Joshua S. Treviño is the Chief Transformation Officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, in which he explores pathways for future Foundation action and develops forecasts for Texas and the nation. Prior to his service as CTO, he was Vice President for Strategy at the Illinois Policy Institute in Chicago. Prior to that, he was Vice President for Communications at the Texas Public Policy Foundation for six years. His other experience includes service as Vice President for Policy at the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco, independent media consultancy, consultancy at Booz Allen Hamilton, service as both a speechwriter and an international-health professional in the Administration of George W. Bush, and service as a United States Army officer. He lives in the Austin, Texas, region with his wife and two sons.
American interest in Greenland confronts Denmark with a choice it has faced before. With strategic imagination, it could engage the US to forge a mutually beneficial path for the island’s future. Denmark is well-practised in the relinquishment of its lands. The Danish kingdom was compelled by war to surrender Norway (to Sweden) and Schleswig-Holstein (to Prussia) in...
In the wake of the narco-regime’s takedown, five lessons emerge — for the region, for the U.S., and for the world. Venezuela’s corrupt leaders got away with it for too long. They sent forth millions of their own citizenry to be trafficked, and they got away with it. They trafficked the drugs that killed and addicted...
Nearly all political sentiment for the past decade has been mediated through the lens of prior reaction to Donald Trump. Those who like the American president, or at least aren’t fixated on him, tend to give his actions in government a fair assessment. So, in the case of the American raid on Caracas to arrest Nicolás Maduro,...
“[T]here’s no other government,” said the United States secretary of State, “that’s cooperating as much with us in the fight against crime as the Government of Mexico.” Issued several days ago from the Palacio Nacional in Mexico City, with the uppermost tier of Mexico’s political elite beaming approvingly, it was a bold statement for Marco Rubio to make. It’s...
What do I remember about Texas History class? Mostly, it’s Angelina Jolie. Sure, there was the volleyball coach, sitting in the back of the classroom, glued to her computer monitor’s screen. And I remember my classmates, 20 or so seventh graders, whispering among ourselves (usually while playing on our phones). And in the background, Angelina...
From March 15-20, 2025, I led an expedition to Mexico City on behalf of the Texas Public Policy Foundation and America First Policy Institute to get the perspectives of local partners living under Mexico’s MORENA regime. Since December 2019, TPPF has consistently argued that Mexico’s MORENA regime, a left-populist movement closely allied with that nation’s...
Trump has taken an accurate measure of the Mexican regime. What remains is to put his vision into action. An extraordinary episode in the two centuries of Mexican-American relations unfolded on Feb. 27, as aircraft of the Mexican state flew northward to various locations across the United States. They carried within them 29 of the most-wanted Mexican-cartel...
The shock for the informed is not that Trump declared the Mexican state a narco-regime, but that it didn’t happen years ago. “The Mexican drug-trafficking organizations have an intolerable alliance with the government of Mexico,” announced the White House last month, buried in the official statement on US tariffs on that country’s goods. The declaration...
What does it mean to be a Texan? Perhaps Joanna Troutman thought about that as she carefully placed stitch after stitch, listening to the men of Macon, Georgia making their preparations. Joanna Troutman, just 18, had never seen Texas when she learned that a group of Georgia volunteers was setting off to come to the...
When the Rev. Al Sharpton used the word “invasion” to describe the onslaught of migrants at the southern U.S. border on Monday, his MSNBC guest suddenly stopped nodding along. And then the fast blinking began — he was triggered. Because to the American left, the word “invasion” is off-limits and even “violence-inciting.” But the word — and...
Mark Esper, former defense secretary under President Donald Trump, recently released a memoir which claimed that the former president had asked about the possibility of shooting missiles into Mexico to target drug labs run by cartels. While Esper painted this question as a potential (and “inappropriate”) attack on our southern neighbor, Trump’s proposal shouldn’t be...
The struggle and the idea. Defining Texas and the Texans. This is the prepared text for my remarks at the Texas Center at Schreiner University in Kerrville, Texas, 25 March 2022. Texas identity. What is it? How do we understand it? What does it mean? What does it demand of us? Those of us who...