‘Stunning’: Ted Cruz Reads Tim Kaine The Riot Act Over Claim That Rights Aren’t God-Given

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) read Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) the riot act after his colleague claimed that it was “extremely troubling” to hear a nominee for a federal post claim that rights were given by God, not governments.

The nominee in question was Riley Barnes, who previously worked in the U.S. State Department and has been nominated to serve as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Barnes said that he agreed with his boss, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who recently said “that all men are created equal because our rights come from God, our Creator; not from our laws, not from our governments.”

Kaine took issue with Barnes’ statement, and argued that only a theocratic government — such as the one in Iran — would attribute the source of rights to God rather than the law.

“The notion that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government, but come from the Creator — that’s what the Iranian government believes. It’s a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Sharia law and targets Sunnis, Bahá’ís, Jews, Christians and other religious minorities,” Kaine claimed. “And they do it because they believe that they understand what natural rights are from their Creator. So the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.”

“I think the the motto over the Supreme Court is ‘equal justice under law,’ — the oath that you and I take pledged to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, not arbitrarily defined natural rights,” Kaine continued.

WATCH:

Our rights don’t come from government or the DNC.

They come from God. @timkaine, I suggest the Dems go back and read the words of our Founding Fathers. pic.twitter.com/QRmhTcbbOH

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) September 3, 2025

Cruz pushed back on Kaine’s claims a short time later in the hearing, saying that it was the Virginia Senator’s comments that were of concern rather than Barnes’.

“I just walked into the hearing as he was saying that, and I almost fell out of my chair, because that ‘radical and dangerous notion’ — in his words — is literally the founding principle upon which the United States of America was created,” said Cruz.

Quoting former President Thomas Jefferson’s words from the Declaration of Independence, Cruz added, “‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator’ — not by government, not by the Democratic National Committee, but by God — ‘with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'”