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Texas is winning the war against ‘woke’

This commentary was originally published in the Washington Times.

Gov. Ron DeSantis brags that Florida “is where woke goes to die,” but in the legislative session that just ended, Texas lawmakers passed the strongest legislation in the country to end DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) and its ideological framework mandating a belief in systemic racism, non-binary genders and pronoun police, men playing women’s sports, drag shows for children and even Democrat cities defunding the police. Some of the protesters challenged the legislators fighting wokeness, insisting that “woke” is merely a left-wing term meaning “stay aware.”

But even the left-leaning AP Stylebook has been forced to accept that “woke” is conservative shorthand for every crazy idea the left is pushing.

Texas lawmakers attacked those crazy woke ideas starting at their power center—college campuses—by passing the strongest anti-DEI bill in the nation. Texas closed down DEI offices on every state campus, prohibited mandatory DEI training and DEI statements to be hired. They also reined in Democrat cities with the “Death Star” bill that will prohibit city leaders from overriding state law. They blocked men from playing in women’s sports on college campuses and prohibited children from being exposed to drag shows.  Children will also be protected from cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers and sex-change surgeries before they are 18.

new Gallup poll makes it clear that the Texas anti-woke agenda is much bigger than Texas. Most Americans agree with Texans on these issues. The number of people who call themselves social conservatives has increased 8 points in just two years while the number of people who call themselves socially liberal is dropping.

To just look at one issue, support for what is called “trans rights,” which impacts those suffering from gender confusion, is falling. According to Gallup, the number of Americans who oppose transgender men playing in women’s sports has increased to almost 70%, about the same as the percentage of Texans who oppose it. Predictions by the left that “trans rights” would gradually evolve into broader acceptance, like gay rights has, seem to be off base.

The Washington Post reluctantly reports in its own poll that almost 60% of Americans “don’t believe it is even possible” to be any sex other than the sex you were born as.  Similarly, the Texas Polling Project also found that 63% of Texans believe that sex is determined by what is on your birth certificate.

Population data regarding “trans” people are suspect, but, even with all the hype, the Washington Post says only about 0.6% of the population calls themselves “trans.” If you add in those folks who believe they are somehow “non-binary” (some gender other than male or female) that number increases to 1.6%. According to the Washington Post, 2.4% of the population is gay—although the number is much higher among younger people.  As Bill Maher has hilariously pointed out, the number of young people who now say they are gay is escalating so rapidly that the entire population will be gay by 2054.

Interestingly, a Summit poll found that about 69% of Americans attribute the skyrocketing numbers of young people who suddenly believe there are the opposite sex to cultural infusion through the media as well as the influence of big medicine, which produces puberty blockers and sex transition surgical centers. Regardless of the cause, the majority of Americans support Texas legislation that restricts discussions of gender identity and adult sexuality in elementary school classrooms.

Disagreement with so-called “trans” issues isn’t the total reason for the substantial shift toward social conservativism among Americans. Progressives pushing ideas that all American and Texas history is a lie, that white supremacy is ubiquitous and racism is in America’s DNA are another chief cause. So is defunding the police, even as American cities are destroyed by crime.

Ignoring progressive charges of racism and transphobia, Texas lawmakers took on the woke insanity and they won, big time.  The took significant steps to return reason and free speech to our college campuses, protect our children and women sports and help restore safety and vitality to our cities. The numbers in the latest Gallup poll showing an increase in social conservatism makes it clear that Americans across the country would like to see more of the same in their states.

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In The Media

The Right Idea | Episode 21: 88th Legislature Session Recap

In this week’s special presentation of The Right Idea, Derek takes part in a panel discussion recapping Texas’ 88th Legislature Session with TPPF’s Greg Sindelar, Sherry Sylvester and Andrew Brown.

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In The Media

State of the Taxpayer: 88th Legislative Session Recap (Austin, TX)

Wednesday, May 31st 12:00 PM CT

The 88th Legislative Session featured a number of conservative policies and debates affecting the future of Texas, from parental empowerment to property tax reform and many others. What did legislators accomplish, what work is left to be done in a possible special session, and how will the Texas Public Policy Foundation help implement this new legislation?

Join the Texas Public Policy Foundation for a panel discussion on everything that happened during the 88th legislative session, the future of Texas, and what this new legislation means for taxpayers in 2023 and beyond.

