Every Friday morning I join the Cardle & Woolley Show on Talk1370 Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. With early voting in the mid-terms starting on Monday, and almost half a billion dollars dropping in advertising spending in Texas, the only clear winners at this point are television and live streaming companies. But there are others who have distinguished themselves, in one way or another, in the past week. Here’s who made list:
WINNER: HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Demands AMA Put Up or Shut Up
Over the last several legislative sessions, TPPF and other advocates for Texas children have sat in countless legislative hearings and heard testimony from those pushing so-called “gender affirming care,” including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and even mutilating sex-change surgeries, point out that those practices are approved by the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Academy of Pediatrics. In February, the AMA backed off recommending unnecessary mastectomies and castrations for children, conceding that those surgeries should only be performed on adults, but they are still on board for the powerful and dangerous hormone treatments.
This week, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. sent a letter to the AMA, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the Endocrine Society and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, demanding they prove their contention that drug, hormone and surgical based “gender affirming care” treatments for children who are gender confused actually work.
The British National Health Service, which started these awful programs decades ago, determined almost five years ago that the evidence for the effectiveness of gender affirming care treatment is “remarkably weak” and several European countries have followed their lead with their own research, ultimately reversing their medical protocols for dealing with children who are gender confused. Hospitals that were performing sex change operation have closed down all over Europe as countries have pivoted to recommending counseling for kids who are gender confused.
Although 19 Democrat states are suing HHS over their attempts to stop Medicare and Medicaid payments to hospitals that perform sex change surgeries on children, a half dozen hospitals have already closed down those programs in response. Can’t wait to see what they say to Secretary Kennedy.
In somewhat related news, new data from the Center for Disease Control found that the number of high schoolers who identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual has dropped substantially in since 2023—most dramatically among ninth grade girls, where the percentage who say they are lesbian, gay or bisexual has decreased from 30 percent in 2021 to 17 percent in 2025.
WINNER: Marco Rubio Says ‘No’ to Fake International Criminal Court
President Donald Trump should stop yearning for a Nobel Peace Prize, because, of course, those prizes have nothing to do with peace.
Last week, when Navi Pillay won, the Peace Prize Committee listed one of her “accomplishments” as getting the International Criminal Court (ICC) to pronounce that Israel is guilty of genocide. Pillay served as a judge on that court.
The ICC has been anti-American and anti-West from the beginning. It was established in 2002 to provide a mechanism to prosecute the U.S. for war crimes. Then-President George W. Bush didn’t join at the time, saying no American statesman or soldier should ever be placed under the jurisdiction of a foreign court. Every president since—Democrat and Republican—has agreed.
Recently, the ICC has been escalating its left-wing attacks on Israel and America, and this week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had finally had enough. After calling the ICC a threat to U.S. sovereignty, he cut off any U.S. resources it might be receiving and banned all transactions between the ICC and any American company. To make his point crystal clear, Rubio said, “the United States and the American people are not subject to the jurisdiction of this fake ICC.”
LOSERS: Gen Z Data Continues to Alarm
Anyone who believes higher education reform in Texas isn’t urgent should look at a new Rasmussen Poll released this week that found that 43% of likely voters between the ages of 18 and 24 have a positive view of Sharia law. This is particularly frightening when you consider those surveyed were likely voters, not simply registered voters. Likely voters actually vote.
A Texas Scorecard story lays out the details, adding that about 25% of those in the same age group would allow a city to impose Sharia law if a majority of the people voted for it.
Meanwhile, a new survey by the Buckley Foundation found that 22% of college students believe, like Democratic Socialist Hasan Piker, that America deserved the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.
Additional data points in the Buckley Poll reveal why college students have such wacky beliefs—they don’t talk to anyone who disagrees with them. More than half said they could not be close friends with someone in a different political party and, among liberal students, 55% said they wouldn’t take a class from a professor who had political opinions contrary to theirs. In fact, some believe opinions that differ from theirs could cause mental illness.
Add that to the data from the Cato Institute that 53% of Gen Z voters have a favorable view of socialism and 38% view communism favorably, and you can see the Red Alert.
LOSER: Gavin Newsom Signs California Reparations Bill
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the first-in-the-nation slavery reparations bill that will require California companies to investigate and disclose their historic ties to slavery.
Kristin Nimmers, a spokesperson for both the California Black Power Network and the Alliance for Reparations, Reconciliation, and Truth, told Fox News Digital that Newsom’s so-called Truth in Disclosure Act is critical for corporate accountability.
But truth is not always simple or easy. Another reparations group in Illinois called the U.S. Freedman Project told Fox News Digital that any funds for reparations should only go to so-called “foundational” black Americans and not to any person of color, underserved communities, immigrants and marginalized groups. They were protesting some reparation programs that have been established by a few blue cities.
California’s Commission on Reparations, which recommended Newsom’s new law, limited eligibility to those who are directly descended from slaves, but the vote was five to four, as some reparation advocates believe every black person should be eligible, regardless of how and when they arrived in America.
If governments begin actually appropriating reparation funds, this debate is only going to get more heated. A new book released last month called History by a Hair: Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings and Solving a 200 Year Old Mystery, raises some additional questions. The book documents recent research into the DNA in a lock of Thomas Jefferson’s hair, establishing beyond doubt that the former president fathered the children of Sally Hemmings, a slave who lived at Monticello. In the six or seven generations since they passed, Jefferson and Hemings have at least 3,000 descendants and maybe as many as 8,000, some of whom identify as white and some as black. Their story is not unique, and it is just one American family. If any one of them applied for reparations, how would their application be judged?
WINNER: Texas Football — ‘We’re not dead, we’re okay.’
Yes, the University of Texas Longhorns lost the Red River Rivalry against Oklahoma last week, but I suspect that Coach Steve Sarkisian is right when he says they are “okay and not dead.” We all know that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and Texas could actually thrive without having to carry the weight of No. 1 ranking onto the field for a while. Their ranking toppled to No. 7 nationally this week as a result of their defeat by an unranked team.
The Longhorns play Florida tomorrow in Austin. Kickoff is at 11 a.m. The No. 10 ranked Red Raiders of Texas Tech are now the only undefeated Texas team in the Top 25. They play Arizona State tomorrow. Texas A&M fell out of the Top 25 three weeks ago, but the Aggies are still fighting. They go up against the Citadel tomorrow and we’ve finally got some football worthy weather!
Have a great weekend!
Listen to Winners & Losers on Talk 1370, the Cardle & Woolley show, every Friday morning at 8:30 a.m. Here’s the listen live link.
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Sherry Sylvester is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the former Senior Advisor to Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick.