Verdict with Ted Cruz - June 30, 2025


One Big Beautiful Bill ADVANCES, plus Major SCOTUS Victories Limiting Nationwide Injunctions & Protecting Parental Rights


Episode Stats


Length

31 minutes

Words per minute

165.7191

Word count

5,237

Sentence count

393

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

10

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Ted Cruz and Ben Fergusons break down the dramatic Senate vote on the One Big Beautiful Bill. They also talk about the Supreme Court and what's in it. Also, a great cup of coffee!

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.640 Guaranteed human.
00:00:05.280 Welcome. It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
00:00:09.020 And Senator, we finally got some action in the Senate on the big, beautiful bill.
00:00:13.940 Catch us up to date.
00:00:15.300 Well, we do. Late Saturday night, there was a major vote to move forward the one big, beautiful bill.
00:00:20.540 The vote passed. The vote was 51 to 49.
00:00:23.860 All Republicans except two voted to move it forward.
00:00:27.660 Now, Sunday, you and I are recording this on Sunday, so we don't know exactly what has happened yet,
00:00:33.740 except that Monday is going to be an all-day voterama, unlimited amendments.
00:00:39.480 The Democrats are going to try to make Republicans cast all sorts of votes on all sorts of politically terrible amendments.
00:00:46.320 Here's my prediction.
00:00:47.920 We will get this done.
00:00:50.100 And by the end of the day, Monday, the one big, beautiful bill will pass the United States Senate.
00:00:55.640 It will have major, major victories for the American people, major victories for President Trump's agenda.
00:01:02.260 We're going to break down what is likely to be in it.
00:01:04.960 And we're also going to talk about three major Supreme Court decisions that came down on Friday.
00:01:10.820 Big victories for conservatives, reasons to celebrate.
00:01:14.320 We're going to lay out the details of all three.
00:01:17.220 Yeah, it is going to be very big.
00:01:18.540 And we'll talk about the biggest things that happened, as you mentioned, with the Supreme Court,
00:01:21.960 and also what is in the big, beautiful bill in just a moment.
00:01:24.880 I want to talk to you real quick about a really awesome company.
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00:03:18.000 All right.
00:03:18.420 So, the big, beautiful bill, it's becoming real.
00:03:21.100 It's in the Senate.
00:03:22.660 What excites you the most about what's in this bill, Senator, that people need to know about?
00:03:27.480 Well, this bill is the principal vehicle to advance President Trump's agenda, the mandate we had coming out of the election.
00:03:35.140 Now, let me tell you procedurally where we are.
00:03:37.120 Saturday night at 730, the Senate took it up.
00:03:40.240 We needed at least 50 votes to move forward.
00:03:43.660 There was a lot of drama.
00:03:44.840 It was not clear that we were going to have 50 votes.
00:03:47.080 At the end of the day, and it was about midnight on Saturday night, we ended up with 51 votes.
00:03:52.540 Two Republicans voted no, Rand Paul voted no, and Tom Tillis voted no.
00:03:58.020 Rand was always going to vote no.
00:03:59.500 Rand has said from the beginning he's going to vote no against anything in this bill.
00:04:03.580 It's frustrating.
00:04:04.700 Rand is a friend, but his vote is hard no no matter what.
00:04:09.040 So, he's off the table.
00:04:10.240 So, we basically have 52 Republicans to work with.
00:04:13.940 Tom Tillis.
00:04:14.880 Tom Tillis has been very vocal that he's concerned about Medicaid, and he wants fewer cuts in Medicaid spending.
00:04:21.000 I don't agree with Tom on this, but he certainly has a right to his view.
00:04:25.580 Tom's a good man.
00:04:26.840 That debate will be ongoing.
00:04:28.760 What will happen next?
00:04:30.640 So, the Democrats objected.
00:04:33.440 Normally, there's a pretty standard motion in the Senate where you ask unanimous consent to waive the reading of the bill.
00:04:40.700 Well, the Democrats objected to that.
00:04:42.440 So, what is happening is a poor clerk of the court, or clerk of the Senate, rather, has to sit there and read a thousand-page bill.
00:04:52.920 And so, all night, Saturday night, at 1 a.m., 2 a.m., 3 a.m., 4 a.m., 5 a.m., a clerk of the court is reading page after page of a thousand-page bill.
00:05:03.660 They're going to read the entirety of the bill.
00:05:05.360 That'll take 10 to 12 hours.
00:05:07.940 We will then, shortly thereafter, so the Democrats then have 10 hours of debate where they're all going to stand up. 0.90
