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 annually. Here’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.
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