Ted Cruz and Cory Booker went head-to-head during a Senate hearing over the increase in threats made to federal court judges during President Donald Trump’s second term, with Cruz savagely criticizing Democrats like Booker and resurrecting the leftist senator’s “Spartacus” nickname from back in 2018.
For context, during a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing titled “The Supposedly Least Dangerous Branch: District Judges v. Trump” on June 3, 2025, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) had a heated debate about threats to federal judges under the Trump Administration. In response to critiques from the left, Sen. Cruz called back to a bizarre moment during the Supreme Court nomination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh when Sen. Booker said that it was his “I am Spartacus” moment.
During his remarks at the subcommittee hearing, Sen. Cruz criticized Sen. Booker for having “clutched his pealrs about language threatening judges,” adding, “And yet I do not recall a single Democrat Senator of this committee saying a word when Chuck Schumer went to the steps of the Supreme Court and threatened the safety of the Supreme Court justices by name, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, and he said, ‘You have unleashed the whirlwind, and you will pay the price.'”
Continuing, Sen. Cruz noted that “not a single Democrat Senator had a word to say” about threats towards judges under Biden, adding, “And so their outrage is selective, and I will give my colleague from New Jersey a chance to just answer a simple yes, no question: should the Biden Justice Department have enforced the criminal law against protesting it at a Justice’s home?”
In response, Sen. Booker Shot back and defended Sen. Schumer, saying, calling Sen. Cruz’s callout of Schumer “rank hypocrisy” based on the fact that Schumer had apologized for potentially endangering judges and adding, “I don’t think Donald Trump would know an apology if it hit him in the head. Never said apologizing. So again, you are very, very, sir, very, very deep into the waters of hypocrisy in your criticisms of Chuck Schumer.”
Next, in a mic-dropping moment, Sen. Cruz retorted that Sen. Booker, who he referred to as “Spartacus,” had dodged his initial question, saying that Booker “did not answer the question and did not tell us whether the criminal law should be enforced because he knows the answer is yes, and he knows that the Biden Department of Justice was being wildly political and partisan in refusing to enforce the law because they disagreed with the Supreme Court justices rulings in.”
Furthermore, the back-and-forth continued when, according to press accounts, Sen. Booker told Sen. Cruz, “Something you said is actually dangerous, and it needs to be addressed.” He went on, “This implication that there was silence [from Democrats] at a time there were threats on people’s houses is absolutely absurd,”
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Standing his ground, Sen. Cruz called attention to the “angry mobs” that had gone to the homes of Supreme Court Justices during Biden’s term, saying, “Did the Biden DOJ go out and arrest a single person under this law?” After Sen. Booker attempted to respond, Sen. Cruz continued, “Did the Biden DOJ arrest even one [person]? Again, the answer is no.”
Watch a clip from the hearing:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video