Welcome it a verdict it Ted Cruz weekend Review. Ben Ferguson here, and these are the big stories that you may have missed that we talked about this past week. Number one, it's a political issue and the question now is how does it move forward as Democrats move to take Donald Trump off the ballot, taking away the rights of the citizens of Maine and Colorado from choosing who they want to be president. So how do we move forward with this? And what will the Supreme Court do?
We dive into that. Also, Al Sharpton comes to protect and defend Harvard's president, who is no kind of step down but still making over a million dollars a year from the university.
How did that happen?
We'll give you the real details about this fake firing at Harvard. And finally, a big win for the country when it comes to security at the southern border and commerce with a bipartisan piece of legislation that center Ted Cruz let on. It is a weekend review and it starts right now. All right, So let's move into the politics and the timing of this year. We're very close now to getting into the primaries. We're talking about Iowa,
New Hampshire and South Carolina Center. You know this map and this calendar, and how important it is when you ran for president. And this could linger on with this over Donald Trump's head, with state after state trying to kick him off the ballot. How long could we have to wait until the Supreme Court gets involved? And then how long would we have to wait for the ruling for this to come down? Are we weeks or months? How long could this? How does this play out the
Supreme Court? Well, the appeal is already pending at the Supreme Court. So last week, last Wednesday, the Colorado Republican Party asked the Supreme Court to overturn the Colorado Supreme Court's decision so that the initial appeal papers have been filed. In the interim, Trump's name is on the ballot and in Colorado, and that was under the terms of the Colorado Supreme Court decision, which is they stayed their own decision pending appeal. They recognized the massive consequences of it.
So the primary in Colorado is on March fifth, and so right now Trump's name is on the March fifth ballot. With the appeal filed, the Court could act exceptionally quickly the Court could act in a matter of days or weeks, and there are times for emergency appeals that the court schedules are very expedited, briefing schedule, schedules, oral arguments, and issued a decision.
I hope they do that. Look, there's a chance they take their time and let it play out because the Colorado Supreme Court decision is stayed, and so they could say, well, look, he's going to be on the ballot, so there's no urgency or exigency. And by the way, in Maine, there's a good chance the main courts overturn the main Secretary of State's decision. If that happens, then there is no immediate threat to the voters being denied the ability to
elect the candidate of their choice. I hope the Court doesn't slow down or doesn't take their time doing it. I hope they resolve this quickly. I think it's important to have clarity nationally. But the court has the ability. There are times where it has briefed and heard argument and issued decisions within a matter of days, so it has the ability to move very quickly. During Bush versus Gore, during those thirty six days when we had multiple recounts in Florida, as your recall, I was part of the
legal team that was litigating Bush versus Gore. I was down in Tallahassee representing George W. Bush. In those thirty six days, we went to the US Supreme Court twice and within that period, briefed out the case, had oral argument, and had decisions two different times from the US Supreme Court within those thirty six days. So when the court
wants to, it can move exceptionally fast. I would note also that between the two look in terms of the general election, the odds are not great that Colorado is going to be a swing state. Joe Biden won Colorado by about fourteen points last time, and so it's Colorado is not anticipated to be a swing state in November. Maine, interestingly enough, is so Maine has an unusual way of
allocating its electoral votes. Maine has a total of four electoral votes, and two of them go to the winner of the state, and then one goes to the winner of one congressional district and another goes to the winner of another congressional district. So Maine has two congressional districts. What's interesting about that is even though Maine has been a reliably Democrat state in presidential elections for some time, one of the two congressional districts in Maine quite regularly
will vote for Republicans. And so Trump one one electoral vote out of Maine. He added one of the districts he won, the other three he lost, and that could easily happen again. And listen, if this election was quite close, it could literally come down to that single electoral vote in Maine deciding the outcome. And so the decision in Maine is quite consequential. It's also consequential going forward. Do other states, in particular swing states, make the same determination.
Do you see bigger states a Pennsylvania, a Michigana, Wisconsin. Do you see states like that that are very much in play that very much could go either way? Do you see them engage and try to follow this pattern? And if these left wing partisans were to succeed in removing Trump from the ballot, I think the risk would be very high that you would see other bigger and more consequential swing states following that pattern. Now, I don't
think that's going to hapen. And because they're not going to succeed and By the way, there's an obvious escalation at some point. If the Left weaponizes the legal system to such an extent that they try to remove the Republican nominee from the general election ballot, you are likely to see red states reciprocate and try to remove the
Democrat nominee from the ballot. That this can be a mutually assured destruction, which is one of the reasons I don't think there's any chance the Supreme Court allows this Colorado decision to go into effect because it undermines the ability of the voters to choose who they want as president, and that is as foundational to democracy in our country as anything there is.
