Parents across the country have been storming school board meetings to demand an end to critical race theory in the classroom, and prominent leftists have responded in one of two ways. Some of them have defended critical race theory is a good and important academic movement, and others have denied that critical race theory exists at all. And actually many prominent leftists have done both at the same time. Critical race theory doesn't exist, but it's also terrific and wonderful and
very important. Well, here to help us break it down, we have one of the nation's top experts on critical race theory. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. Welcome back
to Verdict with Ted Cruz. I am Michael Knowles, and this week I am joined not only by the Senator himself, but also by Christopher Ruffo, who is senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and who is largely responsible for many people around the country waking up to critical race theory and the associated leftist ideological movements that are poisoning the minds of young America. All right, you understand my opinion of CRT, but I want to take a somewhat balanced
perspective Chris, thank you so much for being here. It's great to be with you. So, Senator, you and I were talking not so long ago about what CRT was like back when you were a student in law school, because it did begin in the law schools, but it didn't end in the law schools. Well, that's right, and Harvard Law School is really where it originated, and unfortunately it is metastasized and spread and Chris has done a terrific job of chronicling where and when it has spread
and how it's manifesting. And so maybe one thing to start this conversation, Chris tell us, does critical race theory exist? Because if I turn on MSNBC, I see a lot of people screaming at me that there is no such thing. Yeah, it definitely exists. And I've noticed a lot of folks on the left, especially in places like MSNBC, equating critical race theory with Bigfoot, with the Lockness monster. It seems to be impossible to find only in the fevered imaginations
of conservatives. But critical race theorists, unfortunately for them, left a very heavy paper trail. If you look at the original academic writings in the late eighties and early nineties all the way now to K through twelve schools where I've meticulously documented not just people's experiences and people's opinions, but actual PDFs, videos, documents, and hard evidence of these really atrocious ideas that are not just so give us
an example of what's being taught to kids in schools. Sure, I mean in Kupertino, California, they forced third graders, kids that are about eight years old, to deconstruct their racial and sexual identities and then rank themselves according to a racial hierarchy. In fifth grade, in Buffalo and Philadelphia, they were teaching that quote all white people contribute to systemic racism.
They were forcing kids to hold an assimilated black power rally and the auditorium chanting for Angela Davis to be freed from prison. In a public high school in New York, they sent out an email to white parents saying that and hold on, Chris, let me stop you on that Angela Davis. For someone who doesn't know who she is, Who's Angela Davis? You know? In many ways, Angela Davis
was the kind of prototype of critical race theory. She was the doctoral student of the kind of founding American critical theorist named Herbert marcusa who advocated for revolution, who condoned even violence. Angela Davis was his student, steeped in Marxist ideology, who eventually was provided weapons for a hostage situation in a courtroom. She was a member of the
Communist Party. She advocated for the overthrow of the United States, abolishing capitalism, and a lot of the ideas that during Davis's time we're really on the radical left fringe have now moved not only into mainstream university discourse, but even into public K through twelve schools under this guise of critical race theory. So, Chris, you know, I want to have a good answer for the leftists who have now
made it seems that they're speaking in Unison. After spending weeks defending CRT, now they're denying it, and they are saying that almost by definition, critical race theory is only taught and discussed in law schools, and that the things that are going on in K through twelve maybe they're anti white, maybe they're bigoted, maybe they're vicious and far left, but whatever it is, they're not the same thing as critical race theory. What do you say to people who
are making that argument. Yeah, I mean it's important. Like all Marxist ideologies, you have theory and praxis or kind of general ideas, and then the practical implementation of those ideas that's embedded within critical race theory. So what it looks like in a scholarly paper. Obviously they're not teaching kindergarteners how to read the Harvard Law Review, but what they are teaching kindergarteners could think can be thought of
as applied critical race theory. So I'm just gonna lay out some key terms, and these are really kind of red flag terms that if they're teaching in a K through twelve school, it's almost undoubtedly informed by critical race
theory and using the principles of critical race theory. So if you hear whiteness, white privilege, white fragility, oppress or oppressed, intersectionality, systemic racism, spirit murder, equity, anti racism, collective guilt, or affinity spaces which are racially segregated training programs and educational lectures, all of those key terms which you hear in hundreds, if not thousands, of school districts across the country, even if they don't say under the heading critical race theory.
