You’re reading The Weekly, a Saturday morning recap of the best Dispatch content of the week, with some additional commentary from Managing Editor Rachael Larimore.
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You → read → Larimore
Sure, the Bengals won their season opener Sunday and the new defense is already clicking, but that was a small comfort after my beloved Ohio State Buckeyes blew a huge second-half lead the night before and lost to the Texas Longhorns 24-23.
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Buckeyes → win → Longhorns
To make matters worse, and for reasons having nothing to do with sports, photos of Texas fans celebrating filled my newsfeeds all week—one photo in particular.
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photos → make → newsfeeds
Now, were I not a Buckeyes fan licking my wounds, I might have better appreciated the photo that Bo French, a Republican running for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission, shared on social media of happy students whooping it up after the big win.
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French → lick → win
But French didn’t share it in celebration—rather he did so because it depicted what he deemed too many students of South Asian descent.
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he → share → descent
“I heard UT graduation this year looked like this.
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graduation → hear → this
I didn’t believe it.
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I → believe → it
The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined,” he posted.
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he → imagine → ?
Assuming the young people in the photo—some wearing cowboy hats, all of them enjoying the quintessential American experience of a big-time college football game—are students, they are likely here legally (or may have been born here).
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they → assume → game
But French is not content to reduce or eliminate illegal immigration—he thinks we have too many legal immigrants too, as Michael Warren pointed out in his Next Right newsletter this week.
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Warren → reduce → newsletter
Mike wasn’t surprised when he saw French’s tweet, because he’d heard French speak at a panel discussion put on by the Mass Deportation Campaign in Dallas last week.
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French → see → Dallas
He observed that the backlash to French’s post came quickly, and not just from Democrats—indeed Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who is not on the ballot this fall after losing his primary, posted: “This is how great political parties self-destruct.
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parties → observe → primary
Mike writes:
Sad, but for whom, exactly?
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Mike → write → whom
Cornyn was turned out by his party’s voters in his own bid for reelection, losing his Republican primary runoff election to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton the same day that French defeated incumbent commissioner James Wright.
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French → turn → Wright
French has a better-than-good shot at being in office this time next year, and Cornyn will be in his forced retirement.
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Cornyn → have → retirement
French’s approach to politics, more blatantly postliberal, populist, and overtly racist than the MAGA movement from which it sprung, looks to be on the rise in the Texas and national GOP, while the more respectable conservatism of Cornyn et al. is on the outs.
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conservatism → spring → outs
In Boiling Frogs, Nick Catoggio says French’s tweet is typical of postliberal attitudes about immigration.
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tweet → boil → immigration
He writes:
The point of postliberalism isn’t to make sure that immigrants and their descendants adopt the civic and cultural preferences that Americans have traditionally held.
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Americans → write → that
How could it be when postliberals themselves don’t share many of those preferences: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, democracy rather than right-wing autocracy, and so on?
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postliberals → share → autocracy
The point of postliberalism is to secure the political and cultural dominance of one’s racial/religious tribe.
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point → secure → tribe
The problem with nonwhite kids at UT isn’t that they’re failing to assimilate or are unassimilable.
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they → fail → UT
The problem is that they’re nonwhite, and therefore their personal and professional success threatens the long-term dominance of white Christians.
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success → ’re → Christians
The gang discussed French on the Dispatch Podcast, with Jonah Goldberg arguing that French’s attitude is damaging for the future of the Republican Party:
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attitude → discuss → Party
“There's still a lot of Republicans left over who just don't wanna be part of a racist party.
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who → be → party
It just makes them crazy uncomfortable, maybe even not for, like, the most high-minded reasons.
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them → make → reasons
They just don't, they just don't like the drama of it.
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they → do → it
And as the Trump coalition fractures and they start throwing behind Vance and jockeying for a post-Trump universe, they're saying stuff that is just really, really bad for attracting normie Republicans and normie right-leaning independents.
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that → fracture → Republicans
If you could use a little palate cleanser, one reason I wanted to discuss the Bo French tweet is that we had a lovely piece this week from contributing writer Mindy Belz revealing that, despite all the turmoil we’ve seen around immigration during Donald Trump’s second term, and despite the sometimes frightening rhetoric, some immigrants want nothing more than to become American citizens.
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immigrants → use → nothing
She reported from a naturalization ceremony at Monticello, home of President Thomas Jefferson, on July 4:
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She → report → July
The Mutombos arrived from Africa as refugees invited by the U.S. government seven years ago.
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Mutombos → arrive → government
Before that, they spent 15 years living in a camp in Zambia, having crossed the border from their war-wrecked home in Lubumbashi, the Congo’s second-largest city.
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they → spend → Lubumbashi
Nineteen-year-old Omar Basel Bouz Alassal, standing in his gray suit and tie, fled Syria with his family at age 4, all “looking for safety and a better future,” he said.
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he → stand → safety
Debee Arvind Bouch came from India’s Tamil Nadu state as a teenager with her family for religious reasons, her father sponsored by a church in nearby Charlottesville.
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father → come → Charlottesville
She married an American who runs a local locksmith business and works in the ticket office at Monticello.
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who → marry → Monticello
Her name drew boisterous applause when she received her citizenship certificate.
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she → draw → certificate
Bouch—like Pei-Che from Taiwan and Frank from Switzerland, whose American spouses were also in attendance—shows that many roads to citizenship begin with love.
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roads → show → love
Down below, check out Jonah’s G-File on how the attention economy has left us all exhausted, Kevin Williamson’s rant against influencer culture, and Jack Kubinec’s profile of a January 6 protester who has turned her attention to fighting AI.
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who → check → AI
We increasingly live in an attention economy—and paying attention to things can be exhausting.
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paying → live → things
So can having your attention to one thing constantly disturbed by other things demanding your attention.
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attention → have → attention
Big chunks of our days are like playing that old game “Operation,” trying to use tweezers to remove a liver or spleen without lighting up the patient’s nose, while people are saying, “Did you hear what Trump said?”
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Trump → play → what
…and 23 more, not listed.
The Aporia
