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A Senate Democrat compared language from one of the nation’s founding documents to that of Iran during a Senate hearing considering President Donald Trump’s nominees.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., pushed back against the opening statement of Riley Barnes, who was tapped by Trump to serve as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, during a Senate Foreign Relations hearing Wednesday.
Barnes quoted Secretary of State Marco Rubio in his opening remarks, telling lawmakers on the panel, “We are a nation founded on a powerful principle, and that powerful principle is that all men are created equal, because our rights come from God our Creator — not from our laws, not from our governments.
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Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., speaks during a confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in the Dirksen Senate Office Building July 15, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
“The secretary went on to say that we will always be strong defenders of that principle, and that’s why the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor is important,” he said. “We are a nation of individuals, each made in the image of God and possessing an inherent dignity. This is a truth that our founders understood as essential to American self-government.”
But Kaine, who is a Catholic, found Barnes’ sentiment “troubling.”
“The notion that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government, but come from the Creator, that’s what the Iranian government believes,” Kaine said. “It’s a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Shia law and targets Sunnis, Bahá’ís, Jews, Christians and other religious minorities.
“And they do it because they believe that they understand what natural rights are from their Creator,” he continued. “So, the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.”
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One of only 25 known surviving copies of the Declaration of Independence, which was printed July 4, 1776, sits on display at Sotheby’s June 22, 2000, in New York City. (Chris Hondros/Newsmakers via Getty Images)
Kaine said he was a “strong believer in natural rights” but noted that if natural rights were to be debated by people within the committee room with different views and religious traditions, “there would be some significant differences in the definitions of those natural rights.”
While the Constitution does not explicitly mention God or a Creator, the Declaration of Independence does.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said that the “radical and dangerous notion,” in Kaine’s words, “is literally the founding principle upon which the United States of America was created.”
“And if you do not believe me, and you made reference to this, Mr. Barnes, then you can believe perhaps the most prominent Virginian to ever serve, Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in the Declaration of Independence, ‘we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator.’”
“Not by government, not by the Democratic National Committee, but by God,” Cruz said.
The Declaration of Independence does say, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
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Bishop Robert Barron, a popular Catholic commentator and author, reacted to the death of Pope Francis, the Bishop of Rome. (Fox News Digital)
Kaine’s sentiment drew heat from Bishop Robert Barron of Minnesota, who panned his remarks in a post on X Thursday. Barron argued that the lawmaker was “actively contesting the view that our rights come from God and not from the government.”
“If the government creates our rights, it can take them away,” Barron said. “If the government is responsible for our rights, well then it can change them.”
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“It just strikes me as extraordinary that a major American politician wouldn’t understand this really elemental part of our system. God help us. I mean that literally, God help us if we say our rights are coming to us from the government, that gives the government, indeed, godlike power,” Barron continued.
Fox News Digital reached out for comment from Kaine’s office but did not immediately hear back.