The Daily Signal - Relentless Lawfare: Ted Cruz and Rick Scott Break Down the Lawsuits Blocking Trump Policies

Episode Date: February 23, 2025

The Daily Signal’s Tyler O’Neil sat down with Senators Ted Cruz and Rick Scott to talk about the torrent of lawsuits the Trump administration faces, and what to do about them. Scott, a former Florida governor, faced similar lawsuits. Cruz, a former Supreme Court clerk and solicitor general of Texas, broke down the legal options Trump has, and why he thinks the Left’s lawfare will be relentless but ultimately fail. Keep Up With The Daily Signal    Sign up for our email newsletters: https://www.dailysignal.com/email       Subscribe to our other shows:     The Tony Kinnett Cast: https://www.dailysignal.com/the-tony-kinnett-cast   Problematic Women: https://www.dailysignal.com/problematic-women   The Signal Sitdown: https://www.dailysignal.com/the-signal-sitdown      Follow The Daily Signal:     X: https://x.com/DailySignal   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedailysignal/   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheDailySignalNews/   Truth Social: https://truthsocial.com/@DailySignal   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/DailySignal   Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/TheDailySignal      Thanks for making The Daily Signal Podcast your trusted source for the day’s top news. Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and never miss an episode.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We'd love to talk, business. From the stories of everyday Americans to detailed policy conversations, we are going beyond the headlines to discuss the issues and events that have and are shaping this nation. Welcome to the Daily Signal podcast, weekend edition. I'm Tyler O'Neill, your host today. I'm excited to be here at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, in Oxen Hill, Maryland. It's been really energetic. President Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, speaking from the stage, we even had Elon Musk showing up with a golden chainsaw.

So CPAC has truly been phenomenal this year. So at CPAC, I sat down with two U.S. senators. We talked about the lawfare that President Trump is currently facing. We all know President Trump has come in like a bull in a China shop in Washington, D.C. is shaking everything up. Doge going from agency to agency to agency, exposing the waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government. It is glorious to see. But we've also seen some of the same far-left activist groups that called the shots in the Biden administration now filing lawsuits to block Trump's reforms.

And I sat down with Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Florida Senator Rick Scott to talk about this unprecedented lawfare. You won't want to miss our conversations right after this. Live from Indiana syndicated nationally from the Daily Signal, it's the Tony Kinnettcast. Man, you've got me hook, light and sinker. Now I want to tune into your program. Interviews from the border.

Coverage from inside leftist riots. Exposing those targeting children. From the guy leaving liberal journalist speechless. It's the Tony Kinnettcast. Join us live on the Daily Signals, YouTube and X-stream. every weeknight at 7 p.m. Eastern or anywhere you get your podcasts. This is Tyler O'Neill, senior editor at The Daily Signal. I'm honored to be joined by Senator Ted Cruz.

Tyler, great to be with you. The one, the only. So you just got done interviewing our Attorney General, Pam Bondi. So glad to have her there after the travesty that Mary Garland was. What was the thing that stood out to you from that interview that you just had with her? Well, look, Pam is doing a terrific job as Attorney General. She's been AG for 15 days. And we did, as you know, I do a podcast every week, Verdict with Ted Cruz, and we do it three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

And we've done it now several years in a row here at CPAC and done it on stage. And so today what we did is we did the verdict podcast, but had Pam as our guest. And so we interviewed her and asked her, all right, first 15 days, what has been accomplished, what needs to be done. and I'll tell you, she is very focused on, number one, keeping us safe, putting murderers and rapists and child molesters and gang members and terrorists, putting them in jail, securing the border, going after the cartels, going after the people who are threatening our safety, and she is also laser-focused on ending the politicization

and weaponization of the Department of Justice and the FBI. both of those are desperately, desperately needed. Well, when we saw some of the same groups that urged Biden to open the border in the first place, are now filing lawsuits to block Trump's moves in court. I love the way Pam responded to that question because he said, we're winning, and that's all she said. Yeah. But is there more that needs to be said on that front?