Those are all ideas that are derived from critical race theory and then applied in the classroom through critical pedagogy. Okay, so Chris back up a little bit and run through those terms. A lot of those terms we may or may not have heard of. But what do they mean? To go through them one at a time. Yeah, So I'll first take the trio of terms related to whiteness.
It's this idea that people of different racial categories can be reduced to a racial essence, this almost metaphysical property of whiteness, the condition of being white, and that includes, by definition, in their theories, white privilege, the idea that society is tilted towards you. You are embedded by simply existing, You have vested property, interests, and advantages because of the
color of your skin. And also white fragility, the idea that any reaction against something like critical race theory doesn't come from principled agreement or dissent, it comes from the kind of the kind of psychopathology of being white. That you are fragile, that you are going to react out of rage, out of other sorts of emotions, to any challenge to your identity. And then I think a second bucket.
You have to look at oppressor and oppressed. This is Marxian conflict theory, you know, derived in the nineteenth century, but now looking at that through a racial lens, the idea that the oppressors are not you know, the capitalist landlords and ownership class, but actually a racial category of whites.
The oppressed are black Americans and people of color. And then intersectionality basically takes this kind of uh, you know, kind of shake them up approach to this oppressor an oppressed distinction, saying all the different racial categories, religion, language, disability, status, your body mass index, even are all vestiges of this capitalist, white supremacist patriarchy that oppresses people. And then this is then the kind of antidote that they profess is something
like equity or anti racism. And Ibraham Kendy, who I think is the kind of critical race guru of our time, defines anti racism, defines equity and very simple terms, he says, the cure for past discrimination is present dis corimination, the idea that being, you know, we don't want to have equality under the law, we don't want to have color blindness,
we don't want to have meritocracy. We want to have a legal regime that favors people on the basis of race, that tips the scales to someone on the basis of race, and even in many cases in critical race theory actually abolishes the system of capitalism redistributes land and wealth on the basis of racial identity. So let me break down because there are a number of concepts in there, like like you mentioned equity. Now, equity sounds very similar to equality,
and equality is a good thing. I mean, we are a nation that was built under the principle of equality under the law. But when you hear the critical race theorists talking about equity, they don't mean equality. What's the difference between the two. It's a really key difference. And I think that they've adapted the term equity really to play a language game to trick most Americans to think it's just equality two point zero. It's just a better
version of what we had before. But the philosophical premise of these of these ideas is quite different. Equality, as you said, seeks to provide equal protection under the law. It protects the individual's right to things like private property, to freedom of speech, to political participation or representation so equality says you can't discriminate. Equity says you must discriminate.
Is that am I following this right? That's right? And the key difference is that equality looks to you as an individual and says that the unit, the key unit of measurement, analysis and policy is the individual human being who should be protected from discrimination. Equity says, we don't want to look at society as as a collection of individuals.
We want to look as society as a collection of competing racial groups, and we need to achieve the equality of outcomes between those racial groups by whatever means necessary, including racial discrimination which they call positive discrimination or affirmative action.
Which is so And Chris, let me stope you because one thing you said there that I think is really important as you talk about the language games and in the world of critical race theory, I mean, the left is very good and creative when it comes to language and the similarity between equity and equality. It's like, well, gosh, who could be against equality, which I guess means everyone has to be for what they call equity, which is discriminate based on race, which is the exact opposite of
what we should be doing. But but they do a similar thing with systematic racism. And when you say so, systematic racism is different from racism, like like nobody disputes racism is real. There are bigots in the world. There are bigots, There are white bigots, there are black bigots.
There are bigots of every race and creed you can find. Now, that is a very different thing from the notion of systematic racism, which is that the system is fundamentally racist, whether it's the criminal justice system, whether it is the capitalist system, whether it is whatever the systems we have in the country that they are built into their structure racist. That's very different. But the problem is when someone's listening to it and they hear systematic racism, they think, well, yeah,
racism exists, so that must be right. And when they hear someone denying it, they say, well, gosh, that guy's alone because he says there's no racism. How much mileage do they get out of these language games trying to make something invidious sound like it's innocuous. Yeah, I mean they've been very successful with it, and I think that's why we have to be very vigorous in creating language and also subverting their language. So systemic racism is very interesting.