00:05:14.100 And the preview that they're going to say on Sunday is they're going to say Republicans are horrible.
00:05:18.840 They're going to say Republicans are throwing granny off the cliff. 0.99
00:05:21.500 They're going to say Republicans hate poor kids, hate people with disabilities, hate women, children, men, old people, young people, puppies, kittens, everyone and everything. 0.96
00:05:32.820 They're going to say that.
00:05:35.020 They're going to attack this bill like crazy, but then their 10 hours are going to be up, and the Democrats can't stop it.
00:05:41.980 What happens next, and this will happen Sunday evening, it'll extend all night Sunday.
00:05:46.760 It'll extend into Monday morning.
00:05:49.040 This podcast will come out.
00:05:50.360 My prediction is this podcast will come out, and we'll still be voting.
00:05:54.680 We'll end voting sometime between midnight, 1, 2, 3, 4 a.m., 5 a.m.
00:06:00.980 It could be as late as 7, 8, 9, 10 a.m. on Monday.
00:06:05.240 It depends how long the Democrats delay.
00:06:08.300 One of the weird things about budget reconciliation, the entire process proceeds under the Budget Act of 1974.
00:06:14.400 The reason reconciliation matters, there's a lot of procedural gobbledygook that doesn't matter, but the reason it matters, it's the principal exception to the Senate filibuster.
00:06:25.240 The ordinary rules in the Senate are that you need 60 votes to proceed on legislation.
00:06:30.420 We don't have 60 Republicans.
00:06:31.780 We only have 53.
00:06:33.380 So to get 60 votes, you need seven Democrats.
00:06:36.600 Seven Democrats are not going to agree to do anything positive for America right now,
00:06:40.700 which means budget reconciliation is the main way to get around that.
00:06:46.680 Under the rules of budget reconciliation, the Democrats can offer unlimited amendments.
00:06:51.300 So they're going to offer every horrible amendment they can.
00:06:53.920 And they're literally sitting there drafting, okay, what amendment can we craft that makes Republicans take a terrible vote,
00:07:01.880 that makes Republicans take a vote that then will run TV ads and attack them and try to beat them in November?
00:07:07.660 That'll happen all night.
00:07:08.860 Give an example of that gamesmanship.
00:07:11.660 And by the way, both sides do this.
00:07:13.220 So when the Democrats are in control, they use budget reconciliation.
00:07:18.600 They used it multiple times.
00:07:20.340 They spent trillions of dollars through budget reconciliation.
00:07:23.400 The so-called Inflation Reduction Act was passed through budget reconciliation.
00:07:28.280 And so, look, we teed up all sorts of terrible votes, which, frankly, we ran campaign ads against them and beat them in November on that.
00:07:35.840 And so there is value in forcing your opponents to vote on things they don't want to vote for, particularly when your opponents are embracing unpopular positions.
00:07:45.060 In this case, they'll try to tee up bad amendments, and hopefully Republicans will rally together and reject those amendments.
00:07:52.800 I expect that all 100 senators – and by the way, the median age is about 106, so that says something – at the end of the day, I believe we'll get this done.
00:08:05.380 We'll see.
00:08:06.300 I mean, look, this podcast will come out, and we'll find out if my prediction is right or wrong.
00:08:11.260 But I think we'll get it done, and there's a lot of good elements in this bill.
00:08:17.240 This bill, number one, avoids a $4 trillion tax increase.
00:08:21.900 If we did nothing, at the end of this year, there would be an automatic $4 trillion tax increase.
00:08:27.300 The entire 2017 Trump tax cuts would expire.
00:08:30.820 And so a huge purpose of this bill is to avoid that, to keep taxes low.
00:08:37.200 This bill also embodies and enacts many of the key tax cut promises President Trump made.
00:08:44.200 So, for example, this bill includes no taxes on tips.
00:08:48.020 That's my legislation.
00:08:49.260 I wrote that legislation.
00:08:50.520 It was President Trump's promise, but I wrote the bill.
00:08:52.920 That is in this bill.
00:08:54.360 We're going to get it passed.
00:08:55.600 It also includes no taxes on Social Security and no taxes on overtime.
00:08:59.440 Both of those are huge, working-class, blue-collar victories.
00:09:04.680 President Trump campaigned on them, and I think we're going to deliver them.
00:09:08.500 Beyond that, this bill is also the vehicle to secure the border.
00:09:12.500 There's $150 billion in funding to secure the border, to build the wall, to hire more border patrol agents,
00:09:19.020 to hire more ICE agents, to deploy more technology at the border.
00:09:23.180 That is a big deal.