Finally, on this, there's the political ramifications of this. There's a lot of conservative voters now that are very upset. I've heard from more people that are not necessarily big fans of Donald Trump that are now, like, the hell with this, I'm gonna stand behind Donald Trump because this
is just so egregious. Do you think the Democrats over played their hand here politically and the backfire could be catastrophic to them, Or by the time we get to election day, will a lot of this just be forgotten?
Well, I think politically this benefits Trump in the primary. Rewind go back to our early podcasts last year when the first Trump indictment, when the Alvin Bragg indictment came down, You and I went on air, and right after that indictment, I went on this podcast and I told the podcast viewers, I said, Donald Trump will go up ten points in the polls as a result of this. That was a
prediction I made immediately after the indictment came down. A week later, Donald Trump was up ten points in the polls, and by the way, he's never come down since. If you look at a year ago, the poll numbers had a much more competitive race between Trump and Des Santas a year ago, and then the first indictment came, and then the second, and then the third, and then the fourth, and Trump's numbers went up and up and up, and
everyone else's numbers went down. And I think one of the effects is in a Republican primary, people rallied around Trump. Look when the Colorado Supreme Court decision came down, all of Trump's opponents immediately denounced it, which you had to do it. It was a lawless abuse of power. I also think the Democrats are quite fond of that. Every single Democrat in elected office wants Trump to be the nominee.
But at the same time, so they are happy with helping Trump in the primary because that's the outcome they want in the general. Assuming this Colorado decision is overturned, assuming the main decision is overturned, it could backfire. You could see some independent swing voters get ticked off. In a state like Maine that has independence, that might have some some lasting legacy, in a state like Colorado that has some independence that might have some impact as well.
I have not seen any evidence that this abuse of power is hurting Democrats in a general election. It may be the case, but one of the challenges is that the media is so utterly corrupt that they're by and large not reporting on it. But I would I would
tell listeners a verdict. Anytime you're you're talking with leftists who are arguing and they're trotting out language like we must save democracy, you know, it's a great opportunity to say, oh, save democracy, you mean like Colorado, like Maine, like like preventing the voters from actually voting for the candidate they want to vote for. Explain to me how exactly it's saving democracy to stop the voters from voting for the
candidate they want to vote for. And I don't know of a leftist who can argue against that other than to just jabber, you know, Trump is evil, Trump is evil. Trump is evil, rather than actually engage in reason and logic and so so I'm not convinced this abuse of power will have a massive ish impact on turnout in November, but I do think it helps Trump in the primaries.
Now, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation, you can go back and listen to the full podcast from earlier this week. Now onto story number two and al Sharpton coming out. As you know, Barack Obama, as you mentioned earlier, behind the scenes, was working hard to protect her. Sharpton condemned Gay's critics as racists for questioning the integrity of a black woman, a woman that no
pun intended in black and white. Her words show that she lifted other people's words and used them as her own, saying this quote, present Day's resignation is about more than a person or a single incident.
And he's right. It wasn't a single incident.
It's now we've been told more than fifty instance of plagiarism. He goes on to say, this is an attack on every black woman in this country who puts a crack in the glass ceiling. Is it really that sender or is it just the fact that she cheated? And even they at Harvard couldn't get over that.
Well, it was ultimately this was hurting Harvard. Harvard was becoming a laughing stock when when and look, if you look at at at her academic record, she had published very little for a professor. You expect the president of Harvard to be a serious scholar, to be a world class scholar, and and clotting Gay's entire career, what was built pushing the ideology of DEI was she was an
African American studies professor. She had published relatively little. What she did publish, there now serious questions about the academic integrity of it. And and there is no person on planet Earth what it stands for.
Again, just because there's maybe people that are new, yes, don't exactly know what DEI stands for.
And this is something that the woke left is obsessed with.