It achieves really two objectives for them simultaneously. One, it assumes that any disparity and outcome through any kind of statistical measure where things aren't equal in the ways that they want them to be equal kind of makes the case for racism as the original cause of everything. So what it tries to do is basically say that all of these systems are racist because they produce unequal outcomes
by whatever measure that they're measuring of the day. But the second thing that it does is it also implies a solution. If something is systematically racist, the only solution is to tear down that system. So they try to put this systematic lens, institutional lens, systemic lens on all of the various categories, whether it's the constitution, whether it's law, whether it's private property, whether it's the Civil Rights Act,
and nondiscrimination. And then they try to say, basically the only solution, because we've tried civil rights, we've tried equality, we've tried everything that they said was going to lead to greater equality, it all has to go. And I think at heart, if you look at critical race theory, it is anti constitutional, it is explicitly anti Fourteenth Amendment, the idea of equal protection under the law. It's explicit the anti capitalist, so our economic system has to go.
And if you go on down the line, you find that people that the critical race theoris don't want to reform the United States. They want to overturn the United States. They want to kind of fundamentally destroy the institutions and the hope that something better will emerge. So the question that keeps striking me because I think absolutely your right, Senator.
I mean, you actually saw this ideology develop at the place where it developed in the years that it was developing, and Chris, you've traced that out very well, and I agree. I think the argument now that's being made on the left that actually, when educators in high schools and middle schools repeat all of the various axioms of critical race theory, that that somehow is totally different from critical race theory.
I think it's a kind of weak argue. It's actually a nominalist argument that basically just tries to run away from words having any meaning at all as general principles. But I am still left with this question, how did critical race theory developed in the nineteen eighties at Harvard Law School. How did it go from this kooky fringe movement at one law school, a very disreputable law school as far as I'm concerned, by the way, But how did it go from there to every system of education
in the country. Yeah, I mean that's a big question, and I think you can look at a couple different methods of transmission. I think probably the most important one is graduate schools of education. So there's a large body of academic research that they think of as the critical
turn and education. So taking critical legal studies, taking critical theory, taking critical race theory, and applying it to education, and the idea being that if you can shape a curriculum and shape a pedagogy to apply the ideas of critical race theory to kids, you're going to bring up a generation that can solve some of these problems such as white privilege and white fragility, systemic racism, etc. And if you look at graduate at schools of education, I mean
they are steeped in this stuff. The kind of foundational textbook in most graduate schools of education is the pedagogy of the oppressed by the pedagogies Paulo Freira, and then they take all of these ideas from critical theory and then do essentially critical race theory the practice portion the practice. And then you have I don't know, thousands or maybe tens of thousands of people who are graduating from these schools.
This is really the only framework that they know, and they're being put into place in school districts around the country. And one thing that I've seen is that older teachers are not teaching this. Older teachers are in many cases the people who leak documents to me because they're saying, this is tearing our institutions apart. But if you're under thirty five and you're a new public school teacher or within the first five ten years of career of your career,
this is the water that you swim in. This is what you're teaching, this is how you're designing your curriculum. And then you have a network of nonprofits of critical race theory based training programs and diversity lecturers and contractors that have created an economic ecosystem where they can attach themselves to public institutions like school districts, and then push these ideas from that fringe all the way into in
some cases, a kindergarten classroom, and I think it. You know, in a way, you have to give these folks respect. They've had a thirty year plan to get their ideas into the institutions, and in many ways they're just on the cusp of success unless we stop them. So, Chris, one very useful thing I think you've laid out for folks listening or watching the pod. If you're a parent, if you have kids. Heidi and I are girls are ten and thirteen, if you're looking at their curriculum in school,
they're buzzwords that you want to be looking for. Things like white privilege, or whiteness or white fragility, which are weird concepts. Things like anti racism, which I have to say, by the way, I have to step back in marvel at the cleverness of the propaganda because anti racism, I think, well, absolutely, I'm anti racism. Racism is horrible and evil and bigotry, and so of course I'm against that. But anti racism is a code word that doesn't actually mean being against racism.
