Sherry Sylvester

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Sherry Sylvester

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Sherry Sylvester

Author: Sherry Sylvester

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9th & Congress

9th & Congress: Don’t Forget Who Gloria Steinem Really Was

People often ask me how I made it to the right side — the sunny skies of Texas conservatism — after spending my early professional years on the progressive left. It is a long story (I am writing a book), but one of the reasons is Gloria Steinem, who passed away on Wednesday.

I know some frown on speaking ill of the dead, but since Steinem characterized people like me who support President Donald Trump as an “obstructionist minority,” who are “hooked on hierarchy and opposed to equality,” I figure she has it coming.

There’s no doubt Gloria Steinem is an American icon. As the founder of Ms. Magazine in 1972, she shined a light on discrimination against women that had been virtually invisible before. Rape was basically a free crime.

Domestic violence was impossible to prove. Job discrimination was open and direct. Women couldn’t get their own credit and while Title IX passed about the same time, women and girls weren’t really able to get into sports until Ms., and Steinem pushed those issues into the mainstream. So let’s give her that.

But after a couple decades of battling for solid causes like “equal pay for equal work,” Steinem transformed the women’s movement into just another dark progressive front betraying American women who thought she cared about them.

She led the fight to block the confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, insisting that his accuser, Anita Hill, should be believed despite the fact that she came forward with no credible or corroborating evidence.

Shortly after, in what felt like whiplash, she took an epic stand in support of former U.S. Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Oregon who was accused of sexual harassment – groping, cornering women on elevators and in offices, forceful kissing. Nearly a dozen women came forward and went on the record.

Packwood was a feminist hero and his case shocked the women’s movement, but instead of condemning him, Steinem led many feminists to circle the wagons.

Apparently without seeing the irony of having attacked Thomas just a year before, Steinem said of Packwood, “We all deserve to have our lives judged in context.”

The context, of course, was that Packwood was a Republican who supported abortion — or in Steinem’s words, “a courageous champion.”

Before long it was revealed that Packwood had actually kept diaries detailing his exploits and confirming many of the allegations that women had made against him. Steinem backed down from vocally supporting him, but she never hit him hard. It took almost 3 years to get him out of Congress.

Steinem was also one of the most prominent defenders of former President Bill Clinton when he was impeached for lying under oath about having an affair with a 23-year-old intern in his office. He was 51 at the time. In a line that will undoubtedly go down in history and reappear in her eulogies this week, Steinem said, “we will not stand idly by as a Congress dominated by men impeaches the first president elected by women.”

Steinem testified before Congress and wrote an op-ed in the New York Times insisting that there was no pattern of sustained sexual harassment from Clinton — despite testimony from Kathleen Willey, Paula Jones and Juanita Broaddrick.
It is hard to imagine a more textbook description of sexual harassment.

And by 2016, she apparently completely forgot that she’d given Bill Clinton a pass for the intern, calling Trump the “sexual harasser in chief.”

Her final betrayal of American women came in 2020 when Steinem came out in support of women’s rights for men who say they are women — so-called “trans people.” After a lifetime of fighting for women’s rights, in the end, she apparently got confused about what a woman is.

As I said, how did I get from the far left to the far right — one big reason was Gloria Steinem. RIP.

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

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

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Winners & Losers

Winners & Losers: Goodbye Dolly, Dumb Classes Cut, Buc-ee’s Goes Red and Drag Shows for Kids are Still With Us

Every Friday morning, I join the Cardle and Woolley show on 1370 Talk Radio in Austin to discuss the week’s Winners & Losers. While the Texas Big 3—Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dustin Burrows—get a big thumbs up for telling state agencies to trim their budgets by 3%, here’s who made the list:

WINNER: Dolly Parton, The One Thing Americans Agree On

It has been a while since America has had such a sad loss as the great Dolly Parton—an artist, philanthropist and philosopher who rose up from poverty and represented the best of America—the spirit of our story. In these divisive times, Dolly Parton has been called the only thing most Americans agree on. We all miss her already.

WINNER: U of H Cleans Up Core Curriculum

Gov. Abbott’s directive to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board this week to develop a three year degree option is a Winner move, coming alongside the announcement by University of Houston that the Board of Regents has cut 40% of its core curriculum classes, which few could argue were integral to a college education.

U of H Professor David Mazella, a member of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), loudly disagreed, charging that U of H is following the path of former Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban. Mazella called the curriculum changes an “Orbanization of Higher Ed in Texas.”

Of course, nobody has any idea what he means (and fewer than 5% of Texas professors belong to the AAUP), and there are a couple holes in the media reporting of this story.

First, almost all the media reported that classes that were cut included Introduction to Global Climate Change, Introduction to LGBT Studies and Black Liberation Theology in order to push the narrative that there has been some kind of Republican purge of U of H’s sacred body of knowledge. No media outlet mentioned that the cuts also included Homer to Hollywood, the Bible and Modern Pop Culture and a History of Jewish Food. Keep in mind that these are courses anyone could take and get credit toward a degree.

