Author: Sherry Sylvester

Every Friday morning at 8:30AM, I join the Cardle & Woolley show, Talk 1370 Radio, in Austin to pick the week’s top Winners & Losers. We run the gambit from public policy and political trends to sports and culture in Texas, America and the world.

Here’s my list for the week ending June 21.

The first big winner is Sen. Ted Cruz who is up 11 points in the latest Texas Polling Project poll. Cruz also reeled in a million dollar donation from casino mogul Miriam Adelson, which should help him fend off the millions Democrats are planning to spend to try to beat him. Finally, in a week when national Democrats have been pushing the idea of “cheap fakes” to suggest that video footage of President Joe Biden’s campaign stumbles aren’t real, Cruz introduced legislation to protect against the actual deep fakes that are being used to victimize women and girls.

The same poll that has Cruz up double digits also found that Republicans say immigration is the biggest threat the country is currently facing while Democrats say that it is the “threat to democracy” – whatever that means. Texas Democrats may not have noticed that Gavin Newsom, Governor of the biggest blue state in America, is a pretty big threat to democracy himself. He went to court this week to take away the citizens’ right to vote on tax increases. At Newsom’s urging the California Supreme Court took a ballot initiative petition off the ballot that had been signed by over a million people who say they are drowning under California’s tax burden. The Court said the anti-tax increase initiative would “upend the way government works.”  Seriously? Pretty sure that was the point of the petition. Newsom is on the losers list.

In other California news, a mayoral debate in San Francisco this week featured incumbent Mayor London Breed asking her opponent to name three drag queens and to provide a list of LGBTQ+ advisors to his campaign. Breed’s challenger, Mark Farrell, declined although he said he has two staffers in the “queer community.” San Francisco was also named the worst run city in the country this week. Perhaps Mayor Breed believes having a list of drag queens at your fingertips is key to the Golden Gate City making a comeback. Put them all on the losers list.

Texans also picked their own winners and losers on that new Texas Polling Project poll. They told pollsters that the institutions they view most favorably are first, local businesses, then the military, the police and churches. Texas state government and municipal government tied for the last spot in the top five, which will be a blow to all those local governments who try to paint state government as the villain. In terms of losers, Texans put corporations based outside the United States at the bottom of the worst five, followed by the criminal justice system, the federal government and the news media.

It’s not clear what to make of the news that the University of Texas at Austin fired about 20 communications staffers this week. According to an anonymous source, the employees were told they were being pushed out so the university could focus on “managing reputational issues and crises” presumably which resulted after UT called the Dept. of Public Safety onto the campus to stop the encampment of pro-terrorist protesters earlier this year. Many professors at UT were also upset after the university fired dozens of DEI staff in order to comply with state law which bans the racially divisive programs. However, despite the wailing from the UT faculty, both those actions likely boosted the reputation of the state’s premier university. Polling conducted for the American Council of Trustees and Alumni found that almost 70% of Texans supported bringing in state police to stop campus encampments. Similarly, TPPF conducted polling in April which found that 68 percent of Texans – including African American and Hispanic Texans – do not believe there should be special programs like DEI for black, Hispanic or gay students.

Counting it as a win for former president Donald Trump when the New York Times reported last week that if everyone who is eligible to vote in the upcoming presidential election voted, Trump would win by 14 points. Elections are always about turnout, so this number doesn’t matter much in the horse race.  What is important about this data is that it exposes the liberal lie that conservative legislation, like requiring photo voter identification at the polls, suppresses Democrat voters. Texas Democrats have been saying for years that “Texas isn’t a red state, it’s a non-voting state.”  Perhaps now they will take a look and see if their woke policy platform might be why they consistently lose elections.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated this week that the federal budget deficit will jump to $1.9 trillion this year, a 27% increase from the February estimate. Almost half the increase is a result of Joe Biden’s policies on student loan repayment and his massive student loan forgiveness – one of the policies that keeps the president on the loser list. To understand how this works in real life, Ben Kamens, who works for a Democrat congresswoman, tweeted this week: “Just got a call to let me know my student debt has been canceled. This is why elections matter. Thanks Joe Biden.”

