Author: Sherry Sylvester

Every Friday morning, I join the Cardle & Woolley Show on Talk 1370 Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. While the congressional map wars continue and would-be candidates wait for the smoke to clear, here’s who made the list:

WINNER: Gov. Greg Abbott Goes After Muslim Extremists in Texas

After recent events in Michigan—and England, Gov. Greg Abbott continues to ramp up his efforts to ensure that Sharia Law gains no foothold in the Lone Star State. This week, the governor declared the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim Brotherhood foreign terrorist and transnational criminal organizations, prohibiting them from buying land. Yesterday, Abbott ordered the DPS to investigate both groups. The Muslim Brotherhood has spawned many organizations, including Hamas, and CAIR often serves as an apologist voice for Muslim violence, including following the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel. CAIR insists it is a civil rights organization, and it is suing Abbott for going after them, but comments by its leadership (including referring to Zionist groups as “enemies”) disproves that characterization.

Here at TPPF, we noticed that CAIR recently testified against the new comprehensive social studies curriculum. It prefers the vague and unstructured standards that are currently in place that have allowed misinformation and ideology to be leaked into what K-12 students study. Texans can be thankful that Abbott is making it clear we’re having none of that in Texas.

WINNER: TrumpRX & Jelly Roll

A great winner leading up to Thanksgiving is the news this week that country music star Jelly Roll has lost 200 pounds. The formerly very fat guy—he once weighed over 500 pounds – is another good sign that health is in and the whole “body positivity” propaganda movement, which declared that obesity is just a lifestyle choice, is over.

Much of this is due to the GLP-1 medications including Ozempic and Wegovy, which were designed to treat diabetes, but turned out to be the most effective weight loss drug in history so far.

The only problem is that the drugs are very expensive and so far, lots of the people showing big weight loss are movie stars and celebrities who can afford a medication that can cost over a thousand dollars a month—and is not usually covered by insurance.

President Trump announced last week that he intends to change all that. He calls it TrumpRX, and it will lower the prices of the drugs so that regular fat people can more easily afford them. Ozempic, the most expensive, would drop from $1350 a month to $350 a month in his plan—still pricey, but manageable. Currently, the medication is administered through shots, but oral versions are being developed, and Trump hopes to provide the initial doses at $150 a month.

The U.S. has more obese people than any other country in the world—74% of the country is overweight. If President Trump can pull this off, it could be more transformational than anything he’s done so far. Granted, world peace and securing the border are enormously important, but this is so much closer to home. Three out of four people are overweight, and Trump has a plan that could change that.

If he can pull this off, depending on the time line, he probably doesn’t need to worry about the mid-terms, and certainly can make sure Republicans keep the White House and everything else in 2028. Can’t you see a giant red graph chart on the White House lawn showing trillions of pounds lost? Make America Thin Again!

Winner: A College Degree Still Matters

A new report by Axios this week suggests that maybe we don’t know as much as we think we know. Texas is leading the way in bringing back campuses that that support open inquiry and debate. But nobody likes what is going on in higher education today, and we often hear that a college degree doesn’t matter much anymore.

Currently, only 20% of Republicans say a college degree is “very important,” compared to 43% of Democrats. Another 40% of Republicans say college is “fairly important,” but most people have had it with the astronomical costs, the woke culture and degree programs that don’t seem to line up with job opportunities.

But newly released census data reported by Axios and others shows that college graduates who are now 25 or older earn more than twice as much as their counterparts who are only high school graduates. According to the data, the median income of someone with at least a bachelor’s degree is $132,700, while a high school grad median income is $58,410.

Earnings for college-led households rose 6% over the past two decades, compared with a 3% increase for high school graduates.

That’s something to ponder as Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced this week that she is ready to shut down the U.S. Dept. of Education. She says that if the recent government shutdown proved one thing, it was that the bureaucrats at the Department of Education aren’t needed. Six weeks out, and nobody missed them.

LOSER: The Latest Jasmine Crockett Update

For those who are keeping a list, which includes me, the really dumb thing that U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas did this week was announce that her team had pulled together a more complete list of people who had taken campaign contributions from the notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including Mitt Romney, George Bush and the National Republican Campaign Committee. That’s not true, of course. It turns out Crockett and her crackerjack team did not consider that there might be more than one Jeffrey Epstein in America. In fact, National Review found over 300 in a quick search including almost a hundred in New York alone. Crockett’s team also neglected to check contribution dates, since several of her big expose’s charged Epstein, the sex offender, with donating to Republicans after he was dead. I often cringe when President Trump describes one of his enemies as being a “low-IQ individual,” but when he says it about Crockett, he clearly has a point.

WINNER: Walking Back EVs

California continues to deny a Politico report from a couple of weeks ago that they are pulling back on their plan to phase out gasoline powered cars by 2035. President Trump is trying to overturn the policy, but, while Newsom and his crew continue to talk smack about the White House effort, Axios is reporting that state regulators realize that their requirement that all cars be electric by 2035—which is now 9 years away—is not realistic or even practical.

California has been the spear carrier in banning gas-powered cars, and other blue states were looking for it to lead, but the fact is that electric cars aren’t affordable, particularly without the tax incentives to buy them, and there aren’t enough charging stations. Recall that Biden appropriated $7.5 billion to build hundreds of them across the country, but couldn’t manage to even construct one.

In more good news for our fossil fuel producing state, the VA announced this week that they are pulling the plug (get it?) on the $77 million Biden had allocated to put charging stations on military bases.

WINNER: Texas UIL Blocking Foreign Student Recruitment

While the whole country continues to look for ways to unravel what is happening to college football—and all college sports (see former college athlete and TPPF Board Member Cody Campbell’s analysis here), it turns out that the University Interscholastic League Legislative Council is taking steps to block foreign exchange students from participating in high school varsity sports in Texas.

One coach noted that rules regulating American kids from going from one school to another to play sports are very strict, but foreign students are now marketing themselves on social media, catching the eyes of coaches and being recruited to enter the country as exchange students to play.

Under the proposed rules change, foreign exchange students will still be allowed to play in sports—they just won’t be able to participate on varsity teams. The rule still has to be approved by Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath.

WINNER: Texas Emergency People

Former President Joe Biden did many dumb things, but one of the dumbest was when he accused Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick of not calling him back about disaster aid following Hurricane Beryl in 2024. Trying to make some kind of weird political point, Biden accused Patrick, who was acting governor at the time, of being unreachable even though he was in the state’s Emergency Operations Center for days, working alongside Biden’s federal FEMA employees.

The roar back from the Lt. Governor resulted in an unprecedented editorial from the Houston Chronicle where they admitting they had been wrong to believe Biden, and saying that Patrick was right and Texas is way ahead of FEMA. In addition to Lt. Gov. Patrick, the Chronicle praised the longtime director of the Texas Department of Emergency Management, Nim Kidd.

So it is not surprising that the Trump administration is now considering moving FEMA to Texas, at least partly because Nim Kidd turned down the FEMA job right after Trump was re-elected because he didn’t want to leave the Lone Star State. Nobody does. We’ll see what happens.

Gig’em, Wreck ‘em, Hook ‘em

In what may have been the best game anywhere this year (or any year), the maroon tribe over at Texas A&M managed to pull off the largest comeback victory in Aggie history, after being down 27 points to South Carolina at halftime. The Aggies are now 10-0 for the season, No. 1 in the SEC and at No. 3 in the national rankings.

