Verdict with Ted Cruz - August 06, 2025


Trump Revokes Student Visas for Chinese Nationals, Transgender Athlete Policy Shift in CA, Take It Down Act Targeting Deepfakes Signed & ABA Barred from Judicial Nominations

Topics
Trump revoking Chinese student visas California transgender athlete policy deep fakes legislation Snapchat pictures down
Hosted by
Ted Cruz
Mentioned
Donald Trump Robert Bork Elliston Berry Verdict Brandon Guffey Ben Ferguson Pam Bondi Gavin Newsom Joe Biden Anna Frank Easterbrook Ronald Reagan Edith Jones Charnel Bajelkrenigen Jennifer Stewart Kayleigh McEnany Caitlin Clark Francesca Mani Chuck Schumer Amy Klobuchar and 9 more
BONUS POD： Trump Moves to Protect Conservative Bank Customers & Civil Arrest Warrants on the Table for Fleeing Dems BONUS POD： China’s 'New' Viral Outbreak Echoes COVID-Era Measures plus Democrats Face Removal Over Quorum Walkout

Episode Stats


Length

33 minutes

Words per minute

170.97

Word count

5,713

Sentence count

379

Harmful content

Misogyny

18

sentences flagged

Hate speech

11

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Ted Cruz and Ben Fergusons talk about Trump revoking Chinese student visas, the devastating flooding in the Hill Country, and California's new ban on transgender athletes in sports. They also talk about how to help the thousands of people affected by the devastating Hill Country floods.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.600 Guaranteed human.
00:00:05.540 Welcome.
00:00:06.300 It is Verdict with Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
00:00:09.440 And we did a show that had some really important topics in it a couple weeks ago.
00:00:14.880 Unfortunately, that show was replaced as we were covering the catastrophic flooding that
00:00:20.240 happened in the Hill Country.
00:00:21.540 And we want to make sure that we gave you all the info on that and the relief efforts
00:00:25.620 and how you could help the people in Kerrville and the surrounding areas that were affected.
00:00:30.820 And we were talking about that show, and it's an important one because it dealt with a lot
00:00:36.240 of issues.
00:00:37.000 Number one, Trump revoking Chinese student visas.
00:00:40.560 You probably heard about that nowhere else.
00:00:42.780 Also, California reverses policies on transgender in sports.
00:00:48.200 How that happened.
00:00:49.440 The very important Take It Down Act.
00:00:52.380 It was important to protect people from revenge and people putting fake pictures of them online
00:00:58.660 as well.
00:00:59.800 And finally, the ABA won't have any role in judicial selections.
00:01:04.600 This is massive.
00:01:05.820 So we decided we're going to let you hear that show that we never got to put out.
00:01:10.500 So right now, here it is.
00:01:13.040 All right.
00:01:13.620 So let's dive into this big first topic, Senator.
00:01:16.060 And it deals with what you mentioned earlier, China and Chinese student visas.
00:01:21.340 There was an interesting number that was thrown out earlier in the day on TV, and I'm going
00:01:26.580 to quote it.
00:01:27.300 I'm not sure if it's exactly accurate, but it is.
00:01:30.180 And that's why I said it was I saw it earlier today.
00:01:32.820 And I want to prefix that with saying it.
00:01:35.580 But it said that there are about 500 American students that have visas in China and more than
00:01:40.720 280,000 Chinese students in the U.S.
00:01:43.060 is what was said.
00:01:43.940 Why are we doing so much for Chinese students, many of them, by the way, that come in here
00:01:49.880 that spy and rob us of our intellectual property?
00:01:53.360 And the administration, Trump administration, is basically saying we're trying to put a stop
00:01:57.640 to this.
00:01:59.220 Well, what the Trump administration has announced, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that
00:02:03.780 that they will begin aggressively revoking the visas of Chinese students in the United States.
00:02:10.640 China engages in extensive propaganda and espionage, and they're going to begin vetting
00:02:18.040 and vetting aggressively whether a particular student seeking a visa to come to this country
00:02:22.500 has ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
00:02:25.140 I think this is long overdue, and it's part of a broader effort.
00:02:29.020 They're also engaged with foreign students that are coming to the United States, examining
00:02:33.320 their social media history, examining if they have a history of radicalism.
00:02:37.000 So if you are seeking a student visa to come to America and you've been public saying, I
00:02:41.300 hate America, I want to destroy America, which sadly we've seen some of these radical students
00:02:46.240 who've said that.
00:02:47.500 And nonetheless, Joe Biden and the Democrats said, welcome to America.
00:02:50.600 We need more people who hate our nation and want to destroy it. 0.79
