Trump Victory on Deporting Students, Harvard Loses Serious Funding plus EPA Chief Zeldin on CA Wildfire Clean Up Week In Review
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Welcome. It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, the Week in Review. Ben Ferguson with you. And here are some of the big stories that you may have missed that we talked about this week. First up, a major victory for Donald Trump by immigration judge that has now said, yes, he can deport foreign students who come to America and advocate violence against Jews.

And up next, Harvard has been receiving billions of dollars from us, the taxpayers. Well, the Trump administration is now saying we're cutting off a lot of that money. I'll give you the details why as well. And finally, the EPA administrator Lee Zeldin joined us to talk about the California wildfire cleanup that Trump inherited and how the Trump administration was able to get it done quickly.

It's the Weekend Review, and it starts right now. I want to move to this other big issue also that we mentioned earlier, and it was a massive victory for the Trump administration when it came to an immigration judge doing a major ruling on deporting students that are advocating for the death and destruction of students on campus that, by the way, are Jewish students.

are advocating their support for terrorist organizations. And this all comes out of Columbia University, where it has become a major point of, all right, who's going to win this? Is the Trump administration going to win this? Or are the radicals on the left going to win? And it was a big win for Donald Trump this week.

Well, it was a win. I don't know that it was a massive victory because it's clearly right under the law. So it was a win that was going to happen, but I'm glad it did. And so, listen, one of the things that President Trump is doing that is exactly right.

is the Trump administration is deporting those who engage in anti-Israel, anti-American protests, who are foreign students, who are on student visas, who are non-American citizens. You don't have an entitlement to be here. And look, we talked about during the Biden administration when these viciously anti-Israel, anti-Semitic protests were going on,

that the Biden administration could do something about it, but they didn't want to because Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and Chuck Schumer, they agree that,

with the pro-Hamas protesters. They agree with the radicals. And so you didn't see the Department of Justice investigating them. You didn't see them following the money. You didn't see them trying to do anything really to protect the Jewish students on campus who were being targeted for harassment and threats of violence. Well, you and I, in fact, one of the very first pods we did in the new administration is we interviewed Pam Bondi at CPAC. And in that podcast with a

then Attorney General Bondi, right after she got confirmed, she made clear then they're going to go after these radicals. And I will say immigration law gives considerable room

considerable flexibility to the administration to decide who that is here on a permissive visa can be sent home. And so in this case, you had Mahmoud Khalil, who was a Columbia anti-Israel protester, who the administration is in the process of deporting, and he is challenging that in court. And an immigration judge ruled that he can be deported.

Due to his involvement in last year's pro-Hamas protest at Columbia, and this is a judge, Judge Jamie Comins, and he said the government had met its burden of proof.

I think that's clearly right. And the Department of Homeland Security laid out how Khalil misrepresented himself on his green card application. And in particular, he was not upfront about his involvement with organizations he's involved with. He willfully failed to disclose his employment with the Syrian office in the British embassy in Beirut when he applied for permanent U.S. residency. And...

What the federal government argued is that made him inadmissible at the time he was given his green card because of, quote, fraud or willful misrepresentation of material fact. He also failed to disclose his work for UNRWA.

And UNRWA, we've talked about before, is the U.N. agency that has literally been in bed with Hamas. You had multiple Hamas terrorists working at UNRWA. UNRWA has given significant material aid to Hamas terrorists. And the court ruled that, look, that is ample grounds to deport him. I think that ruling is clearly right.

And if you looked at Khalil, you looked at his writings, this is someone who is viciously anti-Israel and anti-American. And in fact, he's using the deportation to just rail against America and what a hostile environment it is. And in fact, Khalil's argument, here's something he wrote. He wrote an op-ed in Columbia, you know, attacking how dare you deport me.

And he says something. He accuses the Columbia administrators of manufacturing, quote, public hysteria about anti-Semitism without once mentioning the tens of thousands of Palestinians murdered under bombs made of your dollars. So understand this guy's complaint is that the Columbia administrators...

stood too strongly against anti-Semitism. They let their entire campus get taken over. They let Jewish students be terrorized. They let campus buildings be taken over. They were weak and ineffective, which is why the president of Columbia had to step down. And yet this guy's claim is, nope, nope, they were too strong against anti-Semitism. You

They should have been effectively marching alongside me in favor of Hamas. This ruling is clearly right. I'm glad it came down. There are going to be more rulings like this. If you are here— So this will have precedent, right? Like, this is going to— No, no. It won't? Okay. This is a ruling of an immigration judge in this case. So it doesn't resolve the issue across the country, but—

The immigration law is quite clear that, look, Khalil's case was harder because...