Outraged folks dived into the internet to find that Kamens reportedly makes $80K a year and his loan was already being repaid by a federal employee loan repayment program. We’ll add Kamens, whose salary is also paid by taxpayers, to the loser list too for his massive demonstration of cluelessness.

The same kind of cluelessness was visible in Fort Worth this week when at least four City Council members proposed raising the minimum wage for all city employees to twenty dollars an hour – a move that would cost $117 million and almost surely result in a property tax increase for Fort Worth taxpayers.

For a winner who understands that our tax dollars belong to us, we turn to former Vice President Mike Pence, who pledged $10 million this week to fight the repeal of the Trump Tax Cuts which are set to expire in 2025. Trump’s newest tax cut idea, to end taxes on tips is also a winner idea.

Finally, I don’t know if it’s true or not, but if TNT commentator Charles Barkley is really retiring that will be a loss for us all. Barkley is all over the map at times, but his funny and fearless observations on the state of the country extend far beyond basketball. Let’s hope it’s just a head fake.

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 at 8:30AM, I join the Cardle & Woolley show, Talk 1370 Radio, in Austin to pick the week’s top Winners & Losers. We run the gambit from public policy and political trends to sports and culture in Texas, America and the world.

Here’s my list for the week ending June 14.

The first winner of the week is Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton who scored a big win in federal court this week when U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth ruled the U.S. Department of Education did not have the power to change the Title IX law to include men and boys who think they are girls. The Biden administration had threatened to withdraw federal funds from schools that did not comply.

Notice in this news report how NBC News is doing their part to push the transgender agenda. They describe Biden’s regulation as preventing schools from “discriminating against students based on their gender identity or sexual orientation, such as by requiring students to use bathrooms and other facilities that correspond to the sex they were assigned at birth.”

Uh, sex is not “assigned at birth,” it is recorded. It’s a chromosome thing. Follow the science.

The same message goes to a big loser this week, Florida District Judge Robert Hinkle, who struck down Florida’s law banning puberty blockers, unnecessary mastectomies and castrations on children – so called “gender affirming care.” He accused Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Republicans who passed the legislation of “racism and misogyny.”

This comes at a time when most of Europe, including England, has stopped providing puberty blockers and other medical interventions to treat gender dysphoria because there isn’t any medical data that indicates it is effective. Counter to the most prevalent propaganda, medical intervention does not prevent suicides in people experiencing gender dysphoria and the side effects of “gender affirming care” are chilling. Counseling and talk therapy are proving a better option. England is especially important to watch on this issue because they have been doing gender transition surgeries since the 1950’s and have the most data to analyze.

Another loser on “gender issues” this week is Liam Morrison, a middle schooler in Massachusetts who lost his free speech battle in a federal court which ruled that his school in Middleborough could bar him from wearing a T-shirt that reads: “There are only 2 Genders.” The Alliance Defending Freedom said, “This case isn’t about T-shirts; it’s about a public school telling a middle-schooler that he isn’t allowed to express a view that differs from their own.” Not going to put Liam on the losers list, but will chalk it up to a loss for the First Amendment. ADF is considering an appeal.

Finishing up what has turned out to be a whole “gender issues” section is a win for women athletes everywhere — Lia Thomas, a man who competes in women’s NCAA swimming, won’t be going to the Olympics. Thomas has been on the loser list for some time.

Of course, Hunter Biden is also a big loser this week. The fact that he was found guilty in Delaware says a great deal about just how guilty he was. The trial told us way more than we want to know about who he is and, unfortunately, we can’t unsee it.

Amarillo City Council is on the winners list for rejecting what was called an “abortion travel ban” to stop women who might be traveling through Amarillo to another state to get an abortion. Amarillo resident Michael Ford most clearly articulated the position of many in Amarillo’s pro-life community when he said, “I firmly believe that what women and families need most in crisis is love, compassion, and support, not the threat of public shame and humiliation.”