The media also did not look at the courses that remain in the Core Curriculum. Sure, Intro to Climate Change is gone, but the Core Curriculum includes Environmental Science, Earth Systems and Natural Disasters. A student can still take LGBTQ studies as an elective, but that was no comfort to the AAUP as Professor Mazella told Inside Higher Ed, “We are under enrollment pressures…if these courses do not satisfy core requirements, they go away.”

What the professor means is if there’s no credit for these classes, no one will take them and professors will have to teach something substantive—or lose their jobs.

LOSER: Texas A&M Victoria Professors Working 9-to-5

Meanwhile, professors at Texas A&M-Victoria are outraged by an “abrupt policy change” that requires all full-time faculty to spend 40 hours a week on campus, as dictated by Senate Bill 2615, passed last legislative session.

Truth is, it wasn’t that abrupt. Senate Bill 2615 passed the Texas Legislature on May 30, 2025. Texas A&M-Victoria faculty were reminded in June that law had changed and they would be expected to comply. On July 15, faculty were required to sign a form clarifying that they understood the new requirement. Still, this week, Teresa Klein, head of the Texas Chapter of the AAUP, said “the timing of the impromptu mandate has left many faculty scrambling to rearrange their schedules to accommodate, negatively affecting their professional and personal lives.”

Of course, she also said it was probably sexist (“having a possible disproportional, discriminatory and disparate negative effect on female faculty”).

Klein told the Houston Chronicle that many faculty are resigning as a result of the rule, but so far it is not clear what she means by “many.”

When the Higher Education Reform Bill (SB 37) was passed in 2023, the AAUP predicted it would cause a giant “brain drain” in state universities, because professors would leave. They didn’t. In 2021, the AAUP predicted nobody would teach in Texas after the anti-DEI Bill (SB 17) passed. They also said students wouldn’t want to come to Texas—but college enrollment is up across the state, and university leaders told the Senate Higher Education Committee earlier this summer that there has been no exodus of faculty. The University of Texas just welcomed 150 new faculty members this year and student applications broke 100,000—the highest number ever.

LOSER: CBC Won’t Call 9/11 a ‘Terrorist’ Event

The Senior Director of Journalistic Standards and Public Trust at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) directed news reporters not to describe the attack on the U.S. on September 11, 2001 as a “terrorist attack.” With the 25th anniversary of the attacks coming up next week, the CBC official wanted to make sure she got her message out early, emphasizing her directive: “Do not refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as terrorist attacks,” by making the sentence both bold and in italics. Instead, she said news stories should report that: “The hijackings led to passenger jet crashes.”

This inexplicable idiocy undoubtedly will be a boost in popularity for Trump’s decision to rename Lake Ontario. I am looking for a place to buy a LAKE AMERICA tee shirt.

WINNER: Buc-ee’s Says No to Blue States

The legendary Texas gas station chain Buc-ee’s announced this week that it will no longer bother expanding its business into blue states. Announcing the Texas firm’s new outreach into Arkansas, Buc-cees CEO Arch Alpin made it clear that operating in “conservative, business-friendly” states makes a difference. We learned during the World Cup that people around the world love Buc-ee’s—not just Texans. Bad policies are why blue states can’t have nice things.

LOSER: Federal Judge Rules in Support of Drag Shows for Kids

Federal Judge David Hittner, from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, ruled this week that Senate Bill 12, which bans drag shows for children, is unconstitutional. I wrote about this earlier this summer—Why Can’t We Get Rid of Drag Queen Story Hour? The only update is Judge Hittner’s ruling is one more reason why we can’t get rid of Drag Queen story hours.

LOSER: Good Good Golf Makes Awful Awful Ad

While we wait for college football to begin next week, we want to make sure readers don’t miss this very weird story in the golf world that involves the now former title sponsor of the PGA Tournament at Barton Creek in November, Good Good Golf.

This week, Good Good put out this ad for Calloway’s new driver which depicts a male golfer pushing a woman down on a golf course. You can watch the ad here but the plot is simple—four or five young male golfers are standing around a putting green when a young woman walks up from the other side and reaches to pull a club out of a golf bag. Immediately, one of the young men runs up and forces her to the ground, then leans over her and bellows, “Do NOT TOUCH my new driver.”

Every golfer knows that if anything like that actually happened in real life—and it virtually never does—a half dozen other golfers would have punched the guy out before the golf cops arrived and escorted him off the course.

Callaway apologized immediately, explaining the ad had been made by Good Good—but they admitted they’d signed off on it. Blowback was swift and deserved. The Golf Channel has just postponed a new show Good Good was sponsoring because other companies started pulling out. We’ll see what happens with Austin’s upcoming tournament.

Have a great weekend!

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

Follow Sherry on X @sylvester1630 and find her on Substack at sherrysylvester.substack.com.

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Winners & Losers

Winners & Losers: Schools Starts Too Early, Dirty Books & Football

Winners & Losers is calling an end to our summer break. The Almanac says the last 8 p.m. sunsets in the central region of Texas will occur next week, so the days are getting shorter, and we can no longer stand by and let so many winners and losers go by unacknowledged. Here’s who is on my list:

LOSER: The First Day of School in August

Public schools are launching their 2026-27 school years all around us, and the question for parents should be: “Why are kids being dragged back to school when it is still, quite obviously, summer?”

State Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, promised this week to file a bill that will require Texas public schools to not begin the fall semester before Labor Day. In the past, that debate has always come down to a legislative battle between Texas tourism and Texas schools—so we’ll see how that goes when the session starts.

Currently, Texas law says that public schools can’t officially begin classes until the fourth Monday in August, unless they are “Districts of Innovation,” which includes 80% of Texas school districts—so most schools can start whenever they want.

A taxpayer funded lobbyist for the Texas Classroom Teachers Association says the early start date is one of the most popular things about “Districts of Innovation,” but consider the source and then ask the question, “Popular with whom?” Teachers, who have been on vacation since May, apparently are big fans of getting started early in August, but can we really let teachers decide this?

These are the people who give us a school day for younger kids that begins as early as 7:45 a.m. and ends at 3 p.m.—times that are virtually impossible for any working parent to easily navigate, necessitating expensive childcare and ongoing logistical nightmares. This ridiculous schedule has been with us for so long that nobody even asks anymore why the school day is over in the middle of the afternoon. Whoever sets the hours for a public school day didn’t consider parents, but I am betting a 3 p.m. end time is also “popular” with teachers.

Also, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is a WINNER for directing Comptroller Don Huffines to do a spot review of several public school budgets to ensure the over $90 billion the state provides in school funding annually is going to the classroom—and not thrown away on administrative bloat.

LOSER: Bexar County Bet On Pandemic Funding Being Permanent

It is hard not to laugh at a story coming out of Bexar County this week as officials lament that they used $10 million they got during COVID-19 to create permanent programs—and now they don’t have the funding anymore. Who believed trillions in COVID-19 funding would go away? Now, as if it was just another random bad thing that has happened to them, Bexar County officials are wailing and gnashing their teeth because they must eliminate 28 staff positions, and such anti-COVID-19 programs as ending domestic violence and elder abuse are on the chopping block.

You have to hand it to former Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, a Democrat, who led the county during the pandemic, for being honest:

“I don’t know if they’ve done any good with it or not,” Wolff said at the time. “Maybe just another bureaucratic department, as far as I know, and if that’s true, then there’s no need to have it. But if they have done some good things and they can be transferred over to University Hospital, then that ought to be done.”

It is not clear where the funding will come from to evaluate the impact of the anti-COVID-19 programs that had nothing to do with COVID-19.

WINNER: Lt. Gov. Patrick Fights Dirty Books in Texas Schools

Lt. Governor Patrick doubled down on dirty books in public school libraries this week, threatening to dock a school’s rating, or even withhold funds if they don’t clean up their act.

Patrick distributed copies of “Let’s Talk About It” to reporters in a Capitol press conference this week. It’s a book that provides children with how-to directions on masturbation, sex toys, accessing pornography and all manner of sex. The book actually comes with a disclaimer from the publisher and author which reads: “The authors and publisher expressly disclaim any responsibility for any adverse effects which may result from the use or application of the information contained in this book.”

Huh? A safety disclaimer on a library book?

Senate Bill 13, a priority for the Lt. Gov., passed last year, but Bonnie Wallace, who has visited almost 200 school libraries in Texas, says very little action has been taken. In hundreds of public schools in Texas, children can still get a copy of sexually graphic and explicit books like “Gender Queer,” which contains gross and vulgar descriptions of masturbation and all kinds of homosexual and non-binary sex acts. I reviewed “Gender Queer” three years ago and can unequivocally report that it has no redeeming value, although it has won several lefty awards including one that seems blasphemous—the “Lincoln Award,” from the state of Illinois.

Wallace is on Patrick’s podcast, Lt. Dan, this week. You can find it here.

WINNER: DeSantis is Putting Statues Up

As part of Florida’s 250th Celebration, Gov. Ron DeSantis is putting up statues of America’s founders and other heroes all over the state—including a statue of Thomas Jefferson in Jefferson County, a statue of Ben Franklin in Franklin County, James Monroe in Monroe County, Alexander Hamilton in Hamilton County and George Washington in Washington County.

DeSantis drew his line in the sand on statues last year, calling the removal of “some Civil War general or whatever” a form of historical erasure, adding the idea of renaming Jacksonville was ridiculous. Last week, he unveiled a statue of Andrew Jackson in Jackson County.

Meanwhile, up in the deep blue Pacific Northwest, wokeism persists as officials in Portland, Oregon have announced they will return the statue of Abraham Lincoln, which was toppled by Black Lives Matters rioters in the city’s Central Park during 100 days of mob control in 2020. However, the Great Emancipator’s statue will not be returned to its previous pedestal. Instead, the statue will be standing on the ground, so no one will be looking up to him.

LOSER: AOC & the End of Woke 1

National polls continue to show Kamala Harris with a strong lead for the Democrat nomination for president in 2028, with California Gov. Gavin Newsom coming in second. But the prediction markets give the edge to U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, which is undoubtedly why she is trying to re-brand herself as normal person, laughing on ABC News last week that “Woke 1 was crazy,” implying that nobody thinks that opening the borders or defunding the police is a good idea anymore.

AOC is hoping we will forget she has used terms like “menstruating person,” to describe a woman and “two spirits,” to describe men who think they are women. She also hopes we’ll forget that she said that “marginalized Americans have no choice but to riot.