Things didn’t go so well for the Longhorns last week, when another piece of the dream died. Even though the betting lines all favored Georgia over Texas going into the game, fundamentalist orange bloods—and many who are orange blood adjacent—believed that if the stars were aligned, the Longhorns could come out on top. But, of course, the stars were out of whack and Texas dropped 7 points, to No. 17 in the national rankings

Up in Lubbock, the Red Raiders of Texas Tech are No. 1 in the Big 12 and they share No. 6 in the national rankings with my beloved Oregon Ducks. Tech easily demolished Central Florida on Saturday after their big College Game Day win against BYU the week before.

Texas A&M will take on the unranked bulldogs of Samford (not a typo) University in Alabama on Saturday at 11 a.m. in College Station while Texas plays Arkansas in Austin at 2:30 p.m. Texas Tech isn’t playing this weekend.

WINNERS & LOSERS will be off next week for Thanksgiving, but in case you missed it, I want to share my story of what happened in the Massachusetts Bay that first Thanksgiving—complete with the socialism and the number of Indians that were actually at the big dinner.

According to [William] Bradford, not long after the Pilgrims landed in 1620, they found that the collectivity they had instituted in the colony bred “confusion and discontent and retard[ed] much employment” because men did not want to work without pay for other men’s families. And so, a little more than a year after the first Thanksgiving, they decided to divide up the land they had so that everybody had a share and could grow what they wanted. Productivity increased, and the colony began to prosper, attracting more and more immigrants and ushering in the great migration from England.

Read the rest of the article 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.

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Every Friday morning, I join the Cardle & Woolley Show on Talk 1370 Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. Now that the shutdown is finally over, three Texas football teams are in the Top 10 and the Northern Lights are blasting out all over the Lone Star State, here’s who made the list:  

LOSERS: How Did the Democrats Lose the Shutdown War?

It was great seeing the headline in the Washington Post proclaiming the Democrats had lost the shutdown battle after that newspaper spent 40 days proclaiming that the blue team was winning. Granted, the liberals at the WaPo predict that Republicans will ultimately lose on the health care issue, and maybe they will, but, in fact, nobody ever really understood what the Democrats were trying to prove.  

It’s no surprise Americans were confused. A report from the Media Research Center found that broadcast coverage of the shutdown almost exclusively favored the Democrat narrative. Fully 87% of news reports were pro-Democrat while only 13% focused on Republican talking points, including the fact that Democrats had voted in March to end the subsidies to Obamacare that they were now demanding be restored.

Using their own eyes, Americans could see despite the barrage of biased media coverage that the military weren’t being paid, until Trump paid them. The Democrats didn’t care. Then, after thousands of flights were cancelled because air traffic controllers weren’t being paid, Democrats still didn’t care. They didn’t even care when poor people lost their SNAP benefits. On Day 40, when the Dems announced they wanted to push on with the shutdown until Thanksgiving, the entire country roared back, “Noooooooo!”

After almost six weeks of shutdown, at a cost estimate of anywhere between $7 billion and $15 billion a week, eight Democrat senators heard them and broke the logjam. The majority of Democrat lawmakers are outraged at the defection of the eight and, as they try to regroup, most seem to think all their problems will be solved if they get rid of their minority leader, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, who couldn’t hold his caucus together and refused to endorse New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.

They have no idea why they lost.  

P.S. U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, gets a high five for being the only Texas Democrat to vote to end the shutdown.

WINNER: Dan Patrick Wins on THC Ban

The bill that ended the government shutdown was also a big win for Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick because it includes a ban on the THC products that the Lt. Governor campaigned for during the last legislative session. The budget bill that President Trump signed on Wednesday also caps the amount of allowable THC, the intoxicating compound found in marijuana and hemp products, at 0.4 milligrams. The ban will eliminate the sale of most edibles, which have been marketed to children.

The Lt. Governor got another win this week when his former opponent, Mike Collier, announced he will run against him for the third time. Collier is an accountant from Houston who is popular with political reporters, but he’s never caught on with voters. When Collier ran as a Democrat in 2022, Patrick defeated him by almost a million votes. This time he’s running as an Independent.

WINNER: Texas A&M Targets Woke Curriculum

The regents at Texas A&M established new regulations this week to require academic presidential approval of classes that “advocate” race and gender ideology to ensure that nothing is taught that shames any race or ethnicity. The guidelines also prohibit advocating gender ideology that is disconnected from the biological realities of sex.

The word “teach” was changed to “advocate” in the final version of the regulations, but that didn’t appease the A&M faculty, who insist they won’t be able to teach anything—including the Holocaust and World War II—under the new regulations.    

Offices pushing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs were closed down on Texas campuses in 2021, but weeding out DEI in the curriculum is much more difficult. Remember that the mission of DEI professionals, stated on their website, is to “engage in ongoing ways to incorporate alternative narratives in the curriculum and provide robust learning opportunities on the history of racism, colonization, and conquest on how higher education and other sectors of society have been complicit in maintaining systems of privilege.”

The new regulations at Texas A&M are designed to flush out those “alternative narratives,” and eliminate the “opportunities” to teach history as a singular reflection of systemic racism. Keeping in mind that a large percentage of the faculty at A&M shared that mission when they were hired and you can understand why they are pushing back so hard now.

If you want to know more about how progressive ideology permeates curriculum, take a look at this study of syllabi by three professors at the Claremont Colleges released this week from campuses around the country. They found that there is virtually no ideological diversity in course readings and lectures. For example, a book like “The New Jim Crow,” released in 2010, argued that mass incarceration of African-Americans reflects the same systemic racism as slavery. That book appears more than any other book in criminal justice courses throughout the country. Meanwhile, Dr. James Forman, Jr., a professor at Yale Law School, wrote “Locking Up Our Own,” which disagrees with “systemic racism theory” in “The New Jim Crow.” It appears in fewer the 4% of criminal justice classes, even though it won a Pulitzer Prize. The study authors argue that on this issue and others, including America’s policy toward Israel and abortion, college courses only teach the progressive side of the argument.

Senate Bill 37, passed last session in Texas, gives the power to monitor curriculum back to Boards of Regents and takes it away from faculty members whose track record is poor. Kudos to Texas A&M for hacking a path through this jungle. 

WINNER: The Spirit of Ronald Reagan

Reagan believed that our education system must be rooted in the “self-evident truths of Western civilization.” That’s the exact opposite of DEI, which is why it is especially fitting this week that TPPF presented Chancellor Brandon Creighton and House Education Chair Brad Buckley our Ronald Reagan Award for their work transforming education in Texas.

Both championed school choice and Education Savings Accounts which finally busted the teachers’ union monopoly on our public schools and will give parents the right to send their child to the school they believe is best.

Creighton, who has been selected as the incoming chancellor at Texas Tech University, is the author of Senate Bill 17, which ended DEI on Texas campuses and Senate Bill 37, which reformed university governance and curriculum reform (see above.)

The leadership of Creighton and Buckley has not only changed Texas education, it will change the future of our state going forward, unleashing the potential of millions of Texas kids.

LOSER: Wacky Democrat Candidates Update

Democrats had hoped to gain another U.S. Senate seat next year by finally knocking off Republican stalwart Susan Collins, R-Maine. Collins, a moderate who frequently draws the ire of President Trump, often leaves both sides angry up there in the Pine Tree State as she tries to represent all sides of that purple state. But a Democrat poll was leaked this week showed her likely Democrat opponent, Graham Platner, is not strong enough to beat her based on past statements on social media where he called himself a communist, denigrated the police and called white people in rural Maine “stupid” and “racist.”

