Will Hurd

On August 1, 2019, Hurd announced that he will not run for reelection to Congress in 2020 after finishing his third term.

Since 2019, Hurd has also been serving on the Transatlantic Task Force of the German Marshall Fund and the Bundeskanzler-Helmut-Schmidt-Stiftung (BKHS), co-chaired by Karen Donfried and Wolfgang Ischinger.

In February 2019, on Real Time with Bill Maher, Maher pressed Hurd about his vote against the February 2017 resolution to request Trump's tax returns. Hurd said that the resolution had not been on the floor for a vote, but that he would support renewed efforts by the House to obtain the returns.

In July 2019 Hurd was one of four Republican House members to vote in support of a motion to condemn tweets by Trump calling on "'Progressive' Democratic Congresswomen who originally came from countries" Trump described as failing to "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came."

In October 2019, amid the Trump-Ukraine scandal that set off an impeachment inquiry into Trump, Hurd did not openly support impeachment. He said, "some of these things are indeed damning. However, I want to make sure we get through this entire investigation before coming to some kind of conclusion." In December 2019 he voted against both articles of impeachment.

In 2019 Hurd was one of seven Republicans to break with the Trump administration's position and vote with Democrats to end a government shutdown.

On March 7, 2018, Hurd won the GOP primary with 80% of the vote. No candidate won a majority of the vote in the Democratic primary in his district, forcing a runoff between former Air Force intelligence officer Gina Ortiz Jones and high-school teacher Rick Trevino. Ortiz Jones won the runoff.

In July 2018 it was reported that the race for Hurd's seat was on track to become "the most expensive congressional race in the state's history."

In January 2018 Hurd voted down Democratic motions in the House Intelligence Committee to allow the Justice Department and FBI to review the Devin Nunes memo, a document alleging FBI abuses of surveillance powers in the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, before releasing it to the public. The FBI said it had "grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo's accuracy." Hurd voted against the release of a related memo authored by Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee.

Allegheny College gave the 2018 Prize for Civility in Public Life to Hurd and Beto O'Rourke, a Texas Democrat. In March 2017, facing snowstorm-induced flight cancellations, Hurd and O'Rourke, both stuck in San Antonio, needed to get back to Washington for a House vote. They rented a car and embarked on a 1,600-mile (2,600 km) drive that they captured on Facebook Live. Hurd and O'Rourke worked collaboratively on important legislation subsequent to the road trip. In 2019 Hurd was one of eight House Republicans who voted in favor of the Equality Act, which would provide federal non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ Americans.

In February 2017 Hurd voted against a resolution that would have directed the House to request ten years of President Trump's tax returns, which would then have been reviewed by the House Ways and Means Committee in a closed session.

Hurd favors repealing the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. In 2017, when House Republican leadership introduced the American Health Care Act (a bill to repeal the ACA), he faced a political quandary. Hurd did not say whether he supported or opposed the legislation. Ultimately, after the measure was declared dead and withdrawn from a planned vote due to insufficient support, Hurd "released a statement in which he appeared to oppose the overhaul." When the bill came up for a vote again, he voted against it, opposing it because he feared it would hurt people with pre-existing medical conditions. Some Democrats castigated Hurd for the length of his consideration of the bill, but constituents and ACA supporters praised him for declining to support the bill, with former secretary of housing and urban development Julian Castro calling Hurd's vote a "good decision."

Hurd spoke out against Trump's 2017 executive order to build a wall along the southern border with Mexico, saying it was a "third-century solution to a 21st-century problem" and the "most expensive and least effective way to secure the border." Hurd instead advocated for a "flexible, sector-by-sector approach that empowers Border Patrol agents on the ground with the resources they need." He proposed using "a mix of technology. It's going to be significantly cheaper than building a wall. Let's focus on drug traffickers ... and human smugglers."

Hurd criticized Trump's 2017 executive order to bar the entry of nationals of seven Muslim-majority countries to the U.S., describing it as the "ultimate display of mistrust."

In March 2017 a three-member panel of federal judges invalidated the Texas State Legislature's 2011 drawing of three congressional districts (Hurd's 23rd district, the 27th district, and the 35th district), finding that Texas had intentionally discriminated against blacks and Latinos in violation of either the U.S. Constitution or the Voting Rights Act. It is unclear what effect this will have on the three districts, especially Hurd's, as his election victory occurred using a court-approved 2013 interim map that differed from the 2011 map. Hurd said at the time that a revised district plan would not affect his work in Congress or his hopes of winning a third term in 2018.