Well, listen, the entire four years of Trump's presidency, the left is going to wage lawfare against him. You're going to have Democrat attorneys general who are going to sue the federal government, over and over and over again. You're going to have left-wing activists paid for by George Soros, paid for by left-wing billionaires that are just going to file relentless lawsuits,

and they're going to go seek out friendly judges. They're going to file these cases in blue states. They're going to go out and seek left-wing radical judges, and that means the Department of Justice is going to be defending the president day in and day out, and she's right. Right now, they are winning these cases all over the place. Do you think the Supreme Court needs to make,

make a ruling to prevent these activist judges from issuing these nationwide injunctions. I mean, yeah. Look, look, the issue of nationwide injunctions is actually hotly contested in the law, and you see a single district judge that tries to govern the entire country. And the basic principle is that a judge has the authority to resolve the case and controversy in front of him between the litigants. But the authority of one district judge to issue a nationwide injunction is hotly contested, And I think it's something that Congress ought to address as well.

Whether the Supreme Court reigns it in or not, I don't know. At a minimum where you're going to see these cases where you do get a bad injunction, a lawless injunction, you're going to see the Department of Justice appealing those cases, and you're going to see the cases overturned either in the courts of appeal or ultimately, I think, in the U.S. Supreme Court. So right now, Doge is going from agency to agency to agency. It's beautiful. It's glorious. But in order to have lasting change, you know, You and I know, reconciliation is key.

How can the Senate help Doge to actually, you know, solidify some of these changes to the federal bureaucracy? So we've got to get that done. The Senate is right now working on budget reconciliation. In fact, I'm going to leave here in about a half hour and go to the Senate floor. And we're expecting to be on the Senate floor all night tonight. So the first step of budget reconciliation is something that's called Vodorama, which is under the statute that allows. you to circumvent the filibuster.

And the reason reconciliation matters, people at home may be saying, what is this thing? Look, in the Senate, the filibuster rule means you ordinarily need 60 votes to move to major legislation. We only have 53 Republicans. So if you need 60 votes, you need seven Democrats.

Democrats are not going to go along with most of what we want to do. And budget reconciliation is a special statutory path that you can enact legislation with just 50 votes, that you don't need seven Democrats. We're doing budget reconciliation right now. The first step, as I said, is what's called voterama under the statute. There can be unlimited amendments. So the Democrats tonight, they're going to, we'll probably vote on 30, 40, 50 amendments. We could be there.

I've been there until 5 in the morning. I've been there sometimes all night and all day the next day, voting on amendments. And much of what we'll see tonight will be Democrats just playing politics, trying to put amendments that they think are bad political votes to force Republicans to cast votes. And that's fine. They'll play their games and then they'll lose and then we'll move to the next stage. In the Senate, we're focused first on securing the border, on rebuilding the military and on unleashing energy. Right. And then more broadly, we need to extend the Trump tax cuts and make them bigger and make them bolder.

We're going to get all that done because we've got to get it done. And as part of that, I think it is critical that we put into law the reduced spending, and Doge is doing a great job of this, as they find waste, fraud, and abuse, we need to go and codify cutting that stuff out. We need to put it in the federal law. And I think reconciliation provides the ideal avenue to do so. So there's this thing called public sector unions. Yes. Even FDR thought they shouldn't exist. Now they're filing lawsuits to stop Trump, this deep state effort.

they can federal bureaucrats get money from the taxpayer for working for time working for these unions in something called official time. There have been talks about banning official time, but I think it might be easier to tax official time at a rate of, say, 100 percent to recoup that money to the taxpayer in reconciliation. That's something you don't need a filibuster breaking majority. What do you think of that idea? I think that's an interesting idea. There's no doubt we are going to need to consider a lot of ideas that are fundamentally transformational.

Because we've got an opportunity. Look, you look at the election in November. This was a mandate. The American people overwhelmingly reelected President Trump. They gave us a Republican Senate at a Republican House. We have an historic opportunity right now. We can't miss the moment. And what I am urging my colleagues is we've got to roll up our sleeves and get to work, delivering on our

our promises, I think we're going to do exactly that. So we've seen, in an organization, you and I have spoken a great deal about the Southern Poverty Law Center, have a lot of influence in the Biden administration. Are there things that Congress can do? Are there ways that we can watch for the influence of these nefarious groups, cutting them off from USAID, perhaps? Yeah. There's the Tides Foundation funded them and USAID funded Tides.

but how do we respond to this massive NGO apparatus that the left has? Look, the simplest principle in terms of how you catch mobsters, how you catch criminals, is follow the money. And we need to follow the money. That means we need to follow the money behind the anti-Semitic protests on college campuses and who's funding that. That means we need to follow the money that is flowing to all these left-wing activist groups. You know, politicization and weaponization, it has lots of different aspects of it.

