Every Friday morning, I join the Cardle & Woolley Show on Talk1370 Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. It remains very tense in the Strait of Hormuz, and the Virginia Supreme Court just struck down the redistricting map voters approved last month, so we’ll wait to see how that all shakes out. Meanwhile, here’s who made the list this week:

 

WINNER: Cell Phone Ban in Dallas ISD

Here at the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), we have championed the cell phone ban in public schools, and have watched its passage last year transform many classrooms in Texas. However, some of the most concrete data came out this week from Dallas Independent School District, which reports that since the cell phone ban was put in place, more than 200,000 library books have been checked out by students compared to the previous year—an increase of almost 25%.

CBS News in Dallas quoted one 9th grader who said: “Now that I’m busy with a bunch of work and college, I don’t find myself missing my phone that much, even at home.”

Huh? These are the students who have had cell phones in their hands almost since they were born—some of whose parents who opposed the new rule, insisting they needed to be able to reach their child throughout the day. That’s all over.

It’s undoubtedly related that Axios reported this week that a “digital detox” is going on nationwide, and Gen Z is taking the lead, dropping social media accounts and even ditching their smart phones for “dumb” ones.

WINNER: Rubio Meets with Pope Leo 

On some days, it seems that nobody better understands what is going on in the Middle East than Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who reminded the world in February that in the war with Iran, as in the fight on college campuses in the U.S. and Europe, we are battling for Western Civilization—“forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir,” as the Secretary has said.

So what better guy to deliver a reminder to the Pope of our shared roots in Western civilization than Rubio—diminishing the importance of the low-grade skirmishes between the president and Pope Leo.

Rubio also chose the perfect gift for the Pope—a crystal football. The left went crazy criticizing the gift, but it was brilliant on Rubio’s part. If you are truly looking for unity and world peace, nothing does it like sports—tribal disputes disappear and people re-emerge as fans.

WINNER: Abbott Pushes Back on ‘Muslim Only’ Event at Grand Prairie Water Park

Gov. Greg Abbott threatened to claw back $530,000 in state funds from Grand Prairie this week if they moved forward to allow an event at a city-owned water park that was originally labeled “Muslim Only,” on the flyer announcing it. After Abbott made it clear Texans would not stand for taxpayer dollars being spent to support a “Muslim only” event, the flyer was changed to “modest dress only,” while the organizers insisted that everyone was welcome even with the “burkinis” dress code for women. Ultimately, the city of Grand Prairie cancelled the event.

This follows the Islamic Games effort that surfaced earlier this spring. To illuminate how clueless the organizers are about America in general and conservatives in particular, the organizer of the “Muslim only” event said, “I think it’s quite funny that we’re getting pushback from other conservative groups … the thing that we’re trying to do with this event is have a modest dress code. That’s pretty conservative, right?”

They seem to be unaware of the whole “freedom” thing.

WINNER: Texas Wins the Prosperity Cup Again 

It hardly feels like news that Texas has once again won the Prosperity Cup, even with the solid national job numbers announced this morning. As Gov. Abbott points out, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Texas gained 46,000 new jobs in March. Texas gained 117,200 jobs over the last year, far outpacing the national annual job growth rate. Currently, almost 16 million Texans are working.

LOSER: Pulitzer Prizes Again

Pulitzer Prizes were announced this week and the list of winners cannot be viewed as anything but hypocritical and partisan. The Washington Post won for going after Trump’s “veil of secrecy” in reforming government bureaucracy. The New York Times won for “exposing what they called Trump’s “conflicts of interest.” The Chicago Tribune won for what was described as “reporting on Trump’s immigration enforcement” efforts and Reuters won for what they called “exposing” Trump’s use of executive power. No legacy media outlet won for reporting the cognitive decline of former President Joe Biden or the Medicaid and child nutrition program fraud in Minnesota. No major outlet reported the millions that were being wasted on luxury hotels for illegal immigrants in New York, Chicago and other cities, and nobody won for reporting that the Nashville school shooter was a woman who insisted he was a man. ProPublica, a left-wing attack site that partners with the Texas Tribune and is known for stealing IRS returns, won its nineth Pulitzer this year. There will undoubtedly be a nice dinner where they congratulate each other for what a great job they are doing.

WINNER: The Population Bombed

Hate to make someone’s death a winner, but when Paul Erhlich passed earlier this year, it was hard not to see the irony.

Ehrlich’s 1968 book, “The Population Bomb,” was a best seller that predicted that 65 million Americans would starve to death by the end of the 1970s. Not only did that not happen, he couldn’t have been more wrong. Americans are drowning in fat and obesity as a result of overeating. Granted, some women are starving, but they do it voluntarily to fit into a size 2.

But being wrong didn’t stop Ehrlich’s book from ushering in the apocalyptic thinking that substantially weakened American families over the last several decades and is still paralyzing young people today. He insisted over-population would kill us, so many bought into the lie that it’s irresponsible to bring children into such a doomed world.

Before “climate anxiety” became a thing, many in my generation cited Ehrlich as the reason they were delaying marriage and kids or choosing not to have them at all. After Ehrlich’s death was announced in March, the Wall Street Journal ran this letter to the editor:

I was a college student when I read Mr. Ehrlich’s “The Population Bomb.” I took it to heart and now have no grandchildren, but 50 years later the population has increased to eight billion without dire consequences. I was gullible and stupid.

 

Erhlich also predicted that England might not exist by the year 2000, but being wrong about everything didn’t hurt Ehrlich’s career. He continued to teach at Stanford for over 50 years and, according to his obituary, had a long marriage with children and grandchildren. He died at 93. Hopefully, he’s not resting too peacefully.

WINNER: Pentagon Releases Files on UFOs  

Fulfilling another promise from President Trump, the Pentagon declassified and released the best files they have yet on the unidentified flying objects that they have been seeing for years, along with their investigative reports of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP)—which is the politically correct term for UFOs we are using now. Some of the new stuff is great.

Several of the astronauts on Apollo 12 in1969 reported seeing flashes of light from the moon when they were flying by. Astronaut Alan Bean said, “It looks like some of those things are escaping the Moon. They really haul out of here and just press off at the stars.” Another said flashes of light coming off the moon were like the Fourth of July.

Of course, where I live in San Antonio, we don’t need any more proof that aliens are here, since we routinely watch Victor Wembanyama, widely identified as an alien, play with the San Antonio Spurs. There’s a great video spoof here.

Wembanyama almost single-handedly evened up the series with the Minnesota Timberwolves on Wednesday night. The Spurs, the only Texas team still in the NBA playoffs, face Minnesota again tonight at 8:30 p.m.

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.