It means being a racist explicitly and discriminating number one against white kids, discriminating number two, viewing the system in a way that it is inherently biased and wanting to tear it down. And you know, we talked a minute ago about how all of this originated in Marxism. What's interesting is it didn't just originate in Marxism. The endpoint that this curriculum is designed to teach the kids to
go to is Marxism itself. It is designed to tear down capitalism and replace it with communism, replace it with Marxism with government power, although on racial lines. And is that a fair characterization? Yeah, I think it is. And one of the things that I've noticed in my research. You look at critical race theory, and you look at their literature, you look at their academic work, and they're
always focused on pointing out problems. And I've always asked, in the back of my mind, well, what do you want? What are you proposing? What kind of policy solution are you suggesting would solve these problems? And in every case, it is active discrimination, this idea that the that equality of outcomes must be achieved through government action and government force.
It's skepticism about private property, saying that private property actually is a form of whiteness, that actually private property and white identity are inextricably linked, and in order to reduce whiteness and white privilege, you have to actually change property arrangements. And then it's someone like Ebrahm Kendy again who proposes a federal Department of Anti Racism that's unaccountable to voters, unaccountable to Congress, on accountled to the executive. And what
would that department do. It would have the power to veto nullify or abolish any law at any level of government, and silence political speech that's not deemed anti racist. So when you put all of these disparate parts together, you have again kind of the end of private property. You have redistribution of land and wealth along racial lines, and then you have an omnipotent federal bureaucracy with the power to suppress speech and the power to invalidate law outside
of the confines of our federalist system. It starts looking a lot like a Marxist twentieth century style state. And you should keep in mind, Look, I got to say that that as you describe the Federal Department of Anti Racism, that is terrifying, and it's not just Marxist, it's profoundly anti democratic. To have some government bureaucrat with the ability to set aside any law he or she doesn't like
and to silence and censor speech. But this nonsense is not us being taught in the schools, although being taught in the schools is dangerous. It's also being taught in corporate America. It's also being taught in the federal government. It's also being taught in the military. Is a right, Yeah, that's right. I've reported on all of those domains. I mean, started last year with a series of reports I did on the federal government. So give us some examples. Yeah,
so give you some examples. You know. The example that I like to tell as Sandia National Laboratories, which is a federally affiliated laboratory that designs America's nuclear arsenal, so the actual nuclear weapons that we have to keep our country safe. They sent their white male executives to a three day white male privilege re education camp. They sent them to a resort down in New Mexico, and they
had them deconstruct their white male identities. They had them read and recite white male privilege statements, and they had them right letters of apology to fictitious women and people of color. The idea is that breaking down their identity in order for them to be kind of softer and more open to absorbing this ideology. And some of these things, if you look at them, you say, well, you know, this is one crazy training, this is this is something
that was probably well intentioned, but it went awry. But then I started doing reporting at I think now more than a dozen federal agencies. I'm sure it's now almost every federal agency, including very important places like the Treasury Department, like Homeland Security, like the FBI, like West Point Military Academy. All of these these these institutions that most Americans had faith in, have been really really infected with this ideology and really have started to adopt it as their own.
And I think over the short term it makes for a splashy headline, but over the long term, it's something that is very dangerous for our country. So Chris, let me play Devil's advocate for a second here. This past week, General Mark milly is, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was testifying in Congress and made a lot of news. And I know General Milly well. I like him. He's a Princeton grad. He actually is the only general
officer in the military. That is a Princeton grad and I got to know him when he was the commanding officer of Fort Hood in Texas, when he was a three star general, before he had gone up to be hit Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. But but General Milly kind of vented and he was under questioning in the House and he said he was offended that people were criticizing the military as woke. And the argument he gave is, I've read Karl Marx, but that doesn't make me a communist.