Speakers

  • Greg Sindelar (Moderator) – Chief Executive Officer, Texas Public Policy Foundation
  • Andrew Brown, J.D. – Associate Vice President of Policy, Texas Public Policy Foundation
  • Derek Cohen, Ph.D. – Vice President of Policy, Texas Public Policy Foundation
  • Sherry Sylvester – Distinguished Senior Fellow, Texas Public Policy Foundation
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In The Media

Recapping the 88th Legislative Session with Lt. Governor Dan Patrick

As the 88th Legislative Session concludes, Texas Public Policy Foundation Distinguished Senior Fellow Sherry Sylvester will host a live, one-on-one interview with Lt. Governor Dan Patrick.

They will discuss the various bills passed by the Legislature to advance conservative priorities and ensure that Texas remains a bastion of freedom.

What were the biggest challenges? How will these policies help Texas families? And what work might still need to be addressed in a special session?

Join us to hear the leader of the Texas Senate’s perspective on these questions and more.

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In The Media

TPPF Applauds the Passage of Senate 17 – the Strongest anti-DEI Bill in the Nation

Today, the Texas Public Policy Foundation applauded the passage of Senate Bill 17, ending taxpayer support for diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. TPPF Distinguished Senior Fellow Sherry Sylvester released the following statement:

“Senate Bill 17, authored by Senator Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe and Rep. John Kuempel, R-Seguin, is the strongest anti-DEI Bill in the nation.  SB 17 will end Texas taxpayer support of DEI, a political ideology rooted in the premise that white supremacy is the primary force driving every aspect of university and American life.

“SB 17 will close down DEI offices at Texas colleges and universities, end mandatory DEI training and ensure that no job applicant at a state institution of higher education is required to sign a statement affirming their support of any political doctrine in order to be hired.  SB 17 will end the fissures of division that have been created on Texas college and university campuses and help return the principles of open inquiry and free speech to the state’s institutions of higher learning.”

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In The Media

TPPF Commends NAS Report Spotlighting Critical Race Theory at the University of Texas – Austin

Today, the Texas Public Policy Foundation congratulates the National Association of Scholars (NAS) on the release of its report, “Comprehensive Restructuring: Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) at the University of Texas.” The report finds that the UT-Austin’s DEI initiatives push a clear ideological agenda rooted in controversial claims about race, gender, oppression, and white privilege.

“In this report, NAS chronicles how UT-Austin gave in to student demands in 2016, when they called for a complete overhaul of the university to address dubious social justice concerns. The university created a massive and bloated bureaucracy of so-called ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ programs that now permeate every aspect of university life, dividing students based on phony critical race and gender theories,” said Sherry Sylvester, a Distinguished Senior Fellow at TPPF.

The report found UT-Austin routinely trains students and faculty using the writings of Ibram X. Kendi, author of “The Anti-Racist Baby” and other books and Robin DiAngelo, a professor in “whiteness studies” and author of “White Fragility.” The UT-Austin curriculum is riddled with their ideas and critical race theory, which actually discriminates against individuals based on their race.

TPPF is advocating a number of higher education reforms in the current legislative session including examining the ways Texas’ colleges and universities are held accountable to ensure parents and students have reliable and transparent information about college quality.  TPPF also supports legislation that will ensure that equality, freedom of speech and open intellectual inquiry are top priorities at all Texas academic institutions going forward.

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In The Media

Socialism at Plymouth Rock: Getting the Thanksgiving story straight

This commentary was originally published in the Washington Examiner.

One thing to be thankful for this Thanksgiving is that it took the Pilgrims only a year or so to figure out that socialism was bad, both for individuals and communities as a whole.

Four centuries ago, William Bradford, the first governor of the Plymouth Colony, stated flatly in his history of Plymouth that the Pilgrims had been wrong to think the “taking away of property and commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing, as if they were wiser than God.”

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

It’s too bad the failed socialist experiment at Plymouth Rock is not more prominently included in the Thanksgiving story. Perhaps it would make a difference to the 65% of Democrats who have a positive view of socialism today, including about half of millennials and Generation Zers who believe it would be preferable to our capitalist system.

As it is, most public school children do not learn about the early decision by the Pilgrims to move quickly from a socialistlike economy to an economic system that provided property rights and incentives for work and productivity. They also know little of the genius of the Mayflower Compact, which called for “just and equal laws” and set the foundation for the principles that the founders employed when they established America’s government 150 years later.

Instead, too many public schools emphasize the Native American story, which is important but so riddled with leftist ideas such as critical race theory that it doesn’t even get even the basic facts right.

Edward Winslow, a Pilgrim leader who attended the first Thanksgiving at Plymouth, provided us with an eyewitness account of what actually happened that day.

Winslow reported that he and his fellow Pilgrims were very excited about hunting geese and ducks for the big dinner. According to Winslow, they called it “exercising their arms,” so perhaps we could have predicted that their descendants would be big supporters of gun rights. Winslow also bragged that Plymouth Bay was full of lobster, so that was likely on the menu, along with deer, which was brought by the Native Americans.