You gotta wonder why they wasted money doing a poll.

LOSER: Wacky Democrat Candidates Update—Part 2

California State Sen. Scott Weiner is said to be the leading candidate to replace former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who announced last week that she is going to retire. One of Pelosi’s claims to fame is that she was a special guest on RuPaul’s Drag Race. Weiner also revels in his San Francisco drag queen base, and has floated the idea of adding “Drag Queen 101” to the K-12 public school curriculum.

Of course, drag queens aren’t trans, so apparently there was at least one voter in San Francisco who wondered where Weiner stood on the issue of men in women’s sports. Weiner provided a clear answer this week. In a town hall, Tish Hyman, a Grammy nominated singer, asked him to respond to this question:  

“As a lesbian woman who was attacked in the women’s locker room at Gold’s Gym this week by a self-identifying trans woman with a documented history of domestic violence, I’m deeply concerned about women’s safety in female-only spaces.”

Weiner replied that, if he is elected, he’ll make protecting all women, including men who think they are women, a priority. By all means, California, send this guy to Congress.  

WINNER: Olympics Look at Banning Men in Women’s Sports

In related news, this week the International Olympic Committee (IOC) indicated it is taking steps to ban men in all female sports—a move undoubtedly pushed forward after a man beat a woman’s face in during a boxing match in the last summer Olympics in Paris.  

The hero of the story appears to be Dr. Jane Thornton, director of medicine and science of the IOC, who said their research shows that anyone who goes through puberty as a male has permanent advantages over females, and it cannot be mitigated by hormone treatment. The plan is to have this all sorted before the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

WINNER: BBC Admits Doctoring Trump Jan. 6 Footage

Using the same tactics CBS used to try to make Kamala Harris sound coherent, the British Broadcasting Corporation in England admitted this week that they had edited Donald Trump’s speech to supporters on Jan. 6, 2021 to make it appear he had told the crowd to storm the Capitol.

An apology from the media is always news worthy—plus, the Director General of the BBC and the CEO of News and Current Affairs both quit, saying they were appalled at the lapse in journalistic standards and insisting it had never happened before.

President Trump threatened to sue them for a billion dollars if they didn’t apologize and retract the news report. The story is fun to watch because the Brits say things like “dodgy edits” as well as that funny way they pronounce the word “controversy.” You can view the story here.

LOSER: Gavin Newsom in Houston on Saturday

A couple thousand people showed up to see California Gov. Gavin Newsom in Houston on Saturday for a rally after his big redistricting win in last Tuesday’s election, which catapulted him to the top of the Democrat presidential ticket.

As noted last week, Newsom chose to speak in the Lone Star State while millions of Texans were cheering on either Texas A&M or the Texas Tech Red Raiders both of whom had defining games last Saturday. Newsom apparently doesn’t get how much Texans love football.

Not only did he show up in the middle of college game day—as mentioned, we have three teams in the Top 10, and that’s just among the flagships—but then he left to fly to an international climate change conference where they plot ways to get rid of fossil fuels, which we produce here, big time. Newsom just doesn’t get Texas.

WINNER: Christmas Cookies Ice Cream

They say its back by popular demand, but I am wondering where you go to actually slam your fist on the counter and demand that an ice cream flavor be re-instated—but that’s beside the point. The good news is that Blue Bell Ice Cream—which as we all know is based in beautiful Brenham, Texas—announced this week that Christmas Cookie flavored ice cream is back just in time for Christmas season. Of course, we haven’t gotten through Thanksgiving yet, but go ahead, stock up.

Gig ‘em #3, Wreck ‘em # 6 Hook ‘em #10

The No. 3 rated Texas Aggies are the heavy favorites in tomorrow’s game against South Carolina. Coming off what proved to be an easy victory over Missouri last week, they are playing at Kyle Field at 11:30 am. No. 10 ranked Texas has the tougher game against the No. 5 ranked Georgia Bulldogs. That game is in Atlanta at 6:30 Texas Time. Meanwhile, the Texas Tech Red Raiders, ranked No. 6, are coming off their smashing victory against BYU last Saturday, cementing their spot at the top of the Big 12 and pushing them into undisputed playoff territory. Everyone expects them to beat Central Florida tomorrow. The game starts at 2:30 p.m. in Lubbock.

Today is Day 14 of the YouTube TV/ESPN Split—manage however you can and 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.

Every Friday morning, I join the Cardle & Woolley Show on Talk 1370 Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. The dust is still setting after Tuesday’s election and I’m stuck in an airport dealing with a cancelled flight, so here’s how it looks to me:

Election Night: Texas Wins, Country Loses

The good news of the night was all in Texas. All 17 Constitutional amendments passed—property taxes, water infrastructure, dementia research and everything else. Austin voters had the good sense to turn down tax-hiking Proposition Q and, in San Antonio, voters defied their left-wing mayor and voted to support things they like—the San Antonio Spurs and the Rodeo.

In the Senate District 9 Special Election in North Texas, the casino gambling crowd was bombed back to the Stone Age, despite pouring millions into the race. There will be a run-off in late January between a Democrat and a Republican for the right to serve the remainder of the term of Acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock, but the district leans Republican. That special election runoff will happen just days before early voting begins for the real election, so it will be one of those frequent voter confusion exercises.

In the rest of the country, Democrats and their progressive left-wing alliance ran the table, taking both of the gubernatorial races that were up, electing a socialist as mayor of New York City and passing the California redistricting plan that will add enough new Democrat house seats to cancel out the new Republican house seats we added in Texas.

Granted, those victories were all in blue territory, but they were also the result of high inflation, the longest government shutdown in history and a shifting narrative on immigration. Voters blame all that on President Donald Trump, whether he deserves it or not. Conservatives who insist that the problem was that Trump was not on the ballot may be forgetting what a great advantage it was to have the blithering Kamala Harris at the top of the Democrat ticket. The only relevant question in politics is: “compared to what?”

One big loser of the week was CNN’s pollster Harry Enten who declared just last week that the Democrat party was “in the basement,” and the Democrat brand was “garbage.” He’s supposed to be unbiased, so it’s hard to chalk up his big miss to wishful thinking, but for the rest of us, it’s back to the battle stations. Being right about the issues is never enough.

WINNER: Pelosi is Finally Quitting

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced this week that she will retire in 2027 after serving 39 years in Congress. That gives us lots of time to compile our lists of the worst things that former Speaker Pelosi has done to the American people. For me, her decision to tear up President Trump’s first State of the Union address when he handed it to her in 2020 marked an awful historic moment, which was memorialized on TV. Pelosi said it made her feel “liberated.” Democrats frequently call Trump a threat to democracy, but what could have been a bigger threat than that petulant, hateful action symbolizing a rejection of one branch of our government by another?

Pelosi is one of 62 Democrats in Congress who are over the age of 70–which is why the young socialists are challenging so many of them. It’s a generational war as well as an ideological one.

WINNER: Fingers Crossed—Texans Go to Supreme Court on Pornography

Llano County, Texas removed 17 pretty clearly pornographic books from their public libraries in 2021. Calling it a “book ban,” a group of left-leaning residents sued them in federal court, saying their First Amendment rights had been violated.