He was a legal permanent resident. He has a green card. And legal permanent residents have greater legal protections than just somebody under a student visa. Somebody under a student visa, they can have their visa revoked and sent back. It is not a high threshold to do that. To revoke a green card is a higher threshold. And so the ruling here is, well, the Department of Homeland Security gave evidence that he had lied to

when getting his green card, and that was basis for deportation. And so that, I think that's the right ruling here. It's a good ruling. And I think you're going to see, listen, let me say to any anti-American radicals who've come in on student visas, you are not welcome in America. And if you are going to use our hospitality to attack and threaten and harass fellow students, if you're going to use our hospitality to attack America,

Get the hell out and and we're going to help you get the hell out. And that is one of the best things the Trump administration is doing right now. Now, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation, you can go back and listen to the full podcast from earlier this week.

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Now on to story number two, which brings us to Harvard. And Trump has said we are freezing the funding going to Harvard. They have slashed over $2.2 billion in funding to Harvard after the school has defied federal law. And the White House says we're not playing around. A lot of Americans, by the way, may not realize that $2.2 and, in fact, a lot more than that is going to Harvard of your tax dollars.

Yeah, Harvard gets roughly $9 billion in federal taxpayer dollars. So it gets an enormous amount. Now, it's a huge research institution, and it does some good research. It does medical research and scientific research, and some of that research is valuable. But what the Trump administration has announced, the Joint Task Force on Combating Antisemitism, has announced that it's freezing over $2 billion in multi-year grants and contracts to Harvard.

And that was following the school's president putting out a statement saying it would not comply with the Trump administration's demands on anti-Semitism. And I got to say, this is a battle that Harvard and a lot of academic institutions are putting out statements in support of Harvard. So brave, so brave. Now, I will say most other institutions, when the Trump administration has threatened their funding, they've caved and they've caved very quickly.

But the other institutions are happy to applaud Harvard and say, yes, yes, yes, lose your funds. You're so brave. And what is striking is that Democrats, Barack Obama, the Democrat governor of Massachusetts, are all lining up behind Harvard. And there is a reason. When you look at the core bases of the Democrat Party,

You know, there was a time in a prior generation when the Democrat Party was considered a blue-collar party. And in the age of FDR, it was a party of union members and working class. And in fact, one of the reasons that FDR was treated with contempt is because he was a very wealthy person, as many Democrats are. But he was considered a, quote, traitor to his class because he was a rich man who became a historic Democrat leader. Well...

That Democrat Party doesn't exist anymore. The Democrat Party no longer cares about the blue-collar, and in fact, they routinely destroy blue-collar jobs. Today's Democrat Party is a party of coastal elites, and it is a party that is comprised of big universities and big business and big tech and big Hollywood, all of whom have overlapping problems. All of them are in bed.

with China, and all of them have been taken over by radical leftism, by cultural Marxism. As you know, the most recent book I wrote is entitled Unwoke, How to Defeat Cultural Marxism in America, and each chapter breaks down a different major institution that's been captured by the radical left. The first chapter is

is entitled Universities, the Wuhan lab of the woke virus. And what I argue is that it is universities, and sadly my alma mater, Harvard, where the woke virus was first created in a lab, and then it mutated and spread, and it spread throughout just about every other major institution in this country. And so Harvard has been the locus of

of much of the radical leftism and cultural Marxism that has done enormous damage to our institutions. And Harvard is digging in, and they're claiming that...

That they're digging in in defense of free speech, but what they're really digging in on is they don't want to change their policies. Number one, that discriminate on race. They love discriminating on race. They love DEI. They love putting race front and center, which, by the way, is directly contrary to federal civil rights law.

And they also want to continue admitting radical anti-Semites. They want to continue looking the other way at pro-Hamas protesters who threaten Jewish students, who threaten violence, who threaten intimidation, who call for genocide. And they want to continue admitting and promoting anti-American radicals, and that includes both students and faculty. And so when the administration put a series of demands in place, Harvard said no, and

I got to tell you, Harvard thinks they want this fight. In my opinion, the Trump administration is eager for this fight with Harvard. And you could not ask. Harvard has an endowment of over 50 billion dollars.

And, you know, one of my favorite responses to that, to Harvard's supposed stance on principle, where they talked about standing for the First Amendment, is Hillsdale College, which is a great college. It is a conservative college, a free market college.