Missing from the traditional paintings of the first Thanksgiving is the fact that most of the people at the feast were Native Americans. It’s estimated there were about 90 Native Americans there that day. For comparison, 102 Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, but more than half of them died in the first winter, before the big feast.

It is no accident that our education system has distorted the Thanksgiving story and ignored both the Pilgrims’ failed socialist experiment and the importance of the Mayflower Compact. The “1619 Project ” produced by the New York Times, for example, was cynically named to challenge the dates we associate with the beginning of the American idea, including the 1776 signing of the Declaration of Independence and even the 1620 landing at Plymouth Rock. The goal of the “1619 Project” is not just to downplay the significance of the American founding but also to attack and destroy American capitalism. And yet it is this capitalist system that granted the Pilgrims, and millions of Americans since, the opportunity to thrive and prosper.

History is dynamic, and there is always more to learn. But one thing is certain: The fact that the Pilgrims rejected socialism and nurtured the principles of liberty and freedom is important to who we are today — and is one more reason to be thankful this holiday season.

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In The Media

Texas still one of the best places to live and work, even if left-wing CNBC stacks the deck

This commentary was originally published in the Washington Times.

CNBC used to stand for the “Consumer News and Business Channel.” but it is now part of NBC and the left-wing media.  Its job now is to demonize conservative states, especially Texas, as dismal backwaters filled with miserable, uninformed and misguided voters.

But because CNBC is still a business channel, focused on the economy, the workforce and markets, trash-talking the Lone Star State is very difficult to do.

Year after year, the data has forced CNBC to acknowledge that Texas is the best place in the country to do business—or at least one of the best—on their annual “Best States for Business” ranking.  Since they started keeping score in 2007, Texas is the only state to have ranked No. 1 four times.

It was ranked No. 2 eight times and until this year it has never been ranked lower than No. 4. In 2022, CNBC ranked Texas No. 5.  The network also decided to change the way they trumpeted its list. Instead of focusing on the business metrics—workforce, infrastructure, strength of the economy and the cost of doing business—it pumped up its previously described “quality of life” metrics to include “inclusion” and pushed out a new list of 10 states it called “the Best Places to Live” in America.

It’s not exactly clear exactly what metrics they used to determine the “Best Places to Live,” but among other things, they looked at crime rates and “inclusiveness in state laws, including protections against discrimination of all kinds, as well as voting rights.”  Adding crime rates made it impossible for California to climb above a No. 29 overall ranking, but on CNBC’s new woke “inclusiveness” scale Texas ranks No. 49—allowing CNBC to pronounce Texas as one of the worst places to live in the country.

The “best state to live in,” according to their new measure is Vermont, followed by Maine, Hawaii and North Dakota. CNBC’s “inclusiveness” list is clearly designed to give blue states a chance to dig out from the bottom. Washington and New Jersey are also in the top 10 “best states to live” list even though New Jersey, had the highest percentage of people moving out of any state in 2021 and Forbes included Washington on their list of states people are fleeing because of the high cost of living.

In Texas, we all know that when the left says “protections against discrimination of all kinds” they mean that boys are allowed to play on girls sports teams and parents have the right to experiment on their children with risky puberty blockers, hormonal therapy and even surgery. As for voting rights, CNBC apparently didn’t see the poll conducted by the Texas Association of Business before the most recent election reforms which confirmed that Texans of all races and political parties overwhelming support our election laws. Fully 95% of Texans say it’s easy to vote here.

You have to wonder how folks sitting around the conference table at CNBC deal with the fact that their own data shows that the state they have declared the worst place to live in America is where so many Americans want to live. Over a thousand people move here every day. Last year CNBC reported that Houston was number one on the list of top 10 cities people are moving too. San Antonio, Dallas and Austin were also on the list.  Texas was the only state with more than one city on the list.

Texas also just beat out two big blue nation states, New York and California, for the most Fortune 500 companies in the U.S.

And at the end of June, CNBC reported a better than expected jobs report that showed 372,000 workers added to payrolls nationwide.  Their news story did not point out that 82,500 of those jobs—22%—were in Texas, which created more jobs than any other state.

Woke businesses pushing boycotts against Texas haven’t convinced people that Texas isn’t a great place to live, and CNBC is not likely to be successful by stacking the deck on the “Best States to Live” list either.

In 2021, the Houston Chronicle predicted the state would lose $31 billion and 223,000 jobs if they passed proposed election reforms. The reforms passed, voter turnout broke records and the economy continues to soar.

