Verdict with Ted Cruz - BONUS POD： A Billion Reasons to Worry — Who’s Really Running America’s Schools

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:00:02.620 Guaranteed human.

00:00:04.780 All the assassination attempts seem to go in one direction.

00:00:08.120 He's in power.

00:00:08.480 It's Charlie Kirk.

00:00:09.460 It's Donald Trump three times.

00:00:10.640 It's Steve Scalise.

00:00:11.660 Okay, he's in power.

00:00:13.760 You notice that every one of these people in the Trump administration needs a security deal.

00:00:18.360 Staff.

00:00:19.080 No other press secretary in history except for those who serve Donald Trump.

00:00:22.140 He's in secret service detail.

00:00:23.880 You're listening to the 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson.

00:00:27.780 Good Tuesday morning.

00:00:28.700 Nice to have you with us on the 47 Morning Update, and we've got one major story for you.

00:00:34.420 You wonder why there's so much violence against Donald Trump and other conservatives.

00:00:39.600 Well, you may just need to follow the money.

00:00:42.080 We've now learned that teachers' unions have spent more than a billion dollars in the last decade to influence what your kids believe.

00:00:50.840 And now polling data shows that one in four Democrats believe that political violence is appropriate.

00:00:57.740 We break all this down for you.

00:00:59.720 Now, before we get to that, I want to take a moment and talk to you about a company that's standing up for what we truly believe in.

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00:02:41.100 morning update and it starts right

00:02:43.080 now. Story number one. There

00:02:45.040 have been three different

00:02:47.060 assassination attempts on President Donald Trump, where bullets have been fired. We also know that

00:02:54.300 there was another assassination attempt on the President of the United States of America

00:02:58.600 by a man that decided to bring a shotgun as well as other weapons. That would be for a total of

00:03:04.360 four different assassination attempts on President Trump that we know about. The question is, why is

00:03:11.560 this happening? And could it be because the left has taken over the education system and is

00:03:18.140 radicalizing people to hate conservatives, to hate Christians, and to hate Donald Trump?

00:03:25.780 Well, a watchdog group has now released a pair of reports exposing how America's teachers union,

00:03:34.040 yes, the teachers unions that control our public education across the U.S., have funneled now more

00:03:40.860 than $1 billion into left-wing political causes over the last decade.

00:03:49.060 So let me start with a question that every American should be asking.

00:03:53.940 What happens when the institutions that we're supposed to trust to educate our kids

00:03:59.720 become some of the biggest political players in the country at the exact same time?

00:04:06.440 Our politics are becoming so extreme that the President of the United States of America is now on a regular schedule of assassination attempts, in essence, while in office.

00:04:18.660 Because that's really where we are today.

00:04:21.780 It may be the inconvenient truth, but it is.

00:04:24.860 The nation's largest teachers unions, like the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, they know what they're doing.

00:04:35.860 They're pouring more than $1 billion into left-leaning political causes and activism.

00:04:42.320 More than a billion dollars.

00:04:44.740 I want you to really think about how much money that is.

00:04:47.980 Now, this isn't small-dollar advocacy.

00:04:51.200 This isn't occasional political engagement by the teachers' unions,

00:04:55.440 which teachers should be nonpartisan.

00:04:58.660 They should be teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic,

00:05:01.420 which, by the way, statistically, they're failing this country.

00:05:04.140 And we're at the lowest of nations that we compare ourselves to in reading, writing, and arithmetic.

00:05:10.080 In some categories, when it comes to civilized nations, we are at the bottom of the barrel.

00:05:15.460 And it may be because all of these teachers unions are hiring, supporting, and advocating to become indoctrination schools

00:05:25.240 instead of actually teaching children an education.

00:05:28.600 And all you have to do is follow the money.

00:05:32.180 When you look at the full-scale political influence that these teacher unions are involved in,

00:05:37.600 it should honestly be against the law.

00:05:40.320 When you break down where that money is going, the picture becomes even more clear what they believe in.

00:05:46.560 These unions are bankrolling political campaigns, overwhelming for Democrat people running for office.

00:05:55.440 Socialists, Marxists, and communists.

