Hope springs eternal in the Democratic heart

Abby McCloskey, Dallas Morning News, August 3, 2025

“There’s a real can-do spirit in Texas. How else could we survive the summer heat and turn it into rip-roaring growth and economic opportunity? Our optimism manifests in other ways, too. Like thinking that a Democrat could be elected our U.S. senator in 2026.

I’ve heard of heat causing hallucinations, but come on. We’re a far way from that. Living on Mars under Musk’s America Party might happen first.

But it’s worth the thought experiment to consider what would make for better American politics, and how Democrats could crack the door to a different future.

I should disclose: I am a longtime admirer of Sen. John Cornyn. I don’t know him personally, but he was in the Senate when I was a staffer for Sen. Richard Shelby nearly two decades ago. He’s Big John, a principled conservative, one of the rare birds who has eschewed our political toxicity to work across party lines on guns and immigration.

But the senator is down in the polls. Badly. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton — impeached and nearly indicted in deep Red Texas, not in some Democratic stronghold — is outpacing Cornyn in next year’s Republican primary by 15 points. His wife recently filed for divorce following Paxton’s alleged affair paired with his preaching family and Christian values. This double-life only adds to our distrust of politicians.

Of course, we are a long way out, and politics has a way of surprising. Cornyn pulled in more cash last quarter, though politics is less about cash than you might think. Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton with half the funds in his first presidential bid. Joe Biden beat Trump with significantly less cash on hand in 2020. And so on.

Texas voters may actually prefer Paxton’s hard-right, ethically twisty, populist style of politics. It matches Republicans at the national level. Accusations of sexual and economic corruption haven’t deterred there either.

Meanwhile, Democrats have started lining up for a hypothetical Paxton matchup in the general election. It reminds me of 2016, when Democrats thought Trump would be a weak candidate to compete against. They think this is their shot. Former Congressman Colin Allred has announced. He’s joined by former astronaut Terry Virts and Mike Swanson. Beto O’Rourke is circling.

In my humble opinion, they are reading the opportunity wrong. Any person who goes to Congress with a D behind his or her name, no matter how reasonable or ethical or pragmatic, is a sure vote against the Trump agenda. That won’t stand in a state that, in 2024, gave Trump the second-largest margin of victory for any presidential candidate in Texas history. It’s that simple.

How School Choice Became Big, Beautiful Tax Loophole

Abby McCloskey, Bloomberg, July 3, 2025

“An obscure provision in the budget reconciliation bill just passed by the Senate could expand access to private school education but make DOGE — if it had feelings — cry at its inefficiency.

The policy would allow donors who give to an eligible scholarship-granting organization to be reimbursed dollar-for-dollar in the form of a tax credit up to $1,700 (down from $5,000 in earlier drafts). Families making up to three times the average income would be eligible for these scholarships, which is to say, most families with school-age children.

For the many kids who are stuck in subpar schools, any additional money could be a lifeline. As I’ve written before, school choice is associated with improved student outcomes, including better test scores and retention. Studies also suggest such competition increases the performance of nearby public schools.

For the naysayers who worry that school choice — whether in the form of charter schools, magnet schools or vouchers — will worsen public education, one needs only to look at the 2025 NAEP test scores. Most kids cannot read or do math at grade level. Change is needed. Parents understand this. Ask any mom if she’d want the financial freedom to choose the right school for her kid.”

Plot Twist: Republicans Just Got Families More Money

Abby McCloskey, Bloomberg, July 26, 2025

“Washington is a funny place. I don’t think President Donald Trump was thinking about former President Joe Biden with his One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). But it certainly seems to poke fun at Biden’s BBB (Build Back Better) plan in name — and exceed it in some of its family priorities.

The Democrats’ BBB was all about supporting working families with child care, paid leave and an expanded Child Tax Credit — but it never made it past the Democratic-held Senate. Somehow it was Republicans who ended up taking ground on these working family policies in their behemoth reconciliation package. How’s that for a political scramble?

The OBBBA will impact families in myriad ways — but while Medicaid cuts, Trump Accounts and the expanded Child Tax Credit have all gotten attention, two working family provisions have flown under the radar.”

Texas cellphone ban in schools is a good start. Let’s go further

Abby McCloskey, Dallas Morning News, June 19, 2025

“The Texas Legislature just banned K-12 students from using cellphones in school. Dozens of other states have taken steps to do the same. This is a good and needed step forward. It will help students to concentrate and learn, without pings and alerts and distractions.

For this simple step, much credit is due to the sociologist Jonathan Haidt, who started a school phone banning revolution with his book The Anxious Generation. But locking up personal phones is only the beginning.