So what's the response to, Well, what's wrong with reading some of this stuff? Yeah, I mean there's a really important distinction, right. It's like I read a lot of critical race theory. I think it's important to read. I think it's totally fine to read in the context of a college classroom. But there's there's there's two different ways
you can approach it. You can approach it as one perspective of among many, where you have a reason debate, where you look at its flaws, you look at it its benefits, and then you try to come to a better understanding of the world by comparing a variety of subjects.
The other way is to really use it as a form of indoctrination, to compelling people to believe, to forcing them to believe in this, to presenting it not as one perspective among many, but as the truth as dogmat So there's a difference between say, West Point having a survey class of you know, different views of race in America and including this among many different views, and also reading doctor Martin Luther King Junior and Booker T. Washington
and Frederick Douglas, and in that context a survey class, this could be reasonably incute included as among the views there are. That's very different from say a training program that you're forcing young eighteen nineteen twenty year old soldiers and sailors and airmen and marines to complete this training program in order to be able to serve in the military. Yeah, that's right. And I think from some of the documents that I've seen from within the United States military, it's
not presenting it as a survey. It's not presenting it as one perspective of many. It's saying this is the ideology of the US Army or the Marine Corps or West Point Military Academy. These are the books you need to read. It's Robin D'Angelo, it's Ebram Kendy. It's this new gospel of critical race theory that they're presenting as this kind of thing that you need to believe. Not again,
a competing perspective. I think it's also very different when you're talking about kids, when you're talking about K through twelve education, where again it's different. It's presented not as an academic subject, but it's presented as a kind of method of indoctrination. And I think that's why you're seeing millions of parents rise up to say, hey, look, we
want to have a discussion about these issues. We want to work on these issues, but what we don't want is a one sided, manipulative kind of Marxism based curriculum that is being forced down our children's throats, despite the fact that the parents, the people who actually are invested in these school and paying for these schools, disagree with this stuff and it violates their conscience. And it's worth pointing out a third grade classroom is not exactly a
free marketplace of ideas. You know, whatever you might have in a graduate seminar or an even undergraduate really, when you're what you're teaching to eight year olds is this is true and this is false. Right, You're giving them rudimentary education so that they can think later on in more complex ways. And I think you're absolutely right, Chris.
This is not. Though there are many defenders of CRT who are trying to pretend that this is just one idea among many in a free marketplace of ideas, it's
not how it's being taught. And as you also point out, as Senator, the fact that this has made it into the US military, the fact that officers are being told to imbibe this stuff and are being encouraged to treat it as the gospel truth rather than just as some crazy idea among many, the fact that this is infiltrated corporate boardrooms, that this has infiltrated so many institutions in our country. It does make you almost lose hope. And
I wonder is there any glimmer of hope here. It's very strange that I think probably the majority of Americans disagree with this kind of stuff. You see a lot of parents rushing to their school boards, and yet all of the powerful institutions seem uniformly to be pushing it. Yeah,
I'm an optimist. I'm very hopeful about this, and I think that what I'm seeing on the ground, what I'm seeing in hundreds of emails every day, is people are people from all walks of life, people from a variety of racial backgrounds, people from all over the country that are starting to rise up to say, wait a minute, I don't want this in my kids school, I don't want this in my church, I don't want this in my local government. I don't want this being pushed by
the US Congress. And what I think we're seeing every day is a new video of hundreds of parents showing up at a school board meeting, getting activated, really pushing on this issue. And you know, I talk with a lot of local and state legislators and they're telling me that when they're out there in their districts, this is the number one issue that they get when they're doorbelling or going door to door or speaking of events. People
really care about this. I know that some people are saying this has the same kind of energy as the ninety four Congressional Revolution or twenty ten the Tea Party Revolution. There's something happening in the grassroots of this country that people are being energized by this, They're being focused they're being engaged, in many cases for the first time in politics, and I don't think the institutional responses have been frankly
very strong. You see all of the media running cover, you see the playing language games, you see them retreating from critical race theory. None of those strategies are going to hold because people know what's being taught to their kids. People have a visceral and intuitive understanding of what this ideology is trying to accomplish. And we're seeing a critical race theory revolt all over this country. That gives me
an immense amount of hope. And I think that looks If Brooklyn and Berkeley want to do critical race theory in their k the twelve schools, that's fine, that's their right. But I think we're looking at somewhere between seventy and eighty percent of Americans that we could alley into opposition on this issue. And I think that's a starting point for incredible success. So, Chris, if someone wants to learn more,
