Category: Winners & Losers

Every Friday morning, I join the Cardle & Woolley Show on 1370 Talk Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. Texas lawmakers, who make just $7,200 a year, will be working over Memorial Day weekend to finish up the current session, but their counterparts in Congress, who make $174,000 annually, are off for the Memorial Day recess. Go figure. Here’s who made the list this week:

WINNER: Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill Clears House

As a constituent of one of the leading GOP critics of Trump’s reconciliation bill, U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, I am both familiar and sympathetic with the strong argument that the massive budget legislation dangerously increases both the debt and the deficit. But in my view, those arguments are outweighed by the critical need to ensure that Trump’s tax cuts are maintained and that tips and overtime will be tax exempt going forward. In tax reform, one goal for conservatives always has to be changing the culture so that taxpayers vividly see just how much of their money the government takes in taxes.

Ultimately, Rep. Roy voted for the bill, despite his continued concern that much more fiscal restraint is needed. He’s totally right about that, but remember that, aside from immigration, one of the best arguments against voting for Kamala Harris last year was her promise to let the Trump tax cuts expire. With this House vote, the odds are very good Republicans aren’t going to let that happen.

LOSER: Hillary Clinton Attacks Conservative Women

Not that anyone cares, but this week failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton attacked, calling “most” conservative women “handmaidens of the patriarchy.” There’s no point in pushing back on such a stupid remark, but it is important to note that a woman who married her way into a political career has no room to talk about the patriarchy.

LOSER: Biden Cover-Up Still on Big Loser List

After Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s book, “Original Sin,” made a big splash last week, I assumed the issue of former President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline in office would finally rotate off Winners and Losers. Surely, that horse has been sufficiently beaten. But then the tapes of Biden’s deposition by Special Counsel Robert Hur were released and America could actually hear just how disoriented the former president was. His sense of time, his focus, his grasp on reality—all demonstrated that Hur had been right when he said that although Biden had broken the law regarding classified documents, he was so feeble and forgetful that no jury would convict him.

The Hur tapes further validated the information in Tapper’s book about how the White House staff misled the public about Biden’s competence. The Joe Biden revealed on those tapes was the same Joe Biden who his advisors said was sharp as a tack.

Finally, it wasn’t just conservatives who were asking, “Who was running the country?”

Then, just before that question could be seriously considered, Biden’s spokespeople announced that the former president has “Stage 4 prostate cancer that has metastasized to his bones.”

That is terrible news for the former president and his family and virtually everyone, including President Trump and Biden’s harshest critics in conservative media, have profusely and repeatedly expressed their concerns and offered their prayers.

Unfortunately for the Biden family, after the Tapper book and the Hur tapes, they are no longer trusted by anyone, so this awful news doesn’t just evoke sympathy, it raises more questions: Men his age are routinely screened for prostate cancer. If Biden wasn’t, why not?

Biden said he had cancer in 2022, but his staff said he misspoke. Did he? Did the family know Biden had cancer and not tell the country? Did Biden know he had cancer when he was insisting that he would run for re-election again? Did Jill Biden and Hunter know? Did his advisors, the so-called “Politburo” who were apparently making all the presidential decisions, know? Or, was Biden somehow unlucky enough to have a personal physician who missed a crucial point on the former president’s regular check-up? Texas Sen. John Cornyn has asked DOJ to investigate “potential violations of federal law regarding representations made to the general public about the president’s health.

Going forward, historians will undoubtedly debate whether the Biden cover-up was just a sequence of bad decisions made expediently, or if voters had unknowingly put a Richard III in the Oval Office where he and his advisors would do whatever it took to keep the White House.

In the short term, a good question for the media to ponder is how did the former president so completely destroy the public’s trust that even a tragic cancer diagnosis raises justified suspicion?

WINNER: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer

Starmer and the British Labour Party have been on the wrong side of immigration for decades, but when it finally became undeniably clear that they would stop winning elections unless they dramatically changed course, Starmer came out this week saying open immigration has created a “squalid chapter for the economy and the country,” adding that mass migration has turned England into an “island of strangers.”

Perhaps Starmer has been watching Trump or listening to Vice President J.D. Vance, but immigration issues in England finally upended British politics not only because importing cheap labor alienated the working class but also because such a high percentage of migrants are Muslim. Many British communities are no longer recognizable and this is also surely what Starmer was referring to when he said that the country’s open borders had created a “rise of forces that are slowly pulling the country apart.” Over 80 Sharia law courts have been established in England, where many Muslims adjudicate family law issues including marriages and divorces, outside the British legal system.

Unlike American Democrats, Starmer and his Labour Party understand that they only have their selves to blame for their immigration policies. Starmer is a human rights lawyer who spent his career blocking the deportation of foreign-born criminals and other illegal immigrants. But finally, as Prime Minister, Starmer has seen the light and is pledging to close the borders down.

WINNER: Four Polls Show Trump’s Positive Approvals are Up

Polls go up and down and President Trump’s high-energy approach to his job causes his ratings to be erratic. With the legacy media only headlining the low numbers, it’s sometimes hard to get a decent snapshot of what Americans are thinking. However, this week it is worth noting that four opinion polls showed the President with positive ratings at the same time. The Morning Consult Poll had Trump’s approval at 48, HarvardCAPS /Harris poll shows him at a net positive, Rasmussen has him at 50%, just like the Daily Mail/J.L. Partners poll.

LOSER: Grade Inflation in Grievance Studies Programs

While testifying recently in support of Senate Bill 37, the higher education reform bill authored by Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe and Rep. Matt Shaheen, R-Plano, I informed lawmakers that over 400 courses at University of Texas at Austin include gender in the title, 200 purport to be about race and 150 focus on identity. By comparison, less than a dozen courses focus on the Constitution, the Federalist Papers or President Abraham Lincoln. When one of the lawmakers asked why, I noted that students take these courses because they are frequently an easy “A.” The audience at the hearing was filled with faculty, mostly from UT Austin, who opposed the legislation and mocked my response, some by laughing and making derogatory comments out loud. One yelled out, “you need to take a course,” before the chairman gaveled them out of order.

But a study released this week by the America First Policy Institute confirmed that at UT Austin, activist-driven classes, “particularly those found in ethnic, gender, and identity-focused studies—are less academically demanding and contribute disproportionately to grade inflation.” In women’s studies classes, for example, 85% of students receive an A. TPPF is supporting legislation, House Bill 4234, that will make this transparent by noting on individual transcripts what grades are given in a class—so a student whose transcript reports an A will also be informed that 85% of the class also made an A.

SB 37 will restore the authority of Boards of Regents at state run college and universities in Texas and rein in the hegemony of faculty control over the courses that are taught.

LOSER: No Paris Trip for Harris County Judge

The Harris County Commissioners Court has voted against providing funds for County Judge Lina Hidalgo and four of her staff to travel to Paris on a “trade mission.” Hidalgo is a Democrat, and two Democrats joined with Republicans in giving a thumbs down to the Paris trip, noting that the Harris County budget has a deficit of at least $131 million.

Meanwhile, Houston Mayor John Whitmire announced he had no interest in going to France, and put out a budget this week that increases police pay without a budget deficit. Just saying.

LOSER: Man Takes Women’s Swimming Medals in Texas

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced this week that he is investigating what happened at the U.S. Masters Swimming Spring Nationals when a man who says he’s a woman took first place in five events at the meet which was held in San Antonio recently. The man, Hugo Caldas, won the 50-yard breaststroke, the 100-yard breaststroke, the 50-yard freestyle, the 100-yard freestyle, and 100-yard individual combination.

According to a United Nations report “more than 600 biologically female athletes have lost at least 890 medals to transgender competitors in 29 sports. This is ok with U.S. Masters Swimming, but it is not allowed in Texas, so it is good Paxton is on the case.

WINNER: Texas Still No. 1 Job Creating State

This feels like old news, but Gov. Greg Abbott announced this week that the Bureau of Labor Statistics continues to show that Texas is the top job creating state in the nation. Texas added 37,700 jobs in April and over 215,000 jobs last year. Abbott adds that since he has been governor, over 2 million jobs have been created in Texas.

LOSER: Texas A&M Leads SEC in Coach Payouts

Meanwhile, we learned this week that that Texas A&M led the Southeastern Conference (SEC) in coach buyouts in 2024 with $27.5 million spent to buy out the contracts of losing coaches. A&M’s big number was driven by the $19.2 million the Aggies gave Jimbo Fisher in 2023. The University of Texas at Austin paid $7.2 million to buy out the contracts of losing coaches there.

WINNER: NBA Small Markets … and the Knicks

For those who don’t tune into NBA basketball until the playoffs, now is the time. We’re down to the final four—the East and West Championships, where small market teams—the Minnesota Timberwolves and Oklahoma City—are battling in the West and the Indiana Pacers are playing in the East. This is a big boost for teams in relatively small media markets. The once-legendary New York Knicks, who knocked off the reigning champions, the Boston Celtics, just the other week, are obviously in the biggest media market on the planet. All the teams are playing throughout the long holiday weekend.

Have a great Memorial Day!

 

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

Sign up to receive this in your inbox every week at www.texaspolicy.com/9thandCongress.

Follow me on X @sylvester1630 and follow my podcast, the Sherry Sylvester Show on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Every Friday morning, I join the Cardle & Woolley Show on 1370 Talk Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. The clock struck midnight on Thursday and put the dream-killing Deadline Day in the Texas House behind us. Now, we have 17 days to go in the legislative session. But that’s just Texas. Lots happening in the rest of the world. Here’s who made the list this week:

WINNER: Donald Trump’s Middle East Barnstorm

President Donald Trump is returning home from a historic trip to the Middle East that has drawn praise from some Democrat experts and left many conservatives asking how he can fail to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump is the first president to visit Syria in 25 years, where he announced he will lift sanctions against them, using the leverage to push them to join the Abraham Accords and normalize relations with Israel. One former Biden advisor said Trump’s moves are “unequivocally, the right thing to do,” adding “I don’t know why Joe Biden didn’t do it.” Trump also got $600 billion in new American investment from Saudi Arabia, as well as commitments from the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to increase investment. Plus, he secured the release of Eden Alexander, the last living American hostage being held by Hamas.