00:02:53.740 Well, I think the president's exactly right to stand up and say, we're not going to welcome
00:02:58.500 people to this country who are trying to undermine and destroy this country. 1.00
00:03:02.360 With respect to China, you know, the question of espionage and intellectual property theft,
00:03:09.000 that's existed since the dawn of time.
00:03:11.860 Look, when the first caveman invented the wheel, I suspect somebody stole his idea and made another
00:03:19.200 wheel.
00:03:20.080 That's part of the human condition.
00:03:21.880 What is not ever before existed is a nation state with massive economic resources like
00:03:30.020 like China, making it a state policy to engage in the theft of resources.
00:03:35.200 And so I am very I think it's exactly right that we're going to vigorously scrutinize those
00:03:41.980 students coming in to make sure that they are not operating as agents of the Chinese Communist
00:03:46.320 Party.
00:03:46.640 Now, let me say at the same time, look, part of the reason you don't get that many Americans
00:03:50.940 going to China to study is you don't have a whole lot of folks that want to go to Chinese 0.99
00:03:55.120 universities, whereas people from all over the world want to come to American universities.
00:04:00.180 And I will say if you have people who are not agents of the Communist government, we want
00:04:06.500 the best and brightest in the world coming to America.
00:04:09.060 We end up having inventions coming here because because the best and brightest students across
00:04:13.340 the country come and come and study science and engineering and they make inventions and
00:04:17.840 those inventions in turn fuel American companies and they create great jobs.
00:04:22.380 And so I think the administration is cutting the right balance here, which is saying we're
00:04:26.020 going to stop spies.
00:04:27.100 We're going to stop terrorists.
00:04:28.800 But at the same time, that doesn't mean that we want to close our doors entirely to
00:04:35.340 brilliant physicists and engineers from around the world being able to come to America and
00:04:40.920 benefiting from from the fruits of that.
00:04:42.480 You know, there's one thing that we mentioned, gosh, it was probably a little over a year
00:04:47.240 ago on this show and the podcast that we do.
00:04:49.440 I tell people this is why you should download Verdict with Ted Cruz.
00:04:52.360 We do it three days a week.
00:04:53.560 We talked back when under the Biden-Harris administration, there was even warnings coming from their administration
00:05:00.340 that the number one threat to this country was China and Chinese espionage and influence
00:05:07.100 operations. That is now a kumbaya moment with the Trump administration, where in essence,
00:05:15.060 two administrations that saw nothing eye to eye both agreed on China and what they were
00:05:20.960 trying to do in stealing intellectual property and sending an incredible number of spies
00:05:25.860 into this country.
00:05:26.780 And many of them come through our university system.
00:05:30.180 Yeah, but the Biden administration did next to nothing to stop it.
00:05:33.400 So they acknowledged it's a problem.
00:05:34.980 But at the same time, they were complicit in it.
00:05:37.640 And I'll tell you, I have for over a decade been leading the fight to stop Chinese espionage, 0.60
00:05:44.460 to stop Chinese propaganda, to stop China's malign efforts.
00:05:49.560 I think we need a comprehensive effort to take on communist China, much like we had under 0.99
00:05:54.200 Ronald Reagan, to win the Cold War against the Soviet Union.
00:05:57.820 And I'll tell you, Ben, one of the very first pieces of legislation that I authored and passed
00:06:01.860 dealt with exactly this.
00:06:03.440 And it dealt with what are called Confucius Institutes.
00:06:06.480 So Confucius Institutes were started at U.S. universities all across America, where there
00:06:12.280 were roughly 200 of them.
00:06:14.520 And they were controlled by communist China.
00:06:17.280 They were paid for by communist China, by the government, and they were used to engage 0.62
00:06:22.260 in propaganda and espionage on campus.
00:06:24.760 I authored legislation and said, if you have a Confucius Institute on campus, you will not
00:06:29.700 get funding from the federal government, from the Department of Defense.
00:06:32.420 I passed it into law.
00:06:34.180 And I'll tell you, that simple piece of legislation resulted in over 100 Confucius Institutes shutting
00:06:42.340 down at universities across the country, shutting down their espionage, shutting down their
00:06:46.220 espionage, shutting down their propaganda.
00:06:48.700 I think the Trump administration's announcement is the next step in that very important fight.
00:06:52.960 Senator, let's deal with California.
00:06:55.300 And there has been a fight since the president came in with his executive order on trying to