A federal judge ruled against Llano in 2023 but this spring, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the county’s removal of certain books was government action not related to the First Amendment. Here’s the case.

Calling it government censorship, the plaintiffs have asked the Supreme Court to take the case and it looks like they have agreed. The controversial books include “Gender Queer,” a comic book-style memoir that has become the poster book for lefties who insist that children should be exposed to pretty much everything. It was in hundreds of schools in Texas. I read it so you didn’t have to.

My Review of Gender Queer is here. I read it before the numbers of kids identifying as non-binary sharply declined early this year, making it clear it was some kind of contagion, undoubtedly exacerbated by books like this. Let me know what you think.

LOSER: The Shutdown—Day 37

I wrote last week that air traffic controllers will ultimately decide when the government shutdown will end, but now it looks like the Democrats think the chaos is benefiting them politically, so they want to keep the shutdown going.

I am in Denver trying to get to Lubbock for Texas Tech’s game tomorrow. I will survive either way, but that doesn’t mean air traffic controllers shouldn’t be paid, and that air traffic is snarled across the country. This is a political game of chicken and it is not likely to end well for the party in power. The Senate is voting this morning so perhaps we’ll see some movement — but the signs aren’t good.

WINNER: Wreck ‘em & Gig ‘em

ESPN’s College GameDay will be streaming live from Lubbock on Saturday morning as the Red Raiders of Texas Tech take on BYU. GameDay starts at 8 a.m. so if you are not in Lubbock, tune in (you may be watching online since YouTube is fighting with Disney) to see if you see anyone you know. Kick-off is at 11 a.m. The No. 3 ranked Aggies are playing Missouri tomorrow afternoon at 2 p.m. Texas has a bye week. California Gov. Gavin Newsom is speaking in Houston at noon on Saturday. Guess he isn’t a college football fan. Not surprised.

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.

Every Friday morning, I join the Cardle & Woolley Show on Talk 1370 Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. Today marks Day 31 of the government shutdown and it’s been 12 days since the big heist at the Louvre. In this special Halloween edition, here’s who made the list:

WINNER: Three More Years! Three More Years!

It won’t stop the “No Kings” crowd, which spend long and hateful days insisting that President Donald Trump is a dictator who will never leave office. But the President tried to put the issue of his running for a third term to rest this week when he told reporters that he won’t be a presidential candidate in 2028. Flying back from Asia on Air Force One he said: “…it’s pretty clear I’m not allowed to run.”

There are plenty of reasons for the president to have been cagey about a third term. Lame duck presidents simply aren’t as powerful as those who have the potential of another term ahead of them, but that pesky 22^nd Amendment is what it is.

The whole third term thing had become a distraction, and it’s good that Trump has taken it off the table, although the New York Times insisted yesterday that Trump’s plan to become a dictator is still moving forward.

In ruling himself out, Trump again reminded the media and their Democrat allies that Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are coming up behind him, along with a half dozen other strong leaders, while they have virtually nobody on their bench, unless they can convince “The Rock” to run (see below).

WINNER: TPPF Sues Dallas on Death Star Violations

One of the many things Democrats have done in Texas to make sure conservatives keep winning elections is to hamstring the state’s big blue cities with dramatic “virtue signaling” regulations that reduce Texans’ freedom. To undo what has become a mess, conservatives passed House Bill 2127 in 2023, the so-called “Death Star” law, which, despite its name, only means that cities and counties “must rein in their regulations on Texas business that do not conform with state law.” The goal is to address overregulation and ensure that if it is against the law in Dime Box, it is against the law in Dallas, too.

Big D didn’t seem to get it, so this week, my colleagues at the Texas Public Policy Foundation sued the city of Dallas on behalf of several plaintiffs, charging that 83 local ordinances on a wide range of issues, ranging from minimum wage and labor regulations for city contractors to recycling guidelines to restrictions on drilling and producing oil and gas, did not comply with state law. These are the kind of job-killing regulations that have stifled growth and bankrupted coastal blue cities like San Francisco and New York for decades.

Dallas has also piled on a patchwork of noise and airport parking regulations, including their own rules for Uber and Lyft and a host of DEI-based laws, which they describe as “protections” for LGBTQ+ people, apparently unaware that it is illegal in America to discriminate against anybody in hiring, promotion and firing.

In filing the suit, TPPF Senior Attorney Matthew Chiarizo said, “Cities don’t get to pick and choose which state laws they follow…this lawsuit is about protecting Texans’ freedom to live and work without being smothered by layers of needless local regulation.”

WINNER: Light at the End of Shutdown Tunnel?

We can all hope that National Review columnist Jim Geraghty had the quote of the week on the shutdown when he said:

“We might as well amend the Constitution to make it official: A federal government shutdown remains in place until the nation’s air traffic controllers get tired of it and stop showing up to work.”

Geraghty notes that over half of Americans take at least one commercial flight a year and people begin to get anxious, then angry, when there are ground stops and flights start piling up like they did today because there weren’t enough air traffic controllers on the job.

The pilots are angry too and, like the air traffic controllers, they have called on the Democrats to vote for the GOP proposal to end the shutdown. The largest union of federal workers—which has always been part of the Democrat base—has also called on Democrats in the Senate to agree to the Republican compromise and end the shutdown, but the Democrat leaders in the Senate are refusing to budge.  

The Hill is reporting what they call “shutdown fatigue” in Washington, which could mean Geraghty is right that it all depends on the air traffic controllers.

Amid all the shutdown noise, CNN’s Caitlin Collins caught House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in a big lie this week when Jeffries said that Republicans were refusing to talk with Democrats about shutdown issues. Collins noted that Jeffries had told her he had just talked to House Speaker Mike Johnson on the phone. When Collins asked who had called whom, Jeffries admitted that the Speaker had just phoned him to talk about a possible solution. Busted.

LOSER: Democrats Own “Fake But Accurate”

The term “fake but accurate” has deep Democrat roots, first employed by Texan pseudo-journalist and Democrat activist Dan Rather, back when he anchored the CBS News. In 2000, when George W. Bush was running against Al Gore for president, Rather ran with a story that Bush had falsely claimed to have served in the Texas National Guard.

According to Rather’s story, the former president never showed up for duty. Rather provided the nation with documents on CBS News that appeared to confirm the story.

In only a couple days, the documents were proved to be fake, but Rather, along with many of his colleagues in the media and most Democrats, continued to push the story, insisting that even though the documents were fake, the story was accurate. Rather was fired and the term “fake but accurate” will always be his tagline.

After the Democrat nominee for mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, made a speech this week commiserating with his fellow Muslims about how much they suffered following the September 11 attacks, he pulled out a story from his personal life that also turned out to be “fake but accurate.” Mamdani said that his aunt had been afraid to ride the subway after September 11 because she got so many dirty looks, and she was afraid of violence.

Turns out his aunt wasn’t in New York at the time. Then Mamdani said it was actually his cousin, who is now deceased, but there’s no evidence anyone in his family was in New York City after the 2001 terrorist attack. Still, in a city that lost almost 3,000 people on September 11, Mamdani has doubled down on his insistence that Muslims were victims too, insisting that even if his story was “fake,” it is “accurate.”

LOSER: Democrats’ Brand Sinks as “The Rock” Beats Kamala

Granted, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg get bigger numbers, but a report on the betting markets shows that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson edges out former Vice President Kamala Harris in support for the next Democrat presidential nomination. Johnson got polling support from 46% of voters a few years ago, and I’m betting most Americans are like me and loved him when he played the “Tooth Fairy,” in that kids’ movie. He’s an independent—says he has voted for both parties from time to time—so he might not even think of himself as a Democrat these days.

