Welcome.
It is verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you as always and Senator it was a wild night last night in Washington, DC, and the big headline is a four point five trade ar tax cut has passed the House.
It was touch and go.
It's a slim majority of the House, but they got it done for the American people.
Well, this is the first step. So you and I are recording this. It is twelve twenty in the morning Tuesday night. The House had a touch and go vote on the floor of the House on whether to begin the first step of budget reconciliation. They ended up getting the votes by one vote. Initially they put it on the floor of the House and it failed. Then they brought it back. President Trump was whipping the votes that
were on the sidelines and it passed by one vote. Now, this doesn't mean it's done, but it's the beginning of the process. We're gonna break that down. We're gonna explain what it means, what that is st uarding us on the path to do. We're also going to talk about the rather shocking news from this week about an ied that exploded in South Texas, blowing up a Texas rancher, as the Mexican cartels are engaged in what you would
have to call just open warfare at this point. IED's you envision in Iraq, you envision in war zones, You don't envision them in the state of Texas.
We're going to break that down.
And finally we're going to talk about the latest step in the battle over boys and girl sports, which is the Department of Justice is coming after the state of Maine, the State of California, and the State of Minnesota to comply with the federal law and Trump's executive order concerning boys and girl sports, and Maine and California and Minnesota are saying hell no, we're going to break that down as well.
Yeah, it's awesome, all right.
I gotta tell you today I did something that was just really fun, and it was to spend a little time at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Dallas, Texas with my friends of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, and I got to see just what their work looks like with some videos that I was shown, some pictures of the impact that so many of you are having by being involved with IFCJ and helping the people in Israel.
After more than a year of war, tear and pain in Israel, there is still a great demand for basic humanitarian aid and that is where the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews has supported and they continue to support those in the Holy Land still facing the lingering horrors
of war and those who are in desperate need. Right now, your ongoing monthly gift of forty five dollars will provide critically needed aid to communities in the North and the South that have been devastated by the ongoing attacks against the Jewish people. Now, your generous donation each month helps deliver to those that are in need the most, including the evacuees and the refugees from all of these different
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Your gift to bless Israel and her people.
You can do that by visiting support IFCJ dot org. That's one word, support IFCJ dot org, or you can call them eight at eight four eight eight IFCJ that's eight eight eight four eight eight IFCJ eight at eight four eight eight four three two five or support IFCJ dot org. All right, So, Center, it was an exciting and intense night on the floor of the House.
It was the vote was on, it was off.
You literally could physically see people on the floor taking phone calls, speaking on the phone. That's been reported was with the President United States of America. This was part of the whipping votes. And by the way, this is when I tell people please share this podcast on social media because we're going to pull back the curtain here and explain to you what happened and what is next.
So you guys, they're messing with the algorithms now, So we ask for your support of the show by sharing it on social media hitting that subscribe or download the episode button every time you see the show. But Senator, this was one of those moments where it's like, Okay, this is real. It's a tight majority in the House and it passes because of phone calls literally from the President on the floor.
Well, tonight was the first step in delivering on our promises to the American people. And if you look at the election in November, there was a mandate from the voters. Number one, the mandate is secure the border, and that is the most overwhelming mandate we have. Beyond that, there's a mandate to rebuild the military and defend America. There's a mandate to unleash American energy and by doing so,
to lower energy cost, to lower inflation. And there's a mandate to bring the economy back to help small businesses, and that means extending the twenty seventeen Trump tax cuts that are expiring this year. All of that we got to get done, and I got to say failure is not an option. So tonight what the House did is they voted on their budget resolution. Now, why does a budget resolution matter? The reason it matters is ordinarily to pass legislation in the Congress, you need sixty votes in
the Senate. Why is that because the Senate rules give the minority of the ability to filibuster, and the ability to filibuster is the ability to block legislation unless you have sixty votes to cut off debate. Now, we only have fifty three Republicans in the Senate, which means if you need sixty votes, you need seven Democrats. The seven Democrats are not going to vote. There are not seven Democrats.
There's not even one Democrat who's going to vote to secure the border, who's going to vote to cut taxes, who's going to vote to rebuild our military, And so if you've got to go through the filibuster, you can't win.
