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


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Summary


Transcript

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.
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.
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
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,
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
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
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
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.
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
00:08:10.140 women.
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
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
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
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,
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.
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.
00:11:40.740 This is soccer moms who love their daughters.
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.
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
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.
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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.
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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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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