A version of this article was first published in the Right to the Point newsletter. Sign up to receive the free newsletter in your inbox every Wednesday morning and to vote in subscriber-only polls.
It’s hard to imagine a political campaign less likely to capture the nation’s attention than the race to be one of three Texas railroad commissioners.
But a Texas Republican by the name of Bo French has managed to take the attention off the James Talarico-Ken Paxton Senate race, and direct it onto his own, with a widely condemned social-media post about a group of college students celebrating at a football game.
The implication was that the University of Texas at Austin, and America itself, has been overwhelmed by brown-skinned immigrants, a notion that the commenters quickly tore to shreds, noting university policies capping international enrollment, and pointing out that the photo wasn’t representative of the entire stadium.
As one person wrote, “They’re not foreigners ... they’re Texans.” Others pointed out that the cheering students, some wearing cowboy hats and Longhorn T-shirts, were exactly what “assimilation” looks like. The students were celebrating what has been called “the miracle in Austin,” the Longhorns’ comeback after trailing Ohio State by 20 points in the third quarter. It’s bad enough that French’s post took the attention away from that, but additionally, his premise was repugnant and wrong.
According to the student newspaper, The Daily Texan, “international students make up 4.3% of UT’s undergraduate student body, and 9.5% of total enrollment. Additionally, Texas law requires 90% of incoming freshmen to be Texas residents.”
French would be more likely to quote from a report in The Texas Tribune, which shows the number of Asian students at UT is rising while the enrollment of white students has declined in the past 10 years.
“Approximately 26% of degree-seeking undergraduate students at UT are Asian, up from 20% a decade ago. About 29% of students are white, which is down from 44% in the same time period. UT has been prohibited from considering race in its admissions process since a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2023,” the newspaper reported.
That’s true nationwide, and Asian university enrollment has outpaced overall enrollment, especially at so-called elite schools.
But there are many reasons for this that have nothing to do with immigration, and more to do with why enrollment of white students is shrinking as families reassess the cost versus payoff of higher education and the liberal values promoted at many universities. (See Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Rachel Campos-Duffy tell their daughter why they don’t want her going to the “Harvards of the world.”)
French’s post threw gasoline on an already inflammatory subject, the demographic changes that are occurring in the U.S. due to both immigration and the falling fertility rate.
White Americans are projected to be a minority in the country for the first time around 2045, according to census data, a trend that has helped fuel the rise of white nationalism. The post also landed at an especially sensitive time, when Americans were observing the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks. For some, the anniversary serves as an occasion to point out the skin color of the terrorists, as well as their religion.
It also comes as the Trump administration tries to impose new limits on how long international students can stay in the U.S. — a four-year cap was set to begin this week, before a last-minute stay by a federal judge.
French is saying it’s the “radical left” attacking him, although Texas Sen. John Cornyn and Ben Shapiro were among the Republicans criticizing the post, with Cornyn writing on X, “Are other Republican elected officials going to condemn the intolerance and racism, or look the other way while it becomes normalized. This is how great political parties self-destruct.”
But Bo French, who has a history of reprehensible posts, isn’t representative of America any more than Graham Platner is, as the outcry from both parties shows. While there are some people who will support this odious view of the world, he can wave goodbye to the normie vote, as well as the support of the vice president.
Usha Vance, after all, is the daughter of a mechanical engineer and a molecular biologist who moved to the U.S. from India.
On the Mamdani-AOC video
Bo French was among those who promoted a photo that showed Zohran Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez smiling and laughing together at the Ground Zero observance of 9/11.
And the tightly edited clip, which the fact-checking website Snopes.com said is authentic, does make them look bad.
But context is everything, and others have shared a longer clip that shows the two quickly growing somber after greeting each other. Michael Ragusa, a Republican, wrote on X that the criticism was unfair.
This one is tougher to get a read on from the cheap seats.
The Ground Zero observance, in which the names of everyone who died in the attacks is read, lasts for more than four hours. Despite objections from some of the 9/11 families, Mamdani was present as the current mayor of New York and one of the few public officials who stayed for the entire ceremony.
One of his defenders wrote on X that it’s not unusual for people to smile or laugh briefly during the reading of the names, because it lasts for so long. Doing so doesn’t mean you’re happy about a sad event.
Michelle Obama smiled when George W. Bush slipped her a mint at the funeral of his father, George H.W. Bush, in 2018, the continuation of a light moment they shared at John McCain’s funeral a few months earlier. And Donald Trump and Barack Obama laughed together briefly during the funeral for Jimmy Carter.