As for Woke 2.0, the Democratic Socialists of America have given us a close-up of what it looks like. The focus shifts to institutional change, where they want to abolish not only police, but jails and redesign the government to eliminate the executive branch and the Supreme Court, and let something like the House of Representatives run everything. It is not clear how all this will be built by people who organize themselves around their identity rather than their skills, who believe the country is built on racism, disdain achievement on merit and support men who believe they are women. If they get any traction, Woke 1 will look like “the good old days,” and nobody will be laughing.

LOSER: Texas Blue City Blues

Texas largest cities began to make threats this week that they will have no choice but to try to increase property taxes because they are spending way more money than they have.

The budget in Dallas has a $51 million shortfall and in Fort Worth, it’s $94 million. My home town of San Antonio is looking at a $158 million deficit over the next two years and reports are predicting Austin’s is on track to be $100 million in the hole in the next few years. The cities blame all this on the state – for restricting local property tax increases – and threaten to trim costs by closing libraries and laying off employees. It does not appear that they are looking at their own spending culture, which may reveal something they are missing. City managers in all those cities have base salaries of over $400K– and by base, it means that add-ons like a $600 a month car allowance in Ft. Worth are not included. That seems like that’s a lot to pay people who can’t put together a balanced budget.

LOSER: Democrats Like Socialism

Watching the victories and defeats of Democratic Socialists of America in the Democrat primaries across the country over the past few weeks, it appears so-called “normal Democrats,” are prevailing since DSA candidates lose more often than they win. But new polling makes it clear that among all Democrats, the majority, almost 60%, view socialism positively while only a third feel good about capitalism. These numbers are driven by young, white, affluent and college educated Democrats, the same folks who commemorated 100 years of Fidel Castro’s regime this week.

WINNER: Texas Dominates AP Coaches Poll

We are 15 days from the start of college football season, but the AP Top 25 Poll came out this week and the Lone Star State dominates with five teams on the list. No other state is even close. Starting off, the University of Texas at Austin is rated No. 4, Texas A&M is No. 8 and Texas Tech is No. 12. Southern Methodist comes in at No. 19 and the University of Houston is at No. 23. The ESPN Poll has Texas at No. 5, but its pre-season rankings, like the Coaches Poll are about the same. On Sept. 5, Texas will play their season opener against Texas State, Texas A&M is playing Missouri and Tech will play Abilene Christian.

That said, only the University of Texas made it to list of “Most Arrests by College Football Teams Since 2000” which ranks the Longhorns at No. 11, with 291 arrests in the last 25 years. Florida ranks at the top with 539 arrests in the same period. This “Most Arrests” list made the rounds this week, posted on many college team websites, but it’s not clear who compiled it or what their criteria was. If one of the teams you really hate is on the list, it probably makes you happy. Oklahoma is ranked No. 12, just under Texas…just saying.

Have a great weekend!

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

Follow Sherry on X @sylvester1630 and find her on Substack at sherrysylvester.substack.com

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

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9th & Congress

9th & Congress: Trans Women at Bunker Hill: The DAR’s Identity Crisis

It is more than a little ironic that in the middle of the celebration of 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, one of the nation’s oldest historical organizations, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), voted down an effort to ban men who say they are women from membership. If men live in a state that allows the gender-confused to change their birth certificates — and if they can prove they are descended from an American patriot — they are in.

Texas doesn’t allow individuals to change sex on birth certificates, so the DAR rule doesn’t apply here, but the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution’s refusal to ban men at their annual Continental Congress in June has crippled an organization that should be helping Americans understand and remember who they are — particularly now.

My great, great, great, great grandfather, Richard Sylvester, left his farm in Western Massachusetts and marched over 100 miles to Saratoga, New York to fight what turned out to be two critical battles in the American Revolutionary War. He was part of the Massachusetts Militia that defeated the British forces there, providing what some historians argue may have been the first realization among the British military leadership that the numbers, firearm proficiency and mobility of farmers and tradesmen who made up the colonial militias would ultimately make the Americans impossible to defeat.

To join DAR, I had to provide the receipts to prove I am descended from the Richard Sylvester who fought at Saratoga. Every woman who is a member of DAR has a story like mine, and the purpose of the organization is to make sure nobody forgets them. At least, that was the purpose until recently, when the organization was driven off-track from its mission by an ugly bylaws fight ending with an irregular and contested voting process and a final tally of 1,481 over 984 — in favor of admitting men who think they are women into the organization.

What is particularly appalling about this baffling move is that over the last several decades, DAR has been broadening America’s understanding of our nation’s founding by recognizing the wide swath of people who were in the fight for American independence. The early involvement of the people of Texas, for example, is reflected in the DAR membership of increasing numbers of Hispanic women whose ancestors were residents of what was then Spanish Texas, where they played an important role in providing food and money to the Continental Army.

That said, there is no denying that the DAR’s history with African Americans is inexcusable. It includes a “whites only” performance policy at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. that excluded famous opera singer Marian Anderson in the 1930s. That outrage moved First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to resign in protest, but even that would-be wake-up call didn’t make a difference. It wasn’t until the 1980s, when the organization was threatened with the loss of its tax-exempt status, that the DAR backed down and began to actively recruit the descendants of African-American and Native American patriots.

