NPR Removes Claim About Supreme Court Justice Thomas' Views on Segregation

+ Ted Cruz's new book, 'Going Further,' tells the story of Justice Clarence Thomas August 27, 20264:47 AM ET Heard on Morning Edition Steve Inskeep Sen.

+ Ted Cruz's new book, 'Going Further,' tells the story of Justice Clarence Thomas Listen &middot; 7:02 7:02 Transcript Toggle more options Download Embed Embed "> <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/nx-s1-5795538/nx-s1-9902478" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"> Transcript NPR's Steve Inskeep speaks with Republican Sen.

+ Sponsor Message Transcript STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Senator Ted Cruz has written a book praising Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The Texas lawmaker highlights Thomas' rise from poverty and his move to the political right.

+ TED CRUZ: When he was in college and law school, he was a left-wing radical. And Justice Thomas today describes himself as an angry young man - angry at God, angry at the world. INSKEEP: By the 1980s, Thomas was Republican leaning on the individualism he'd learned growing up. Today, he's the court's senior justice and among its most conservative. The book "Going Further" calls attention to Thomas and also to its author, who used to argue cases before the court. People will wonder about your choice here. Does this book, for example, tell us what kind of Supreme Court justice you think you would be if you ever had the opportunity? CRUZ: So it doesn't, Steve, for the simple reason that I don't want to be a judge. INSKEEP: You will never be a judge? CRUZ: I will never be a judge. INSKEEP: OK. Go on. CRUZ: The reason I don't want to be a judge is a principal judge stays out of politics and stays out of policy fights. And if I were a judge, I'd do that. I'd stay out of those fights. I don't want to stay out of those fights. INSKEEP: Well, that leads to my next question, then. Does this book tell us what kind of Supreme Court justice you would appoint if you ever had the opportunity? CRUZ: Absolutely, yes. And I think that in our lifetimes, we have had four giants on the court - Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, Sam Alito and my former boss, Chief Justice William Rehnquist. INSKEEP: Clarence Thomas has authored opinions on gun rights and joined the ruling overturning a right to abortion. Cruz says he's also comfortable filing dissents, even if the vote is 8-1. CRUZ: There has never been a Supreme Court justice more willing to go back to the original Constitution, go back to the original understanding and to overturn precedent. He is the most willing to overturn precedent. INSKEEP: I want to jump in right there because you have this quote from Antonin Scalia, the late Supreme Court Justice, who is conservative, but concluded, you say, at some point he didn't want to try to overturn everything. And his quote is, "I'm an originalist. I'm a textualist. I'm not a nut." And then you say Clarence Thomas is the nut. What do you mean by that? CRUZ: Well, look, I mean, Scalia was being somewhat self-deprecating and hyperbolic. Another exchange that I describe in the same chapter is Scalia said to Thomas when he's pushing to overrule older precedents that he thinks are wrong, Scalia said, Clarence, you're tilting at windmills. And Thomas responds, Nino, windmills are dangerous. INSKEEP: Ha. OK. CRUZ: He was willing to argue against precedent. And look, some of it is - this is a man who was born in 1948. In 1948, Plessy v. Ferguson was still the law of the land. INSKEEP: Yeah. CRUZ: The Supreme Court had ruled that separate but equal (inaudible). And so you could have segregated classrooms and discriminate based on race. INSKEEP: A liberal Supreme Court soon overturned that ruling. This year, Thomas offered a hint into how much American law he thinks should change. In a speech played on C-SPAN, he said the United States went wrong from the Progressive Era of the early 1900s. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) THOMAS CLARENCE: You will not be surprised to learn that the progressives had a great deal of contempt for us, the American people. INSKEEP: In his telling, President Woodrow Wilson began turning over government to experts supposedly above politics. Thomas blames the horrors of the 20th century on similar ideas. In Clarence Thomas' mind, is the ideal American government something like before we had in 1912 or 1900? CRUZ: Well, I will say that speech that Justice Thomas gave, he gave it at the University of Texas, and it's a masterful speech. And Clarence Thomas has written at length in his opinions that understanding that our rights are fundamental. They're inviable. They come from God, and the purpose of government and the Constitution is to protect those rights. INSKEEP: But does that mean a pre-1900 government is... CRUZ: No. Of course, not. INSKEEP: ...What's in his head is the proper government? CRUZ: He's not saying anything about pre-1900 or post-1900 government. He's saying... INSKEEP: He's saying that everything has gone wrong since then. I mean, I'm oversimplifying, but really not a lot. It's a pretty strong speech. CRUZ: It is a very strong speech, but you're misunderstanding what he's saying there, Steve. What he is saying that has gone wrong is the progressives. And by the way, Woodrow Wilson was a left-wing Democrat, and he believed in government power. In fact, he embraced a European and German notion - the government is in charge of all of our rights. And what Clarence Thomas was saying is that is fundamentally wrong. INSKEEP: Cruz says Justice Thomas is determined to hold to the Constitution. So in our long talk, I asked about opinions in which critics would say Thomas went beyond. When the court upheld birthright citizenship, Thomas dissented. Cruz says a phrase in the document gives latitude for that. We also discussed a ruling in favor of President Trump, who sought immunity from prosecution between his two terms. The literal text of the Constitution does not say a former president cannot be prosecuted. Did he go beyond the Constitution there? CRUZ: He did not, and that ruling was consistent with more than two centuries of judicial understanding of separation of powers of the difference between Article 1, the Congress, Article 2, the executive branch and Article 3, the judicial branch. And... INSKEEP: But he's willing to overturn precedent, and the words aren't there in the Constitution. CRUZ: Well, they are. And the words for the structural - the word separation of powers do not appear in the Constitution. Nonetheless, the structure of the Constitution explicitly separate powers, which is why the court enforced it. INSKEEP: You portray Justice Thomas then as an independent thinker who's been willing to defy people, particularly on the political left. But as you portray him as an independent thinker, can you give me a strong example in which he agreed with liberals, agreed with the left, defied conservatives from the political left because his conscience and his intellect took him there? CRUZ: Well, look, I wouldn't say as much - he is not looking at politics. He's looking at what the Constitution says. INSKEEP: To give an example, Cruz reached back some 40 years before Thomas was a judge. Thomas objected when Bob Jones University, a conservative Christian school, banned interracial dating. Thomas himself would later be in an interracial marriage. CRUZ: A related story I describe in the book when he is being vetted by the Bush 41 administration for the Supreme Court, and they're firing questions at him. One question that a lawyer fires at him is, will anyone be bothered by the fact that you're married to a white woman? And his response was, only liberals and bigots. INSKEEP: Ted Cruz contends Justice Thomas is hated because he did not conform to what liberals expected him to be. His book on Clarence Thomas is called "Going Further." Copyright &copy; 2026 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. Accuracy and availability of NPR transcripts may vary. Transcript text may be revised to correct errors or match updates to audio. Audio on npr.org may be edited after its original broadcast or publication. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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