Unfortunately, the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard is a loser this week. As if the Title IX stunt wasn’t enough, in another move to pander to his progressive base, Biden’s Department of Fish and Wildlife Services designated the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard, which only lives in the Permian Basin, as an endangered species. The Permian is the largest oil and gas producing region in the world and the Bidenites slapped down the endangered species designation in a clear attempt to hamper oil and gas production, despite the fact that oil and gas producers in the region have been working with the Dept. of Fish and Wildlife for over a decade to ensure that the lizard’s homeland is protected. My colleagues at TPPF note that in announcing the new designation, Fish and Wildlife provided “next to no scientific data demonstrating that the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard is presently or will soon be endangered.”

Bureaucrats have been trying since 1982 to use the lizard to slow down oil and gas production, but it hasn’t worked. The lizard is not extinct and I am betting the people of the Permian can produce energy and keep on keeping the little lizard safe.

Another winner is Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson. If you haven’t read the latest Texas Monthly profile of him, take a look at it now. Johnson, converted from Democrat to Republican last year, which continues to make him a winner. In this interview, he tells it like it is, saying, among other things, “I learned that the real heart of the Democratic Party is with the criminals and that it feels more sympathy toward the offenders. The Democratic Party does not take public safety seriously… so, I joined the party that’s right on public safety.”

Also, in a series of responses that clearly drove the lefty Texas Monthly interviewer crazy, Johnson said:

Being the mayor of Dallas, in some people’s minds, was me taking something that I wasn’t entitled to. I started getting all kinds of hate, and it was coming, disproportionately, from people on the left. From a lot of white liberals. They would tell me that I shouldn’t run for mayor because I’m doing “so well” as a state representative. It felt like people were telling me to stay in my place… I do believe that some folks, primarily white liberals, have a problem with a strong-willed, competent, self-assured, highly educated Black man leading their city. Period. I said it. You got me to say it. That, as an African American, he’s always felt people from the left who patronized him and encouraged him to “stay in his place.”

Finally, the close out winners this week are the Congressional Republicans who trounced Democrat House members 31 to 11 in the annual Congressional Baseball Game. Texans had a big boost from the start since this year’s game was in honor of former President George H.W. Bush who would have turned 100 on Wednesday. Bush, who played baseball for Yale, was an avid baseball fan who participated in the game when he was in Congress. Play was interrupted by some climate protesters, but they didn’t manage to spoil the fun.

That’s all for now. Have a great weekend.

The Texan Founder and CEO Konni Burton is my latest guest on the Sherry Sylvester Show. If you missed it, you can watch it 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.

Every Friday morning at 8:30AM, I join the Cardle & Woolley show, Talk 1370 Radio, in Austin to pick the week’s top Winners & Losers. We run the gambit from public policy and political trends to sports and culture in Texas, America and the world.

Here’s my list for the week ending June 7.

It was a week filled with gratitude for the courage and heroism of those brave Americans who stormed the beaches on D-Day. Those of the greatest generation will remain winners for all time. American pride seemed to bring the country together for a bit as Americans remembered our connection to those who risked their lives and died to save Europe and the world expanding the American legacy of freedom that is part of our DNA.

Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton apparently was not moved by it all. She took the opportunity to push the tiresome partisan trope that her former political opponent, Donald Trump, is a threat to democracy.  She posted:

Eighty years ago today, thousands of brave Americans fought to protect democracy on the shores of Normandy. This November all we have to do is vote.

It was also noted this week that Hillary was fined $8000.00 for misrepresenting the money she paid to create the Steele Dossier, her phony report on Russian involvement in her 2016 campaign, as “legal expenses,” precisely what Trump is now facing jail time for.  The term “loser” doesn’t adequately to cover it.

The Texans who want to challenge the New York Stock Exchange by establishing a Dallas–based stock exchange have a tough hill to climb, but it’s likely a big win for the state no matter how it turns out.  The Texas Stock Exchange (TXSE) would be an ongoing demonstration that the Texas pro-business formula of low taxes and reasonable regulation works.  Texas is routinely one of the top job creators in the country and businesses come online, without the requirements of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and environmental social governance (ESG) that hamstring companies, depress profits and inhibit productivity and innovation.  Reports indicate Blackrock and Citadel Securities are leading the charge while Elon Musk, Mark Cuban and Texas Governor Greg Abbott are cheering it on.   Where do you sign up to ring the bell?