The threat of legal repercussions appears to be what fueled DAR members to vote against excluding male members this summer after they received a sketchy legal opinion from a former Biden attorney who warned that the DAR could be sued for discrimination. Apparently, what he did not clarify is that the DAR might be in violation of the District of Columbia’s local civil rights ordinance, which includes gender confusion. There doesn’t appear to be much likelihood of federal discrimination liability. There is also a Sons of the American Revolution, so it is not as if men have no alternative. Although admitting men to DAR has nothing to do with gay rights, the LGBTQ+ movement is cheering the DAR vote as a giant step forward for gender-confused men.

But it is at least three steps backward for DAR. At a time when expanded access to DNA has created an unprecedented interest among American’s in their ancestry, it is particularly perplexing that the DAR has allowed itself to become a beachhead in a gender identity war that men are rightfully losing. While most Americans believe every individual should be treated with dignity, a majority of Americans also believe biological men should not be allowed in women’s restrooms, half support restrictions on health procedures that help men look more like women and almost 80% support restrictions on men in women’s sports. Gallup found last year that over half of Americans also believe changing gender is “morally wrong.”

The Supreme Court has upheld states that have to reined in efforts by gender-confused men to gain access to women’s locker rooms and restrooms, which is one more reason it is so puzzling that men are being successful in pushing their way into DAR now. The momentum is clearly moving the other way.

U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., has introduced legislation — the “Daughters of the American Revolution Membership Integrity Act,” — that will amend the DAR federal charter to reinforce the biological reality that the Daughters of the American Revolution is only for women. Identical legislation has been introduced in the U.S. House.

Woman have a long track record of preserving America’s history. In 1872, when Boston city fathers slated the Old South Meeting House — the old church where over 5,000 people gathered to plan the Boston Tea Party — for demolition, the legendary “20 Women of Boston” raised over $400,000 to buy the land and save the building. In Texas, in 1902, Texas icons Clara Driscoll and Adina De Zavala saved both the Alamo Church and the Long Barrack to ensure the Shine of Texas Liberty would be preserved.

We have always been able to count on women to ensure the stories of our past are not lost. Unfortunately, right now, we can no longer count on the Daughters of the American Revolution.

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

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

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Sherry Sylvester Show

Sherry Sylvester Show: Freedom Haulers, AI, Immigration & Growth: A Conversation with Sen. Brent Hagenbuch

Fresh off his first legislative session (and in the middle of his first Legislative Interim) Senator Brent Hagenbuch joined me on The Sherry Sylvester Show to discuss how Texas is addressing challenges from epic growth to Islamification.


A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and founder of one of the nation’s largest trucking companies, Hagenbuch was elected in 2025 to represent Senate District 30, anchored in Denton.


This summer, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick appointed him chair of the Senate Select Committee on Veterans Affairs, where he will help implement President Trump’s initiative – Freedom Haulers – to streamline the path for veterans to earn commercial driver’s licenses and strengthen the trucking workforce.


Hagenbuch sits on a half-dozen other interim committees including Business & Commerce, Religious Liberty and Transportation. We talked about the explosive growth of AI and data centers and massive power lines and traffic congestion. He also shared the conservative principles that help guide him through his first session in the Texas legislature.


I think you’ll be interested in what he had to say.

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

You can also listen to the Sherry Sylvester Show on Apple or Spotify.

Sign up for Sherry’s 9th & Congress newsletter here.

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Sherry Sylvester Show

Sherry Sylvester Show: Did the World Cup Change the World? w/ Joshua Treviño

The 2026 World Cup featured 104 matches in 16 host cities, including 2 in Texas. 7 million people attended the games but for many Americans it turned into a nationwide tailgate party that went on for weeks.

I asked my TPPF colleague, Joshua Treviño, a soccer aficionado and deep thinker on a host of global issues, to join me on my most recent podcast to discuss how international visitors reacted to the World Cup and whether the 2026 games were an effective demonstration of America’s soft power.

Did they change the way the world sees America and the way we see ourselves? You can listen to our conversation 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.

You can also listen to the Sherry Sylvester Show on Apple or Spotify.

Sign up for Sherry’s 9th & Congress newsletter here.

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9th & Congress

9th & Congress: The Sons of Liberty to DEI – Universities and Our Freedom

On July 4, I stood at the site of the Boston Massacre, in front of the Old Massachusetts State House, and heard the Declaration of Independence read from the same balcony where it was first read 250 years ago. Standing on the streets where it all started, I pondered the miracle of those first patriots of Boston who planted the idea of independence in the minds of the people and then saw it realized.

For those of us who are fighting for our history today, it is beyond inspiring—but it is also a cautionary tale, reminding us that the battle over what America would become actually began in a university classroom.

Most American historians say our revolution could not have happened without Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty, and that’s not just in hindsight. Thomas Jefferson called Adams “the earliest, most active and persevering man of the Revolution,” and John Adams, the former president and Samuel’s cousin, said bluntly, “the American Revolution can never be written without the character of Samuel Adams.”

