TPPF’s Sherry Sylvester takes a time out from her typical interview schedule to honor the women who have blazed trails across our great nation, highlighted with Sherry’s favorite episode of TPPF’s award winning series, Forging Texas: Trailboss!
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The New York Post reports that on Super Tuesday, MSNBC’s progressive women’s roundtable got a big laugh out of exit polls showing that illegal immigration was the top priority for GOP voters in Virginia.
Former Biden spokeswoman Jen Psaki laughingly insisted that she lives in Virginia and there’s no problem. Joy Reid called the poll proof that Republicans are racist.
Rachel Maddow mockingly quipped, “I guess Virginia does have a border with West Virginia.”
Maddow’s snarky comment will no doubt overtake the 50 year-old legend of a similar clueless remark on the media elite by New Yorker writer Pauline Kael who reportedly said in 1972, “I don’t understand how Nixon won the election. I don’t know anyone who voted for him.”
Nixon won 49 states.
Maddow and her friends clearly missed the latest data from Gallup in February which found that immigration is now at the top of the list of critical problems cited by Americans. Or perhaps the MSNBC girls are just getting their information on what is going on at the border from the Texas media.
The Texas press has pretended for years that concerns about the border are simply a trumped up talking point for Republicans designed to incite fear into voters and demonize people who are looking for a better life. The culprits they target most frequently are Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.
For the Texas press, describing 5,000 to 10,000 people crossing the border every day as an “invasion” is a crime against humanity. Actual crimes against humanity on the Texas border, including rape trees displaying the underwear of sexual assault victims and sex trafficking of minors, don’t get as much play.
Although it’s big national news, I don’t recall seeing many Texas media reports about the hundreds of terrorists who have been detained at the border or the thousands of Chinese who are coming over now. The Texas media has also ignored thousands of criminal illegal aliens who have been entering Texas though the southern border for years. The press treats them as a figment of former President Donald Trump’s imagination.
After the primary election on Tuesday, the Texas media was as stunned as the women on MSNBC when nearly a dozen House GOP incumbents they thought were too big a deal to fail fell to Republicans who were backed by Gov. Abbott. All over the state, candidates backed by Abbott and Patrick defeated longtime incumbents.
Abbott asked voters to elect representatives who would not give an inch to Democrats, and voters listened to him—because they know the Democrats are responsible for the tragedy that has been happening at the border since President Joe Biden’s inauguration.
The Texas media belittled then-candidate Trump in 2016 when he brought the issue of the border into the national conversation. They stepped up attacks on Abbott for beefing up security at the border and establishing Operation Lone Star. They also attacked Patrick who stood by his election promise to appropriate millions—and ultimately billions—to substantially increase the manpower of the Department of Public Safety at the border.
Of course, if some border politician criticized Abbott, the Texas media was all over that. But even when Trump flipped several solid blue counties to red in South Texas, the Texas media failed to connect the dots.
When Abbott sent illegal migrants to the big blue cities, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post finally reported what the Texas press refused to investigate—what happens to a city or a state when it is overrun with a constant influx of new immigrants in need of virtually everything. What happens when crime skyrockets? What happens when people’s land and homes become migrant stopovers? How do hospitals, schools and other public services keep up?
The Texas press remains mostly silent on the border. Still, not only has immigration become the top issue for Americans, but polls show for the first time that a majority of Americans now support building a border wall.
Of course, school choice was also a critical issue in Texas’ Super Tuesday, but a strong majority of Texans have supported a parent’s right to choose the best school for their child for at least a decade. The Texas media refused to cover that story too. They opted for helping the teachers unions block reforms, rather than writing about parents whose children are trapped in failing public schools.
Abbott’s firm stand on school choice will be transformational for the future of the state, but he was able to win that battle because he bused migrants north and called the bluff of sanctuary cities. He exposed them as simply sanctimonious cities and showed America the truth about what is going on at the southern border.
He got no help from the people who are supposed to tell these stories—the Texas media—but most Americans get it now… except those women at MSNBC.
Every Friday morning at 8:30 a.m., I join the Cardle & Woolley show, Talk 1370 Radio, in Austin to pick the week’s top Winners & Losers, which has gotten a lot easier since November 5 — just put President-elect Donald Trump at the top of the winners list. Time Magazine has named him Person of the Year, and except for Don Lemon, nobody is quibbling about the choice. Trump has essentially taken over as president, both at home and abroad, and nobody seems unhappy about it. Clearly, the Europeans who showed up at Notre Dame Cathedral last week were pleased to see him — as was the longshoremen’s union he met with earlier today.