But one of the things they do is they don't take federal money. And Hillsdale actually tweeted, well, you can say anything you like, just don't take federal money. And oddly enough, Harvard doesn't want to do that. They want the taxpayers to fund them, but they want to continue to be embracing racism and vitriolic anti-American sentiment while at the same time being funded by American taxpayers.

So when you look at this, this fight, I do think one of the very interesting parts of all of this that we're talking about is now Americans are really waking up and realizing like where their money has been going, how much of it is going. And you're right. There's some of this is research and that's something we can be proud of. And that's a good thing. But a lot of this is going to indoctrinating kids with radical leftist ideals.

And that's part of the reason why I think they need this money, right? They want the money for that reason. They've been doing a great job of doing that for the last several decades. So if the money does dry up at places like Harvard,

And then we start to see more questions being asked about other money. Not only could this change universities in a positive way, I think, for free speech and not having one set of views that are indoctrinated, but it could also save the taxpayers a hell of a lot of money because it's not just Harvard that's getting cash.

Oh, yeah. But Harvard is the perfect test subject, and our universities right now have become indoctrination labs. They've become places that enforce rigid orthodoxy, and if you say something that is contrary to the radical leftist view, you risk being disciplined, you risk having your grades, and you also risk just not being admitted. And look, some of the question—

comes down to a very simple, what is it that the administration was requesting? Because if the administration was demanding Harvard must teach in every class that Donald Trump is the greatest president to have ever lived, I would agree with Harvard that no university could give in to a government demand about a specific position like that, particularly if it's one they disagree with. But that's not what the Trump administration said. And I have in front of me

The letter that the Trump administration said, it's five pages. I'm not going to read it all, but I'm going to read some of the portions of it. So it is addressed both to Alan Garber, who is the president of Harvard University, and to Penny Pritzker, who is the lead member of the Harvard Corporation. Penny Pritzker, by the way, was a cabinet member under Barack Obama. And the Harvard Corporation runs all of Harvard. And it's this privately held corporation of all Democrats that run Harvard as this left-wing bastion.

Here's how the letter begins. Dear Dr. Garber, the United States is invested in Harvard University's operation because of the value to the country of scholarly discovery and academic excellence, but an investment is not an entitlement. It depends on Harvard upholding federal civil rights law, and it only makes sense if Harvard fosters the kind of environment that produces intellectual creativity and scholarly rigor, both of which are antithetical to ideological capture.

Harvard has in recent years failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment. But we appreciate your expression of commitment to repairing those failures and welcome your collaboration in restoring the university to its promise. We therefore present the below provisions as the basis for an agreement in principle that will maintain Harvard's financial relationship with the federal government. Here's the first. Governance and Leadership Reforms.

By August 2025, Harvard must make meaningful governance reform and restructuring to make possible major change consistent with this letter, including fostering clear lines of authority and accountability. Apparently that was objectionable. Empowering tenured professors and senior leadership and from among the tenured professorate and senior leadership, exclusively those most devoted to the scholarly mission of the university and committed to the changes indicated in this letter.

reducing the power held by students and untenured faculty, reducing the power held by faculty, whether tenured or untenured, and administrators more committed to activism than scholarship. Now, again, this is something Harvard found unacceptable. We're not willing to focus on scholarship instead of activism. Nope, that's a violation of what we want to do.

and reducing forms of governance, bloat, duplication, or decentralization that interfere with the possibility of the reforms indicated in this letter. So that's the first one. Apparently something was objectionable about that. What's the next one? Merit-based hiring reform.

By August 2025, the university must adopt and implement merit-based hiring policies and cease all preferences based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin throughout its hiring, promotion, compensation, and related practices among faculty, staff, and leadership. Now, mind you, that is existing federal civil rights law. You cannot discriminate based on race. And yet, for Harvard...

That is outrageous. Of course they want to discriminate based on race. It's an ideological commitment. What's the next one?

Merit-based admissions reform. By August 2025, the university must adopt and implement merit-based admission policies and cease all preferences based on race, color, national origin, or proxies thereof throughout its undergraduate program, each graduate program individually, each of its professional schools, and other programs. Again, the idea of actually admitting students based on merit rather than discriminating based on race, which, mind you, discriminating based on race is illegal under federal civil rights law,

to Harvard is anathema. What's the next one? International admissions reform. By August 2025, the university must reform its recruitment screening and admission of international students to prevent admitting students hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence, including students supportive of terrorism or anti-Semitism.

