title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: The object exploded in a meteor air burst over Chelyabinsk Oblast, at a height of around . The explosion generated a bright flash, producing a hot cloud of dust and gas that penetrated to , and many surviving small fragmentary meteorites. The bulk of the object's energy was absorbed by the atmosphere, creating a large shock wave with a total kinetic energy before atmospheric impact estimated from infrasound and seismic measurements to be equivalent to the blast yield of 400–500 kilotons of TNT (about 1.4–1.8 PJ) range – 26 to 33 times as much energy as that released from the atomic bomb detonated at Hiroshima, and the rough equivalent in energy output to the former Soviet Union's own mid-August 1953 initial attempt at a thermonuclear device.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: The object approached Earth undetected before its atmospheric entry, in part because its radiant (source direction) was close to the Sun. Its explosion created panic among local residents, and about 1,500 people were injured seriously enough to seek medical treatment. All of the injuries were due to indirect effects rather than the meteor itself, mainly from broken glass from windows that were blown in when the shock wave arrived, minutes after the superbolide's flash. Some 7,200 buildings in six cities across the region were damaged by the explosion's shock wave, and authorities scrambled to help repair the structures in sub-freezing temperatures.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: With an estimated initial mass of about 12,000–13,000 tonnes (13,000–14,000 short tons), and measuring about in diameter, it is the largest known natural object to have entered Earth's atmosphere since the 1908 Tunguska event, which destroyed a wide, remote, forested, and very sparsely populated area of Siberia. The Chelyabinsk meteor is also the only meteor confirmed to have resulted in many injuries. No deaths were reported.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: The earlier-predicted and well-publicized close approach of a larger asteroid on the same day, the roughly 367943 Duende, occurred about 16 hours later; the very different orbits of the two objects showed they were unrelated to each other.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: Local residents witnessed extremely bright burning objects in the sky in Chelyabinsk, Kurgan, Sverdlovsk, Tyumen, and Orenburg Oblasts, the Republic of Bashkortostan, and in neighbouring regions in Kazakhstan, when the asteroid entered the Earth's atmosphere over Russia. Amateur videos showed a fireball streaking across the sky and a loud boom several minutes afterwards. Some eyewitnesses claim they felt intense heat from the fireball.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: The event began at 09:20:21 Yekaterinburg time, several minutes after sunrise in Chelyabinsk, and minutes before sunrise in Yekaterinburg. According to eyewitnesses, the bolide appeared brighter than the sun, as was later confirmed by NASA. An image of the object was also taken shortly after it entered the atmosphere by the weather satellite Meteosat 9. Witnesses in Chelyabinsk said that the air of the city smelled like "gunpowder", "sulfur" and "burning odors" starting about 1 hour after the fireball and lasting all day.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: The visible phenomenon due to the passage of an asteroid or meteoroid through the atmosphere is called a meteor. If the object reaches the ground, then it is called a meteorite. During the Chelyabinsk meteoroid's traversal, there was a bright object trailing smoke, then an air burst (explosion) that caused a powerful blast wave. The latter was the only cause of the damage to thousands of buildings in Chelyabinsk and its neighbouring towns. The fragments then entered dark flight (without the emission of light) and created a strewn field of numerous meteorites on the snow-covered ground (officially named Chelyabinsk meteorites).