Trump’s election has ushered in a new era of optimism — even people who didn’t particularly support him are buoyed by the knowledge that the Biden era is over and things are going to change, finally. Here’s who else made my list:
Winner: Whoever Launched the New Jersey Drones
As of Friday morning, nobody seems to know anything about the drones that have been flying over New Jersey every night for the past month. Granted, New Jersey Republican Congressman Jeff Van Drew says credible sources told him they were launched from an Iranian mothership off the Jersey coast, but the Defense Department quickly shot him down, which is exactly what Van Drew wants to do with the drones. Van Drew is a former Democrat who became a Trump Republican in 2020. Trump’s team was essential in getting him re-elected, so if there are “credible sources” who can back-up the Iranian mothership story, you can bet Trump’s people know about it, too.
Van Drew represents several coastal counties in southern New Jersey, not all that far from Grover’s Mill, the site of the Martian landing in the legendary War of the Worlds radio broadcast that panicked the nation into believing America was under attack from Martians in 1938. That was 86 years ago, but the people of New Jersey will not be fooled again. No one in the Garden State has panicked. They’ve seen this kind of thing before.
Loser: America’s Defense Capabilities
Perhaps folks in New Jersey wouldn’t feel so confident if they’d seen the report from the House Select Committee on China, which estimates that if the United States got into a war with China over Taiwan, we’d run out of anti-ship missiles in a week and long range missiles in a month. No estimates on how we would fare if the Jersey shore were attacked by aliens from outer space, but we are behind China in virtually every aspect of warfare capability. Rebuilding America’s defenses is a top priority of the incoming Trump administration, and if you look at this report, it’s clear that dramatic change can’t come soon enough.
This point was underscored on Wednesday when the Department of Defense released a statement stating that it was dealing with climate change as the top security concern in Africa. The statement precisely captured what is wrong with our national defense effort and why Americans voted for something dramatically different.
Winner: Pete Hegseth Gets Cornyn’s Support
It’s also one reason why prospects for President-elect Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, are now looking up. Momentum for Hegseth rebounded over the last week, with an assist from a number of grassroots and policy groups and a Hegseth pledge to at least one senator that he would stop drinking if he got the job. Texas Sen. John Cornyn said that he would support Hegseth this week. Texas’ other senator, Ted Cruz, had previously announced he would back him. Hegseth is a decorated combat veteran and is clearly committed to getting the Department of Defense back on mission.
Winner: Daniel Penny Found Not Guilty
Daniel Penny’s victory in court was not just a victory for him, it was a victory for the people of New York and for our country, a sign that safety is again a priority for our communities. Penny, who subdued a man on the New York City subway who was threatening to kill his fellow passengers, is a Marine Corps veteran who said his only motivation was to protect others. Penny is white and the man threatening the passengers was African-American so black leaders across the country have condemned the jury, but there’s no indication that most African-Americans feel Penny’s actions were unjust. An African-American woman who was on the train during the trial testified in his support, noting that most of the passengers on the train were also minorities.
Loser: Sen. Elizabeth Warren on UnitedHealthcare CEO Assassination
In response to the heinous murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren stated that while violence was never the answer, she understood the murderer’s frustration, having lost faith in the government to solve the health care problem. As the National Review noted, her fellow Democratic Sen. John Fetterman did not feel the need to issue a nuanced statement: “He’s the a**hole that’s going to die in prison,” Fetterman said. The Pennsylvania senator also called the murder “vile,” noting that Thompson leaves behind two children who will grow up without a father.
Loser: “Gender-Affirming Care”
The Washington Post reported this week that so-called LGBTQ+ people are shrinking in fear of what will happen to them once the Trump administration comes in. This story, like many of its ilk, conflates the concerns of the transgender community with gay rights. Several of Trump’s major donors are prominent in the gay community and he just appointed Scott Bessant, who is gay, as Treasury Secretary.