00:09:24.440 On top of that, there's another $150 billion to rebuild the military, to invest in defeating China,
00:09:32.960 defeating our adversaries, to invest in hypersonics, to invest in the next generation of military defense.
00:09:41.900 Historically, the Democrats keep defense hostage.
00:09:45.140 So the battle that you have in Washington, classically, is between guns and butter, where Republicans care about guns.
00:09:52.220 We care about actually defending the nation, supporting our military.
00:09:55.740 The Democrats, by and large, don't care about that, and they try to hold defense spending hostage to push for more domestic spending, more welfare.
00:10:04.160 They are the party of welfare.
00:10:05.880 They are the party of big spending.
00:10:08.340 We're making a major investment in the military precisely because the Democrats can't hold that hostage.
00:10:15.060 And then there are a ton of other priorities, including three huge priorities of mine, legislation that I introduced that are in this bill.
00:10:23.600 Number one, auctioning off 800 megahertz of spectrum.
00:10:27.700 Why does that matter?
00:10:28.560 What does that mean, auctioning off spectrum?
00:10:30.680 Look, electromagnetic spectrum is how all of our electronic devices communicate.
00:10:38.260 It's how Wi-Fi operates.
00:10:39.460 It's how you get your cell phone operates.
00:10:41.180 It's how you get streaming.
00:10:43.180 And 60% of the most valuable spectrum is controlled by the federal government.
00:10:48.400 I wrote the provision in this bill that mandates the federal government sell a significant chunk of that spectrum to the private sector.
00:10:56.040 That's going to do a couple of things, Ben.
00:10:57.600 And number one, it's going to produce, I believe, over $100 billion in real revenue to the taxpayers, money that will pay down the deficit, pay down the debt.
00:11:07.580 So that's real revenue to the federal government.
00:11:09.920 But number two, even more importantly, it will unleash billions of dollars of private sector investment and create hundreds of thousands of jobs.
00:11:18.360 Because America needs to win the race for 6G, which is the next generation of telecom, and beat China.
00:11:26.500 That is in this bill.
00:11:28.200 And then there are two other provisions we've talked about, both of which I've authored.
00:11:32.540 Number one is school choice.
00:11:34.100 And this bill has the most significant federal school choice provision ever written into law.
00:11:39.640 I wrote it.
00:11:40.340 As we speak now, I'm battling with the Senate parliamentarian to keep that in the bill.
00:11:45.240 I believe we will keep that in the bill.
00:11:47.520 And that investment, I think, school choice is the civil rights issue of the 21st century.
00:11:52.700 And finally, there are the Invest America accounts, the Trump accounts, where this bill will create a private investment account for every child in America, will seed it with $1,000, will allow family and employers and parents to contribute $5,000 a year in a tax-advantaged fund.
00:12:11.920 That fund will be invested in the S&P 500.
00:12:15.280 It will grow with compound growth, and it will make a whole new generation of capitalists.
00:12:21.780 I actually think this provision, it's a very small part of the bill.
00:12:25.360 I think 10, 20, 30 years from now, it will be the single most impactful part of the bill because we will have a whole generation of kids who have built up savings and investment in the market.
00:12:36.680 They will be owners of the major employers in America.
00:12:40.200 That's in the bill.
00:12:40.940 I'm really excited about it.
00:12:42.320 It's going to be, as you said, one of the core things, I think, for Donald Trump and a victory for him and for the American people.
00:12:48.120 How significant do you think the boost could be just to the rest of the agenda of putting America first, the MAGA agenda, because of this big victory?
00:12:58.800 I say early on in his administration, yes, we're well past 100 days.
00:13:02.880 It takes time to get these things done.
00:13:05.060 But this could also be momentum building for other agenda items.
00:13:08.900 Am I wrong?
00:13:09.320 You're not wrong.
00:13:11.260 And listen, I expect we're going to take up other reconciliation bills over the next year and a half.
00:13:16.780 Why?
00:13:17.340 Because reconciliation is the biggest exception to the filibuster.
00:13:20.360 So it's the way we can legislate and get victories.
00:13:23.560 But this bill has massive victories in it.
00:13:27.240 Now, some conservatives, including me, have argued we should cut spending more.
00:13:32.840 I agree with that.
00:13:33.680 I have leaned in hard on cut spending, cut spending.
