Go Woke, Go Broke

you by ip vanish. Did you know that browsing online using incognito mode doesn't actually protect your privacy? Without added security, you might as well give all your private data way to hackers, advertisers, your Internet service provider, and who knows who else. Ip Vanish helps you securely and privately browse the Internet by encrypting one hundred percent of your data.

This means that your private messages, passwords, emails, browsing history, and information will be completely protected from falling into the wrong hands. Ip vanish makes you virtually invisible online. It's that simple. Just for Verdict listeners, ip vanish is offering an insane seventy percent off their annual plan. That's like getting nine months for free. You have to go directly to ip vanished dot com slash cactus to get this seventy percent off discount. Ip Vanish is super easy to use.

Just tap one button and you're instantly protected. You won't even know it's on. You can use ip vanish on your computers, tablets, and phones, whether you're at home or in public. Don't go online without using ip Vanish. Don't forget. Verdict listeners get seventy percent off the ip vanish annual plan. Just go to ip vanished dot com slash cactus to claim your discount and secure your online life. That's ip

v anish dot com slash Cactus. This episode, a Verdict that's Ted Cruise is brought to you by Jenny Cell. How old does your mirror say you are? You can delay this question by five, ten, even fifteen years with Jennie Cell's new ultra retinal serum. You can you know see it sitting right here on the desk. Here's a testimonial from Marina. Marina lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She says, great product, my skin loves it. I have spent more money, she says on creams over the years, enough to pay

off my house. Just kidding, but it feels like that this product has changed my life like no other. Now Marina is flying high with Genia Cell's new ultra retinal serum with hyaluronic acid. This works to hydrate your skin at the cellular level. It builds on this deep moisture

with incredible anti wrinkle effects. And gentlemen, you know that we ladies, we wives use your razors in the bathroom when you are not looking likewise, we know that you use our face products are skincare products, and it's fine. All's fair in love and war. Now, if you go to my uurl that is genu cell dot com slash cactus, you can get up to fifty percent off Genia Cell's new ultra retinal serum. That is fifty percent off. If

you go to genie cell dot com slash cactus. It's spelled gn u cel dot com slash cactus, Genua cell dot com slash cactus. This episode, A Verdict with Ted is brought to you by American Hartford Goal. Now, the new inflation numbers are out, and I think we can all agree they are incredibly depressing. The price of gas is way up, the price of housing is up, the

US national debt is way way way up. And unfortunately, given the way that our current administration prints money and spends money, experts don't see this going away, this inflation going away anytime soon. So how do you protect your money, your savings, your retirement from inflation. Well, when times are turbulence, Americans like you turn to physical gold and silver, and American Hartford Gold can show you how to headge your hard earned savings against inflation by diversifying a portion of

your portfolio into physical gold and silver. It's really easy to get started. All it takes is a short phone call and they will have physical gold and silver delivered right to your door or if you prefer inside your four O n K or your IRA. They make it easy. If you call them right now, then they will give you up to fifteen hundred dollars of free silver on your first order. So don't wait, call them right now.

Call eight five five seven eight one eight eight three, or if you prefer texting, you can text the word tactus to six five five three two. Again. The phone number is eight five five seven to sixty eight one eight three or text the word tactus to six five five three two. Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz. I'm Michael Knowles, Senator. You have just come from Capitol Hill just voting on this big gun control legislation. There seems to be a compromise between a bunch of Republicans

and the Democrats. What happened, Well, I just voted about an hour ago on the initial vote, the motion to proceed to take up the legislation. Now, the statutory tax texts they rolled out just a couple of hours ago, so we're still in the process of studying the details of what they laid out. But all the Democrats voted for it, and fourteen Republicans voted for it. So the

vote was sixty four to thirty four. They needed sixty to proceed, so they get They got there with fourteen Republicans and that's going to consume this week the debate on that bill. I think it is safe to say you are not one of the fourteen Republicans who voted to proceed with this legislation. That is safe, And actually I printed out the fourteen who are So if you want to know the fourteen who are it is Blunt, Burr, Capita, Cassidy, Collins, Cornin,