American colonists were angry that the British Parliament failed to uphold their rights as Englishmen, but very few considered the answer was severing ties from the mother country. That thought was not in anyone’s head—until Samuel Adams put it there.

In 1740, Adams graduated from Harvard after defending his thesis, entitled “Whether It Be Lawful to Resist the Supreme Magistrate if the Commonwealth Cannot Otherwise Be Preserved.” Most people at the time would have considered it ludicrous to challenge the King of England, but Adams had launched his ideas at Harvard, the most respected university in the country, and his thinking was not viewed as ludicrous there.

In the 33 years between Adams’ thesis coming to fruition in Philadelphia, with the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Harvard continued to provide Adams with the intellectual leadership and ideas that bolstered his credibility and the work of the Sons of Liberty.

Building on his master’s thesis and collaborating with other Harvard thinkers, Adams wrote and published constantly, creating a new narrative that changed how American colonists thought about themselves and England. He and the Sons of Liberty also created an intricate information network that spread his ideas to the other colonies.

Adams was playing the long game, writing for decades and embedding the principles of his Harvard thesis into a feasible path toward independence. His Harvard allies fortified his work at every step.

James Otis, the first lawyer to challenge the British in court for the practice of unimpeded search and seizure in colonists’ homes, and later the quartering of soldiers, was a Harvard graduate. So was Samuel’s cousin John Adams, as were John Hancock, Joseph Warren and seven other signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Changing the worldview of British colonists in a single generation and rallying them behind the principle of independence was essential to the creation of the United States. The intellectual clarity and selfless commitment of Adams and the Sons of Liberty places them in the pantheon of patriots for all time, but the impact of Harvard University also can’t be understated.

We should not forget that one single academic institution was a critical force in the founding of our country. Samuel Adams knew how a powerful university could expand worldviews and open minds and he used that power for good.

Harvard still understands that power, but the ideas have changed. Now, 250 years later, American universities have been used for a darker purpose: closing minds, stifling individual achievement and creating hatred and divisions specifically designed to destroy the country that Adams and the founding patriots created.

It is a cruel irony that leftist academics chose an acronym that sometimes seems to echo the sentiments of the Declaration of Independence. “Diversity, equity and inclusion,” sounds like something early American patriots would support—until they learned the details about what is known as DEI.

“Diversity” means proclaiming that some people must be given preferential treatment because of their race, gender or even their sexual preference. “Equity” means everyone must achieve the same outcome, regardless of merit or effort. “Inclusion” actually means excluding anyone who disagrees.

We are still trying to determine both the depth and breadth of the Marxist-based Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs that have nearly destroyed free thought and open inquiry at American universities, but it is likely much broader than the 200 academic institutions that admit to being members of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, where the stated mission is to incorporate “alternative narratives” about America “focused on the history of racism, colonization, and conquest.”

It is worth noting that many Americans first saw the massive impact of DEI on higher education when several presidents of elite universities, including Harvard’s Claudine Gay, were forced to testify before Congress where they refused to condemn students at Harvard and elsewhere who were calling for the genocide of Jews. Gay, in sharp contrast to Samuel Adams, apparently had also plagiarized much of her thesis.

Gay still teaches at Harvard and she, like all advocates of DEI, is also playing a long game, resisting higher education reform efforts and clinging to curriculum control, litmus tests in hiring, vast administrative expansion and a K-12 pipeline of DEI indoctrinated teachers that has produced a generation of Americans who have been taught to revile their country, the founders and ultimately themselves.

At President Donald Trump’s direction, the White House Office of Domestic Policy recently released a report that reveals that DEI-driven leadership at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., an academic adjacent institution, has eliminated exhibits of the Founding Fathers—no Samuel Adams or John Hancock. According to the report, only references to Benjamin Franklin and George Washington remain among the early founders, and that’s apparently because they both were slaveholders. The fact that Franklin changed his views and became a leader in the abolitionist movement is not mentioned.

It should be no surprise that new polling released by Gallup just before July 4 found that people who say they are proud to be Americans is at an all-time low, driven by Gen Z, where only 41% view the country positively. Other polling found that half of Gen Z believe America is a “racist country,” and almost 60% believe that capitalism should be replaced with either socialism or communism.

By hijacking the curriculum and dramatically expanding administrative programs, leftist DEI forces in academic institutions have created a new normal—a generation that believes the truth that is self-evident is that America is a colonizing, racist and patriarchal country built on systemic oppression.

Listening to the reading of the Declaration on that sacred ground in Boston, I was grateful Samuel Adams understood that universities are one of the primary forces that shape civilizations. Sadly, he could never have imagined his beloved Harvard would one day focus on dividing Americans between oppressed and oppressors, while teaching students to question whether America even deserves to exist.

Texas has been fighting back against DEI for several years, banning DEI offices at state universities and reforming university governance across the board. Texas will no longer allow universities to abuse their power.

Every state should follow Texas’ lead, not only to ensure that academic institutions are places of open inquiry and free thought, but also that there is another glorious Fourth of July celebration in 50 years—and 100 years after that—in America, and even at Harvard. Our lives, our liberty and our freedom to pursue happiness depend on it.