Another winner is Houston Mayor John Whitmire.  He faced a huge backlash in March when he ignored the demands of pro-Palestinian groups in the Bayou City who threatened the Mayor with a loss of “audience” and “business partnerships” if he did not call for an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s war against Hamas terrorists.  The Mayor ignored the threat and this week he celebrated the 76th anniversary of the founding of Israel with the Jewish Community in Houston where he vowed to continue to fight anti-Semitism anywhere he sees it.

President Joe Biden is on the loser list again, this time for his Executive Order pretending to address the crisis at the southern border.  After three years of policies that have allowed eight million people to enter the country illegally, Biden finally issued an executive order that cannot even be described as “too little, too late.”  Instead it’s “nothing, too late.”  My colleagues at TPPF, Rodney Scott and Selene Rodriguez call it political theatre, noting Biden’s only goal was to try to get some good press on the border issue, undoubtedly because it is now the top concern of voters across the country who will decide whether to re-elect him in November.  Biden rolled back dozens of border policies that were keeping the border secure when he came into office in 2021.  Jiggering with the asylum application process at this late date is, frankly, pathetic.

Two professors at the University of Texas at Austin, Daniel Bonevac and John Hatfield make the winners list this week for pushing back on President Biden’s Title IX revisions.  Biden expanded Title IX to include men who say they are women.  According to the Austin American Statesman, the professors say they would not discriminate against men who dress as women in hiring but they would not allow them to dress in drag or appear in clothing of the opposite sex while they are teaching.  They also said they would not give excused absences for non-medically necessary abortions or address any student with a plural pronoun like “they” instead of him and her.  Obama tried to legalize and normalize men saying they are women in 2017 with a threat to take away funding to public schools if they didn’t open girls bathrooms to boys. He was not successful.  Like the professors, most Americans don’t want to discriminate against anyone, but they simply don’t support the so-called “trans agenda” being pushed by progressives. That’s probably why there is growing concern that guy who just became the new Miss Maryland USA will be spending so much time around children. Put him on the losers list.

The National Center for Energy Analytics is a winner this week for giving us more news about what transitioning to electric cars is actually going to cost.  The NCEA’s new report finds that the cost of building the charging stations and infrastructure to service electric cars will run somewhere between $2 to $4 trillion.  That’s the cost of the charging stations and getting electricity to those charging stations – something that hasn’t been in the calculation so far.  Taxpayers have already put down billions to subsidize electric cars – which most people still don’t want — and now this.  But wait, there’s more.  The $4 trillion doesn’t include the cost of new power plants that will also be required.  Take a look at the new report.

The pandemic continues to be a loser.  Pollster Scott Rasmussen reported this week 61% of Americans believe that at least some of the information released by the federal government during the pandemic was intentionally false and misleading. This includes 34% who say that most of it was false, 19% who think just about all of it was false and 15% who think everything the government told us was a lie. Given that, a healthy majority of Americans were undoubtedly not surprised to hear Anthony Fauci tell Congress this week that he had nothing to do with any of it.  Fauci, who referred to himself during the pandemic as “the science,” is also on the loser list.  He told Congress that even though he was leading the national response to COVID, the 6-foot separation rule “just appeared.” It wasn’t him. He denied ever telling the country that COVID couldn’t have been the result of a leak in a Wuhan lab and when emails were revealed from his long time senior advisor saying they had a system for avoiding public information disclosures, Fauci said he hardly knew the guy.  Expect the percentage of Americans who believe the government gave us intentionally false information during the pandemic to increase soon.

In other loser news, we’ve all been waiting to see what would happen if the pro-Hamas protests continued into Gay Pride Month which is always replete with parades.  Sure enough, two parades collided in Philadelphia where the pro-terrorists belted out chants comparing the Philadelphia Pride Parade (PPP) to the KKK.  The counter parade was led by Queers for Palestine, a group that has been likened to “Chickens for Colonel Sanders.” There’s a concept called “intersectionality” within the DEI ideology where the goal is to determine who is the biggest victim. To see where such one-up-manship ultimately leads, take a look at this footage from the Philadelphia streets last weekend.

