Former Cruz co-chair claimed “that so-called Jewish bloodguilt is similar to the bloodguilt Planned Parenthood has today for providing abortion services.”

AUSTIN, Texas – On Oct 3rd, the New Republic reported on Ted Cruz’s ties to Troy Newman, an anti-choice extremist who has spread “antisemitic tropes.” Cruz has previously praised Newman, saying “we need leaders like Troy Newman in this country who will stand up for those who do not have a voice.”

The New Republic: Ted Cruz Silent About Activist Who Said Judaism “Perverted Itself”

By Pablo Manríquez

• Texas Republican Ted Cruz would not say if Troy Newman is advising his Senate reelection campaign against Democrat Colin Allred. Three times in the past week—once in the Senate parking lot and twice in the Capitol’s hallways—I tried asking Cruz if Newman had a role in his campaign. “Nice try,” Cruz laughed each time.
  
  
• Back in 2016, when he was running for president, Cruz did not equivocate about Newman at all. “I am grateful to receive the endorsement of Troy Newman,” Cruz said then, after naming Newman a co-chair of his failed presidential election campaign. “He has served as a voice for the unborn for over 25 years and works tirelessly every day for the pro-life cause. We need leaders like Troy Newman in this country who will stand up for those who do not have a voice.”
  
  
• Cruz has long been a right-wing firebrand when it comes to abortion and a litany of other social conservative issues. In 2016, he tried to attack Donald Trump for being insufficiently opposed to abortion rights. He pledged back then that he “would sign any legislation on my desk to defend the least of these,” even without exception for the life of the mother.
  
  
• In 2021, Texas’s Heartbeat Act went into effect, which included a six-week abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest, along with provisions empowering individuals to enforce the law through civil lawsuits against anyone who performed or assisted in an abortion. Then, in 2022, thanks to three jurists whom Cruz voted to confirm, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
  
  
• Last month, Mother Jones reported that a Cruz campaign press release from 2016 announcing the “Pro-Lifer for Cruz” group Newman co-chaired cited some extremist quotes from the activist’s 2001 book, Their Blood Cries Out, which Newman co-authored with Cheryl Sullenger. In the book, MoJo reported, Newman and Sullenger wrote that, in dealing with the “blood-guilty,” the U.S. government’s responsibility “rightly involves executing convicted murderers, including abortionists, for their crimes.”
  
  
• [Newman’s] book also includes previously unreported antisemitic tropes, thematically linking abortion supporters today to alleged Jewish sins of the past.
  
  
• “The bloodguilt associated with murdering Jesus, the prophets, and then the Apostles caused a great firestorm of judgment to fall upon the Jewish people,” Newman writes. “It was a judgment so severe that the Jewish people will never recover.
  
  
• In his book, Newman uses the sacking of Jerusalem and destruction of the Jewish temple there by the Romans to argue that so-called Jewish bloodguilt is similar to the bloodguilt Planned Parenthood has today for providing abortion services.
  
  
• Cruz likely could get away with tying himself to such figures when Texas was a firmly red state. But as he faces a tight Senate race where he must actually do his job instead of record another episode of his podcast, Newman might prove to be a drag on him. After all, there must be a reason he refused to answer a question about Newman three different times.