Good Monday morning.
Nice have you with us, It's verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you and Senator I hope you had a great Mother's Day with your family. I will start with that as well. Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there listening. And I know you wanted to say something as well.
Well.
I had a wonderful Mother's Day. We took my mom out. My mom is ninety years old. We took her out for a dinner in town. We took her out along with Heidi and both the girls, and we had a great dinner together as a family. We celebrated moms. My mom is ninety and still going strong. HEDI is a rock and I'm just grateful for all the moms in our lives because there ain't nothing better.
Amen to that.
Am in too that We've got a big show today, including a big victory in Texas that could have a big impact on the country on the issue of school choice, which is something you've been championing now for years.
Well, that's exactly right. We've got three big stories that we're going to break down tonight. Number one, school choice and school choice Texas just passed the biggest, the boldest, the most significant school choice program in the entire country. We're going to tell you all about it and what it means for the school children in Texas.
We're also going to talk to you about on school choice.
We have an historic opportunity right now to win the biggest victory in the country ever. On school choice is part of budget reconciliation. I'm going to explain to you how. We're going to talk also about Iran, and they're ongoing negotiations right now with Iran. There are those who are advocating for another Obama Iran nuclear deal, which would be disastrous.
It would be terrible.
I agree with President Trump and the red line that he has drawn that any agreement with Iran must include total dismantlement of Iran's nuclear capability.
All of that up next.
Yeah, it's a great story and it's one that's important. What I also tell you real quick about our friends over at Patriot Mobile. You've heard me talk about Patriot Mobile now for a long time, and you probably already know that for years they've stood in the gap for every American that believes that freedom is actually worth fighting for. Now, Patriot Mobile, they're the real deal. So let me ask you a question. Why haven't you switched to Patriot Mobile yet?
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give it back to conservative causes. Don't wait, do it right now. Patriot Mobile dot com slash verdict or nine to seven to Patriot. Use the promo code vertict You're gonna get a free month of service. That's Patriot Mobile dot com slash verdict or no, I'm seven to Patriot. So centator, let's start with this big story. It is one that media really hasn't been covering. I think it's because they're terrified that this is going to give parents
freedom to give their kids a great education. And there's a bill that passed in Texas. It deals with school choice. It's something that you have been acting for for such a long time. Now it's becoming a reality. Talk about it.
Well.
Governor Abbott just signed in a law in the state of Texas the biggest, the broadest, the most significant school choice program in the entire country. This has been the result of decades of battle and hard work, decades that I've been fighting in the field. So I'm going to walk you through number one, the details of the bill. The details of the bill. It's a billion dollars that the state is allocated as school choice. One billion dollars that is going in the form of education savings accounts.
Education savings accounts that are going to be funded by the state to the tune of just under eleven thousand dollars for roughly ninety thousand school kids statewide. In addition, kids with disability are education are eligible to get education saving accounts that can be as high as thirty thousand dollars. Now, these are not accounts that you're saving into. This is the state putting funding, making it available to parents so that they can choose the best school for their kids.
It is historic. Many other states have done small, little pilot programs. The breadth the scope of this is massive, and it's worth remembering Texas comprises ten percent of the entire American population. Texas comprises roughly ten percent of the school kids in America, So having robust school choice for ten percent of the school kids in America is a massive and game changing victory, and I got to tell you, Ben, it's one that has been hard fought for a long time.
You know, if you.
Look at school choice and over the past two decades, the states that have led on it have been states like Florida, Arizona, Ohio, and Texas had been lagging behind. And I got to say, for Texans, it is infuriating not to lead. It is infuriating not to be standing up doing the right thing. And Texas, it was a big battle, and our challenge was not partisan. It wasn't Republican or democratic. It wasn't even ideological conservative versus moderate. It was rather geographic in that Texas has a lot
of rural areas. And the challenge you faced is in the Texas State House there were a number of rural Republicans who were good guys, but the biggest employer in their district is the public school district, and the school superintendents in the rural districts vigorously opposed school choice, most significantly because the urban superintendents and the teachers' unions hated school choice. And so what we had in Texas for a long time it is a bunch of urban Republicans
who would vote to kill choice programs. Now, I'll tell you what changed that. What changed that was a massive political effort and something I started six years ago. Six years ago, I began intervening and making endorsements in primaries all across the state. And I got to tell you, Ben, out of one hundred US Senators, to the best of my knowledge, ninety nine of them don't do that.
