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- [00:01]
Michael Knowles
The Department of Justice is suing the state of Georgia over its voting rights law. There is a new voting rights law up for discussion named after the late Congressman John Lewis. There's a major court case that the Supreme Court refused to hear on whether or not there's a constitutional right for men to use the women's bathroom. But there is one legal issue on the mind of America before any of the others. That, of course, would be when will we Freebritney Spears. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. Welcome back to Verdict. I'm Michael Knowles. Oops. I did it again. I did not lead with the most important story and one that I really want to get into. Senator, so good to be with you to touch on all the important legal issues of the day.
- [00:55]
Ted Cruz
Well, if there's anything this podcast is known for, it is focusing on the issues that will determine the fate of the republic. And so I'm glad we can continue in that tradition today.
- [01:05]
Michael Knowles
In that case, Senator, hit me, baby, one more time. I wanna know what the real details are of this case. I actually, I'm only being half facetious here because we've seen this pop up in the culture every now and again. You'll see the hashtag freebritney movement. She's under a conservatorship. You know, a lot of us grew up with her as a very important figure, especially the young men out there. She occupied a lot of space in our minds, and she's been under this conservatorship for some time. So she doesn't appear to have any real legal rights. I read somewhere that she has a birth control device that her doctors will not remove and that her family will not allow her to remove. I mean, this seems like in some cases the stuff you hear about in Communist China, and yet that's permitted to go on here. So do you know anything about this or, you know, conservatorships more generally and how people can be deprived of their civil rights?
- [02:00]
Ted Cruz
So I will say this. This may be an illustration of something of a generational divide. Whereas you grew up with Britney Spears on your wall, I was more of a Farrah Fawcett guy. But, you know, the decades had a way of passing on. So I will readily confess I am no expert in Britney Spears music. That was not particularly my cup of tea. But I gotta say, on the question of the conservatorship, I am squarely and unequivocally in the camp of Free Brittany. I think this is frigging ridiculous what is happening to Britney Spears and It needs to end.
- [02:41]
Michael Knowles
Can you tell me any? I don't even really understand the idea of the conservatorship more broadly. I understand if someone has personal troubles, then someone else can be designated to make legal decisions for them. But how broad is it? Because just knowing what I read in the newspapers, it seems deeply un American. It seems deeply wrong what is happening to this woman.
- [03:01]
Ted Cruz
So it is incredibly broad. And look, there are various steps in the law that an individual can forfeit their freedom, their liberty. If you're seriously mentally ill, you can be involuntarily committed. But for you to be involuntarily committed, you've got to be typically a danger to yourself or a danger to others. And that's gotta be demonstrated. It varies state by state, but usually with a pretty high evidentiary standard for your freedom to be taken away from you and you to be incapacitated. A conservatorship is similar to that, the demonstration under California law for a conservatorship to be entered into, for someone else to have the ability to make life decisions for you, either about you, your person, your health, like what you can do with your life or your finances. The threshold is quite high. And they're typically used for people who are very, very elderly, for people whose faculty have lost them. If you have, say, Alzheimer's and you're no longer able to care for yourself, then there's a role for a conservatorship if you have someone whose mental capacity is not there. What is bizarre about what happened to Britney Spears is she's a 39 year old woman, she's a mother of two. Has she had issues in life? Sure. Has she had issues with mental illness? Perhaps. I don't know, I'm not her doctor. I haven't seen that demonstrated. Has she had issues with substance abuse? She's been to rehab. But I gotta say, if you're gonna lock up everyone in Hollywood who's had substance abuse issues, you're gonna have a long, long line. And in fact, Sunset Boulevard might be empty.
- [04:46]
Michael Knowles
That's true. Real estate prices would plummet. It'd be great.
