SCOTUS Allows Trump's Transgender Military Ban, plus USAID Corruption & NPR Extremism
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Welcome, it is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you. And Senator, there's a big win we get to start off today with for the President of the United States of America on one of his promises, which was to get DEI out of our military and actually go back to what they're supposed to be doing, which is keeping us all safe. Well, that's exactly right. President Trump started his administration by putting in place a ban on transgender service members serving.

And immediately he got sued. And the lawsuit, you had judges that ordered the ban not to go into effect. It went to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court this week allowed the ban to go into effect. 6-3, the Supreme Court said, yes, this ban can go into effect. That was a big victory. On top of that, we've got an amazing story.

about a foreign aid official who refused to allow a Doge officer to enter his agency to examine his financial record. And actually, we've discovered a reason for this, which is that he steered illicit contracts...

to a friend who sent him secret payments. It is a level of corruption that is shocking. We're going to explain that to you as well. And finally, the president is going all in to defund NPR. NPR, National Public Radio, it is long past time to defund NPR. We're going to break down what the president is doing and just how rabid and political and biased NPR is. We're going to cover that as well.

Yeah, definitely. It's a really big story, and it's one that could save taxpayers an awful lot of money. Hey, I want to tell you real quick about the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. And did you know, just like here in the U.S., Israel has their own Independence Day?

In case you missed it, this year Israel's Independence Day was a few days ago on May 1st. But for the people of Israel, freedom is nothing more than a daily struggle just to survive. There's no real peace, only terror, no joy and just suffering at the moment. The Israeli government recognizes the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews for ongoing help to make sure that the elderly, the

The sick, the wounded soldiers, and impoverished families don't fall through the cracks. And that is where your help is needed. Your gift to the fellowship today will provide life-saving aid, medicine, hearty meals, safety, and comfort. I believe that when we bless the people of Israel, we unlock God's blessing in our lives as well. So show your support for Israel's independence by making a life-saving gift today. You can call them at 888-

That's 888-488-4325. Or go online to ifcj.org. That's ifcj.org. All right, so let's start, Senator, with this big story. And look, the Supreme Court giving Trump a big win today.

on the Pentagon transgender policy. This is something the president campaigned on. It is something the left tried to beat him up on. And clearly the American people backed the president and the Supreme Court now giving him a win. A lot of people were worried maybe it wouldn't happen this way, but it did. Thank goodness. And now Trump says, look, we get to go back to what we do well and not all this DEI woke crap. Yeah, that's right. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court entered an order

that upheld the Trump administration's order banning transgender military service members from serving. And the order, the Trump policy, bars individuals with gender dysphoria, or those who have undergone gender transition medical procedures, from serving in the armed forces. And, of course, the instant the policy was put in place, there was a lawsuit, a lawsuit that was brought challenging it. And

U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle granted a preliminary injunction blocking the Department of Defense's policy from taking effect nationally, and that was in March. And he ruled that the hardship the government said allowing transgender people to serve would inflict, quote, pales in comparison.

to the hardship imposed on those service members. This was in the Ninth Circuit, which is the most liberal federal court of appeals in the country on the West Coast. And a panel of judges in the Ninth Circuit declined to stop the injunction, so left it in place. And the Trump administration appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court on Tuesday reversed that injunction. It was 6-3. The three left-wing justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented.

But all the other justices said the policy could go into effect. And so this is a big, big victory for the Trump administration on a major issue. And it's good for America. When you look at what this means for our military, it means that the idea that we were going to have before, which was the Biden dream and Obama's dream as well, that we're going to try all these social experiments together.

Pete Hedge, Seth has made it clear. The president's made it clear. That is not the job of the military. We want to be ready. We want cohesion. We want there to be a service that works well together. This is not supposed to be a melting pot of experiments, especially when we need to be ready at wartime. So, Ben, more simply, the job of the military is to defeat our enemies. It's to defend America. It's to be the most badass fighting force on the face of the planet.

And unfortunately, under radical Democrats, they decided that was not the job of the military. They wanted the military to be a transgender experimental pool where I'm sorry. Look, if you're suffering from gender dysphoria, if you're a man who thinks he's a chick, if you're a chick who thinks she's a dude, that I'm sorry that you are struggling with those issues.

But at the end of the day, the job of the military is not to provide mental health counseling to you. The job of the military is to defend America. And the Supreme Court, it was 6-3. It was not close. That is a big victory for the military. It's a big victory for President Trump. It's a big victory for America.