Especially after a new report came out this week from a group on the left stating that the messages that most people identify with Democrats, like protecting the rights of LBGTQ+ Americans and fighting climate change, only resonate with white liberals. If The Rock has a different message, like securing the border or fighting crime, he might quickly zoom past Newsom, Buttigieg or Ocasio-Cortez. Or perhaps he’ll decide to ditch the Democrats altogether. I’m going to watch that “Tooth Fairy” movie again to see if there are any clues there.

LOSER: The French Are as Dumb As We Thought

No one will ever have to suffer through the condescending attitudes and haughty sighs of the French when traveling in Europe again, now that we know they couldn’t even protect the crown jewels—including the necklace Napoleon gave to his second wife, Maria Louise. French security had so few digital cameras on the outside of the most famous museum in the world that the thieves were literally able to scale up the side of the building and climb through a window.

According to a New York Times report, police stationed near the Louvre were blind to the break-in, and the thieves—who turned out to be pretty sloppy too—knew how to get inside the glass jewelry cases because the museum manual told them what kind of disc grinder drill to use.

Fans of the old Pink Panther movies who have watched this for a week or so and assumed that a real-life version of Inspector Jacques Clouseau was somewhere on the job are going to be disappointed. Authorities think they have the thieves, but so far they don’t have the jewels.

LOSER: More in the “What’s Wrong with England?” Series

This week, the UK Edition of Glamour Magazine has nine men who think they are women on the cover. No actual women are pictured. There’s no more to say on this. Here’s the photo.

Happy Halloween—The Truth about the Salem Witch Trials

A few years ago, I wrote a piece about the Salem Witch Trials, making it clear that in the 17^th century, if you were a woman—or even a witch—the best and safest place in the world was in the American colonies. TPPF put it in the Cannon Online today, but here’s my personal backstory about the piece:

In the old Plymouth Colony General Court records, it is reported that in 1661 one of my ancestors, Dinah Sylvester, accused one of her neighbors, Goodwife Holmes, of witchcraft. Dinah said she saw Mrs. Holmes transform herself into a bear. This was 30 years before the more famous Salem trials, but the Plymouth Court quickly dispensed with the case. They got Dinah to admit she was lying. She pleaded guilty to perjury and was fined. Then the Holmes family sued Dinah for defamation, and Dinah lost that case too, which resulted in even bigger fines and court costs. She also had to issue a public apology.

Making a false allegation of witchcraft was very serious and nothing good happened to Dinah after that. Her fiancé broke their engagement and, unlike her brothers, whose life stories I can trace, it’s not clear exactly what happened to her—it’s all here in my Halloween op-ed.

Wreck ‘em, Hook ‘em

Texas A&M’s No. 3-ranked Aggies have a bye week, while the Longhorn are playing Vanderbilt in Austin. Vanderbilt moved up in the charts after beating Missouri last week in one of the most exciting games on Saturday, but I’m sure the Longhorns are ready for them. Texas Tech is at No. 13 and they play at Kansas State tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully, those of us who watch football on YouTube TV will be able to see it all.

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.

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Every Friday morning, I join the Cardle & Woolley Show on Talk 1370 Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. We are now officially in the second-longest government shutdown in U.S. history and the only thing Congress agrees on is that nobody trusts anybody enough to even begin to make a deal. Here’s who made the list this week:

LOSER: The “No Kings” Thing

It has never been clear what the “No Kings” message is supposed to mean. Of all the criticisms that could be hurled at the government, surely “No Kings” is among the most nonsensical. If we had a king, the government would not be shut own, MSNBC would be off the air and Elon Musk would be building a nuclear power plant on the moon.

Last Saturday I was visiting family in Portland, Oregon, where I passed a man on the street wearing a huge inflatable chipmunk suit. He was on his way to the No Kings march, carrying a sign that read “Constitutional Rights.” For him? For chipmunks? Seriously. What does “No Kings” mean?

WINNER: University of Texas at Austin & the Trump Compact

The University of Texas at Austin is reportedly still considering President Donald Trump’s “Compact for Academic Excellence, which gives universities the first shot at billions in federal research funds if they agree to take steps to transform the ideological culture that has dominated on university campuses for the past couple decades. It’s a pretty good deal, but so far, the University of Arizona, Brown, Dartmouth, MIT, the University of Pennsylvania, USC and Virginia have all given the president a thumbs down. Vanderbilt and UT are still considering the offer. Here is what those 7 universities that rejected Trump’s Compact are refusing to do:

Admit students based on merit – Trump’s Compact requires using standardized tests to determine who gets in. It prohibits using race, sex, ethnicity, or gender identity to admit students to the university, give them financial aid or hire anyone for a job. All those things are already illegal, of course.
Remain neutral on political and ideological issues. For taxpayer funded universities it seems like an easy call to just not take a side. Trump’s Compact also prohibits punishing or belittling conservative ideas on campus. Why just conservative ideas? Because no one is making fun of what progressives think. A survey conducted by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) among faculty members at 55 major universities found that only 20% of faculty members said a conservative would be welcome in their academic department. Almost 80% said another liberal would be welcome.
Commit to a five-year tuition freeze for American students. Spending is out of control at American universities. Administrative bloat has persisted throughout the pandemic and the protests. Between 1976 and 2018, full-time administrators and other professionals employed by academic institutions increased by 452%, while student enrollment grew by 78%. Capping tuition until they get a handle on that seems like a reasonable ask.
Cap the number of international undergraduate students at 15%. It’s only about 6% now—1.1 million international students. International students pay much higher tuition rates so universities are reluctant to cut off that cash cow. Current estimates indicate that international students pay about $44 billion in tuition to American universities.
Say What a Woman Is. The Trump Compact requires that universities give up the “gender identity” war and acknowledge there are only two genders. Hard to believe that some universities would forgo easier access to federal research funds rather than stop using they/them.
I have no insider knowledge on what UT will ultimately decide to do (I went to Oklahoma State), but I am rooting for the Longhorns on this one.

WINNER: SOS Identifies Illegal Voters

Let’s hear it for Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson, who announced this week that she had found 2,274 people on the voting rolls who are not citizens and should be ineligible to vote. Texas media has always insisted that non-citizen voters do not exist. They rolled that back a bit in reporting this story. The San Antonio Express-News said that the “number of potential non-citizens on the registration rolls is hardly indicative of widespread abuse. The 2,724 names account for just 0.01% of all the Texans who were registered to vote in the November 2024 election.”

Using that same metric, you gotta wonder why they didn’t say that 20,000 to 30,000 people participating in No Kings marchers in Texas over the weekend represented less than 0.01% of the state’s population and are “hardly indicative” of anything.

WINNER: Ted Cruz Goes After Christian Killings in Nigeria

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz introduced the Nigerian Religious Freedom Accountability Act this week to address the long history of Christian murders in Nigeria by the Islamic group Boco Haram. According to Cruz, “over 52,000 Nigerian Christians have been murdered by jihadists groups, including Boko Haram, and over 20,000 Christian churches have been destroyed in the last 15 years.”

Religious rights groups report that of all the Christians killed worldwide, 69% are from Nigeria. Reports from inside the country say that Muslims mostly target older women and children who cannot easily run away.

