Every Friday morning, I join the Cardle & Woolley Show on 1370 Talk Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. While the Texas kids I know are trying to figure out how they will possibly manage being back in school without their cell phones, the first called special session has come and gone. Gov. Greg Abbott has called a new one and we are now in what is officially called 89th (2), which started today. Here’s who made the list:
WINNER: Trump Takes Over Policing in D.C.
I am reading a great book called “Reveille in Washington: 1861-1865,” about the day-to-day happenings in Washington, D.C. during the Civil War. As everyone knows, despite being the capitol of the Union, Washington was a southern city, and throughout the war it was filled with confederate spies, would-be assassins, thieves, bordellos and all manner of grifters who gravitate to war zones. Still, the historic accounts don’t suggest anyone felt unsafe walking down the street in Washington, D.C back then, like they do today.
When Trump made his takeover announcement, he said D.C.’s homicide rate is six times higher than New York City and three times higher than Islamabad. The media spent several days trying to discredit his crime numbers, then Border Czar Tom Homan suggested that reporters who say crime isn’t a problem should hang out in D.C. at night. Trump invited reporters to go on a ride-along with police.
By the end of the week, even the progressive diehards at MSNBC admitted that no one who lives in D.C. believes the city is safe, and the increasingly pathetic MSNBC star, Joe Scarborough, admitted that many Democrats are cheering Trump’s takeover after too many car jackings, too many shootings, too much street crime. Still, on Thursday night protesters showed up to heckle the National Guard officers’ first night on the streets. The protesters called the officers fascists.
Washington, D.C., has gone to court, of course, to stop Trump, but the lawyers I’ve listened to make it clear that the law definitely gives the president the authority to go in and clean up the nation’s capital.
WINNER: Trump Winning Culture Wars
President Trump earned several spots on the winners list this week, including his historic meeting in Alaska with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump made it clear he doesn’t necessarily expect a cease-fire agreement, but he is a big believer in face-to-face conversation. As a bonus, the leaders may also discuss a nuclear arms agreement.
But Trump’s latest victories in the culture wars are what earned him an extra spot on the winners list this week. Conservatives used to routinely say that “the culture war was over and we lost.” It seemed hopeless. The left controlled everything and pushed its divisive and hateful anti-American ideology into media, arts, movies, music, education—the culture.
Trump has changed all that because he clearly sees boosting American culture as part of his job—from his attendance at big sports events to his takeover of the Kennedy Center. The New York Times laments that Trump is obsessed with pop culture, but Trump wants to see America through the eyes of Americans. He’s interested in what everyday people listen to and like. He chose Sylvester Stallone, Gloria Gaynor and George Strait as recipients of the first Kennedy Center honors under his direction, along with the legendary rock band KISS and Phantom of the Opera star Michael Crawford. In fact, his entire list is so stellar that you have to ask why these icons weren’t given these honors before—perhaps at the same ceremonies where notable leftists including Robert Redford, Barbara Streisand, Robert DeNiro, Oprah, David Letterman, Lin Manuel Miranda, Joan Baez, Norman Lear, George Clooney and a zillion other progressives got theirs. When Clinton, Obama and Biden handed out those awards, there were no snide comments from the New York Times.
Importantly, Trump also announced this week that he has sent in a team to do a comprehensive review of everything that is on display at the Smithsonian museums in Washington, D.C. His charge is to implement “content corrections where necessary, replacing divisive or ideologically driven language with unifying, historically accurate, and constructive descriptions across placards, wall didactics, digital displays, and other public-facing materials.”
To start with, they can probably take down the homage to the gay pride flag that is currently near the entrance of the Smithsonian Museum on American History, along with a statement in support of transgender men competing in women’s sports.
The Smithsonian Museums have been an outrage for the last couple decades. The African-American History Museum contains no mention of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, for example, and instead of explaining Benjamin Franklin’s world-changing experiments with electricity, the museum exhibit suggests that because Franklin had several slaves over his life time, he had free time to do his research.
The Federalist has a good list of some of the most outrageous violations of historical facts, including a long display suggesting that Texas still belongs to Mexico. “I didn’t cross the border,” says one exhibit, “it crossed me.” As for the Texas Revolution, a museum display explains it was fought to preserve slavery.
The Smithsonian Museums are a comprehensive demonstration of how much damage so-called DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programs have done over the past 20 years. Every American should support Trump’s effort to dismantle the woke, anti-American narrative.
LOSER: Democrats’ Quorum Bust Completely Fails
We assumed the Texas House Democrats were kidding on Tuesday when ABC News in Houston reported their announcement that they had “accomplished their mission” and would be returning to Texas. That mission, they say, was to show the country that Texas was trying to gerrymander the state’s congressional map.
Unfortunately for them, even their media allies pointed out that they had decamped to three states where Democrats have notoriously gerrymandered the maps—New York, Illinois and Massachusetts—eliminating almost a dozen Republican seats. What the Texas Democrats actually accomplished was to show the country that gerrymandering was not some kind of Republican trick. Democrats have ruthlessly gerrymandered the states where they hold a majority, and gerrymandering has been part of the American political process since the country began.
The Democrats then rolled back the “mission accomplished” rhetoric and claimed all they really cared about was flood relief. They stuck with that for a while and then, yesterday, they held a press conference demanding that Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, adjourn the First Special Session, something he’d already announced he was going to do. Now they say they will return to Texas and fight the redistricting map in court—something everyone already figured they would do anyway. They also say that California must present a redistricting map that will counter any new seats Texas creates.