What Trump has pledged to end is the practice of allowing gender-confused children to be prescribed puberty blockers or be subjected to sex-change surgery — so-called “gender-affirming care.” It has nothing to do with gay rights. Britain announced this week that it is banning puberty blockers altogether, following the path of most of Western Europe, which has long acknowledged the danger and ineffectiveness of drug treatments and surgery to treat gender confusion. Britain’s action hasn’t convinced Democrats in Congress, 140 of whom voted against the National Defense Reauthorization Act yesterday because the bill would prohibit the military from providing puberty blockers and other “gender-affirming care” to military kids. Perhaps if those Democrats knew that we’d run out of anti-ship missiles in a week if we have to fight with China about Taiwan, they’d have put the need for more weapons ahead of puberty blockers.
Winner: U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace Takes Stands on Women’s Privacy
Before we leave the topic of gender confusion, we need to acknowledge U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-South Carolina, who was accosted this week by a transgender activist because she has insisted that women’s bathrooms in the nation’s capital be used exclusively by women. Public restrooms exclusively for women have been a key factor for women’s equality throughout history. Before public restrooms were available for women, we were unable to work or participate in community life. Mace is a hero for recognizing that to ensure women’s privacy and safety, we can’t turn our bathrooms over to men. Texas is also mobilizing to reinstate restrictions on men using women’s restrooms.
Winner: Webb County and Judge Tano Tijerina
Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina announced this week that he will become a Republican, reflecting the political change in Texas border counties, which voted overwhelmingly in support of Trump in November. Webb County, which has been reliably Democrat for 100 years, is anchored by Laredo. The fact that this major border city was forced to experience the negative impact of President Joe Biden’s open-border policies clearly had an impact on voters. Judge Tijerina made the right move.
Loser: The Progressive Shoulders Greg Cesar Stands On
The Wall Street Journal published a piece this week musing on the career of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who suggests he may retire in 2031. Throughout his 50 years in politics, Sanders has, among other things, been an apologist for brutal communist regimes in Soviet Russia and elsewhere. Sanders noted that when he was first elected to Congress, he founded the Progressive Caucus with only five people. Last week, the Progressive Caucus, which now numbers more than 100, selected Austin Congressman Greg Casar as its new head, proudly placing him on Sanders’ shoulders. Casar will be carrying out Sanders’ tradition of supporting despots, just like his predecessor, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Washington, who has vigilantly praised the Hamas terrorists while calling Israel a racist state. After his selection, Casar held his first press conference with Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minnesota, by his side. Recall that Omar characterized September 11 as a time when “some people did some things.” Fellow progressive Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Michigan, who accused President Joe Biden of genocide last year, was also there.
Loser: Norway is Worse than California
As Fredrik Haga explains in this great Free Press article, 100 of Norway’s top taxpayers have left in the past two years, taking half the country’s wealth with them. To stanch the flow, Norway is now imposing a 38% exit tax on the market value of your assets. Even California hasn’t thought of introducing an exit tax to make it too expensive for people to leave.
One tax policy that is bankrupting Norwegians is an “unrealized gains tax” on all your assets, even if you didn’t sell them. Vice President Kamala Harris had an “unrealized gains tax” on her wish list, had she been elected. That’s one more reason we can be thankful she was not.
Drones have also been spotted in New York and Pennsylvania, but so far, we’ve not seen one blinking light in the sky in Texas. Keep your eyes peeled, 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.
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TPPF’s Sherry Sylvester sits down with Director of Communications and Media at the Pioneer Institute Chris Sinacola to discuss how bad history and civics education in our schools have become and what we can do to turn it around.
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TPPF’s Sherry Sylvester sits down with author Alexandra Hudson to discuss how we might return to civil discourse one person at a time.
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Most date the campus launch of the notorious “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (DEI) ideology to 2010, with a hyper-escalation in 2020, although its roots go back to the late 60s when socialists created it on college campuses. Until now, the trajectory has always been up.
However, in the last year, DEI has been exposed to business as a huge profit loser by Dylan Mulvaney, Target and most recently the demise of Sports Illustrated after they started putting men pretending to be women on their covers.
On college campuses, the congressional testimony of the three Ivy League presidents showed DEI for what it is: progressive sanctioned racism that denigrates the autonomy of the individual in favor of collective identities linked to the immutable characteristics of race and gender.