Let's just remind people of where our military was before Donald Trump was reelected. This was the U.S. Air Force Academy hosting a transgender Pentagon official. So this is someone in the top level of our Pentagon for a symposium on, quote, inclusion. They did this. It was caught on tape. Here is what that transgendered individual in our military high ranking had to say at the time.

All too often, I hear leaders talk about providing everyone with dignity and respect like it's an aspirational goal. That's not good enough. Dignity and respect is the bare minimum. It's the floor of where we can be.

We must set our sights higher and focus on intentional inclusivity because there are still far too many people out there, not just LGBTQ individuals, that feel marginalized, shut out, or discriminated against. So for all of you out there, I ask you to set out your symbols of pride, share your pronouns in your email, particularly if you're a person who doesn't think they need to,

initiate difficult conversations about racial and gender barriers, and share a bit of your vulnerability in a way that draws others in.

You all have the power to take intentionally inclusive actions to ensure the multiple perspectives that we know make us stronger as we devise winning warfighting strategies get heard. Let me ask you, if you're a Russian general, if you're a Chinese general, if you are a North Korean general, if you're a Venezuelan general, if you're an Iranian terrorist, and you hear that, are you scared? No. No.

Not at all. Like, what the hell are these people doing? Like, proclaim your pronoun. No. Go, like, train on weapons and get really badass in great shape and get really smart and learn to use weapons to defend America. That's the job of the military, to be so ready to kill our enemies that, frankly, they don't need to.

because our enemies are scared out of their mind. And I got to say, the fact that the Democrats not only lost sight of that, but didn't care about that, they viewed the most important thing to do in the military is let's all be transgender and have sex change surgeries. And by the way, Ben, there is a reason military enlistment plummeted, because you know what?

The big old strapping dudes in Texas and Mississippi and Alabama and across the country who said, I want to defend America. They looked at that and said, OK, that ain't for me. If that's what serving in our military is, no thank you. And it is striking in the first three and a half months of the Trump administration with Pete Hegseth there. Pete is a friend of yours, a friend of mine. He is someone who's focused on defending the warfighters.

We're seeing military enlistment numbers skyrocketing because once again, young men and women say, yes, damn it. I want to defend America. I just don't want to be on this social experiment for radical, woke, left-wing ideologues.

You look at December of 2024, the Army reported its most productive month in 15 years with an average of 346 enlistments per day. The momentum continued into January of this year with 6,531 new contracts signed, making it the highest January total since 2010-2012.

And you look at these gains, we had real challenges there. The Army reduced its recruitment goal from 65,000 in 2023 to 55,000 in 2024 because they knew they weren't going to hit their target because people did not want to serve them.

Under the Biden administration, if this is, and again, I go back to the audio we just played of you a second ago. If this is the military, right? The U.S. Air Force Academy hosting a transgender Pentagon official for symposium on inclusion. You say, nah, maybe I don't want to serve in this level. You look at these recruitment numbers now, it goes back to what you mentioned earlier.

The Trump administration has emphasized one simple thing. We want to have a military that's ready. We want to have a military that's ready to take on anybody that we need to in the world. We want them to be effective. We want them to be proud of being Americans and having a strong military. And none of the DEI stuff is in here for us right now. Look, we want warriors prepared to defend America. And by the way, there are a ton of young men and women

who want to be warriors prepared to defend America. And that's exactly... I'm a big believer, as Reagan put it, in peace through strength. That if you're strong enough, if your military is strong enough, the bad guys don't want to screw with you. This is one of the things the left gets wrong. They think the way you avoid war...

is being weak, is engaging in appeasement, is giving your enemies whatever they want. And it's exactly backwards. I've joked more than once. There's a reason nobody goes and studies and gets a degree from the Neville Chamberlain School of Foreign Affairs.

Appeasement doesn't work. Weakness doesn't work. And Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer and Kamala Harris and the Democrats, they are the party of appeasement and weakness. And what they did to the military, they look at badass warriors and they're like, get out. No, no, no. We don't want anyone who could actually win a fight.

We want people who could emote and say, I just want you to tell me your pronouns. I don't give a damn about your pronouns. I want you to defend America. And you know what? A whole lot of young men and women, they want to be in the military that's doing that. Which brings us center to one of our other stories. It's a very interesting one. And it's one that I think a lot of people are going to be upset about.

