Ted Cruz Attacks Federal Judiciary to Further Trump’s Authoritarian Agenda

UPDATE: Shortly after this blog post was published, the subcommittee announced that this hearing would be postponed. It was rescheduled for January 7, 2026..

Today, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) will be weaponizing his position as head of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights to hold a congressional hearing attacking two sitting federal judges. He goes so far as to suggest they are “rogue” and deserving of impeachment simply because they were doing their jobs. Chief Judge James Boasberg held the Trump administration accountable when it disobeyed a court order to stop unlawfully sending Venezuelans to an El Salvadorean maximum security prison, while Judge Deborah Boardman ruled against the Trump administration’s unlawful restriction of birthright citizenship.

These rulings exemplify how the separation of powers was designed to work. If anyone breaks the law — even an administration or a president — the federal judiciary must call it out and stop that misconduct. But the system only works if federal judges are not threatened with impeachment or attacked for holding misconduct to account. By attacking judges, Cruz is undermining the independence necessary for a functioning democracy. 

Indeed, when Trump denounced a judge who rejected his migrant asylum policy during his first administration, Chief Justice John Roberts reiterated, “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them,” Roberts said.” More recently, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned her fellow judges that attacks on judges “…are not random. They seem designed to intimidate those of us who serve in this critical capacity…[t]he threats and harassment are attacks on our democracy, on our system of government. And they ultimately risk undermining our Constitution and the rule of law.”

As we continue to witness the crumbling of our humble republic, ratified by a billionaire-purchased Supreme Court majority, Cruz’s latest shenanigans are another reminder that the real “rogue” judges are those who are not acting independently and upholding the rule of law. Instead, these judges have simply fallen in lockstep as an extension of an administration that continues to engage in illegal and unprecedented misconduct.

Take Judge Aileen Cannon, who pandered to Trump’s personal interests by granting his request for a special master to complete a review of the documents taken from Mar-a-Lago despite the DOJ’s prior review of materials for privileged content.  Her decision unnecessarily halted the FBI’s case until this special master review was completed. Thankfully, the Eleventh Circuit intervened, noting, “[t]he law is clear. We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so…[e]ither approach would be a radical reordering of our caselaw limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations. And both would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.”

This was the same judge who later presided over Trump’s criminal case and indefinitely postponed his trial date until she granted Trump’s request to dismiss the case entirely (mirroring Justice Thomas’s concurrence in his presidential immunity case).

The Senate just confirmed Trump’s 21st judge, and it’s no surprise that this time around, there seems to be a loyalty test involved. When asked about who won the 2020 election, many of Trump’s second term judge nominees have given a canned, “Biden was certified as the winner,” rather than, “Biden won the election.” At best, such a non-answer is one that demonstrates loyalty to Trump in order to cinch a nomination. At worst, this is an election denier tell.

Perhaps this is why some judges are finally speaking out. Reagan-appointed Massachusetts Judge Mark Wolf recently resigned from the federal bench to speak out against the “White House’s assault on the rule of law.” He explained, “President Donald Trump is using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while sparing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution, and possible punishment. This is contrary to everything that I have stood for in my more than 50 years in the Department of Justice and on the bench. The White House’s assault on the rule of law is so deeply disturbing to me that I feel compelled to speak out. Silence, for me, is now intolerable.”

Instead of attacking independent judges for simply doing their work, perhaps Senator Cruz should think about his continued role undermining our democracy and acting as a thug for President Trump’s authoritarian and unlawful agenda.

Christine Chen Zinner is the Federal Research and Advocacy Director at Alliance for Justice.