00:07:00.660 protect women from men being in their locker rooms, being in their sports, beating them up.
00:07:07.360 We saw it during the Olympics in boxing.
00:07:10.060 We've seen countless women who their achievements have been taken away from them on the podium 1.00
00:07:14.380 because of men claiming they're women, which is impossible in reality.
00:07:20.520 And California decided they were going to stand up to Donald Trump.
00:07:23.460 And guess what?
00:07:24.140 It didn't go very well for them.
00:07:26.100 Well, listen, we've seen the Democrat Party getting more and more radical ever since Donald
00:07:30.640 Trump took the oath of office back in 2017.
00:07:33.320 They hate Trump and they've gotten more and more extreme on a host of issues.
00:07:37.320 And one of the poster children for their extreme issues is embracing boys and girls sports, men
00:07:44.780 and women's sports. 0.99
00:07:45.600 And it is wrong.
00:07:46.620 It is unfair.
00:07:47.940 It invites injury.
00:07:49.460 And it also deprives both girls and women of athletic victories they should have and they've
00:07:56.900 earned.
00:07:58.000 There are differences between boys and girls.
00:08:00.280 There are differences between men and women.
00:08:01.900 That did not used to be a controversial proposition.
00:08:05.300 It is only in today's Looney Tune left that they can't tell the difference between men and 0.74
00:08:10.140 women. 0.81
00:08:10.800 But I got to tell you, even though in the Senate, Senate Democrats, all of them continue to defend
00:08:18.040 men and women's sports and boys and girls sports.
00:08:21.220 We're seeing the state of California.
00:08:22.780 We're seeing the Democrats beginning to retreat.
00:08:25.520 We're seeing Gavin Newsom, the governor, who's been a far left radical governor.
00:08:30.020 He's got ambitions of being president.
00:08:31.920 He's looking at looking at running in 2028.
00:08:34.800 And he's decided, OK, we're on the wrong side of an 80-20 issue.
00:08:38.260 I want to get the hell away from this.
00:08:40.740 And so California announced this is a big deal.
00:08:43.620 They're changing their policy for track and field so that if you're a biological girl 0.82
00:08:49.680 and you missed out on making it to the state championship because you were beaten by a
00:08:56.980 biological male who claims to be a transgender woman, then the girl, you will still get your 0.99
00:09:03.320 slot.
00:09:03.800 You still get invited to the state championship.
00:09:07.220 Look, that's a significant step in the right direction.
00:09:09.920 And Gavin Newsom is embracing it.
00:09:12.460 And I've got to say, this really illustrates that at least some Democrats realize, wow,
00:09:19.020 we are on the wrong side of an issue that America wants to protect girls' sports and 0.98
00:09:24.740 women's sports.
00:09:25.360 We want to protect our daughters, and we don't want to see them hurt or competing unfairly.
00:09:32.540 And so the crazy thing is, that means in track and field in California now, they may give
00:09:39.380 three gold medals, one to the boy, one to the girl, and one to the transgender athlete.
00:09:44.140 You may have gold medals all around.
00:09:46.800 But for bright blue California to make this concession, it shows that at least some Democrats
00:09:54.440 realize they are way on the wrong side of this issue.
00:09:56.820 This also, I think, is an issue that it's worth fighting for.
00:10:01.080 And I think many that are listening are saying, we don't want to give in and we don't want
00:10:05.000 to give up.
00:10:05.600 And the pendulum went so far to the radical left for so many years that this is the fight
00:10:11.120 that is worth fighting on and fighting over.
00:10:13.800 And showing California having to change girls' track and field championship rules after the
00:10:19.320 Trump threatens funding over the trans athletes is just an example of, hey, we are, many times,
00:10:24.700 the silent majority, and we need to start acting like it, especially on these types of issues.
00:10:31.820 Well, I'll tell you, Ben, this issue is a powerful issue.
00:10:35.480 And as you know, I ran for re-election in Texas last year in 2024.
00:10:40.120 It was a quarter billion dollar race.
00:10:42.580 I was Chuck Schumer's number one target.
00:10:45.200 And my campaign was the first campaign in the country last year to put real time and
00:10:52.300 energy behind this issue of, we're going to protect girls' sports from boys competing, 0.97
00:10:58.600 and we put tens of millions of dollars behind this issue.
00:11:02.180 What's fascinating is the media completely misunderstood the issue.
00:11:06.660 So one of the things that my campaign did is we did focus groups in Houston and Dallas
00:11:10.940 of undecided moderate women to understand what issues moved them, and we tested 30, 35 different
00:11:17.860 messages.