Ernst Graham, McConnell, Murkowski, Portman, Romney, Tillis, and Young. Those were the fourteen Republicans who voted. Yes, wish I could say that I were surprised, Senator, but I'm not. You know that obviously you've named a lot of the moderates and the people who often do go over with the Democrats here. But that's a big not fourteen is a

big number. Well, it's a combination of the moderate to liberal Republicans combined with Republican leadership, combined with the Republicans who are retiring, and that's sort of the ace and the whole for leadership. As the folks who are retiring, you're never going to face the voters again, that they're likely going to go be lobbyists in town. And so suddenly they have all sorts of votes that the people

who elected them would prefer they wouldn't take. But since they're not on the ballot anymore, they vote differently than they would otherwise. You know, it's it's actually it's a similar manifestation in the Senate. You've got six year terms

and it's a common phenomenon. We're two out of every six years people grow a backbone or a conservative and those happen to me the two years they're on the ballot, and then the other four years they're not on the ballot, they transmogrify into very very different senators until the last two years when they're back on the ballot, when suddenly they become conservative again. And unfortunately, it's kind of a merry go round of of who are the chunk of

Republicans on the ballot that will stand steady. The retiring Republicans it's an even worse problem because then they feel little to no accountability to the voters who sent them there. So this is still being worked out right now, just in broad strokes. How bad is it? You know, I don't know the full details, As I said, they just rolled out the statutory text right before we voted on it, which is a typical Capitol Hill strategy. So I'll study

the details more and know it. There's some elements that are fairly unobjectionable in terms of funding for things like school safety that everyone agrees with. The most problematic elements I think concern red flag laws. Red flag laws that there's funding to incentivize states to pass red flag laws, red flag laws or proceedings whereby you can strip guns from law abiding citizens. And in a number of states, particularly Blue Democrats states, they're very very low thresholds for

doing so. There's very little protection of due process. And you know, it poses a real problem if somebody is unhappy with you, Michael, if you have a you know, someone who's mad at you, a disgruntled coworker, a jilted ex girlfriend, what have you. Red flag laws, particularly without serious due process protections, can provide an avenue for that person unhappy with you to go behind your back and

take away your Second Amendment rights to protect yourself. Because in that case, the red flag is not you know, some raving lunatic who's making direct threats, who says I'm gonna kill you. I'm gonna kill you. The red flag simply could be you are a conservative, you are a Republican, you voted for someone that I don't, You've said something that I disagree with. The red flag could be you, And in that case, to deprive someone of a constitutional

civil right would seem to be a huge overreach. Well, and I will say this, look that they were negotiating back and forth between the Republicans and Democrats on the exact language. And so I haven't read the statutory language yet. I will read it this week before we vote on the final bill. This was the initial vote just to take it up. So I'll study the details. But there's a lot of there's a lot of variants in the details.

The devil is in the detail on this. And so for example, some of the formulations they were talking about keyed off of whether someone was a quote mental defective. That's some language that actually is in federal law right now. It's sort of an different era. We don't don't tend to speak much in terms of things like mental defective. But if the threshold is low, I look, there are estimates that something like twenty percent of Americans have some

form of mental illness. You know, I joked at lunch last week that it seems to me serving in the United States Congress should be prima facia evidence of mental illness. You know, you think about schools, how many kids are diagnosed with ADHD, how many kids are medicated on prozac

or riddle in or something else. And if the threshold is low, that there's a hyperactive fifteen year old who gets a diagnosis and gets medicated and you have a gun grabbing Blue Stith that says, Okay, well, guess what, You've just lost your right to keeping bare arms for the rest of your life. I think that's obviously unconstitutional and would be striking struck down by any court following the law. But in the meantime, it's a real problem. And so my view on guns and crime generally is

there's a right approach and a wrong approach. You know, there's an interesting story. Are you for here with Project Exile? No, I'm not okay. So Project Exile was something that was created during the Bill Clinton Justice Department, and it was created in Richmond, Virginia, in the Eastern District of Virginia, and it was the US attorney there laid out and said, we are going to prosecute anyone who commits a violent crime with a gun. We're gonna go after them under