Diversity, equity, and conclusion, and it is the premise of their anti racism. It is the premise of critical race theory. It is the premise of the cultural Marxist on the left, who advocate that we should affirmatively discriminate and discriminate against so called oppressors and in favor of so called victims. It's why the radical left is just fine with Jewish people being demonized, being threatened, because to the cultural Marxist
Jewish people are oppressors. It's why cultural Marxists are okay with whatever Hamas terrorists do because they are the victims and that same reasoning. Look, I'll give you an example Ibram X Kendy, who's one of the godfathers of critical race theory, who has pushed this so called anti racism, which we've talked about at length in this podcast. It has an Orwellian name because what he means by anti racism is aggressively just discriminating against the so called oppressors
on behalf of the so called victims. Here's what he had to say about Claudine Gay resigning.
Quote.
Racist mobs won't stop until they topple all black people from positions of power and influence who are not reinforcing the structure of racism. What these racist mobs are doing should be obvious to any reporter who cares about truth or justice as opposed to conflicts and clicks. That is going to be their talking point. If you dare stand against their radical ideology, you are by definition a racist. And and and they that they still see nothing that she did or said that was wrong.
I want to I want to play for everybody to remind them of exactly where all this started and to put it back into context of the demise of this Harvard president. Is not for what she said that was anti Israel, anti Semitic. It was the plagiarism. And do not be duped by the mainstream media acting like she's being held accountable for these words. These words that she said before Congress to representive Stephanic are words that Harvard
was willing to stand by her no matter what. Here is that flashback to December the fifth, and what was said.
We're student calling for the mass murder of African Americans is not protected free speech at Harvard. Correct our commitment. It's a yes or no question. Is that corrected? Is that okay for students to call for the mass murder of African Americans? At Harvard. Is that protected free speech our commitment to free school. It's a yes or no question. Let me ask you this. You are president of Harvard, so I assume you're familiar with the term into fada.
Correct. I've heard that term, yes.
And you understand that the use of the term into fada in the context of the Israeli Arab conflict is indeed call for violent arm resistance against the state of Israel, including violence against civilians and the genocide of Jews.
Are you aware of.
That that type of hateful speech is personally abhorrent to me?
And there have been multiple marches at Harvard with students chanting, quote there is only one solution into fada, revolution and quote globalize the intofada.
Is that correct?
I've heard that thoughtless, reckless and hateful language on our campus.
Yes, So, based upon your testimony, you understand that this call for intefada is to commit genocide against the Jewish people in Israel and globally.
Correct.
I will say again that type of hateful speech is personally abhorrent to me.
Do you believe that type of hateful speech is contrary to Harvard's code of conduct or is it allowed at Harvard, it is.
At odds with the values of Harvard.
Say that it is against the code of conduct at Harvard.
We embrace a commitment to free expression, even of views that are objectionable, offensive, hateful. It's when that speech crosses into conduct that violates our policies against bullying?
Does that speech not cost that barrier? Does that speech not call for the genocide of Jews and the elimination of Israel? When you testify that you understand that is the definition of intofada? Is that speech according to the code of conduct or not.
We embrace a commitment to free expression and give a wide berth to free expression, even of views that are objectionable.
You and I both know that's not the case.
You are aware that Harvard ranked dead last when it came to free speech?
Are you not aware of that report?
As I observed earlier, I reject that characterization.
It's the data shows it's true.
And isn't it true that Harvard previously rescinded multiple offers of admissions for applicants and accepted freshmen for sharing offensive memes, racist statements, sometimes as young as sixteen years old. Did Harvard not rescind those offers?
Of admission that long predates my time as present.
But you understand that Harvard made that decision to resin those offers of admission.
I have no reason to contradict the facts as you present them, correct, because it's a fact.
You're also aware that a Winthrop House faculty dean was let go over who he chose to legally represent. Correct, that was while you were dean. That is an incorrect characterization. Avoid transfer. What's the characterization?
I'm not going to get into details about a personnel matter.
Well, let me ask you this, Will admissions offers be rescinded or any disciplinary action be taken against students or applicants who say from the river to the sea or into Fada advocating for the murder of Jews?
As I've said, that type of hateful, reckless, offensive space each is personally abhorrent to.
Me, and today that no action will be taken. What action will be taken?
When speech crosses into conduct that violates our policies, including policies against bullying, harassment, or intimidation. We take action, and we have robust disciplinary processes that allow us to hold individuals accountable.
What action has been taken against students who are harassing and calling for the genocide of Jews on Harvard's campus.