00:11:18.940 The number one issue that moved undecided moderate women in Texas was boys' and girls' sports. 0.98
00:11:25.900 And when I started campaigning on it, it was very funny.
00:11:29.440 The reporters are like, oh, Cruz is trying to appeal to the crazy right wing.
00:11:33.860 And I was just laughing at him.
00:11:35.340 I'm like, you guys are so clueless.
00:11:37.680 This is not the crazy right wing.
00:11:39.560 This is soccer moms. 1.00
00:11:40.740 This is soccer moms who love their daughters. 1.00
00:11:43.660 And we led on this issue.
00:11:46.460 And then you saw Senate races all across the country pick up the same message because they
00:11:50.960 were seeing the same data we were.
00:11:52.460 We saw President Trump lean in hard on this message.
00:11:55.540 And by the way, some of those women that you were talking to, let's be very clear, had
00:11:59.620 moved from California because how many people from California moved to Texas over the last
00:12:06.340 six years?
00:12:07.000 A lot.
00:12:07.680 We have over 1,000 people a day moving to the state of Texas.
00:12:11.780 And California is overwhelmingly the heaviest, the largest state that is sending people to
00:12:18.160 Texas.
00:12:18.860 But this issue, what's fascinating, Ben, is, you know, four years ago, this issue did not
00:12:24.980 work politically.
00:12:25.840 You saw campaigns try to raise it four years ago.
00:12:28.400 And I think people thought then that it was jumping the shark, that it didn't feel real
00:12:33.480 four years ago.
00:12:34.340 I think people said, oh, come on, that's not a real threat.
00:12:37.680 Well, you know what?
00:12:38.700 We've now seen Leah Thomas, the swimmer who is a biological man and looks like Michael
00:12:45.400 friggin Phelps, who we've also seen, and I think this was really a seminal moment in
00:12:53.460 the Olympics, the two dudes competing in women's boxing and beating the hell out of women. 0.67
00:12:59.400 And I think a whole lot of people said, wait, this is not theoretical.
00:13:02.720 This is happening over and over and over again.
00:13:05.460 Enough is enough.
00:13:07.840 And I think this is another milestone, that California is retreating on this issue, shows
00:13:14.720 that truth and sanity are winning.
00:13:18.440 Yeah.
00:13:19.060 And now the question becomes, how much are they going to be able to fight back through
00:13:22.900 the court system?
00:13:23.740 And is this going to be something that's going to be, unfortunately, an issue for probably
00:13:27.160 years to come?
00:13:27.860 Well, look, we'll see.
00:13:29.920 And to be honest, California hasn't conceded altogether.
00:13:32.660 They're still having biological males compete against women, which is unfair.
00:13:37.480 It invites injury.
00:13:39.040 You know, if you're playing volleyball, we've seen women who have a biological man spike the 1.00
00:13:44.100 ball into their head and they get injured.
00:13:45.820 I mean, it is.
00:13:47.280 California is still Looney Tunes.
00:13:49.120 But the fact that even the lefty government of California is saying, we've gone too far,
00:13:56.000 that's a very positive sign.
00:13:58.780 Canadian women are looking for more. 1.00
00:14:01.020 More out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world around them.
00:14:05.120 And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.
00:14:08.880 I'm Jennifer Stewart.
00:14:10.060 And I'm Catherine Clark.
00:14:11.280 And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women.
00:14:14.660 entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of
00:14:19.920 their journey.
00:14:20.780 So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.
00:14:24.020 Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
00:14:30.480 Senator, let's talk about this other incredible moment.
00:14:34.060 Donald Trump signed the Take It Down Act into law.
00:14:36.420 It's something that you championed.
00:14:38.400 And remind people what this law is intent and why it is such an important piece of legislation
00:14:43.820 to protect not only young people and minors, but really anyone from just evil and hateful
00:14:50.440 revenge from an ex.
00:14:52.080 Well, this is legislation that I authored, that President Trump signed into law this week.
00:14:57.880 Actually, he signed it into law in the Rose Garden, at a big ceremony in the Rose Garden.
00:15:01.500 I've done a lot of bill signing ceremonies in the Oval Office.
00:15:05.220 This is the first time I've been in the Rose Garden because you had victim groups and victim
00:15:09.600 advocates and people who have been victims of non-consensual explicit imagery.
00:15:14.280 Now, what is that?
00:15:15.560 That's really two different things.
00:15:17.460 Number one, so-called revenge porn.
00:15:19.860 So if you have a boyfriend and girlfriend and they're in a relationship and they take
00:15:23.680 explicit pictures or videos, and then they have a breakup, and one or the other is mad,