Texas’ anti-DEI law, Senate Bill 17, continues to make national news because it is the strongest legislation of its kind in the nation. Texas parents feel safer sending their children to taxpayer funded campuses because the DEI offices have ostensibly been closed. But almost none of the hundreds of people who ran those offices in colleges and universities across the state have been fired, so we can assume they are still spewing phony DEI nonsense from their new perches as Vice President of Belonging, or some other such Sesame Street name.
Dr. Hal Atkins recently noted in the Wall Street Journal that “DEI is down but not out.” The goal of DEI is to convince white Americans that they are all racist, whether they know it or not, and they want black and brown Americans to believe that they are all victims. It’s a $6 billion industry that is not going to go away quietly.
DEI is purposefully never clearly defined by the left, but new polling shows that Americans know it when they see it — and they don’t like it.
When asked if they would like their company to hire and promote individuals based on race, gender or sexually based categories, 66% of all Americans said no, including 54% of Democrats, 71% of Independents and 76% of Republicans.
Of course, DEI zealots have a poll too that shows just the opposite. A poll was referenced in the New York Times late last month that insisted a majority (56%) of those surveyed by Pew in February 2023, said that “focusing on increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace is mainly a good thing. Only 16% thought it was mainly a bad thing.”
What the New York Times didn’t report is that the same poll shows that people clearly don’t know what DEI is. Diversity, equity and inclusion sound good, but digging deeper into the data is the point in the same poll. 68% of Americans don’t want hiring or university admissions to be determined by race or gender or any kind of sexual identity group. They want fair and open merit-based selection processes in all things. This is a benchmark principle for a bipartisan majority of Americans.
So what will DEI advocates do now that Claudine Gay has been exposed as a plagiarizing hack (who probably wasn’t qualified to be president of Harvard) and Dylan Mulvaney (who is definitely not qualified to be a woman) is driven back to counting her Twitter (X) followers? How will the DEI industry fight back?
A recent front page of the New York Times makes it clear that even after DEI advocates have been exposed as frauds, their strategy will remain the same – demonize and insist that all opposition to DEI is not substantive, just political. The Times attacks Texas Republican leadership for the DEI law, demonizing rather than addressing whether DEI programs are discriminatory and divisive.
I have frequently noted that I have yet to hear a DEI advocate provide examples proving that DEI has been effective in increasing minority recruitment, either in business or in academic institutions, or improving student performance or outcomes on college campuses. No one is providing evidence of success (and tons of evidence is showing it is harmful), but the pro-DEI crowd ignores that question too.
Americans oppose DEI because it promulgates a race-based ideology that pits students – and all Americans — against each other based on their ancestors. It creates guilt in those who have done no wrong and exonerates others from responsibility for their lives.
But DEI is also something much worse: a war against civilization. Viewing the world through the DEI ideology requires pronouncing virtually everything that humans have accomplished since time began as the result of white supremacy, racism or colonialism. It rejects the principles of individual freedom and autonomy, science, research, advancement, inquiry and discovery. Their worldview is a dark place where everything humans value is proclaimed to be bad and everything human decency condemns as bad is said to be good.
That’s how thousands of DEI indoctrinated students could continue to flood into the streets to support terrorists who are attempting to wipe Jews off the face of the earth. This barbaric madness and other actions like it will continue until DEI is ended.
Sherry Sylvester is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the former Senior Advisor to Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick.
TPPF’s Sherry Sylvester sits down with Texas State Senator Paul Bettencourt to discuss the importance of steadfastly standing against harmful ideologies such as Marxism and Socialism.
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TPPF Distinguished Senior Fellow Sherry Sylvester explains the intentions of Texas Senate Bill 17, which bans Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) from public higher education institutions.
Pushing out Claudine Gay as president of Harvard may be the biggest academic rejection in American history since Cotton Mather was passed over for the same job in 1702 because of his participation in the Salem Witch Trials. That said, many people do not realize that Gay is still at Harvard as a professor earning $900,000 annually, even though she has not recanted her anti-Semitic statements or apologized to the people she plagiarized. Instead, she essentially called those who criticized her a bunch of racists.
In Texas, the infamous congressional hearing occurred just as Texas academic institutions were rolling out their plans for compliance with Senate Bill 17, the anti-DEI bill that passed in the 2023 Legislative Session and went into effect on January 1.