Less discussed are the school-sponsored devices, starting in elementary school, which are increasingly replacing pen-and-paper learning, teacher-student interactions and, in some cases, recess.

Growing up in the 1980s, summer was my indulgent screen time for daytime movies and TV shows. These days, it’s the school year. Students in grades 1 through 12 now spend an average of 98 minutes on school-issued devices during the school day — more than 20% of instructional time — according to data reported by The Wall Street Journal.”

A Christian Mind Out of Practice

Abby McCloskey, Christianity Today Magazine, June 10, 2025

“I spent the last year working on a book about Christians, American politics, and the challenges of faithful and nuanced Christian engagement that are unique to this moment. But as I wrote, I came to think those challenges are rooted in a larger problem for American evangelicalism that extends well beyond politics: a Christian mind out of practice. 

The brain is not literally muscle, but our minds work as if it were. There is no switch to be turned on and off when quandaries present themselves. We must always exercise our minds, or else they atrophy.

And the American evangelical mind is not in good shape. For too many of us, faith is a private affair that exists largely in our own thoughts—yet those thoughts are not particularly deep. As Mark Noll famously charged three decades ago in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, too many American evangelicals have little appetite for exploring with rigor our historic faith or the world around us.”

Can Vouchers Save Public Schools?

Abby McCloskey, Bloomberg, June 13, 2025

“It’s the end of another school year. Is it the end of American public schools?

Some in Texas think so, following the recent passage of a statewide voucher program. Starting in the 2026-2027 school year, parents will be able to use vouchers to offset tuition costs at participating private schools.

Despite the dire predictions of critics, who accuse the programs of draining taxpayer money from public schools, research shows that the programs deliver on their promises. At the same time, after decades of advocacy from conservatives, perhaps it’s time to admit that they are no educational elixir. More is needed on questions of funding and curriculum, especially these days, given how far American students have fallen behind.”

We could simply choose abundance

Abby McCloskey, The Dallas Morning News, June 1, 2025

“Abundance is the buzzword in economic policy right now. It’s the title of a new book by pundits Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, which lays out their vision for Democratic economic policy. As the authors say, “This book is dedicated to a simple idea: To have the future we want, we need to build and invest more of what we need.”

Enough of the overburdensome regulation that chokes off housing supply and spikes cost. Enough of AI’s energy suck that will break an outdated grid once and for all. Enough of congested roads and traffic, polluting the skies. Enough of the right fighting the government at every turn and the left giant-sizing the bureaucracy, which handicaps its efficiency. Enough of inflation’s scarcity and expensive organic food and medicine. Let’s usher in a future of health and plenty. . . “

The Future of Conservatism

Abby McCloskey, The Bush Institute, Summer 2025

“I worry that my children may never get to experience true conservatism manifested in one of America’s major political parties – at least not like I did growing up. They may never feel the thrill I got from watching as an ideology that I believed was good and true was promoted by admirable institutions and leaders. Of course, they’ll be able to read about such moments in history books. But it may all seem so distant to them, so quaint.

Perhaps, while doing research for a university term paper, they’ll come upon the work of Phyllis Schlafly, who may as well have been Mother Mary in the Protestant Republican household of my childhood (at least to my father). I hope they do, because the title (more than the substance) of Schlafly’s infamous book, A Choice Not an Echo, frames much of what’s gone wrong with U.S. politics today.

The conservatism I knew growing up was a choice – a choice to adhere to longstanding principles and ideas, to hold onto a cord that stretched back to our nation’s founding. What I see in the Republican Party today is something very different: an echo, a reaction that defines itself largely in relation to something else.
Ask what Republicans stand for these days, and you’ll hear a lot about the things they are against: affirmative action, the deep state, international treaties and alliances, abortion on demand, free trade, the legacy media, open borders, the swamp, college protesters, boys in girls’ sports, or America being taken advantage of.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with being against things. I’m against unsustainable budget deficits and co-opting women’s sports and needless war. And today’s Republicans clearly do stand for certain things, such as “Made in America” and safe borders.

But I would argue that the modern GOP has become too focused on opposition to the way things are going – politically, economically, and culturally. These days, the Right’s policy solutions often feel like a call-and-response with the Left, and both sides’ solutions seem to have a similar substance and weight. Many contemporary Republicans exhibit a newfound comfort with expanded executive control and weakened norms, institutions, and constitutional guardrails – the kind of attitudes for which earlier conservatives would have criticized progressives. Too many Republicans now share a disregard for prudence and moderation and a predilection for rapid action. They eschew the tradition of civility and increasingly focus on an identity based on race, gender, and religion. Both the Left’s advocates of DEI, which stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion, and the White manosphere bros on the Right are obsessed with identity. Both the Left and the Right seem committed to escalation.

