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Winners & Losers

Winners & Losers: Trump at the Helm, No Kings, No Gender Affirming Care

Every Friday morning, I join the Cardle & Woolley Show on 1370 Talk Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. As the whole world watches to see President Donald Trump’s next step regarding Iran, here’s who made the list:

WINNER: President Trump’s Birthday Week
All but the totally deranged can see the positive impact of having a strong leader like President Trump in charge in the dangerously precarious situation we are currently facing. Even Europeans who don’t like his style see the value of having him at the helm. It is impossible to imagine how former President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris would have reacted to Israel’s attack on Iran.

Trump’s celebration of the 250th Anniversary of the U.S. Army was a big hit (see below) and the notoriously left-leaning 9th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled in his favor over California Gov. Gavin Newsom, holding that Trump has the authority to dispatch the National Guard to California.

Cruz is Right, Tucker Carlson is Wrong
In case you missed it, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, sat down with fringe-right bomb thrower Tucker Carlson this week to discuss whether President Trump should move forward with our bunker buster bombs and take out what’s left of Iran’s nuclear facilities.

There are lots of issues to debate here—including whether or not the bunker buster is adequate—but Carlson doesn’t care about that. His position is that Iran is not all that bad and the U.S. should mind our own business. Cruz rationally argued that Iran, the country that bankrolls Hamas and Hezbollah, and where “death to America” is the national slogan, should be stopped from developing a nuclear bomb.

Carlson, who has also praised the Russians for keeping Moscow so clean and has hosted Holocaust deniers and Nazi defenders on his podcast, attacked Cruz for supporting Israel. Carlson doesn’t appear to care that Iran’s prime directive is to destroy Israel, who they call the “Little Satan.” Guess who the “Big Satan” is?

Iran is not just engaged in an ancient regional conflict—Muslims against Jews—they are in a war to destroy Western Civilization. This is not Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. For Carlson to condescendingly suggest that the situation is more complex than a war over good and evil is simply wrong. President Trump has given them a two-week runway, but he made the key point succinctly this week: “Somebody please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson why Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon.

WINNER: U.S. Supreme Court Ruling against Gender Affirming Care
Hopefully, the ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court this week will result in the disappearance of the insidious term “gender affirming care” from the American lexicon. In a 6 to 3 ruling, the justices affirmed the right of Tennessee to bar parents from giving their children puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and allowing them to undergo unneeded mastectomies and even castrations in an effort to change their sex.

That destructive mutilation is what “gender affirming care” is.

There have always been a tiny minority of people who suffered from gender dysphoria—believing they were born in the body of the other sex. Research continues to show that talk therapy is the most effective treatment for those individuals. However, over the last 20 years, the diagnosis has become far more common, giving the gay rights movement a new reason to raise funds after gay marriage was legalized and spawning a billion dollar industry of drugs and clinics across the nation to help children “transition” from one sex to another. According to an analysis by the Manhattan Institute, as many as 400,000 minors were diagnosed with gender dysphoria between 2017 and 2023.

TPPF took the lead in 2023 in helping pass Senate Bill 14, a law similar to Tennessee’s, which bans gender modification drugs and mutilation on minors in Texas. Now, 27 states have enacted similar bans—more than half—but the media is not likely to erase “gender affirming care” from its narrative anytime soon.

In this news report on the Supreme Court ruling in the Texas Tribune, note how the reporter defines gender dysphoria: “a medical condition related to the distress someone can feel when the sex they were assigned at birth doesn’t align with their gender identity.”

This distorted definition is diabolical, rooted in the unquestioned premise that sex is “assigned at birth,” instead of simply being reported based on reproductive organs. It also suggests that something described as “gender identity” is actually real.

At this point, I’d like to insert my regular appeal to the Texas media to please step out of the silo and read something cogent and fact based on the trans issue. This analysis by an expert at the Free Press would be a good start.

LOSER: No Kings March Proves There Are No Kings
A fake tweet was posted by somebody suggesting that Trump thanked all the No Kings protestors for making sure that no king took his place. He happily reported he is still the president.

Too bad it was fake, because, as a USA Today column pointed out this morning, the nationwide marches prove the point that democracy is alive and well in America. We don’t know how much the American Federation of Teachers spent to help promote the No Kings events, but they didn’t get much for their money. We got one more round of the usual low-grade street riots in Los Angeles, Seattle and New York, but it was mostly a big nothing burger. Meanwhile, the president’s parade in Washington, D.C., celebrating the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army, went off without a hitch. It got great reviews, even from critics at left-wing MSNBC who were shocked that there was no “dark, malevolent energy.”