LOSER: Qatar’s Big Texas Footprint

It is too soon to tell whether Qatar will be successful in gifting President Trump with a 747 to become the new Air Force One, but the story has lots of Texas connections. The plane itself was spotted at the San Antonio International Airport earlier this month and now is reportedly being repaired somewhere in Texas – either there, Waco or Greenville, near Dallas.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz does not support the President’s taking the plane from Qatar, saying it will present significant “surveillance and espionage” problems. His colleague, Florida Sen. Rick Scott, has the same issues and goes even farther, saying he’d never fly in a Qatari plane because there’s no way to make it safe. Cruz and Scott are both on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and have long voiced concerns about Qatar because of that country’s connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Jazeera, the Muslim news organization that frequently dishes out anti-Israeli and anti-American news stories.

Meanwhile, the conservative and usually reliable Powerline Blog says the plane controversy is just another smear job against Trump, noting that the “gift” is actually costing $400 million and will go to the Air Force, just like any routine transfer of military equipment. L3Harris, which works on lots of Air Force equipment, has facilities in Texas to do whatever retrofitting is needed.

The Free Press has a long piece on the ubiquitous presence of Qatar in the U.S., particularly on university campuses. Even after closing down Texas A&M’s engineering school in Qatar, Texas universities take more funding from Qatar than any other country, much of which has strings that allows the Qatari donors to direct how the funds are spent. Two of my TPPF colleagues issued a report on “foreign soft power” influencing Texas universities late last year. Reporting requirements are weak, but the study found that the University of Texas at Austin is the top recipient of Qatari funding and that Texas A&M had underreported funding received from Qatar by almost $400 million. The Texas House passed strong legislation this week that will require universities to more strenuously report foreign donations, but Qatar is not on the list of countries that are covered by the bill.

WINNER: America’s Military Academies Go Merit-Based

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has declared that the nation’s three military academies – West Point, Annapolis and the Air Force Academy – must now admit students based entirely on merit without regard to race, ethnicity or sex. The Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that all American universities that receive federal funds cannot give preferences to students based on their race, ethnicity or sex, but the military academies were excluded. Hegseth’s edict eliminates that exception. It is hard to argue with the notion that the military should be led by the country’s best and brightest – a decision that certainly does not preclude diversity.

LOSER: The Media’s “Original Sin”

All week, CNN host Jake Tapper has been talking about his new book, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover Up and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again which has dozens of stories of what was going on behind the scenes as former President Biden’s advisors covered up the cognitive decline of their boss. If it wasn’t such a diabolical power grab, it would be heart-breaking to learn that the President’s doctor was so concerned about Biden’s steadiness on his feet that he felt a wheelchair would be needed to protect him from a fall. But, of course, advisors said a wheelchair was out of the question until after the election. They report that cabinet secretaries had virtually no contact with their leader and actor George Clooney was visibly shaken when Biden did not recognize him at the big California gala that launched Biden’s re-election campaign.

All of this is a herculean effort on the part of Tapper and his co-author, Alex Thompson, to shift the blame for the cover-up of Biden’s mental failings away from the media and declare that it was the fault of Biden’s staff. Unfortunately for the media, it’s too late. The whole country – and the world – saw what was going on. They saw the media fail to report that Biden went for months without doing a press conference, that he confused the names of world leaders, and would wander around aimlessly after speaking. He even had to be rescued by the Easter Bunny at the annual White House Easter Egg Roll. I talked with Texas media legend Ray Sullivan about the coverage of Biden’s decline this spring and he said bluntly that the “media committed suicide.” It’s their job to tell the truth. They didn’t.

WINNER: Kolkhorst Foreign Land Bill Passes the House

Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, has led the charge on legislation to prohibit hostile countries from purchasing Texas land ever since she learned that a Chinese company with connections to the Chinese Communist Party had purchased 140,000 acres near Laughlin Air Force Base, east of Del Rio. Her legislation passed the Senate last session, but failed to pass the Texas House. However, this week, the bill passed the Texas House where members made it even stronger by giving the governor the right to expand the list of impacted countries if national security risks warrant it. This is a huge boon to Texas and national security.

WINNER: Women’s Bill of Rights Passes House

State Rep. Ellen Troxclair, R-Austin, passed House Bill 229, the Women’s Bill of Rights this week, which defines men and women based on the biological organs they are born with. The Texas Tribune’s report on the bill describes it as more Republican hegemony against people who insist they are a different gender than they actually are, but at least they gave Troxclair the last word from her speech on the Texas House floor:

“We’re a state that believes in truth, and we’re a state that honors the hard-won achievements of women, the women who fought for the right to vote, to compete in sports and to be safe in public spaces, to be treated equally under the law. But if we can no longer define what a woman is, we cannot defend what women have won. We cannot protect what we cannot define.”

LOSER: Austin Drops to Number 5

Despite all the gushy hype about Austin, Fort Worth is now the fourth largest city in Texas and Austin drops to number five with a population under a million, driven down by affordability costs, crippling traffic and expensive woke policies that have resulted in a sketchy downtown and regulation policies nobody wants to pay for. Houston remains the fourth largest city in the nation and the largest city in Texas with a population of 2.4 million.

WINNER: Texas Roadhouse Overtakes Olive Garden

Texas Roadhouse restaurants have finally beaten the Olive Garden’s 7-year winning streak to become the top casual dining restaurant in America. In what must also be a gratifying win for HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the Texas Roadhouse has fearlessly battled Olive Garden’s “never ending breadsticks” and “never ending pasta,” to dominate by pushing protein over carbs in the family restaurant war.

Other Texas food winners this week include Texas Gov. Greg Abbott who has asked the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture for a waiver to allow Texas to restrict the purchase of highly processed and junk foods, like candy and soda, with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funds – what used to be called food stamps. A good move to help Make Texas Healthy Again.

WINNER: Women’s Flag Football

Axios Austin reports that Austin ISD is hosting the first girls’ flag football tournament this weekend, featuring Dallas cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott. The NFL is pushing flag football programs for girls across the country in a clear effort to expand the base of football fans. The 2028 Olympics will include flag football for both men and women. In Austin, they are calling it Friday Night Lights in May and it starts tonight at the Burger Athletic Center.

The rest of us have the NBA playoffs. Have a great weekend!

 

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

Sign up to receive this in your inbox every week at www.texaspolicy.com/9thandCongress.

Follow me on X @sylvester1630 and follow my podcast, the Sherry Sylvester Show on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Every Friday morning, I join the Cardle & Woolley Show on 1370 Talk Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. With tariffs are coming down everywhere but China, and less than a month to go in the Texas legislative session, here’s who made the list:

WINNER: Catholics Weigh-in With New Pope

We used to say that every election was a fight for the hearts and minds of America, but now the biggest battle is for the hearts and minds of the world, which makes the election of a new Pope especially significant. A war is being waged against Western civilization, which is built on the principles of love, faith and freedom, rooted in Judeo-Christian faith. Catholics have chosen a leader they hope can fight that battle.

Everyone is scrambling to learn as much as they can about the first Pope born in America, Pope Lex XIV, who is a Chicago White Sox fan and has Creole roots in Louisiana, but who has lived most of his life outside America as a missionary. Catholics are the largest branch of the Christian church, with 1.4 billion members, and the Pope is an important symbolic world leader, even for those of us who are not Catholic. In his first sermon this morning, he shared his view that too many in the world are living in a kind of de facto atheism that robs lives of meaning, joy and respect for life. To see what that can lead to, just look at those folks who are once again on the Losers List—the Pro-Hamas Protesters arrested this week at Columbia who were circulating pamphlets glorifying an anti-Israel terrorist and ignoring edicts to stop hate and anti-Semitism. The same scene played out at Brooklyn College, where protesters crashed into campus buildings, hoisting Palestinian flags and chanting support for terrorists.

WINNER: UT Establishes School of Civic Leadership

Meanwhile, at the University of Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and UT Leadership including Board of Regents Chair Kevin Eltife announced yesterday that they will build a new building for the School of Civic Leadership, established in 2023, to “grow citizens who understand the ideas and institutions that have made free, prosperous societies possible.”

According to the leaders of the School of Civic Leadership, its mission is to wrestle with the great ideas of the Western tradition and answer the critical timeless questions regarding the nature of justice, leadership and truth. Its scope of study includes “the best achievements and greatest difficulties of the American tradition in order to understand what it takes to preserve the blessings of liberty for ourselves and for others.”

According to the latest survey from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Freedom (FIRE) the ratio of liberals to conservatives at the University of Texas is 4 to 1, and almost half the students say they do not feel comfortable speaking out in classrooms or even among friends on campus. The School of Civic Leadership could not have come at a better time.    

WINNER: Marco Rubio

Remember when President Donald Trump used to call Marco Rubio “little Marco?” Now, of course, he calls him “Secretary Rubio,” as the Secretary of State who just got the added job title of National Security Advisor.

Trump speculated this week that while Vice President J.D. Vance is most often named as his obvious successor, Rubio would also be on the list as the possible next GOP president based on his stellar performance in the first 100 days. There are hundreds and hundreds more days until 2028, but it is still worth noting that, at least for now, Rubio made the short list.

WINNER: Texas’ Newest Star Base

It’s official. Voters, almost all of whom are employees at Elon Musk’s SpaceX’s launching site in South Texas, voted to become a Texas city on Saturday by a margin of 200 to 4. Following on that win, SpaceX got approval this week to do 25 Starship launches a year from the new city named Starbase, which is near Boca Chica. Musk first moved SpaceX and Twitter, now known as X to Texas to Texas in 2024. In addition, Musk’s son, X, lives here, which prompted Gov. Greg Abbott to recently quip that all Musk’s eXes are in Texas.

LOSER: No Prizes for the Pulitzers

It is not news that the Pulitzer Prize Committee is a leftist cabal. This year they gave an award to Pro-Publica—the activists who got people’s IRS records and then reported them. Their latest most patently egregious example is that the photo of the year was not the iconic shot of President Trump rising and raising his fist after he was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, taken by AP Photographer Evan Vucci. Instead, the prize went to a photographer who got a photo of the president while he was on the ground after the shooting.