- [04:49]
Ted Cruz
So the threshold, it is bizarre. And this conservatorship, it happened in 2008. It happened while she was in the midst of and coming out of a nasty custody dispute with her ex husband over her kids. Look, custody disputes get ugly. And she had had an incident, you know, she went and took an umbrella to a paparazzi. Now listen, you know, I don't know any of us that would react well to people hounding you every moment you go outside, when you go to the 7 11, when you go to the grocery store, when you do anything, people taking pictures constantly being in your face. You know, I'm reminded of the scene in the Untouchables, to use a movie example, where Al Capone, played beautifully by De Niro, gets mad at a photographer and grabs the camera and breaks it like that reaction, while perhaps not the best reaction, is an incredibly human and understandable reaction. And the idea that. And so, all right, she shaved her head. Okay, Last I checked, shaving your head is not a capital offense. She had pretty hair. But who the hell's business is if she wants to shave her head or not? The threshold for taking away someone's liberty and capacity to make decisions properly under the law is very high, and it should be high. And at this point, we're looking at, what, 13 years of a grown woman having every decision made by her father. Now it might even be a different story. If her father had been a caring, nurturing figure throughout her life, had helped her through a career, was someone who had demonstrated enormous love for her. As best I can tell from her history, her father was out of her life for much of the period of her life. Had his own drinking problems, his own issues as she was rising up as a pop star. And then when she got super rich, just kind of parachuted in there and said, hey, I like me some hundreds of millions of dollars. Well, I get that he might, but that seems absurd. And then, let me put really, the finishing touch on it. If, for the last 12, 13 years, she had been severely mentally ill, if she was sitting in the corner, you know, playing with blocks and counting on her toes, okay, maybe you could say, all right, this is someone not able to function. There is an important place in the law for protecting someone who's not able to function. But during the last 13 years, she's done hundreds of shows. She's made hundreds of millions of dollars. She's able to stand up on stage and sing and perform and dance over and over and over again. Look, I gotta admit, I. You and I couldn't do that to save our lives. Well, maybe you could, but I couldn't do that to save my life. And everything I have seen about this case, it seems like an enormous abuse of the judicial process, going right down to when the conservatorship was first put in place. She tried to hire a lawyer to fight it, and the California district judge threw her lawyer out, says, no, she's not capable of Hiring a lawyer. I've got a medical report that proves it and I'm not gonna show it to you. So I've got a secret report, by the way, I have a secret report right here on Michael Knowles. It says that you're not capable of handling yourself. And so by the way, your vast hundred dollar fortune. I'm taking over right now.
- [08:36]
Michael Knowles
Like Senator, no one would dispute that. I think in that particular case it's public knowledge. Different for Brittany.
- [08:42]
Ted Cruz
But what an asinine situation for a judge to throw out a lawyer that she tried to retain and appoint instead another lawyer. The entire process throughout it seems designed to just trample on her rights. And I don't have any dog in the fight of saying that she's the. The wisest and most capable person on earth. I don't know. I don't know her. But there are no outside indicia of the level of lack of competence that should be required to justify a conservatorship for one week, much less for 13 years.
- [09:27]
Michael Knowles
And I think part of the reason why people care about this story is not just because Britney Spears actually wasn't a very important pop culture figure for a lot of people. But I think it's also because all around our country we're seeing people's civil rights being taken away. We're seeing abuses of the judicial process. It seems that this is sort of one particular sensational story that is representative of corrosion around the justice system. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but there are other examples of these major abuses.
- [09:59]
Ted Cruz
No, I think that's right. And there are a couple of other points. One, in ordinary circumstances, she's not someone who would be considered powerless. This is someone who has made hundreds of millions of dollars, has vast resources, which may explain why vultures are circling around and want access to her money. Two, the entire affair. There seems enormous misogyny connected with this. It's difficult to imagine a similar situation with a man. I mean, you wanna talk about people who are irresponsible with their money. You don't have to stretch to find some pro athletes who hemorrhage cash like crazy and spend money on everybody on earth. You don't have to stretch to find rock stars and people who. Look, all of us have watched the sort of, you know, late night Eon television series of. They started off young and bright and. And then to the descent into drugs and alcohol and it always ends. And then sometimes there's a redemption and then they cleaned up and are living their life. In this instance, it Seems that Britney Spears encountered the kind of challenges with fame and success that many, if not most people who have experienced that encounter. But for her, that was used as an excuse to strip away her liberty. And you mentioned one of the more stunning allegations. She gave a recent interview where she said that they put an iud, a birth control device, in her involuntarily because they didn't want her to have kids. I mean, good God, that sort of forced prevention of childbirth, forced sterilization, it has an ugly, ugly legacy. It goes on in China, Communist China, all the time. But we have an ugly legacy in the United States of people with mental retardation being forced to be sterilized. And that is grotesque. And the idea that the court would step in and say she doesn't have a right to make a decision to have a child, that is stunning. I don't know that that fact is confirmed, but it's an allegation she's made and the, the judicial system ought to be protecting her rights, not treating her like a child because she's not a child.