WINNER: Conservatives are Happier
Data analyst Nick Silver may help explain that longing for “dark malevolent energy” from left-leaning MSNBC with some data he rolled out this week showing that conservatives are more mentally healthy than liberals. According to Silver’s data, something called the Cooperative Election Study, a 60,000 sample survey, found that “among people who report ‘excellent’ mental health, conservatives outnumber liberals 51-20. Liberals outnumber conservatives 45-19 among those voters who say they have ‘poor’ mental health.” There’s lots more detail including why men are unhappy with Democrats and why young women are just unhappy. We’ve seen findings like these before but Silver’s numbers are new. He talks about it all here on a podcast.

LOSER: New York City Will Get Leader It Deserves
With a week to go until the New York City mayoral election, the Big Apple is poised to select former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who many believe is responsible for the death of hundreds of elderly people during COVID-19, then trying to cover it up, or Zohran Mamdani, a proud socialist who is strongly anti-Israel, as their next mayor. Billionaire Michael Bloomberg has poured over $8 million into Cuomo’s campaign. Bloomberg, like many Jewish New Yorkers, is undoubtedly concerned that Mamdani has refused to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada.”

Brad Lander, who is also Jewish, and another of the 11 candidates for mayor, believes the phrase means “open season on Jews,” although he is hesitant to criticize Mamdani because he’s in third place. The Jewish population of New York City numbers 1.4 million—the largest Jewish community in the world outside Israel.

Meanwhile, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, are both backing Mamdani, so presumably they are OK with globalizing the intifada.

Naturally, New York City uses ranked choice voting in their local elections because … well who knows why. When New Yorkers go into the voting booth next week, they will vote for their top five choices for mayor. Does this system work for them?

It hasn’t yet. In the last mayoral election in 2021, they didn’t get the ballots counted for two weeks. The election is Tuesday. Can’t wait.

LOSER: California Leader Admits They Overreached on EVs
President Trump eliminated California’s electric vehicle mandate this week and a longtime leader of the California’s Air Resources Board admitted that the state only had themselves to blame for pushing to eliminate all fossil fueled cars in the state by 2035. Although Mary Nichols, who chaired the Air Resources Board for 17 years, doesn’t recant California’s anti-fossil fuel mantra, the admission that they over-reached is rare among Democrats these days—and it seems important to acknowledge.

LOSER: Jasmine Crockett Issues Nationwide Diagnosis
Compare that California reflection with Dallas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, who proclaimed that everyone who voted for Trump is “sick,” or “mentally ill.” Crockett told former broadcast anchor Katie Couric that:

“We’ve got a mental health crisis in this country because everyone, no matter how you affiliate yourself, should be against Trump, period. This is not partisan for me.”

Crockett, who has referred to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott as “Governor Hot Wheels,” also said that the only reason Trump was elected is because he is an “old white man.” So how do you define that “mentally ill” thing again?

LOSER: Oligarchy Tour Comes to Texas
Sen. Sanders will be in Amarillo on Sunday along with former Texas Congressman and frequently losing Democrat candidate Beto O’Rourke and Austin Congressman Greg Casar. Sanders had been drawing big crowds around the country warning people of the dangers of oligarchy, but enthusiasm seems to have cooled, with many of his fellow Democrats suggesting that he stop because nobody knows what “oligarchy” means. It will be fun to see how it goes in Amarillo.

WINNERS: Lakers, Caitlin Clark and the NBA
The Lakers sold for a record $10 billion this week, the most ever paid for any sports franchise, while WNBA star Caitlin Clark reaffirmed her star power. After Clark was out for five games with an injury, TV viewers declined, but proving that the “Caitlin Clark effect” is still magic, once she was back on the court, the audience returned.

Meanwhile, the NBA finals between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Indiana Pacers are all tied up at three games each. They will take it to Game 7 on Sunday 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 AppleSpotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Winners & Losers

Winners & Losers: Israel Blasts Iran While Trump & Abbott Mobilize Guard

Every Friday morning, I join the Cardle & Woolley Show on 1370 Talk Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. While the battle between Donald J. Trump and Elon Musk rages on (I’m betting on Trump) and since the Texas Legislature has closed up shop for the season, here’s who made the list:

WINNER: Israel Gets Forces Iran Back to the Table 

Israel’s strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities last night, Operation Rising Lion, is a strong and unequivocal statement of many things—most , most bluntly, that Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuclear bomb. Now it is time for them Iran to get back to the negotiating table with Trump and face reality.  Israel took out three of their top commanders, which is a hint that regime change might also need to be on their the agenda.   

