Cruz spoke to Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Monday about the ongoing requirement for mask-wearing on public transport including airplanes that was put in place by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The senator has previously expressed strong opposition to a mask mandate for airplanes and on Friday he took aim at Democrats on the issue, saying they “obey Chuck Schumer.”

Cruz discussed Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI), who had called for a “sense of the senate” resolution in June asking the Biden administration to reconsider the rule.

That is a non-binding resolution that would express the view of the majority in the Senate if passed.

Cruz said Schatz had “just gotten off, I think, a long flight from Hawaii wearing the stupid mask.”

“He was like, look, ‘I can’t stand this mandate, I agree with you, the science but I don’t want us to tell the federal government what to do. How about we just pass a sense of the Senate that we should end the mask mandate on airplanes?’”

“And I’m like, OK, I don’t know why we apparently, Congress under the constitution doesn’t have the power to tell the federal government what to do, I thought that was actually what Article 1 was all about but fine, you want to make it a sense of the Senate, great,” Cruz went on.

“And he suggested to me, he said: ‘Ted, let’s do this together, let’s make it bipartisan.’ So I went and drafted it and you know what at the end of the day, he wasn’t willing to join because the rest of his caucus, the other Democrats, they cracked the whip.”

“And it’s a weird thing, Sean, there is a herd mentality among congressional Democrats that they obey Chuck Schumer and their only answer is ‘Sir, yes, sir’ and so we filed the bill even - it was the weakened sense of the Senate bill because that’s what a Democratic senator suggested he might support and even that not a single Democrat was willing to support.”

Cruz and five other Republican senators introduced a resolution encouraging the CDC to “review and update its guidance relating to mask wearing in confined places” on June 24. No Democrats were co-sponsors. It was referred to the the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

Newsweek has asked Senators Chuck Schumer and Brian Schatz for comment.