Again, apparently that is outrageous and unacceptable. The next one, viewpoint diversity in admission and hiring. By August 2025, the university shall commission an external party which will satisfy the federal government as to its competence and good faith to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity.

such that each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse. Now, notably, they're not saying hire conservatives. They're not saying hire Trump supporters. They're saying you cannot have a faculty that is universally orthodox and indoctrinating, that all have the same view,

The left loves to prattle on about diversity as our strength, and by diversity they mean we must all be leftists who believe the same thing, but say so with different skin colors. Now, I actually think diversity means having different ideas, confronting ideas you disagree with.

Look, I go through these to give an example. I think each of those demands are very reasonable. They're saying comply with federal law, be an institution that actually does what you say, what you claim to be doing. And yet Harvard is outraged. How dare you hold us to the terms of federal law? We cannot comply with that.

As before, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation on this topic, you can go back and download the podcast from earlier this week to hear the entire thing.

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That's why your generosity is critical. That's why we have partnered with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews to help provide not only humanitarian assistance, but life-saving aid and security essentials. Your urgently needed gift today will help provide security essentials. It will provide bomb shelters, flak jackets, bulletproof vests for first responders, and so much more.

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Ready to transform your home entertainment? Visit Vizio.com today. I want to get back to the big story number three of the week you may have missed.

You told a story earlier today about the EPA's involvement in cleaning up the California wildfires, and it's a good example of how it impacts people's lives. Like, you wouldn't necessarily think the EPA is involved in dealing with wildfires, but you guys are deeply involved. As soon as the wildfires hit Los Angeles, over 13,000 properties destroyed. President Trump comes into office, he inherits it, happened a few days before he got there. He signs an executive order, he says, EPA, you have 30 days

to do your entire Phase I hazardous material removal before Phase II starts, which is the Army Corps of Engineers doing their debris removal. And like with the wildfires, you have people's homes that burn to the ground. There's a lot of toxic sludge. I mean, it's a mess. It's dangerous. Like, fires produce bad stuff, and you guys had to figure out how to clean it up, but do it in 30 days. Yeah, at first, the response was, that's impossible. This is going to take you until the summer at best.

It's going to take a few months for sure. The lithium ion batteries were all over this particular area. We got it done in less than 30 days after ramping up to 1,500 workers. Proud of the effort from EPA. We do a lot like this that the American public might not know about. And that's why in just a couple days we're heading to the Tijuana area in Southern California where a lot of Mexican raw sewage is.

is entering for decades. We need to end it. Number one about you guys dealing with water issues in Tijuana, and there's another one that a lot of Americans will remember, and that was the train derailment. And it seemed like the government was picking winners and losers with that cleanup or lack thereof. You guys have also gotten involved with that because what you did in the wildfires in California is incredible. That's what every American should get no matter where they live, and politics shouldn't come into it.

This is something that really showed then junior Senator J.D. Vance as someone who understands leadership in a time of crisis. When disaster strikes, your instinct as a leader should be to show up at that site and to be the voice of the people. And what was wild was J.D. was like the only one there.

I think that might be Congressman Bill Johnson's district. Well, to be fair, Donald Trump came too. Yeah. Well, and it was J.D. Not Joe Biden, not Pete Buttigieg, but Donald Trump came. That's right. And I remember the conversations where J.D. was engaging with President Trump to make sure that President Trump was there. And this was all in the initial days and weeks after disaster struck. Yes. And...

A lot of people were wondering, well, where is this person? Where is that person? Where is this agency? Where is that agency? It should be. This is the ultimate gut check and instinct check. And it's amazing because Biden and the Democrats, they really like Palestinians. You would think they would have gone. Oh, my gosh. You know, for the record, Lee Zeldin is officially speechless. He doesn't know what to do with that smart ass comment.

I'll tell you, it was such a missed opportunity to lead. And that EPA, over the course of time, there ended up being 220,000 employees.

We saw 220,000 tons of contaminated soil removed. We saw tens of millions of gallons of water removed. It ended up becoming a massive EPA effort that actually is still ongoing. And in a way, for the environmental and human impacts, there's going to be testing going on for a long time

to come and I would encourage anyone who's out there listening who is in that community in the area that maybe you used to go to East Palestine but now you take a detour you go somewhere else we all need to do our part to help bring East Palestine Ohio back it's very important to the Vice President but

Unfortunately, too many of these cases have shown that lack of leadership. Well, tell us what you're doing in Tijuana because it's an amazing story. Here you have an issue where for decades Mexican raw sewage has been coming across the border.