Finally, as college football continues its massive realignment, news dropped this week that San Antonio’s Alamo Bowl has lost the option to include University of Texas or Oklahoma in its selection pool for the bowl game this year.  Alamo Bowlers were hoping to put either Oklahoma or Texas in a slot in place of picking from what is left of the PAC-12, but the powerful SEC, the new home for Oklahoma and Texas, said no.  An unnamed SEC source gave what may well be the best quote of week when he said:  “Allowing the Alamo to take OU or Texas instead of a Pac-12 legacy team would have caused a lot of issues with the SEC bowl, and we don’t like issues.”

Got it. We’ll just leave it there. 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 at 8:30AM, I join Cardle & Woolley show, Talk 1370 Radio, in Austin to pick the week’s Winners & Losers. It runs the gambit from public policy and political trends to sports and culture in Texas, America and the world.  The last week in May, 2024, includes major winners and losers who will impact Texas and America for years to come—and maybe even change the course of our history. Considering all that, here’s who made my list.

The biggest loser is the New York City justice system. I lived in New York City for over a decade, where I worked around the media, politics and the criminal justice system so I am not surprised that the Judge and the District Attorney sold their souls, along with any semblance of ethics or integrity, in order to deliver a guilty verdict to former President Donald Trump. Using the court system to attack a presidential candidate will further erode trust in the America’s legal system, as well as the widening conviction among Americans that the justice system is rigged. This is particularly true in New York City, where robbery and shop lifting go unpunished and illegal immigrants can punch out police officers and get free tickets out of town.  I spoke to Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, who was in the court room on the last day of the trial. He talks about biased rulings of Judge Juan Merchan in his instructions to the jury and the corruption of the judicial process. Click here to watch the interview.

There’s lots of speculation about how the verdict will impact Trump’s presidential campaign. Most of it is wrong, because the answer is unknowable. The biggest advantage for the former president is that he is still running against Joe Biden. Biden has been pronounced too feeble to go to trial for his classified documents crimes, but even though he got the guilty verdict against Trump that he wanted, he still has to explain the high cost of living, the border invasion, inflation and a couple of very awful wars that have happened on his watch. Biden is on the losers list again this week for many of the same old things—he released a million barrels of oil from the Northeast Gas Reserve, for example, telling voters it would lower the cost of gas. Americans use 9 million barrels of gasoline daily, so a million barrels will have virtually no impact.

The verdict will super-charge Trump into hyper-campaign mode, and no one who is paying attention would bet against Trump, who is still the odds on favorite to win the election, according to the Las Vegas Review (although the odds dropped a little after the verdict.) We’ll see what the polls like look over the next few days after news of the guilty verdict sinks in. It is important to remember that the polls will also determine how the verdict plays out. Sentencing is scheduled for July 11 and legal experts say it is unlikely that a 78 year-old first offender would be sent to jail for a white collar crime, but Judge Merchan has made it clear that the law, legal precedent, fairness and decency don’t really matter in this case. If Trump is still ahead of Biden in the polls, the judge will put him in the slammer.

Robert DeNiro is a loser for showing  up outside the New York City courtroom ranting about Trump, but he created a winner—the New York Post, which followed the actor’s tantrum with the front page headline, Raging Bullsh*t. Conservative media outlets in Texas are getting stronger and better all the time, but we really need a good tabloid.