- [12:32]
Michael Knowles
That was the fact that really pushed me over the edge. It's just intrinsically evil. It is just the kind of thing that you read about in communist China. This, for all intents and purposes, forced sterilization. It's just if the allegation is true, it is just such a stunning overreach. And so I agree, I am entirely with you on the freebritney train. I was wondering if we could also, if you could enlighten me on some of these broader overreaches because I just from the legal, I have my own political views and my own philosophical views, but from the legal perspective, it would be good to get an expert here. What is going on between the DOJ and Georgia? Georgia passed a voting rights law. We've now heard that Merrick Garland, the AG is going to sue Georgia. The people of Georgia don't have the right to pass their own election laws.
- [13:24]
Ted Cruz
Apparently not. Look, if you look at the Department of Justice under Joe Biden, Merrick Garland had been a judge for a couple of decades. It actually earned a reputation of being relatively fair and impartial. So when he was first nominated, I was cautiously optimistic that this was not a wild eyed partisan. That optimism was substantially shaken during his confirmation hearing where Merrick Garland refused to answer just about any question, no matter what you asked. He wouldn't make even the barest commitments. He just basically dodged everything. And that was disconcerting. I voted against Garland's confirmation, but then it Got much worse because I saw Biden's subsequent nominations and in particular two in particular, Vanita Gupta, who's the number three lawyer at the Department of Justice now, and Kristen Clark, who is the head lawyer at the Civil Rights Division. The two of them are both radicals and in fact, I've dubbed them the radical twins. They're both, they're two of the leading proponents of abolishing the police in this country. And by the way, we're not talking about a long time ago, we're talking about last. Last year, both of them either gave testimony or in writing advocated for defunding or abolishing the police. These are now two.
- [14:41]
Michael Knowles
Can I just ask, at a very practical level, Senator, how is it that two of the top cops in the country would end up be advocating for abolishing the. Doesn't that seem a little self undermining?
- [14:52]
Ted Cruz
It should, because Biden has handed control of the agenda over to the radicals. And by the way, at their testimony, for both their confirmation, they said, well, okay, a. They denied that they'd written it, even when you read them the words back at them. And it was almost like a, you know, Obi Wan Kenobi. These aren't the droids you're looking for. They're just like, nope, I didn't say that. And you'd read the words, nope, that's not what that says. And then more importantly, they just say, I do not advocate abolishing the police Today, by the way, the politicized fact checkers. So today, the Washington Post fact check, a sort of joking tweet I made about Joe Biden's anti crime agenda. I laid out five points, one of which was abolish the police. And they came out for Pinocchios. Why? Because they say, well, no, no, no, Joe Biden himself has not advocated abolishing the police. Well, you know what? When you nominate not one, but two senior officials at your Department of Justice who are among the leading advocates for abolishing the police in the country, you don't get to pretend you're on the other side. So one of them, Kristen Clark, is leading the Civil Rights division and she has been a radical partisan her entire life. By the way, in law school, she put on a conference celebrating cop killers as heroes. This is the kind of radical that she is, that people who murder police officers are heroes to be lionized. So what did the department.
- [16:21]
Michael Knowles
You know, I seem to recall that Kristen Clark also wrote, I believe it was in the Harvard Crimson, it may have been in some other publication At Harvard, she wrote a piece about the biological racial superiority of black people over whites. And I didn't believe it when I saw the allegations. I actually had to go look it up in the newspaper, and there it is with her name in the byline she did.