where do we go? Where can someone go to learn more about what this is, where it's being taught, and what to do about it. Yeah, I put together a critical race theory briefing book. So if you just search Google Christopher Ruffo Critical Race Theory Briefing Book or CRT Briefing Book. I've provided anything that you'll need to get started to engage on this issue, whether you're a parent, whether you're a local legislator, whether you care about this
in the workplace. So I have definitions, I have key concepts and quotations. I have stories about where it's being taught in schools. I also have suggestions for language that's successful in winning on this issue, as well as some model legislation. So that's where i'd recommend you go. You could always reach out to me. I'm happy to help put you in connection with other people that are working
on this issue. I think it's just a tremendously important thing right now, and I encourage everyone to get involved. As Chris, we have got to get to the mailbag now, so I will not have you sit around and answer the difficult, impossible questions from our listeners, though I'm sure you could do it, because you really have done such a service with your writing over at City Journal and your work on really making this issue come into stark relief.
Chris Farrufo, thank you for being on the show. Thank you before we get to the mailbag. I am so pleased to announce that we are now finalizing the dates for Verdict Live. We are taking Verdicts with Ted Cruz on the road in partnership with the Young America's Foundation. We will be coming to a school near you, or maybe even to your school, but you will need to request that, so you can go to yaff yaf dot org slash Verdict and apply to have your school be
one of the spots. Deadline to apply as August eighteenth, Senator. We're taking this thing live. We're going to go meet people in real life. We're headed out on the road to college campuses. We'll have an auditorium, will film it live. We will have hopefully some friendly questions, some hostile questions, and it's really up up to the listeners of Verdict
where we should go. You know, should we go to places that are oases of truth and have people that are used to hearing about life, liberty in the pursuit of happiness. Or do we go to places of communist indoctrination where where we're going behind the iron curtain and we might have to have a subversive effort to come in. I don't know we're asking you, the reader, let us know where you think Verdict should be filmed, and we're
going to have fun regardless, We absolutely are. We could even head to the University of East Berlin also known as Berkeley in California. There are a lot of a lot of schools we could go to, and hopefully we'll be able to do a combination. So you can apply to hostess at your school. That will be yaf dot org slash Verdict. Get those applications in by August eighteenth. That is the deadline, and we're going to be looking forward to it. And now before we see you live,
we will answer your questions in the mail bag. All right, this question completely out of left field, but it's from our colleague on this show, who is sitting right behind you, Real Truth Cactus, who writes, what are some conservative arguments for environmental practices? We all hear the sun monster is going to kill us, But as conservatives, do we not also wish to conserve our planet? Where is the balance?
I think that's a great question, and I think a lot of conservatives are really timid when it comes to discussing environmental issues. All of us breathe, all of us drink water, all of us presumably, and you're drinking I think coffee or vodka whatever you're drinking right both actually, but there you go. But but you know, water is at its base. Look, all of us would like for our kids to be able to breathe and drink water. We'd like for our grandkids to be able to breathe
and drink water. Protecting the environment. You know, you look at Teddy Roosevelt, who was one of the first great conservationist and environmentalist. We have a responsibility to protect the environment. What does that mean? That means fighting pollution. Fighting pollution is a good and noble role. It is an important government function. We don't want to see factories pour in a bunch of gunk into rivers or into the air that make people sick. All of that is legitimate, it's
not where today's environmentalist movement is. Today's environmentalist movement is focused on shutting down production. So it's not. If the test is is the air cleaner and is the water cleaner? Then you can actually tell an amazing story because as American ingenuity has moved forward, we have cleaned the air and cleaned the water dramatically. Last year the year twenty twenty, what country had the greatest reduction of carbon emissions of
any country on Earth? Answer? The United States of America by far, not even close. And what caused that? What caused that primarily was the shale revolution and the incredible abundance of natural gas we have, and we've seen a large scale shift from electricity production from coal to natural gas. Natural gas is a much cleaner way to produce electricity than coal, and so we've seen not just carbon emissions going down, but pollutant's going down by dramatic numbers. Now
here's the weird thing about environmentalist on the left. You would think if the goal is a cleaner environment, you'd be celebrating that. You'd say that's a good thing. What the environmentalist on the left are trying to do is shut down natural gas. Shut down natural gas, destroy American production. And ironically, they also want to shut down US oil, which then makes us more dependent on fore and oil, all of which is produced in a dirtier way. So
you end up hurting the environment more. And today's environmental movement on the left is an ideology where actually clean air and clean water is really low on the priority list. Stopping human production, stopping new businesses, stopping new residential developments, stopping new economic stopping jobs is their priority. And you've got zealots who view economic development inherently as an evil. Look.