00:13:37.140 I've made that case to my colleagues.
00:13:38.860 I wish we were cutting spending more.
00:13:42.020 But at the end of the day, we are reducing spending some.
00:13:45.720 We need to do more.
00:13:46.940 And we are cutting taxes in a profound way.
00:13:49.920 And we are winning major victories for President Trump's agenda.
00:13:54.500 There's a reason President Trump is all in behind this bill.
00:13:58.900 And so I think we're going to get it done.
00:14:00.640 I don't know if it will be signed into law by July 4th.
00:14:04.140 But I think if the Senate gets it done on Monday, there's a real chance the House will come back and just pass the bill.
00:14:09.640 And we could see on the 4th of July, President Trump signing this into law.
00:14:14.500 Canadian women are looking for more. 1.00
00:14:16.640 More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world around them.
00:14:20.800 And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.
00:14:24.520 I'm Jennifer Stewart.
00:14:25.720 And I'm Catherine Clark.
00:14:26.680 And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women, entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey.
00:14:36.460 So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.
00:14:39.700 Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
00:14:43.760 I want to move to the other big story as well.
00:14:48.100 And this one deals with the Supreme Court.
00:14:50.320 The Supreme Court's term has come to an end.
00:14:53.360 And there was a major, not just win, but wins for President Trump and also the rule of law.
00:15:01.900 I love talking Supreme Court with you.
00:15:03.480 And I mean, this is a compliment.
00:15:04.520 You get to geek out on it because you clerked there.
00:15:06.600 Take us into what just happened and how significant were some of these major decisions.
00:15:13.380 Yeah, you know, there are a few things more wonderful than an Ole Miss varsity tennis player calling me a geek.
00:15:20.400 But, you know, the truth hurts.
00:15:23.400 So I will happily do that.
00:15:27.100 So there were three major decisions from the Supreme Court came down the end of last week.
00:15:31.860 All three were victories.
00:15:34.860 The most important was a decision on President Trump's birthright citizenship executive order.
00:15:41.520 And the punchline is the court dramatically reined in the ability of district courts to issue nationwide injunctions, universal injunctions.
00:15:50.540 We're going to break all that down momentarily.
00:15:52.080 There was also a big victory that held that the parents of public school children can opt out of LGBT curriculum.
00:16:02.440 It's a big win for religious liberty, big win for parental rights.
00:16:06.940 And finally, one other decision upheld a Texas law.
00:16:11.400 So Texas passed a law requiring age verification for porn sites.
00:16:15.780 That was challenged as unconstitutional.
00:16:18.360 And the Supreme Court upheld that 6-3 as well.
00:16:21.900 So three big victories, really important.
00:16:25.180 All right.
00:16:25.880 So let's start with universal injunctions and the Trump v.
00:16:29.660 Casa case.
00:16:31.480 This is also, by the way, something that you chaired the subcommittee hearing on that very issue earlier this month.
00:16:39.320 So explain why this is such an important issue for everyone listening.
00:16:44.860 Well, this was a case challenging President Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship.
00:16:50.400 Birthright citizenship is the law that says that a baby born in America is a U.S. citizen, even if that baby's parents are illegal, even if they came illegally precisely to have that baby in America.
00:17:03.000 Nonetheless, that baby is a U.S. citizen. 0.63
00:17:05.060 As a policy matter, I think that is a very foolish policy.
00:17:10.740 It is a policy that incentivizes illegal immigration. 0.82
00:17:14.620 You see people.
00:17:15.820 I spend a lot of time at the southern border.
00:17:17.880 I go out on midnight patrols with the border patrol agents.
00:17:20.780 We see everyday pregnant women coming across the border illegally, coming across, being brought in by human traffickers with the express purpose of coming here to have their baby in America because that baby then becomes an anchor baby.
00:17:34.780 That baby becomes a U.S. citizen.
00:17:36.840 That doesn't make any sense.
00:17:38.040 And by the way, most of the other countries on earth don't have that policy.
00:17:40.880 If you sneak into another country illegally, most other countries don't make them a citizen of that country.
00:17:47.320 It is an accident of American history that our law has done that.