Despite the dark times at the national level, we must acknowledge the big win in Tuesday’s Run-Off Election by Gov. Greg Abbott in defeating those in the Texas House who voted against school choice in the last session. Abbott put his money where his mouth is to defeat 11 incumbents who had repeatedly voted with the teachers unions instead of Texas children. Adding the new members to the pro-parental choice challengers who were also elected with Abbott’s help when 9 incumbents retired, support for school choice is virtually assured next session and Texas can join 33 other states where school choice programs have improved educational outcomes for children from kindergarten to high school. The big losers in this fight are the Texas teachers unions, which have demonstrated again and again that its members don’t really care about student outcomes. They are fighting to protect a system where fully 50 percent of the students are performing below grade level.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is also on the winners list for taking a stand on his wife’s right to fly whatever flag she wants. He’s joined by Chief Justice John Roberts who ignored Senate Democrats who said they need to meet with the justices because the flags have created an “ethics crisis” on the high court. Chief Justice Roberts pointed out that it would be inappropriate for the justices to meet with members of one party and appeared to stand by Alito who has no intention of recusing himself in any election cases because of the flags flying over his house. After this week it is hard to imagine any more appropriate display than George Washington’s Appeal to Heaven flag.

The State GOP Convention is on the loser list for a proposal to close Texas primary elections to prohibit Democrats from crossover voting and allowing the 62 people on the State Republican Executive Committee (SREC) to “censure” an office holder and thereby block him or her from appearing on the ballot for two years. If this sounds a lot like those efforts in several Democrat states to keep Trump off the ballot, that’s because it is.  GOP convention-goers also want to create a kind of Texas electoral college that would require statewide office holders to not just win the popular vote, but to win a majority in half of Texas 254 counties.

Closing the primaries would prove to be a logistical nightmare for Texas. In states with closed primaries that register by political party, registration is managed by the government, not by political parties, as is proposed by the Texas GOP resolution. The Texas proposal will require voters to register four months in advance, excluding thousands of people moving into the state before the election and making military ballots dicey. In states with closed primaries, it ends up making little difference because a huge percentage of the electorate registers as independent.

The censure proposal and the Texas electoral college are not likely to make it through the courts, but that doesn’t mean they won’t do damage to Republicans. Normal Americans do not respond favorably to these kinds of abuses of power and they aren’t necessary.

Conservatives win elections in Texas and America because we have the best ideas—we are right on the economy, we are right on the border, we are right on education and we are gaining ground in the culture war as more and more people see the idiocy of woke policies. Closing down our elections is not a good strategy, even in the short term, and it is disastrous for the long term. The phrase I heard over and over again at the Republican convention is “we have to hold our elected officials accountable.” I totally agree—and we just did. Just ask the 11 incumbents who were defeated for voting against school choice. It’s called an election.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s popularity is increasing in Israel, undoubtedly after he ignored directions from Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on how to fight the war against the Hamas terrorists. Clearly a winning move for Netanyahu and a bad political call the other month by U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer who said Netanyahu had “lost his way.”

We cannot fail to acknowledge that Houston was named the dirtiest city in America making it a loser by taking the crown away from that perennial hellhole, Newark, New Jersey.  This is a really black mark for the iconic Darrel the Barrel, most recently immortalized by Ethan Hawke in this great video. Houstonites need to pull it together. Don’t Mess with Texas!

Closing out with the great news that we’ve got a Texas team in the NBA finals. The Dallas Mavericks are up against the Boston Celtics. Game 1 is next Thursday night. Let’s go Mavs!

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 at 8:30AM, I join the Cardle & Woolley show, Talk 1370 Radio, in Austin to pick the week’s Winners & Losers. It’s a lightning round that runs the gamut from public policy and political trends to sports and culture in Texas, America and the world. Here’s who made my list for the week ending on May 24.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz is a big winner for taking on Secretary of State Anthony Blinken for the Biden Administration’s disastrous policy toward Iran, from refusing to enforce sanctions to slow walking arms shipments to Israel, ultimately enriching and enabling the world’s largest sponsor of terrorism.  Cruz didn’t stop there, hitting Blinken for America’s issuing of condolences following the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the “Butcher of Tehran.”

Cruz also filed a Senate bill on IVF (invitro-fertilization) ensuring parents will not lose this important option for having children. Finally, amid lots of noise that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr’s appearance on the ballot in Texas could negatively impact Cruz’s re-election chances, the latest poll continues to show him with a double-digit lead over his Democrat opponent.

