What's new

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz announced his bid for president early Monday. He has been making the rounds with other 2016 hopefuls, so it's hardly a surprise, but he's the first major one to make it official. And if the early campaign trail is any indication of how the race will play out, Cruz, 44, will be exactly who he's always been. He's relatively new to public office, elected to the Senate in 2012. But he has made his career — and attracted support from the right's base along the way — as a staunch defender of conservative values.

Here's what you need to know:

Canadian hockey fans cheer-on their team. Sen. Ted Cruz was born in Canada, but has renounced his Canadian citizenship. Anders Wiklund/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Anders Wiklund/AFP/Getty Images

He was born in Canada.
Cruz was born to a Cuban father, who escaped during the revolution, and an American mother, who was the first in her family to go to college and who became a computer programmer in the 1950s. Because of Cruz's Canadian birth, some have questioned whether he qualifies to be president. Being a "natural born" citizen is one of the three eligibility requirements to be president laid out in the constitution.

But the weight of legal evidence supports that the term "natural born" also applies to people born abroad to U.S. citizen parents (which Cruz's mom was). Cruz considers Houston, where he was raised, his hometown.

He's was a top college debater at Princeton.
Here are some of the debate accolades Cruz raked in as an undergraduate at Princeton: National Championship Top Speaker, North American Debating Championship Top Speaker, Speaker of the Year and Team of the Year. His classmates at Princeton remember him, according to a 2013 profile, the way many see him today: smart, confident, firm on conservative principles and polarizing.

After Princeton, he went on to study at Harvard Law; his classmates from that time also remember him as a smart, but divisive guy with a hard edge.

He's argued before the Supreme Court nine times. Sometimes in cowboy boots.
From 1996-1997, Cruz was a law clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist. In 2003, Cruz was appointed solicitor general of Texas, becoming the youngest person in the nation appointed to such a post. In that capacity, he argued several cases before the Supreme Court and authored more than 80 Supreme Court briefs. As solicitor general, he defended Texas' death penalty, the constitutionality of the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and the state's congressional redistricting map.

Cruz clerked at the U.S. Supreme Court for former Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

And about those cowboy boots — he has a pair called his "argument boots." He says he didn't wear them to the Supreme Court out of respect to his mentor, Justice Rehnquist, who was a stickler for proper attire. That changed after Rehnquist's death — he sought and was granted permission from Chief Justice John Roberts to wear the boots before the high court.

He won his Senate seat without prior experience in elective office.
Once considered a long-shot for Senate, Cruz quickly became a Tea Party favorite when he ran in a tough primary against Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. On the campaign trail in 2012, he fired up his base, conservative Tea Partiers disillusioned with government and unsatisfied with the direction of the country. "There is a great awakening that is sweeping this country," he said at the time. His win was called the biggest of the year for Tea Party activists.

He spoke for 21 hours on the Senate floor.
Cruz was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012. Less than one year in, he commandeered the Senate floor to oppose President Obama's health care law. "I intend to speak in opposition to Obamacare; I intend to speak in support of defunding Obamacare until I am no longer able to stand," he said. Cruz's crusade, which attracted wide attention, advocated a government shutdown unless Democrats compromised on the law. Days later, Congress remained locked over Obamacare provisions, and the government partially shut down for more than two weeks.

During his tenure, he's developed a reputation for throwing down the gauntlet against congressional Republican leaders over issues like health care, the federal budget and, most recently, immigration. And this year, he's already been blasting his fellow Republican presidential hopefuls, like Jeb Bush and Chris Christie, accusing them of not standing up for true conservative values.

2016 Presidential Race

Ted Cruz

election

Tea Party

The 2016 presidential campaign has its first official candidate. Republican Ted Cruz jumped into the race for the presidency, announcing his intentions in a tweet at 12:09 am EDT Monday morning.

"I'm running for President and I hope to earn your support!" the firebrand Texas senator tweeted simply with an embedded video.

I'm running for President and I hope to earn your support! pic.twitter.com/0UTqaIoytP

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 23, 2015

"It's a time for truth," Cruz says in the 30-second video that shows pictures of Americana — baseball, the Golden Gate and Brooklyn bridges, men walking in a factory. "A time to rise to the challenge, just as Americans have always done. I believe in America and her people and I believe we can stand up and restore our promise. It's going to take a new generation of courageous conservatives to help make America great again. And I'm ready to stand with you to lead the fight."

Though several candidates are testing the presidential waters in what is expected to be another crowded Republican field, Cruz is the first major candidate to outright declare he is running.

Cruz trails in early presidential primary polls. He pulled in just 4 percent of Republican primary voters in the latest CNN/ORC poll. An NBC/WSJ poll found Republicans split on whether they could support Cruz — 40 to 38 percent.

Sen. Ted Cruz kisses his wife Heidi during a walk through Sunday night at Liberty University before Cruz's Monday presidential campaign announcement. Andrew Harnik/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Andrew Harnik/AP

But the ideological hardliner and his team hope he can capitalize on his popularity with the tea party and his reputation as an outspoken fighter of both Democrats and the Republican establishment.

Cruz is set to hold a more traditional announcement event Monday at Liberty University in Virginia. The setting is emblematic of the path Cruz hopes to carve out to the nomination. Liberty claims to be the largest evangelical Christian university in the world. It was founded by evangelical pastor Jerry Falwell in 1971.

For Cruz, that means a focus of his campaign will be on rallying religious conservatives. And that's Iowa and South Carolina, two key early states where the number of voters in the GOP nominating contests are overwhelmingly white and a majority evangelical.