00:17:51.720 And so for more than a decade, I've been advocating for ending birthright citizenship. 0.91
00:17:57.980 Now, Ben, there is an open legal debate about how you can end birthright citizenship.
00:18:03.100 There are some legal scholars who argue it can only be done through a constitutional amendment, and the reason is part of the predicate for birthright citizenship is the language of the 14th Amendment that talks about granting citizenship to people born in America.
00:18:20.580 Now, there's a phrase in the 14th Amendment which is subject to the jurisdiction thereof, and legal scholars argue back and forth.
00:18:30.440 Some say you can only change birthright citizenship through a constitutional amendment. 0.90
00:18:35.120 If that's the case, we should have an amendment because it's a policy that is foolish.
00:18:40.280 Others say Congress can pass legislation to end birthright citizenship because someone who comes here illegally is not subject to the jurisdiction thereof, is not subject to American jurisdiction, but rather came here illegally.
00:18:53.800 I've introduced legislation to end birthright citizenship through legislation.
00:18:58.680 What President Trump has done is he's tried to do it a third way, which is through an executive order.
00:19:04.580 That's going to be a harder hurdle to get through, but he's trying to do it, and on the policy grounds, he is exactly right.
00:19:11.420 So what happened is in this case there was a lawsuit challenging President Trump's executive order, purporting to eliminate birthright citizenship.
00:19:21.960 And the district judge issued a nationwide injunction, a so-called universal injunction.
00:19:28.860 So ordinarily, courts have jurisdiction, have authority over the parties in front of them.
00:19:35.200 So if you have two parties in a car wreck and they crash into each other and one party sues the other, the court has jurisdiction over those two parties to say, okay, you're at fault.
00:19:45.200 You pay for the repairs, the medical bills of the person injured.
00:19:49.120 That is called, under the Constitution, Article III of the Constitution, courts are given jurisdiction over cases and controversies, so actual disputes between real people.
00:19:58.820 What the district judge did in this case is issued an injunction prohibiting Donald Trump and prohibiting the entire federal government from enforcing the birthright citizenship executive order against anybody, not just against the parties in front of the court.
00:20:15.440 But 330 million people in this country, the court said, you cannot enforce this against anybody.
00:20:21.260 It is a universal injunction.
00:20:23.200 That is something that, for the first 100-plus years of our country, never occurred.
00:20:31.880 Universal injunctions began occurring more frequently, but not that much more frequently.
00:20:37.440 There have been over 40 universal injunctions issued against Donald Trump in the first five months of his presidency.
00:20:44.840 Now, how does that compare to the historical record?
00:20:47.360 There are more universal injunctions that have been issued against President Trump than were issued in the entire 20th century, from 1900 to 2000.
00:20:58.720 There have been more in the last five months than there were in those 100 years.
00:21:05.900 There have been more universal injunctions issued against President Trump than were issued against all eight years of George W. Bush, all eight years of Barack Obama, and all four years of Joe Biden.
00:21:20.100 Five months, Trump has even more than that.
00:21:22.600 It has been an abuse of power, and as you noted, I have been very vocal.
00:21:26.640 I've been laying out the case.
00:21:27.800 I chaired a Judiciary Committee hearing focused on exactly this abuse of power.
00:21:32.700 This is the next wave of lawfare.
00:21:35.900 During the last four years, we saw Democrat prosecutors indicting Donald Trump that was using the courts to attack their political enemy to try to stop the voters from re-electing Donald Trump.
00:21:46.780 That didn't work.
00:21:47.940 They failed.
00:21:49.120 Once President Trump was re-elected, this was the next iteration of lawfare.
00:21:52.780 Get Democrat attorneys general, get left-wing radical groups to go seek out radical district judges put on the bench by Joe Biden and Barack Obama to issue injunctions and shut down the entire Trump agenda because, and understand, these Democrat attorneys general, they don't believe in democracy.
00:22:13.520 They don't believe the voters have a right to decide this is what we want and to elect someone to carry it out.
00:22:18.240 Instead, they want courts to stand in the way.