00:15:29.900 and they say, okay, I'm going to stick it to you.
00:15:31.640 I'm going to put this out for the whole world to see.
00:15:33.540 And it is an utterly grotesque violation of privacy.
00:15:38.060 Nobody has the right to do that to somebody else, and it's something we're seeing happening
00:15:42.520 more and more often.
00:15:44.060 There's a second manifestation that is new, and it has to deal with technology, which is
00:15:49.320 more and more we are seeing people use AI, artificial intelligence, to create deep fakes,
00:15:55.180 and deep fakes where they appear to be either a picture or a video of a real person, but it's
00:16:01.860 utterly fake, and so they make a naked or explicit image of someone and put it out.
00:16:06.820 And the incidence of deep fakes last year increased 3,000%, and over 90% of the victims of deep
00:16:16.780 fake explicit imagery are women or teenage girls. 0.79
00:16:20.880 And so it is growing massively.
00:16:24.080 And so the Take It Down Act is legislation that I introduced that makes it a crime, a federal
00:16:28.700 felony, to post non-consensual intimate images, either real pictures or deep fakes.
00:16:35.220 And secondly, it puts a federal statutory obligation on tech platforms to take the pictures down,
00:16:42.820 to take the videos down, because the platforms have been horrible responding to victims.
00:16:47.660 They ignore victims.
00:16:49.120 They leave the images up.
00:16:50.560 And so the victim ends up being victimized over and over and over again by the images
00:16:55.680 staying out there.
00:16:57.240 And so the Take It Down Act puts a legal obligation that when the victim notifies them,
00:17:02.200 hey, that's me, that's an explicit image of me, and you don't have my consent to put it
00:17:06.980 up, they have to take it down.
00:17:08.920 This legislation I introduced with Amy Klobuchar, Democrat from Minnesota, and we passed it through
00:17:15.780 the Senate.
00:17:16.280 We passed it unanimously.
00:17:17.260 It was 100 to nothing.
00:17:17.980 And then the House took it up and passed it with an overwhelming bipartisan majority, and
00:17:24.040 President Trump signed it into law.
00:17:26.380 And give a listen to what President Trump said this week in the Rose Garden as he signed the
00:17:30.500 Take It Down Act into law.
00:17:31.900 Today it's my honor to officially sign the Take It Down Act into law.
00:17:36.180 It's a big thing, very important, so horrible what takes place.
00:17:40.020 This would be the first ever federal law to combat the distribution of explicit, imaginary,
00:17:47.020 posted without subjects' consent.
00:17:50.180 They take horrible pictures, and I guess sometimes even make up the pictures, and they post it
00:17:55.700 without consent or anything else.
00:17:57.820 And very importantly, this includes for forgeries generated by artificial intelligence known as
00:18:04.080 deep fakes.
00:18:04.960 We've all heard about deep fakes.
00:18:06.160 I have them all the time, but nobody does anything.
00:18:08.420 I ask Pam, can you help me, Pam?
00:18:10.760 She says, no, I'm too busy.
00:18:12.160 Too busy doing other things.
00:18:13.580 Don't worry, you'll survive.
00:18:15.020 But a lot of people don't survive.
00:18:17.060 That's true, and so horrible.
00:18:19.240 With the rise of AI image generation, countless women have been harassed with deep fakes and 0.99
00:18:24.240 other explicit images distributed against their will.
00:18:28.220 This is the wrong, and it's just so horribly wrong.
00:18:32.120 And it's a very abusive situation, like in some cases people have never seen before.
00:18:38.440 And today we're making it totally illegal.
00:18:41.640 Senator, one of the things I just I love about this legislation is the fact that not only is
00:18:46.240 it bipartisan, but you had the First Lady who really got involved in this as well. 1.00
00:18:50.260 It was important to her, and that made it, I think, even easier to bridge the gap.
00:18:55.300 Well, we did.
00:18:56.220 The First Lady became very active in pushing this bill. 0.99
00:19:00.760 She reached out to me and said she wanted to help get it over the finish line.
00:19:05.160 So last year, we passed it out of the Senate 100 to nothing, and the House failed to take
00:19:10.360 it up last year.
00:19:11.120 So it did not pass last year.
00:19:13.300 And so we got to this year, to the new Congress.
00:19:15.480 I passed it through the Senate again 100 to nothing, and the real battle was to get it
00:19:21.660 to rise up the priority list of House leadership.
00:19:24.400 And so when the First Lady called my office and said she wanted to help, what I did is
00:19:29.600 I invited her to come to Capitol Hill for a roundtable where she could hear from the victims.
00:19:36.160 And also at that roundtable was the Speaker of the House and Steve Scalise, the majority
