylvester
Post date April 1, 2024

Senate Education Chairman Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, has alerted Texas universities that he will be calling them to the Capitol in May to provide an update on their progress in ridding Texas campuses of DEI, as required by Senate Bill 17. With the support of Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Creighton wrote the strongest anti-DEI legislation in the nation and his letter reminds university leaders that failure to comply with the law could ultimately affect their funding.

To be clear on what Sen. Creighton is talking about, DEI is the acronym for “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,” a deceptively named race-based ideology that divides people into two groups—oppressors, who are mostly white people, although increasingly Jews and Asians are included in the oppressor group, and victims, who are African American, Hispanic or gay. Sometimes women are included in the victim group, though rarely white women. Victims also include those who are suffering from gender dysphoria.

DEI advocates have been working for over a decade to re-segregate university campuses in Texas and across the country so “victims” aren’t required to interact with “oppressors” in classes and activities. Many Texas universities have segregated graduations for Black students and Hispanic students. “Lavender graduations” are held for gay students.

Imagine if a white student boasted, “I don’t feel like I go to a racially integrated university because I only hang out with my white friends.”

There has been massive blowback on Texas campuses following the passage of Senate Bill 17. The Austin-American Statesman reported that both students and faculty are rattled, exhausted and confused. DEI has infiltrated every aspect of university life because it seems administrators have put forward almost anything in the name of DEI without assessing the impact on students and its relevance to the educational mission of the academic institution.

For example, in a move that harkens back to the “Whites Only” signs before the Civil Rights Act, in the name of DEI, at least one flagship university established separate study rooms in the library for only LGBTQ students. When the library was crowded, other students were required to sit on the floor whether the separate study rooms had people in them or not.

Students at Texas A&M lamented that when the so-called “Pride Center” closed down there would be no place for women students to get binders to smash down their breasts so they looked like men. But administrators at the University of Texas at Dallas bragged that they were able to keep their “transition closet” open to provide cross-dressing outfits and supplies for students who believe they are the other gender. The officials insist they are now using “transition” as a broader term.

“Longhorns of all genders?” The wacky notion that there are Longhorns who are some gender other than male or female, like the evil idea that it is good for black students to only hang out with other black students, are two of the prime directives of DEI that permeate campus culture. Instilling these beliefs and others rooted in critical race and gender theory is the mission of DEI at every level.

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published a survey of a number of Texas universities and found some leaders were taking comprehensive steps to adhere to Senate Bill 17. But change will not be quick.

Sen. Creighton made clear in his letter to university leaders that none of this is permissible under the law.

These frantic administrators who are clinging to DEI seem unaware that the biggest indictment against it is that it doesn’t work. A British study is the latest to reveal what we have seen in Texas—DEI makes no difference in increasing the recruitment of minority and marginalized students or improving their academic outcomes or career opportunities. Sen. Creighton is right to remind university leaders across the state that the mandate of SB 17 to shut down these racially divisive and ineffective DEI policies isn’t a suggestion—it is Texas law, and could cost them their funding.

Sherry Sylvester is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and the former Senior Advisor to Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick.

Sherry Sylvester

Sherry Sylvester

Sherry Sylvester

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