They don't, yeah, because why take the political risk. And it's where you said, this is how we get it changed.
It is frankly politically stupid for a US Senator to make endorsements in primary races in his own state. And that's why none of my colleagues do so. Because when you make an endorsement, the old rule of thumb is you get half their friends and all their enemies, yep. And so every time you do it, you're losing votes, you're losing support. Well, what I've done for three cycles in a row is I sit down with my team.
I have to make an Excel spreadsheet and I say I want to see every vote that they've cast, every state repid, every state senator on school choice. And my rule is, if you voted in favor of school choice, and you're otherwise relatively conservative, you're very likely to get my support. If you voted against school choice, the chances of my supporting your zero. And if you have anything resembling a credible primary challenger, I'm going to endorse your
primary challenger. And when I do so, I don't do so gently.
I come in and I hold on, are you saying you're not subtle when it comes to your endorsing people?
And it's shocking. This is so off brand for your centator.
Look, I come in, I cut radio, I cut TV, I get kinetic, and my view is all right, if you're not going to support choice, that's fine, but you're gonna find something else to do because you're not going to be representing the people of Texas. Because the people of Exis want and deserve school choice. I think school choice is the civil rights issue of the twenty first century.
And so for three cycles I've done that.
And there were a bunch of Republicans who voted against choice, and you know what, we've beaten almost every one of them that they came in, and we ran primary challengers against them, and we beat them. And so this time the state Senate passed a strong bill, they sent it to the House, and I'll tell you, I went down to the House. I spent an entire day on the floor of the House.
This wasn't that long ago, by the way, it was an April last week. Went all in.
I spent an entire day on the floor of the House. Okay, it is weird for a US Senator to be on the floor of the State House. That does not happen very often. I sat the Speaker's office, and I was there trying to shore up the votes while they're considered school choice.
And for everyone I'm in.
I sat down and there's some great men and women serving in the State House, and for those for those that are there, I told every one of them, I said, listen, this is the single most important vote you will cast in your time. I'm in the legislature. I'm here to tell you. The teachers' unions they're going to spend millions attacking you when you stand up for the kids of Texas. And I wanted to tell them I've got your back.
I'm going to support you. And in fact, when I went and did that, I spent a quarter million dollars in TV ads support Actually not TV as digital ads supporting state reps and in particular freshman state reps who were standing up for school choice, who were demonstrating courage. And I did that to say, look, you've got friendly air cover, you've got support. But at the same time
people understood the flip side. If you vote on the other side, I'm going to do everything I can to retire you and put someone in that position who actually is going to fight to do the right thing for the kids of Texas.
So let's talk about the practical aspect of this. What does this mean for a parent moving forward when it comes to their kid and practically apply school choice, Because look, the Teachers' Union center made this incredible. I guess the best way to put is they've complicated it with doom and gloom and extremism instead of simplifying it, which is part of the reason why we've seen some of you worried about schooltures, like it seems too complicated, let's not do it.
Well, look, the Teachers' Union scaremonger. But the good news is we now know the truth. So it was literally thirty years ago that I got involved with the school choice movement. I was a young lawyer and early on in the nineteen nineties, I was the national chairman of the School Choice and Education Reform Committee for the Federal Society.
And I did that coming off of my clerkship with Chief Justice Renquist, where Leonard Leo, who was helping run the Federalist Society, asked me, would you lead this because you're passionate about this issue, and I'll tell you what I said. Actually when he did, he said, look, I said I'd love to, but I said, to be honest, I don't have a record on this. I've never done
anything on choice. I was a twenty seven year old lawyer. Sure, and so I said, I'll do it, but I want to have a co chair with me, and I asked for the co chair to be a woman named Nicole Garnet. Nicole is a good friend of mine. She was a law clerk to Clarence Thomas. She was married to Rick Garnett, who was my co clerk with Chief Justice Rehnquist. Both
Rick and Nicole a professors at Notre Dame. But Nicole at the time was a lawyer at the Institute for Justice, and she was litigating school choice cases all over the country, and so she had been representing defending these programs and winning victories. And I said, look, Nicole's got a record on this, I've got passion, so I'm happy to do the work.
But I didn't want to do it alone. We did it together. I got to tell you.
So in the nineteen nineties when you were debating school choice, like at nineteen ninety nine, all right, I had a very odd speaking invitation. Where do you think I was invited to speak in nineteen ninety nine?
I genuinely have no clue at all on this one.