Yes, this is a story Daily Wire broke. And actually, the reporter there, Luke Rosiak, he was the one who broke the story about Loudoun County.

and the incredible, the shocking abuses in Loudoun County where you had a sexual predator, a boy dressed as a girl in a skirt who sexually assaulted a teenage girl and the school district covered it up. And it was a great example where Daily Wire, which is not the New York Times, it's not the Washington Post, it's not ABC, NBC, CBS, they drove the news. This story, we're going to cover this story and it's one of the reasons, Ben, you and I do this podcast.

Because the corporate media is so corrupt, they don't cover stories that are counter to the narrative. So this Daily Wire story is a bombshell. And yet I'm going to wager you are going to take a bet. A hundred bucks. CNN won't cover this. Actually, yeah, I'll take that. They're not going to cover this. No way.

No, no, I'm on that side. Oh, see, you always stack the deck against me on this. No, of course they're not going to cover this. No bet. No bet at all. Nobody will cover it. Nobody will cover it. Okay, so that's what this podcast is for. So here's the Daily Wire story. Let me just read you the beginning of it. A foreign aid official who refused the Department of Government Efficiency access to his agency's financial records may have had a reason to keep auditors out.

He steered illicit contracts to a friend who sent him secret payments, according to a law enforcement affidavit obtained by the Daily Wire. Matthew Zahoui, chief financial officer of the African Development Foundation, refused to grant Doge access to its books.

and told the White House that the agency would not acknowledge President Donald Trump's appointee as chairman of the board. After a dramatic showdown in March, Doge physically took over the building with U.S. Marshals, but control of the agency is now subject to a lawsuit objecting to swooping in with Doge staff demanding access to sensitive information systems, an objection that reads differently in light of the criminal probe.

For years, workers at the small USAID-adjacent federal agency focused on Africa have told oversight bodies about allegations of self-dealing, procurement violations, and mysterious offshore bank accounts, many of them involving Zahoui. But little was done about it, several told the Daily Wire. One action that raised eyebrows was Zahoui's insistence on directing both grants and contracts

to a company in Kenya called Ganyam Limited. According to spending records, it was awarded nearly $800,000 in contracts without competition. For example, a one-year $350,000 contract for quote, travel, transport, and relocation services was executed in March of 2020 when few people were traveling or holding conferences because of coronavirus.

According to a search warrant application uncovered by the Daily Wire, USAID's inspector general established by August of 2024 that the company's owner had secretly wired money to Zahui's personal bank account at times to match up with the federal contracts.

To date, the Department of Justice has not charged either man with a crime. I want to repeat that sentence again because it's stunning. According to a search warrant application uncovered by the Daily Wire, USAID's inspector general established by August 2024, before the election, that the company's owner had secretly wired money to Zahui's personal bank accounts.

at times that matched up with the federal contract. So this guy is sending federal taxpayer monies, hundreds of thousands of dollars to his buddy, and his buddy is wiring money back to him. And when Doze shows up, he blocks them and says, no, you can have no access to our records. It is on the face of it. It certainly appears to be massive corruption, which is why the media won't cover it.

So the question everybody's listening now, Senator, is asking themselves, like, all right, well, is there actually going to be accountability here? Will this individual be prosecuted or is this just somebody that's just going to get fired and we move down the road or maybe doesn't even get fired, right? They'll just maybe move them around somewhere. When is there going to be hell to pay for this type of corruption? Look.

If this was corruption, this person should be fired, number one, but number two, prosecuted. We don't know that for sure, but the allegations on the face of it are deeply concerning. If you're giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to a buddy of yours, and by the way, the person who got these contracts, I'll read a little more from the article. Gannium Limited is owned by Maina Gakur.

whom Zahoui has known for decades. Both worked at the Department of Veterans Affairs in San Diego and later moved to Fairfax, Virginia. Gakoury had been in charge of awarding contracts to the VA and then created his own company designed to get government construction contracts by taking advantage of minority preference programs.