Axios claimed at the time that there was concern among some in the media that the photo of Trump raising his fist after he was shot was “free PR” for the then-presidential candidate. Other media even mused that had they thought about the impact of the photos sooner, they might not have distributed it so broadly.

It is hard to know which is worse—the fact that the Pulitzers ignored a photo that will obviously go down in history, or learning that some in the media actually said that had they thought about it, they might not have released the defiant photo of Trump at all.

LOSER: Jasmine Crockett

The latest on Dallas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett is that one of her Republican colleagues spotted her at the Atlanta airport apparently jumping the line in front of disabled passengers to get on a plane. Crockett, who is angling for a new position on the House Oversight Committee, is clearly trying to be the new Democrat “it girl” and is making every effort to “out-AOC” AOC, (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez). When President Trump pointed to Crockett as just one more example of the lack of serious people in the Democrat Party, Crockett went on X and replied that the president is “terrified of smart, bold black women.” 

Apparently Crockett didn’t notice what happened when fellow Dallasite Mark Cuban said Trump didn’t like to be challenged by strong, intelligent women. The blowback from strong, intelligent women who support Trump, including his chief of staff and others who work for him, was massive. As for black women, perhaps Rep. Crockett should take a look at the strong black women in this interview by CNN’s Van Jones.

WINNER: Van Jones Talks to Black People in South Carolina

If CNN wrote a news story about what their commentator, Van Jones, learned in South Carolina, where he went to talk to African Americans who voted for Trump, I couldn’t find it. But what Jones reported is worth taking a couple minutes to WATCH.

In speaking with several African American voters in Charleston, Jones said that most people thought of Trump voters as “white guys in red hats,” very unlike the black South Carolinians he was talking too who did not fall for any of the lefty dog whistles Jones laid out. He asked them their reaction to President Trump taking down Harriet Tubman’s picture for a minute, before it was put back up (a very big story on the left), but South Carolinians said that kind of thing isn’t important. He asked them about Trump supposedly removing Biden’s guidelines on how police should deal with black people. In response, one “bold black woman” told Jones that her husband was in training to become a law enforcement office and she is disgusted with the way police are treated. Another man said he voted for Trump because he is authentic. All of them said they had no regrets about their vote and would absolutely vote for him again. Perhaps Rep. Crockett should pay more attention.

WINNER: Paxton Sues Austin ISD for Teaching CRT

Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Austin ISD for teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT) , a move that is causing the usual wailing and gnashing of teeth among public school educators who cannot seem to understand why they cannot continue to teach the often de-bunked 1619 Project on the sly, even after the Texas Legislature banned it from public schools.

CRT is an anti-American ideology based on the false notion that American was founded to further slavery and that every American institution is built on white supremacy. Consequently, the 1619 Project asserts that America’s real beginning was not at Plymouth Rock, but instead in 1619 when the first Africans arrived in Virginia. The mission of CRT is to pre-empt American history and discredit all other accounts of our past. CRT is not presented as just one theory, it is presented as fact, which is probably why some instructors at Austin ISD appear willing to not be truthful about teaching it in defiance of the law.

WINNER: Watching Sports

The Nielson Ratings, which told us what the country was watching on TV, are antiquated now, and a new system called Big Data Plus Panels is now giving us a much better picture of what Americans are watching. The answer is sports, all sports, and all the time. Forgot Netflix, Prime and the wars between Fox News and CNN. The only thing that gets all eyes glued to one screen is sports. Football draws far more than any other sport, but lots of folks are watching the second round of the NBA playoffs to see if the Knicks can really take down the champion Boston Celtics. They are up 2-0 in the series after two great games. Game 3 is tomorrow night.

Have a great weekend.

 

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

Sign up to receive this in your inbox every week at www.texaspolicy.com/9thandCongress.

Follow me on X @sylvester1630 and follow my podcast, the Sherry Sylvester Show on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Every Friday morning I join the Cardle & Woolley Show on 1370 Talk Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. Somehow it is already May, and the Texas House will start working Saturdays tomorrow as they speed toward June 2. Meanwhile, the numbers on President Donald Trump’s first 100 days are dazzling—although the U.S. still does not own Greenland. Here’s the list:

WINNER: Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick Making Religious Liberty Great Again

President Trump went to the Rose Garden yesterday to announce he is establishing a Religious Liberty Commission that will be chaired by Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. Former HUD Secretary Ben Carson will serve as vice chair, along with dozens of other religious luminaries including Rev. Franklin Graham, NY Archbishop Timothy Dolan, Rabbi Meir Soloveichik and Dr. Phil.

In accepting the appointment, Patrick noted that despite America’s great heritage of religious liberty, people of faith were under attack during the four years of the Biden administration. He pledged to carry out the president’s mission to ensure that all believers are free to pray and worship God anywhere in this country.

Patrick is embarking on his mission at an interesting time in the war against faith. The U.S. Supreme Court has heard three religious liberty cases this term, including the one argued last week by a coalition of parents of faith in Maryland who were denied the right to keep their children out of LGBTQ+ classes. The Court considered a case in March in which the state of Wisconsin declared that Catholic Charities was more charities than religious, so they took away their tax exemption. This week, the Court heard the religious charter school case in Oklahoma.

These legal battles always bring out the usual atheist blather that Americans should not have to be exposed to anything involving faith or belief. However, it is interesting to note that some prominent atheists are taking a decidedly different stand these days. Tom Holland, Louise Perry and even notorious atheist Richard Dawkins have been saying of late that the values Christianity brings to a culture, which have been the bedrock of Western civilization since Christ died 2000 years ago, are a positive force for good, even if you don’t believe in God.

As a believer, it is hard to understand why seeing that good does not lead to a deeper exploration of faith. Still, it is important that even atheists recognize that cultures that are rooted in Judeo-Christian values are stronger and better for people than cultures that aren’t.

Lt. Gov. Patrick lives his faith and has written eloquently about the ways it has transformed his life and the lives of those around him. With his leadership at the Presidential Commission on Religious Freedom, all people of faith will be able to live their faith and tell their stories.

WINNER: Trump’s First 100 Days

We have been reflecting on the first 100 days of Trump 2.0 since Day One and when the milestone finally arrived on Wednesday, the scorecard was official—143 Executive Orders, 100,000 deportations of illegal criminals and almost zero illegal crossings at the southern border. DOGE found billions of dollars in government waste, and billions in federal funds were pulled from anti-American academic institutions. The Gulf of America is a thing and Europe has been repeatedly reminded who is paying their defense bills. Froot Loops won’t have those garish colors anymore and freedom has come for plastic straws.  

Trump did all this and more while receiving almost exclusively negative media coverage from ABC, CBS and NBC, which were followed by the Washington Post and, of course the two government funded outlets, National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, which he defunded today. The Media Research Center found that out of 1,841 statements made by journalists, anchors, reporters, and experts during evening news broadcasts from January 20 to April 9, a total of 1,692 of the statements—92%—were negative.

For just one example, left-wing media routinely trash Trump’s open cabinet meetings, but at a minimum, they illustrate just how broadly Trump sees his scope of work. The contrast with the lethargic Biden administration, where everything happened behind closed doors, is stunning.

WINNER: Trump Defunds PBS and NPR

In an Executive Order late Thursday night President Trump directed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to stop giving federal funds to National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). In a masterful statement that will be difficult for elite journalists to refute, Trump’s EO read:

“Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.”

It was that easy. Makes you wonder why it took so long, since many of us have advocated for de-funding PBS and NPR for decades. Both media outlets only get a small portion—10% to 15%—of their funding from taxpayers, so they won’t go away, but it will be fun to watch how they change going forward. Do stodgy, elitist news shows have a future?

LOSER: San Marcos City Council’s Anti-Israel Resolution

San Marcos, which for many is a wide place in the road between Austin and San Antonio, made big time news this week when a couple City Council members decided to step into international affairs and proposed a resolution calling for a cease fire in the Hamas war in the Middle East, an arms embargo against Israel and the recognition of Palestinian sovereignty.

Gov. Greg Abbott immediately threatened the city with the withdrawal of state grant funding because the move violates Texas law prohibiting boycotts against Israel. The council members’ wordy resolution calls Israel’s response to the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack a “genocide” and accuses Israel of “apartheid and illegal occupation of Palestinian land.”

The proposal made quite a scene at the San Marcos City Council meeting, with dozens of pro-Palestinian supporters waving signs. Testimony continued until 1 a.m., and although no vote was taken, news reports say it had votes to pass. This outrageous City Council meeting shows how the ignorance of academia can poison a community. Sleepy San Marcos, of course, is home to Texas State University, where according to FIRE, the ratio of liberals to conservatives is 3 to 1, and 76% of the students say it is sometimes acceptable to shout down a speaker you don’t agree with. Apparently, anyone who knew anything about what is actually going on in the Middle East was shouted down.

LOSER: Texans Paying for Illegal Immigrant Health Care

According to a report by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, over 31,000 illegal immigrants visited Texas hospitals in 2024, including 22,000 who went to emergency rooms. The state estimated the cost of those visits to be $121.8 million, which doesn’t count the time lost by Texans who had to wait for care or who could not be given care because of overcrowding. Texas has borne these less-visible costs of illegal immigration for decades, and Gov. Abbott was right to ask the state to start keeping records. No one is surprised by these numbers. It’s another cost of open borders.

WINNER: Sen. Ted Cruz Passes Revenge Porn Bill

The fact that any bill passes in Washington is big news, but this past week, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s legislation to ban non-consensual posting of nude photographs, including AI generated shots, passed the House. It now awaits President Trump’s signature, which is very likely since First Lady Melania Trump went to the House to lobby in support of the Legislation. Cruz spoke out about the devastating impact of fake images on teenagers, especially girls, as well as what phony postings can do to families and children. The fight against this kind of thing from AI has undoubtedly just begun, but Cruz has staked out a spot on the moral high ground.

LOSER: Democrats 100 Days Under Trump 2.0

So far, the Democrat opposition hasn’t been able to get any footing against President Trump in the first 100 days, probably because they spend most of their time defending men who say they are women and trying to keep illegal alien criminals in the country. A move to impeach the president fizzled before it started this week. Meanwhile, former vice presidential candidate Tim Walz said this week he was picked to run because he could “code talk to white guys,” and former Vice President Kamala Harris, currently the leading contender for the Democratic nomination in 2028, gave her first speech this week talking about how elephants band together during earthquakes. Finally, ActBlue, the Democrats’ primary fundraising machine, which has long been the gold standard in raising campaign money, is being investigated for big time fraud. As we start the second 100 days, all thumbs are pointing down for the Democrats.

