Every Friday morning, I join the Cardle & Woolley Show on 1370 Talk Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. As the whole world watches to see President Donald Trump’s next step regarding Iran, here’s who made the list:
WINNER: President Trump’s Birthday Week
All but the totally deranged can see the positive impact of having a strong leader like President Trump in charge in the dangerously precarious situation we are currently facing. Even Europeans who don’t like his style see the value of having him at the helm. It is impossible to imagine how former President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris would have reacted to Israel’s attack on Iran.
Trump’s celebration of the 250th Anniversary of the U.S. Army was a big hit (see below) and the notoriously left-leaning 9th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled in his favor over California Gov. Gavin Newsom, holding that Trump has the authority to dispatch the National Guard to California.
Cruz is Right, Tucker Carlson is Wrong
In case you missed it, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, sat down with fringe-right bomb thrower Tucker Carlson this week to discuss whether President Trump should move forward with our bunker buster bombs and take out what’s left of Iran’s nuclear facilities.
There are lots of issues to debate here—including whether or not the bunker buster is adequate—but Carlson doesn’t care about that. His position is that Iran is not all that bad and the U.S. should mind our own business. Cruz rationally argued that Iran, the country that bankrolls Hamas and Hezbollah, and where “death to America” is the national slogan, should be stopped from developing a nuclear bomb.
Carlson, who has also praised the Russians for keeping Moscow so clean and has hosted Holocaust deniers and Nazi defenders on his podcast, attacked Cruz for supporting Israel. Carlson doesn’t appear to care that Iran’s prime directive is to destroy Israel, who they call the “Little Satan.” Guess who the “Big Satan” is?
Iran is not just engaged in an ancient regional conflict—Muslims against Jews—they are in a war to destroy Western Civilization. This is not Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. For Carlson to condescendingly suggest that the situation is more complex than a war over good and evil is simply wrong. President Trump has given them a two-week runway, but he made the key point succinctly this week: “Somebody please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson why Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon.”
WINNER: U.S. Supreme Court Ruling against Gender Affirming Care
Hopefully, the ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court this week will result in the disappearance of the insidious term “gender affirming care” from the American lexicon. In a 6 to 3 ruling, the justices affirmed the right of Tennessee to bar parents from giving their children puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and allowing them to undergo unneeded mastectomies and even castrations in an effort to change their sex.
That destructive mutilation is what “gender affirming care” is.
There have always been a tiny minority of people who suffered from gender dysphoria—believing they were born in the body of the other sex. Research continues to show that talk therapy is the most effective treatment for those individuals. However, over the last 20 years, the diagnosis has become far more common, giving the gay rights movement a new reason to raise funds after gay marriage was legalized and spawning a billion dollar industry of drugs and clinics across the nation to help children “transition” from one sex to another. According to an analysis by the Manhattan Institute, as many as 400,000 minors were diagnosed with gender dysphoria between 2017 and 2023.
TPPF took the lead in 2023 in helping pass Senate Bill 14, a law similar to Tennessee’s, which bans gender modification drugs and mutilation on minors in Texas. Now, 27 states have enacted similar bans—more than half—but the media is not likely to erase “gender affirming care” from its narrative anytime soon.
In this news report on the Supreme Court ruling in the Texas Tribune, note how the reporter defines gender dysphoria: “a medical condition related to the distress someone can feel when the sex they were assigned at birth doesn’t align with their gender identity.”
This distorted definition is diabolical, rooted in the unquestioned premise that sex is “assigned at birth,” instead of simply being reported based on reproductive organs. It also suggests that something described as “gender identity” is actually real.
At this point, I’d like to insert my regular appeal to the Texas media to please step out of the silo and read something cogent and fact based on the trans issue. This analysis by an expert at the Free Press would be a good start.
LOSER: No Kings March Proves There Are No Kings
A fake tweet was posted by somebody suggesting that Trump thanked all the No Kings protestors for making sure that no king took his place. He happily reported he is still the president.