Trump admits he was in conversation with Israel about their plans, which is why the U.S. moved our diplomats out—and  – and why the President continues to make it clear Israel has his support.     

The whole world is watching how this plays out.   The Free Press is providing the most thorough and thoughtful coverage.      

WINNER: Trump and Abbott Get Ahead of Rioters 

Protesters are continuing in Los Angeles, Texas and all over America with big plans for the weekend. It all looks like a movie we have seen before.   Rioters are burning cars, destroying police cars and vandalizing stores in Los Angeles, while CNN insists that the protests are “mostly peaceful.”  

President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard to California to quell the riots, so Gov. Gavin Newsom took him to court. California Gov. Gavin   Newsom won the first round, but a U.S. District Court sided with Trump on Thursday so the troops, as well as the Marines, will stay in California for now.   

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has deployed over 7,000 Guard troops to Texas cities after they were successful in containing protesters earlier this week, including guarding the Alamo, the Shrine of Texas Liberty, in my home town of San Antonio.  

Most political strategists note that the protests help Trump and increase support for his policies because they focus on immigration, crime and public order— – all winning issues for the President. Waving Mexican flags, another frequent feature of the protests both in Texas and California, brings a confusing message to an anti-deportation event, (even the New York Times can’t figure it out), but there you have it.   

Many dumb comments have been made in blue states and cities about all this, but Brandon Johnson, Mayor of Chicago, wins the prize, saying that sending in the National Guard to respond to the protests indicates that some people will not accept who won the Civil War. Johnson suggests Trump is acting as if the Confederacy won the war.  

It’s hard to know where to start on that one.   

WINNER? Background Notes on Redistricting   

Reportedly, the Trump team is suggesting that Texas hold a Special Legislative Session to re-draw the state’s congressional map. Who knows if that will happen, but here’s what we do know:   Redistricting, re-drawing the maps that comprise the districts of members of Congress— – has always been a process where political parties try to gain a numbers numerical advantage in representation by drawing lines that divide their opponents’ voters and maximize the voting impact of their own voters.     

It is called “gerrymandering” and it was not invented by Texas Republicans— – or any Republicans.  It is named after Eldridge Gerry, founding father, former governor of Massachusetts and Vice President under James Madison, who approved a congressional map that looked like a salamander to provide an advantage to the Federalists. Gerrymandering has been with us for the whole American ride, so the incessant proclamation by the left that it is a “threat to democracy” is, quite frankly, ridiculous.    

Congressional districts are drawn using the numbers from the most recent census, and that is where the partisan fight starts. When Joe Biden took over the 2020 Census, he reversed former President Donald Trump’s decision that the census would only count citizens who would be represented in the United States Congress. Biden believed non-citizens and illegal aliens also should be represented, so he had them counted as well.   

The census count has lots of political history too. George Washington asked Thomas Jefferson to take a census, so they the country could go to Europe boasting 5 million residents to help them make their case for credit.  When Jefferson came back to Washington to say he only counted  3.5 million new Americans, he also said that he suspected the newly freed people didn’t want to sign up for anything. Washington agreed and they told the Europeans there were five 5 million Americans.  

Which brings us to today, where the red states like Texas, filled with conservatives and refugees from blue states who are fed up with high taxes and woke policies, gained most of the new congressional seats in the last census while the two big blue states, New York and California, lost seats. This was the first time in American history that California had lost seats.    

So that’s why the Trump administration would like to take another look at it.  It is not anti-American, it’s not a threat to democracy. It’s just what Americans do. We’ve always done it. Here’s a Texas Tribune story on it, which doesn’t explain any of that.    

WINNER: CNN’s Polling Guy 

I heard someone on Fox News gloatingly report that CNN had fewer than 400,000 viewers in the previous week, which is bad in some ways because they don’t get the frequent polling reports from Harry Enten, the CNN polling guy who frequently lays out data showing support for conservative policies while a stunned CNN anchor looks on.   

This week, he talked about the 40 point swing Trump gained in the last election with immigrants— — voters who were born in other countries— — going from +32 for Democrats in 2020 to +8 for Republicans in 2024.  Here’s Enten’s tweet on it. 

