Andrew M. Yang (born January 13, 1975) is an American entrepreneur, politician, philanthropist and Democratic candidate for New York City mayor. Orig...
Andrew M. Yang (born January 13, 1975) is an American entrepreneur, politician, philanthropist and Democratic candidate for New York City mayor. Originally a lawyer, Yang began working in startups and early stage growth companies as a founder or executive from 2000 to 2009. In 2011, he founded Venture for America (VFA), a nonprofit organization focused on creating jobs in cities struggling to recover from the Great Recession. He ran in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, and is running in the 2021 New York City mayoral election.
The son of immigrants from Taiwan, Yang was born and raised in New York. He attended Brown University and then Columbia Law School. Dissatisfied with his work as an attorney, Yang began working for startups during the dot-com bubble before spending a decade as an executive at test preparation company Manhattan Prep. In 2011, Yang founded VFA, which recruits top college graduates into a two-year fellowship program at startups in developing cities across the United States. The Obama administration selected him in 2011 as a "Champion of Change" and in 2015 as a "Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship." Yang left VFA in 2017 to focus on his presidential campaign. In 2018, he authored The War on Normal People, which outlines several of his campaign's central ideas.
On November 6, 2017, Yang filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to run for President of the United States in the 2020 election. Yang's campaign largely focused on responding to the rapid development of automation, which is increasingly leading to workforce challenges and economic instability in the United States. His signature policy was the "Freedom Dividend," a universal basic income (UBI) of $1,000 a month to every American adult as a response to job displacement by automation, one of the primary factors that he claims led to Donald Trump's election in 2016. Considered a dark horse candidate throughout much of the primary, Yang received significant popularity online, with The New York Times calling him "The Internet's Favorite Candidate". News outlets described Yang as the most surprising candidate of the 2020 election cycle, going from a relative unknown to a major competitor in the race. Yang qualified for and participated in seven of the first eight Democratic debates, and has been credited with elevating discussions on UBI, automation, and autism to the national level, as well as for engaging Asian Americans in presidential politics.Yang's campaign was noted for its happy-go-lucky and "tech-friendly" nature. His supporters, informally known as the "Yang Gang", included several high-profile celebrity endorsements and were noted for their ideological and political diversity. Yang suspended his campaign on February 11, 2020, shortly after the New Hampshire primary, pledging that he and his movement are "just getting started." Following his campaign's end, Yang joined CNN as a political commentator, announced the creation of the political nonprofit organization Humanity Forward, and is running for the Democratic nomination in the 2021 New York City mayoral election.
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Steve King
Steven Arnold King (born May 28, 1949) is an American politician and former businessman who served as the U.S. Representative for Iowa's 4th congressi...
Steven Arnold King (born May 28, 1949) is an American politician and former businessman who served as the U.S. Representative for Iowa's 4th congressional district from 2003 to 2021. A member of the Republican Party, he represented Iowa's 5th congressional district until redistricting.
Born in 1949 in Storm Lake, Iowa, King attended Northwest Missouri State University from 1967 to 1970 but left without graduating. He founded a construction company in 1975 and worked in business and environmental study before seeking the Republican nomination for a seat in the Iowa Senate in 1996. He won the primary and the general election, and was reelected in 2000. In 2002 King was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Iowa's 5th congressional district after the incumbent, Tom Latham, was reassigned to the 4th district after redistricting. He was reelected four times before the 2010 United States Census removed the 5th district and placed King in the 4th, which he represented from 2013.
King is an opponent of immigration and multiculturalism, and has a long history of racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric and white-nationalist affiliations. The Washington Post described King as "the Congressman most openly affiliated with white nationalism." King has been criticized for alleged affiliation with white supremacist ideas, and has made controversial statements against immigrants, and supported European right-wing populist and far-right politicians accused of racism and Islamophobia.For much of King's congressional tenure, Republican politicians and officials were silent about his rhetoric, and frequently sought his endorsement and campaigned with him because of his popularity with northwest Iowa's conservative voters. Shortly before the 2018 election, the National Republican Congressional Committee withdrew funding for King's reelection campaign and its chairman, Steve Stivers, condemned King's conduct, although Iowa's Republican senators and governor continued to endorse him. King was reelected, but after a January 2019 interview in which he questioned the negative connotations of the terms "white nationalist" and "white supremacy", he was widely condemned by both parties, the media and public figures, and the Republican Steering Committee removed him from all House committee assignments. King ran for reelection but, campaign funding and support having declined, lost the June 2020 Republican primary to Randy Feenstra.
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