Not sure if it’s President, Joe Biden or the American people who are the big losers this week, but Biden’s policies continue to bring hard times and there’s no indication that anything is going to change. A report by the Wall Street Journal this week found that, after adjusting for inflation, which is up 20% since Biden took office, the net worth of American households increased just 0.7%. Under Trump, household net worth increased 16%.  Unlike most Americans, the President seems to be ignoring those pesky facts and instead looking for tricks to help him win the election like forgiving more student loan debt. He added another $7.7 billion this week on top of the $7.4 billion he announced in April. This brings the total amount of student loan forgiveness to $167 billion, double the amount the federal government spends on Pell grants for low-income students. Perhaps he made the move because when the President recently spoke at the Morehouse College commencement, it seemed like the only applause he got was when he mentioned government paying off student loans.

This was a particularly big week for “gaffs” by the President including what will surely become an infamous speech before the NAACP which required 9 corrections on the official transcript, including mispronouncing the NAACP.    My personal favorite was the story he told of being Vice President during the pandemic (he wasn’t) and former President Barack Obama sent him to Detroit (he didn’t) to “fix it.” How do the folks charged with walking that one back even know where to start?

Texas Governor Greg Abbott is a big contrast to the President and earns another week on the winners list for keeping his foot on the gas, announcing that he will continue to bus illegal migrants into New York City. Abbott’s commitment to secure the border has dramatically reduced illegal crossings in the Rio Grande Valley. More illegals are now crossing the border in San Diego.

Lots of celebrities on this week’s list. Former Dallas Cowboy Emmitt Smith, makes the losers list for his statement attacking his alma mater, the University of Florida, for closing down its so-called Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs, like we have done in Texas. Smith makes an impassioned statement that our universities succeed when there is diverse thinking from all backgrounds.  No one disagrees with that, but Smith seems unaware that DEI does not actually allow diverse thinking. Instead, the ideology proscribes that you must view America as a land of white supremacy where everyone is either a virtuous victim or an oppressor.  Smith is on the right track, however, because he says equality is his goal – like it is for most Americans. Unfortunately, the “equity” in DEI is something else – it requires the same outcomes for everyone. To understand the difference, equality means any Texan can try out for the Dallas Cowboys and the best players get a spot on the team. Equity means that 40.2% of the team would be required to be Hispanic, 39.7 % would need to be white and 11.6 % would be required to be African American in order for the Cowboys to equitably reflect the racial population of Texas. With DEI, race and identity are what matter, not skill and merit.

Along the same line, some of his fellow celebrity athletes, LeBron James and Charles Barkley, make the winners list for pushing back against some who some of have charged that basketball phenom Caitlin Clark, is making such a splash because she is white and has “pretty privilege,” (another wacky DEI term). Both athletes paraphrased the old basketball adage, “the ball don’t lie.” Clark has scored more points than any other college basketball player in history. She’s clearly earned any attention she gets.

Not really a correction but an update. Last week Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene made the losers list for attacking Texas U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett for wearing false eyelashes. Greene’s shoddy behavior and lots of news on the “mean girls in Congress” spat followed this week.  Then Crockett said the whole “eyelashes” thing was actually a racist attack.  Apparently, she only has one card to play and that puts her on the Losers list.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick gave another winning speech at the Texas Republican Convention on San Antonio this week and joined the Sherry Sylvester Show podcast afterward to discuss what he saw in New York City when he attended the last day of the trial of former President Donald Trump.  Patrick was inside the courtroom and gives his views on New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan and the court proceedings. It’s Episode 28 and will be posted shortly.

Have a great holiday 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 at 8:30AM, I join the Cardle & Woolley show, Talk 1370 Radio, in Austin to pick the week’s Winners & Losers. It’s a lightning round that runs the gamut from public policy and political trends to sports and culture in Texas, America and the world. Here’s who made my list for the week ending on May 17.