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

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

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Sherry Sylvester Show

The Sherry Sylvester Show | Race Card Play Falls Flat in College Football with Dr. Richard Johnson

On the latest Sherry Sylvester Show, I discuss how the progressives try to play the race card in college football recruitment with Dr. Richard Johnson, head of TPPF’s Booker T. Washington Initiative and a member of Texas Southern University’s Board of Regents.

Last month, the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus called on college athletes to boycott the SEC and other Southern universities to protest the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which struck down racial gerrymandering in congressional districts. House Democrat Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries declared the ruling as proof that the spirit of the “Old Confederacy” is rising again, and New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dubbed it the new Jim Crow, while calling on the North to come to the aid of the South.

Dr. Johnson brings a perspective on all this that few can match. In addition to serving on the Board of Regents of Texas Southern University and his decades of experience in public policy and education, he is a former college and Army athlete himself. I think you will enjoy his perspective.

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

You can also listen to the Sherry Sylvester Show on Apple or Spotify.

Sign up for Sherry’s 9th & Congress newsletter here.

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Winners & Losers

Big Loser: Socialism in New York and Texas

Even though I’ve taken off from my Winners & Losers newsletter this summer, I still join the Cardle & Woolley Show on Talk 1370 Radio in Austin Friday mornings at 8:30 a.m. to announce the week’s list. You can listen live here every week or download the broadcast anytime by clicking here. This week I want to talk about one big loser: socialism in New York and Texas.

Socialism in New York — and Texas
To start, let me set the record straight. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is invariably described as the “first Democratic Socialist” to serve in the top job in New York City. 

In fact, the first member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) to be elected mayor was David Dinkins, who took office in 1990. Perhaps because he was also the first African-American mayor, the DSA distinction got lost. I worked for Dinkins — more on that a little later.

 I bring this up because the big political news this week is that, buoyed by endorsements from Mamdani, three Democratic Socialists ousted three establishment Democrats, including the Chair of the Hispanic Caucus, for New York City congressional seats in the Democrat primary. The victors are calling it an “insurgency” over the Democrat establishment. Socialist senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, also endorsed the trio whose collective credentials are riddled with anti-capitalist and anti-American positions. One stated the U.S. deserved the 9/11 attack while another refused to condemn Hamas for the Oct. 7, 2023 terror attack in Israel and called for “the complete and total destruction of Western Civilization.” 

When Mamdani was first elected, he was viewed by many as a fluke — something that could only happen in New York City, where voters were ultimately given a choice between him and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who many New Yorkers believe was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of elderly people during COVID-19. 

Nobody thinks Mamdani is a fluke now — he is a kingmaker, the new face of the Democrat Party — or what the Democrat Party is about to become.A half dozen more DSA members won New York State legislative Democrat primaries on Tuesday night, which virtually ensures that 16 socialist lawmakers will be seated in Albany after November, the largest socialist delegation in any state. 

Washington, D.C. also nominated a Democratic Socialist mayor this week, and Democratic Socialist Nithya Raman is in a tight race with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass for control of the country’s second largest city. Seattle’s socialist Mayor Katie Wilson was elected last year and has famously driven Starbucks, which was born in Seattle, to Nashville with her “tax the rich” policies. 

Because we are blessed to live “deep in the heart,” it is easy to dismiss New York’s socialist sweep as something that could never happen here, unless you live in San Antonio, like I do, where three DSA members have been elected and currently serve on City Council. So far, they have proposed a Trans History Week and a program called LOVIN to ensure that men who say they are women are not restricted from public women’s restrooms. 

Austin has only has one DSA member on City Council now that the DSA mouthpiece, U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Austin, has moved onto Congress. None of this should surprise us. Gallup released a poll last summer that found that 66% of Democrats view socialism positively, compared to the 42% of Democrats who view capitalism positively — a 24 point gap. 

One big problem with the media failing to report that New York City has already had a Democratic Socialist mayor is that they also didn’t report what happened under previous socialist leadership. Here’s what I saw: 

When Dinkins was mayor, I worked in his administration as part of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation. The administration operated 18 hospitals all over the city, ostensibly to provide universal healthcare to every New Yorker, but largely to provide a pipeline for federal funds. Democrats had run New York City into a ditch and it was already bankrupt when Dinkins got there, but things got much worse when his only strategy for change was to beg for a federal bailout. 

The reality was a nightmare. Like a third world country, New York City was battling four simultaneous epidemics — AIDS, low birth weight babies, asthma and tuberculosis. Crack cocaine was also rampant, and there were “crack babies” convulsing in tiny cribs in hospitals across the City while breast cancer deaths skyrocketed among African-American women because messages to get regular mammograms weren’t being delivered, and even if they were, there were no mammogram machines in black communities. 

Then, as now, most people recognized that poor people with no other options were using emergency rooms for basic healthcare, siphoning off resources and escalating costs. Five- and six-hour emergency room wait times were common. I worked for months on a program to establish a network of clinics to treat asthma patients so people — mostly kids — could go to a clinic where they could get medication or an inhaler. 

It was relatively inexpensive and we pushed the program forward without anticipating any problems. Why would we? It was in everybody’s interest to provide better care for patients, free up emergency room slots and decrease wait times.