LOSER: DNC Leader Cries Because He’s Losing Control of His Party 

Does it seem ironic to anyone else that Democrats are spending $20 million trying to figure out how to talk to American men while Ken Martin, head of the Democratic National Committee, reportedly was on the verge of tears on a leaked call with other party leaders, complaining that his vice chair, David Hogg, is undermining him because he wants to kick all the dead wood out of the party.  

Martin reportedly choked up and said, “I don’t know if I want to do this anymore.” Wait! There’s no crying in baseball…uh, politics.     

Part of the $20 million the Democrats are spending figuring out how to talk to men is on polling, where I am sure they will learn that essentially crying and saying that you want to go home is not a sign of strong leadership.    

Granted, Hogg has been the General George Custer of his party— – the only guy with any new ideas. Unfortunately, they are all bad. For example, he wants to replace all the “dead wood” in the party with people like U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas, who he says “is the kind of leader the Democrats need.”   

Crockett, who is vying to become the Texas AOC, frequently appears on the Texas Loser List, not only because of her ugly reference to Gov. Greg Abbott as “governor Hot Wheels,” but also for her strong stands against ICE and in support of open borders as well as her insistence that men who say they are women should be allowed to play in women’s sports.  

Not sure what happens to her efforts now, following the news this week that Hogg is stepping down from the DNC. It’s not exactly clear why he’s leaving, but according to the New York Times, one reason is they had too many male vice presidents…which tells you something.    

LOSERS: Democrats Become Permanent Residents on the Wrong Side  

In addition to siding with people who are burning cars in their streets, California’s Democrat governor, Gavin Newsom decided to sue the U.S. Dept. of Justice, saying the Golden State wants to continue to allow boys to play in girls’ sports.    

California’s Interscholastic Federation rules allows students to declare what gender they are and then compete in those sports.   

Newsom is waffling on this, having said in March that he doesn’t think it’s fair to let boys play girls’ sports, presumably after seeing polling that shows 80% of Americans oppose it.  

But maybe Newsom has joined other Democrats who don’t seem to care what regular people think. Axios posted some other polling numbers this week that they say were provided to the Senate by the White House regarding the Big Beautiful Bill, showing other areas where Democrats seem committed to sticking with the wrong side:       

  • Ending taxes on tips polled 77% support — 18% oppose 
  • Cutting taxes on overtime pay: 74% support — 18% oppose 
  • Making Trump’s tax cuts permanent to avoid a 22% tax increase: 53% support 34% opposed 
  • Hiring more ICE/border patrol officers: 55% support — 40% oppose 
  • Ending federal coverage of gender-affirming care: 54% support — 39% oppose  
  • Ending Medicaid benefits for unauthorized immigrants: 52% support — 39% oppose  

LOSER: Biden’s Afghan Evacuation 

Trying to figure out how Biden will once again make the losers list has almost become a drinking game. If you recall, last week Biden insisted that he was the guy in charge of the auto-pen and had signed every pardon, every law, every order— – which would presumably include the order to evacuate Afghanistan.  

This week, we have a report revealing that there were 55 people in that chaotic airlift out of Kabul who were on the terrorist watch list.  No one will ever forget watching the tragedy of that plane going down the runway with people trying to hold onto the wings, knowing they were as good as dead if they didn’t get out. To learn that 55 of the people who made it out safely were on the terrorist watch list (with another 22 who were added to the list later) is just one more awful fact we must swallow from the long list of really awful things that happened while Biden was president.   

A Biden bonus this week. Former Vice President and Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris is also is a loser for blaming Trump for the riots in Los Angeles.  

WINNER: Trump Beats the AP 

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington granted President Trump a stay in enforcement of a lower-court ruling that the administration had to let the Associated Press (AP) into the White House briefing room and back on Air Force One.  The Trump team took action because AP persisted in referring to the Gulf of America as the Gulf of Mexico. Trump has broad support on this because it’s not just dead-naming the Gulf.  AP style dictates lots of wacky woke stuff like “birthing person,” for mother and the capitalization of Black for African Americans, while keeping the little “w” for white.    

According to the ruling, “the First Amendment does not control the president’s discretion in choosing with whom to speak or to whom to provide special access.” 

Here’s the write-up on the ruling by the Associated Press, which calls the ruling an “incremental loss,” and includes their differing opinion.     

LOSERS: Chinese Smuggle in Wheat Blight  

In a story that will make a great movie script, a couple of Chinese researchers were arrested this week at the University of Michigan when it was determined they were likely engaging in “agro-terrorism” by bringing a fungus into the U.S. that would cause “head blight” killing crops like wheat, barley and rice.  