One aspect of the politicization and weaponization of government under the Democrats was indicting and prosecuting Donald Trump, was targeting pro-life activists, was targeting faithful Catholics, was targeting parents who speak up at school boards. That's one aspect of weaponization. Another aspect of politicization and weaponization is turning a blind eye to the illegal conduct of your friends and allies. And this administration did that a lot, including the cartels and the human traffickers who flourished. and letting criminals go, which they did for four years. But yet another aspect of politicization is sending cash to your political allies. And if you look at one of the things Elon is uncovering is everything the Biden administration did was politicized. And they were shoveling millions and billions of dollars to left-wing groups. We need to root all of that out. I'm really grateful Elon's putting the energy in to finding that because the relentlessness, every agency, every program.

It was accepted wisdom in the Biden administration. It's all about partisan politics and shovel the money. As they said at the EPA, they were throwing gold bars out the window. Yeah, I can't get over that. Like some of these things, Doge finding trillions of dollars without the full marking for the budget. You talked about the public employee unions. One of the things Joe Biden did on the way out, and I got to say, there's never been a president after his party is defeated, who has behaved more petulantly and with more contempt for

democracy and the voters than Joe Biden did. He spent his last two months as president doing everything he could to try to frustrate Donald Trump and the will of the voters. And one of the examples was signing agreements with federal employee unions saying they don't have to go into the office to work. You know, you look at a typical federal office building and under Biden, five to eight percent of the workers were coming in. These office buildings are empty. And by the way, these federal workers believe they have an entitlement to, quote, work at home.

Now, for those not watching, I put that in air quotes because there's a question how much they're working at all. One of the things President Trump is doing is saying, if you want a job, get your butt to the office. This is not a dial-in from home in bunny slippers job. If you're doing something and it's important, show up and work. And by the way, in the private sector,

Everyone else in America has gone back to work. It's only the federal government employees that think COVID is still happening. Well, and I think there are flexible arrangements, and then there's flexible arrangements. Like when you're talking about offices that you have to heat, the taxpayers pay for that are sitting there. And over 90% of the people aren't there. I mean, that's not a mom who's working part-time. I mean, there are arrangements you can do in limited circumstances, but when none of your employees come in, that's brazen. And that is what it was under.

the Democrats, and it's one of the important things the Trump administration is turning around now. Well, thank you so much for speaking with me, Senator. Is there anything else you'd like to add? Look, I think this was terrific. I just want to encourage everyone listen. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz. And it's an exciting time right now. It really is. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. This is Tyler O'Neill, a senior editor at The Daily Signal. I'm honored to be joined by Senator Rick Scott of the great state of Florida. It's great to be here. It's warmer there. Yes, quite a bit warmer.

So, you know, there's never a dull moment in the Senate, but I feel like right now is particularly hot for you guys. How is the Senate looking at, you know, dealing with Doge, upholding some of the good reforms that are coming out of this new administration, and maybe codifying things that need to be codified? Well, first, the Democrats are doing everything they can to obstruct, but we've got, we got Cash Patel done today. That's nice. So we've been able to get, I think, 19 confirmations done. You know, the bomb is first term we've ahead of that, but we'll make a progress.