In contrast to Gaza, the media ignores this story. The State Department put Nigeria on a watch list in 2020 for what it called “systematic violations of religious freedom.” The designation was lifted in 2023 to avoid embarrassing former Biden Secretary of State Anthony Blinken before he visited Nigeria.

WINNER: World Has a New Moon

Well, actually they are calling it a “quasi-moon,” that reportedly has been traveling alongside Earth for decades, which makes you wonder why nobody noticed it until now. We’ve seen photos showing traces of water on Mars, hints of vast new galaxies beyond the Milky Way and hundreds of shots of UFOs from pilots who snap pics of space craft that are straight out of science fiction. But somehow this asteroid, named 2025PN7, has been orbiting just outside the door and nobody picked it up. Does anybody else think NASA has some explaining to do?

LOSER: Who Knows How Bad Big City Crime Is?

One familiar screed during the “No Kings,” protests came from city dwellers in New York, Chicago and Portland, who repeatedly insisted that their cities are safe and that Trump’s insistence that they need federal troops to help control crime and protect ICE is an over-reaction. Democrats support the “our cities are safe” delusion with crime statistics that the Dept. of Justice has revealed are increasingly problematic. The problem is not only underreported crime, it’s also policies that encourage undercharging for crimes. Here’s how it works: David Mazariegos was arrested in New York City last week for attacking a passenger on a subway train with a sword and ultimately beating him to death. Mazariegos had just been arrested in July for assaulting someone else, but his charge had been lowered to a misdemeanor so he got out of jail and NYC’s felony statistics didn’t go up.

Democrats reportedly are trying to get crime rates down before next year’s elections to re-assure their constituents in big cities that their neighborhoods are actually safe. The message is, “if you feel scared, you are just imagining it.”

LOSER: Texan Urges National Democrats to “Fight Dirty”

Sixteen people are running in a special election to replace the late Sylvester Turner in Houston’s 18th Congressional District. The district is likely to elect a Democrat, and one of the candidates, state Rep. Jolanda Jones, has said the problem in Washington today is that Democrats are losing because they play by the rules. If elected Jones promises to “fight ugly.”

“I am not a ‘when they go low, we go high’ [person]. I’m not that kind of girl. If they go low, I’m going to the gutter.”

U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett has long been following the Jones “fight dirty” plan, making a name for herself by calling Gov. Greg Abbott “Governor Hot Wheels” and President Trump a Nazi. Crockett said this week she is seriously considering a race for the U.S. Senate. Crockett is leading in the latest poll for the Democrat nomination that shows her at 31% in front of State Rep. James Talarico, D-Austin and perennial Democrat loser, Beto O’Rourke, both of whom are at 25%.

LOSERS: Off-Year Democrats May Die on Trans Issue Hill

The New York Times has profiled the two women who are running for governor in Virginia and New Jersey—the only two states that hold odd-year statewide elections. Both states are blue, but both races are now in single digits and there’s a lot on the line. According to Thomas Edsell at the New York Times, “if either Mikie Sherrill or Abigail Spanberger loses her bid to become governor in November, the Democratic Party is in trouble heading into the 2026 congressional elections.”

Andrew Sullivan is a virulent anti-Trump blogger, but he is always vigilant on the “trans” issue and he has a theory. He points to those tight elections in Virginia and New Jersey and says the Democrat candidates are losing ground because they are afraid to move away from supporting “rights” for biological men who think they are women. Voters in those two states—including Democrat voters—remain concerned about laws that support boys in public schools having access to girls’ sports teams and restrooms.

Sherrill, who is running for governor of New Jersey, has held her pro-trans ground, trying to stir up fear in the hearts of parents by saying: “…there are threats that “some Moms for Liberty type person [will] go out on soccer fields and try to check seventh-grade girls’ soccer teams for trans people…”

In Virginia, Abigail Spanberger, the Democrat candidate for governor, refuses to directly answer questions about boys in girls’ sports.

LOSER: Meanwhile, Democrats in New England

The off-year elections aren’t the only problem Democrats are facing. As I noted last week, the Democrat candidate for Virginia Attorney General threatened to shoot the Speaker of the State Assembly but none of his fellow Democrats have withdrawn their endorsements. This week’s story comes from Maine, where Graham Platner is up 20 points in a Democrat primary for a shot to run against longtime Republican senator Susan Collins, R-Maine. Platner, who has been endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders from Vermont, which is very close to Maine, fought off charges all week that he has a Nazi tattoo which he says he got while he was out carousing when he was a Marine. Platner has tried to cover up the tattoo, but now he’s being hit with old social media posts where he says he became a communist when he got older and that he doesn’t love America anymore. He also belonged to a group called the Socialist Rifle Association, saying you can’t beat fascism without a rifle.

And in New York City—which would be the eighth largest state if it were a state—Democrats are running a guy who currently calls himself a socialist: Zohran Mamdani.

WINNER: Trump Nominates Sen. Brian Birdwell Assistant Sec. of Defense

In a big win for America and for the Pentagon, Texas Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, was nominated by President Trump to serve as Assistant Secretary of Defense. Birdwell is a retired Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army who survived the Sept. 11 attack on the Pentagon, suffering burns that took dozens of surgeries and years to recover. If you haven’t heard his story of the attack, you can listen to it here. Birdwell is a great American patriot and a respected leader in the State Senate who has worked tirelessly for the people of Texas. President Trump is lucky to get him in Washington.

Gig ‘em, Wreck ‘em, Hook ‘em

Texas A&M has climbed to No. 3 in the national rankings and is traveling to Baton Rouge to play No. 20 Louisiana State on Saturday night. Aggie fans should not read the New York Times, which is predicting an A&M upset, but we all know that the New York Times is wrong about almost everything. I’m betting on the Aggies

Still ranked 14th after their heart-breaking loss at Arizona State last week, Texas Tech plays Oklahoma State this week, and they are picked to crush them. But the Cowboys are now breaking records in response to their truly awful season. Last week they filled empty seats at Boone Pickens Stadium with the largest crowd of shirtless fans ever recorded, while Houston beat them. This week, they are going for the most banana suits in a Conga line. Watch for them between Red Raider touchdowns.

No. 22-ranked Texas is on the road, playing Mississippi State at 3:15 p.m. tomorrow. Texas is predicted to eke out a victory. Mississippi State is on a three-game losing streak.

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.

Listen to Winners & Losers on Talk 1370, the Cardle & Woolley show, every Friday morning at 8:30 AM. Here’s the listen live link.

If you were forwarded this email, you can sign up to receive it 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.

Every Friday morning, I join the Cardle & Wooley Show on Talk 1370 Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. In a week marked by an historic peace accord in the Middle East and Portland, Oregon’s naked bike ride to protest the National Guard in their city, here’s who made the list:

WINNER: Trump Really Deserves the Nobel Prize Now! 

Writing Winners & Losers on Friday is always a challenge in those weeks when President Donald Trump has accomplished something monumental early in the week because, by the end of the week, America’s left-leaning news establishment will have hopelessly distorted the event. There is no doubt that Trump brokered an historic peace between Israel and Hamas. During the broadcast of the meeting in Egypt where the ceasefire was signed, a CNN reporter noted that Trump’s appearance on stage with all the major players in the Middle East and the many European leaders behind him amounted to “pretty much the whole ball game.” She didn’t sound happy.