federal law. We're gonna lock them up in jail with a mandatory minimum sentence, and we're going to let people know. We're gonna let people know if you knock over a liquor store and you're a felon. If you're a felon in possession of a firearm, that carries a mandatory minimum settence under federal law, but typically the Feds don't prosecute it. Project Exile says you commit a crime with a firearm, you're going to jail, you're doing hard time, and they

advertise it. They put up billboards in Richmond in Virginia, carry a gun, do hard time. And Richmond had one of the highest murder rates in the country, and the Feds started anytime you brought a gun to a crime boom, you got prosecuted, and the murder rates plummeted, and you started seeing criminals that would literally go knock over a liquor store, go do a home invasion, and they leave their gun at home because they'd say, if I take

a gun, I'm doing serious federal time. If you want to stop crimes, that's the sort of program that works. That's a great point. Obviously, we all agree that we should take guns away from criminals and people who have, in some objective way been seemed to be too dangerous to have a gun. We shouldn't just go along with some program to exploit a shooting or a tragedy as a way to advance generally unrelated gun control measures that Democrats have been pushing for a while. Not too late

to stop this kind of thing. Let's hope that the squishes toughen up a little bit here and back off of this and listen to this podcast. That's the bad news that the squishes are going along with the Dems here. There is quite a lot of good news in the culture, though. I really want to get to the Supreme Court case, which the Left has lost their mind over. They've now said that this is a nearly fatal blow to the

separation of church and state. Before that, though, I do have to do a little bit of gloating on the culture front. There was a big cultural win here. We sort of predicted it on this show. It's the get woke, go broke prediction. We talked last time about how people don't want to see toys and cartoon characters engaging in all sorts of eccentric sexual activities and kissing and pushing the woke sexual revolutionary agenda. And then over the weekend light Year, which made a big show of having a

lesbian toy kiss in it. Light Year bombed at the box office. They were expecting a global box office of one hundred thirty five million dollars. What did it come to? I think it was eighty something million. And then the domestic box office was way below predictions at fifty one million dollars. Did you, senator, did you take the air out of the gay toys? That's a question I've never

gotten before. Listen. I will say this. I do think it's amazing how the Verdict podcast seems to be driving Hollywood. At our campus live tour in Alabama, we talked about how Disney wanted Mickey and Pluto to go at it, and liberals brains exploded, and apparently the showrunners for Light Years said, hey, what a great idea. Let's have lesbian toys get it on. And you know they got a little Berry White and with his deep boys, let's get it on. And then last week on Verdict, we said

this is terrible. Leave the kids alone. You said, we don't want to see uh eccentric sex with with with kids or toys. Let me take out the word eccentric. How about no sex like kids and toys. And by the way, I will say leftists really lost their minds because last week we talked about do we really need lesbian toys and cartoons? And leftist like the phrase lesbian toys that I really think they're tiny, little walnut sized brains broke that that apparently they're supposed to go on

these these cultural rampages and we're not supposed to notice. Ye, and not only that, we're all supposed to quietly shut up and take our kids. Well, you know what, there were very few kids movies at the box office this past weekend. It was Father's Day. You want to talk about a good time to take your kids to the movies. And I think there were a whole bunch of Americans that said, you know what, I can think of something better to do than listen to Hollywood lecture my six

year old on their views of sexuality. How about just to have a fun like the Toy Story films are awesome. Yeah, but it speaks volumes that while light Year was getting his ass kicked, the kicker was Tom Cruise and Maverick in Top Gune, a straight up patriotic conservative. We love Americans beat the bad guys like the contrast is night and day, and Hollywood is so knuckleheaded that they seem

unable to get the message. Maybe they will, because look, there's tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars delta between those two. Maverick's been out for several weeks and it's still obliterated light Year. Somebody depositing the checks ought to notice that they certainly should. That this is what the left does to so many institutions. Is as you say, Toy Story is a great movie. It's a great friend. I love Toy Story one. I liked Toy Story two.