State Senator Brandon Creighton tops the Winners list for calling in the state’s flagship universities to report to the Senate Higher Education Committee on steps they have taken to end the so-called “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (DEI) programs that push identity politics on Texas campuses. Despite major pushback from faculty, staff and students, the state’s major academic institutions all reported that DEI offices had been closed and DEI officers had been laid off or re-assigned. The University of Texas at Austin told Creighton they recouped $25 million by eliminating 311 positions and 681 contracts. Continued monitoring and on-going audits remain essential to determine how much of what the academic leaders reported was accurate and how much was an attempt to blow smoke at the Legislature so they don’t take away their state funding. Texas A&M maintained they only had 8 DEI officers, for example, a figure that a review of the data shows is likely wildly inaccurate. All the flagships failed to provide substantive answers to questions about DEI initiatives that remain embedded in hiring practices, academic infrastructure and strategic plans, but Creighton made it clear the era of DEI is coming to an end in Texas.

Creighton was attacked during the hearing by Texas NAACP President Gary Bledsoe who makes the Losers list for accusing Creighton of racist motivations in authoring the DEI ban (Senate Bill 17) last year. A couple students who testified at the hearing also spit out charges of “white supremacy.” Not surprising. If you believe in the ideology of DEI you believe everyone is either a victim or a white supremacist.

Texas State University is on the Losers list, but it’s not their fault. They were about to become the first Texas university to host a presidential debate slated for mid-September, but President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump went around the Debate Commission and made their own deal. Virginia State University, the first historically black college or university (HBCU) to be selected as a debate venue also lost out.

Keeping with the collegiate theme, Texas A&M makes the Winners list for suspending Title IX Director Rick Olshak, who lamented that Biden’s wacky rules that expand Title IX protections to men who think they are women and vice versa did not go far enough.  Governor Abbott made the Winners list the other week for instructing educational institutions to ignore the new rules. So did Attorney General Ken Paxton, who joined 14 states in suing Biden over it.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will be on the Texas presidential ballot in November. It’s not clear what impact he will have on the presidential race or any down ballot contests, but Texas can be proud that his folks are engaged and we’ve got a ballot access program that works.

Houston State Rep. Shawn Thierry is fighting back a challenge from the progressive wing of her party for voting to outlaw gender modification — Senate Bill 14 — which prohibits puberty blockers, castrations and non-necessary mastectomies, for children. Thierry has rightly called it “Black Genocide” and has put up signs throughout the district reminding voters that legalizing non-necessary surgeries for children that frequently result in sterilization is not a good idea for black kids – or any kids.

These are tough times for U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, from Laredo, but he still managed to make the Winners list this week for being one of the 16 Democrats, and the only Democrat representative from Texas, who voted to rebuke President Joe Biden for withholding offensive arms shipments to Israel after Congress had approved them.

Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene voted against rebuking Biden for withholding arms shipments to Israel, but that’s not why she’s on the Losers list again. She went after U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, for wearing fake eyelashes. I don’t actually know if Crockett’s eyelashes are fake, but as a lifelong feminist, I defend her right to wear them, as well as Greene’s right to pretend she is a platinum blonde. Greene has got to stop these nutty antics. She is forcing conservative women to root for AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY).

Some staffers in the U.S. House are planning a protest of U.S. support for Israel next week and they are telling everyone to show up in a mask, hide their employee tags and wear an outfit that will keep them incognito. The staffers are certainly free to protest – that’s America – but disguising oneself while proclaiming you are standing on principle is not. Those guys who signed the Declaration of Independence were not just risking their jobs and livelihoods. They also knew the British would hang them if they caught up with them. That’s why John Hancock’s huge signature was such a big statement. The fact that the pro-Palestinian protesters are in disguise shows it’s not just Middle East history that they don’t understand. They don’t know much about American history either. Losers.

Let’s close out the Losers list with the always obtuse City of San Francisco which is spending a couple million a year to provide alcohol – a shot or a beer – to homeless alcoholics in the Tenderloin District. The strategy of giving alcohol and drugs to addicts has been tried for decades. It doesn’t work. Only Losers like the people running San Francisco would think it’s a good idea.

** Correction** Last week Barron Trump made the Winners list for being selected as a Florida delegate to the Republican National Convention. Later in the day the news broke that Barron has declined the invitation. He was out of the spotlight when his father was in the White House and it appears he will stay in the background for a while longer. However, he did graduate from high school today, so he’s taken the first step in the critically important Success Sequence – clearly a winning move.

That’s all for now – 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.