It's been poured into the Tijuana River. It ends up contaminating water and air. We have Navy SEALs getting sick. They have to do training somewhere else. So we have decided enough is enough. We're going to Tijuana in the coming days. I can't wait to get there. We're going to be on the U.S. side of that border. We have a whole plan of action. I'm just warning you when you're in the cabinet, what happens in Tijuana does not stay in Tijuana.

Yes, sir. Great advice. And especially if you drink the water. You'll be bringing that back with you to D.C. So listen, it's something that we're going to step up and tackle. And we're proud of it. EPA wants to assist. And these are Americans that we see over there. California, do they vote red or blue? All your listeners know the answer to that one. It doesn't matter. But look, you're cleaning that crap up. Literally. Literally.

I mean, that is valuable. That's what we want the EPA to be doing. That's important. Let me ask you. So you and I are in Midland, Texas. We spent the day. We started by going to a rig that was drilling an oil well. We then had a roundtable. And actually, when you were being confirmed and you came by my office, you and I have been good friends for over a decade. But when you were being confirmed, I said, I want to ask you to commit to come to Midland, Texas.

and sit down with oil and gas leaders, with entrepreneurs, with people that are producing energy, and hear from them. And it's amazing. You're the first EPA administrator in history...

to come to Midland-Odessa, which is astonishing. It's like saying an Ag Secretary had never been to Iowa. It's like saying a Secretary of State had never been to the United Kingdom or never been to Israel. Like your job, every EPA administrator should be in the Permian Basin, given the importance of it and the involvement of the EPA. So tell us about, you met with wildcatters and business leaders, a lot of people that are good friends of mine.

Give us your impression of the folks you met and what you learned on this trip. Was it valuable? Salt of the earth job creators. You could just imagine how much sweat equity was around that table of people who have poured their lives, their heart,

blood, tears, creating jobs, providing energy to Texans and beyond. And these people need us to be thanking them, to be praising them for their good work, to be supporting them, as opposed to using our power to try to make it more difficult for them. We shouldn't be trying to shut them out.

I have had great joy in recent weeks and months asking them how much they're like Billy Bob Thornton. Have they ever been tied up and had a mask over their head? Had they been covered in gasoline by cartels? Our host, Bill Holmes, great, great, great friend, landman, very successful businessman. I asked him, so by the way, if you haven't watched Landman, you should. It's the best show on television.

I did play for President Trump in the Oval Office last week the segment from Landman where Billy Bob Thornton talks to the left-wing environmental lawyer about windmills. It's the best three minutes on television of our lifetime. And I will say at least the landmen I know in Midland tell me that

They murder fewer people than they do in the show. It's still a great show. And for Billy Bob, if you're out there listening, that was a free sponsorship from Senator Ted Cruz. So you're lucky that you have that fan. Playing it for President Trump in the Oval, bringing a great show to the people. And listen, we need to get smart with energy policy. There are people promoting wind as an intermittent source as if that's a substitute for baseload power. For all of you out there listening, let's get smart.

Educate, advocate the people who are around us. All of the above. We need good policy. As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz. Ben Ferguson with you. Don't forget to download my podcast and you can listen to my podcast every other day you're not listening to Verdict or each day when you listen to Verdict afterwards. I'd love to have you as a listener to, again, the Ben Ferguson podcast. And we will see you back here on Monday morning.

Hello, iHeart listener. We have a confession to make. Both iHeart and this commercial you're listening to right now would probably sound a heck of a lot better on the new Roku Pro Series TV. It's got side-firing speakers that fill your room with sound, Dolby Atmos audio that puts you right in the middle of the entertainment, and the ability to pair seamlessly with your home theater sound systems that already have surround sound and booming bass.

If all that sounds too good to be true, it'll sound even better on the new Roku Pro Series. Your hearing isn't better. Your TV is. I'm Rodney Williams. And I'm Travis Holloway. Welcome to the Wealth Break Podcast, a real conversation about finance.

Let's be honest. Building wealth doesn't look the same for everyone. I feel like sometimes being broke is a cycle and that we might have to revisit that. And we're not stopping at success stories. What happens when it doesn't go right? How do you cope with it? Because wealth isn't just about money. It's about creating a life where you thrive and help others do the same. Listen to the Wealth Break podcast on the iHeartRadio app.

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