So that's good. I think Elon Musk is doing a good job coming up with savings. So that's positive. We need to, you know, the House of Senate have got to come together. We've got to figure out how do we, you know, give the Trump the money to secure the border. You know, make sure the criminals, the terrorists, the narco-traffickers are not in the United States. We need to make sure we continue to build our military. So we've got some work to do there.

balance of budget, to extend the Trump tax cuts. So we're working hard, the House and Center working together to get that done. Yeah, when we're looking at reconciliation, I think one of the things that can easily be done to weaken the deep state is this thing called taxing official time. Official time is the time that federal bureaucrats work for unions that get paid by the taxpayers. It's kind of complicated, but it's millions of dollars that I think the taxpayer

can recoup if you tax official time, in reconciliation. We have some good bills getting rid of official time overall. But what do you think of the idea of using something like that to weaken the deep state and claim back some of the money that taxpayers should not be paying? Well first off, we shouldn't be paying for somebody to do something besides their job as a federal worker. That's the number one thing. Then you don't have to worry about it. There's no way that I'm a business guy. You know, you don't, it's not what you do. I mean, you you you basically, you basically, you don't, you basically, you're

you pay to get a result. And the American taxpayer is not interested in paying for somebody to do a job that's not part of their job to provide a service or to provide a product or something like that. So it doesn't make any sense that we would be paying for something that doesn't help the American taxpayer. So if there was a way to get rid of that in official time, well, not to get rid of it, but to tax it in reconciliation so that you can recoup the costs without having to get all the way through a filibuster to change the rule.

The easiest thing to do is you stop. The easiest simple do is that don't allow people to get paid to work on doing something that's not your job as a federal employee. But it's already there. That has to be changed. That doesn't make any sense. Yeah. Well, what ways do you see in reconciliation or otherwise

that we can weaken the influence of these unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats? Well, first off, we should have. have no non-essential federal workers. Well, I think one thing that Elon Musk and the Doge team is doing, they're showing waste, they're showing inefficiencies, and I think that, you know, he says he thinks he can get a trillion dollars a year in savings. We need to get two trillion dollars a year in savings, actually. But, I mean, that'd be a big deal if he could do that. So I think through reconciliation, we can, you know, reduce wasteful spending. We can, you know, we can balance a budget. You know,

If you go back and take President Clinton's last budget and increase it by population and inflation, use today's numbers for Social Security and Medicare, you'd have a balanced budget. Huh, funny how that works. So why don't we do that? Why don't we say, why are we spending more than what President Clinton would say, other than population growth and inflation? So, you know, the other thing is the way to think about, I've always talked about government is if we solve a problem, we should be saving money. If we keep people back to work, then we have fewer people that need food stamps, fewer people that need Medicaid, fewer people to need Medicaid, fewer people to do unemployment. When I was governor of Florida, I balanced the budget every year. Florida had not balanced its budget in 20 straight years.

We paid down a third of the state debt, and guess what? The number of jobs skyrocketed. Now, we got 20% of regulatory environment. We should remind the permanent environment. So we made a state that people want to move to. People knew they could get a job. Kids could get a good education because we had an unbelievable school choice. And we had when I left 47-year-a-low on a crime rate.

So it's a place where people wanted to live because that's exactly what they wanted. So what are the barriers to doing that in the Senate today or in the federal government overall? There's none. Yeah. It's all doable. Now, let's take education. Education should not be a federal issue. Education should be done at the state level.

So I don't think we ought to have a Department of Education. We send the power back to the state. With regard to law enforcement, our federal law enforcement agencies are to focus on the things that are federal issues, not local issues. You know, I was talking to one sheriff the other day and he said, you know, in 1930s, we need the FBI to help us with bank robberies.

We don't today. The FBI, let's have them focus on the issues that are national issues and have local law enforcement do the local issues. first we want to do the local issues. So we've got to push the decision making and the cost down to the local level as much as we can. And where do you see the biggest promise

of this administration right now? The biggest promise? Yeah. And you know I've always thought that we know what Americans want. They want to be left alone. They want a good paying full-time job. They want their kids good education. They want to be safe.

And so I think that's where we're heading. I think President Trump is absolutely committed to this country. He's committed to Americans. He's committed to what he talked about. The border is getting secure. He's going to do everything can and make the country a safer country. He's going to try to do everything you can and bring jobs back and I think he will. I think the states are going to take responsibility for education and they're going to go compete.