It was called Ganyem LLC and was based out of a house in Virginia. Gakuri similarly created a company based in Kenya called Gakuri Limited. The African Development Foundation is permitted by law to give grants only to African entities. In January 2024, Inspector General Agents interviewed Zahoui.

about the Ghaniam contracts, and he acknowledged having known Gakoury personally since 1999 and having been to his apartment. He, quote, could not explain why the contract with Ghaniam was sole sourced instead of being competitively bid, the agents wrote. Zahoui was named chief financial officer of the federal agency,

after he declared bankruptcy and had his house foreclosed on. He acknowledged to investigators that the travel contract was executed after COVID had already shut down travel. He told them the contract was actually used for IT services, but since Ganim had no expertise in IT, it subcontracted to a different company. A Department of Treasury contracting official told the agents that

That was not allowed. Zahoui continued to give more contracts to Ghaniam without competition.

which he justified by saying he was, quote, lazy. By the way, that's his defense. I'm lazy. I'm lazy, right? I'm just lazy. It works. He didn't want to find a new vendor. Zahoui stated he did not receive any direct or indirect benefits from Gakuri, but agents found text messages showing at least eight instances of

Look, I got to say...

I don't know all the evidence, but on the face of it, this stinks. This looks like straight out corruption. This looks like straight out kickbacks. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. I got to say, by the way, the guy is cheap. You're giving hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts and you're only getting 10 grand back. Like, it's one thing to be corrupt, but corrupt for like next to nothing is astonishing. My hope, we have a...

serious investigation, and if these allegations are true, this individual should be fired, should be prosecuted, and should go to jail.

So how concerned should we all be that this is, in fact, not just an outlier, but that there's all sorts of corruption like this happening all within our government for years on end? And we're just now starting to find some of it, because if this is like how the government did it and no one was paying attention, I mean, part of this, like, how did this guy get away with this for so long?

Well, look, I think he got away with it because the culture was nobody's going to look. This is expected. It's an amazing thing. Democrats have normalized that when they take control of government, that what they're going to do is pay off their buddies.

They're going to give millions of dollars, billions of dollars. You look at the EPA, which had a contract with an NGO that Stacey Abrams was one of the leaders of. Stacey Abrams was the failed Democrat candidate for governor in Georgia. Two billion dollars. You and I on this podcast, we interviewed Lee Zeldin, the Permian Basin. He talked about how the Biden administration EPA officials said,

After Trump won in the couple of months between the election and swearing in, they wanted to get rid of as much money as possible. And it was the Biden administration officials that referred to it as throwing gold bars out the windows. Twenty billion dollars, two billion dollars to this nonprofit that Stacey Abrams was one of the leaders of.

And on the face of it, it looks like pure political grift. What did the nonprofit, what was it charged with doing? Spending $2 billion buying appliances, buying stoves and refrigerators and ovens for Georgians. Now, the last I checked, spending $2 billion to buy votes to get people to vote for Democrats is

That ain't the job of government. And yet there's a culture in the Democrat Party when they have control, they reward their friends and they punish their enemies. By the way, to be clear, Republicans don't do that and we shouldn't do that. And yet the Democrats, I think they believed nobody would ever look. It would always be in darkness. There would be no accountability. I'm hopeful and I'm thankful that under Trump, there's finally going to be accountability.

There may be accountability coming very, very soon when it comes to the issue of NPR. This is something that the president's talked about a lot. Taxpayers don't like it. It's been pretty obvious that at NPR...

In PBS, there's a lot of our tax dollars are going to activists and to those in the far left that want to indoctrinate people through our tax dollars. And now accountability may be coming to NPR. Well, that's right. So the president signed an executive order ending the taxpayer subsidy of NPR and PBS, both of which received millions from taxpayers. And they're just partisan propaganda outlets.

the order reads as follows by the authority vested in me as president by the constitution and the laws of the United States. It is hereby ordered NPR and PBS, uh, they will be shut down from cash. And, and let, let me read some facts on NPR. So NPR ran a story entitled quote cannibalism. It's perfectly natural in which the author like by,

By the way, how am I saying this? How is this real? The author describes eating another's human's placenta. So let me read this excerpt. This is from an NPR story. In the book, you describe getting invited over for dinner by one of your sources to eat her placenta. How was that? Was it good? Yeah, it was really the prep that made it taste good. Granted, the husband was a chef, so he knew how to prepare it Osabuco-style.

and used a really nice wine I had bought. It smelled great. It didn't taste bad. I wouldn't do it again. I don't have any regrets I did this. So, I just want to go back to the title. NPR, Cannibalism, It's Perfectly Natural. All right, in 2021, another story. NPR said the Declaration of Independence was a document with, quote, flaws and deeply ingrained hypocrisies. Here's what they wrote.