00:19:42.980 leader, and Brett Guthrie, who's the committee chairman in the House.
00:19:46.800 And when the First Lady asked them, will you please pass this into law, they committed to
00:19:53.220 her they would.
00:19:54.160 And this was the day before the State of the Union address.
00:19:56.540 And you may remember at the State of the Union address, Melania was sitting with a teenage
00:20:02.120 girl from Texas, Elliston Berry, and President Trump told her story in the State of the Union
00:20:07.480 and called on Congress to pass this bill.
00:20:09.800 And I'll tell you, it's actually, it's a fascinating story of how this bill came to pass because
00:20:15.860 it originates with one teenage girl in Texas, Elliston Berry.
00:20:21.720 She's from North Texas, from Aledo, Texas.
00:20:23.800 And a year ago, she was 14, and she was in ninth grade.
00:20:28.320 And she woke up one morning, and her phone was blowing up with texts from her friends
00:20:32.720 because a classmate of hers had taken a perfectly innocent picture of her from social media and
00:20:41.260 had used an app online that he had found to create a deep fake and then sent what appeared
00:20:48.300 to be naked pictures of Elliston to all of her ninth grade classmates.
00:20:51.940 And so she was in tears.
00:20:54.020 Listen, it is hard to be a teenager.
00:20:55.820 I'm the father of two teenage girls.
00:20:57.760 I know the pressure that is on teenage girls.
00:21:00.220 It's much harder to be a teenager today than when you and I were teenagers, Ben.
00:21:04.600 And this was just horrific.
00:21:07.500 Well, what happened is her mom, Anna, look, Elliston and Anna are constituents.
00:21:13.320 They're Texans.
00:21:13.900 So Anna picked up the phone and called my office and said, hey, look, you're my senator.
00:21:20.040 Can you help my daughter?
00:21:21.960 And my staff, to their credit, they elevated this to me, and they told me what had happened
00:21:26.580 to Elliston.
00:21:27.540 And this is happening more and more all over the country.
00:21:30.700 And so I said, look, let's draft legislation to fix this, to address the problem.
00:21:36.160 And so we did.
00:21:37.040 And it was because of Elliston that we drafted it.
00:21:40.560 But as I said, it's happening all over the country.
00:21:43.600 Well, Elliston came to D.C. the day we announced the bill last year for the press conference.
00:21:50.280 And I sat down and met with Elliston.
00:21:52.000 I met with her mom in my office.
00:21:54.040 And in the course of the meeting, I asked, I said, hey, what happened to the pictures?
00:21:58.560 And her mom said, it's the most frustrating thing in the world.
00:22:01.200 She said, this happened nine months ago.
00:22:02.780 She said, I had been calling and emailing Snapchat over and over and over again.
00:22:08.440 They just stonewall us. 1.00
00:22:09.980 We get no response.
00:22:11.820 Ben, I turned to my staff.
00:22:12.980 I said, I want you to get the CEO of Snapchat on the phone today.
00:22:17.320 I want those pictures down today.
00:22:21.320 They pulled them down within two hours.
00:22:23.980 Now, it should not take a sitting senator making a phone call to get those pictures taken down.
00:22:29.440 And now, as a result of the legislation Trump has signed, every victim has a statutory right to insist that it be taken down as a matter of law automatically.
00:22:39.600 Yeah.
00:22:39.800 In fact, Ellison Berry got to go on Fox News Channel with our good friend Kayleigh McEnany and talk about this moment.
00:22:46.860 And here's what she had to say.
00:22:47.960 Take a listen.
00:22:49.100 But you didn't stop.
00:22:50.580 You decided to go and talk to your local congressman.
00:22:53.700 You get connected with a senator, and then you manage, there you are, standing behind the president of the United States, changing the laws for other young women like you.
00:23:00.960 Did you ever think this day would come?
00:23:03.440 I never would have thought that this could ever be my reality.
00:23:07.620 My mom, she's really an amazing person, and she's the one that's been pushing for this, and she's the one that's encouraged me.
00:23:13.660 So I wouldn't be able to do this without her help and her support, and she really just has encouraged me to the point where I feel encouraged about this.
00:23:23.080 So having the opportunity to speak about this and to bring awareness really just means so much, especially it's so much growth seeing how scared I was at first and seeing how confident I am able in this situation.
00:23:36.400 Well, other young women now have recourse. 1.00
00:23:38.540 Thanks to you.
00:23:39.360 Elliston Berry, so impressive.
00:23:40.860 Thank you.
00:23:41.680 I love it.
00:23:42.260 It's finally a happy ending to a really hard and sad subject.
00:23:47.720 Well, and Ben, at the signing ceremony, I was able to introduce Elliston to the president.
