Every Friday morning at 8:30 a.m., I discuss the week’s Winners & Losers on the Cardle & Woolley show on Austin’s 1370 Talk Radio. It’s a lightning round with Jim Cardle, Lynn Woolley and me that runs the gambit from public policy and political trends to sports and culture in Texas, America and the world. You can listen to the segment with everybody’s comments by clicking the 8:30 a.m. segment here.
For the week of April 8 to 12, unfortunately my list begins with the powers that be in Washington, D.C.
The U.S.’s ever-weakening support for Israel escalated this week when President Joe Biden put out his own call to Hamas for a six-week ceasefire. Not sure what happened to the “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” principle, but whatever. The president’s bid to give Hamas a chance to reload didn’t even pretend to be linked to the release of any hostages. Hamas rejected the U.S. offer and America is now busy making it clear to the world that our support for Israel is more than a little mushy. Add that to the news that administration-induced inflation that continues to trend upward at 3.5% impacting not just food and basic necessities, but insurance and car repairs. Mortgage rates are at 7%! Then there’s the administration’s continuing attempts to pander to younger people with a student loan bailout that has a floating price tag of somewhere between $76 billion and $500 billion. The cost to every taxpayer is estimated at over $3,500.
Well, maybe not every taxpayer if Dallas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, R-Dallas, gets her way. She suggested this week that Black people be exempted from paying taxes as a back door to racial reparations. That really terrible idea has earned her a place on the Losers List.
But let’s not plunge into a negative spiral. There were lots of winners this week, including Texas, where the number of millionaires in the state has increased 47% since 2021. Texas’ conservative formula of low taxes, reasonable regulation and fair courts continues to make our great state ground central for prosperity.
In a related win, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick issued his interim charges for the next legislative session, which include a number of initiatives that underscore our conservative principles and ensure that Texas will continue to lead the nation in job creation, business innovation, productivity and growth.
Chick-fil-A was a big winner this week when it became a visual confirmation of the latest findings of a new Wall Street Journal poll showing former President Donald Trump’s continued increasing support among African Americans. Amidst a flurry of Trump’s buying free milkshakes for the house, an African American woman proudly told the former president, “I don’t care what the media tells you, we support you.”
Another big winner this week was Pope Francis, who declared transgender surgery a violation of human dignity, making the moral high ground official, for anyone who had doubts. The Pontiff’s move comes as the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) announced that it is banning men from women’s sports—a big win for women athletes at smaller schools. In what should be a new spirit of inclusivity, the NAIA announced that anybody can play in men’s sports—real men, fake men, even women who think they are men.
Of course, South Carolina won the NCAA Women’s Basketball championship on Sunday, drawing millions more viewers for the big game than the men’s final. It was marred only by its coach, Dawn Staley, who earned a spot on the Losers List by saying before the game that anyone who “feels like a woman” should be able to play in women’s sports. South Carolina Congresswoman Nancy Mace called Staley out on it, asking how she would feel if she’d been beaten by a team that had a male player on it. Perhaps Mace was thinking that some guy could block Staley’s MVP, the 6’7” Kamilla Cardoso. The average height in the NBA is 6’6”. The WNBA height average is 6’. Mace rightly called Staley’s statement “absolute lunacy,” earning her a spot on the Winners List.
Other Weekly Winners:
Dan Crenshaw who called out Tucker Carlson for his latest insistence that the U.S. should stop helping Israel because it is killing Christians in Gaza.
Uri Berliner, a long time editor at National Public Radio (NPR), who reported in the Free Press this week how NPR went woke and lost its audience. Similar to James Bennet’s piece in the Economist on the New York Times late last year, Berliner details the process of journalists going from reporters to activists who push a politically correct ideology instead of facts. He talks of being ignored when he suggested NPR should stop calling Florida’s ban on sex education for preschoolers the “Don’t Say Gay” law since the legislation doesn’t even include the word gay. He said a respected NPR reporter told his colleagues they should not cover the Hunter Biden laptop story because it would “help Trump.”
Finally—Eclipse Losers
Central Texans only got a bit of an eclipse view because of the cloud cover, but Houston Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee shone a whole new light on the celestial phenomenon. Jackson explained to students at Booker T. Washington High School that the moon is a planet made up of gases. She has thoughts on the sun too, but her astronomical theories are too complex to explain. I encourage you to read the news report and then listen to her entire theory on the solar system here.
Meanwhile, Sunny Hostin, on The View, blamed the eclipse, the New Jersey earthquake and cicadas on global warming.
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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