The Declaration is a document with flaws and deeply ingrained hypocrisies. It also laid the foundation for our collective aspirations, our hope for what America could be. So in that spirit, here again is the Declaration of Independence as read by the NPR staff. So that was 2021, where they just crapped on the Declaration of Independence and then they read it. You know what they did in 2022? What's that?

They said, we're not going to read the Declaration of Independence anymore. So it was a long tradition. And in 2022, they tweeted the following. This July 4th, we break with tradition. Instead of reading the Declaration of Independence, we examine what equality means and is meant in this document. Important segment about our past and future. So the Declaration of Independence is apparently no longer allowed on NPR.

because apparently hating America is NPR's mission. Yet again, your tax dollar is hard at work here. So there's going to be pushback, right? There's going to be fighting here. Ultimately, what are the chances that this sticks and that we actually say, hey, you're not getting the tax dollars for this radical agenda that you're pressing and trying to indoctrinate on so many people? So look, I am hopeful. I want it to happen. I'm fighting for it to happen. Let me give you another example. NPR. NPR.

issued an editor's note warning that the Declaration of Independence is, quote, a document that contains offensive language. And here, this was in 2022. Editor's note on July 8th, 2022. The story quotes the U.S. Declaration of Independence, a document that contains offensive language about Native Americans, including a racial slur. That was what they were saying. The

In the NPR also in 2019, they apologized for calling illegal immigrants illegal. And they posted, quote, Sorry, that was a mistake. NPR's policy is not to characterize people as illegal, by the way, in federal law.

an illegal alien is referred to as an illegal alien. That is in the United States Code. But NPR says, we slip up from time to time, but we'll keep working hard to get it right. They also, here was another story, NPR sounded the alarm about young men who abstained from masturbating to pornography. And here was the headline of the story at NPR in 2024. Masturbation abstinence is popular online. Doctors and therapists are worried.

Like, what the hell? Here was another story. NPR featured a Valentine's Day story around, quote, queer animals, in which it suggested the make-believe clownfish in Finding Nemo would have been better off as a female. And that, quote, banana slugs...

are hermaphrodites and that, quote, some deer are non-binary. The title of the story was Manny Loves Cayenne, plus five facts about queer animals for Valentine's Day. Okay, these people are freaks. Queer animals for Valentine's Day. This is what they're writing. By the way, a year ago, this was 2024 Valentine's Day. They also devoted a panel to what it means to be woke.

and to quote white privilege and the title was stay woke this is this is all right i'll give you another story they routinely promote chemical and surgical mutilation of children calling it quote gender affirming care without mentioning the irreversible damage caused by these procedures

And finally, in 2021, a PBS program aired a, quote, children's program. So this is what they're talking about to kids. Featuring a drag queen named Little Miss Hot Mess. And here's drag queen Little Miss Hot Mess sings, the hips on the drag queen go swish, swish, squish.

to a virtual child audience on an episode of Let's Learn. This is who they are. By the way, okay, one more that I, there are two more. There's so many, they keep piling up. NPR educated the nation on, quote, the whole community of genderqueer dinosaur enthusiasts.

and transceratops. So here's a quote from the story. Many people who are queer, whether they are trans or some other form of gender queer, whatever it is, we love dinosaurs. Along with being a dinosaur expert, Riley is herself transgender. According to Riley, there is a whole community of gender queer dinosaur enthusiasts online.

We had no idea, so we checked it out. Sure enough, there there, we found dozens of paleo artists online that identify as queer. Type dinosaur into the LGBT subreddit. Hundreds of results with pride dinos, rainbow dinos, dino moms, dino dads, and lots of puns. Like Allysaurus.

And then, all right, here are the last couple. Then PBS White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor characterized President Trump's patriotic 2020 Mount Rushmore speech as a love letter to, quote, white resentment that promoted the myth of America. And then, all right.

NPR suggested that our doorway sizes are based on, quote, latent fat phobia. They also said they assigned reporters to investigate how the thumbs up emoji is racist. They have a story. Which skin color emoji should you use? The answer can be more complex than you think.

These people are idiots. They are radicals. They're zealots. Now, by the way, they're entitled to be idiots and radicals and zealots. But Ben, why should you pay for that? Why should I? Yeah, that's exactly the point that the president's making as well and why there's a good chance.

We may actually get a big victory on this one. Don't forget we do this show Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Hit that subscribe or auto-download button. On those in-between days, grab my podcast, the Ben Ferguson Podcast. I'll keep you updated on the latest breaking news there as well. And the Senator and I will see you back here on Friday morning. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.