LOSER: Harvard

For those keeping score in the Trump versus Harvard battle, first Trump took away $2.2 billion in federal funding. Then Harvard roared back with a lawsuit (even though it is a private school) and all the other Ivy League schools rallied around it, pledging to join in the fight against Trump’s war against academia. Next, Trump threatened to take away Harvard’s tax exempt status and then Trump’s budget, just released today, slashed funding for higher education. Unfortunately for Harvard, in the middle of this fight, a report was released by the university itself showing how the school suppressed diversity of thought and pushed political agendas. Harvard’s president called the report “painful and disappointing,” but most everyone else sees it as no surprise. This is the same university that gave us Claudine Gay.

WINNER: Tommy Tuberville Speaks Out on NIL

Texan Cody Campbell, who chairs the Texas Tech Board of Regents, is the national thought leader on reforming college sports, starting with NIL and the transfer portal. Campbell has pointed out that college sports not only provide a lifeline for thousands of athletes, they also are a vital part of American life and culture that fuels economic vitality in college towns across the nation. The current NIL system threatens all of that, including the non-revenue producing sports—that’s everything except football and men’s basketball. Women’s sports, Olympic sports, college baseball, soccer, track, gymnastics, will not survive under the current system. Yesterday, former coach and Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville got on board, calling on Trump to push for college sports reform sooner rather than later. Let’s hope the president puts this on his list for the second 100 days.

That’s a wrap. Have a great weekend.

 

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

Sign up to receive this in your inbox every week at www.texaspolicy.com/9thandCongress.

Follow me on X @sylvester1630 and follow my podcast, the Sherry Sylvester Show on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Every Friday morning, I join the Cardle & Woolley Show on 1370 Talk Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. Today marks President Donald Trump’s 95^th day in office, while the Texas Legislature has knocked out 102 of the constitutionally allotted 140 days in the regular odd-year session. Here’s the list:

Winner: Education Savings Accounts Come Just in Time

When the always-eloquent Senate Education Chairman Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, rose in the Texas Senate Chamber to concur with the version of Senate Bill 2 that had passed the House, he noted that the Texas Education Freedom Act will transform education in our state—expanding options and restoring hope for thousands of children in our state. After overcoming three decades of resistance from education bureaucrats who repeatedly made it clear they care more about their jobs than their students, the bill now goes to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk for his signature.

Loser: Too Many Texas Public Schools

Those bureaucrats were working down to the wire to keep the truth from Texas parents about how poorly many of our public schools are performing. Yesterday, after overcoming a lawsuit from more than 100 school districts, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) released school ratings for 2022-23 school year which revealed that one in five Texas public school students attend a school that is rated D or F. These ratings are particularly galling for those who spent the last 102 days watching the school choice battle at the Capitol and hearing teachers’ unions and their Democrat water-carriers insist that letting parents choose the best school for their child would destroy public education in Texas.

Looking at the ratings, you have to wonder how much worse it could get. Despite state spending that hovers close to $100 billion, the number of F-rated schools increased from 4.5% to 7.6 percent in 2022-23. TEA says it evaluated 8,539 public schools; 19.3% received an A, 33.6% got a B, 24.7% a C, and 14.8% received D’s. So the flip talking point is that only one in five students goes to an A-rated school.

The school districts that had sued to stop release of the ratings had charged that TEA had changed the rating system in the five years  since the last A-F school grades were last released. But after the 15th Court of Appeals ruled TEA could inform parents about how their kids’ schools were performing, the ratings showed both the scores the school would have received using the old ratings as well as the new rating system. Many grades dropped a few points with the new standards, but some schools scored higher with the new criteria. You can view the available ratings here. TEA still cannot release the ratings for the 2023-24 school year because school officials have filed a separate lawsuit. In other education news, California is considering allowing community college students to sleep in their cars because housing is so expensive.

Loser: Federal Regulation

Those who insist that Elon Musk is over-doing it with his war on waste, inefficiency and over-regulation should take a look at the report that came out last week from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which found that federal regulations cost $1.2 trillion annually, about the same as Americans pay in federal income tax. According to the report:

US households pay on average $16,016 annually in a hidden regulatory tax, which consumes 16 percent of income and 21 percent of household expenses.

These household outlays exceed expenditures on health care, food, transportation, entertainment, apparel, services, and savings. Only the costs of housing, which stand at $25,436 annually, exceed regulation.

Winner: J.K. Rowling and Texas Stand Up for Women

J.K. Rowling, author of the beloved Harry Potter series, has been brutally besieged for years because she refused to bend the knee to those who insist that men who declare themselves to be women actually are women. In addition to death threats, cancellation and hate attacks—Scotland passed a law targeting her that would make it illegal to “stir up a hate crime.” Several of the actors in the Harry Potter movies denounced her—rendering those films unwatchable now for those of who care about facts and science.

But Rowling finally won the war when the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom declared this week that there are only two biological sexes—an important ruling, for the British were the first to perform sex change operations and then became the first to halt them after research showed that they were hurting patients instead of helping them.

Meanwhile, Axios reports that Texas legislators have filed more legislation reining in men who say they are women than any other state, as if that’s a bad thing. In all, 120 bills have been filed here, twice as many as Missouri, which is in second place. Texas legislators have already passed laws that prohibit boys from playing in women’s sports. New proposals seek to ensure women’s privacy is protected in public restrooms and locker facilities, and it would prohibit individuals from changing the sex on their birth certificates or other official documents, as well as making sure teachers can’t be fired for using the wrong pronouns. There’s a nationwide Trans legislation tracker here.

Winner: U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo

Another week has passed, and as far as anyone can tell, the national strategy of the Democrats is to focus on poor gang members who beat up their wives and, of course, men who say they are women. The New York Times asked several old Democrats how the party got its momentum back after big losses in the 1980’s. They have lots of theories, but Laredo Congressman Henry Cuellar gets specific when he made it clear what Democrats should not be talking about. He noted that the South Texas border communities he represents don’t care about Kilmer Abrago Garcia, who Trump deported: “With all due respect, when you’re talking about bringing somebody—and I know there were due process questions—that was in Maryland, and now El Salvador. I don’t know if that’s the right issue that Democrats should be focusing on right now.”

Winner: No Bike Lanes Bill

Anyone who doubts the importance of Sen. Paul Bettencourt’s legislation to halt bike lanes in Texas cities needs to visit Portland, Oregon and talk to business owners there who were driven out of the downtown core of that formerly beautiful city when bike lanes virtually stopped all car traffic from moving.

Portland is known as the one of the worst sites of the Black Lives Matters riots in 2020, which destroyed many parts of the downtown, but residents with a longer memory will tell you that the bicyclists, who are a loud and powerful lobby, did as much or more damage to Portland by closing down traffic lanes and making bike lanes and bicycle travel the priority. Similar efforts are underway in the Austin now, where traffic is stifled by more and more encroaching bicycle lanes, most often with no bikes in them. Blue cities have always been anti-car for no good reason other than they don’t like them. Bettencourt is right to fight back.

Winner: Houston May John Whitmire

Speaking of blue cities, Houston Democrats are up in arms because Houston Mayor John Whitmire attended a fundraising event for U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Houston. Democrats accused Whitmire of undermining the “values and mission of the Democrat Party…” which, as noted above, appear to be the fight for men who think they are women and keeping violent gang members in the country. Whitmire served as a Democrat in the Texas House for 10 years and the Texas Senate for 40 years—literally 50 years in the Legislature—where he was always a tireless voice for his party. Since he has been mayor he has also been attacked for standing in support of the Jewish community and making sure the Houston Police Department cooperates with ICE in arresting illegal aliens. Most folks think he is focused on “values and mission.”

Winner: COVID “Lab Leak” Website

The left-wing media went nuts when the Trump administration took down all the COVID information websites and replaced them with a big blaring headline that reads COVID LAB LEAK, detailing the origins of the virus. Years of lies about COVID, the denials, the intolerance of dissent, along with the loss of freedom and lives, all had a traumatic impact on most every American. Changing the websites and setting the record straight will help Americans remember never to go so far off course again.

Loser: Joe Biden’s $300K Speaking Tour

Each week we wonder how long we will be able to keep former President Joe Biden on the Losers List—but here he is again. Granted, there is some humility in Biden’s thinking that he would get $300,000 to make a speech—former President Barack Obama gets $400,000, but the word is that bookings are not going that well. In his first official public speech since the election, the New York Post reports that he referred to black children as “colored kids,” which charitably can be called anachronistic if not offensive. This speech should not be confused with Biden’s recent trip to Harvard after Trump announced he was withdrawing federal funds to the Ivy League school. While there, Biden reportedly referred to Ukraine as Iraq, dropped his ice cream bar and departed suddenly—but then, they weren’t paying him.

Winner: Hail to the Chief

President Trump has weighed in on the school mascot controversy in Massapequa, New York, where the state government is demanding that Massapequa High School stop using a “Chief” as their mascot. It’s part of the Empire State’s overall Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies.

The school board in this old suburban town with an ancient Native American name argued in a federal lawsuit that they are victims of government overreach and that their First Amendment rights are being violated. Their state representative has proposed a legal carve out for Massapequa, but they should get rid of the whole law.

Trump called the change “ridiculous” and an affront to our great Indian population. He asked Education Secretary Linda McMahon “to fight for the people of Massapequa on this very important issue,” adding “LONG LIVE THE MASSAPEQUA CHIEFS!”

Have a great weekend!

 

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

Sign up to receive this in your inbox every week at www.texaspolicy.com/9thandCongress.

Follow me on X @sylvester1630 and follow my podcast, the Sherry Sylvester Show on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Every Friday morning, I join the Cardle & Woolley Show on 1370 Talk Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. Lots of ups and downs this week, but here’s who made the list:

WINNER: President Donald Trump – Texas Majority Doesn’t Doubt Him
Seconds after, President Donald Trump announced he was putting his reciprocal tariffs on a 90-day pause, the Dow quickly soared to 40,000 points, the S&P index went up by more than 9%, and the sun began to break through the clouds. When he clarified that he was adding 145% tariffs on China, the clouds returned as the market trended down again.