I was the keynote speaker, or one of the keynote speakers.
If you say the Democratic National Convention, I'm going to laugh out.
Out worse at the National Convention of the ACLU, No way in hell and the ACLU. They had a one on one debate on school choice between me and Juan Williams.
Oh yeah, and you know Wan.
And it was moderated by Barry Lynn, who runs American United for Separation of Church and State, who's a big left to you hate school choice? And I did it in San Diego. There were over five hundred hardcore left wing ACLU activists, maybe the most hostile audience I've ever spoken in front of my life, but I was out there pounding it away.
I will tell you in the nineteen.
Nineties, when you were arguing about school choice, the teachers unions would say, if kids have a choice, it'll destroy the public schools. And I got to say, that's a serious and powerful argument. If that were true, Ben, I would oppose school choice sure, because the vast majority of kids are educated by the public schools, and for the foreseeable future will continue to be educated by the public schools.
Back then, school choice was a theoretical idea of Milton Friedman and other free market economists that talked about it, but it hadn't been implemented a lot of places. What has happened in the last thirty years is we have seen roughly thirty different school choice programs implemented all over the country, and we now know the facts. Number one, the claim that it destroys the public schools, we know is objectively false because everywhere it's been implemented, that has
not happened. What has happened consistently when choices implemented.
You see for the students.
Who exercise a scholarship, who take another choice and leave off of a failing school to go somewhere else.
The results are unequivocal.
Their reading scores go up, their mass scores go up, their high school graduation rates go up, their college admissions go up. It has a profound effect on the students that accept and use the scholarships or use the education savings accounts to choose a preferred something they want more than where they were already. But here's the striking thing that is really important. We now know that choice is
also good for the public schools. So for the students that never exercise choice, that stay at the same school that had been struggling or failing, when the other students have the ability to exercise choice, we've seen quality go up. That competition is good. It turns out when you have to fight for your customers, for your clients, for your students, or else they leave, you end up providing a better product. We know that consistently across the country, and we're about
to see it. I believe powerfully in Texas, in numbers that are frankly just bigger than any other state.
So, Santa, the next question I got to ask is how do we get this federally? How do we have the ability for so many people to get what we just accomplish in Texas on the federal level.
That seems like an uphill battle.
It took you a long time to pull this off in Texas, and you got your hands dirty in the process.
Well, it is an uphill battle, and it's a battle that I've been fighting for the past thirteen years. Since I've been in the Senate, I've been the leading defender, the leading advocate of school choice. The single biggest legislative victory that I've had that I'm most proud of in
my entire time in the Senate concerned school choice. Back in twenty seventeen, when we were passing the Trump tax cuts, I introduced an amendment that expand expanded college five to twenty nine savings plans to include K through twelve education. So five twenty nine savings plans let parents and grandparents save in a tax advantage way for college expenses. And I headed amendment to say this can now apply to K through twelve, to public schools, private schools, parochial schools,
your choice. It ended up passing on the floor of the Senate at one in the morning, was a fifty to fifty vote. It was tied, and so the Vice President came down at one in the morning and broke the vote. It remains to date the single most far reaching federal school choice bill that's ever passed. Now, when Trump was president, I then introduced a much broader school choice bill, and it was a school choice bill that I introduced along with President Trumps Secretary of Education at
the Department of Education. And it would create a federal tax credit for contributions given to scholarship granting organizations in the States. The states would administer them, the states would run them, but you would get a dollar for dollar contribution. So if Ben Ferguson gave money to a scholarship granting organization in Texas, you would get a credit on your federal income tax for the amount of your contribution. And it was structured so it was ten billion dollars a year,
so one hundred billion dollars over ten years. Now there are no federal strings on the money other than the only requirement is that the scholarship granting organizations cannot discriminate against private or parochial schools. They have to let the parents and the kids actually decide. And as long as the parents and kids are choosing. It is up to the states to administer, and the parents and kids to administer. So that bill I rolled out at the Department of Education.
President Trump in the State of the Union address called on Congress to pass it, and we had a problem. The problem is every Democrat in the Senate opposes school choice because the teachers' unions are the single most important donors and the most important foot soldiers for Democrat candidates. And so every one of the Democrats is more afraid of the teachers' union bosses than they are motivated to help the kids who are trapped in failing schools. So
we couldn't get it passed. Now, your question, Ben is how can we get it done at a federal level. Well, you know what we're doing right now, doing budget reconciliation. Budget reconciliation means that we can pass a tax bill with only fifty votes of the Senate, with only Republican votes. So I'll tell you, I am making the hard run at my colleagues that we have the chance right now, as a part of one big, bold, beautiful bill to pass the biggest federal school choice bill in history. We
can get it done right now. The Democrats cannot stop it if Republicans stand together.