Too bad it was fake, because, as a USA Today column pointed out this morning, the nationwide marches prove the point that democracy is alive and well in America. We don’t know how much the American Federation of Teachers spent to help promote the No Kings events, but they didn’t get much for their money. We got one more round of the usual low-grade street riots in Los Angeles, Seattle and New York, but it was mostly a big nothing burger. Meanwhile, the president’s parade in Washington, D.C., celebrating the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army, went off without a hitch. It got great reviews, even from critics at left-wing MSNBC who were shocked that there was no “dark, malevolent energy.”
WINNER: Conservatives are Happier
Data analyst Nick Silver may help explain that longing for “dark malevolent energy” from left-leaning MSNBC with some data he rolled out this week showing that conservatives are more mentally healthy than liberals. According to Silver’s data, something called the Cooperative Election Study, a 60,000 sample survey, found that “among people who report ‘excellent’ mental health, conservatives outnumber liberals 51-20. Liberals outnumber conservatives 45-19 among those voters who say they have ‘poor’ mental health.” There’s lots more detail including why men are unhappy with Democrats and why young women are just unhappy. We’ve seen findings like these before but Silver’s numbers are new. He talks about it all here on a podcast.
LOSER: New York City Will Get Leader It Deserves
With a week to go until the New York City mayoral election, the Big Apple is poised to select former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who many believe is responsible for the death of hundreds of elderly people during COVID-19, then trying to cover it up, or Zohran Mamdani, a proud socialist who is strongly anti-Israel, as their next mayor. Billionaire Michael Bloomberg has poured over $8 million into Cuomo’s campaign. Bloomberg, like many Jewish New Yorkers, is undoubtedly concerned that Mamdani has refused to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada.”
Brad Lander, who is also Jewish, and another of the 11 candidates for mayor, believes the phrase means “open season on Jews,” although he is hesitant to criticize Mamdani because he’s in third place. The Jewish population of New York City numbers 1.4 million—the largest Jewish community in the world outside Israel.
Meanwhile, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, are both backing Mamdani, so presumably they are OK with globalizing the intifada.
Naturally, New York City uses ranked choice voting in their local elections because … well who knows why. When New Yorkers go into the voting booth next week, they will vote for their top five choices for mayor. Does this system work for them?
It hasn’t yet. In the last mayoral election in 2021, they didn’t get the ballots counted for two weeks. The election is Tuesday. Can’t wait.
LOSER: California Leader Admits They Overreached on EVs
President Trump eliminated California’s electric vehicle mandate this week and a longtime leader of the California’s Air Resources Board admitted that the state only had themselves to blame for pushing to eliminate all fossil fueled cars in the state by 2035. Although Mary Nichols, who chaired the Air Resources Board for 17 years, doesn’t recant California’s anti-fossil fuel mantra, the admission that they over-reached is rare among Democrats these days—and it seems important to acknowledge.
LOSER: Jasmine Crockett Issues Nationwide Diagnosis
Compare that California reflection with Dallas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, who proclaimed that everyone who voted for Trump is “sick,” or “mentally ill.” Crockett told former broadcast anchor Katie Couric that:
“We’ve got a mental health crisis in this country because everyone, no matter how you affiliate yourself, should be against Trump, period. This is not partisan for me.”
Crockett, who has referred to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott as “Governor Hot Wheels,” also said that the only reason Trump was elected is because he is an “old white man.” So how do you define that “mentally ill” thing again?
LOSER: Oligarchy Tour Comes to Texas
Sen. Sanders will be in Amarillo on Sunday along with former Texas Congressman and frequently losing Democrat candidate Beto O’Rourke and Austin Congressman Greg Casar. Sanders had been drawing big crowds around the country warning people of the dangers of oligarchy, but enthusiasm seems to have cooled, with many of his fellow Democrats suggesting that he stop because nobody knows what “oligarchy” means. It will be fun to see how it goes in Amarillo.
WINNERS: Lakers, Caitlin Clark and the NBA
The Lakers sold for a record $10 billion this week, the most ever paid for any sports franchise, while WNBA star Caitlin Clark reaffirmed her star power. After Clark was out for five games with an injury, TV viewers declined, but proving that the “Caitlin Clark effect” is still magic, once she was back on the court, the audience returned.
Meanwhile, the NBA finals between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Indiana Pacers are all tied up at three games each. They will take it to Game 7 on Sunday night.
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.
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.