Almost 65% of Americans are in the stock market, most because they have to be, since companies rarely offer pensions anymore. Pundits have been saying for weeks that Wall Street doesn’t like uncertainty. Nobody does, but uncertainty is one of Trump’s strategic negotiating tools—and it seems to be working. The White House reports there are dozens of countries at the table and Trump and his team are negotiating new deals now while increasing the pressure on China. Even with the whiplash trading, the week is still a win for the President because he has changed the conversation about trade, not only in America, but across the world. Inflation is also down and his “big beautiful budget bill” passed the U.S. House this week.

For the record, the pollsters over at the University of Texas Politics Project found that here in Texas, the President’s GOP base —the conservative majority —are steadfast in their belief in him. The survey, which was conducted in late February, found that 68% of Texans, including 48% of Republicans, thought Trump’s new tariffs would increase prices. But if you dig into those numbers, you can see that over two-thirds of Texas Republicans believe the president is right, and tariffs will help the U.S. economy in the long run.

President Trump also had several legal wins this week. The Supreme Court allowed Trump to use the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged criminals, he got a green-light on his firing of 16,000 probationary workers, and a federal judge said this morning that illegals must register with the government.

WINNER: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Insists on Competent Elections
Sometimes it’s the little things. Gov. Greg Abbott has been the target of threats from the Democrats who run the U.S. House and the Texas Democrat Party, both of whom whined that he delayed in calling a special election to replace former U.S. Congressman and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, who died on March 5. Democrats charged that Abbott didn’t call the election in order to bolster the Republican majority in the House, which is now at five.

But, as Abbott points out, it is never a good idea to rush for an election in Harris County — the poster child for election incompetence. Among Harris County’s elections’ golden hits are the time they decided, during COVID-19, that it would be OK to keep the polls open all night and allow drive-through voting. Poll workers would simply walk out to the car and hand out ballots. Forget those silly ideas about secret ballots, or prohibitions against consulting with others about how you should vote. It was the worst idea since Texas’ old drive-in margarita stands.

In 2022, Harris County provided more examples of chronic ineptitude. They had voting machines that didn’t work, they failed to have voters registered, resulting in thousands more people voting than were registered, voters had to wait in long lines and then, they ran out of ballots. If that wasn’t enough, after the polls finally closed, it took them more than 24 hours to count the votes.

Abbott called the Special Election for Congressional District 18 this week, to be held Nov. 4. Democrats will have a vacant seat in the U.S. House until then, but that’s on Harris County. Sen. Paul Bettencourt has spent years passing election integrity laws to get Harris County on track. It is time that county election officials follow his lead.

WINNER: A-F Grades for Texas Schools

When former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush began public school reforms in Florida back in the 2000s, he frequently said that nothing had made a bigger difference in getting parents and communities engaged in education than giving the schools a grade — A-F — just like students get, based on how the school performs. Schools where students could read and do math got a better grade than schools where most children were failing to learn basic skills. Passing an A-F accountability ranking made sense to Texas conservative lawmakers back then, but efforts to get it passed were thwarted year after year by Texas teacher unions, which insisted that it wasn’t fair to hold a school accountable for performance. The unions said that students who got poor grades would be traumatized and predicted that all the wealthy schools would get good grades and all the poor schools would get bad grades.

 

Democrats and the teachers unions aggressively fought the A-F legislation over several sessions, but it finally passed in 2017 and the first A-F accountability rankings were released in 2018. Everybody, especially parents, loved them, and guess what? All the A-rated schools weren’t in wealthy districts and all the failing schools weren’t in poor districts.

 

In deep blue Democrat districts throughout the state, when a local school got an A, everyone showed up for the photo op, including lawmakers who’d fought tooth and nail against A-F.

However, a new day had not dawned. After COVID-19, the accountability rankings were dropped for a while, because schools were in such disarray. Then, as the Texas Education Agency (TEA) prepared to release the latest list, over 100 Texas school districts took them to Court to stop it. But this week a judge at the 15th Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the TEA and the A-F grades for schools should be coming out in the next couple weeks. If this report card is anything like what we saw in 2018, there will be surprises. Take a look. They will be posted here.

 

WINNER: University of Austin Wants Smart Kids

The very smart and always innovative people at the newly established University of Austin came up with a novel idea this week — they will automatically admit any student who scores 1460+ on the SAT, 33+ on the ACT, or 105+ on the CLT. Students will not get extra points if they write an essay explaining how a minuscule amount of indigenous DNA or their racial or gender identity gives them special insight into how the world works. They also won’t be able to cut the line by reporting how they spent their summer tracking threatened bird life at the shore or joining two dozen extra-curricular clubs their senior year.

If you open the UATX website, the words “DARE TO THINK” booms across the home page. In making their announcement on merit-based admissions, university officials said, “We care about two things: Intelligence and courage.”

UATX leaders called the current college admissions system “broken,” saying it rewards manipulation, not merit and too often comes down to identity group and connections. They don’t care about any of that. They just want to recruit smart kids.

LOSER: Men in Women’s Sports
There are a surprising number of people who advocate allowing men to participate in women’s sports, who frequently insist that men who think they are women represent only an infinitesimal percentage of the population. That may be true, but their impact on sports is not insignificant.

A United Nations report last year found that as of March, 2024, over 600 female athletes in more than 400 competitions lost more than 800 medals in 29 different sports. That was a year ago. Now it feels like we are seeing it every day. Just this week there was the inspiring fencer who refused to compete against a man and the disc golfer who followed her lead and walked off the course rather than play against a man. In England, the two finalists in the Ultimate Pool Women’s Pro-Series were men. Many female athletes, including tennis great Marina Navratilova, are outspoken in the fight to keep men out of women’s sports, but South Carolina Women’s Basketball Coach Dawn Staley, an icon in women’s sports, is not among them. Staley insists that men who say they are women should be allowed to compete in women’s games.

It’s petty on my part, but I admit Staley’s position was one reason I cheered on Sunday night when UConn walloped South Carolina in the national championship game.

LOSER: Democrats in Texas
The Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee announced this week that they will target U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz, R-Texas, who represents McAllen and Hidalgo County, in next year’s mid-term elections. De La Cruz defeated her Democrat opponent by 15 points last year, but Democrats seem to believe De La Cruz will be easier to beat without Trump on the ballot. De La Cruz supports Trump’s immigration policies — which remain enormously popular in South Texas. Meanwhile, almost every Democrat in the U.S. House this week voted against the SAVE Act, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, which will require voters show proof of citizenship before they can register. More than 80% of Americans support the requirement. With that record, what do Democrats think they can run on that will defeat De La Cruz?

WINNER: Nick Saban Nominated for Sports Emmy
Well, maybe he’s a winner. Nick Saban stunned the sports world when it was announced this week that he has been nominated for a Sports Emmy for his work on College Game Day after only a year on the show. Saban seemed to easily make the leap from coach to commentator, and College Game Day had its best year ever with Saban in the mix. Will keep you posted on the award.

LOSER: Buying College Sports
The Wall Street Journal published a story this week in which a financial analyst asserts that even though Florida defeated University of Houston on Monday to claim the NCAA national basketball championship title, if the teams were for sale, Florida’s value would be about $121 million, about a third as much as Duke is worth ($370 million). The fact that UofH beat Duke to get into the championship game is not a factor, either.

The analyst, Ryan Brewer, a finance professor at Indiana University, says he came up with his numbers by studying revenues and cash flows and making a financial projection about the team’s sustainability. He insists it’s no different than analyzing any other business. According to his data, UofH is valued at $81 million, far less than several Texas teams including the University of Texas, which didn’t make the tournament this year. Brewer puts UT’s valuation at $153 million. Texas Tech is at $102 million and Texas A&M is at $95 million. Brewer doesn’t explain why his list of women’s team valuations has national champion UConn at the top at $95 million and South Carolina, last year’s national champion, in the number two spot with $86 million.

What is very concerning about this analysis is the glib discussion of selling college athletic teams. This is a terrible idea. The current monetization of college sports, including new NIL rules, the transfer portal and the increasing domination of rich schools over poorer ones is not sustainable. It will funnel all the revenue to a few schools and dramatically narrow the field of competition to the universities that can afford to buy the best players. Because football and men’s basketball bring in more than 90% of the sports funding for universities, the impact will result in no funding for other sports like soccer and tennis and certainly women’s sports.

Happily, the Masters Tournament will be on this weekend, and we’ll undoubtedly have lots of glorious shots from the magnificent Augusta Golf Course to take our minds off the turbulent week.

Have a great weekend!

 

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

Sign up to receive this in your inbox every week at www.texaspolicy.com/9thandCongress.

Follow me on X @sylvester1630 and follow my podcast, the Sherry Sylvester Show on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Every Friday morning, I join the Cardle & Woolley Show on 1370 Talk Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. With less than 60 days to go in the Legislative Session and two Texas teams in the Final Four tournaments this weekend, the already-hectic pace is approaching light speed. Here’s who made the list:

Winner: Texas Parents, Texas Kids

Every step on the road to Education Savings Accounts for Texas is a big win for parental rights and Texas students. The Texas Senate passed Education Savings Accounts early in the session and the Texas House Education Committee passed the bill out this week, so it’s on to the House floor for a full vote. If you know anyone who is still weighing the facts, give them this checklist put together by TPPF.

Loser: The Tesla Takedown

Progressives may be gloating that they managed to defeat Elon Musk’s candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court this week, but in terms of swaying public opinion their way, the whole notion of torching perfectly good cars is just not selling with the American people. Last weekend’s national demonstrations against Tesla dealerships drew hundreds, not even thousands, in a country of nearly 375 million people. In terms of pressing priorities, making Elon Musk a tiny bit less rich is just not high on the list of normal people.

Sure, there are reports that Tesla sales have plummeted since Musk took over DOGE and started cutting spending for the Trump administration, but that doesn’t mean anything either. Teslas were always a virtue-signaling luxury item that primarily appealed to progressive tastes. It wouldn’t take many self-righteous lefties to cause sales to dip.