- [16:43]
Ted Cruz
Now, she claims that was satirical. Whether it was or not, I don't know, but that's her explanation today. Regardless, both she and Vanita Gupta have had an entire career, decades of being hard, partisan radicals. So what happens? Georgia passes a voter integrity law. Democrats and the press demonize that voter integrity law. And now we see the Department of Justice is the enforcement arm for the radical left because the Department of Justice sued Georgia under what's called Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. And here's what the Department of Justice is arguing that it violates the Voting Rights act for Georgia to do things like, for example, not send absentee ballots to people who didn't request them. I gotta tell you, there are a whole bunch of states all across the country, including Texas, that don't send absentee ballots to people who don't request them. Now in 20.
- [17:42]
Michael Knowles
Not yet.
- [17:43]
Ted Cruz
Not yet.
- [17:44]
Michael Knowles
Not until the Biden DOJ gets its.
- [17:46]
Ted Cruz
Way in 2020 with COVID A lot of states, including Georgia, relaxed or failed to enforce their voting laws to make voting to lessen the protections against voter fraud. And it was justified because of the pandemic. Set aside for a second which of those justifications were and weren't right. Look, providing absentee ballots to people who request them is the way an awful lot of states across the country do it and have done it for a long, long time. The idea that that violates the federal voting rights law is absurd. Another element of George's bill is a requirement of voter ID. Eighty percent of Americans support voter ID. Over 60% of Democrats support voter ID. Over 60 percent of African Americans support voter ID. The Department of Justice is suing, saying the fact that Georgia passed a law with ID requirements violates the federal civil rights laws. This is, I believe, an abuse of the justice system. And it really is. The fruits of what happens when you put partisan radicals in senior positions of the Department of Justice, they turn around and use the Department of Justice as a partisan weapon.
- [19:01]
Michael Knowles
But could I push back on their behalf? Sure, because what they're going to say is, they're gonna say, look, when you have widespread mail ins, more people vote, right? We had something like 7 zillion people vote in the last election. When you don't have voter id, you're gonna get more people to Vote, some of those people might be dead, and some of those people might be foreign nationals. And as we actually talked about on this show, in the federal attempted takeover of many of these elections, there was actually a provision to give legal immunity to foreign nationals who would vote in the elections. But I guess that's a point for another episode. My point is, if these Democrat policies expand the number of people who vote, and if the Georgia law will, whether for right or wrong, make it more difficult to vote, whether it's because you have to show an id, it could be a perfectly legitimate policy, but still will make it more difficult to vote, then do they have an argument that by the Voting Rights act and by these other provisions of the law, we need to expand the vote?
- [19:59]
Ted Cruz
No, they don't. Nothing in the Voting Rights act requires you to allow people to vote for whom it is illegal for them to vote. The Voting Rights act does not require you to turn the other way to voter fraud for you to allow people to vote illegally. And the argument that it does is pretty crazy. You know, there's right now litigation at the Supreme Court concerning laws restricting ballot harvesting. Ballot harvesting is the practice where you send a paid political operative to collect. Collect the ballots of other people, of other voters. And it is an instance that is particularly ripe for voter fraud. That case, as we sit here today, has not been decided by the Supreme Court. It's expected to come out any day now. I led an amicus brief of a number of senators in that case, arguing that protecting the integrity of elections is entirely consistent with the Voting Rights act, and in fact, it furthers the Voting Rights Act. You know, Supreme Court has said for a long time that when you allow voter fraud, it steals the right to vote from legal voters. Number of years ago, when I was Solicitor General of Texas, Indiana passed one of the first photo ID laws for voting. And Indiana was promptly sued. A bunch of Democratic plaintiffs came in and they sued and they argued that this discriminated against minorities. Now, by the way, the argument that minorities can't figure out how to get an ID is asinine. The last time I checked, African Americans are perfectly capable of getting IDs. Hispanics. Look, I'm Hispanic. You know what? I got a driver's license in my pocket. I'm not under a conservatorship in California. I am actually capable of going to the DMV and sitting there for 19 hours in an endless line. And the sort of paternalistic, condescending argument that minorities can't get IDs is absurd. And by the way, you need a photo ID to get on an airplane, to drive a car, to get a beer, to go into an R rated movie if you look like you're under 17. There's a reason why over 60% of African Americans support voter ID laws. Because they recognize that. That getting an ID is not a difficult thing, and protecting the integrity of elections is. Well, I led a coalition of states in front of the U.S. supreme Court in that Indiana photo ID law, and we ended up winning six. Three, actually. The decision was written by Justice John Paul Stevens, one of the most prominent liberals on the court, who explained that protecting the integrity of elections actually protects the right to vote. And looking the other way on voter fraud undermines the right to vote. Sadly, the Department of Justice under Joe Biden has turned that upside down.