As my TPPF colleague, Chuck DeVore, wrote this week, Texas recently passed legislation designed to halt the advance of the Chinese Communist Party in Texas. Texas also passed higher education reform legislation that prohibits state colleges and universities from accepting gifts and grants from countries that are adversaries of the United States. What happened in Michigan with the researchers who were on the university staff is not a one-off. It is a routine strategy employed by the Chinese to infiltrate the U.S.       

WINNER: Trump/Musk Update   

Trump continues to be the best bet to come out a winner in his battle with former White House advisor Elon Musk. Musk folded pretty quickly, actually, saying mid-week that he regretted some of the really ugly things he’d said about the President, adding that he hoped the two could talk. Trump hasn’t agreed to a talk yet, but he was nice, so Musk sent him a heart emoji.  Of course, Fox News is on top of this story.  

WINNER: Texas Wins Women’s College World Series 

The Lady Longhorns defeated Texas Tech this week to win their first Women’s College World Series.  The victory is especially sweet for the Longhorns, who were defeated by Oklahoma the last two years— – and also for the rest of us, who are so proud that the top two teams in the Women’s World Series are both from the Lone Star State.

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 AppleSpotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Winners & Losers

Winners & Losers: Big Wins for Texas, Dems Blow Up & Biden Loses Again

Every Friday morning, I join the Cardle & Woolley Show on 1370 Talk Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. While the battle between Donald J. Trump and Elon Musk rages on (I’m betting on Trump) and since the Texas Legislature has closed up shop for the season, here’s who made the list:

WINNER: The Texas Legislature Passes Fewer Laws

Following each Texas legislative session, there’s always a period of celebration for new laws that have been added to the books, as well as requiems for the bills that didn’t make it. Some great bills passed, (Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has a list of big wins) and some equally great and important bills failed. Still, conservatives can take comfort in a report from the Texas Tribune that found that the Legislature passed the lowest percentage of bills this session since 1991, the earliest data available

According to the report, only 13.9% of the 8,719 bill that were introduced by lawmakers in both chambers this year made it to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk. Capitol veterans are speculating about why that might be, but who cares? Texans haven’t consistently elected a conservative majority for the last 20 years because they want a bunch of new laws. There’s a reason the Texas Legislature only meets every two years for 140 days. 

LOSER: Joe Biden Says He Did It

After President Donald Trump ordered an investigation into whether former President Joe Biden’s aides were using an autopen to sign documents that Biden didn’t know about, Biden issued an outraged statement saying, “I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false”

So now the investigation can be expanded to determine who wrote that statement. 

Unfortunately for Biden and his collaborators, the train has left the station on his competency issues, driven by the hundreds of people who told the “guys who wrote ‘Original Sin’” and others that he was incapable of doing much during a great deal of his time in the Oval Office. It doesn’t really seem fair to keep putting him on the Losers List, but there’s not another category that fits. 

WINNER: Texas Bail Reform

Gov. Abbott, Lt. Gov. Patrick and House Speaker Dustin Burrows are big winners for passing Senate Joint Resolution 87 which will automatically deny bail to repeat offenders who have committed a violent felony. This important legislation would have automatically become law if it had received a 100 votes in the Texas House, but unfortunately, it fell three votes short, so it will be in the ballot in November, where there is virtually no doubt that Texas voters will approve it.

(There’s more on those who blocked the bail reform effort below.)

WINNER: Texas Anti-ESG Legislation

TPPF played a lead role in passing legislation in 2021 that would block state investments in firms that required companies to adhere to Environmental Social Governance (ESG) programs that oppose fossil fuel development. This week Comptroller Glenn Hegar announced that once-notorious BlackRock is no longer on the ESG “Blacklist.”    

In fact, Hegar’s office said that no American banks remain on the blacklist, although several European firms including UBS Group, BNP Paribas, and HSBC are still blocked from doing business in Texas. 

The anti-fossil fuels movement appears to be coming to an end. Ruy Tiexiera has a great piece in the Free Press this week entitled “Americans Love Fossil Fuels,” where he explains why the issue will continue to be a loser for Democrats. And according to left-leaning Pew Research Center, while most Americans support expansion of alternative fuel sources, they don’t want to give up fossil fuels and don’t support policies that mandate that.

LOSER: KJP is No Longer a Democrat

Many of us wondered what it must be like to have a job like former President Biden’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, who had to stand up every day before cameras and say things she must have known were not true.

We are going to find out what it was like very soon. Jean-Pierre has a new book coming out entitled “Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines,” where she says she’s left the Democrat Party because they “betrayed” Biden. 