00:05:58.600 And it's not just people running for office.

00:06:01.440 They're also funding the most extreme activist groups of the progressive agenda.

00:06:06.640 They're backing ballot initiatives on issues far outside and beyond education.

00:06:13.820 And they're spending heavily on lobbying to influence legislation to protect their indoctrination of our children in this country.

00:06:21.940 I go back to the core point.

00:06:23.760 This isn't about math scores.

00:06:25.460 This isn't about reading levels.

00:06:27.120 It's literally about political indoctrination.

00:06:29.160 And these organizations have become some of the most powerful political machines in this country.

00:06:35.900 They're using their resources that many teachers themselves are required to contribute through dues.

00:06:41.140 And if you don't, that is called collusion, by the way, then you're on the outs with a teacher's union.

00:06:46.760 Good luck getting a job or a promotion.

00:06:50.080 These teachers, many of them are forced to give to the teacher's unions.

00:06:53.580 Now, this isn't about the classroom anymore at all.

00:06:56.700 They're not even trying to hide it.

00:06:58.420 Think about what's not being funded when a billion dollars goes into political activism.

00:07:03.980 The money is not going to fixing our struggling schools.

00:07:07.180 It's not going to reduce class sizes.

00:07:09.620 It's not even going to increase teachers' salaries directly

00:07:12.380 or even help students catch up after they miss school

00:07:15.840 and went way behind where they should be after COVID.

00:07:19.520 No, no, no, no, no.

00:07:20.820 Instead, it's being directed to shaping the political landscape of this country.

00:07:25.280 And that should raise a serious question.

00:07:28.420 When did teachers and the union stop being about education and start being about ideology?

00:07:35.620 Well, Democrats clearly decided they were going to play the long game.

00:07:38.940 They were going to control the minds of our children at the education levels of elementary school and then middle school and then junior high and then high school.

00:07:48.160 And then they started dumping big money into our universities.

00:07:52.300 This is the game plan.

00:07:54.080 And then you look at what they've accomplished. In politics, 25% of Democrats now believe

00:08:02.260 that political violence is justified and acceptable. Why? When you grow a generation

00:08:09.160 through the education system to be ashamed of this country, to hate America, and to believe

00:08:14.540 that if they're not getting their way and you do not bow down to their beliefs, they can then

00:08:19.820 literally kill you to get rid of you as a roadblock. The rhetoric is getting sharper

00:08:25.040 and the bullets are flying. And the lines, well, they're getting more extreme. The recent polling

00:08:32.160 paints this troubling picture. A significant portion of actual American voters. We're talking

00:08:38.600 about millions of voters. 25% of the Democratic Party say political violence can be justified.

00:08:47.800 Now, just stop for a moment and think about this latest assassination attempt on President Trump.

00:08:53.480 How do we get to the point where millions and millions of Americans, one in four, think that it's okay to kill someone, to hurt someone, because they voted for something you disagree with?

00:09:09.620 Now, that's not some fringe entitlement on the Internet.

00:09:13.360 That's a real measurable slice of the American population, the American electorate.

00:09:19.380 And no matter your politics, whether you're Republican, a Democrat, an independent, you should be terrified knowing that in the United States of America, one out of four Democratic voters thinks they can kill you if they don't like what you're saying.

00:09:34.280 because once people start believing that violence is a legitimate answer,

00:09:39.040 a legitimate political tool, we are no longer just debating ideas.

00:09:43.340 We're entering a new dangerous territory.

00:09:46.500 It's basically a coup whenever you want it.

00:09:50.200 And it's time that we're honest about connecting these dots.

00:09:53.560 It is, in fact, the education system that is breeding a generation to hate this country.

00:09:59.600 And when you have massive financial power from the teachers' unions,

00:10:02.820 That money is now flowing heavily into one side of the political spectrum

00:10:07.540 and a growing acceptance, at least among some, of extreme tactics,

00:10:12.180 including assassinating a sitting president.

00:10:14.640 So that brings up the big question.

00:10:17.700 What kind of environment has the left created?

00:10:21.220 Because these institutions, they don't just reflect culture.

00:10:24.980 They literally shape it.

