This is ridiculous, and riddled with errors. To begin with, as Cruz no doubt knows, there are lots of ways the U.S. government can make international agreements. Submitting the treaty for the advice and consent of the Senate is one way, but not the only one. Thread 1/ https://twitter.com/SenTedCruz/status/1341410973501059072

Much more common are executive agreements, as @jacklgoldsmith @curtisabradley and I wrote about here 2/: https://harvardlawreview.org/2020/12/the-failed-transparency-regime-for-executive-agreements/

Trump has submitted just five Article II treaties in his entire presidency. Meanwhile he made hundreds of executive agreements. And his administration concluded who knows how many "nonbinding arrangements." 3/

Where was Cruz then? Where was his concern for the "Senate's constitutional role"? Where was his worry about the sanctity of Article II treaties? 4/

There's no doubt what's really going on. Cruz wants to prevent President-elect Biden from reentering two agreements that are, contrary to his claim in the letter, wildly popular with Americans. 5/ https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/registered-voters-say-us-participate-paris-agreement/

And did he forget that Congress already weighed in on the JCPOA with the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015, which effectively blessed the deal while retaining power to look closely at the deal before the President exercised any statutory authority to lift sanctions? 6/

In the end, this gambit will cause mischief, but it won't work. There's no rule saying that the fact that an agreement has been submitted for the advice and consent of the Senate cannot be concluded in another way. 7/

Biden can ignore this political circus and just go ahead and rejoin the agreements as planned. After that, his team and Congress SHOULD take a close look at how international agreements are made--the system is imperfect, to say the least. But this is not the way to fix it. 8/8