Winners & Losers Digital is back for 2025! Every Friday morning at 8:30 a.m., I join the Cardle & Woolley show, Talk 1370 Radio, in Austin where we discuss who made the list of Winners and who turned up on the Losers list for the previous week. Now that the ball has dropped and we are in the final countdown for the opening of the 89th Legislative Session in Texas and the swearing in of the once and future President is about to take place, it’s time to take a look at who made it—and who did not—in the first full week of January.
Loser: California, its Governor and the whole Progressive, Left-Coast Model
The tragic fires in California may not have been preventable, but they were predictable—the Santa Ana winds blow every year. California is a big, rich state and it should have had a plan. Unfortunately, Gov. Gavin Newsom was too busy working on legislation to “protect” California from the policies of the incoming Trump administration to attend to the critical issue of wildfire mitigation. Forest underbrush wasn’t cleared, controlled burns weren’t set and there wasn’t enough water available. Current estimates are now as high as $150 billion to build back and since California is one of the most difficult places in the country to build anything because of onerous government red tape, you can double or triple that. Biden promised that the U.S. Government would pick up 100% of the firefighting and cleanup tab for the first 180 days (because California has no money, of course). Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pointed out that the media would absolutely hold Republican leaders accountable for such a massive disaster failure, but so far, Newsom and other California leaders are not taking much heat from the press.
Winner: Women’s Sports & Women’s Rights
Yesterday’s ruling by the U.S. District Court of Eastern Kentucky which pulverized President Joe Biden’s Title IX rules change was a big victory for women’s sports and women’s rights. Chief Judge Danny C. Reeves pulled no punches, calling the proposed rules changes “unlawful.” Reeves was crystal clear, saying there is nothing in Title IX to suggest it means anything other than to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex. He said the idea of twisting that principle to include gender identity “turns Title IX on its head” and to use it to open locker rooms and bathrooms to both sexes “makes no sense.”
Finally, the ruling states that requiring teachers to use whatever pronouns their students dictate—like “they and them” instead of “he and she” clearly violates the free speech principles in the First Amendment. This ruling is going to make a big difference in our educational institutions and, hopefully, in the culture.
Winner: Bring Hollywood to Texas
Without capitalizing on the tragedy of the people of Southern California, it is important to note that a coalition of actors and other movie workers were already pressing the Texas Legislature to allocate more funds for film production in the Lone Star State. Their goal is to “move Hollywood to Texas.” And as Matthew McConaughey says in their latest message to the legislators, “if you don’t like what Hollywood’s been dishing, let’s take over the kitchen.” If you haven’t seen their latest spot featuring McConaughey, Woody Harrelson, Dennis Quaid, Billy Bob Thornton and Renee Zellweger, it’s called “True to Texas – Let’s Bring Production Home.” You can watch it here.
Winner: Trump’s Idea to Buy Greenland—Texas Should Do It!
Trump is an ideas guy and his going after Greenland is one of his best. He’s right that Greenland is needed for national security and it’s a strategic source of rare minerals. Unfortunately, Washington kills good ideas. Congress will stall, Democrats will push back, crazies in Europe and the United States will weigh in and rile up the Greenlanders and it will all be tied up in some bogus international court for years.
It makes more sense for Texas to buy Greenland. It will be faster and more efficient. Think about what happened at the southern border when Trump was first elected. He wanted to fix the problem, but he ran into all kinds of resistance from sanctuary cities and the Washington swamp. Meanwhile, Texas simply outlawed sanctuary cities, deployed hundreds of border patrol officers, fenced off the biggest entry points, put buoys in the river and substantially stemmed the illegal migrant flow.
Texas could pick up Greenland without much drama or bureaucratic red tape and it won’t cost much when you consider the almost immediate return on investment.
Texas could also remind the Greenlanders that we actually know what it is like to transition from being an independent country to a state. We can assure them they can retain their own identity, like we do, and we can help them set up a “keep Greenland Greenland” campaign.
Trump would still get the credit, of course. It was his winning idea.
Winner: Gov. Greg Abbott Endorsed “Gulf of Texas” Idea
Along the same lines, in an X tweet this week, Gov. Abbott amended President-elect Trump’s suggestion that the Gulf of Mexico should be renamed the “Gulf of America” to “Gulf of Texas” which makes more sense. We’ve all suffered through left-wing name changes like calling Columbus Day “Indigenous People’s Day,” so it’s time that normal people make some suggestions — a “Gulf of Texas” is a great start.