I don't really remember Toy Story three or if there was a four, but they were good movies. And by the way, Tim Allen was fantastic. Tim Allen was fantastic. Then they yanked him out of this movie. And so people look at it and they say, well, we like these movies. And then the radicals go in and they say, oh, look,

we've got these really popular movies and institutions. Let's go in and in a really heavy handed way, in a very didactic and obvious way, let's go in and use the things that people love to push our radical political agenda, which is completely superfluous and irrelevant to the story. And I'm really pleased to see that the American parents and moviegoers said, oh, no, thank you. Yeah, we like toy story. We don't like you using the things that we love

to push your radical agendas. So no thanks. And let me make a point also, Michael, this is also not about so the left like saying things like the Florida law was don't say gay. You're right, it's actually not about that. And I'll give an example on the counter. So, Hollywood usually is so willing to chase the dollar that they're craven when it comes to China, and they're willing to censor movies because China wants them too. And one

great example of that is Bohemian Rhapsody. Bohemian Rhapsody, I think was a fantastic movie. I really enjoyed that. It was very well done. China insisted that they edit Bohemian Rhapsody to cut out the scene showing Freddie Mercury was gay, which, by the way, is insane. How do you tell Freddie Mercury's life story and leave out that he's gay. It was a big damn part of his life. And Bohemian Rhapsody is not being marketed to six year olds. It

Bohemian Rhapsody was an R rated movie. It was four adults. It was the story of an credible artists that was entirely appropriate. You know, Rocketman about Elton John. You wouldn't tell Elton John's life story and leave out that he's gay. It's it's it's an integral part of who he is. What made the light Year Antics so dismaying. It was entirely gratuitous. It was meant it was targeted at kids, and it was meant to say, this is what we

want to convey to you, little children. And I think a lot of the parents are saying, leave our kids alone, and and and let us discuss sex and sexuality with our kids at a time and age that is appropriate, not what you If we can't even take him to Disney movies, what can we take him to? Right? Stop stop forcing this. I love that point it was. It was so gratuitous, superfluous, irrelevant to the plot of Toy Story,

was so heavy handed and on the nose. And I like that that the the gamble from the left didn't pay off, that the moviegoers are not so infatuated with Toy Story that they were willing to go to the movies and just allow the left to go in and hollow out their stories to push their own radical agenda. So there was a big one at the box office. There was also apparently a big win for conservatives at the Supreme Court. This isn't the case that Carson versus Making.

This is a case up in Maine on religious liberty. That would seem to be what's the case about. So

it's a terrific, terrific victory for religious liberty. So the state of Maine has a tuition assistance program, and then there's some parts of Maine that are very rural where they don't actually have public schools up and running, and so the state provides tutition assistance for you to send your kids to whatever schools are there, to whatever private schools are there, particularly in smaller communities where you don't have the resources of a big public school. But Maine

excluded religious schools. Said you can send your kids somewhere, but if it's a religious school, or as they called it, a sectarian school, which means they actually believe in faith, believe in God, and teach something about God, then you're not eligible. And so the plaintiffs in this case challenge that and said, look, you're discriminating against my free exercise of religion. And I want to choose to send my kid to a religious school, and you're discriminating against faith

and religion. And the Supreme Court six three So Chief Justice Roberts wrote the opinion and concluded that it violated the Constitution to discriminate against religious schools when otherwise they would qualify, they met all the other criteria. If they just stopped as pesky references to God, they would get the state money. But if they insist you say God, Nope, no money. And the Supreme Court said, sorry, you can't.