Jean-Pierre may have picked a good time to jump ship. Democrats continue to hemorrhage supporters (see item about men below) and the Democrat National Committee has been forced to sell $5 chances to meet President Barack Obama.

WINNER: U.S. Supreme Court Says Reverse Discrimination is Real

In a unanimous opinion authored by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the Supreme Court has ruled that a straight white woman does not have a higher burden of proof to claim employment discrimination simply because she is in a “majority group.” Marlean Ames claims she was passed over for a promotion at the Ohio Department of Youth Services for a gay person.  

The Court confirmed that federal civil rights law demands equal treatment of all individuals, while the New York Times reports that, until now, most courts believed that men and white people should not be treated quite as equally as everyone else. 

This ruling is one more victory in support of merit-based hiring decisions.   

LOSER: Update on Democrats and Male Voters  

Democrats were among last weeks’ losers, when we noted that they are spending $20 million for the much-mocked “SAM Project,” which stands for Speaking to American Men. Because Democrats lost so many male voters in 2024—the gender gap is at an all-time high at 13.4%—their goal is to examine the “syntax, language and content that gains attention and virality in male-dominated spaces online.”    

Among other things, they are devoting $6 million to examine “gamified messaging,” (love that term) to see the kinds of ads that are most effective during games.

We now know that Texas’ own Colin Allred, recently defeated by U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, is a big player in the SAM initiative. According to Illyse Hogue, one of the group’s leaders, the challenge is to change “the sentiment that young men are reporting, namely that Democrats don’t care about them, and even if they did, they can’t get anything done.”  

LOSER: Texas House Democrats Blocking & Blowing Up   

At the bill signing ceremony on Bail Reform, (see Winner above) Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick called out the names of the Harris County Democrats who made up a large percentage of the 40 Democrats who voted against bail reform, blocking the two-thirds majority needed to immediately make it law to deny bail to repeat violent offenders. 

If you watched the final hours of legislative debate in the Texas House, you could see Texas House Democrats standing on the wrong side of another issue that 80% of Texans support. They filibustered for over an hour in outraged opposition to the final passage of Senate Bill 12, which removes so-called “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (DEI) programs in public schools. SB 12, also prohibits, among other things, school sponsorship of Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA) clubs, a point that made the Democrats explode, especially when the author referred to them as “sex clubs.”

Rep. Rafael Anchia, D-North Oak Cliff, claimed GSA groups are actually more like 4-H or Girl Scouts, ignoring the fact that the GSA website includes materials encouraging discussions of how students might want to handle not only same sex relationships, but also open or polyamorous relationships or simply sequential sexual activity. Keep in mind, these clubs aren’t only in high schools, they are also in some middle and elementary schools.

Rep. Erin Zweiner, D-Driftwood, said Republicans were passing SB 12 because they were “afraid their children would grow up queer” and she flatly proclaimed that SB 12 was “hate.”

Rep. Jolanda Jones, D-Houston, told her fellow lawmakers that she is a lesbian who lives in a world that isn’t safe. She said Republicans had put her “at the end of the barrel of a gun,” the entire legislative session. 

Rep. Jessica Gonzalez, D-Dallas, said that children are gay at birth, although it’s hard to see how her logic works when she and her party repeatedly argue that gender is only “assigned at birth” and children must be allowed to decide later if they are male, female or something else. 

Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston called his Republican colleagues “monsters” for supporting the bill and proclaimed that parents “will beat and kill their own children rather than let them be who they are.” Wu also accused Republicans House members not only of having bullied kids who were different from them when they were in high school but of teaching their own children to abuse kids today. There’s more. You can watch the whole debate here, just replay the tape starting at 3:42.

These outraged Democrats are the same people who carried all the water for the Texas teachers unions this session in their fight to block school choice, even though barely half of Texas kids can read at grade level. Democrats opposed allowing the parents of minority and marginalized students who are trapped in failing public schools in Texas to be able to choose a school where their children would have a chance to learn to read and do math, but they support school sponsorship of sex clubs. 

Amazingly, they still wonder why they don’t win elections in Texas. 