Now.
The main exception to the Senate filibuster rule is something called budget reconciliation. Budget reconciliation is a law that was passed in the nineteen seventies that provides for moving forward on budgetary matters, and by statute, a budget reconciliation cannot be filibusters, which means you can pass it with only fifty votes in the Senate. You don't need sixty. So if you go back to twenty seventeen, the twenty seventeen
Trump tax cuts we passed using budget reconciliation. If you go back to the Biden administration, the Democrats use budget reconciliation multiple times to pass things like their incredibly misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, which was the Green New Deal spending scam. They use that because they couldn't get sixty. Now, in order to pass our agenda, we are trying to pass
budget reconciliation. The House and Senate have a difference in strategy on how to do this, and we've talked about this in a previous podcast, but I'm going to explain a little bit of it. The House, the Speaker of the House, believes we should pass one single reconciliation bill. What he refers to it as is one big, beautiful bill.
Donald Trump has repeated that multiple times, and he believes that's the best way, with his exceptionally narrow majority in the House, to get all of this across the finish line. I will tell you virtually every Republican Cenator, including myself, believes the way to do this is two bills, starting with one bill that secures the border, rebuilds the military, and Unleasha's energy, and then a second bill that extends the tax cuts and makes the bigger and bolder.
I don't know who's right.
I don't know if the Senate's right or the House is right, but at at some level, Ben I don't care. We just have to get the job done. So tonight I had dinner with Steve Scalise. Steve is a good friend. He is the House Majority leader.
By the way, what's he doing for people that know his history of being shot and the health issues. I just I want to pause and ask, how is he doing physically?
Really really well? So Steve, Steve has been is a good friend. He's from Louisiana. He's a conservative, he's a friend. He and I have been friends a long time. He's doing great. And and and listen, Steve. We all remember where Steve was shot with with with the crazed angry leftist who went to the practice of the congressional baseball game and wanted to kill Republicans and and shot and badly wounded. Steve shot him in the pelvis, and he was in a coma for some days. He almost died.
He's recovered from that. And then I got to say, Steve has had some tough health scares because he had just a couple of years ago cancer and he was down in Houston at MD Anderson being treated. And m d Anderson is an amazing hospital. My mom, who's ninety now, she was treated there for cancer. It is look cancer is a terrifying diagnosis. I hope never in my life to be a patient.
At MD Anderson.
I don't want to be a patient there because you're only a patient there if you have cancer.
I'd really like not to have cancer.
But I'll tell you this, if I ever get cancer, I want to be patient at MD Anderson. I mean, they do an amazing job. And I got to say Steve, his health is doing great. I told him tonight he is. He's in remission, he's finished with his cancer treatment. He is strong, his color is back, he is full of life and vim and vigor. I told him said, look, even you know, five six months ago when he was coming out of the cancer treatment, you could see, Look, when you go through that, you go through chemo, it
weakens you. You can just see it's hard, your body is I mean it exact cost, it's brutal. But you know what, Steve is strong and effective and good. I was really encouraged, as the best I've seen Steve in years and he's come through this. And he was jubilant. So he was on the House floor. He's the House majority leader. He was trying to get the votes to pass this on the House and he wasn't sure. So
the first time they brought it on the House. It failed, and then he kept pressing and then he got it done. And he got it done. Look, a critical piece of getting it done was President Trump. And I sort of joked when Steve showed up at dinner. I said, you know, it does help when the chief whip in the House is named Donald J.
Trump.
Yeah, no doubt about it.
And they were putting President Trump on the phone with the publican votes that are wobbly, and he was saying, listen, I need you to vote with us, and he flipped the votes. And so it was. Steve told me, so we're supposed to have dinner at seven thirty. He didn't get there at about about eight thirty because he was on the floor badly. Sure, and Steve told me, he's like, all right, I'm late for dinner. So he said, I'm picking up the tab, which I appreciated last time.
Steve and I had dinner.
I picked up the tab and he said, I'll tell you what, order a drink, whatever you like, make it expensive.
I'm paying And he said, I want.
To celebrate, That's what I want to know. Did it hurt a little bit?