Most of us think jobs are good. We'd like to have clean air and clean water two and have jobs. You can do both if you actually employ some common sense. The radical left on the environment is not interested in common sense. Yeah, there does seem to be something a
little misanthropic about it at all. I don't want to read into our opponent's thought process here or anything, but it did sometimes seem when I was living in California, as though the Left valued the delta smelt more than they did working families who are trying to have jobs and people who trying pay for energy prices. And ironically, so many of their policies actually were harmful ultimately to
the environment. Next question from Ben is for me. Ben writes, will your next book be titled shameless because of your shameful plugs of speechless? Yes, it will be. That is if I ever write a book again, Senator. I know you've written multiple books with words. I frankly am sick of writing a book with words. It's much too hard, so I'll probably return to my former magnum opus. The final question is for you from em Taylor, Senator Crews, can you explain standing and why does this not apply
in the DOJ case against Georgia voting laws. So I bring up this question because I want on the next episode, I want to get into some legal questions that are very much in the news right now. This one just came up. The DJ is suing Georgia because of George's voter integrity law. They're saying that this is discriminatory and the federal government's can go in and stop Georgia from passing laws to protect their own vote. And because I know absolutely nothing about the law and did not go
to law school, Senator, can you please explain it for us? Sure? Two related concepts. One, in order for a court to be able to decide a case, it has to be what's called a case or controversy. It has to be a live dispute between real parties. It can't just be a request for judges to issue an advisory opinion on a question of law. An element of that, one element of that is that you've got to have a real injury.
But another element of that is that you've got to have a plaintiff with standing, and standing put simply is essentially someone with a beef in it, someone who's got something at stakes. So listen, if if your book publisher breaks it's contract with you and says Michael, we're tired of publishing books with no words. We're not going to send you any royalty checks. Fair enough. Now, I might look at that and say that is ridiculous. Michael is
the poor guy, as a starving yaely. He depends upon these royalty checks to buy his skinny genes and his you know, the outfits he wears on verdict. And so I'm really upset they're not paying it. Well as upset as I might be. I don't have standing to sue over breach a contract. It's not I'm not a party of the contract. I you have standing to sue if if they breach a contract with you, you have standing to sue because you've suffered an injury and you're actually
a party to the in this case the contract. So the question is why does the United States have standing to sue Georgia in this instance? They sue Georgia under section two of the Voting Rights Act, and that is a statute that Congress passed to protect voting rights, and it actually gives the Attorney General the authority to bring suits to enforce the law. And so in the role as the chief lawyer for the United States of America, the Attorney General has the authority under the Voting Rights
Act to bring suits. Now, I think the suit is not meritorious, and I think we're going to discuss that on a subsequent verdict. But in terms of standing, the way the Voting Rights Act is written, the Department of Justice has standing to bring a case to enforce Section two of the Voting Rights Act. All right, that's just a little teaser for something talking about. Yes, that's the argument from the federal government, and we will knock down why it's a very bad idea to go in and
up end this voting rights law in Georgia. But not this time. We run out of time. Senator, Thank you as always. And by the way, I think all of the listeners of verdict would have standing if I could no longer afford my skinny genes. I think that would greatly injure all of the viewers out there. But we'll discuss it coming up. I'm Michael Knowls. 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.