- [23:09]
Michael Knowles
Well, I will not, like a white liberal, presume to tell my Hispanic senator friend that he can't go get an id. I think you've disavowed people of that crazy notion.
- [23:19]
Ted Cruz
Muchisimas gracias.
- [23:22]
Michael Knowles
De nada.
- [23:24]
Ted Cruz
Mire eso yo seville que tu podillares. Okay, we've reached your limits.
- [23:31]
Michael Knowles
That's about. I think we got. When we get to the bibliotheca, that's about it. But we have established in English and perhaps in Spanish as well, that the Voting Rights act does not currently prohibit these sorts of things. But right now on Capitol Hill, many people that you go to work with every day are discussing an expansion of the Voting Rights Act. So under this proposed expansion, what does that mean for voter fraud and election integrity measures?
- [23:55]
Ted Cruz
Yeah, well, as you know, last week the Senate took up S1, which many of us are calling the Corrupt Politicians Act. And we've talked about all the different ways the Corrupt Politicians act was gonna federalize elections. Strike down protections against voter fraud, strike down voter ID laws, mandate ballot harvesting, register millions of illegal aliens, allow criminals and felons to vote, provide welfare for politicians, and billions of dollars in federal funding for politicians. Turn the Federal Election Commission into a partisan enforcement arm. All of that's in the Corrupt Politicians Act. We voted on it last week. It was a 5050 vote. So it failed because under the Filibuster, it takes 60 votes to move to legislation. And at least right now, only 48 Democrats would end the filibuster. There are two who would not. Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, and Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona. We've covered all of that before. So the next iteration on this front that Democrats are expected to push is a different change. To the voting laws. And it's a law called the John Lewis Voting Rights act, and it's named after legendary civil rights pioneer John Lewis, who was a member of Congress. Let me say a couple of things on that. Number one, let me just talk about John Lewis for a minute. I actually. I knew John Lewis. I got to know him. I didn't know him well, but I got to spend significant time with him back in December 2013, because we went together to Nelson Mandela's funeral. And it was my first year in the Senate, and Mandela passed away, and every member of Congress was invited. If you want to go to the funeral, you can. And I remember I was in Texas. I was in Austin meeting with my team at the time. We got the invitation. I'm like, are you freaking kidding me? Of course I'm gonna go. Like, to go to Mandela's funeral. What an incredible honor and privilege. And so I went. And here's the astonishing thing, Michael. Out of 100 senators, do you know how many senators went to Mandela's funeral?
- [26:00]
Michael Knowles
I couldn't even guess.
- [26:02]
Ted Cruz
One.
- [26:03]
Michael Knowles
No. Really?
- [26:04]
Ted Cruz
No other senator went. I was astonished. I didn't know how 99 senators could say no to that. There were a number of House members who went. It was essentially me and about half of the Congressional Black Caucus, so they were almost all Democrats. And so I flew over with John Lewis. I flew over with Maxine Waters, who, you know, my mom said, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything. So I've said everything I'm gonna say about Maxine. Right, right. But John Lewis, I mean, talk about someone who was legendary. And I spent much of that trip. Long trip to South Africa. We went to the funeral together. Long trip home. I spent a lot of it just listening to him and saying, can you tell me stories about being on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, about standing up for civil rights as a young man, about standing with Dr. Martin Luther King on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial as he gave the I have a Dream speech. I mean, you know, as a young, young teenager, John Lewis was a leading figure in the civil rights movement. And he was charming, he was courageous, and his leadership in the civil rights movement made a big difference. And he's passed. And so Democrats doing what they do are taking his name and trying to use it to pass a bill. That would be a terrible bill.
- [27:39]
Michael Knowles
Yeah, yeah. I was wondering if they have a.