WINNER: Pacers Come Back Again

It’s June and we have made it to the NBA finals, which should be interesting after last night’s game where the Indiana Pacers came back after being down 15 points to beat the Oklahoma City Thunder. This is the fifth time in the playoffs that the Pacers have resurged after being that far behind. Game 2 is Sunday 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 AppleSpotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Winners & Losers

Winners & Losers: Trump’s Transparent, Property Taxes Get Cut and 10 Commandments Still Matter

Every Friday morning, I join the Cardle & Woolley Show on 1370 Talk Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. With Elon coming home to Texas and the state Legislature finally nearing the end of the thousands of bills it has considered over the last 140 days, here’s who made the list:

WINNER: Texas Property Taxpayers

If you watch social media (which I don’t recommend) you will see that there is a small but noisy crowd of Texans who spend their days repeating on X that Texas lawmakers are doing nothing to lower property taxes. They label any spending on anything else—like education, water or dementia prevention—as frivolous. But when the sine die gavel goes down for the last time on the 89th Regular Legislative Session on Monday, the Legislature will have added over $10 billion more in property tax relief to the $51 billion they have approved over the last decade. In addition, the homestead exemption is up to $140,000 for every property taxpayer. And for seniors and the disabled, the exemption is $200,000. That means that $140,000 to $200,000 is subtracted from the value of your house before taxes, and for a large percentage of Texans (about half in the state’s largest county, Harris) their property tax bill will be zero.

My tax policy colleagues at TPPF break down the details here along with a reminder that it is local governments that impose property taxes. They need to be watched every minute.

WINNER: Trump Transparency, Global Impact and the Harvard Visa Fight

Politico reported this week that Trump held 111 press appearances in his first 138 days in office. In terms of transparency, no other president is even close. The fact that Trump is out there every day talking about what he’s done and what he wants to do is a dramatically stark contrast to the revelations that continue to roll in from the book, “Original Sin,” which Rolling Stone describes as “the plot against the American voter.”

If you thought you had heard it all, “Original Sin” authors Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson continue to reveal discussions they had with dozens of people who say Biden frequently did not recognize his cabinet secretaries and people who had advised him for years and he couldn’t even pull off a 10 minute off the record conversation with a few big donors. Any time Americans saw him, everything he said, from the “thank you” to the “good bye” was scripted.

Biden-gate far rivals any presidential scandal in our lifetime including Watergate and Clinton and Lewinsky. The authors, of course, have their own share of blame for the cover-up and they are currently out on tour with their book—they will be at the LBJ Library in Austin next month. But while Congress figures out how to make sure this never happens again, we have to assume Tapper and Thompson are also discussing movie deals. It could be a blockbuster. What Hollywood actress wouldn’t kill for the role of Jill Biden?

Cease fire negotiations aren’t going well just now in the Israeli-Hamas war, but we need to give President Trump another spot on the Winners list, based on a report from released hostage, Omer Shem Tov, who said that Hamas was rooting for Kamala Harris in the presidential election last year and that once Trump was elected, Hamas began treating the hostages better. Shem Tov, who said he was being starved, noted that after the election, he started getting food and that he was beaten and spit upon less. He attributed the change to Hamas awareness that Biden was no longer at the top and Trump was in charge. Recall that Biden (or somebody in the White House) first pledged to solidly back Israel until protesters on college campuses made it appear that many Democrats were more sympathetic to Hamas, so they began to back-peddle.

Finally, it’s not clear whether Trump will win his battle to revoke the visas of international students at Harvard, but it is an important fight because it will help illuminate the large presence of international students on campuses throughout the country, some of whom are involved in sensitive research. This comes on top of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s pledge to revoke the visas of students with connections with the Chinese Communist Party. About 7,000 of Harvard’s students come from other countries, for 23% of the total student population.

WINNER: 10 Commandments Bill Passes

Headline after headline blazed across Texas media outlets last weekend over the passage of a law that will require a copy of the 10 Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom across the state. Speaking against the bill, State Rep. James Talarico, D-Austin, who the Dallas Morning News called a seminary student, said he believed the goal of the bill was to create more Christians, apparently unaware that the 10 Commandments are in the Old Testament.

The 10 Commandments are not only the basis of English and American law, they are also a foundational document for most of Western Civilization. It is inexplicable why hanging a copy in public school classrooms was viewed as a big deal by Texas media. The question that should have been asked is why it wasn’t there before.

LOSER: Democrats, especially Austin Congressman Greg Casar

U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Austin, is very excited about the prospects of his fellow lawmaker, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, who is currently barnstorming the country with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders talking about “Fighting Oligarchy.” Casar leads the Democrat Caucus in the U.S. House. Happily for conservatives on the other side, lots of people are showing up at these oligarch rallies to hear AOC and Sanders, even as their party has a 27% approval rating, the lowest in over 30 years. The rallies are boosting AOC’s profile for a U.S. Senate run against New York Senator Chuck Schumer, or even a presidential bid.

