Every Friday morning, I join the Cardle & Woolley Show on 1370 Talk Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. The clock struck midnight on Thursday and put the dream-killing Deadline Day in the Texas House behind us. Now, we have 17 days to go in the legislative session. But that’s just Texas. Lots happening in the rest of the world. Here’s who made the list this week:
WINNER: Donald Trump’s Middle East Barnstorm
President Donald Trump is returning home from a historic trip to the Middle East that has drawn praise from some Democrat experts and left many conservatives asking how he can fail to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump is the first president to visit Syria in 25 years, where he announced he will lift sanctions against them, using the leverage to push them to join the Abraham Accords and normalize relations with Israel. One former Biden advisor said Trump’s moves are “unequivocally, the right thing to do,” adding “I don’t know why Joe Biden didn’t do it.” Trump also got $600 billion in new American investment from Saudi Arabia, as well as commitments from the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to increase investment. Plus, he secured the release of Eden Alexander, the last living American hostage being held by Hamas.
LOSER: Qatar’s Big Texas Footprint
It is too soon to tell whether Qatar will be successful in gifting President Trump with a 747 to become the new Air Force One, but the story has lots of Texas connections. The plane itself was spotted at the San Antonio International Airport earlier this month and now is reportedly being repaired somewhere in Texas – either there, Waco or Greenville, near Dallas.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz does not support the President’s taking the plane from Qatar, saying it will present significant “surveillance and espionage” problems. His colleague, Florida Sen. Rick Scott, has the same issues and goes even farther, saying he’d never fly in a Qatari plane because there’s no way to make it safe. Cruz and Scott are both on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and have long voiced concerns about Qatar because of that country’s connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Jazeera, the Muslim news organization that frequently dishes out anti-Israeli and anti-American news stories.
Meanwhile, the conservative and usually reliable Powerline Blog says the plane controversy is just another smear job against Trump, noting that the “gift” is actually costing $400 million and will go to the Air Force, just like any routine transfer of military equipment. L3Harris, which works on lots of Air Force equipment, has facilities in Texas to do whatever retrofitting is needed.
The Free Press has a long piece on the ubiquitous presence of Qatar in the U.S., particularly on university campuses. Even after closing down Texas A&M’s engineering school in Qatar, Texas universities take more funding from Qatar than any other country, much of which has strings that allows the Qatari donors to direct how the funds are spent. Two of my TPPF colleagues issued a report on “foreign soft power” influencing Texas universities late last year. Reporting requirements are weak, but the study found that the University of Texas at Austin is the top recipient of Qatari funding and that Texas A&M had underreported funding received from Qatar by almost $400 million. The Texas House passed strong legislation this week that will require universities to more strenuously report foreign donations, but Qatar is not on the list of countries that are covered by the bill.
WINNER: America’s Military Academies Go Merit-Based
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has declared that the nation’s three military academies – West Point, Annapolis and the Air Force Academy – must now admit students based entirely on merit without regard to race, ethnicity or sex. The Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that all American universities that receive federal funds cannot give preferences to students based on their race, ethnicity or sex, but the military academies were excluded. Hegseth’s edict eliminates that exception. It is hard to argue with the notion that the military should be led by the country’s best and brightest – a decision that certainly does not preclude diversity.
LOSER: The Media’s “Original Sin”
All week, CNN host Jake Tapper has been talking about his new book, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover Up and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again which has dozens of stories of what was going on behind the scenes as former President Biden’s advisors covered up the cognitive decline of their boss. If it wasn’t such a diabolical power grab, it would be heart-breaking to learn that the President’s doctor was so concerned about Biden’s steadiness on his feet that he felt a wheelchair would be needed to protect him from a fall. But, of course, advisors said a wheelchair was out of the question until after the election. They report that cabinet secretaries had virtually no contact with their leader and actor George Clooney was visibly shaken when Biden did not recognize him at the big California gala that launched Biden’s re-election campaign.
All of this is a herculean effort on the part of Tapper and his co-author, Alex Thompson, to shift the blame for the cover-up of Biden’s mental failings away from the media and declare that it was the fault of Biden’s staff. Unfortunately for the media, it’s too late. The whole country – and the world – saw what was going on. They saw the media fail to report that Biden went for months without doing a press conference, that he confused the names of world leaders, and would wander around aimlessly after speaking. He even had to be rescued by the Easter Bunny at the annual White House Easter Egg Roll. I talked with Texas media legend Ray Sullivan about the coverage of Biden’s decline this spring and he said bluntly that the “media committed suicide.” It’s their job to tell the truth. They didn’t.
WINNER: Kolkhorst Foreign Land Bill Passes the House
Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, has led the charge on legislation to prohibit hostile countries from purchasing Texas land ever since she learned that a Chinese company with connections to the Chinese Communist Party had purchased 140,000 acres near Laughlin Air Force Base, east of Del Rio. Her legislation passed the Senate last session, but failed to pass the Texas House. However, this week, the bill passed the Texas House where members made it even stronger by giving the governor the right to expand the list of impacted countries if national security risks warrant it. This is a huge boon to Texas and national security.
WINNER: Women’s Bill of Rights Passes House
State Rep. Ellen Troxclair, R-Austin, passed House Bill 229, the Women’s Bill of Rights this week, which defines men and women based on the biological organs they are born with. The Texas Tribune’s report on the bill describes it as more Republican hegemony against people who insist they are a different gender than they actually are, but at least they gave Troxclair the last word from her speech on the Texas House floor:
“We’re a state that believes in truth, and we’re a state that honors the hard-won achievements of women, the women who fought for the right to vote, to compete in sports and to be safe in public spaces, to be treated equally under the law. But if we can no longer define what a woman is, we cannot defend what women have won. We cannot protect what we cannot define.”
LOSER: Austin Drops to Number 5
Despite all the gushy hype about Austin, Fort Worth is now the fourth largest city in Texas and Austin drops to number five with a population under a million, driven down by affordability costs, crippling traffic and expensive woke policies that have resulted in a sketchy downtown and regulation policies nobody wants to pay for. Houston remains the fourth largest city in the nation and the largest city in Texas with a population of 2.4 million.
WINNER: Texas Roadhouse Overtakes Olive Garden
Texas Roadhouse restaurants have finally beaten the Olive Garden’s 7-year winning streak to become the top casual dining restaurant in America. In what must also be a gratifying win for HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the Texas Roadhouse has fearlessly battled Olive Garden’s “never ending breadsticks” and “never ending pasta,” to dominate by pushing protein over carbs in the family restaurant war.
Other Texas food winners this week include Texas Gov. Greg Abbott who has asked the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture for a waiver to allow Texas to restrict the purchase of highly processed and junk foods, like candy and soda, with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funds – what used to be called food stamps. A good move to help Make Texas Healthy Again.
WINNER: Women’s Flag Football
Axios Austin reports that Austin ISD is hosting the first girls’ flag football tournament this weekend, featuring Dallas cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott. The NFL is pushing flag football programs for girls across the country in a clear effort to expand the base of football fans. The 2028 Olympics will include flag football for both men and women. In Austin, they are calling it Friday Night Lights in May and it starts tonight at the Burger Athletic Center.
The rest of us have the NBA playoffs. Have a great weekend!
Sherry Sylvester is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and the former Senior Advisor to Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick.
Sign up to receive this in your inbox every week at www.texaspolicy.com/9thandCongress.
Follow me on X @sylvester1630 and follow my podcast, the Sherry Sylvester Show on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