- [27:42]
Ted Cruz
Bill to erect a statue of John Lewis. Sign me up. If they have a bill to tell John Lewis's life story. Sign me up. If they have a bill to vindicate the legacy of John Lewis by defending people's civil rights, sign me up. But what this bill does is it reinstates Section 5 of the Voting Rights act and extends it to everyone. All right, what does that mean? That's lawyer gobbledygook. There are two main sections of the Voting Rights act that have had significant teeth over the years. Section 2 of the Voting Rights act, which prohibits diluting the votes, reducing the right to vote of minorities. That's the provision under which the Department of Justice is suing Georgia. Section 2 still applies. Where it typically applies is where you have, say, a redistricting effort that is designed to dilute the votes of minorities. So, for example, white Democrats for decades had a path to elect more white Democrats. And we actually had, back in the early 2000s, I was the lead lawyer for Texas on redistricting and argued the Texas redistricting case in front of the U.S. supreme Court. Won that case, five, four. And in that case, we went through the history of white Democrats in Texas. What they discovered is that if you design a district that has just enough African American voters and just enough Hispanic voters that neither one can win a primary in Democratic primaries, they found traditionally the African American voters and the Hispanic voters would vote differently than each other that you made sure you didn't put, from their perspective, too many African Americans or too many Hispanics. What would happen is if you had, say, an African American Democrat against a white Democrat, the Hispanics and white Democrats would vote for the white Democrat. Likewise, if you had a Hispanic Democrat versus a white Democrat, the white Democrats and the black Democrats would vote for the white Democrat over the Hispanic Democrat. And Southern Democrats had this down to a science in terms of how to have just enough minorities to be sure to win the general, because they would all come together and vote for the Democrat the general, but not too many that you could actually have an Hispanic or African American win a Democratic primary. It was all about stopping minorities from winning Democratic primaries. And that was the cynical strategy Democrats pursued in Texas and in states across the South. In Texas, in the 2003 redistricting, essentially when the Republicans took control of the legislature, essentially what they did is they created a new African American Democrat district, they created a new Hispanic Democrat district, and they obliterated all the white Democrats who had gerrymandered their seats so they could stay in power. And Democrats were furious about it. They didn't want new Hispanic Democrats and new African American Democrats elected. And so we had testimony at the trial about how this had been the long strategy of white democrats to disenfranchise minorities. Anyway, all of that is analyzed under Section 2 of the Voting rights act. And so part of the reason why we won virtually every claim in the Texas redistricting case, because we laid out that the effect of this redistricting actually increased minority representation. And so that the results satisfied the legal test. That's section two of the voting rights act. So what's section five? Section five is a provision the voting rights act had that for certain jurisdictions that were almost exclusively jurisdictions in the south, where there had been a history of significant prior discrimination, that those jurisdictions required what's called preclearance. What that means is if the legislature changed any voting law, made any change in voting laws at all, that change had to be submitted to the department of justice for pre clearance by the department of justice. And so what you would have was unelected bureaucrats, career lawyers who work in the civil rights division, who are almost 100% hard left, liberal democrat. Yeah, they were required to determine whether a change in voting rights law could go into effect. And it was only a limited number of jurisdictions that were subject to preclearance. And essentially in the south, Texas was a pre clearance jurisdiction, not based on actually discrimination concerning African Americans, but based on a determination of discrimination concerning Mexican Americans, is what made the state of Texas subject to it. But you know, the entire northeast, where there's rampant history of discrimination, sadly, as there is across much of planet earth, that bigotry is something we've wrestled with as long as man has been on the planet. Much of the country was exempt from this. Well, a few years ago, the supreme court struck down Section 5 of the Voting rights act. Struck down pre clearance. The Supreme Court 30, 40 years ago had upheld it and said, look, this really stretches our constitutional system to have an unelected federal bureaucrat having veto power over laws passed by elected state legislatures. But the supreme court concluded that the history of the civil war and segregation was so profound and pervasive that it justified a massive departure from the ordinary constitutional structures. Now, whether or not that decision is right or wrong, that decision was made 40 plus years ago. Supreme court a few years ago said, however, the formula to determine which jurisdictions are subject to section five was 50 years old. The supreme court said, look, this formula is out of date. The entire country has changed. Most of the people who were alive at the time of this formula are dead. Now there's a whole new population. People who moved in, move Out. And for this kind of extraordinary remedy, you've got to have a current evidentiary basis of a pattern of pervasive discrimination that justifies such a remarkable step. Democrats in the media screamed and hollered and said, oh, the Supreme Court has struck down the Voting Rights act, which is not true. It was one provision of the Voting Rights act, which was a fairly extraordinary provision. So what does the John Lewis Bill do? Reinstate Section 5 preclearance. But instead of defining a formula based on a history of discrimination, it subjects the entire country to it. So it says every change in voting rights laws anywhere in the country cannot go into effect until the Department of Justice authorizes it.