Entrance polls in 2012, for example, found that 99 percent of voters in the Iowa Republican caucuses were 99 percent white and 57 percent described themselves as born -again or evangelical Christians. In South Carolina, it was 98 percent white and 65 percent evangelical or born-again, according to exit polls.

Pat Robertson, another evangelical pastor, was the first to capitalize on the strength of the evangelical vote in Iowa. In 1988, "Robertson's Army" helped him past Vice President George H.W. Bush for a second-place finish in the caucuses. Ever since, GOP candidates have been trying to replicate what Robertson was able to pull off.

But that well-worn path is likely to have some traffic on it this year, including from the two most recent Iowa winners — former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, both of whom are seriously considering running again.

Since bursting onto the scene in 2012 after his GOP primary upset victory against a former Texas lieutenant governor, Cruz has struck out not just against President Obama and Democrats, but also Republican leaders.

He has endorsed outsider tea party candidates against sitting U.S. Senators, even while serving as vice chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the organization tasked with electing — and reelecting — GOP senators.

Cruz gained notoriety in 2013 for a 21-hour speech on the Senate floor against a government-funding bill because of his opposition to the health-care law. To fill time, he even wound up reading Dr. Seuss' Green Eggs and Ham.

The Daily Show
Daily Show Full Episodes, More Daily Show Videos, Comedy Central Full Episodes

That was something Democrats decried as ironic given that the lead character went on to actually like the title dish after trying it.

Cruz has also rankled Republican leaders, going around them to push for tactics leadership found politically unpalatable.

In 2013, Cruz worked with hard liners in the House to oppose plans to re-open the government after the partial shutdown — a political crisis some Republicans accused Cruz of orchestrating.

Cruz also opposed the year-end 2014 spending bill. He wanted stronger language that would have defunded the president's executive action on immigration.

2016 Presidential Race

Ted Cruz

Republicans

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani tells NPR that most people in his country want a continued U.S. troop presence and that his government is determined to make sure that the self-declared Islamic State does not gain a foothold.

Ghani, on an official visit to the United States, spoke in a wide-ranging interview with Morning Edition host Renee Montagne to be broadcast on Monday.

He says the perception that Afghans are eager for U.S. troops to leave the country is simply untrue. "They see the United States as critical to their future."

Ghani, who came to power in September succeeding long-time President Hamid Karzai, is expected to spend Monday at Camp David, Md., for discussions with Secretary of State John Kerry and to meet with President Obama at the White House on Tuesday.

He is also scheduled for talks with Defense Secretary Ashton Carter to discuss security and Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew to talk about the economic challenges faced by Afghanistan.

Asked about ISIS, Ghani expressed concern that "terrorism is morphing into a system. ... It's becoming sophisticated. And more than anything else, it's controlling immense resources."

In Afghanistan, the Islamic State, he says is "posing a threat, but we are determined to make sure that they do not do the kind of atrocities that they've managed so well in Syria, Iraq, Libya, or Yemen."

One of the biggest challenges faced by his six-month-old government is corruption.

"It's a bottomless pit," acknowledges Ghani, a former World Bank official who has lived in the U.S.

"The good news is that it can be overcome. The bad news is that it requires an enormous amount of effort, determination, and focus. And there'll be a lot of resistance to it," he tells NPR.

Salaries are a main area of concern, as officials skim a take before paying employees. Technology may solve the problem. Paying salaries by phone would "clear the middleman," he says.

He's already gone after the Kabul Bank, "which was notorious," he says.

"It was a case of a fraud. From day one, it was established as a Ponzi scheme," Ghani says.

An Afghan Supreme Court ruling last week has cleared the way to begin going after corrupt politicians and politically connected people implicated in the scheme "to get the depositors' money and use it for their own," he says.

"[All] the books were fake. And we've tackled it," Ghani says.

Despite his reputation as a reformer, however, Ghani has not managed to avoid criticism. Some suggested that he's acting more like a dictator than a president — micromanaging the approval of contracts issued by the government.

"I'm not taking power. I'm catalyzing systemic change. First you need to gather it in order to give it away in a credible and effective way," Ghani says.

"I'm too busy thinking about the larger issues to micromanage. All of my colleagues who've worked with me in the ministry of finance or other, they know I delegate," he says.

Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai

Taliban

Afghanistan

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz will announce Monday he is running for the Republican nomination for president, according to The Houston Chronicle, which quotes senior advisers with direct knowledge of the plans.

Ultra-conservative Cruz, who has quickly risen to prominence in recent years with firebrand tactics that have fired up the GOP's tea-party base, will make his run official during a speech at Liberty University, the evangelical Christian college in Lynchburg, Va., founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell.

Unlike some of his potential Republican challengers, Cruz will bypass an exploratory committee and launch directly into the campaign, the Chronicle says.

The newspaper reports: "Over the course of the primary campaign, Cruz will aim to raise between $40 million and $50 million, according to advisers, and dominate with the same tea party voters who supported his underdog Senate campaign in 2012. But the key to victory, Cruz advisers believe, is to be the second choice of enough voters in the party's libertarian and social conservative wings to cobble together a coalition to defeat the chosen candidate of the Republican establishment."

The New York Times adds:

"Mr. Cruz will be effectively firing the starting gun on the Republican primary, which has been dominated so far by the early exploratory maneuvers of Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor; Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin; Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey; Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky; and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.

"Mr. Rubio and Mr. Paul are said to be planning to enter the race next month, meaning that Mr. Cruz is looking to leap ahead and define himself as much as possible."

Sen. Ted Cruz

2016 Presidential Race

Republican party