House Budget VICTORY, Cartels Escalate War Zone at Southern Border & Dems DIg in on Boys in Girls' Sports
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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, D.C. And the big headline is a $4.5 trillion tax cut has passed the House. It was touch and go. It's a slim majority in 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 1220 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 going to break that down. We're going to explain what it means, what that is starting 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 raided

are engaged in what you would have to call just open warfare at this point. IEDs 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 girls 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 girls sports. And Maine and California and Minnesota are saying, hell no, we're going to break that down as well. Yeah, it's awesome. I got to 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 at 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, terror, 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.

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All right. So, Senator, 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 of the 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 this 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, OK, 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 costs, to lower inflation. And there's a mandate to bring the economy back to help small businesses. And that means extending the 2017 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 60 votes in the Senate. Why is that? Because the Senate rules give the minority the ability to filibuster. And the ability to filibuster is the ability to block legislation unless you have 60 votes to cut off debate.

Now, we only have 53 Republicans in the Senate, which means if you need 60 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 1970s that provides for moving forward on budgetary matters. And by statute, a budget reconciliation cannot be filibustered, which means you can pass it with only 50 votes in the Senate. You don't need 60. So if you go back to 2017...

The 2017 Trump tax cuts we passed using budget reconciliation. If you go back to the Biden administration, the Democrats used budget reconciliation multiple times to pass things like their incredibly misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, which was the Green New Deal spending scam. They used that because they couldn't get 60. 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 senator, including myself, believes the way to do this is two bills, starting with one bill that secures the border, rebuilds the military and unleashes energy. And then a second bill that extends the tax cuts and makes them bigger and bolder.

I don't know who's right. I don't know if the Senate's right or the House is right. 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, how'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 listen, Steve, we all remember where Steve was shot 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 and and badly wounded Steve, shot him in the pelvis. And he was in a coma for several days. He almost died.

He's recovered from that. And then I got to say, Steve has had some 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 MD Anderson is an amazing hospital. My mom, who's 90 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, you better believe I want to be a 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, I said, look, even 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 exacts the cost. It's brutal.

It's brutal. But you know what? Steve is strong and effective and good. I was really encouraged. It's 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 Republican 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 were supposed to have dinner at 7.30. He didn't get there until about 8.30 because he was on the floor battling. 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 you make it hurt a little bit? So I ordered McAllen 25 neat. There you go. Which is a great single malt scotch. And, you know, Steve is not a big scotch guy. I actually don't drink scotch a lot, but I do like McAllen. And so we toasted. And when someone else, by the way, is paying, it's just a nice little touch there. Look, Steve said hurt me a little bit and ordered something pricey. So I thought about Michelob Ultra.

But somehow, McKellen 25 seemed a better call. As long as it wasn't a Bud Light or a Budweiser, I'm good with it. 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 Strohs. You know, it used to be a few years ago, I'd go to the Astros, and every baseball game, I'd have a Bud Light. I mean, that's just what I drank, you know?

I'm old enough that I drink light beer instead of regular beer because I like water that's slightly flavored. I like it. But...

After the whole Bud Light thing, it's an amazing thing. You go to the Minute Maid Stadium. You go to watch, I guess it's now the Dyken Stadium. The Dyken's like, no, no, we paid a lot of money to change that name. I know, but it's hard to make the change. It's always going to be Minute Maid. I laugh because when they change it, I'm like, dude, how many people are going to remember this? It's going to be Minute Maid for the majority of my lifetime.

So but I'll say this. You'd go to the stadium and 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 is. It is a real boycott. It has not gone away at all. And I do love every once in a while when conservatives say, OK, you insult us at 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 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 don't, I didn't like their politics, but I'm like, I'm not willing to, to sacrifice my joy just because I'm pissed about politics. What got Bud Light to,

is they have a product that is easily substitutable. Yeah, easily replaceable. Every place you could get a Bud Light, there's a Coors Light. Yeah. There's a Miller's Light. It's right next to it. There's an Ultra. And by the way...