00:23:52.500 I introduced also Francesca Mani, who's another 15-year-old girl who was in New Jersey, and the exact same thing happened to her as happened to Elliston.
00:24:01.340 And I also introduced Brandon Guffey.
00:24:04.040 Brandon Guffey is a state rep from South Carolina, and tragically, his oldest son got what we thought was a direct message.
00:24:12.260 He's from a cute girl, and she convinced him to send naked pictures to her.
00:24:16.980 Well, it turned out it was not a cute girl.
00:24:20.400 It was a con man.
00:24:21.160 And the con man began extorting him and threatening, I'm going to send these naked pictures to your friends and family.
00:24:28.860 Well, Brandon's son, Gavin, killed himself.
00:24:31.400 And we are seeing suicides across the country.
00:24:34.180 So I introduced Brandon and his family, the president, too.
00:24:36.900 And this law is a victory for everyone that is a target of this kind of exploitation.
00:24:42.400 All right, Senator, so let's dive into this other issue that really is an interesting one.
00:24:48.900 You've got a lot to say about the Trump Justice Department telling the American Bar Association that it will no longer comply with ratings for judicial nominees.
00:25:00.000 Now, explain the politics behind this.
00:25:03.360 The ABA has had a lot of power, and they're basically now saying, we're not going to let you guys have that power because there's been a lot of bias coming out of the American Bar Association.
00:25:13.860 Well, the American Bar Association, it's a national organization of lawyers, and it is a left-wing advocacy group.
00:25:22.000 It is not fair.
00:25:22.940 It is not impartial.
00:25:24.100 It is a radical left organization, and the ABA has had a formal role in judicial selection for 75 years.
00:25:33.880 It started rating judicial nominees in 1953, and until 2001, the ABA actually had a formal role evaluating judicial nominees before they were nominated.
00:25:48.140 So a president, a department of justice and administration would share with the ABA, hey, we're thinking of nominating Ben Ferguson to be a federal judge.
00:25:57.880 And they'd go and research and interview former clients, and at some point people would say, wait, Ben's not even a lawyer.
00:26:05.640 How the hell is he going to be a judge like he probably should go to law school first?
00:26:09.360 And by the way, that point is not crazy, but they engaged that they would do a formal role, and they would rate the qualifications of judicial nominees.
00:26:22.780 Now, here's the problem.
00:26:23.880 For decades, the ABA's qualification measures were wildly biased.
00:26:31.580 So, for example, Robert Bork.
00:26:33.740 Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan nominated Robert Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987.
00:26:39.800 Robert Bork was by any measure one of the most qualified federal judicial nominees in the history of this country.
00:26:45.700 Robert Bork had been the Solicitor General of the United States, the Chief Lawyer for the United States in front of the Supreme Court of the United States.
00:26:53.560 Robert Bork had been one of the most renowned and respected law professors for decades.
00:26:59.500 Robert Bork had been a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and so a remarkable career.
00:27:08.900 And yet the ABA, when they evaluated Robert Bork, they concluded he was, quote, not qualified to be a judge.
00:27:15.080 They also concluded the same thing for Frank Easterbrook.
00:27:18.120 Again, brilliant, brilliant judge, brilliant professor, one of the greatest judges to have ever served on the Court of Appeals, Frank Easterbrook.
00:27:25.780 The ABA concluded he was not qualified.
00:27:28.620 Also, Edith Jones.
00:27:30.420 Edith Jones is a judge on the Fifth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals down in Texas. 1.00
00:27:35.200 I know Judge Jones well.
00:27:36.480 She's a phenomenal jurist, one of the best and most conservative judges in the entire country.
00:27:43.120 The ABA rated her not qualified.
00:27:45.860 Well, the breaking news is this week the Trump Justice Department announced the ABA will no longer have a role in judicial selection.
00:27:54.900 They will no longer have a role in vetting.
00:27:56.760 They're out.
00:27:57.840 And the Department of Justice said, you know what, they can chime in like any other left-wing advocacy group, but they don't have a role in this process.
00:28:05.140 This is going to have, I think, a big impact on the quality.
00:28:10.800 Pam Bondi informing the ABA that they'll no longer enjoy the special access to judicial nominees.
00:28:16.260 And the left, by the way, when that news came out, they totally freaked out.
00:28:21.100 And I think that also shows just how much they were depending on the ABA to get rid of good candidates that were maybe more conservative.
00:28:28.520 Yeah, and so Pam Bondi sent a letter to the president of the ABA, and she said, quote,
