Every Friday morning I join the Cardle & Woolley Show on 1370 Talk Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. With Texas just past the halfway mark of the 140-day legislative session and March Madness officially begun, here’s who made the list:
Winner: SpaceX Rescue of Astronauts
President Donald Trump gave us a glimpse of what the future could look like when he got his buddy, Elon Musk, to rev up a SpaceX rocket and go get the two American astronauts who were stranded on the International Space Station. Astronauts have been American heroes since Alan Shepherd took that first 15-minute Mercury flight and Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. We love them! Apollo 13 was nominated for nine Oscars.
Stuck here on the home planet, many of us looked at the sky and wondered how we had gotten to a place where we were seeing the same sad shots every day—Suni Williams’ zero-gravity flying hair and Butch Wilcox’s game face were a daily reminder that some things just weren’t right on Planet Earth.
Musk said he reached out to former President Joe Biden months ago and offered to go get the astronauts, but Biden reportedly declined, reluctant to give such a high profile job to a big Trump supporter. It’s not clear if that’s absolutely true, but it sounds like Biden.
Unfortunately for the country, the rescue didn’t get much coverage in the legacy media. Space flights are one of the things that usually transcend media bias. They always have great visuals from the blast off to the splash down. There wasn’t a total blackout on the rescue, but it didn’t merit a big story because it challenged the current lefty narrative that Musk is Darth Vader bent on destroying America on behalf of the Empire.
But for those who got to see it, it was inspiring. Of course, the official Democrat position is that the astronauts were not actually stranded and a private company going to pick them up was no big deal. You can read all about that here.
Loser: Judge Who Tried to Stop the Deportation of Tren de Aragua
After President Trump ordered the immediate deportation of Venezuelan gang members on Saturday, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg issued an injunction ordering Trump to bring them back, prompting the Babylon Bee to release a spoof saying a federal judge had ordered Trump to return the astronauts to the space station.
Boasberg’s action also moved Charlamagne tha God—who is not a Trumper or a conservative—to ask, “Why are they raising hell about a gang being deported?
For just that moment in time, Charlamagne was speaking for most Americans who continue to be puzzled about whose side progressives are on. They want to keep violent gang members in the country, they want to keep the war going in Russia, despite the fact that a half-million people have been killed, and they want to burn down Tesla dealerships, after years of telling us that gas-fueled automobiles are evil. (In case you missed it, the New York Times has a great story about depressed liberals who believe they must now get rid of their Teslas.)
Trump and the courts are in a stand-off, but the gang members are in El Salvador.
Winner: Trump Decision to Eliminate the Dept. of Education
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick were in Washington on Thursday to applaud President Trump’s signing of a new Executive Order to disband the Department of Education. With its demise, control of public schools and universities will return to the states free of the massive regulations and reporting requirements of one of the most unproductive and annoying federal agencies.
Education bureaucrats are apoplectic, but it’s not clear how they can make a case. The Department of Education’s own numbers reveal that reading scores fell to a new low last year and math scores remain stagnant.
States already largely control their school systems, but the Dept. of Education has used tactics like “Dear Colleague” letters over the years to threaten schools to comply with the favorite ideological policies of teachers unions, who demanded that former President Jimmy Carter establish the agency in the first place.
In 2015, President Barack Obama sent a letter to every public school system in the country threatening to withdraw federal funds if they did not allow boys who think they are girls to use girls’ restrooms. Biden copied that strategy during his administration, insisting that he had single-handedly changed Title IX to include people who believe they are the opposite of their actual sex. Again, he threatened withdrawal of federal funds if the school districts didn’t comply, including allowing boys to play in girls’ sports.
The Department of Education also maintains the current monopoly accreditation system in higher education that most often forces colleges and universities to implement DEI policies on their campuses or risk losing low-income (Pell Grants) funding for their students.
If this sounds a bit like an extortion ring, that’s because it is. Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon are absolutely right to shut it down.
Loser: Greenpeace
In case we needed another sign that the Green New Deal is officially dead, this week a North Dakota jury ordered Greenpeace to pay Texas-based Energy Transfer almost $700 million as a result of their efforts to block the Dakota Access Pipeline. The jury found the environmental protest group was guilty of trespassing and destroying private property as well as publishing lies about the pipeline. Greenpeace will appeal, of course, but this is an important victory in the left’s on-going war against fossil fuel.
Winner: Texas Senate
The Texas Senate is moving at its usual warp speed, passing out dozens of bills this week which will now make their way to the Texas House. There’s too many to list, but a couple of my favorites are the bill to ban Drag Queen Story Hour in public libraries, which is long overdue for final passage along with legislation to remove inappropriate books from school libraries. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has taken the lead in stopping THC stores from selling products that contain several times more THC than actual marijuana sold on the street. THC sales were initially allowed in Texas only to provide medicinal doses and the Lieutenant Governor wants to crack down on the thousands of stores that have gone rogue and are selling massive doses with few guardrails to prevent sales to children.
Winner: Texas DEI Ban is Copied by California
Texas passed the strongest anti-DEI ban in the country in 2023, forcing state colleges and universities to close their DEI offices, end mandatory DEI training, and eliminate the requirement that all applicants for teaching or administrative positions be required to sign a so-called “diversity statement” asserting their allegiance to DEI and outlining how they would implement DEI programs should they be hired.
On Thursday, the University of California system announced that they would eliminate the diversity statement requirement at their 10 campuses too, just like Texas did.
Recall that California is the same state that launched a boycott against Texas and other states because they didn’t like our policies prohibiting children from undergoing puberty blockers or unnecessary surgeries or allowing boys who think they are girls to participate in girls’ sports. The boycott stipulated that no California sports team could travel to Texas or any state with similar laws to compete in any sports—Final Four, Big 10 Championship, whatever. They finally realized the boycott didn’t work when more states passed laws like Texas after the boycott began.
California’s change of heart on diversity statements was not a sudden realization that students should not be divided on the basis of race, gender and sexual preference. Instead, it was prompted by President Trump’s promise to withdraw federal funding to universities that continue DEI programs. Texas provided the model and showed California the first step. That’s why we’re the winner.
Winner: Finland is Happiest Country in the World Again
After an extensive poll by Gallup, Finland has once again been found to be the happiest country in the world. This is the eighth time they’ve come in the top spot. For some reason, the cold, dark countries dominate the happiness competition. Denmark is No. 2 again this year, Iceland is No. 3 and Sweden is No. 4. The Netherlands and Norway are also in the top 10. The only countries with decent weather on the top of the list are Costa Rica and Israel. The United States has fallen to No. 24, just under the United Kingdom, which is No. 23. The report from Gallup includes findings that suggest happiness may be linked to kindness and generosity, so perhaps cold isn’t the only factor. If we all try harder to be kind and generous, perhaps we can raise our happiness competition score. USA! USA!
March Madness Begins with Three Texas Wins
All three Texas men’s teams that played in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament last night were victorious. Texas A&M beat Yale, the University of Houston beat SIU Edwardsville and Texas Tech defeated UNC at Wilmington. All three will play their second round games on Saturday. Baylor plays tonight.
The Women’s NCAA Tournament starts today. Stephen F. Austin plays Notre Dame and TCU takes on the New Jersey school, Fairleigh-Dickinson. The women from the University of Texas, a number one seed, will play William & Mary in the first round tomorrow night.
Have a great weekend!
Sherry Sylvester is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and the former Senior Advisor to Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick.
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