00:22:21.180 Well, you and I talked about it on an earlier podcast, what I thought was likely here, and what I predicted on this podcast, as I said, I think the Supreme Court is going to rein in universal injunctions.
00:22:36.200 The Supreme Court's going to make clear this is an abuse of power.
00:22:39.260 And so I was really optimistic because in terms of the tools we have to rein in universal injunctions, the Supreme Court acting is by far the best.
00:22:48.280 Well, on Friday, they did.
00:22:50.220 Their decision was fantastic.
00:22:52.120 It was 6-3.
00:22:53.580 The decision was written by Amy Coney Barrett.
00:22:55.860 It is the most important opinion she has written in her tenure on the court.
00:22:59.780 And it is very strong.
00:23:02.240 It makes clear that individual district judges do not have the legal authority, they don't have the jurisdiction, to issue universal injunctions.
00:23:11.580 That is a massive victory for the rule of law, and it is a massive blow against the lawfare that the radical left is waging against President Trump.
00:23:20.000 Yeah, no doubt about it.
00:23:22.120 And that wasn't the only victory that came down.
00:23:24.980 Another one was a free speech coalition versus Paxton.
00:23:29.680 And this was a case out of Texas where the Supreme Court came down 6-3, and they held that Texas age verification law, where you have to verify your age to be on a pornographic website, is in fact constitutional.
00:23:46.240 This is really a huge, I think, build-off to something that you worked so hard on that there was bipartisan support for, which was the Take It Down Act.
00:23:58.800 And this really, coupled with that, is a significant move by the United States to protect kids under the age of 18.
00:24:06.400 That's exactly right.
00:24:07.580 Ben, you and I are both parents.
00:24:08.940 You and I are both dads.
00:24:09.900 It's scary to be a parent right now because our kids, when our kids get to be teenagers, we give them phones.
00:24:17.600 And phones are just this portal to everything evil and horrible in the world, the pressures that are on our kids.
00:24:26.040 When you and I were young, the biggest thing you had to worry about was the kid down the street punching you in the nose and giving you a bloody nose.
00:24:32.800 And that wasn't fun, but it didn't end your life.
00:24:36.240 Your nose healed, and you were fine.
00:24:37.620 Today, our kids deal with, they deal with sexual predators online.
00:24:43.220 They deal with social media pushing all sorts of negative content to them, pushing self-harm, pushing suicidal ideation, pushing substance abuse, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, pushing body image. 1.00
00:24:56.820 Look, I'm the dad of two daughters, and there's so much garbage online telling young girls, you're too fat, you're too ugly, you're this, you're that. 0.97
00:25:04.880 And it does real damage and depression, anxiety, all the pressures that are directed at kids. 0.99
00:25:10.960 And one of the pressures that are directed at kids is there is so much sexual content that is just bombarding children and bombarding sometimes young kids.
00:25:22.480 And so the state of Texas passed a law, I think it's a very common sense law, that says if you have a site that is putting pornography online, that you have to verify if the users are over 18 or not, that you should not be pushing out porn to kids.
00:25:36.080 And listen, when it comes to questions of free speech, I'm very libertarian.
00:25:42.340 I think adults have a right to speak, and if they want to go back and forth on issues like this, adults can.
00:25:49.600 But pushing porn to kids is wrong.
00:25:52.580 And children, the content now is just, it is graphic, it is grotesque, and it bombards our kids.
00:26:02.900 And so Texas passed a law that said, if you want to push it to adults, you can, but you can't push it to kids.
00:26:09.080 And there was a lawsuit.
00:26:10.160 There was a lawsuit that said, look, we have a right to give five-year-olds graphic porn.
00:26:15.420 And the Supreme Court, 6-3, Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion, said, no, there's nothing in the First Amendment that says you have the right to push pornography to young children.
00:26:25.880 And states have a reasonable interest in protecting kids.
00:26:30.520 I think that's a common-sense victory.
00:26:33.140 And on free speech, I'm a free speech absolutist, but I also think there is room for protecting children.
00:26:40.240 When it comes to adults, adults are welcome to consume all sorts of content.
00:26:45.020 But there's no reason 5, 6, 7, 8, 9-year-olds should be seeing all the garbage that's there.
00:26:55.200 I'm really gratified this was an important decision. 0.74
00:26:58.260 Yeah, it really was.