So I'm urging my colleagues.
We had this past week, we had a retreat of all the Senate Republicans and we're talking about all the different priorities for budget reconciliation that we're trying to pass. And one of the things I stood up and said to my colleagues is, look, this bill is going to be four trillion, four and a half trillion dollars. It's going to be a big bill that impacts a lot of things. A lot of what we're working on individual individual tax cuts, corporate tax cuts, small business tax cuts,
those are all massively, massively important. But I said, we ought to focus at least a little bit on legacy. We ought to focus on ten, twenty, thirty, forty years from now, what in this bill do people remember? What will make a difference forty years from now that people will say this changed the country, This changed my family. And the case I made to my colleagues is is there's just about nothing we could do that would have
a bigger legacy than school choice. Ten billion dollars a year in federal tax credits for contributions to scholarship granting organizations in the States. You would see ten billion dollars worth of new scholarships in all fifty states. We can get that done if we simply stand together.
Right now, I want to talk about what we also some big news that deals with the issue of Iran. You went on Life livertal event our good friend Mark Levin show, and we're talking about Iran right now and what they're actively trying to do.
Fill us in on that for a second.
Well, right now, they're ongoing negotiation going on with the nation of Iran and the Iyahtola is a theocratic lunatic. He regularly regularly leads mobs chanting death to America and death to Israel. And by the way, if history teaches us anything it's that if somebody tells you they want to kill you, believe them. Yeah, And when it comes to Iran, I'll tell you there are some voices in Washington and the administration that are pushing for another Iran deal.
They really want an Iran deal and basically they want time.
Why did I got to ask, because as some of you listening, they're going to say the same thing I'm saying right now is why on earth would you want an Iran deal if you know that they cheated on the last deal.
So look, I don't know. I'm not Sigmund Freud. I'm not their psychoanalysts. I just know they're advocating for it. If you look at the Obama Iran nuclear deal, the elements of it, it lifted international sanctions, it allowed Iran to sell oil on the global market, and it allowed Iran to have its nuclear program continue unmolested. There are voices within the administration, and by the way, I led the charge to pull out of that disastrous deal, and President Trump did exactly that.
He did the right thing.
It was the single most important decision, national security decision of his first term to pull out of the disastrous Obama Iran nuclear deal. And right now there's a battle within the administration. But I agree with the red line that President Trump has drawn, and he has said that any deal must include full dismantlement, dismantling the centrifuges, shutting them down, that anything short of that is unacceptable.
When you look at that deal.
And I want to play part of what you said on Mark Levin's show, because it is more background just on how crazy the IETOA is in Iran and how big of a threat it is and why you shouldn't trust them.
Take a listen.
It's my understanding that the vast majority Republicans in the Senate in the House are saying Iran must dismantle its nuclear program.
It's not a joke. He know what it.
Means when people talk about a civil or civilian nuclear program. We're not going to be fooled. They must dismantle their program. Is that what you understand? That?
That is exactly right?
And I got to say, Mark, there's a real contrast between the strength that President Trump has shown with respect to Iran and the weakness and appeasement that Joe Biden showed for four years the first term President Trump took on Iran directly pulled out of the disastrous Obama Iran nuclear Deal. He ended the civilian nuclear waivers, he ended the oil waivers, and the result maximum pressure put the
Iranian economy into freefall. Their oil sales fell from a million barrels a day of oil down all the way down to three hundred thousand barrels of oil. When Joe Biden came into office, the Iranian economy was in shambles and the Iotola and the Mullahs were teetering and near collapse.
But sadly, Biden reversed everything he did complete appeasement. He stopped enforcing the oil sanctions, and as a result, the Iatola's oil sales skyrocketed from three hundred thousand barrels a day to two million barrels a day.
That's one hundred billion dollars that.
Joe Biden, the Democrats gave the Iatola, and the Iatola is using it to fund the RGC to attack and kill Americans. The Iatola is using that to fund Hamas and Hezbola. In a very real sense, Joe Biden and the money he gave the Iatola funded October seventh. Now that Donald Trump is back in office, he's drawn a clear red line. Iran must dismantle their nuclear capacity.