Hurd was handily renominated for a second term in the Republican primary election held on March 1, 2016. He defeated William "Hart" Peterson, 39,762 votes (82.2%) to 8,590 (17.8%). After winning renomination, Hurd began to distance himself from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. He opposed Trump's "nasty rhetoric" in reference to Muslims and Latinos and the candidate's proposal to build an $8 billion, 1,000-mile-long (1,600 km) wall across the American border with Mexico. "Building a wall is the most expensive, least effective way to do border security," Hurd said in an interview. Hurd said he did not need coattails from his party's presidential nominee: "Anybody who is hoping on coattails or macro trends, is not doing his job."

Vote Smart, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization that collects and distributes information on candidates for public office in the United States, "researched presidential and congressional candidates' public records to determine candidates' likely responses on certain key issues." According to its 2016 analysis, Hurd generally supports pro-life legislation, opposes an income tax increase, opposes federal spending and supports lowering taxes as a means of promoting economic growth, supports building the Keystone Pipeline, opposes the federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, opposes gun-control legislation, supports repealing the Affordable Care Act, and supports increased American intervention in Iraq and Syria beyond air support.

Hurd assumed office as U.S. representative on January 3, 2015. During his first term he ranked third among freshman House members who had the most bills passed. Much of Hurd's work focused on bipartisan cybersecurity and technology bills.

In July 2015 Hurd was named to replace Aaron Schock of Illinois as a co-chair of the Congressional Future Caucus, along with Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii. In his first term in Congress, Hurd was made the chairman of the Information Technology Subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (which focuses in part on cybersecurity), which is unusual for a first-term member of Congress.

In 2015 Hurd voted 96% with his party's position on roll-call votes. As of August 2019 he has voted with his party in 82% of votes in the 116th United States Congress and in line with Trump's position in 81.3% of votes.

Hurd once again ran for the 23rd district in the 2014 United States House of Representatives elections. After defeating Canseco in the primary, Hurd defeated Gallego, the incumbent, in the general election. The San Antonio Express-News again endorsed Hurd. Hurd conducted a post-election swing through some parts of his district that had heavily supported Gallego. He was also the only candidate ever to be endorsed by CIA director Robert Gates, who admired Hurd's work at the CIA and was disappointed by his departure to run for public office. Gates said that Hurd "has the character and the integrity and the leadership skills for higher office."

Hurd opposes the normalization of Cuba–U.S. relations.

On February 15, 2010, the San Antonio Express-News endorsed Hurd. In the March 2 primary election he received the most votes but not a majority, resulting in a runoff election on April 13, 2010. Hurd faced second-place finisher Francisco "Quico" Canseco, a San Antonio banker, formerly from Laredo, who was making his third attempt at a congressional seat. Canseco defeated Hurd in the runoff, 53% to 47%. Canseco won the general election but was defeated for reelection in 2012 by Democrat Pete Gallego of Alpine by a margin of 2,500 votes.

On November 19, 2009, Hurd announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination in Texas's 23rd congressional district, a district that is two-thirds Hispanic. His electronically filed campaign finance records indicated he had $70,000 on hand to fund his campaign.

Hurd called for a ramp-up of U.S. military action against ISIS in Libya and in Syria, using the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan as a model. He blamed ISIL's rise on the Obama administration, accusing it of underestimating the threat. Hurd has written that Islamic extremists "are in it for the long haul, which means that we have to be also." On the broader Syrian civil war, Hurd has written that "the brutal dictator Bashar al-Asad must go."

Hurd worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for nine years from 2000 to 2009, stationed primarily in Washington, D.C., including a tour of duty as an operations officer in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. He speaks Urdu, the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan, where he worked undercover. One of his roles at the CIA was briefing members of Congress, which is what made Hurd want to pursue politics. He returned to Texas after his CIA service and worked as a partner with Crumpton Group LLC, a strategic advisory firm, and as a senior adviser with FusionX, a cybersecurity firm.

William Ballard Hurd (born August 19, 1977) is an American politician and former CIA officer serving as the U.S. representative for Texas's 23rd congressional district since 2015. The district stretches about 550 miles (890 km) from San Antonio to El Paso along the U.S.–Mexican border.

Hurd is the only black Republican in the House of Representatives in the 116th Congress, one of seven in the House of Representatives since the 1930s; he shared this distinction with Mia Love during her term in Congress from 2017 to 2019. He is also the sole remaining Republican representative from a district along the U.S.–Mexican border. Hurd has been described as a leading congressional voice on technology issues. He has said that the principal role of the government in the lives of African Americans today should be to empower them to do things for themselves. Along with Brian Fitzpatrick, John Katko and Elise Stefanik, Hurd is considered one of the most moderate Republicans in the House. He has bucked his party on LGBT rights, gun control, immigration, repeal of the Affordable Care Act and congressional oversight, and has received praise for his bipartisan strides as a lawmaker; The Dallas Morning News lauded his record in August 2019, writing that Hurd's "refreshing, common-sense legislating separated him from reflexive party-line orthodoxy."