For those of us old enough to remember the old days – by which I mean those of us barely middle-aged – today’s politics often feel like an echo chamber. Sometime in the early 21st century, we became so divided that our political extremes started to resemble one another, at least in terms of methods and emotional intensity. Republicans and Democrats currently struggle to define themselves in the absence of the other….”

Trump Accounts? Republicans Have Had Better Ideas

Abby McCloskey, Bloomberg, May 27, 2025

“The Republican tax bill contains flashy goodies for families with kids. The flashiest: savings accounts for children — branded Trump Accounts — created and initially funded by the Treasury Department. These will consist of $1,000 in invested assets for each American citizen born through 2028, plus whatever funds parents later add.

So if you want to have a baby, hurry up! The seeding of the accounts (previously called MAGA Accounts) expires at the end of President Donald Trump’s term. The president has made his goal clear: “I want a baby boom.” House Republicans also proposed expanding the Child Tax Credit from $2,000 to $2,500; that would also expire in four years.

But if more babies are the goal, these cash carrots are the wrong incentive. Claudia Goldin said it best in her recent paper, “Babies and the Macroeconomy”: “The birth rate is … clearly determined by forces that are independent of the whims of governments.”

McCloskey: Happy MAGA Mother's Day

Abby McCloskey, The Dallas Morning News, May 12, 2025

It’s Mother’s Day. For this mother of three, I have a feeling that the holiday is either about to lose its luster, as fewer people relate to parenthood, or become the crown jewel in the pro-natalist MAGA culture war. The next “Merry Christmas,” if you will.

American women have an average of 1.63 children each. Humanity’s survival requires an average of at least 2.1. This puts America on a path to a shrinking population with terrible consequences, impacting everything from the federal budget to caretakers to the workforce. Unsurprisingly, policymakers have some thoughts about how to fix it.

McCloskey: 100 days of Trump 2.0

Abby McCloskey, The Dallas Morning News, April 30, 2025

“How to make sense of the chaos, broken norms and kept promises of the last 100 days? Even those of us who follow politics for a living have had a time sorting through it.

But consistent threads are emerging. The mother thread is that Donald Trump was serious about most of his campaign promises. He might be a wheeling-dealing, emotional and erratic man, but he did not bluff about what he planned to do.

Sealing the border was Trump’s No. 1 campaign promise, and it has happened in record time. There’s been a dramatic drop-off in border crossings in recent months. This is good news. We should have a better handle on who is coming to and leaving this country. Things had gotten out of control after the post-pandemic surge across the border during the Biden administration.

In contrast, we are a far way from his other immigration promise of the largest deportation campaign in American history. Thank goodness. But high-profile raids and deportations (including wrongful ones), eliminating and reinstating student visas, and an indefinite pause on the refugee program have all communicated loud and clear that immigrants aren’t welcome here. This is upsetting, unnecessary and antithetical to America as a shining city on a hill. But is it consistent with Trump’s agenda? Absolutely. See the more than 1,400 children who remain separated from their parents after his first term.

The tariffs have been on-again-off-again, but the president was serious about trade wars too. Trump’s tariffs represent the biggest tax hike since 1993 and the highest level tariffs have been since coming out of the Great Depression. Tariffs will fundamentally rewire our economy. Allies and manufacturing plants aren’t built overnight. . . .”

These Aren’t the Family Values I Remember

Abby McCloskey, The Dispatch, April 17, 2025

s a millennial mother and policy researcher, I’ve been waiting a long time for Republicans to take up the mantle of dependable pro-family policies. The traditionally conservative, free-market philosophy of a rising tide lifting all boats by reducing regulation and taxes didn’t always work in the latter part of the last century: Families were breaking apart in historic proportions, wages for low-income workers stalled, nearly half of mothers lacked any type of job protection (let alone pay) after birth, and public schools showed cracks. Reagan-era conservatives such as myself knew we didn’t like what the Democrats offered: massive new entitlements and spending. But our laissez-faire alternative wasn’t working either.

To be sure, Republicans are talking more about family policy these days than I can remember in my lifetime, but what we’re seeing and hearing from the new right in Washington is not what I had in mind. Instead of fiscal responsibility and a focus on family values, we’re seeing fiscal profligacy, policy decisions that could destabilize families, and political figures displaying a disregard for norms and decency in their personal lives. MAGA leaders have lost the vision on what “good” even looks like for families, and operate their lives out of a different value set. 