If it's an equally applicable program that everyone else can get, you can't discriminate against people of faith and school rules of faith just because they're exercising their First Amendment rights and their religious liberty rights. I think it is a great victory for religious liberty for everyone. But it's also a great victory for school choice, and both of those

I think are incredibly important. Now, what are conservatives supposed to say when they hear the liberal justices on the Court and a lot of people in the liberal media complaining that this is an outrageous attack on the American tradition of the separation between church and state. Well, there are a lot of things they should say. First of all, the words separation of church and state are found nowhere

in the Constitution. They're not in the Constitution, they're not in the Bill of Rights, they're not in the Declaration of Independence. That's not there. The phrase a wall of separation between church and state comes from a letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist So it's a private correspondence is where that phrase is taken from. But it's not actually the law. And what is the law is the First Amendment. And the First Amendment has two

religious liberty clauses. It has the establishment clause that prevents Congress from establishing a religion, and it has the free exercise clause that prevents Congress and prevents government from restricting the free exercise of religion. And there are two different interpretations of what the establishment clause mean. Liberals interpret it as saying that essentially government must be hostile to religion,

that government must treat religion as something bad. That's where you get the phrase wall of separation of church and state is church bad. I think that's a complete misreading of what the establishment clause is about. The establishment clause was about preventing government from controlling churches, preventing government from controlling faith. Both the establishment Clause and free exercise clause work hand in hand. Well, this actually leads into one

of the mail bag questions that we got. We've been extremely derelict on taking mail bag questions, so I do want to get through a few of them before we go. And this was on this case and on the question of religious liberty. This is from Zachary who says, if the Satanic Temple starts private schools that your tax dollars will pay for, will you? Conservatives regret the Supreme Court decision, so we're happy about it now. I think this is

a great ruling. And obviously I don't think that the Christian school should be discriminated against, and I'm very in favor of school choice. But what happens if the Satanic Temple, which is as it's a little different than the outright the Satanists down on their knees, they're kind of ironic Satanists. And we could debate further whether one can be an ironic Satanist or if you end up kind of being

a sincere one either way. But what if they started school and they say, Okay, we've got the Satan's school, and your tax dollars are going to go for that is? One, would that follow from the support case? And two should we support it? So yes, it would follow, and should we support it? Well, let me answer it by making an observation. I don't maintain today that federal student loans, federal pell grants should be disallowed from going to Yale University.

So why should I say they shouldn't go to the Satanic temple they're teaching? Is much garbage at Yale, right, and for that matter, of my alma maters, Princeton at Harvard. So I don't don't particularly mean to single out Yale. It's a really good point on I'm sorry to say, on my alma mater, and yours too, and probably most

schools at this point in the country. Is if you had a school that was teaching the tenets of Satanism and then you had any old run of the mill public or otherwise nambr nambrand school, what would the difference be. I'm not sure that if it were a blind test, I'm not sure you could identify them. So Michael, let me give you an example. A tenured professor at Princeton

is a guy named Peter Singer. Peter Singer is a very left wing ethicist who, among other things, has argued not only is easy in favor of abortion on demand, which a lot of people in the left are, he's argued in favor of infanticide up until age six. Right, it's a fair bet that Professor Singer could could make some of the some of the more moderate Satanists blush. That's a very important point. And there's a phrase you

rarely hear more moderate Satanists. So this question. I got a lot of questions this week with lots of salty language, but this is a family show, so I'm going to clean it up a little bit. This was one of the more eloquently written ones, gets back to what we were talking about at the top of the show. This is from Josh. Why are there so many worthless Rhino Republicans? Currently?

And it's not obviously this guy and other people are complaining about this, but it is a real tactical Republican question, which is why are there so many Rhinos? Why are there so many people when it seems that there is so much wind at the backs of the Conservatives because we don't do a good enough job in primaries on insisting on and finding strong conservatives with proven records. Listen, I'm on the road NonStop between now and election day.

I'll probably be on the road thirty forty days between now in the November election, campaigning for candidates for the Senate, campaigning for candidates for the House. Look, I'll give you an example. So we had primary elections tonight, in multiple races. Yesterday, I campaigned for a candidate in Northern Virginia, Yes Lee Vega. Yes, Lee Vega is, and she won tonight. So I did two rallies for yesterday. She won tonight. So Yes, Le Vegas,