In other Democrat news, this week somebody leaked that the Democrat Party is now planning to spend $20 million to study “the syntax, language and content that gains attention of male voters,” who they lost in droves in 2024. They call it the SAM Project—(Speaking with American Men). Yes, $20 million seems like a lot—but it appears they have no faith in the male voices of Sanders or Casar.

WINNER: It’s Official — Texas Knows What a Woman Is

We know what a man is too. State Rep. Ellen Troxclair, R-Lakeway, was already on the winners list for her bill that clarifies the law to ensure that men and women are defined by the reproductive organs they are born with. Now her bill, sponsored by Sen. Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston, in the upper chamber, is on its way to Gov. Abbott’s desk for his signature.

The Texas Tribune reports that the ACLU and assorted “experts” around the country are apoplectic—read the story—about the legislation, which also requires that people put their actual sex on their driver’s license and other official documents. They do not mention the outrage most of us feel that Texas actually needs to pass a law to protect women from men who pretend they are women.

LOSER: NPR Mourns Thousands of DEI Officers

Gotta love a story from National Public Radio (NPR) this week reporting that thousands of DEI jobs are being eliminated in corporate America. NPR’s Morning Edition profiled a sad, unemployed DEI officer who calls the current job market for people with DEI skills a “toxic wasteland.” NPR acknowledges that the decline of DEI came even before Trump’s early executive orders banning DEI in many areas as businesses realized that divisive DEI programs were not strengthening their work force or improving the bottom line.

What is particularly gratifying about this story is that the primary mission of DEI professional groups has always been to create more DEI jobs. There has long been speculation in both business and higher education that DEI professionals increased their job count by exploiting, and even creating what appeared to be strife or discord in businesses and on college campuses so they could swoop in and claim to be the solution.

A decade later with no problems solved, businesses came to the conclusion that DEI divides employees and even customers—remember what happened with Bud Light. No one should be sad to see DEI coming to an end anywhere.

WINNER: Texas DEI Bill in Public Schools

As for DEI in public schools, Senate Bill 12 has passed both chambers and is currently in conference committee. Anyone who doubts whether the legislation to end DEI in public schools is needed should look at what is happening in some California schools. Before they were stopped, a program in the San Francisco United School District (SFUSD) called for “grading for equity.” Equity grading eliminated any requirements that student attend class or do homework. Students would only take one test, where answering 80% of the questions right would result in an A. A C would only require getting 41% right. Just 21% was a passing grade on the test, which the student could take as many times as they needed in order to pass.

This all came from a DEI guru, Joe Feldman, who insists that actually grading students on what they know only highlights the student’s failures. Feldman’s answer is not to teach more students to read and write, it is to make them unaware that they have failed so they won’t feel bad.

San Francisco had to put the program on pause because parents—and even the Mayor of San Francisco—were outraged. However, other schools in California are using “equity grading,” although none reports anything other than “mixed results.” Ya think?

LOSER: Claudine Gay is Still at Harvard

Anti-DEI advocate Corey DeAngelis reminded us this week that former Harvard University President Claudine Gay, who was exposed for plagiarism and being soft on anti-Semitism before she was forced to step down, is still working at Harvard. Gay earns about $900,000 annuallyHere’s her webpage, which notes she was the 30th president of Harvard.

WINNER: Texan Wins the Spelling Bee

Faizan Zaki, a 13 year old from Allen, in Collin County, won the Scripps National Spelling Bee last night, correctly spelling the word éclaircissement after 21 rounds. This is the fourth time Zaki, who is an Indian American, has competed in the National Spelling Bee. He was runner-up last year. There is a great profile of him here.

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 AppleSpotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Winners & Losers

Winners & Losers: Trump Gets Big Bill, Hillary Attacks, England Sees the Light

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 AppleSpotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Winners & Losers

Winners & Losers: Trump Wins in Middle East while Austin Drops a Notch

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 QatarTexas 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 AppleSpotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Winners & Losers

Winners & Losers: World Has a New Pope, Texas has a Star Base

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 AppleSpotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Winners & Losers

Winners & Losers: 100 Days, Faith, College Football & More

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 AppleSpotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Winners & Losers

Winners & Losers: Too Many F’s, Too Much Regulation + Harry Potter

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 95th 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 AppleSpotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Winners & Losers

Winners & Losers: Stocks Up & Down, Abbott Wins & Buying College Sports is a Loser

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.

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