00:28:35.840 While the ABA is free to comment on judicial nominations along with other activist organizations,
00:28:41.100 there is no justification for treating the ABA differently from such other activist organizations,
00:28:46.520 and the Department of Justice will not do so.
00:28:50.060 And so previously, the Office of Legal Policy, which is the office within the Department of Justice that handles judicial selections,
00:28:59.460 they changed – they had previously directed judicial nominees to provide a waiver to the ABA to let the ABA access non-public information, including bar records.
00:29:12.140 And so no longer is the Department of Justice going to tell judicial nominees, give the ABA special access.
00:29:18.160 As that is over, and moreover, Pam Bondi says, quote,
00:29:23.800 Nominees will also not respond to questionnaires prepared by the ABA and will not sit for interviews with the ABA.
00:29:30.740 In other words, you can be like every other whack job organization on the left, but you're not going to have any special access whatsoever.
00:29:39.460 This is something I've called for a long time.
00:29:42.300 I have for years, for more than a decade, advocated that the ABA is wildly biased, and it should not have a special role in the process,
00:29:51.580 and I want to commend President Trump and Pam Bondi.
00:29:54.200 It's the right thing to do.
00:29:55.740 Senator, we hear a lot about bias and bias against conservatives, but my other question is, were they also biased in advocating for liberals?
00:30:04.520 Absolutely. They are a hard-left advocacy organization masquerading as a non-partisan professional organization.
00:30:13.760 And Joe Biden, over the last four years, nominated over and over again radicals and zealots, many of whom were wildly unqualified.
00:30:21.840 And the ABA was more than happy to stamp them with a rating of qualified.
00:30:26.180 And one example is Charnel Bajelkingren, who was wildly unqualified, and yet the ABA happily deemed her qualified.
00:30:37.420 And rather than me lay out how bad she was, I want you to listen to this cross-examination from my colleague John Kennedy to this judicial nominee in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
00:30:47.520 Here, give a listen.
00:30:48.820 Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and congratulations to all of you.
00:30:53.420 Judge, on the far end, tell me what Article 5 of the Constitution does.
00:31:04.940 Article 5 is not coming to mind at the moment.
00:31:08.340 Okay. How about Article 2?
00:31:10.600 Neither is Article 2.
00:31:12.620 Okay. Do you know what purposivism is?
00:31:15.800 In my 12 years as an assistant attorney general and my nine years serving as a judge, I was not faced with that precise question.
00:31:27.800 We are the highest trial court in Washington State, so I'm frequently faced with issues that I'm not familiar with,
00:31:35.680 and I thoroughly review the law, research, and apply the law to the facts presented to me.
00:31:41.740 Well, you're going to be faced with it if you're confirmed.
00:31:45.700 I can assure you of that.
00:31:51.560 He was dumbfounded at the end there.
00:31:53.580 Like, I can't believe you don't know this.
00:31:55.880 Well, and let me underscore how simple the first two questions are that he asked.
00:32:01.720 So, the Constitution has seven articles.
00:32:05.720 It's not a very long document.
00:32:08.080 Article 5 is the article that lays out the process for amending the Constitution.
00:32:13.300 It's fairly basic.
00:32:15.120 That was his opening question.
00:32:16.340 She had no idea what Article 5 was.
00:32:18.820 Article 2 is even more fundamental.
00:32:20.960 So, the first three articles of the Constitution, Article 1 creates the Congress,
00:32:25.260 Article 2 creates the President and the Executive Branch,
00:32:28.400 and Article 3 creates the Federal Judiciary.
00:32:30.380 To not know what Article 2 is, is stunning.
00:32:34.600 To give you a sense, you will flunk constitutional law
00:32:37.900 and not graduate law school if you don't know what Article 2 is.
00:32:41.920 She was being nominated to be what is called an Article 3 judge.
00:32:47.440 I assume she had no idea what Article 3 was.
00:32:50.540 And nevertheless, the ABA said she's qualified to be an Article 3 judge,
00:32:54.800 even though she has no idea what it is.
00:32:56.680 Because I'm very glad the ABA no longer has a role in making those determinations.
00:33:01.360 As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
00:33:07.060 Don't forget to download my podcast, and you can listen to my podcast every other day
00:33:10.660 you're not listening to Verdict, or each day when you listen to Verdict afterwards.
00:33:14.080 I'd love to have you as a listener to, again, the Ben Ferguson podcast.
00:33:17.820 And we will see you back here on Monday morning.
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