William Hurd
*William Hurd was born on this date in 1977. He is a former Black CIA officer, author, and politician.
William Ballard Hurdis, the son of Robert and Mary Alice Hurd. He is a 1995 John Marshall High School graduate in the San Antonio suburb of Leon Valley. Hurd attended Texas A&M University and served as the student body president in 1999 during the Aggie Bonfire collapse. He received his Bachelor of Science degree from Texas A&M in 2000 with a major in computer science and a minor in international relations.
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, Pakistan's national language and lingua franca, where he worked undercover. One of his roles at the CIA was briefing members of Congress, many of whom he said could not distinguish between Sunnis and Shi'ites, the divide at the center of Islamic civil wars for centuries. His experience briefing members of Congress made Hurd want to pursue politics.
He returned to Texas after his CIA service. He partnered with Crumpton Group LLC, a strategic advisory firm, and as a senior adviser with Fusion X, a cybersecurity firm. In 2014 he was elected as the U.S. representative for Texas's 23rd congressional district. He took office on January 3, 2015; his district stretches 800 miles from San Antonio to El Paso along the U.S.-Mexican border. He became the first non-white Republican elected to Congress from Texas. Hurd is one of two non-white Republicans in the U.S. House; he serves alongside Mia Love, who represents Utah's 4th congressional district.
Vote Smart is a non-profit, non-partisan research organization that collects and distributes information on candidates for public office in the United States. According to Vote Smart's 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 is a conservative public servant. In February 2017, he voted against a resolution that would have directed the House to request ten years of Trump's tax returns, which would then have been reviewed by the House Ways and Means Committee in a closed session. He did not run for re-election in 2018.
In 2022, he released a book called American Reboot.