I think a fantastic candidate. She's running in a Democrat district. You have Abigail Spanberg, who's the incumbent. Yes. Lee is the daughter of immigrants from El Salvador. Her brother was nearly killed by MS thirteen. He was badly wounded by MS thirteen. She knows firsthand the perils of illegal immigration. She's a cop. In fact, she's a three time cop. She's been a member of two police forces, and she's now a deputy sheriff. She is the wife of an

army soldier. She is the daughter of a pastor. Her dad is a pastor right now in Maryland. She is the mom of two teenage kids. And she is a fantastic candidate. Now, when she jumped in this race, no one thought she had a prayer. All the money was on the other side. I sat down, I met with her. I said, you're a star. Endorsed her, campaigned for she was trailing yesterday. She just won today. That's encouraging. We

don't do that enough. And there's a structural problem. Listen, Republican leadership in both the Senate and House, they want members. Their number one criterion is a member who will be obedient, who will just do what leadership says. And the dirty little secret is if you have someone who's going to rock the boat, who's going to be a rebel, leadership would rather a Democrat get elected than a pain in

the neck conservative who will buck leadership. If you're a middle of the road, squishy mod they'll flood you with cash because you'll be obedient, you'll do what leadership wants. If you're a pain in the neck conservative, they'll do everything they can to kill you. And so listen, if you want stronger conservatives, then you've got to get involved in the primary process and get behind people who will

follow through on what they say. Not only are you hanging around trying to gum things up on Capitol Hill while the squishes are to give away our Second Amendment rights. Not only are you going around the country raising lots of money for the good conservative candidates, but not only are you doing this show, coming straight and doing this. But Senator, we can't let you go because you are sticking around for the verdict plus community to discuss even more on the cloak room with Liz Wheel or Liz

what are you going to talk about him? Michael High, Senator, we are going to get into some really nitty gritty legal stuff. So we're all waiting with bated breath for the dab's decision. Right, is roeb Wade going to be overturned? Did Chief Justice John Roberts convince somebody else to join him in not overturning roev Wade. We're waiting for this. It seems like it's going to be at the last minute.

But the Democrats meanwhile are preparing their arsenal of what they're going to do in response to Roe v. Wade being overturned, what tactics they're going to use, and so we're going to dive into some of the legalities of some of their ideas because a couple of their suggestions, I'm pretty sure are against the law. So if you'd like to join us for this conversation, it's going to be great. Head on over to Verdict Plus. It's Verdict

with Tedcruise dot com slash Plus. If you use my promo code Cloakroom, then you can watch for free for one month on your annual subscription. It's Verdict with tedcrewis dot com slash Plus and the promo code is Cloakroom. It's really going to be a great discussion. I'm very excited about it. And Michael, let me jump in for a second and take people behind the behind the curtain and get in a little bit of the sausage making

of how we do Cloakroom. So before we do the podcast, every week, Michael, you and I get on a conversation with our producer and we talk about what topics we want to have and sort of roughly lay out Okay, tonight, we're going to talk about the gun stuff, and we're going to talk about light Year, and we're going to talk about the Spring Court case. This just happens on Capitol Hill. On this we gotta hit this right. So we do a prep call and it's a loose prep call.

We kind of just roughly have topics and then then get into it. But it's interesting Cloakroom the way we've done, and it just sort of arisen organically every episode when you turn to Liz and say, Liz, what are we get a discussed on cloak Room? If you cut to me and asked me, I have utterly no idea. So when Liz comes on, she's coming up with these topics and she sort of has a mandate of fine, interesting, esoteric, deep dive legal topics. And I gotta say she's phenomenal

at coming up. She's come up with some really good topics. But I'm sitting here every week, I don't know, let's hear And sometimes if it's really esoteric, Liz and I will have a brief like she'll forward me some if she wants to talk about a particular case that I haven't read recently, she'll forward it to me and I'll reread it quickly. But it is an interesting process because we've had some really good deep dives on cloak Room of ideas that Liz has that she springs on me

out of nowhere and we jump into him. This week on cloak Room will be discussing the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow. Well, I can't wait. I can't wait to hear the topic and so I don't have to do any preparation at all. It's you're in the hot seat, Senator Liz. You've got all the prep. We will see

you next time. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security Pack, a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations, and candidates across the country. In twenty twenty two, Jobs Freedom and Security Pack plans to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress and help the Republican Party across the nation.