Compare that to the way Americans toppled Bud Light from the top of the beer charts. Folks simply decided to buy a beer that didn’t have a man pretending to be a woman in the commercials. No marches were needed.

The tepid Tesla Takedown is one more sign that what used to be called the “protest movement,” is over in this country. The anti-Israel, pro-Hamas marches that have been happening since Israel was attacked in 2023 have had no impact on American support for Israel, which remains at almost 80%. Instead, the demonstrations have provided a wake-up call to anti-Semitism on American campuses.

Progressives hold protest marches all the time, because they don’t seem to know what else to do. They are gatherings of the same frequently misinformed people who apparently do not work and don’t have anything better to do. They can’t even be bothered to come up with an original chant. How many times do we have to hear “Hey hey, ho ho INSERT WHAT YOU DON’T LIKE HERE, Has Got to Go.” Note to the left: Nobody is paying attention.

Winner: Ted Cruz on Trump’s Third Term

There’s no way to know if President Trump is serious when he says he is considering a third term, but Texas Sen. Ted Cruz minced no words last week when asked about it, telling NBC News: “The 22nd Amendment is clear and unequivocal.”

America went through one of its darkest and most stagnant periods in recent history under former President Joe Biden and Trump’s engagement with the country, his high energy and focus are such a stark contrast that it is easy for some to say that they never want him to leave. But when asked, almost 70 percent of Americans believe, like Cruz, that the Constitution has served us well on this and we should stick with it. Here’s the 22^nd Amendment:

“No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.”

Loser: Cory Booker and Everyone Who Had to Listen to Him

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, used to be a kind of good guy. When I lived in New Jersey decades ago, he was elected mayor of Newark at least in part because he supported school choice. But Mayor Booker is not the same guy as Sen. Booker, who decided on Monday that it was time for his “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” moment, so he decided to break the U.S. Senate’s filibuster record. Sen. Booker wasn’t fighting for any principle or policy—he just wanted to prove that he could talk for 25 hours straight.

In yet another sign of how bad things are in the Democrat party, Booker is now seen by some as the leading contender for the Democrat presidential nomination in 2028 as a result of the stunt. Go figure.

Winner: Tilman Fertitta

President Trump nominated Houstonian Tilman Fertitta to be his ambassador to Italy, and his confirmation hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington, D.C., this week was a hit. Introduced by both Texas U.S. senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, Fertitta is expected to be easily confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Fertitta, who owns the Houston Rockets, has a lot to celebrate this week. He chairs the Board of Regents at the University of Houston, which made it to the Final Four and is playing for the national championship this weekend.

Loser: Equality Texas Anti-DEI Poll

Equality Texas, the group that is fighting to let men play women’s sports and put drag shows for kids in public libraries, among other things, released an astonishing poll this week.

According to its data, 52% of LGBTQ students surveyed at Texas colleges and universities said they considered leaving whatever Texas institution they attended after Texas’ anti-DEI law passed in 2023. Even worse, according to Equality Texas, 78% said they’d considered leaving the Lone Star State entirely.

Equality Texas reports that it only surveyed 23 students and they provided no information on how that 23 was selected. So let’s do the math: 78% of 23 means that 18 of the 1.6 million Texas college students are thinking of leaving Texas because of DEI. What about faculty? There have been frequent warnings that Texas DEI law will drive away potential faculty members. However, the Equality Texas survey reached out to 21 faculty and staff members and found that 25% of them said they had “considered” leaving Texas—so that’s 5.25 people.

Winner: Men’s Final Four in San Antonio

The University of Houston is the only Texas team that made it all the way to the NCAA Men’s Final Four in San Antonio. The Cougars play Duke at 8 p.m. Saturday. For many fans, the fact that all four No. 1 seeds—Florida and Auburn are the other two teams—made it to the Final Four is one more sign that dramatic changes in college sports have pushed many schools out of the real competition. More than a few people wonder if the NIL, the portal and big money schools getting all the good players has resulted in an NCAA tournament with few upsets and no Cinderella teams. If you have not read TPPF board member Cody Campbell’s cutting-edge analysis on the current threats to college sports, read it here now.

UPDATE! The University of Houston defeated Duke in the Final Four game last night. After being down by 9 points with 3 minutes to go, they pulled off what the Houston Chronicle called “a comeback for the ages.” They will play Florida for the national championship on Monday. 

Winner: Texas Women in the Final Four

The Longhorns will play in the NCAA Women’s Final Four in Tampa on Friday night going up against their nemesis, South Carolina, at 6 p.m. The Longhorns beat another Texas team, TCU to get the ticket to Tampa. Texas famously ended South Carolina’s 57 game winning streak in February, but the Gamecocks got a revenge win over Texas in the SEC Championship tournament last month. The University of Connecticut and UCLA are also playing on Friday.

The women’s championship game is on Sunday night and the men’s game is on Monday. Let’s root for both Texas teams to come home with trophies.

Have a great weekend!

 

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

Sign up to receive this in your inbox every week at www.texaspolicy.com/9thandCongress.

Follow me on X @sylvester1630 and follow my podcast, the Sherry Sylvester Show on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Every Friday morning, I join the Cardle & Woolley Show on 1370 Talk Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. With Women’s History Month coming to a close and March Madness trickling down to the Elite Eight, here’s who made the list:

Winner: Trump’s Women’s History Month Speech at the White House

It would have been easy to miss President Donald Trump’s White House speech on Women’s History Month this week where he joked that if whoever said he didn’t like strong women (it was Mark Cuban) was right, he is in real trouble, because he is surrounded by them. As he pointed out the women on his team—including Susie Wiles, the first woman to serve as White House Chief of Staff—along with the dozens of Republican women leaders around the country, he demonstrated what a fool Cuban was, without ever saying his name.

Mainstream coverage of the event was mostly snide, as it always is when Trump directly challenges what is a given in the left-wing narrative—that he is sexist. I am sure lefty pundits are studying his comments right now, trying to find something they can use to demonstrate that he hates women. Perhaps they will distort his jocular comment that he knows women are superior to men: “I’ve known it all my life, I don’t like it, but I know it.” They also may belittle the fact that he said he had ended the Democrats’ “war on women” and called his edict proclaiming that there are only two genders in America one of his major accomplishments. He said “no matter how many surgeries you have or chemicals you inject, if you’re born with male DNA in your body, you can never become a woman.”

Trump noted that Democrats simply do not understand how important this issue is to real women. The reason he was finally able to break through with the women’s vote is that those who fought for women’s rights over the years—from establishing Title IX to reforming rape laws—are offended by the notion that some man can simply declare himself to be a woman and land a spot on the volleyball team, or whatever. Trump joked that he hopes Democrats continue to fail to get it. Me too.

Loser: National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service

Before Democrat strategist James Carville said “it’s the economy, stupid,” he described the established Democrat party as the “Volvo driving, white wine drinking, National Public Radio crowd.” That was over 30 years ago and even Carville knew back then that elitist public media sources did not reflect the American people—which wouldn’t be a problem if they were a private company, but public broadcasting is taxpayer funded. The heads of NPR and PBS appeared before a Congressional committee this week and if you are wondering why we are even discussing this, the budget Congress passed the other day includes over $500 million for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which passes the funding along to NPR and PBS.

The fight isn’t really about money; it’s about progressives wanting an official broadcasting tool to misinform the country. NPR persistently reported that any discussion about the origin of COVID-19 was racist, that President Trump colluded with Russia to win in 2016, and that Hunter Biden’s laptop was not an actual news story.

Katherine Maher, the head of NPR, told members of Congress that she’d “never seen any instance of political bias at NPR.” What is so pathetic about that statement is that it is probably true. She just doesn’t see it.

I talk with reporters all the time, from mainstream media outlets in Texas and, like Maher, they honestly don’t see the bias in what they report and what they choose not to report, even in the words they choose to adopt. If you call an Education Savings Account a “voucher” or a man who says he’s a woman “her,” or a pregnant mom a “birthing person,” you have taken a position before you even begin the report. To hand one side of a debate the right to define the terms is journalistic malpractice.

To see how this works in real time, note that CNN’s report on the hearing mocked the congressional members who said the public broadcasting outlets were biased. Similarly, Politico reported that the hearing was an attack on freedom of the press. We don’t know the political make-up of CNN’s or Politico’s reporters, but the 87 writers at NPR are all registered Democrats. There are no Republicans.

Congress should claw back the millions in the new budget. We don’t need a line item for state-funded media. Anyone who is worried about Downton Abbey or Big Bird should know that all the good shows will be picked up in a week by Netflix and Amazon.

One more thing in case you missed it. Texas Congressman Brendan Gill, from Flower Mound, stole the show with his questions to the NPR head, Maher, as she repeatedly denied having said things she’d actually tweeted. For example during the BLM riots she tweeted “it’s hard to be mad” about the damage to businesses because private property is part of “a system of oppression founded on treating people’s ancestors as private property.” Maher claimed she didn’t say it, but Gill had the receipts.

Loser: Military Leaders Text Chain on Signal

Conservatives should stop pulling punches on the leaked text chain that inadvertently included a reporter in classified conversations with high ranking military officials. It was stupid beyond belief. There is no excuse. Stop shrugging it off and saying “mistakes happen.” Stop whining about all the security breaches on the left and the fact that mainstream media is treating the story as if it were bigger than Watergate. You can expect that—when you do something so absolutely dumb.

Trump is being gracious, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea if he expressed a little anger. We lived through four years of incompetence in the White House. Conservatives promised to fix that, and this was a big fail.

That said, it is important to remember that if there was a security breach, it came from the reporter, Jeffrey Goldberg, who was accidentally included on the text chain. If anyone’s life was put in danger or America’s strategic position in the world was compromised, that’s on him. He had the information, he had lots of options including working with the principals on the call. Instead, he ran to the newsroom to put the story out and undoubtedly assumes he’s at the front of the line for a Pulitzer.

Winner: Marco Rubio Pulls Hamas-niks’ Visas

Homeland Security arrested another student who was working with Hamas during the recent campus protests—Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish national and doctoral student at Tufts University in Boston. This follows the arrest of Mahmoud Kalil at Columbia University who was arrested last week. The idea that the protesters were not collaborating with Hamas last year is outlandish—even at the University of Texas where the protests were quickly contained, law enforcement officials found Palestinian propaganda supporting the genocide of Jews. Hamas is still holding an American hostage and they killed several Americans along with Israelis, so it is very reasonable to disqualify their allies from holding a guest visa to be in the country. Secretary of State Rubio said it succinctly:

“We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas.”