And guess what? I was a governor. I want to be number one. It's going to make them all better. And people are going to stop waiting for the federal government to make a decision for them. They're going to make decisions at the local level. So we've seen a lot of the state. same left-wing activist groups that staffed and advised the Biden administration filing lawsuits

to block Trump's policies, be it his birthright citizenship order, his deportations of illegal aliens, or, you know, his issues on trans, his orders on gender ideology. How do you see this, you know, these woke NGOs, some of which are connected to the funding apparatus that was getting its back scratched by USAID. I think this is a continuing challenge that Trump is going to have to face and the government... I mean, that's what happens.

I mean, if you do your job, the left is always going to sue you. They did when I was governor. You just have to fight every day. So, you know, you just have to be active. You have to fight. You have to have good policies. You have to be able to explain them.

You have to, you know, get out there and sell them every day. And, you know, if something doesn't work, then you try something else. So I think that's what Trump's going to do. He is absolutely committed to making America great again, making this the golden era, and I think it's going to happen. So when you face those lawsuits as governor, what was the best advice you'd give to Trump facing them now? I mean, what you do is you, you know, you fight all the lawsuits.

And, you know, sometimes if you lose, then you figure out how to get your account. You get what you need done and, you know, look at a different, do it in a different way. It's no different than business. I'm a business guy. I build businesses. You try, and if it didn't work that way, then you try another way. So, I mean, it's just, I mean, look, the left is going to try to block common sense. That's what they're doing.

I mean, they want big government. They want wasteful government. They want men taking over women's sports. They want all these crazy things. But, you know, the American public doesn't. Now, what I tell everybody, get involved in elections. Make sure, if you don't get involved in election, then you don't have much of a complaint about what happens. run for office, help somebody run for office, but for sure, vote.

And do your homework. Go find out what people, what you want, make sure they're doing what you want. And hold politicians accountable. That's why I tell people, I mean, I went out and got almost, what, six million votes, and those six million people, I said, if I'm not doing what I told you I was going to do them in the campaign last fall, then you should call and yell at me, but I'm going to. And I think President Trump is going to do the same thing.

We do that. We get more Republicans and more conservatives elected. So you've run businesses, you've been governor, your senator. How long do you see what's the next step for Rick Scott? Well, I've got to keep trying to solve the problems. I think the biggest thing is build the most robust economy you can, so people can get a good paying job. Here's why I think it that way.

I grew in public housing, never met my dad. I watched my mom struggle, put food on the table. I know the importance of a job. So the biggest thing I try to do every day is make sure kids like me, their parents can get a good job. It's a hell of a better life. Number two, most parents, the number one thing is their education of their kid. So I focus on that.

Then people want to be safe. Yeah. Well, unemployment's been rising. I've seen in younger generations this large amount of men who aren't even entering the workforce. And I feel like there's so much bloat, so many people who can be working, able-bodied Americans, not in the workforce. How do we address that problem? We have over 50 million people working age that are not working. Yeah.

Right. Now, look, if you're disabled, I get it. Right? We ought to help you. But if you just don't want to work, you shouldn't get food stamps. You shouldn't get public housing. You shouldn't get unemployment, right? You shouldn't be on a government program.

You need to go get a job. Go get back to work. We've got to get this country back to work. We should be able to add, you know, tens of millions of jobs in a good economy. And how do we do that? Well, what you've got to do is you've got to make sure this is the country that people want to produce things. You know, we can't have higher taxes.

We can't have higher regulatory costs. We can't have a harder time to get a permit and expect more jobs are going to come here. Then what we've got to do is we've got to out-compete every other country in the world. When I was Governor of Florida, my job was to make Florida the number one state in the United States

for job creation. So I had to figure out how do I help my employers do a better job in my state than any other state and we did. It became the top state for job creation in the country. We were competing against Texas every year. that Tony, Rick Perry was governor, and I competed with him every day.

And that's what we've got to think the same way about our country. We've got to say, we can't put our businesses at a competitive disadvantage than businesses around the world. If we do, then we will have fewer opportunities for Americans. Well, thank you so much. Senator Scott, is there anything else you'd like to add? No, if you're in, if you need anything, give me a call. We've got nine offices Florida and office in D.C. I am a full-service senator. I work hard to try to take care of all the people of my citizens.

and all the people in this country. Well, thank you so much for joining us. All right. Take care. Bye-bye. We're going to leave it there today. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss out on new shows from the Daily Signal. Every weekday, catch top news in 10

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