Air travel! It stinks. It’s expensive. The planes are cramped. Increasingly, parts of them just plumb fall off! And before you’re on board, you must navigate long security lines where Transportation Security Administration agents yell at you to take your shoes off, or leave your belt on, or take your laptop out of your carry-on bag, unless you’re at an airport where they don’t want you to take your laptop out of your carry-on, in which case they yell at you to leave it in. For what is one of the true technological marvels of the modern age—you are literally flying! In the sky! Through clouds!—we’ve sure done a spectacular job of making the whole experience downright miserable. 

Enter Ted Cruz with a solution—not for all of us, but for Ted Cruz and a gaggle of his peers. Back in February, Texas’s junior senator introduced an amendment to the TSA funding bill that would allow U.S. senators and congresspeople, along with cabinet members and federal judges, to receive a security escort through the airport, skipping security lines. The amendment would provide such an escort for someone who “currently is or previously has been the subject of a threat,” as determined by federal law enforcement.

What that will look like in practice is unclear. American politicians haven’t, as yet, faced serious threats to their physical safety at airports; indeed, terminals are generally very safe because of all of the security that Cruz’s amendment would allow political VIPs to pass through quickly. Airports are also one of the few places where national politicians have no choice but to experience the world the way the rest of us do, with its attendant hassles, and to interact with constituents who aren’t campaign donors, however briefly, while standing in the same lines we all go through. 

Cruz, of course, famously had a bad time in an airport in 2021, when he was photographed boarding a flight to Cancún when the Texas electric grid failed, 11 million of us lost power, and more than two hundred died. Had he been surrounded by a security escort, a photo like that might have been more difficult for another traveler to take. In February, Cruz told Politico that his amendment was necessary because there are “serious security threats facing public officials,” and that “it’s important that we take reasonable measures to keep everyone safe.” 

Cruz’s fellow travelers in Congress seem to agree. The amendment passed through the Senate commerce committee in a unanimous voice vote, which means that, if the TSA funding bill passes, the amendment will likely become law. It’s a lucky break for the junior senator! And a rare one: Cruz is not a particularly active lawmaker, having authored or cosponsored just two bills that have passed in the 118th Congress, which first convened in 2023. That’s two fewer than the number of episodes of his podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz, that the senator released last week. (The bill he cosponsored changed age requirements for a financial support program for cadets at national maritime academies; the one he wrote authorized the extension of Interstate 27, in the Panhandle, into portions of New Mexico.) After this story was published, a representative for Senator Cruz sent over a list touting several amendments and examples of language that he authored in other lawmakers’ bills being signed into law, including several provisions of the Defense Authorization Act and an amendment he introduced banning the “Chinese Communist Party from sponsoring junior ROTC programs.”

If this success gives Cruz a taste for legislating, here are some other ideas he might pursue, all of which would also offer him some nice benefits. 

Beverage Enthusiast Enjoyment Regulatory (BEER) Act

Cruz enjoys making a performance of many of his views. Last year, he decided to oppose what he falsely described as a Biden administration policy that would restrict the amount of alcohol Americans were allowed to consume. What he was actually referring to was a nonbinding recommendation to drink only two alcoholic beverages a week from the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse and Addiction that the American director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism said he found interesting. 

In voicing his opposition, Cruz didn’t just issue a press release rejecting a rule that, again, did not actually exist. He gathered a bunch of other fellas to declare that the president could “kiss [his] ass” in a choreographed performance of beer drinking that looked like a good time. It was the second time that year that the junior senator made beer-related news. He’d previously called for an investigation into Bud Light for partnering with a transgender influencer. The BEER Act would require all Americans to drink beer the way Ted Cruz thinks they should: in unlimited quantities, but without the faces of any trans Americans on the cans. 

Criticism Unfair for Relatable Sports Enthusiast (CURSE) Act

The one time when Cruz seems to be uninterested in cutting pro wrestling–style promos? When he shows up to a sporting event, his team loses, and folks try to blame the loss on him. Evidence suggests that the senator’s teams tend to do just fine whether or not he’s at the games, but that hasn’t stopped some constituents from calling him cursed. 

So far, the fan of the Astros, Texans (yes, he’s claimed both!), and Rockets has bristled at the theory that he’s a drag on his beloved teams. Right now, though, all Cruz can do about such allegations is complain. With the passage of our proposed CURSE Act, though, he could put a firmer hand on the issue: anyone who makes the claim that Cruz is a curse on a sports team would have to appear on Verdict with Ted Cruz and debate him. Your move, libs.

Amnesty for Suspected Shooters: Action Suspending Sanctions for Implicated Near-Ones Against Termination Incidents, Offenses, and Nefariousness (ASSASSINATION) Act

Famously, during the 2016 GOP presidential primary, Donald Trump accused Ted Cruz’s dad of involvement in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. There’s no evidence to support this claim, and Trump softened on Cruz during the senator’s race against Beto O’Rourke, declaring Cruz was no longer “Lyin’ Ted” but “Beautiful Ted.” The affection seemed to be mutual; in 2020, Cruz tried to overturn the election result in favor of Trump. 

But Trump is famously fickle. If Cruz has any concerns that his father might somehow face criminal charges, he could introduce the ASSASSINATION Act, which would grant amnesty to the close family relatives of elected members of Congress who are suspected of assassinating an American president between the years of 1962 and 1964. It’s just common sense. 

Let’s Observe Voracious Exultation of a Tough, Eloquent Dynamo (LOVE TED) Act

The curious dual nature of Cruz’s approach to public life is that he enjoys antagonizing those on the other end of the political spectrum even as he desperately wants to be adored. Perhaps the hole in his heart would be filled by the passage of the LOVE TED Act, which would require the news media to refer to him as “Beautiful Ted” on first mention.

Update, April 9, 2024: This story has been updated to clarify the roles Cruz played in passing various pieces of legislation in this session of Congress.