Winner: Zuckerberg Moving Content Moderators to Texas
Meta founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, announced this week that he is laying off fact checkers and will be employing a “Community Notes” system like X so that anyone can add comments if they think something inaccurate has been posted. Zuckerberg said the new system will be monitored in Texas because he thinks he’s less likely to get biased workers here than at his HQ in California.
All Meta’s soon-to-be laid-off fact checking groups denounced the move, insisting that they are arbiters of the truth and the only thing that stands between us and complete anarchy. But Politifact’s annual “Lie of the Year” award demonstrates the problem. Readers could select from a variety of “lies” from 2024—all but two were uttered by conservatives. The lie that won was Trump’s statement about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio eating pets. The lie that was not on the list was the claim by Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris, that Joe Biden was absolutely fit to run for re-election. That seems like a “pants on fire” moment.
Loser: Justin Trudeau and His Left-Wing World View
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced this week that he will be stepping down before Canadians make a move to push him out. Trudeau began his final decline in 2022 when he employed emergency powers to go after truckers who were protesting the country’s extreme COVID mandates. Trudeau also authorized freezing the bank accounts of truckers who opposed his policies.
Most recently, Trudeau chided Americans, saying the failure to elect Kamala Harris was a setback for women’s rights. President-elect Trump has suggested making Canada a 51st state, but Trudeau has left it in such a mess that we’d be better off without it. Canadian conservatives are running almost 30 points ahead right now. Let them take over and fix it.
Winner: McDonald’s Ends DEI Programs
McDonald’s is the latest big company to announce it has ditched its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs and is re-focused on what is good for business, customers and workers. America First Legal and conservative activist Robby Starbuck, who has pushed a dozen other big companies to abandon DEI, have had McDonald’s in their sites for a while. As companies abandon DEI, which research shows has failed to provide any positive benefit, the big losers are the multi-billion dollar DEI industry and extortion groups like the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index which forces companies to follow policies based on racial and sexual identity, regardless of their impact on the business or workers. It took a long time for the phony ideology of DEI to become embedded in our culture and it is going to take a long time to weed it out—but Americans don’t like it and it is time for DEI to go.
Winner: Golden-Cheeked Warblers in the Texas Hill Country
My colleagues at TPPF began a legal battle a decade ago to remove the Golden-Cheeked Warbler, which lives in the Texas Hill Country, from the endangered species list. This week, the U.S. Dept. of Fish and Wildlife announced the warbler was no longer in need of an endangered designation, because its migratory patterns are expanding and it is generally thriving. The U.S. Department of the Interior makes the final decision on whether to keep the endangered designation, but TPPF’s legal pushing has helped to finally get the process moving. TPPF can also take the credit for the announcement by Black Rock this week that they have dropped out of the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, a program that pushes ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) policies that block investment in fossil fuels in the name of fighting climate change. TPPF’s Life Powered program has been working for years to fight ESG and give Americans the truth about energy issues. It’s working.
Loser: The Presidential Medal of Freedom is Not What it Used to Be
Many conservatives were rightly outraged this week when President Joe Biden gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to George Soros, who shares much of the blame for the increase in violence and crime to American cities after he spent the last two decades bankrolling district attorney candidates who wouldn’t put people in jail. Biden also gave the medal to Hillary Clinton, because she was the “first woman nominated for president on a major party ticket.”
The Presidential Medal of Freedom was given to Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mother Teresa, but the standards seem to have dropped a bit. Granted, civil rights warrior Fannie Lou Hamer got the award posthumously this year—the Biden team undoubtedly did not know she was an outspoken opponent of abortion—but so did clothes designer Ralph Lauren and Annie Wintour, the editor of Vogue, who organizes the annual Met Gala, a big lefty get-together in New York City. Former U.S. Senator and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy also received the award, but apparently Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Trump’s designee to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services, was not invited to the ceremony.
For the folks in the Biden White House, freedom does just seem to be “another word for nothing left to lose.”
Big Game Tonight!
By the time we are back here next week, we will know whether the University of Texas will be playing Notre Dame in Atlanta on January 20. Let’s not say anything about that now—you know how the Longhorns are and we don’t want to do anything to jinx it. Have a great weekend!
Sherry Sylvester is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and the former Senior Advisor to Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick.
Sign up to receive this in your inbox every week at www.texaspolicy.com/9thandCongress.
Follow me on X @sylvester1630 and follow my podcast, the Sherry Sylvester Show on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.er you get your podcasts.