00:10:26.620 And that's why Democrats chose years ago to take over our education systems.

00:10:30.780 and they've done it completely and when organizations tied directly by the way to our

00:10:37.020 schools are deeply involved in the radical partisan politics what happens then well what

00:10:44.820 gets emphasized in the classroom is what they believe it's how literally the books are written

00:10:49.840 it's how the issues are framed it's how the papers are assigned it's how the discussions are organized

00:10:56.580 And it's how the next generation then understands America and politics itself.

00:11:03.800 So the message that we all need to understand right now is this.

00:11:08.340 If major institutions are fully engaged in partisan battles with our tax dollars and pouring massive resources into ideological causes,

00:11:18.180 while part of the political base are becoming more accepting of this extreme rhetoric,

00:11:22.520 then what are we actually teaching our kids?

00:11:26.580 What are we teaching them directly?

00:11:27.940 And also, what are we teaching them indirectly?

00:11:31.340 Are we teaching debate?

00:11:32.980 No.

00:11:33.780 What we are teaching is violence.

00:11:35.980 We're teaching literal division.

00:11:38.500 Are we encouraging critical thinking?

00:11:40.800 No.

00:11:41.720 We are enforcing and reinforcing that your political ideology is supreme over all others.

00:11:49.120 There is no grand debate. 1.00

00:11:50.800 And if the other side wins, you just kill them. 1.00

00:11:53.780 Because kids are watching all of this. 1.00

00:11:56.080 They're absorbing everything in the classroom

00:11:59.240 And then they're forming their own understanding of how the world works

00:12:02.900 How America works

00:12:04.160 Now hopefully this is a wake-up call for parents

00:12:08.100 It's why we're seeing in some places in the country

00:12:10.920 Parents are showing up by the thousands at school board meetings across this country

00:12:15.600 Not because they want to fight with teachers

00:12:17.740 Because now they're demanding answers

00:12:20.280 They're asking the basic questions we should have been asking years ago

00:12:23.960 why is education becoming a political indoctrination? Why are unions spending

00:12:30.380 billions on issues outside of the classroom? And why does it feel like ideology is creeping

00:12:38.340 into spaces that used to be and are supposed to be neutral? These aren't unreasonable questions.

00:12:45.180 They're basic accountability questions. We also know there's some simple truths. Money and power

00:12:53.240 well they're one in the same and when you have both when they're used for evil there are real

00:12:59.000 consequences money power is either a positive or a negative and what we're witnessing right now

00:13:07.420 is when the left spends a billion dollars on politics not only they gain hearts and minds

00:13:13.420 and influence but when they gain that influence they're now shaping the outcome of what happens

00:13:18.460 next. And when you shape those outcomes demanding that there is political violence, that's exactly

00:13:24.780 what is happening right now. So if you want to know why a guy by the name of Donald Trump got

00:13:31.040 shot at yet again, let's be clear. It is because of what these kids have been indoctrinated to

00:13:37.940 believe. It is because the radical left now has convinced 25% of their own party. And that number

00:13:45.960 actually may be higher there's some that may have lied to the pollsters not really wanting to say

00:13:51.080 out loud that they believe in political violence but to those that laugh about when the president

00:13:55.960 gets shot saying they wish the shooter would have been better at it you know those people you see

00:14:01.720 on social media that hide behind their computer screens so here we are a third assassination

00:14:07.900 attempt others we don't know about that were foiled before they became actual plans that were

00:14:14.860 actually taken to the president and a teacher's union or unions that are spending more than a

00:14:21.740 billion dollars to influence the minds of our children to think and believe that killing

00:14:29.960 someone you disagree with is warranted, is just, is appropriate. That is how we've gotten to where

00:14:39.140 we are today thank you for listening to the 47 morning update with ben ferguson please make sure

00:14:45.300 you hit subscribe wherever you're listening to this podcast right now and for more in-depth news

00:14:51.080 also subscribe to the ben ferguson podcast and we will see you back here tomorrow

00:14:56.020 this is an iheart podcast guaranteed human

Verdict with Ted Cruz - April 28, 2026

BONUS POD： A Billion Reasons to Worry — Who’s Really Running America’s Schools

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