Every Friday morning, I join the Cardle & Woolley Show on 1370 Talk Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. Lots of ups and downs this week, but here’s who made the list:
WINNER: President Donald Trump – Texas Majority Doesn’t Doubt Him
Seconds after, President Donald Trump announced he was putting his reciprocal tariffs on a 90-day pause, the Dow quickly soared to 40,000 points, the S&P index went up by more than 9%, and the sun began to break through the clouds. When he clarified that he was adding 145% tariffs on China, the clouds returned as the market trended down again.
Almost 65% of Americans are in the stock market, most because they have to be, since companies rarely offer pensions anymore. Pundits have been saying for weeks that Wall Street doesn’t like uncertainty. Nobody does, but uncertainty is one of Trump’s strategic negotiating tools—and it seems to be working. The White House reports there are dozens of countries at the table and Trump and his team are negotiating new deals now while increasing the pressure on China. Even with the whiplash trading, the week is still a win for the President because he has changed the conversation about trade, not only in America, but across the world. Inflation is also down and his “big beautiful budget bill” passed the U.S. House this week.
For the record, the pollsters over at the University of Texas Politics Project found that here in Texas, the President’s GOP base —the conservative majority —are steadfast in their belief in him. The survey, which was conducted in late February, found that 68% of Texans, including 48% of Republicans, thought Trump’s new tariffs would increase prices. But if you dig into those numbers, you can see that over two-thirds of Texas Republicans believe the president is right, and tariffs will help the U.S. economy in the long run.
President Trump also had several legal wins this week. The Supreme Court allowed Trump to use the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged criminals, he got a green-light on his firing of 16,000 probationary workers, and a federal judge said this morning that illegals must register with the government.
WINNER: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Insists on Competent Elections
Sometimes it’s the little things. Gov. Greg Abbott has been the target of threats from the Democrats who run the U.S. House and the Texas Democrat Party, both of whom whined that he delayed in calling a special election to replace former U.S. Congressman and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, who died on March 5. Democrats charged that Abbott didn’t call the election in order to bolster the Republican majority in the House, which is now at five.
But, as Abbott points out, it is never a good idea to rush for an election in Harris County — the poster child for election incompetence. Among Harris County’s elections’ golden hits are the time they decided, during COVID-19, that it would be OK to keep the polls open all night and allow drive-through voting. Poll workers would simply walk out to the car and hand out ballots. Forget those silly ideas about secret ballots, or prohibitions against consulting with others about how you should vote. It was the worst idea since Texas’ old drive-in margarita stands.
In 2022, Harris County provided more examples of chronic ineptitude. They had voting machines that didn’t work, they failed to have voters registered, resulting in thousands more people voting than were registered, voters had to wait in long lines and then, they ran out of ballots. If that wasn’t enough, after the polls finally closed, it took them more than 24 hours to count the votes.
Abbott called the Special Election for Congressional District 18 this week, to be held Nov. 4. Democrats will have a vacant seat in the U.S. House until then, but that’s on Harris County. Sen. Paul Bettencourt has spent years passing election integrity laws to get Harris County on track. It is time that county election officials follow his lead.
WINNER: A-F Grades for Texas Schools
When former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush began public school reforms in Florida back in the 2000s, he frequently said that nothing had made a bigger difference in getting parents and communities engaged in education than giving the schools a grade — A-F — just like students get, based on how the school performs. Schools where students could read and do math got a better grade than schools where most children were failing to learn basic skills. Passing an A-F accountability ranking made sense to Texas conservative lawmakers back then, but efforts to get it passed were thwarted year after year by Texas teacher unions, which insisted that it wasn’t fair to hold a school accountable for performance. The unions said that students who got poor grades would be traumatized and predicted that all the wealthy schools would get good grades and all the poor schools would get bad grades.
Democrats and the teachers unions aggressively fought the A-F legislation over several sessions, but it finally passed in 2017 and the first A-F accountability rankings were released in 2018. Everybody, especially parents, loved them, and guess what? All the A-rated schools weren’t in wealthy districts and all the failing schools weren’t in poor districts.
In deep blue Democrat districts throughout the state, when a local school got an A, everyone showed up for the photo op, including lawmakers who’d fought tooth and nail against A-F.
However, a new day had not dawned. After COVID-19, the accountability rankings were dropped for a while, because schools were in such disarray. Then, as the Texas Education Agency (TEA) prepared to release the latest list, over 100 Texas school districts took them to Court to stop it. But this week a judge at the 15th Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the TEA and the A-F grades for schools should be coming out in the next couple weeks. If this report card is anything like what we saw in 2018, there will be surprises. Take a look. They will be posted here.