00:26:59.720 And finally, the other one that you mentioned earlier, this one for me is so important for parental rights and getting parental rights back in our public schools.
00:27:09.440 Because there was a massive fight where parents were saying, we should be able to opt our kids out of this LGBTQ plus curriculum. 1.00
00:27:21.420 There was a lawsuit.
00:27:22.900 It went to the Supreme Court.
00:27:24.360 It favored on the side of parents 6-3.
00:27:27.840 This was massive for so many parents that are concerned about their kids being indoctrinated by the radical left.
00:27:35.060 Yeah, this case arose out of Montgomery County in Maryland.
00:27:38.200 And Montgomery County has a very diverse population.
00:27:42.680 And the Montgomery County School Board, unfortunately, is one of the more woke school boards in America.
00:27:49.160 And so they put in place an aggressive LGBTQ curriculum.
00:27:56.380 And they mandated it.
00:27:58.480 And we're not talking high schoolers.
00:28:00.480 We're talking young kids, kids kindergarten through fifth grade.
00:28:04.900 And they pushed content that was pushing LGBT content, that was pushing transgender content to little children, five, six, seven, eight-year-olds.
00:28:18.000 And a group of parents said, hey, this is wrong.
00:28:22.980 A group of parents, and they included Catholics, they included Muslims, they said, we don't want our school indoctrinating, brainwashing our kids that you think it's great to be gay, to be transgender.
00:28:36.380 You think it's great, like if you're a boy, one day you think you're a girl.
00:28:40.300 It's not the school's job to tell our five-year-olds that's your ideology.
00:28:44.760 And so they sued, and the school board said, basically, go jump in a lake.
00:28:52.400 We're going to indoctrinate your kids, and you have no right.
00:28:56.660 And on appeal, well, the district court and the court of appeals both ruled against the parents and said they had no right.
00:29:06.860 And it went to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court 6-3 upheld the right of the parents to opt out of that curriculum.
00:29:17.720 And the court said, quote, because it has long recognized the rights of parents to direct the religious upbringing of their children,
00:29:25.420 the court concluded that the parents are likely to succeed on the claim that the board's policies unconstitutionally burdens their religious exercise.
00:29:34.920 Justice Alito wrote the majority opinion for a 6-3 court, and they said that parents' rights are violated
00:29:42.820 when the government, quote, substantially interferes with their children's religious development.
00:29:49.940 And so this is a great protection for parental rights.
00:29:54.520 Look, parents ought to be in charge of what is being taught to their kids.
00:29:58.460 It's also a great victory for religious liberty.
00:30:00.380 If a parent wants to teach kids to embrace a radical agenda, whether on LGBT or anything else, a parent has a right to do that.
00:30:10.900 But the school system should not be indoctrining children, in particular young children.
00:30:16.700 Kindergarteners is what this case was about.
00:30:18.940 And so this is a big victory, three big victories for our constitutional rights, for common sense,
00:30:26.460 and all three of them were 6-3 out of the Supreme Court.
00:30:29.260 6-3, massive, massive win there.
00:30:33.540 I just am so thankful.
00:30:35.920 You talk about elections having consequences, and these fights are worth it.
00:30:39.960 These are three massive changes, major victories.
00:30:43.920 And remember, these Supreme Court justices were picked years or decades ago.
00:30:48.060 It's why presidential elections are so important, because when things like this happen,
00:30:52.680 you need a conservative court that actually looks at the law and interprets it the right way.
00:30:56.720 And this is where all that hard work for so many people that went out and campaigned for people like you and others paid off.
00:31:03.880 So congrats to everyone listening that votes in these elections.
00:31:06.620 And this is why, you know, elections have consequences and presidencies have legacies.
00:31:11.440 And this is finally where we're seeing some major, major victories that are protecting the rule of law
00:31:17.020 and protecting parental rights, as we just went through there, and protecting kids.
00:31:20.620 Don't forget, we do this show Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
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00:31:27.500 Be safe and have so much fun with your family.
00:31:29.480 We'll be back here on Wednesday morning.
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