McCloskey: Trump tariffs will feel good, before they bite

Abby McCloskey, Dallas Morning News, April 7, 2025

I was trying to think of an insect that tickles you nicely before it bites, some human experience of short-term pleasure before pain. The best I can come up with is a drug. Tariffs are like a drug. And drug stories rarely end well.

On April 2, President Donald Trump announced his plan for reciprocal tariffs — 10% worldwide as a baseline on long-time trading partners and foes alike. In many cases, it’s double, triple and quadruple that and more.

I couldn’t help but think of my relatives and friends as it went into effect. Many of them are financially well-off and have built American companies. Not like Meta or Musk companies, by which I mean that the types where the gains are so wild that you can afford tax shelters and fancy accounting accommodations.

I don’t come from a line of Ivy League entrepreneurs, silver spoons in our mouths, but instead the type who mixed perfumes to sell out in the basement in Ohio with a New York P.O. box (my father) and scraped through grad school in the Midwest.

But they have made real money, which they have long suspected Democrats as eager to take by hiking up top marginal tax rates. They are thus faithful Republican voters even if they roll their eyes at Trump’s various antics.

These lifelong conservatives thought the tariffs were a bluff. They, like the vast majority of Americans regardless of political orientation, believed that Republicans were the party to trust for economic growth and limited government.

Last week we learned they were not. The irony is the negative impact of tariffs on prices, the market and U.S. credibility is likely to far outweigh any changes to the tax code that Democrats could have implemented, or any pro-growth counterprogramming that the Trump administration might run, like tax and regulatory cuts.

Where's Trump Taking America?

Abby McCloskey, The Dallas Morning News, March 7, 2025

“What does America look like four years from now when the next president is being sworn in? We heard a big game in his turbocharged, exuberant speech to Congress on Tuesday night. But this could go a lot of different ways.

It reminds me of what the father of conservatism, Edmund Burke, wrote of the French Revolution: “The wild gas, the fixed air, is plainly broke loose; but we ought to suspend our judgment until the first effervescence is a little subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and until we see something deeper than the agitation of a troubled and frothy surface. I must be tolerably sure, before I venture publicly to congratulate men upon a blessing, that they have really received one.”

Full text on my Substack @McCloskeyPolicy

Education is broken. Don’t defund education

Abby McCloskey, Dallas Morning News, February 17, 2024

Here’s a true story from a public school near you: My elementary age son brought home a wooden box from school a few years ago. It was covered in his pencil drawings of fish — his favorite. I opened the box and on a scrap of paper inside saw the curse word. Scraps of paper underneath it were filled with other bad words. I shut the box and called the school.

That’s when I learned about the school assignment of the “tacky box.” A guidance counselor came to the class, told the kids to write down the worst words they could think of (they could crowdsource with friends from upper grades) and then to put them in a box instead of saying them out loud. It was part of anti-bullying week. I think the class bullies learned some new words.

This week, parents on my kindergarten group message chat were upset to find inappropriate images come up on the school-sponsored iPads and Chromebooks. Someone’s daughter had stumbled on them while Googling something for her kindergarten class. How much time are kids spending on those devices at school anyway? And why is this still a mystery? Research is piling up about the negative impact of devices on learning and attention span for kids.

Then there’s the new math curriculum, which I’ve written about in these pages before. Memorizing addition and subtraction facts, multiplication tables are out. Intuitive learning and educated guesses are in. It seems backward, like driving a car before building the road. Can we get the basics right? We haven’t even gotten to the tests, the testing to test, the silent recesses to not mess up the tests — how the means to accountability became the ends, and unaccountable ones at that.

What does this have to do with the Department of Education? Absolutely nothing. But it helps explain why many parents, even with kids in great schools, are emotionally fed up with the system. That’s the energy behind President Donald Trump’s pending executive order to eliminate the department altogether. . .

What they think of Trump (and us) across the pond

Abby McCloskey, Dallas Morning News, February 8, 2025

Who cares what Europe thinks? It’s America first, our president and our circus. I get that feeling. But a little distance often brings perspective, and so here’s what I got from my recent trip to the United Kingdom.

There wasn’t a taxi driver in London who didn’t bring up Donald Trump. Their focus wasn’t so much America; it was that they could use a little Trump at home. That England needed a shake-up, a change in status quo. That life was too hard for the normal person, the taxpayer, the worker, the parent. That the country was too soft on the woke agenda, the rule-breakers, the cover-up politicians and their sex ring scandals.

