The fans in the photograph met every requirement on the original list. The panel says that is how it knew the list needed work.
AUSTIN, Texas—Citing a photograph of University of Texas fans in cowboy hats flashing the hook ’em horns sign at Saturday’s comeback win over top-ranked Ohio State, a volunteer panel of Central Texas conservatives has revised its assimilation checklist four times since Sunday, according to a copy reviewed by Newswax.
Bo French, the Republican nominee for the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the state’s oil and gas industry, posted the photograph on Sunday. The fans in it appeared to be South Asian. “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this,” French wrote. “I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.” Karl Rove, the strategist credited with building the modern Texas Republican Party, will vote for French’s Democratic opponent, Jon Rosenthal. It will be Rove’s first vote for a Democrat since 1994, The Washington Post reported.
What the Assimilation Checklist Asked For
The first version, adopted in 2024, fit on one page and named four indicators: a cowboy hat, University of Texas apparel, the hook ’em horns hand sign and audible enthusiasm for Texas football. All four appear in the photograph. “The photograph satisfied the checklist in full,” said a panel member who requested anonymity because the checklist is a working document. “In our experience, that means the checklist has a defect.”
The Lone Star Heritage Review Panel has nine members and ordinarily meets on Tuesday nights in the banquet room of a Georgetown steakhouse. It has met every night this week. The chair, Wendell R. Tiedemann, 67, is a retired feed-store owner from Fredericksburg whose grandmother spoke German at home until 1951. Tiedemann said the panel has no affiliation with French’s campaign or with the Republican Party of Texas. “Assimilation is a standard,” he said. “A standard anyone can meet is a participation trophy.”
Conversion, Then Class Rank
Version two, adopted Monday, drew on the commentators who came to French’s defense. John Daniel Davidson, a senior editor at The Federalist, wrote that it would be “way WAY more Texas-assimilated than wearing a cowboy hat and cheering at a Longhorn game” if Indian immigrants converted to Christianity and tore down a 90-foot statue in Sugar Land. The statue, consecrated in 2024, depicts the Hindu deity Lord Hanuman. Steve Deace, a Christian talk show host, posted, “Just 2.3% of India is Christian.” Conversion and demolition became items five and six, and Deace’s figure went into a footnote. Panel members said they found the posts in a New York Times column that quoted them at length in order to condemn them. “We read it for the quotes,” one member said.
Tuesday’s revision turned to admissions. Sean Davis, a co-founder of The Federalist, posted that “only 13% of undergrads are white men” at the university. French followed his first post with a second: “I weep for the families in Texas who can’t get into UT because they prioritize foreigners over Texans.” The university must fill 90 percent of its freshman class with Texas residents, according to the Times, and it automatically admits students who graduate in the top 5 percent of Texas high school classes, according to the Post. The new version moves a top-5-percent class rank from the positive indicators to the disqualifying ones. “A student in the top 5 percent has outperformed 95 percent of Texans,” the anonymous member said. “The panel asked itself whether that is something a Texan would do to other Texans.”
The panel’s record also includes two statements from Texas Republicans. Sen. John Cornyn, who lost this year’s Republican Senate primary to Attorney General Ken Paxton, called on fellow Republicans to condemn French’s “intolerance and racism.” The panel recorded him as a dissent. Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement that French’s comments were “not my message.” He also said, “That doesn’t mean that Texas cannot also lead in having the toughest immigration laws of any state in America and freezing H1B visas at our universities.” Abbott was recorded as a concurrence. “He said it was not his message,” Tiedemann said. “He never said it was not his checklist.”
A Birthplace Rule Reaches Karl Rove
Version four of the assimilation checklist, adopted Wednesday, requires that an applicant be born in Texas to two parents also born in Texas. “The birthplace rule does what we were hoping the hat would do,” the anonymous member said.
The panel applied the rule to Rove the same night. George W. Bush credited Rove in his 2004 victory speech as “the architect,” and the Post reports that Republicans held one statewide office in Texas when Rove arrived from Virginia in the late 1970s and all 29 of them when he left for Washington in 2001. Rove was born in Denver and grew up in Nevada and Utah. “Mr. Rove is a transplant,” Tiedemann said. “His vote for a Democrat was reviewed Wednesday night and accepted as confirmation.”
The Assimilation Checklist Applied to Its Authors
An internal review on Thursday found that six of the panel’s nine members fail version four. Among them is its treasurer, a retired orthodontist born in Toledo, Ohio, who watched Saturday’s game in an Ohio State sweater. Version five, adopted Thursday evening, exempts sitting members under a grandfather clause. “Members who were on the panel before the birthplace rule existed are exempt from the birthplace rule,” Tiedemann said. “The members felt that was fair.”
The assimilation checklist now runs to four pages. Version six goes to a vote Monday night, and a person familiar with the drafting said it will be considerably shorter.
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