UT Regent Kevin Eltife made a heroic statement to usher in the end of “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” programs at the University of Texas at Austin:
“We really want to make something crystal clear, whether you like the policy or whether you like this law or any other law, the University of Texas System is going to respect the process, and we’re going to respect the law. We’re not going to look for loopholes. We’re not going to look for workarounds. We’re going to implement the law as passed.”
Texas A&M University posted a website message that states:
“As Texas A&M University prepares to comply with Texas Senate Bill 17 regarding diversity, equity and inclusion programs at public universities, staff members previously supporting the Office for Diversity have been reassigned, and this office is closed. The university is transitioning S.B. 17-compliant programs and resources previously offered by the Office for Diversity to other areas of the university and discontinuing programs that are not compliant.”
Here’s how the anti-DEI ban is working on Texas campuses so far: The San Antonio Express-News reported that a campus-wide working group sifted through about 300 “DEI programming items” at the University of Texas at San Antonio and decided that only 10% of the items would be stopped. The president of UTSA did say that the school would not repurpose its Office of Inclusive Excellence.
“300 DEI programming items” gives us an idea of the scope of DEI on that campus. And what exactly is “Inclusive Excellence?” Does that mean everybody gets an “A” like they do at Harvard?
Meaningless naming designed to obscure the true ideology is a critical component of the DEI playbook. On Texas campuses, word salad office names and titles are being exchanged for different word salad office names and titles.
The University of Texas at Austin’s Division of Diversity and Community Engagement will now become the Division of Campus and Community Engagement.
The Multicultural Center and Pride Alliance at the University of North Texas will now become the Center for Belonging and Engagement. The president of the University of Texas at Dallas admitted that the programs will continue under a different name.
Everyone knew the Pride Center at College Station wasn’t for most A&M students, so now they are going to call it the Student Life Center.
It’s not clear what the former “Pride Center” did at A&M, but at the University of North Texas, some are lamenting that without the Pride Center there will be no place for students to go to get “‘binders’ which women use to smash their breasts so they look like men. According to one staffer, other ‘gender affirming supplies’ are also likely to disappear along with designated spaces for queer students and students of color.”
“Designated spaces for students of color?” Sounds a lot like the back of the bus.
The five employees who worked at the LGBTQA Resource Center and the Center for Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Houston will now be working for the Center for Student Advocacy and Community.
Texas Tech University and San Jacinto College simply closed their DEI offices to comply with Senate Bill 17. On behalf of the conservative majority of Texas, who overwhelmingly oppose the ideology of DEI and who elected the legislators who passed the anti-DEI legislation, we thank you.
We may not quickly know what Texas academic institutions are doing with the hundreds of DEI employees, DEI focused committees and so-called “DEI programming items” that have become embedded within the universities because many have not reported their deployment of DEI personnel and programs. A professor at Texas A&M School of Nursing recently characterized requests for public information from the American Accountability Foundation as “harassment.”
Other campuses are in hysterics over SB 17. UT professors and administrators are telling the Austin American Statesman that the anti-DEI legislation has resulted in profound “confusion and despair” and morale is at an all-time low. Faculty members say they are exhausted.
And, of course, Pavitra Kumar, a student at the University of Texas at Austin, actually went on the record to say that no one is talking to students to ask what they would feel “safe and comfortable with.”
Kumar seems blithely unaware that when college students across the country hit the streets to support the terrorists who attacked Israel on Oct. 7, including at the University of Texas, nobody asked the Jewish students what they’d feel “safe and comfortable with.”
DEI programs at Texas universities employ hundreds of people and cost millions of dollars. The Texas Legislature passed an anti-DEI ban because those programs foment hate and division, and have had no impact in attracting larger numbers of minority and marginalized students or improving their academic outcomes.
Like Claudine Gay at Harvard, most of those who promulgated the divisive DEI ideology on Texas campuses are still there. There is no indication that any Texas academic institution has fired anyone who formally held a DEI title. Like Gay, those who are committed to dividing students into either oppressors or oppressed based on their identity group still have their jobs. They have simply been moved around or given new titles.
The state of Texas put $43 billion into higher education in the last legislative session and Senate Bill 17 has only been in effect for a couple weeks. However, it is clear that it will take a much more comprehensive and serious effort to eradicate DEI from our academic institutions and return to the principles of real academic excellence – merit, vigilance, open inquiry, free speech and respect for people as individuals – not identity groups.