Bottom line: The clip was terrible optics for both AOC and Mamdani, in large part because of how it was presented, right after a shot of a man weeping. No doubt Ocasio-Cortez regrets initiating the exchange. But weaponizing an edited shot for political gain is worse than laughing at the wrong time.
Recommended Reading
Utah Rep. Jordan Teuscher watched Gov. Spencer Cox’s appearance on “The Daily Show” and disagrees with Jon Stewart’s take on contempt.
“Of course, some things deserve condemnation. Evil should be called evil. Injustice should be fought. Certain ideas can be dangerous. Even an individual’s conduct can be contemptible. But that is different from treating a person who holds a different view with contempt.”
Why the Utah Compromise still matters in an era of contempt
Is the widespread opposition to AI data centers a knee-jerk reaction to manipulation by online bots? Jay Evensen weighs the evidence, some of which was posted by X, which says it identified a “bot farm” with 200 accounts trying to influence the debate.
“None of this helps the truth get any easier to verify. All it does is add new layers. X is owned by Elon Musk. He wants to put data centers in outer space. As the Deseret News reported, wealthy Europeans also have helped fund American environmental groups that oppose data centers. Who knew information was going to be so complicated in the information age?”
Are foreigners manipulating debates over data centers?
Not every adult child who cuts ties with their parents is wrong to do so. But as one therapist tells Jacob Hess for his analysis of the trend, there’s been “an enormous expansion of what gets labeled as harmful, abusive, traumatizing, neglectful behavior.”
“No one disputes there are times and places where clear boundaries are needed and lifesaving. But Noelle Mering says that in many families she interviewed about being cut off, the ‘fundamental harm was one of disagreement.’ She sees this as reflecting a broader culture that insists belief can be a type of violence.”
2 very different kinds of “cutting off my parents” are taking place
‘60 Minutes’ redux
The rumors of the murder of “60 Minutes” under Bari Weiss have been greatly exaggerated, to paraphrase Mark Twain.
That’s not what Weiss’ defenders are saying. That’s what journalists are admitting.
The “new” version of the venerable program debuted Sunday, and the Poynter Institute’s media columnist Tom Jones called it “solid and respectable — although not necessarily spectacular.”
Jones reviewed coverage from news outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post and Variety, all of which said much the same, although there was some criticism of Norah O’Donnell’s conversation with the Air Force pilot shot down over Iraq.
It was, according to Variety, the most watched news program of the week, even though it had 2 million fewer viewers than the season debut last year. “Was it football, or the overhaul?” Brian Steinberg of Variety asked. We’ll know in a few months.
End notes
Finally, in last week’s Right to the Point subscriber poll, we considered the question “How did America go from honoring 9/11 first responders to calls for defunding the police within 25 years?”
Poor parenting, 33% of us said. Poor policing came in second, with 22%. But the majority simply responded with the ambiguous “other,” and I respect the refusal to be boxed into a single, definitive answer. That is, after all, what nuance is all about.
Here’s a sampling of the comments submitted on this question:
- Divisive politicians, polarizing news organizations and a general lack of simple civility.
- Media bias pushing the “defund” message and glorifying leftist violence.
- A mixture of multiple high-profile police brutality cases, spurred on by the media, and conversations around the dinner table have not helped. In addition, high-profile police corruption cases further tainted public perception.
- It’s a combination of the two, but more specifically, it has been caused by loud voices in society and the media who decry the very foundation of our country. The loud and the proud have forgotten what it means to be free, to be united, to need each other and to need laws and good government.
- Deep political divisions and hatred, amplified by constant social media influencers. Along with higher ed turning radically left and teaching about how evil America and its history is.
- I believe we owe the shift to poor “never forgetting” — essentially we forgot. Not too long after the world-changing tragedy, Americans reverted to bickering about this or that and we all picked up where 9/11 had interrupted us. It’s as if we collectively said, “Let’s now return to our regularly scheduled biases and arguments.” Sadly, it appears we took the fear, anger, and bitterness we felt that day — and week — and wove them into our DNA. … For me, it feels like our great nation pivoted to a sadder, angrier and disillusioned mindset which is being manifested in our thoughts, words and deeds. For a short time we were American kin, and now we have sided with either the Hatfields or the McCoys.
Many thanks to everyone who weighed in.