Winner: Making Texas Healthy Again

Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, is the author of Senate Bill 25 that would increase the number of hours that Texas public school children spend in physical education classes, a first step toward getting healthier. Sen. Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston, has proposed Senate Bill 379, which will prohibit the use of federal food supplement funding administered by the state for junk food—soda, chips and cookies.

In a statement that harkens back to the tobacco companies of yesteryear, when they insisted that smoking doesn’t cause cancer, the American Beverage Association said this week that “soda is not driving obesity in America.”

Actually, sugary soda is a major contributing factor to the fatness that is killing too many Americans. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, a Texan and former TPPF CEO, noted this week that soda is the No. 1 item purchased with food stamps.

You can understand that the beverage producers would be against this—they call it the “government food police,” but some advocates for poor people are also fighting it, saying it will be difficult for grocery stores to figure out what is covered.

Uh, no, it won’t. They already sort that out all the time. It seems like they may oppose the healthy agenda just because it is being pushed by President Trump and conservative lawmakers who want to make Texans healthy again.

Loser: U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett Sets Hair on Fire

It was a big week for the Dallas congresswoman who helped ramp up the attacks of vandalism on Tesla dealerships by saying that Elon Musk should be taken down. Attorney General Pam Bondi told her to tone it down. Then she mocked the bans on boys playing girls sports, an issue that has the support of 80% of Americans including a majority in her party, insisting it’s not a problem and saying “find the poor little trans child that is ruining your life.”

But then she made fun of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who uses a wheelchair, calling him “Governor ‘Hot Wheels.’” Even the uber-hateful women on The View were outraged, telling Crockett she should never mock people’s disabilities.

Crockett ignored all that, insisting she didn’t say it, even though it’s very clear that she did. The Dallas Morning News also criticized the local congresswoman, but to keep it balanced, they concluded that the whole “Hot Wheels” situation was actually Trump’s fault.

Gov. Abbott was gracious, calling it just one more disaster by Democrats. Crockett is clearly trying to topple Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and take over the comedy relief spot for progressive Democrats, but she didn’t get any closer to that goal this week.

Winner: Texas Senate Passes Bill on the Horrors of Communism

One of Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s priorities this session is Senate Bill 24, which will require that Texas public school students be educated on the horrors of communism. A number of important bills passed the Texas Senate this week and the Texas House is putting together a calendar for next week, but this bill resonated with me because I recently testified before the Senate Education Committee on a panel with Dr. Carrie Butler, a professor on sabbatical from Stephen F. Austin University who told the senators that very few of her students knew the difference between communism and capitalism.

This ignorance among younger people is at the root of the demonstrations we have been seeing on college campuses across the country. It makes sense that Texas require public school students to learn about the crimes against humanity perpetrated by communist regimes.

March Madness Update – Tech

Texas Tech’s Red Raiders provided what may be the most exciting March Madness game so far when they made an amazing comeback against Arkansas last night. They were behind most of the game and at one point trailed by 16 points, but they took the Razorbacks into overtime and won with a buzzer beater at the finish. They are moving onto the Elite Eight.

All the other Texas teams that made it through last week are still in Sweet Sixteen match-ups. The University of Houston plays Purdue tonight. On the women’s bracket, the University of Texas plays Tennessee tomorrow and TCU will play Notre Dame.

That’s a wrap. Have a great weekend!

 

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

Sign up to receive this in your inbox every week at www.texaspolicy.com/9thandCongress.

Follow me on X @sylvester1630 and follow my podcast, the Sherry Sylvester Show on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Every Friday morning I join the Cardle & Woolley Show on 1370 Talk Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. With Texas just past the halfway mark of the 140-day legislative session and March Madness officially begun, here’s who made the list:

Winner: SpaceX Rescue of Astronauts

President Donald Trump gave us a glimpse of what the future could look like when he got his buddy, Elon Musk, to rev up a SpaceX rocket and go get the two American astronauts who were stranded on the International Space Station. Astronauts have been American heroes since Alan Shepherd took that first 15-minute Mercury flight and Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. We love them! Apollo 13 was nominated for nine Oscars.

Stuck here on the home planet, many of us looked at the sky and wondered how we had gotten to a place where we were seeing the same sad shots every day—Suni Williams’ zero-gravity flying hair and Butch Wilcox’s game face were a daily reminder that some things just weren’t right on Planet Earth.

Musk said he reached out to former President Joe Biden months ago and offered to go get the astronauts, but Biden reportedly declined, reluctant to give such a high profile job to a big Trump supporter. It’s not clear if that’s absolutely true, but it sounds like Biden.

Unfortunately for the country, the rescue didn’t get much coverage in the legacy media. Space flights are one of the things that usually transcend media bias. They always have great visuals from the blast off to the splash down. There wasn’t a total blackout on the rescue, but it didn’t merit a big story because it challenged the current lefty narrative that Musk is Darth Vader bent on destroying America on behalf of the Empire.

But for those who got to see it, it was inspiring. Of course, the official Democrat position is that the astronauts were not actually stranded and a private company going to pick them up was no big deal. You can read all about that here.

Loser: Judge Who Tried to Stop the Deportation of Tren de Aragua

After President Trump ordered the immediate deportation of Venezuelan gang members on Saturday, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg issued an injunction ordering Trump to bring them back, prompting the Babylon Bee to release a spoof saying a federal judge had ordered Trump to return the astronauts to the space station.

Boasberg’s action also moved Charlamagne tha God—who is not a Trumper or a conservative—to ask, “Why are they raising hell about a gang being deported?

For just that moment in time, Charlamagne was speaking for most Americans who continue to be puzzled about whose side progressives are on. They want to keep violent gang members in the country, they want to keep the war going in Russia, despite the fact that a half-million people have been killed, and they want to burn down Tesla dealerships, after years of telling us that gas-fueled automobiles are evil. (In case you missed it, the New York Times has a great story about depressed liberals who believe they must now get rid of their Teslas.)

Trump and the courts are in a stand-off, but the gang members are in El Salvador.

Winner: Trump Decision to Eliminate the Dept. of Education

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick were in Washington on Thursday to applaud President Trump’s signing of a new Executive Order to disband the Department of Education. With its demise, control of public schools and universities will return to the states free of the massive regulations and reporting requirements of one of the most unproductive and annoying federal agencies.

Education bureaucrats are apoplectic, but it’s not clear how they can make a case. The Department of Education’s own numbers reveal that reading scores fell to a new low last year and math scores remain stagnant.

States already largely control their school systems, but the Dept. of Education has used tactics like “Dear Colleague” letters over the years to threaten schools to comply with the favorite ideological policies of teachers unions, who demanded that former President Jimmy Carter establish the agency in the first place.

In 2015, President Barack Obama sent a letter to every public school system in the country threatening to withdraw federal funds if they did not allow boys who think they are girls to use girls’ restrooms. Biden copied that strategy during his administration, insisting that he had single-handedly changed Title IX to include people who believe they are the opposite of their actual sex. Again, he threatened withdrawal of federal funds if the school districts didn’t comply, including allowing boys to play in girls’ sports.

The Department of Education also maintains the current monopoly accreditation system in higher education that most often forces colleges and universities to implement DEI policies on their campuses or risk losing low-income (Pell Grants) funding for their students.

If this sounds a bit like an extortion ring, that’s because it is. Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon are absolutely right to shut it down.

Loser: Greenpeace

In case we needed another sign that the Green New Deal is officially dead, this week a North Dakota jury ordered Greenpeace to pay Texas-based Energy Transfer almost $700 million as a result of their efforts to block the Dakota Access Pipeline. The jury found the environmental protest group was guilty of trespassing and destroying private property as well as publishing lies about the pipeline. Greenpeace will appeal, of course, but this is an important victory in the left’s on-going war against fossil fuel.

Winner: Texas Senate

The Texas Senate is moving at its usual warp speed, passing out dozens of bills this week which will now make their way to the Texas House. There’s too many to list, but a couple of my favorites are the bill to ban Drag Queen Story Hour in public libraries, which is long overdue for final passage along with legislation to remove inappropriate books from school libraries. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has taken the lead in stopping THC stores from selling products that contain several times more THC than actual marijuana sold on the street. THC sales were initially allowed in Texas only to provide medicinal doses and the Lieutenant Governor wants to crack down on the thousands of stores that have gone rogue and are selling massive doses with few guardrails to prevent sales to children.

Winner: Texas DEI Ban is Copied by California

Texas passed the strongest anti-DEI ban in the country in 2023, forcing state colleges and universities to close their DEI offices, end mandatory DEI training, and eliminate the requirement that all applicants for teaching or administrative positions be required to sign a so-called “diversity statement” asserting their allegiance to DEI and outlining how they would implement DEI programs should they be hired.

On Thursday, the University of California system announced that they would eliminate the diversity statement requirement at their 10 campuses too, just like Texas did.

Recall that California is the same state that launched a boycott against Texas and other states because they didn’t like our policies prohibiting children from undergoing puberty blockers or unnecessary surgeries or allowing boys who think they are girls to participate in girls’ sports. The boycott stipulated that no California sports team could travel to Texas or any state with similar laws to compete in any sports—Final Four, Big 10 Championship, whatever. They finally realized the boycott didn’t work when more states passed laws like Texas after the boycott began.

California’s change of heart on diversity statements was not a sudden realization that students should not be divided on the basis of race, gender and sexual preference. Instead, it was prompted by President Trump’s promise to withdraw federal funding to universities that continue DEI programs. Texas provided the model and showed California the first step. That’s why we’re the winner.

Winner: Finland is Happiest Country in the World Again

After an extensive poll by Gallup, Finland has once again been found to be the happiest country in the world. This is the eighth time they’ve come in the top spot. For some reason, the cold, dark countries dominate the happiness competition. Denmark is No. 2 again this year, Iceland is No. 3 and Sweden is No. 4. The Netherlands and Norway are also in the top 10. The only countries with decent weather on the top of the list are Costa Rica and Israel. The United States has fallen to No. 24, just under the United Kingdom, which is No. 23. The report from Gallup includes findings that suggest happiness may be linked to kindness and generosity, so perhaps cold isn’t the only factor. If we all try harder to be kind and generous, perhaps we can raise our happiness competition score. USA! USA!

March Madness Begins with Three Texas Wins

All three Texas men’s teams that played in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament last night were victorious. Texas A&M beat Yale, the University of Houston beat SIU Edwardsville and Texas Tech defeated UNC at Wilmington. All three will play their second round games on Saturday. Baylor plays tonight.

The Women’s NCAA Tournament starts today. Stephen F. Austin plays Notre Dame and TCU takes on the New Jersey school, Fairleigh-Dickinson. The women from the University of Texas, a number one seed, will play William & Mary in the first round tomorrow night.

Have a great weekend!

 

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

Sign up to receive this in your inbox every week at www.texaspolicy.com/9thandCongress.

Follow me on X @sylvester1630 and follow my podcast, the Sherry Sylvester Show on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Every Friday morning I join the Cardle & Woolley Show on 1370 Talk Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. March and the President blew in like a lion. Here’s who made the list:

Winner: Trump’s First Speech to Congress

One thing that was clear from President Donald Trump’s first speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday is that the president understands the American people—and the Democrats don’t. In fact, after the speech was over and the smoke cleared, it looks increasingly like the Democrats don’t even like the American people.

The pageantry of a presidential speech to a joint session of Congress is great fun. When the words, “Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States,” boom through the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives and our television sets, it’s a bit of a rush for most red-blooded Americans—except, apparently, for the current Democrat members of Congress, who could not be bothered to drag themselves out of their seats to demonstrate the customary respect for the commander-in-chief.

Predictably, Trump used his speech to review the greatest hits of his first 44 days in office—but before he could even get started, he was interrupted by Texas Congressman Al Green, D-Houston, who heckled him with such ferocity that he had to be thrown out.

Following Green’s lead, Democrats proceeded to ignore the guests Trump invited to the speech including:

• Payton McNabb, whose high school athletic career ended when she suffered a traumatic brain injury after a boy playing on a girls’ volleyball team spiked a ball at her head in a volleyball match in 2022.
• Stephanie Diller, the widow of a New York City police officer killed during a traffic stop last March. The suspect in her husband’s case had prior arrests and was out on bail.
• January Littlejohn who sued the local school board for allowing her 13-year-old daughter to present herself at school as a boy without her consent.

The Democrats’ facial expressions varied from blank stares to contempt as Trump told the stories of his guests. Either the Dems didn’t believe the stories were true or they didn’t care.

They refused to stand to acknowledge Mark Foley, who had been imprisoned in Russia for over three years before Trump conducted a prisoner exchange for his release.

When the families of Laken Riley and Jocelyn Nungaray were introduced, Democrats again did not rise for the grieving mothers whose daughters were both killed by illegal aliens last year.

Trump said when he began his speech that there was nothing he could do that would make the Democrats smile, clap or applaud and he went on to prove he was right. When he introduced D.J. Daniel, a 13 year old battling brain cancer who dreams of being a police officer, there were few dry eyes in the house, except for the Democrats who did not join in the standing ovation for D.J., but remained glued to their seats.

Trump made D.J. an honorary Secret Service agent, delighting him, his family and the entire country. It was an enormously kind and lovely gesture on the part of the president—and politically, it was brilliant.

Trump’s speech was a triumph because he made it clear he is on the side of ordinary Americans. The Democrats went to great pains to make it clear they are not.

Loser: Democrats Go Pro-War

If you just watch news reports, you will miss what Trump has been saying about the war in Ukraine since his inauguration—that his primary concern is the huge death toll. An estimated half million people have been killed in that war—2,000 a week. The president has repeatedly called the loss of life “senseless.”

It seems few could disagree, but the Democrats did not applaud the president even when he says he wanted to end the war and bring peace.

In fact, the only point in the speech where the Democrats applauded was when Trump charged that many Democrats wouldn’t care if the war continued for 5 more years—at which point, most notably, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, clapped.

It is hard to imagine such an avalanche of bad political calculations—malpractice doesn’t begin to describe it. Dressing in pink—the girly, girl Barbie color—to send a message of support for women, just days after killing the very popular ban on men in women’s sports. And then there was the auction paddle props with childish messages that were asking to be mocked on social media.

Still, clapping to continue the Ukraine war gets my vote for the worst thing progressives did all week. Some on their side knew they blew it, but everything they tried to do to fix it as the week rolled on just made it worse.

Winner: Gavin Newsom Says Men Playing in Women’s Sports is “deeply unfair.”

On his new podcast, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a likely Democratic presidential candidate, said it was “easy to call out the unfairness” of men and boys playing in women’s and girls’ sports. But we will see how easy it will be for him. The Human Rights Campaign, the powerful transgender rights organization, slammed him immediately and other progressives soon followed.

Newsom was quick to add the dishonest talking point that, even though it’s unfair, compassion and grace are needed for transgender kids because they are at a higher risk for suicide than their non-gender confused peers. Compassion and grace are always a good idea, particularly now in the season of Lent, but children afflicted with gender dysphoria also need our help to get counseling, the only effective treatment for the mental health issues that are virtually always part of a gender confusion diagnosis. Those include bi-polar disorder, depression, PTSD and substance abuse, all of which is why they are at risk of suicide—not the stigma of being transgender.

Winner: BlackRock Distances Itself from ESG

In 2021, Texas led the fight against so-called ESG—Environmental, Social Governance policies—when lawmakers passed legislation barring state pensions and endowments from investing in companies that boycott fossil fuels. BlackRock was at the top of the offenders list. This week, BlackRock announced they are on a new path and the company that gave us “woke capitalism” has now pretty much declared it dead. According to news reports, when BlackRock dropped out of the national climate change group, Net Zero Asset Managers, the organization more or less collapsed.

When Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick made Senate Bill 21 a priority in 2021, the blowback against him and the Texas Senate was enormous, but, as usual, they were way ahead of the curve. If you haven’t looked at the Lieutenant Governor’s priorities for this legislative session, here’s the list.

Loser: Democrats Blocking the Ban on Men in Women’s Sports

Perhaps it’s not fair to hit the Democrats twice on this—since they failed to stand up during the President’s speech when he introduced a young woman who sustained a traumatic brain injury when competing against a male. But it needs to be underscored that Democrats really do intend to die on the hill of so-called transgenderism.

On Monday, Senate Democrats blocked legislation to ban boys playing in girls’ sports. 51 Republicans voted to bring the bill to the floor but they needed 60 to end the filibuster. And 43 Democrats and two independents voted against it. A New York Times poll in January found that 79% of respondents (and Gavin Newsom) said biological males who identify as women should not be allowed to participate in girls and women’s sports. That includes 67% of Democrats polled. Who are they representing?

Winner: Texas Wins the Governor’s Cup… again

It’s not really news that Texas has won the Governor’s Cup from Site Selection Magazine again. This is the 21^st time the Texas has scored number one in attracting new and expanded business facility projects. The state has won the award every year for the past 13 years. Texas has added over three hundred more corporate headquarters over the last decade, prompting Gov. Greg Abbott to call the Lone Star State “the headquarters of headquarters.”

Winner: Texas A&M’s Drag Show Ban

What was really great about Texas A&M’s Board of Regents resolution last week to ban drag shows on campus was that they rightly stated that drag shows denigrate women. The Aggies’ Queer Empowerment Council is outraged of course and national groups are making noise about free speech, but the question that should be asked is: Would a blackface performance be allowed on campus? As I wrote a couple of years ago, drag is blackface targeting women.

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

If you change blackness to women, you have a precise definition of drag—”comedic performances of women by men in exaggerated costumes and make-up…distorting their features, their looks, language, dance, deportment and character.”

Blackface also perpetuated the most violent racism in America by pushing racial stereotypes that black men were stupid with enormous sexual appetites. If you have ever seen a drag show, you know they present the exact same stereotypes about women. The Texas A&M Board of Regents is exactly right to shut them down.

Loser: Oscar Winning Fans of the “Sex Worker Community”

Last week, after the movie “Anora,” which I and millions of Americans have not seen, won the Oscar for best picture, the actress who played a stripper turned prostitute in the film used her award-getting moment in the sun to proclaim her support for the “sex worker community.” Later, the film’s producer said that sex work should be decriminalized. So far, there has been no outcry from any feminists on the left about glorifying the danger, abuse and degradation of women that is a byproduct of prostitution. Movies are movies, and there’s always been a lot of them about prostitutes, but at a time when the human trafficking of women and girls is an epidemic in America, we should not use films about prostitution as a platform to suggest it is simply another career choice for women.

Loser: Maxine Waters Suggests Musk Rigged the Election

Speaking of antics, after 2020, so-called “election denial” became a big attack line for Democrats and their allies in the media. Anyone who questioned any of the data following the 2020 election was treated as if they were a flat earther. Now comes U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California, first screaming that Elon Musk should “go back to wherever he came from” —tough words for a legal American immigrant. Then she charged that somehow Musk may have been involved in rigging the outcome of the 2024 election. Sounds like election denial.

Winner: Schools Revive Shop Classes

A report in the Wall Street Journal this week detailed that schools across the country are bringing back shop classes in order to teach students all kinds of mechanical and building skills in preparation for blue collar jobs in the workforce. Reviving shop classes, like virtually all innovation in education, is done at the state and local level, which is why Trump and new Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, were right this week to move forward with the plan to abolish the Department of Education, which played a role in getting rid of shop classes in the first place.

As the Wall Street Journal points out, shop classes were shut down in the late 1980’s when reports indicated that reading skills in our schools were low. Thirty years later, those scores are still low—and we need to fix that. But we can also bring back shop classes!

Winner: Texas Longhorns Lose Coin-Toss But Still No. 1

The Texas Women’s Basketball team is still ranked No. 1, after decimating Florida last Sunday, 72 to 46. They lost the coin-toss to South Carolina for the top seed in the SEC Tournament and they play Ole Miss this afternoon at 5 p.m. in the opening round. Hook ‘em.

Have a great weekend.

 

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

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.