Rafael Edward Cruz (; generally known as Ted Cruz, born December 22, 1970) is an American politician and attorney serving as the junior United States...
Rafael Edward Cruz (; generally known as Ted Cruz, born December 22, 1970) is an American politician and attorney serving as the junior United States Senator for Texas since 2013.
After graduating from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, Cruz pursued a career in government. He worked as a policy advisor in the George W. Bush administration before serving as Solicitor General of Texas from 2003 to 2008. In 2012, Cruz was elected to the U.S. Senate, becoming the first Hispanic American to serve as a U.S. senator from Texas. In the Senate, Cruz has taken consistently conservative positions on economic and social policy; he played a leading role in the 2013 United States federal government shutdown, seeking to force Congress and President Barack Obama to defund the Affordable Care Act. He was reelected to the Senate in 2018.
In 2016, Cruz ran for president of the United States, placing second behind Donald Trump in the Republican primary. The competition for the Republican presidential nomination between Trump and Cruz was deeply acrimonious and characterized by a series of public personal attacks. Trump ridiculed the physical appearance of Cruz's wife, and falsely accused Cruz's father of murdering John F. Kennedy; Cruz vilified Trump, calling him a pathological liar and morally unfit for the presidency. Despite this, Cruz became a staunch Trump supporter during his presidency.
In January 2021, Cruz provoked a widespread political and popular backlash after filing objections to the certification of Joe Biden's victory over then-President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election; he was criticized for giving credence to the baseless conspiracy theory that the election was fraudulent. On the day the electoral votes were tallied and Cruz filed his objections, Trump supporters motivated by the belief that the election was stolen stormed the United States Capitol. Because Cruz helped popularize and legitimize the conspiracy theory that motivated the rioters, many figures from across the political spectrum argued that he bore a degree of responsibility for the riot and the five deaths it caused, and called for his resignation or expulsion from the Senate.
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Deval Patrick
Deval Laurdine Patrick (born July 31, 1956) is an American politician, civil rights lawyer, author, and businessman who served as the 71st governor of...
Deval Laurdine Patrick (born July 31, 1956) is an American politician, civil rights lawyer, author, and businessman who served as the 71st governor of Massachusetts from 2007 to 2015. He was first elected in 2006, succeeding Mitt Romney, who chose not to run for reelection to focus on his presidential campaign. He was reelected in 2010. He was the first African American Governor of Massachusetts. A Democrat, Patrick served from 1994 to 1997 as the United States Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division under President Bill Clinton. He was briefly a candidate for President of the United States in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
Raised largely by a single mother on the South Side of Chicago, Patrick earned a scholarship to Milton Academy in Milton, Massachusetts in the eighth grade. He went on to attend Harvard College and Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. After graduating, he practiced law with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and later joined a Boston law firm, where he was named a partner at age 34. In 1994, Bill Clinton appointed him as the United States assistant attorney general for the civil rights division of the United States Department of Justice, where he worked on issues including racial profiling and police misconduct.
During his governorship, Patrick oversaw the implementation of the state's 2006 health care reform program which had been enacted under Mitt Romney, increased funding to education and life sciences, won a federal Race to the Top education grant, passed an overhaul of governance of the state transportation function, signing a law to create the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, increased the state sales tax from 5% to 6.25%, raised the state's minimum wage from $8 per hour to $11 by 2017, and planned the introduction of casinos to the state. Under Patrick, Massachusetts joined the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Shortly after Patrick's second term began on January 6, 2011, he declared he would not seek re-election in 2014.Patrick is a managing director at Bain Capital and serves as the chairman of the board for Our Generation Speaks, a fellowship program and startup incubator whose mission is to bring together young Israeli and Palestinian leaders through entrepreneurship. He also holds a Board of Directors position at telehealth company American Well.Members of his own inner circle and Barack Obama's inner circle encouraged Patrick to run for president in 2020, but Patrick ruled out a 2020 presidential bid in December 2018. In November 2019, however, uneasy about the existing field of Democratic candidates, Patrick was reported to have called a few leading Democrats and allies to say that he would soon announce a 2020 presidential bid. He formally entered the race on November 14, 2019. He ended his campaign on February 12, 2020, following a very poor showing in the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary.
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