Show me the guy that if you do a blind taste test between Bud Light, Miller's Light, and Coors Light could tell you the difference. I don't know. That's someone with a better palate than me. They're all light beers, and they all taste pretty much the same to me. I'll probably piss off some listeners.

but I can tell the difference between a Guinness and a Bud Light. Yes, yes. But I'll be damned if I can tell the difference between a Bud Light and a Coors 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 boycott that said, oh,

Yeah, I can literally hold my beer or let me return it and I'm going to get a different one and watch how easy this is for me. Right, right. And that got them in real trouble. By the way, Target gotten a little bit of this when they got super woke and Target is somewhat substitutable. But I'll say I think Target and 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 Wal-Mart.

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, 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.

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I'm also getting points. Learn more at AmericanExpress.com slash US slash explore dash gold. Terms and points cap apply. All right. I want to ask you one other question on the budget issue. So for people that say, OK, this passed, how quick is this going to move forward or how long is this going to take? There's a long way to go. So what's the timeline on this? So we 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 inning 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 tradeoffs. It's going to be hard. It's going to be hard because the House majority is so excruciatingly tiny that on any issue, if you lose two votes, 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 military, if we don't unleash energy, if we don't extend the tax cuts.

will get killed in November of next year. Yeah, and that's probably a lot of what Donald 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 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, terrorist organizations. I think this is another example of the president getting it right, saying we're going to declare them as terrorist organizations because that's what they do. They are terrorist organizations. And now we have another data 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 warn 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 Gaspérez Saldirna, 74, who worked on both sides of the border, along with Horacio López Peña, was killed in the blast in Tamaulipas, Mexico, which was just south of Brownsville, Texas. López's wife, Ninfa Griselda Ortega,

was hospitalized with injuries. Saldierna 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 to 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 got to say, it is dangerous and it shows, you know, some in the media say, gosh, it's hyperbole, it's rhetoric to call the cartels 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 going to call them terrorists, let's go after them like they're terrorists. How dare them be allowed to do this? Well, I believe we're going to do that. I believe we're starting with we saw on January 20th, President Trump securing the border. We've seen the numbers of illegal crossings plummet, drop 90 percent.

We're going to go after them. We're going to go after them. We're going to go after the people who are here, the murderers, the rapists, the child molesters, the gang members. We're arresting them. We're deporting them. We're going to send them back. But we're also stopping the traffic coming in, the human traffickers, the drug traffickers. That is impacting the cartels' 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 2018, the Mexican drug cartels made roughly $500 million from human trafficking. $500 million is a lot of money. Last year, they made $13 billion, a 2,600% 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 Hezbollah.

The days of the cartels terrorizing 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 a great nation is only beginning. And now is the time to take a stand. And Patriot Mobile is leading the charge.

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bill you're going to have every month and fight for what you believe in. Patriot mobile dot com slash verdict. All right, Senator. Lastly, there is a war that is taking place between Donald Trump and certain states. They're 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 the 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. 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 60-40 issue. It's not a 70-30 issue.

This is an 80-20 or a 90-10 issue. I mean, if you ask any rational and sane 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 dumbass idea. And yet the elected Democrats in Massachusetts, their answer is let him go. We are opposed to deporting anyone, no matter how vile.

They're continuing the same position on, they continue to support, the Democrats in Congress continue to support sterilizing and castrating children for sex change operations. Again, that's an 80-20 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 80-20 issue. The American people don't want

boys 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 clobbered 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 Pam Bondi, the new attorney general, said,

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 out of girls' sports. And here's what Pam Bondi 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

to ensure state 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 14201 on this subject explains, allowing men and boys to compete in women's and girls 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 IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972.

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 girls sports. We talked about in Monday's pod how the governor of Maine is in open defiance, saying to hell with you. We'll see you in court tomorrow.

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 podcast. And if you want a quick morning update of what's going on, grab the 47 morning update. I give you the three biggest stories of the day in about a 10 minute short form podcast. Grab that as well. The Senator and I will see you back here on Friday morning.

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