The Brits had their populist shot at big change and were left wanting. They were promised that Brexit would renew the kingdom. That wages would go up, immigration down. That they wouldn’t be ruled by European Union progressives. But so far, hard to tell. Public sentiment has shifted away from Brexit; nearly 60% now disapprove. The economy isn’t booming. It’s made it a lot harder to travel and do business for everyone from students to professionals. It’s not clear if things are safer, more prosperous, more British yet.

Certainly the timing of Brexit alongside the pandemic and Ukrainian war didn’t help, but the fundamentals of isolation aren’t great either. According to Goldman Sachs, Brexit Britain’s economy grew 5% less than peer countries. Last year, just 15% of Brits said the benefits of leaving the EU outweighed the costs. They’re looking for the next unlock, and it’s hard to see one in the February drizzle. . . .

McCloskey: Here’s what separates MLK’s dream from visions of MAGA grandeur

Abby McCloskey, the Dallas Morning News, January 19, 2025

“. . . It’s a strange coincidence, one that happens only every few decades, for Inauguration Day to happen on the same day as Martin Luther King Jr.’s remembrance. It’s an awkward pairing this time: the felon president and the reverend. But it has me thinking about dreams and what history might be trying to say.

We might live in a secular age, but who doesn’t love a dream? Who doesn’t admire the dreamer, the one who can see what others can’t see, do what others won’t do?

I’ve come to believe that dreams are the magic of Donald Trump, love him or hate him. They’ve always been there with Trump: his beautiful wives, his gold-encrusted residencies, Mar-a-Lago and escapist resorts, his name in gold emblazoned across buildings all over the world.

Dreams were there in his first presidential run. When he rode down a golden escalator and believed that a reality TV star could become president, when he promised a big beautiful wall that somehow Mexico would pay for. They motivated one of the most shocking political comebacks in American history heading into his second term, with the political decks and dozens of felony charges (and convictions) against him, and a bullet just grazing his ear, sparing his life.

Trump’s dreams are getting bigger now, like how, in my dreams, familiar houses all of a sudden include new rooms. This time it’s to expand America and acquire Greenland; to slap 20% tariffs, or more, on all imports; to revive domestic manufacturing long sent over to China; to make Europe pay for our security treaties with them; to set up a Department of Government Efficiency led by the man on a mission to colonize Mars; to retool how Washington’s labyrinth gets business done — what 3 million federal workers do and how $23 trillion in expected new debt over the next decade debt gets paid down; to make America completely safe and secure, where we know everyone’s comings and goings and anyone here without a document gets taken out the back door to goodness knows where while the citizenry parties in the front with the flag and gold souvenirs.

Dreams aren’t always good. . . “

Why an immigration reform bill should go first

Abby McCloskey, The Dallas Morning News, January 10, 2025

”. .. . It’s so audacious. It’s so, Trump.

To be sure, combining these priorities into one package makes strategic sense for all the reasons listed above and more. It combines two wings of the modern GOP: the establishment of Wall Street Journal Republicans (for tax reform) with the populists and Stephen Miller immigration hawks.

One could argue that it is more of the same to the extent that Congress has increasingly combined its appropriations work into unwieldy, giant omnibus packages. Why not its other work, too.

The problem is that with really big things, it becomes easy to lose track of the smaller things, the pieces and parts. The people. This is where we citizens and elected policymakers will need to pay attention, watch closely for fine print. . . . “

McCloskey: Christmas comes into our chaos

Abby McCloskey, Dallas Morning News, December 21, 2025

“. . . . Christmas tends to be a time when, aside from the Salvation Army bell, the world tends to look away from pain and suffering, toward parties and merriment. This is a trap that many Christians also fall into.

Think of the Christmas hymns. “O Little Town of Bethlehem, How still we see thee lie,” or “Silent night, Holy night, All is calm, All is bright.” There’s a peaceful stupor of sorts, a halo of calm and break from reality, even before the eggnog.

But the Scriptures describe Bethlehem differently, in a way that would have shaken early Christians out of any dreamlike state. The very first time the town appears in the Bible is in the book of Genesis. It too is a story of childbirth. After striving so long (and sometimes faithlessly) to have children of her own, Rachel dies in Bethlehem giving birth to her son Ben-oni, son of my sorrow, who would later be renamed Benjamin.

In the book of Judges, Bethlehem appears again, this time in a story that should come with a trigger warning. Bethlehem is the home of a woman who is sexually assaulted to the point of death. Her body is cut into 12 pieces and sent to the tribes of Israel, setting off a civil war. . . . “