So I ordered McCallen twenty five neat there you go, which which is a great single malt Scotch. And and and I you know, Steve is not a big Scotch guy. I actually don't drink Scotch a lot, but I but I do like McCallen and so we toasted it.
And when someone else by the way is paying, it's just a nice little touch there.
Look, ste Steve said, hurt me a little bit and ordered something pricey. So I thought about michelb Ultra. But but but somehow McCallum twenty five seemed to better call me.
As long as it wasn't a bud Light or a Budweiser, I'm good with it. That's that's I'm still on the Boycott train there by the way.
By the way, I will say you and I have been to a lot of Astros games. Yes, I love the Stros. You know, it used to be a few years ago. I'd go the Astros in every baseball game.
I have a bud Light. I mean, that's just what I what I drank.
You know, I'm old enough that I don't I drink light beer instead of regular beer because you know, I like you know, water that's slightly fave flavored. I like it but after the whole bud light thing, it's an amazing thing. You go, you go to the Minute Maide Stadium, you go to watch uh or although I guess it's now the Dykings Stadium there.
The Dyking's like, no, no, we paid a lot of money to change that name.
I know, but it's it's hard to make.
It's going to be a minute made.
There's this.
I laugh because when they change it, I'm like, dude, how many people are gonna remember this. It's it's gonna been it made for the majority of my lifetime.
So but I'll say this, you'd go to the stadium in a few years ago, like everyone was drinking bud light. It was literally every person in the stadium. That's what they drink. And now I don't even think they sell bud light. I mean, I mean, it is an astonishing difference.
No, it's it is. It's it is a real boycott. It has not gone away at all. And I do love every once in a while when when conservatives say, okay, you insult us to this point. Enough already, we're not backing down, and we have it like I don't think I'll ever drink one again. The rest of my life.
So, by the way, there's a structural reason for that. So listen, you take something like the NBA. The NBA got all woke. It put all the damn slogans on the court and on the jerseys. It pissed me off. It pissed a lot of conservatives off. Here's the problem. I love basketball, like for me, the price of boycotting the NBA, the price of boycotting the NFL, the price of boycotting sports is painful. Like, I get great joy from watching professional sports, and so I didn't like their politics.
But I'm like, I'm not willing to.
Sacrifice my joy just because I'm pissed about politics.
What got bud light.
Is they have a product that is easily substitutable.
Yeah, easily replaceable.
Every place you could get a bud light, there's a course light. Yeah, there's a Miller's light. It's right next to it. And by the way, show me the guy that if you do a blind taste test between bud Light, Miller's LT and Coreslight, I tell you the difference. I don't know, that's someone with a better palette than me. They're all light beers and they all taste pretty much the same to me. I'll probably piss off some listens, but I can tell the difference between a getness and
a bud light. Yes, yes, but I'll be damned if I can tell the difference between a bud light and a course light. That meant every customer. It was not a boycott that was painful. It was not a boycott that's like I got to give up something that gives joy to me. It was a boycoth that said, oh.
Yeah, let me return it, and I'm going to get a different one and watch how easy this is for.
Me, right right, and and and that got them in in real trouble. By the way, Target got in a little bit of this when they got super woke. And Target is somewhat substitutable. But I'll say I think Target and that they suffered a big drop, But I think they've come back because listen, I mean, I guess instead of Target, you can go to Walmart. But they're not a ton of choices. I'll tell you my girls. I'll confess my teenage girls love Target.
Yeah, trust me, my wife loves it, and there's no way she was substituting Walmart for it.
Yeah, I mean it's but it's a more expensive substitution. Bud light got hit because it was a cost free way to say I don't like what you did.
All right, I want to ask you one other questions on the budget issue. So for people that say, okay, this past, how quick is this going to move forward or how long is this going to.
Be's a long way to go.
So what's the timeline on this? So we limit expectations or be realistic.
So the Budget resolution just starts this process. Now what's happened in the House is they've directed each of the House committees to draft the underlying bill. So what was voted on tonight was not securing the border, it was not rebuilding the military, it was not cutting taxes. It was the opening resolution to say, go draft that legislation. That was a real fight.
So this is the first sitting to use a baseball analogy.