I can assure you we have robust what actions have been taken. I'm not asking estions underway.
I'm asking what actions have been taken against and students.
Given students' rights to privacy and our obligations under FURPA, I will not say more about any specific cases other than to reiterate that processes are ongoing.
Do you know what the number one hate crime in America is?
I know that over the last couple of month months there has been an alarming rise of anti Semitism, which I understand is the critical topic that we are here to discuss.
That's correct, It is anti Jewish hate crimes, and Harvard ranks the lowest when it comes to protecting Jewish students. This is why I've called for your resignation and your testimony today. Not being able to answer with moral clarity speaks volumes.
I yield back, Senator, you hear that.
And the part that I think galls me the most is the fact that she's still employed. She's still going to be paid about a million dollars a year.
She's just had a title change, that's.
It well, and Harvard doesn't intend to change its conduct. They certainly have made no expression that they intend to
do differently. That they were forced after over a billion dollars in commitments to contributions were called out, after academically their president became a laughing stock, after you began to have students who I would note had to anonymously call for her to resign because they were afraid of retaliation, after you had ed editorials in the New York Times and the Washington Post, bastions of the left, both calling not from the papers but from people submitting op eds
calling for her resignation. After all of that, it became intolerable. And yet they dug in, and they dug in and they dug in. And it's really quite ironic. You look at her testimony, and she is defending free speech. And it would be one thing if she was saying, you know, Harvard's a place where anyone can say anything, and we protect free speech for everyone. That's laughably false. They protect
free speech for anti semites and leftists. And at the same time, so there's an organization called Fire and Fire is actively involved in fighting to defend free speech and examining censorship and suppression of free speech on campus, and they do an elaborate survey every year at an analysis of universities across the country. So Harvard is consistently ranked one of the worst in the country. In twenty twenty, Harvard ranked number forty six out of fifty five schools in
terms of protecting free speech. In twenty twenty one, it ranked one hundred and thirty out of one hundred and fifty four schools. In twenty twenty two, it ranked one hundred and seventy out of two hundred and three schools, and this past year, in two thousand and three, Harvard was dead last, and out of a possible score from zero to one hundred, Harvard's score was actually a negative ten point six ' nine, so it was dead last.
It was six standard deviations below the average and more than two standard deviations below the second to last school in the rankings, and the second to last school was the University of Pennsylvania, pen And so when she is is saying, well, anti semites are allowed and apparently encouraged because of free speech, that is a policy that is applied very selectively, and Harvard's expressed no willingness, no desire to correct that, and I think it is imperative that
this become a moment to try to address and try to fix the profound ideological corruption. By the way, if you look at the Harvard Corporation Board, every single one of its board members is a hardcore partisan, ideological democrat. There is no one right of center allowed anywhere near that board. And you see it in the policies why they universally circled the wagons around Claudine Gay and it was only when dragged, kicking and screaming that they allowed her to resign as before.
If you want to hear the rest of this conversation on this topic, you can go back and down the podcast from earlier this week to hear the entire thing. I want to get back to the big story number three of the week you may have missed. I want to move to something else that is obviously important and significant. We've talked about it, and it's a big win on the border to secure the enactment of a streamline permitting process for new and expanded bridges across the Rio Grand
in Brownsville, Laredo and Eagle Pass, Texas. It is something that you were a part of and led on it's now actually become law. You were down in Laredo, and I want to play for people part of what you had to say at this very, very big moment.
We're here today to celebrate bipartisan legislation that was signed in the law in December of last year that will expedite building new bridges and expanding bridges between Texas and Mexico. We're here at the World Trade Bridge, the largest land port in the United States. Every year, Texas and Mexico have roughly eight hundred billion in trade and commerce that comes across this border. That's jobs in Texas, that's jobs in Mexico. That's the lifeblood of South Texas.
This is obviously significant, not just from the standpoint of security that you talked about and orderly commerce coming across the border in a safer manner, but it's also a really big deal from the fact that, as you mentioned, it was bipartisan talk about how significant this is going to be for this country and for Texas well.