I was wrong. It was not in everybody’s interest. The New York City Health and Hospital Workers Union didn’t mind that emergency rooms were jam-packed — that simply meant more overtime and more jobs. In a Democratic Socialist administration, the big unions had lots of clout, and they were able to shut down the community asthma clinics proposal in a day. 

Outside the hospitals, crime and homelessness skyrocketed. In a city that requires walking, constant garbage strikes kept the streets littered with huge stinking garbage bags. Rats stopped even bothering to hide. 

Finally, New Yorkers reached a breaking point and the unthinkable happened. There were barely enough registered Republicans in New York City at that time to make a blip on a chart, but Rudy Giuliani, who Ronald Reagan had made the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, narrowly defeated Dinkins in 1993 and began immediately to clean up the streets and rein in the crime. One of the first things he did was to return the hospitals to private providers.

New Yorkers didn’t forget the nightmare for a long time. While the city remained deeply Democratic, they didn’t elect another Democrat mayor for twenty years. 

It is not surprising that the media has failed to report that Mamdani is actually the second Democratic Socialist mayor of New York City. They don’t want to remind anyone what happened after the first one.

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 a.m. Here’s the listen live link. 

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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9th & Congress

9th & Congress: Why Can’t We Get Rid of Drag Queen Story Hour?

Why Can’t We Get Rid of Drag Queen Story Hour?

June is here and Pride Month is back—but it’s not all rainbows and parades like it used to be.

For years, Americans were told that so-called Pride events were all about tolerance and equal treatment, something we should celebrate like the Fourth of July. Ultimately it didn’t sell. Pride celebrations have become inextricably linked to the broader LGBTQ+Infinity agenda that extends well beyond gay rights and embraces the idea that gender is fluid, biological sex is irrelevant, and traditional institutions such as marriage, faith, and family are relics of an oppressive past. Pride parades usually feature lots of drag queens and nearly naked men, more than a few of whom are dressed in anti-religious costumes (scantily dressed men in nun outfits are common). They are no place for children.

Americans have pushed back. Many, even on the left, believe that a big factor in President Donald Trump’s re-election is because he is for “us,” and his opponent, Kamala Harris, was for “they/them.”

Polling consistently shows that most Americans oppose allowing biological males to compete in women’s sports and support maintaining sex-specific spaces, such as locker rooms and restrooms for women.

Pride celebrations in many cities can’t find sponsors anymore as corporations reconsider whether it’s worth alienating customers to add their brand to a “pride” event.

Americans delivered a resounding “no thanks” to Bud Light after it featured Dylan Mulvaney, a man pretending to be a woman, in its advertising. Customers also turned their back on Target after it marketed a line of cross-dressing clothing.

So why has there been so little progress in eliminating drag shows for children, most commonly manifested in what has become known as Drag Queen Story Hours?

Texas has spent several legislative sessions attempting ban drag shows that target kids. Senate Bill 12, which passed in 2023, prohibited sexually oriented performances in the presence of minors and on public property. Texas has gotten leave to enforce the law, but court challenges continue.

Some educational leaders, including Texas public school librarians, believe it is important that children see drag shows. They insist drag queen performances are part of the mainstream, so they belong in public schools.

It is interesting to note that, as late as the 1950s, educators allowed and even advocated for black face shows to be performed in public schools, not just across the south but across the nation.

A couple years ago, I wrote an article titled “Drag Shows are Blackface,” to show that the message and intent behind drag shows and black face are not just similar, they are virtually identical.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture describes blackface this way:

“Minstrelsy, comedic performances of ‘blackness’ by whites in exaggerated costumes and make-up, cannot be separated fully from the racial derision and stereotyping at its core. By distorting the features and culture of African Americans—including their looks, language, dance, deportment, and character—white Americans were able to codify whiteness across class and geopolitical lines as its antithesis.”

Replace “blackness” with “womanhood” and the comparison is impossible to ignore. Drag performances typically portray women through exaggerated makeup, costumes with oversized breasts and hips, mannerisms, voices, stereotypes including, catty, bitchy and stupid, alongside highly sexualized behavior. Like blackface before it, drag turns a human identity into a theatrical caricature.

Most Americans recognize that blackface is rooted in racist stereotypes and perpetrates heinous indignities toward black people. Blackface is not illegal – all Americans have freedom of speech – but few adults would consider attending a blackface show today.

Why isn’t it the same for Drag Queen Story Hours? We can’t even get Drag Queen Story Hours outlawed in front of children. Scantily dressed men across the country routinely invade public schools and public libraries where they read gender identity-infused stories to kids. Boston is hosting nearly two dozen “story hours” for children as young as 3 during the month of June.

According to its perpetrators, the goals of the Drag Queen Story Hour movement are to teach “imagination, self-expression, and the fluidity of gender at every age. Through glamorous, playful, and proudly queer role models, it creates joyful spaces that reflect the diversity of the world we live in.”

That’s one way to look at it. Another is to recognize that drag carries the same hate-filled message contained in blackface, except it is directed at women. If we really want to celebrate Pride Month, let’s get rid of Drag Queen Story Hours.

Here’s my previous article, “Drag Shows are Black Face.”

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.

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