Yes, now it actually gets your batter at the plate, Like if they'd failed, they don't even get a batter at the plate.
So now we can start swinging.
We're in the game.
But they're going to be harder steps forward, and I believe we're going to get this done. I believe we're going to get this done. We're going to secure the border, we're going to rebuild the military, we're going to unleash American energy, and we're going to extend the tax cuts. But but it is going to be a lot of trade offs. It's gonna be hard. It's gonna be hard because the House majority is so excruciatingly tiny that on any issue, if you lose two votes, you're you're you're
out of luck. But I think we will get the job done. And I will say both Mike Johnson, the Speaker, and Steve Scalise, the Majority leader, they're both good friends. I work very closely with both of them, and I think we will go through some difficult paths to get there. But all of us, from the most conservative Republican to the most moderate, squishy, wobbly Republican, all of us want to produce these victories we get. There was a mandate
from the election, and we can't fail. And by the way, if we fail, if we don't secure the border, if we don't rebuild the milliyitary, if we don't unleash energy, if we don't extend the tax cuts, we'll get killed in November of next year.
Yeah, And that's I'm a big believer a Trump said on the floor, right like, Hey, you don't want to be involved in this.
Right, get it done. We made a promise to the voters. Let's deliver on the voters, and I think today was an important step to doing that.
Let's talk about the border for a second. There was there was another big story, and I want you to just read part of this for people, because it truly is heartbreaking.
It makes me angry.
It's what you see in war in the Middle East, and it's happening now against ranchers and people in agriculture. The warning is very real now that the cartels are acting like what they are, terrorists organizations. I think this is another example of the President getting it right, saying we're going to declare them as terrorist organizations because they that's what they do. They are terrorist organizations. And now we have another We had a point of saying, here's the proof.
So let me read from a story in the New York Post. Texas rancher killed by suspected cartel ied on Mexican border as authorities worn of growing threat.
Here's what the New York Post.
Reported, quote a Texas border rancher was killed near the border by a suspected cartel ied earlier this month. The Texas Department of Agriculture told the Post Tuesday, as officials issued an urgent safety warning for the Rio Grande Valley. Rancher Antonio Gespenes Saldierna, seventy four, who worked on both sides of the border along with Horatio Lopez Pena, was killed in the blast in Tamalipas, Mexico, which was just south of Brownsville, Texas. Lopez's wife, Ninphi Griselda Ortega, was
hospit vitalized with injuries. Saldirna was driving on his ranch when he hit the explosive device, causing it to detonate. According to KRGV, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said the deadly explosion is part of a quote growing threat posed by cartel activity along our southern border and encourages ranchers to quote exercise extreme caution in the area.
Quote.
I encourage everyone in the agricultural industry to stay vigilant, remain aware of their surroundings, and report any suspicious activity law enforcement. Additionally, you can avoid dirt roads and remote areas, refrain from touching unfamiliar objects that could be explosive devices. Limit travel to daylight hours, stay on main roads, and avoid cartel controlled regions.
Said Miller.
This is happening right at the Texas Mexico border. I gotta say it is dangerous and it shows. You know, some in the media say, gosh, it's hyperbole, it's rhetoric to call the cartel's terrorists. They are terrorists and they're murdering Texans.
What does this mean moving forward if they continue this? And how could this change the way that we interact with them? Because I think there's a lot of Americans right now they're like, look, if we're gonna call them terrasts, let's go after them like they're terrorists.
How dare them be allowed to do this?
Well, I believe we're gonna do that.
I believe we're starting with we saw on January twentieth, President Trump securing the border. We've seen the numbers of illegal crossings plummet, drop ninety percent. We're gonna go after them. We're gonna go after them. We're gonna go after the people who are here, the murderers, the rapist, the child molesters, the the gang members, we're resting them, we're deporting them, we're gonna send them back, but we're also stopping the
traffic coming in, the human traffickers, the drug traffickers. That is impacting the cartel's bottom lines. But I think we're going to use leverage to go after the cartels directly and try to Joe Biden and the Democrats gave billions of dollars to the cartels, a stat you and I have talked about multiple times, but it's a stunning stat. In twenty eighteen, the Mexican draw cartels made roughly five hundred million dollars from human trafficking. Five hundred million dollars
is a lot of money. Last year they made thirteen billion dollars, a two thousand, six hundred percent increase. That is ending now, and I have every confidence the Trump administration is going to go after their money.
