Republican Presidential Candidate Ted Cruz is on a campaign swing through the state this weekend. Cruz, who is a first-term Texas Senator, told an audience of 200 in Pierson Friday night that the U.S. Supreme Court is exhibiting a “pattern of lawlessness” this week, starting with its ruling Thursday on “ObamaCare.”

“Six justices of the United States Supreme Court committed a naked and shameless act of judicial activism,” Cruz said. “What they did was fundamentally lawless….They rewrote the law and, in doing so, violated their judicial oath and effectively joined the Obama Administration enforcing this failed law.”

And after the court’s ruling on Friday morning making same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states, Cruz began calling for a constitutional amendment

“We are not governed by a judicial priesthood,” Cruz said. “We are not governed by judicial tyranny and when five lawyers believe they know better than 320 million Americans and seize sovereignty, it is incumbent upon us to take that power back.”

Cruz proposes retention elections for justices on the United States Supreme Court.

“So that when they violate the constitution and the law, the American people can remove them from their post,” Cruz said, to applause.

Iowa is among the 20 states which have retention elections for the judges in state courts. Three members of the Iowa Supreme Court were voted off the bench in 2010 after the joined the court’s unanimous 2009 decision which legalized same-sex marriage in Iowa. A fourth justice who joined in that ruling won his retention vote in 2012. The justice who wrote the Varnum decision is currently the court’s chief justice.

This past week in the U.S. Senate, Cruz switched his position on trade promotion authority for the president, which he had supported, and instead voted against giving President Obama that “fast track” authority to negotiate trade agreements.

“I’m a strong supporter of free trade,” Cruz said. “Like Ronald Reagan, I believe when we open up foreign markets it benefits American farmers, American ranchers, American manufacturers. It produces jobs and economic growth and so, initially, the first time the Senate took up what’s called trade promotion authority, I supported it. However, in the months since then there have been two significant changes.”

Cruz points to the Wikileaks release of some of the text of a proposed trade agreement which Cruz said would “explicitly” change U.S. immigration laws.

“No over and over again the administration had been saying it wasn’t changing immigration laws,” Cruz said. “I had introduced in the Senate a strong amendment to prevent any trade deal from affecting immigration law and, if it attempted to, have it not be subject to fast track. That amendment was blocked in the senate and was not added to TPA.”

And Cruz accuses Republican leaders in congress of making a deal with some Democrats to pass trade promotion authority along with reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank to get Democratic votes. Cruz says the Export-Import Bank is “corporate welfare” because it guarantees loans to U.S. corporations that do business in developing countries.

Both of Iowa’s Republican Senators voted in favor of giving President Obama trade promotion authority.

Last night’s event was hosted by Bill Anderson, a state senator from Pierson and, as the crowd in Pierson’s city park munched on grilled pork loin sandwiches, Anderson announced he was endorsing Cruz.

(Reporting in Pierson by Dennis Morrice, KLEM, Le Mars; additional reporting and editing by Radio Iowa’s O. Kay Henderson)