- [35:09]
Michael Knowles
Now, what I'd like to know about this is, you know, look at me. I don't have a law school education. So it seemed pretty simple. If they struck it down before, if they struck down the more modest version of this, and now there's an even more ambitious version of this, surely the court would strike it down now. The court has given us a lot of disappointing decisions, actually just in recent days. They've now discovered some right of men to use the women's bathroom. And multiple ostensibly originalist judges voted for that as well. So it would seem very obvious that the court should strike this down. That would just seem logical. And the court has given us a lot of terrible decisions. So something tells me that that is not necessarily what's going to happen.
- [35:54]
Ted Cruz
So it's not at all clear the court would strike a debt. I agree that it should. More fundamentally, we talked about Kristen Clark a minute ago. Kristen Clark is the head of the Civil Rights division. So what Democrats are proposing is that Kristen Clark, this hard leftist radical who advocated abolishing the police, who organized a conference celebrating and lionizing cop killers, that she should be in charge of deciding what voting rights laws are allowed and what voting rights laws are not allowed. And she should have veto power over every state legislature in the country if she disagrees with what they're doing. The reason the Democrats want this is they know the Civil Rights division. Even under a Republican president, the career lawyers are hard leftist activists. Here's the consequence. If this so called John Lewis bill were to pass, no state in the country could ever again pass a voter ID law because the Department of Justice career bureaucrats would strike it down. No state in the country could pass a prohibition on ballot harvesting. Lawyers at the Department of Justice would strike it down. No state could pass any provisions designed to prevent dead people from voting, to prevent illegal aliens from voting, to prevent felons and criminals from voting because the hard political activists at the Department of Justice would veto the decision of democratically elected legislatures. And what this all comes down to is Democrats today don't believe in democracy. Just like the Corrupt Politicians act, they want to rig the system so that they win heads, they win tails, you lose. And it's all about disempowering the voters, ironically enough, in the name of voting rights.
- [37:39]
Michael Knowles
Right, right. It's an interesting point that we seem to be okay right now on the Corrupt Politicians act that seems to be on the back burner for the moment. So now the Democrats are trying to achieve perhaps an even more ambitious power grab from another angle. All of this is enough to depress one, unless you knew that we are gonna be taking Verdict on the road. We are partnering with the Young Americas Foundation. We're going to multiple school. I think we're going to six schools and universities with YAF. You can go to yaf.org verdict right now to request that we come to your school. The deadline is August 18th. Senator, should we go to the really nice, wonderful conservative schools with the Young America's foundation, or should we go to the crazy, leftist, insane schools that are gonna run us out of town on the rail?
- [38:31]
Ted Cruz
Well, it seems to me that should be up to the listeners a verdict to decide. And so you tell us, if you're a student right now, you might be at one of the few havens of sanity and you say, hey, come, come cheer us on and reach out to us. On the other hand, you might be behind enemy lines surrounded by Bolsheviks and Mensheviks and looking for a Berlin airlift. You know, my guess is we're open to doing a little of both. But it's really the incredible listeners of Verdict who are gonna make that decision.
- [39:05]
Michael Knowles
We wanna free Brittany. We wanna free the students on campus. We wanna free all of us here in this country. So make sure you get those names in yaf.org,/verdict. August 18th is the deadline, but we'll be speaking much more before then. Until then, in the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
- [39:31]
C
This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security pac, a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations and candidates across the country. In 2022, jobs, freedom and Security PAC plans to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress and help the Republican Party across the nation.