Ted Cruz, Republican senator for Texas and the chair of the committee in charge of NASA, used Twitter tonight to announce his intentions to run for president in 2016. Cruz's tweet was accompanied by a 30-second video, in which the senator calls on "a new generation of courageous conservatives" to "make America great again."
I'm running for President and I hope to earn your support! pic.twitter.com/0UTqaIoytP
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 23, 2015
Cruz has taken a strong stance against net neutrality, arguing that by classifying broadband under common carrier laws, companies would not be able to be "bold, innovative, and fair." In a less comprehensible argument, Cruz said net neutrality was "Obamacare for the internet," conflating two topics that while not particularly similar in any way, sound scary to partisan Republicans. For his anti-net neutrality efforts, Cruz was called out last week by a small plane flying over Austin's SXSW festival.
He has also railed against the existence of climate change. In a CNN interview last year, the senator claimed that the Earth has not become any warmer in the last 15 years, despite evidence that shows 2014 was the hottest year on record. Cruz complained about the definition of the phenomenon, saying "Climate change, as they have defined it, can never be disproved, because whether it gets hotter or whether it gets colder, whatever happens, they'll say, 'well, it's changing, so it proves our theory'."
Cruz has already incorporated his views into his policies as he's gained more power in Washington. After becoming the head of the Senate subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness — the body that oversees NASA — the senator released a statement in which he criticized the space agency for doing too much research on climate change and Earth sciences. Cruz said that NASA should focus on space exploration instead, and that the agency "must not sacrifice funding for NASA's core mission of space exploration to continue expanding climate change funding."