They must shut down.
Their centrifuge, as it is the only thing that is verifiable is full dismantlement. And I have every confidence confidence the president is going to hold that line.
I do, But I don't have any confidence in the Iranians who lie and cheat and still and murder.
Yes.
And so the question is, how can we expect a regime that does all those things. It is not abided by anything, it's agreed to anything. It has promised over the course of the last fifteen years. So here we are at the eleventh hour. Here we are at the eleventh hour trying to deal with this. How can we trust them? Or, better put, we're not going to trust them. How do we make sure that they do what we tell them they must do?
Well, listen, we can't trust them because we know that they lie, and they lie over and over and over again. It's worth noting the IATOLA right now today is actively trying.
To murder Donald J.
Trump has hired hitmen trying to murder the President of the United States. The IATOLA is also actively trying to murder the former Secretary of State Mike Pompeio and the former National Security Advisor John Bolton. They have hired hitmen that are targeting former senior US officials and the sitting president of the United States. These are not people who can be trusted, which is why the objective must be full dismantlement must be the centrifugeas disassembled, destroyed, taken out.
And as President Trump said recently, we can do that either nicely or not so nicely. Nicely if they agree and we go in and dismantle them ourselves, or not so nicely is if Iran refuses to negotiate, we have the capability to take out these nuclear facilities. And I got to say, Mark, you and I have talked about this.
Listen.
There are some voices in the Trump administration that are on the isolationist wing of foreign policy that say, let's not worry about Iran. Let's not let's not do anything about Iran. And listen, I am someone who is very reluctant to use military force. But Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons because Iran wants to be able to threaten to use nuclear weapons, and they might even use them.
And I believe a nuclear Iran is an unacceptable threat of seeing an atomic bomb detonated in the skies of New York or the skies of Los Angeles, and so our commander in chief, President Trump, I don't think he's going to.
Allow that risk.
We are going to demand the centrifugas, the nuclear capability be dismantled, and they either do so willingly or they'll be dismantled unwillingly.
It doesn't seem to be any gray area here from you, I will bend there and the president. It seems to be y'all are all in lockstep on the same thing here. You cannot trust Iran at all.
Well, and you asked, what why do people oppose this the rhetoric they use as they say, Well, if you're standing up to Iran and you're a warmonger. And let me be clear, as I mentioned to Mark Levin, I have consistently been very reluctant to use military force. You know, you go back to twenty sixteen, the presidential race. You had seventeen Republicans running for president that year, set ran
policide because Rand's views are unique in the Senate. Of the remaining sixteen, there were only two of us on that stage who believed and said the Iraq War was a mistake. Donald Trump and me. Both of us said the Iraq War was absolutely a mistake. I believe it was a mistake because you had a dictator, a cruel dictator, Saddam Hussein, who was killing terrorists. We came in and we toppled that dictator, and the result was the terrorist took over and they began killing Americans. That did not
help America. Toppling a dictator and putting the terrorists in charge was a mistake. By the way, we made the same mistake in Libya, where you had Kadafi and other another very cruel dictator, but he was killing terrorists. We came in and toppled him, and the terrorists took over and they began killing Americans. I think that's a bad trade off. So when I say that we need to focus on American national security, it doesn't mean we should
invade other countries. It doesn't mean we should send the Marines. It means we should look at serious, real threats to our national security. And I think the single most acute threat we face, the urgent threat we face right now, is a nuclear Iran, because you've got a theocratic lunatic who has said he wants to murder us, and by the way, we know that he's willing to hire hitmen to try to murder the president already, and if he had nuclear weapons, I think the odds are unacceptably high
he would use them. And so in the first term, what I advocated for and what President Trump agreed with, was maximum pressure, using sanctions, cut cutting off their financial system. Their economy went into freefall because President's Trump stood up against the iotolin. It was incredibly effective until Joe Biden undermined it by embracing appeasement. That was a massive mistake, and I hope and believe President Trump is turning that around right now.
Yeah, it is really incredible to see him standing up and saying, hey, there are certain things that we're just not gonna deal with and certain things that we're not going to negotiate on. That's exactly what you're hearing from the President.
Now.
Don't forget we did this show Monday, Wednesday and Friday. So hit that subscriber auto download button wherever you're getting this podcast, and make sure that you tell your friends about it, put it up where you are on social media, and then Senator I will see you back here on Wednesday morning.