Yep. Texas House Democrats are demanding that California voters blow up their redistricting process and establish a new one, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom has called for a special election to do just that.
The latest polling says 64% of Californians oppose changing their redistricting process and even if they change their minds, the California election won’t be held until Nov. 4, so it’s not clear how that fits into the Texas Democrats’ timeline. Whatever, it’s a safe bet that they will be slinking back into Austin in the near future. For the record, 80% of California’s Congressional seats already advantage Democrats, even though 40% of Californians voted Republican.
A slanted report in the New York Times explains that California’s map is drawn by an independent commission and that the state was careful to make sure racial and ethnic minorities are represented. That’s particularly interesting because it’s illegal to use race to draw Congressional districts. Also, there’s really no such thing as an “independent redistricting commission.” States that have them stack them to favor the majority party. It just means the politicians don’t have to do the work.
WINNER: Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and the Texas Senate Pass It All
Meanwhile, doing the work they were elected to do, Lt. Gov. Patrick announced this week that the Texas Senate passed every item on Gov. Greg Abbott’s special session call. In addition to the critically important flooding legislation and congressional redistricting, the list included a bill to continue to cut property taxes, get rid of the STAAR test and end taxpayer-funded lobbying. The whole list is here.
WINNER: Texas Taking Over the Hollywood Kitchen
In one of the terrific ads the “True to Texas” team put out earlier this year to help pass Senate Bill 22, the legislation to provide incentives to movie makers who bring their productions to Texas, Matthew McConaughey says, “if you don’t like what Hollywood’s been dishing, take over the kitchen.”
This week we got the latest report that the kitchen takeover is happening big time when it was announced that a new company called Alliance Texas is opening a huge new sound stage in Fort Worth. A collaboration between Taylor Sheridan—producer of “Yellowstone,” “Landman,” “1883,” “Lioness”—and Hillwood, Ross Perot Jr.’s company anchored in Dallas, it is the largest film production studio in Texas so far.
Conservatives rightly avoid advocating government incentives to create winners and losers in the marketplace, but fighting the cultural war against wokeism and California domination is critically important to the future of America and Texas. The filmmakers in Fort Worth report that the recent filming of the second season of “Landman” resulted in the hiring of 1,092 people for the film crew along with 192 cast members and more than 2,500 extras. Notably, Dennis Quaid was also in the True to Texas ad and he said, “We won’t call it Hollywood, we’ll call it Fort Worth.”
LOSER: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth Wobbling on 19th Amendment
Trump’s Secretary of Defense and former Fox News personality Pete Hegseth needs to take a breath. This week he posted a video featuring several Christian nationalist pastors, one of whom believes the 19th Amendment (which gives women the right to vote) should be repealed and another whose compromise position is that women should cast their ballots for whoever their husband tells them to.
Hegseth has fired several high ranking women military leaders and continues to be the administration’s primary source of cringe-worthy moments. Recall, he decided to double-down on his strong belief that women should not be involved in combat, just as it was revealed that one of the fighter pilots who bombed Iran was female.
Everyone supports getting “woke” out of the military, but Hegseth completely blew the challenge to get rid of DEI by removing references to African-American war heroes, including the Tuskegee Airmen and the female WASP pilots in WW II, from military recruitment videos and official websites. He was forced to put them back. He stopped the month-long celebrations of Pride Month and drag shows at military bases, which is a good thing, but for some reason, he used the same tactics to try to erase Juneteenth, a holiday celebrating the end of slavery that originated in Texas and is now an official federal holiday.
Hegseth let it appear that he might be wobbly on women’s voting rights for several days this week until it became clear it wasn’t going away. In the last 12 hours, dozens of headlines have been posted that read: “According to the Pentagon, Hegseth supports a woman’s right to vote.” Huh? Hegseth probably thinks he’s fighting some battle against political correctness, but he’s not. He just looks ignorant.
WINNER: M&M’s, Skittles and Freedom of Choice
Mars Wrigley North America announced this week that they are working on new versions of M&M’s and Skittles that are free of artificial dyes. They will call these new color-free candies “product options,” although it’s not clear when they will be coming out. As far as we know, Mars Wrigley hasn’t gotten any farther on the project than making the announcement.
It’s hard to imagine anyone will be interested in eating M&M’s or Skittles without their bright shiny colors and it looks like the candy company also has their doubts. The new color-free candy will only be available for purchase online.
Happily, for the freedom lovers among us, you will still be able to purchase regular M&M’s and Skittles, complete with bright colors, everywhere. They call them “choice products.” Is this a great country or what?
WINNER? Ohio State Chopping Wood & Carrying Water
Perhaps in preparing to face the Texas Longhorns in just two weeks, Ohio State coach Ryan Day revealed this week that over the summer he made all his Buckeye players read “Chop Wood Carry Water: How to Fall In Love With the Process of Becoming Great.” Ohio State believes they have the toughest starting game of the season when they face Texas on Aug. 30. The Longhorns are ranked No. 1 in the AP pre-season poll while Ohio State is ranked third.
According to Day, his goal has been to get his team, which lost 14 players to the NFL draft, to focus on the process, not the result. Doesn’t sound like a winning game plan, but we’ll see.
If the Longhorns want to gain some insight into what the Buckeyes are thinking, they still have time to read the book before game day in Columbus at the end of the month. It’s only 118 pages long.
Have a great weekend.