By Thursday, in a move that was not a joke, former President Joe Biden’s Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, had the temerity to suggest that the Biden administration had actually laid the groundwork for the peace accord. Apparently, Blinken is unaware that many people believe that if Trump had been president instead of Biden, Hamas would not have attacked Israel and started the war in the first place. They also seem to have forgotten that their presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, could never quite bring herself to condemn Hamas for the attack, without also blaming Israel.

LOSER: Democrats Losing Shutdown Messaging War

In the beginning, it looked like the Democrats might have finally landed on an effective message for themselves by insisting they were shutting down the government to reduce health care costs—because people are increasingly concerned about the rising costs of medical bills. But we are now more than two weeks into the shutdown, and polling data shows that voters overwhelmingly blame Democrats for the shutdown. They don’t trust Democrats to address health care costs, or with any economic issue.

National Democrat leaders haven’t gotten the memo yet that their shutdown message is failing. They continue to filibuster incessantly.

WINNER: White House Says No to Texas GOP Ballot Ban

The Texas Senate Republican Executive Committee (SREC) ultimately did not pass resolutions this past weekend to censure Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows and several other Texas Republican lawmakers, a move that could have resulted in their being blocked from the Republican primary ballot next year.

Although the SREC insists the high profile call didn’t matter to them, news circulated during the meeting that the White House was watching the livestream. Ultimately, White House Political Director Matt Brasseaux weighed in, saying the White House did not support banning anyone from the ballot. Reportedly, Brasseaux added that it should be up to the voters, not the executive committee, to decide which candidates will appear on primary election ballots.

One of the challenges of a democracy is to always affirm that voters are smart enough to know who they want to vote for. Last week, I reported that at least one progressive pollster believes Democrats should ignore what voters say in opinion polls because voters don’t know what they are talking about—so their opinions shouldn’t matter.

That kind of thinking could bring down Democrats—but it could bring down Republicans, too. What the White House political director said is a foundational principle that the SREC should reaffirm—anyone can run for office who is eligible, and voters get to pick the candidate who wins.

WINNER: Building Icebreakers in Texas

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz is a winner this week for getting a provision added to the big budget bill in July that will ramp up construction of the heavy icebreaker ships that are capable of navigating through the polar regions. Lots of countries increasingly care about the polar regions, not only for security reasons but also because of rare earth metal resources. Currently, China has four of these icebreaking ships and Russia has more than 40. The U.S. has two that are operational, including the Polar Star, which was commissioned in 1976.

Cruz’s legislative addition will result in the construction of seven more icebreakers, including three that will be built in Galveston, which Cruz boasts will create about 7,000 jobs. The contracts were awarded last week so everything is ready to go.

LOSER: Where Did the Non-Binary People Go?   

Among the many awful things that seemed to happen during COVID and the 2020 riots was that the number of young people who called themselves non-binary—neither a man or a woman—increased dramatically. If you haven’t watched it, comedian Bill Maher created an hysterical spoof in 2022 showing at on the current trajectory, by 2054 everyone will be gay.

But this week we got the news that an academic at the University of Buckingham has been looking at polls from around the U.S.—primarily university surveys—that show a substantial decline in the number of young people who call themselves non-binary. In some places it is as low as 2%, down from 5.2% last year, and the all time high of 6.8% in 2023. It’s a big loser for the trans community, but it is a big win for the obvious.

LOSER: California’s Billions on Homelessness

California has reportedly spent $24 billion to end homelessness, but they still have the worst homeless problem in the country. Tented homeless camps in Los Angeles and San Francisco have become infamous. I always assumed that the Democrats who run everything in the Golden State had just wasted billions of dollars targeted for homelessness on dumb ideas like buying needles for addicts and acquiring more land for the homeless to put up tents and cardboard shanties. But it turns out that that a couple of California homelessness moguls have been stealing millions from the state, using fake bank accounts to bilk the treasury out of as much as $26 million, which they allegedly used to pay off their credit card bills and buy luxury goods. The DOJ brought charges yesterday, so we’ll see what happens.

LOSER: Buc-ees No Longer No. 1

The University of Texas may have won the Red River shootout last week, but a couple of Oklahoma based convenience stores beat out Buc-ees as the nation’s top store in the latest surveys. Kwik Trip, headquartered in Wisconsin, is now the No. 1 quick shop store, while Buc-ees has toppled to the No. 5 place, a position it shares with Loves, which is headquartered in Oklahoma. Oklahoma based Quik Trip is No. 4. This relative dominance in the convenience store wars could provide some comfort to Sooner fans after the trampling they received at the hands of the Longhorns at the Cotton Bowl last weekend.

WINNERS: Hook ‘em, Gig ‘em, Wreck’em

The Longhorn victory over the Oklahoma Sooners in the Red River Shootout last Saturday put Texas back in the top 25. They are now No. 21 nationally and will take on unranked Kentucky tomorrow. Let’s be clear—for many fans, the only thing that matters is that the Longhorns beat Oklahoma and since that’s done, anything good that happens from here on out is just gravy, even if the early season was pretty rocky.

Meanwhile, Texas A&M has become a serious national contender, rising to No. 4, and Texas Tech Is also soaring up the charts, now at No. 7. The Aggies play Arkansas tomorrow afternoon, and the Red Raiders face Arizona State.

Hope your team wins! 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.

Every Friday morning, I join the Cardle & Wooley Show on Talk 1370 Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. The government is still shut down, and members of the military won’t be getting their paychecks next week, but in case you were worried, the members of Congress (the same people who won’t even talk about ending the shutdown) will still be getting paid. Here’s who made the list:

WINNER: Trump’s Peace Plan in Gaza

No place on earth is trickier than the Middle East, but Trump’s Peace Plan has been accepted by both Hamas and Israel. And while details are still being worked out, the Wall Street Journal reports that both sides are hopeful and moving forward. Israel says it has withdrawn from parts of Gaza, and the 72-hour clock is now counting down for Hamas to release the hostages.

It is hard to imagine anyone but President Trump getting this done, although so far, accolades are coming reluctantly. A New York Times columnist reluctantly suggests that Trump could claim the right to a Nobel Peace Prize for the accomplishment, but, so far, only Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman from the Democrat side has given the President a high five.

Norway, the country where they award the peace prizes, expressed worry yesterday that Trump might throw a fit if he didn’t get the prestigious award. The leader of the socialist party in Oslo said the country should be prepared for anything, because Trump is so volatile and authoritarian. They want to make sure Trump knows that Norway doesn’t officially have anything to do with who gets the prize, in case Trump was thinking of invading or dropping a bomb or something.

This morning, the Nobel crowd announced that the Peace Prize would be awarded to Maria Corina Machado, who has been fighting the authoritarian regime in Venezuela. Machado immediately dedicated her award to the people of her country and to President Trump, for his “decisive support of our cause.” She clearly understands what matters better than the Nobel Peace Prize committee, which essentially said they don’t like the President’s style.

Apparently, style is a big part of the whole “peace prize” thing. The Peace Prize Committee ignored the guy who brought the Abraham Accords to the Middle East and laid the groundwork for the ceasefire agreement today while making such a big deal about giving the prize to former President Barack Obama in 2009 for doing nothing.

LOSER: Were Biden’s Antics Worse than Watergate?