WINNER: University of Austin Wants Smart Kids
The very smart and always innovative people at the newly established University of Austin came up with a novel idea this week — they will automatically admit any student who scores 1460+ on the SAT, 33+ on the ACT, or 105+ on the CLT. Students will not get extra points if they write an essay explaining how a minuscule amount of indigenous DNA or their racial or gender identity gives them special insight into how the world works. They also won’t be able to cut the line by reporting how they spent their summer tracking threatened bird life at the shore or joining two dozen extra-curricular clubs their senior year.
If you open the UATX website, the words “DARE TO THINK” booms across the home page. In making their announcement on merit-based admissions, university officials said, “We care about two things: Intelligence and courage.”
UATX leaders called the current college admissions system “broken,” saying it rewards manipulation, not merit and too often comes down to identity group and connections. They don’t care about any of that. They just want to recruit smart kids.
LOSER: Men in Women’s Sports
There are a surprising number of people who advocate allowing men to participate in women’s sports, who frequently insist that men who think they are women represent only an infinitesimal percentage of the population. That may be true, but their impact on sports is not insignificant.
A United Nations report last year found that as of March, 2024, over 600 female athletes in more than 400 competitions lost more than 800 medals in 29 different sports. That was a year ago. Now it feels like we are seeing it every day. Just this week there was the inspiring fencer who refused to compete against a man and the disc golfer who followed her lead and walked off the course rather than play against a man. In England, the two finalists in the Ultimate Pool Women’s Pro-Series were men. Many female athletes, including tennis great Marina Navratilova, are outspoken in the fight to keep men out of women’s sports, but South Carolina Women’s Basketball Coach Dawn Staley, an icon in women’s sports, is not among them. Staley insists that men who say they are women should be allowed to compete in women’s games.
It’s petty on my part, but I admit Staley’s position was one reason I cheered on Sunday night when UConn walloped South Carolina in the national championship game.
LOSER: Democrats in Texas
The Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee announced this week that they will target U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz, R-Texas, who represents McAllen and Hidalgo County, in next year’s mid-term elections. De La Cruz defeated her Democrat opponent by 15 points last year, but Democrats seem to believe De La Cruz will be easier to beat without Trump on the ballot. De La Cruz supports Trump’s immigration policies — which remain enormously popular in South Texas. Meanwhile, almost every Democrat in the U.S. House this week voted against the SAVE Act, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, which will require voters show proof of citizenship before they can register. More than 80% of Americans support the requirement. With that record, what do Democrats think they can run on that will defeat De La Cruz?
WINNER: Nick Saban Nominated for Sports Emmy
Well, maybe he’s a winner. Nick Saban stunned the sports world when it was announced this week that he has been nominated for a Sports Emmy for his work on College Game Day after only a year on the show. Saban seemed to easily make the leap from coach to commentator, and College Game Day had its best year ever with Saban in the mix. Will keep you posted on the award.
LOSER: Buying College Sports
The Wall Street Journal published a story this week in which a financial analyst asserts that even though Florida defeated University of Houston on Monday to claim the NCAA national basketball championship title, if the teams were for sale, Florida’s value would be about $121 million, about a third as much as Duke is worth ($370 million). The fact that UofH beat Duke to get into the championship game is not a factor, either.
The analyst, Ryan Brewer, a finance professor at Indiana University, says he came up with his numbers by studying revenues and cash flows and making a financial projection about the team’s sustainability. He insists it’s no different than analyzing any other business. According to his data, UofH is valued at $81 million, far less than several Texas teams including the University of Texas, which didn’t make the tournament this year. Brewer puts UT’s valuation at $153 million. Texas Tech is at $102 million and Texas A&M is at $95 million. Brewer doesn’t explain why his list of women’s team valuations has national champion UConn at the top at $95 million and South Carolina, last year’s national champion, in the number two spot with $86 million.
What is very concerning about this analysis is the glib discussion of selling college athletic teams. This is a terrible idea. The current monetization of college sports, including new NIL rules, the transfer portal and the increasing domination of rich schools over poorer ones is not sustainable. It will funnel all the revenue to a few schools and dramatically narrow the field of competition to the universities that can afford to buy the best players. Because football and men’s basketball bring in more than 90% of the sports funding for universities, the impact will result in no funding for other sports like soccer and tennis and certainly women’s sports.
Happily, the Masters Tournament will be on this weekend, and we’ll undoubtedly have lots of glorious shots from the magnificent Augusta Golf Course to take our minds off the turbulent week.
Have a great weekend!
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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