WASHINGTON — As he wields his new chairmanship of the Senate Commerce Committee, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has secured several victories by threatening to subpoena targets of his oversight investigations and pledged more will come if companies and organizations don’t comply with his inquiries.

In recent weeks, Cruz threatened a tech company he accused of “deplatforming” conservative organizations, a consulting firm that conducts diversity training for federal workers and Massport, the Massachusetts Port Authority, with subpoenas. On Wednesday, the Texas Republican said during a committee meeting that all three agreed to supply the documents he had requested, including Massport, which oversees Boston’s Logan International Airport and complied with his requests “at the 11th hour.”

What You Need To Know

  • As he wields his new chairmanship of the Senate Commerce Committee, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has secured several victories by threatening to subpoena targets of his oversight investigations and pledged more will come if companies and organizations don’t comply with his inquiries

  • In recent weeks, Cruz threatened a tech company he accused of “deplatforming” conservative organizations, a consulting firm that conducts diversity training for federal workers and Massport, the Massachusetts Port Authority, with subpoenas

  • On Wednesday, the Texas Republican said during a committee meeting that all three agreed to supply the documents he had requested, including Massport, which oversees Boston’s Logan International Airport, which complied with his requests “at the 11th hour”
  • Cruz’s tactics are both appealing to his right-wing base who want probes into areas of Republican interest, while also attempting to reassert Congress’ oversight role in an era of power consolidation in the executive branch that has been accelerated since President Donald Trump’s return to the White House. 

A vote to subpoena Massport had been scheduled for Wednesday.

“It turns out subpoenas work. And it turns out even the threat of subpoenas works. This committee noticed a vote on authorizing three different subpoenas: authorizing subpoenas on Bonterra, authorizing subpoenas on NewPoint Strategies and authorizing subpoenas on Massport Authority,” Cruz said. “After we noticed the vote on the authorization of subpoenas two of those involved, Bonterra and NewPoint Strategies immediately reached out to the committee and agreed to comply and to provide all of the materials that had been requested.”

“I also hope this is a message to other entities, that when Congress has serious oversight questions, you should answer them. And if you refuse, this committee will exercise all the authorities it has to ensure we can engage in full and rigorous oversight,” Cruz added. 

The senator disclosed that Massport had initially denied his requests, but ultimately complied ahead of the planned vote. Massport is a target of Cruz’s investigation and ire for housing homeless migrants at Logan Airport between 2023 and 2024 — a policy that Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat, ordered an end to in June. 

“The Committee requested a lookback on activities at Logan that concluded this past summer,” Massport media relations director Jennifer Mehigan said in an email, noting that “no families have stayed at the airport since” Healey’s order. “We are working closely with the Committee and appreciate their patience as we gather the documents to voluntarily comply fully with their request.”

At a committee hearing last week, Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, a Democrat, called the probe into Massport “a fishing expedition” that is “unfair, unnecessary and unprecedented.” Markey and other Democrats argued in a heated debate that the subpoena effort was overly broad and premature. 

Representatives for Bonterra, which Cruz first accused of bias last year for declining to work with the anti-transgender organization the Independent Women's Forum, and NewPoint Strategies did not immediately return requests for comment. 

Cruz’s tactics, while yet to produce considerable results in the first few months of his tenure, are both appealing to his right-wing base who want probes into institutions defending diversity practices, “deplatforming” conservatives online, protecting migrants and other areas of Republican interest, while also attempting to reassert Congress’ role in setting policy and discourse in an era of power consolidation in the executive branch that has been accelerated since President Donald Trump’s return to the White House. 

“In recent years, the Senate has allowed its oversight muscles to atrophy. Oversight rarely occurs within our standing committees and I believe our country is worse off for it. It’s a void I sought to fill as ranking member and it’s a front I will continue to lead on as chairman,” Cruz said last week as he previewed the threatened subpoenas. 

Cruz had previously sought approval from his committee to unilaterally subpoena his investigative targets, but Trump’s White House opposed the idea as Cruz publicly pronounced his desire to go after major tech companies, according to Punchbowl News. Many tech billionaires have cozied up to Trump since his reelection, most notably Elon Musk, but also Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

“It was striking to see the CEOs of just about every tech company in America sitting behind the president, and that is a massive shift. The single biggest threat, I believe, to free speech in America is big tech censorship,” Cruz told Spectrum News in January. “I will welcome [tech CEOs] doing the right thing. I will welcome them defending free speech. That’s what they need to do.”