The more we hear about what was happening while former President Joe Biden was in office, the more outrageous it becomes. This past week, emails surfaced from the CIA with Ukrainian complaints about how incompetent Biden’s diplomatic efforts were in regard to their country. Ukrainian leaders also didn’t trust dealings with Biden because of the highly questionable business activities of his son, Hunter. The kicker on these revelations is that Biden officials demanded that the CIA bury the Ukrainian emails.

We also learned this week that Biden and his henchmen ordered the monitoring of phone calls of eight Republican senators—including Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Some have said the outrage of a sitting president surveilling the phone records of members of Congress is worse than Watergate, and it clearly is. After all, Watergate was actually about stealing campaign plans—something that is pretty much standard practice today. Getting the phone records of members of the opposition party is a huge affront to all our Constitutional rights.

This comes on top of what we learned last week, about Biden requiring flash cards with photos to remember who he was talking to—Hillary Clinton, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois. There’s no way to know whether he understood that he’d signed off on going after the phone records of the GOP lawmakers. But if he didn’t sign off, who did?

WINNER: Texas Tech and UT Audit of Gender Identity Classes

Let’s be clear, gender identity isn’t a real thing. The idea that individuals are born neutral and turn into males or females depending on how they are reared is, frankly, nuts. Gender identity advocates believe that girls are girls because their parents encourage them to behave like girls. Presumably, if their parents encouraged them to behave like boys—they’d be boys. Their core belief is that your gender is “arbitrarily assigned at birth.”

Most Texans don’t agree, so the recent winning move by Texas Tech and the University of Texas at Austin to examine the so-called “gender identity” classes on campuses is long overdue. Last year, during the debate over the passage of Senate Bill 37, a cursory review of the course catalog at UT revealed over 400 courses with the word “gender” in the title.

That’s because once you accept the premise that gender is arbitrary, it permeates every aspect of study—the role of gender in the agricultural patterns of southwest America—the role of gender in defining color-blindness in dogs, whatever. A new curriculum emerges and dozens of gender theory professors are required to teach it. It’s a grift. It’s a racket. Good for Tech and UT for going after it.

WINNER: Abbott Edict on Crosswalks

Gov. Greg Abbott let Austin and other cities know this week that government-sanctioned graffiti like we see in Austin including the Gay Pride crosswalk and Black Lives Matter messages have to go. The city of Austin authorized these “decorative street markings” over the past several years, but, as Abbott rightly points out, taxpayers don’t want their money being used for activist ads that they are forced to stare at while they are waiting in traffic—which they almost always are. Street propaganda is not unique to Austin. Most Democrat cities, including Houston, have them.

So far, the neither Gov. Abbott nor TXDOT have suggested the activist ads are a safety hazard, so perhaps cities could get entrepreneurial and sell the space to make much needed cash. You could imagine: “TURN LEFT HERE FOR THE BEST TACOS IN TOWN” in bright red and yellow.

LOSER: Watching Progressives Continues to Entertain

I so wanted to read a news report on a national conference of progressive Democrats entitled “Democrats Still Have No Idea What Went Wrong,” that I signed up for a free trial to Atlantic Magazine, a premier left-wing publication, to learn what happened at an conference called Persuasion 2025 in Washington, D.C., last week. (I intend to unsubscribe before they charge me, but even if I miss the deadline, I gained some interesting intel).

Austin Congressman Greg Casar, chair of the Progressive Caucus, told the group that they all had to stop blaming progressive policies for the loss of the 2024 election, even as data was circulated by another Democrat pollster showing that the ad revealing that former Vice President Kamala Harris supported sex change operations for inmates in prison (She’s for They/Them, He’s for Us) resulted in a 2.7% shift among Independent voters—a margin that amounted to victory for Trump in seven swing states.

Since the election, we have seen a few news reports of Democrats trying to regroup. California Gov. Gavin Newsom admitted it isn’t fair to have boys playing girls’ sports and Rahm Emanuel wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed bluntly telling Democrats they need to totally re-think their stance on education. So-called “sane Democrats” like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore have become fixtures on many podcasts and news talk shows, but they are exceptions, not the rule.

According to the Atlantic, the Persuasion 2025 conference makes it startlingly clear that the stereotypes about progressive Democrats are actually true—they may love humanity, but they can’t stand people. They ignore opinion polls, insisting it doesn’t matter what people think. They think voters are simply wrong and paying attention to polls is “pollingism.”

One progressive pollster, Anat Shenker-Osorio, challenged the idea that the way to win elections is to find people who support your ideas and get them out to vote. Shenker-Osorio says that’s all wrong:

Conventional wisdom says to meet people where they are. But on most issues, where they are is unacceptable.

“Unacceptable,” is a little bit nicer than “deplorable,” but the sentiment is the same.

UPDATE WINNER: Cell Phone Ban Update

After a rocky start last month, Alamo Heights School District, in San Antonio reported this week that the school system will abide by the state cell phone ban on students, prohibiting phone use from bell to bell. Alamo Heights was one of several large San Antonio school districts that had initially defied the state ban on cell phone use for students in classes, creating a ridiculous loophole by interpreting the law to mean that students were only restricted from using their phones during class. They could still use them before, after and between classes, at lunch and virtually anytime they were out of the classroom—totally defeating the purpose of the ban.

Whether it was pressure or the fact that the cell phone ban is proving to be very popular among students, Alamo Heights has reversed course.

Northeast School District, also in San Antonio, continues to ignore the ban and the Texas Education Agency (TEA) is investigating this refusal by professional educators to do what is best for kids. Northeast ISD has essentially said to the State, “You are not the boss of me.” TPPF and many others worked hard to pass this important legislation. Stay tuned.

LOSER: Sentence in Kavanaugh Assassination Attempt

It was outrageous this week that the man who attacked Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was only sentenced to eight years for the crime. It is also outrageous that the media seems to have completely forgotten he is a man.

It is not completely clear how Nicholas Roske became Sophie Roske during the time he has been awaiting trial for the attempted under of Kavanaugh, but virtually all the legacy news reporting this week on the sentencing said that Kavanaugh was attacked by a woman, even though the person who traveled from California with a knife and a Glock to kill Kavanaugh was a man.

During the sentencing, Roske became the victim in the story when the judge said that one reason the sentence was so light is Roske will be held in a male prison. The judge noted that life for “trans woman” is particularly difficult in male prisons, suggesting that eight years should count for more—like dog years or something.

WINNER: Columbus Day “We’re Back, Italians”

The long travail is finally over—Columbus Day is back, just in time for “Columbus Day.” Trump officially proclaimed the end of politically correct “Indigenous Peoples Day,” today and the country can now move forward out of the murky confusion.

Winners & Losers: Red River Shoot Out, Aggies & Raiders

Perhaps the less said the better about the Red River Shootout and the battle for the Golden Hat tomorrow as the undefeated Oklahoma Sooners, ranked No. 6 in the nation, come to the Cotton Bowl to face the Longhorns (who barely came out of The Swamp alive last week). Texas, with a record of 3-2 has dropped out of the top 25 national rankings and Oklahoma is picked to win it—but you never know in a rivalry game like this so Hook‘em. Kickoff is at 3:30.

Meanwhile, Texas A&M, ranked No. 5 in the nation, will play Florida, but they are in College Station. Texas Tech continues to move up the charts, now at No. 9. They are playing Kansas.

Hook ‘em! Gig ‘em! Wreck ‘em!

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.

Listen to Winners & Losers on Talk 1370, the Cardle & Woolley show, every Friday morning at 8:30 AM. Here’s the listen live link.

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