It's going to go after them directly, and.
You are going to see the cartels targeted, just like we target al Qaeda and Hamas and Hezbola. The days of the cartels arising Americans, those days are.
Ending, yeah, thank goodness. And there's clearly a mandate from the American people. While we may have won this election. The fight to restore our great nation is only beginning, and now is the time to take a stand, and Patriot Mobile is leading the charge. It has never been easier to switch your cell phone than in twenty twenty five. With technology, you can do it literally over the phone with a code they send you. It is amazing. But
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make a difference with that bill. You're going to have every month and fight for what you believe in patriotmobile dot com slash verdict all right center. Lastly, there is a war that is taking place between Donald Trump and certain states that are saying we're not going to listen to you. Maine now is the latest state to tell the DOJ. In essence, this is adding to California and Minnesota saying we're not going to comply with a federal laws protecting girls' sports. I'm trying to figure this out.
Is this pure arrogance or is this a political move by the radical left to say we're not going to comply and we think it's going to be good for us to raise money and for our base break this down for us.
What do you think, Well, listen.
Unfortunately, elected Democrats remain radical that they have not learned any lessons from the November election. So if you look at Democrats in Congress, if you looked at Democrat governors, they continue to support open borders. They continue to support releasing murderers and rapists and child molesters into this country.
You look at we talked about this in last week's pod, how Massachusetts is literally releasing violent child rapists who are illegal immigrants rather than turn them over to Ice to be deported. And I got to say, look, this is not a sixty forty issue, it's not a sty issue. This is an eighty twenty or a ninety ten issue. I mean, if you ask any rational, insane person a violent child rapist, should we release him into our community, Any rational person, most normal Democrats would say, hell no,
that's a dumb ass idea. And yet the elected Democrats in Massachusetts, their answer is let them go. We are opposed to deporting anyone, no matter how vile. That They're continuing the same position on on they continue to support. The Democrats in Congress continue to support sterilizing and castrating children for sex change operations. Again, that's an eighty twenty issue. They're on the wrong side of it, but they're listening to their radical base. And when it comes to men
and women's sports, this is another eighty twenty issue. The American people don't want competing against their daughters. They don't want men competing against women, and yet the Democrats are all in on that.
And I've been amazed.
Normally, when your party gets clabbered in an election, you go and reassess, gosh, maybe we miscalibrated, Maybe we should change where we stand. The Democrats are not doing that. And so what happened this week is Pambondy, the new Attorney General, targeted in particular three states, targeted Maine, California, and Minnesota, and she issued a warning to them that those states have to comply with federal anti discrimination laws that require them to keep boys at a girl sports.
And here's what Pambondi said, quote, This Department of Justice will defend women and does not tolerate state officials who ignore federal law. We will leverage every legal option necessary to ensure eight compliance with federal law and President Trump's
executive order protecting women's sports. And she continues, The Department of Justice says, quote, as President Trump's recent executive order one four to two zero one on the subject explains, allowing men and boys to compete in women's and girl sports quote is demeaning, unfair, and dangerous to women and girls. This practice is also illegal under federal law. It denies women and girls the equal opportunity to participate and excel in competitive sports in violation of Title nine of the
Educational Amendments of nineteen seventy two. And so understand, the Department of Justice is making clear they intend to sue these states and they intend to cut off federal funds to these states if they continue to embrace the radical notion that they're going to let boys compete in girl sports. We talked about in Monday's pod how the governor Maine is in open defiance, saying to hell with you, We'll see you in court. It's amazing democrats continue to embrace these radical positions.
Yeah, it really is.
Don't forget. We do this show Monday, Wednesday Friday. Hit that subscribe or auto download button on those in between days. Grab my podcast, the Ben Ferguson Podcasts, and if you want a quick morning update of what's going on, grab the forty seven Morning Update. I give you the three biggest stories of the day in about a ten minute short form podcast. Grab that as well, The Senator and I will see you back here on Friday morning.