California has banned travel for state workers and universities to Texas, and a couple of dozen other states, because of Texas laws supporting women’s sports and privacy. Since it first passed that law, the number of states on its list has almost doubled and even some major California newspapers are urging them to repeal the ban since it is obviously making no difference.

By contrast, Texas has become a mecca for business and innovation. That is no accident. The conservative policies passed by Texans over the last several decades create jobs, help business flourish and ensure that the state continues to effectively compete in the global economy. The CNBC annual rankings that consistently put Texas at the top show how well this is working for Texans and the world. CNBC should not only report that Texas is at the top, it should also report why.

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In The Media

Inflation, Gas Prices, Drag Queens And Biden’s Sinking Poll Numbers

This commentary was originally published in the Daily Caller.

With inflation breaking records, gas prices pushing $10 per gallon and the border exploding with hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, President Joe Biden decided to issue an executive order to “enhance protections for transgender children and take steps to ban conversion therapy as efforts continue in Texas and other states to restrict gender-affirming medical care.”

“Gender affirming medical care” is a woke term that includes chemical castration and puberty blockers, as well as hormone injections from the opposite sex. It also includes actual castration and mastectomies that are not medically necessary. These irreversible and dangerous medical actions are more accurately described as “gender destroying.” They have nothing to do with care.

There’s no way to know what the president means by “conversion therapy” in this this context, but it is clearly an effort prohibit any restrictions by states like Texas against parents who want to experiment on their own children with dangerous “gender affirming” treatments.

Meanwhile, Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently appeared on a show where men dress up as women and mimic their speech and mannerisms — “RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars.”

Despite the insulting characterization of women by drag queens, which is increasingly being compared to minstrel black face by discerning feminists, Pelosi told the men dressed up and behaving as the most degrading female stereotypes that she wanted to thank them “for the joy and beauty you bring to the world.”

She added, “Your freedom of expression of yourselves in drag is what America is all about. I say that all the time to my friends in drag.”

Texas public school librarians apparently agree with the speaker that drag queens are what America is all about, because thousands of them attended a session on drag queen story hours at their recent meeting in Fort Worth.

They must have forgotten what happened in the Houston Public Library in 2019 when one of the drag queens brought in to read stories to children turned out to be a registered sex offender.

Drag queen reading programs in public libraries and public schools are increasingly common. Advocates describe them as a fun and harmless way to introduce children to the transgender movement.

Of course, most of America is not looking for a fun way to introduce their children to the transgender movement — which brings us back to Biden’s sinking popularity.

Gloria Romero, a Democrat and former U.S. House member from California, believes wokeism is part of Biden’s problem, at least with Hispanic voters.

After Biden’s approval dropped to 24% among Hispanics and Republican Mayra Flores’s historic South Texas victory, Romero said:

“We’re [Hispanics are] looking at the economy, we’re looking at approaches to immigration. We’re looking at language, my God. Here in California, among the Latino community, we not only celebrate Mother’s Day, we celebrate two Mother’s Days and the birthing people lingo doesn’t cut it for us.”

“Birthing people” is another woke term used to push the absurd notion that both men and women can deliver babies.

Setting aside the many ethical and public policy questions raised by Biden’s transgender executive order, let’s just look at the politics.

There’s no doubt about the fact that Biden has lost support across the board in every age, race and demographic category because of his destructive economic and border policies, but his approval rating is also at 39% because of what Romero said — the country is tired of having Democrat leaders like Biden and Nancy Pelosi push destructive and fringe behavior into the narrative as if it were normal.

Dealing with those who are suffering from gender dysphoria is not a gay rights issue — which most Americans support. Instead, Americans continue to view transgender issues as a medical and mental health challenge where it appears that drug treatments are not effective and can be damaging. We are seeing more and more stories of transgender adults who regret having had surgery in childhood.

Even if Biden manages to rein in inflation, lower gas prices and address the avalanche at the border, his base, particularly in the Hispanic community, will keep slipping away if he continues to be a megaphone for woke issues like “gender affirming treatment” for gender dysphoria victims. Most people are way ahead of him on this, and they just don’t buy it.

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In The Media

The People of Texas Podcast

When William Travis wrote his famous “Victory or Death” letter from the Alamo he sent it to “The People of Texas.”

Today, the Alamo stands as a symbol of the bravery and courage of Travis, Crockett, Bowie, Seguin, and all heroes who founded Texas and their commitment to freedom and liberty to live their dreams and build an even greater Texas.

Tune in to the People of Texas podcast, where host Sherry Sylvester will talk to Texans about stories, the battles they’ve had to face in their own lives, and their views on the future of Texas.