The audio you just played was from a press conference that I did in Laredo yesterday morning, and it was right at the World Trade Bridge, right on the southern border, and I did that alongside Henry Quayar, the Democrat congressman who represents Laredo, and Henry and I worked hand in
hand in this and it was a huge victory. The Texas Business Association that was down there with us and there was a large group of people celebrating this legislative victory that we had just two weeks ago described the legislation that I introduced and passed as the biggest positive step for jobs and commerce in Texas since the US Mexico Canada agreement was negotiated. It is literally billions of dollars of additional trade in commerce and tens of thousands
of jobs and real quickly what happened. So, there are four bridge projects that have been proposed in South Texas to in Laredo, one in Brownsville won an eagle pass, and the Biden administration had put bureaucratic barriers they were delaying every one of these bridge projects. The World Trade Bridge that I was at yesterday morning, that bridge right now is eight lanes. They have proposed to expand it to eighteen lanes, to more than double the size of it,
which enables commerce to move much more rapidly. That benefits farmers, that benefits ranchers, that benefits manufacturers, that benefits small businesses. That benefits consumers by lowering prices at the grocery store. It also benefits national security by making it easier to bring manufacturing back from China, either back to the United States or near shoring it, bringing it back to Mexico where we could have trade and commerce with Mexico rather
than China. So all of those are good outcomes. And what happened. So in order to build a bridge, ordinarily you have to do what is called Federal Environmental NEPA review. It's to go through a process of reviewing the environmental impact of a bridge. That's true for any bridge. If you're building a bridge across an international border, there's an additional legal requirement. You need a permit from the President
of the United States. Now, the way this used to be done is the President would grant that permit contingent on the completion of the NEPA review. And what that did is accelerated the process, enabled it to move through quickly. When Joe Biden became president, he announced they were reversing that policy and Biden was going to grant zero presidential permits for cross border bridges unless and until the NIPA
environmental review was fully completed. The effect of that was to add two, three, four five years to these bridge projects, to delay them all. It also made it harder for them to get funding because the banks were reluctant to commit capital until the presidential permit had been granted. So there was a chicken and egg problem, and the Biden
administration dug in. And so what I did is is Number One, unified the congressional delegation in South Texas, and so I brought together a coalition of myself and John Cornon the other Texas Senator, along with Henry Quayar, a Democrat, Monica Delacruz, a Republican, Vicente Gonzalez, a Democrat, and Tony Gonzales, a Republican, all of the South Texas Congressional Delegation. We jointly pressed the Biden State Department reverse this idiotic policy.
This is hurting Texas and hurting America. The Biden administration dug in. They refused to change, and so I authored legislation mandating that they expedite the process. Got bipartisan support the Senate passed it out of the Senate and then passed it out of the House, and Joe Biden signed
it into law on December twenty second. It was actually my birthday that he signed the law, and so it was a pretty great birthday gift because it's a huge victory for jobs in the state of Texas, and it's an example of you know, I got to say, it's
also an example of the bizarre hypocrisy. I mean, let me ask you seriously, Ben, explain to me the mind of a whack job liberal that you want totally open borders and ten million people invading this country illegally, including human traffickers and drug traffickers on the one hand, but on the other hand, you want to put bureaucratic roadblocks in the way of legal trade and commerce from farmers and businesses, while you're allowing illegal immigrants to flow with no restraint.
Yeah, it makes so sense, especially when every year Texas and Mexico, as you mentioned, have roughly eight hundred billion in trade and commerce that come across this border. And this does it in a more early fashion, but also with the issue of national security involved in it, keeping it orly with safety and security, especially with all the drug trafficking FETNO and everything else coming across the border, it makes no sense.
Look, that's exactly right, and we ended up building the bipartisan coalition to pass this into law. And so the way the law works is December twenty second is when Joe Biden signed it into law. On that date, which was the date he signed it, the legislation starts a shot clock of sixty days, and the State Department has a sixty day time limit to submit its recommendations to the White House as to whether he should grant the
permit for these four bridges. After that sixty day period, a second shot clock starts and the president it has sixty days to make it a termination on the permit. If the President does nothing after that second sixty days, the permit is deemed automatically granted by operation of law. What that means is because it was signed on December twenty second, that by April twentieth, we will have these
presidential permits which will expedite these bridges going forward. That is an enormous victory despite the Biden administration putting roadblocks in the way every step of the way.
As always, thank you for listening. To Verdict with center Ted Cruz. Ben Ferguson with you don't forget to deal with my podcast, and you can listen to my podcast every other day you're not listening to Verdict or each day when you listen to Verdict. Afterwards, I'd love to have you as a listener to again, Ben Ferguson Podcasts, and we will see you back here on Monday morning.