Aaron Reitz
The sort of hyper-caution that I think too often Republicans demonstrate, not just in the legal space but political and elsewhere, the time for that is over. We need to understand what time it is and … fight our war accordingly. Aaron Reitz on Moment of Truth podcast
Aaron Reitz is chief of staff for Senator Ted Cruz. For years, he was a Deputy to Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General. Reitz has asserted “our soldiers are lawyers and our weapons are lawsuits and our tactic is lawfare,” and lamented the “hyper-caution that [he] think[s] too often Republicans demonstrate.” Reitz’s approach has been described as “the mindset that would likely pervade a second Trump term,” by Axios, which also observed that “[t]he lawyers in Paxton’s office are a useful proxy for the type of attorneys Trump would likely recruit to fill a second-term administration.” Reitz is also on Stephen Miller’s list of lawyers who have the “spine” to deliver on their agenda in a second Trump administration.
Reitz has called Paxton “the most effective Attorney General in America” and reminisced on their efforts that, in his words, “protected precious unborn children,” “pushed back against woke corporations by thwarting their Environmental, Social, and Governance agenda,” and “resisted radical LGBTQ activists’ attempts to push their sexual agenda on kids.”
Nicknamed “Offensive Coordinator,” Reitz directed the Texas v. Biden litigation agenda, helping Paxton sue the Biden administration nearly 50 times, including in efforts to curtail abortion medicine access and on immigration, Covid-19 public health measures, climate change, and more. Ken Paxton’s Office of the Attorney General infamously attempted to overturn the 2020 election, and while Reitz’s name does not appear directly on the lawsuit the office filed against four battleground states, he is an author in the lawsuit’s metadata.Reitz boasted “remaining ever vigilant against the left’s attempts to corrupt Texas elections in 2020 and 2022.”
In July 2021, after Simone Biles withdrew from the individual all-around gymnastics competition at the Tokyo Olympics to focus on mental well-being, Reitz called her a “selfish, childish national embarrassment.”
Reitz is a current or former fellow of Alliance Defending Freedom, Club for Growth Foundation, the Claremont Institute, the James Wilson Institute, and the John Jay Institute, each of which are part of right-wing dark money networks. Reitz also chaired the Austin chapter of a Texas Public Policy Foundation, which was previously led by Kevin Roberts, who now leads the Heritage Foundation and is spearheading Project 2025.
Reitz graduated from the University of Texas Law School in 2017, where he was president of the Texas Federalist Society. He is a former clerk for the Texas Supreme Court’s Justice Jimmy Blacklock and onetime primary candidate for the Texas House of Representatives.
Notably, Sen. Ted Cruz praised Trump’s frequent appointments of Texas AG office alums to the federal judiciary at a 2019 Federalist Society event.
This profile has been updated.