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: The last time a similar phenomenon was observed in the Chelyabinsk region was the Kunashak meteor shower of 1949, after which scientists recovered about weighing over in total. The Chelyabinsk meteor is thought to be the biggest natural space object to enter Earth's atmosphere since the 1908 Tunguska event, and the only one confirmed to have resulted in many injuries, although a small number of panic-related injuries occurred during the Great Madrid Meteor Event of 10 February 1896.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: Preliminary estimates released by the Russian Federal Space Agency indicated the object was an asteroid moving at about in a "low trajectory" when it entered Earth's atmosphere. According to the Russian Academy of Sciences, the meteor then pushed through the atmosphere at a velocity of The radiant (the apparent position of origin of the meteor in the sky) appears from video recordings to have been above and to the left of the rising Sun.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: Early analysis of CCTV and dashcam video posted online indicated that the meteor approached from the southeast, and exploded about 40 km south of central Chelyabinsk above Korkino at a height of , with fragments continuing in the direction of Lake Chebarkul. On 1 March 2013, NASA published a detailed synopsis of the event, stating that at peak brightness (at 09:20:33 local time), the meteor was 23.3 km high, located at 54.8°N, 61.1°E. At that time it was travelling at about – almost 60 times the speed of sound. In November 2013, results were published based on a more careful calibration of dashcam videos in the field weeks after the event during a Russian Academy of Sciences field study, which put the point of peak brightness at 29.7 km altitude and the final disruption of the thermal debris cloud at 27.0 km, settling to 26.2 km, all with a possible systematic uncertainty of ± 0.7 km.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: The United States space agency NASA estimated the diameter of the bolide at about 17–20 m and has revised the mass several times from an initial , until reaching a final estimate of 10,000 tonnes. The air burst's blast wave, when it hit the ground, produced a seismic wave which registered on seismographs at magnitude 2.7.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: The Russian Geographical Society said the passing of the meteor over Chelyabinsk caused three blasts of different energy. The first explosion was the most powerful, and was preceded by a bright flash, which lasted about five seconds. Initial newspaper altitude estimates ranged from with an explosive equivalent, according to NASA, of roughly , although there is some debate on this yield (500 kt is exactly the same energy released by the Ivy King nuclear explosion in 1952). According to a paper in 2013, all these ~500 kiloton yield estimates for the meteor airburst are "uncertain by a factor of two because of a lack of calibration data at those high energies and altitudes". Because of this, some studies have suggested the explosion to have been as powerful as , which would mean a more powerful explosion than Tunguska and comparable to the Tsar Bomba.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: The hypocentre of the explosion was to the south of Chelyabinsk, in Yemanzhelinsk and Yuzhnouralsk. Due to the height of the air burst, the atmosphere absorbed most of the explosion's energy. The explosion's blast wave first reached Chelyabinsk and environs between less than 2 minutes 23 seconds and 2 minutes 57 seconds later. The object did not release all of its kinetic energy in the form of a blast wave, as some 90 kilotons of TNT of the total energy of the main airburst's fireball was emitted as visible light according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and two main fragments survived the primary airburst disruption at ; they flared around , with


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: , with part of the meteoroid continuing on its general trajectory to punch a hole in the frozen Lake Chebarkul, an impact that was fortuitously captured on camera and released in November 2013.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: The infrasound waves given off by the explosions were detected by 20 monitoring stations designed to detect nuclear weapons testing run by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) Preparatory Commission, including the distant Antarctic station, some away. The blast of the explosion was large enough to generate infrasound returns, after circling the globe, at distances up to about . Multiple arrivals involving waves that travelled twice around the globe have been identified. The meteor explosion produced the largest infrasounds ever to be recorded by the CTBTO infrasound monitoring system, which began recording in 2001, so great that they reverberated around the world several times, taking over a day to dissipate. Additional scientific analysis of US military infrasound data was aided by an agreement reached with US authorities to allow its use by civilian scientists, implemented only about a month before the Chelyabinsk meteor event.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: A preliminary estimate of the explosive energy by astronomer Boris Shustov, director of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Astronomy, was , another using empirical period-yield scaling relations and the infrasound records, by Peter Brown of the University of Western Ontario gave a value of and represents a best estimate for the yield of this airburst; there remains a potential "uncertainty [in the order of] a factor of two in this yield value". Brown and his colleagues also went on to publish a paper in November 2013 which stated that the "widely referenced technique of estimating airburst damage does not reproduce the [Chelyabinsk] observations, and that the mathematical relations found in the book "The Effects of Nuclear Weapons" which are based on the effects of nuclear weapons – [which is] almost always used with this technique – overestimate blast damage [when applied to meteor airbursts]". A similar overestimate of the explosive yield of the Tunguska airburst also exists; as incoming celestial objects have rapid directional motion, the object causes stronger blast wave and thermal radiation pulses at the ground surface than would be predicted by a stationary object exploding, limited to the height at which the blast was initiated-where the object's "momentum is ignored". Thus, a meteor airburst of a given energy is "much more damaging than an equivalent [energy] nuclear explosion at the same altitude".


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: The seismic wave produced when the primary airburst's blast struck the ground yields a rather uncertain "best estimate" of 430 kilotons (momentum ignored), corresponding to the seismic wave which registered on seismographs at magnitude 2.7.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: Brown also states that the double smoke plume formation, as seen in photographs, is believed to have coincided near the primary airburst section of the dust trail (as also pictured following the Tagish Lake fireball), and it likely indicates where rising air quickly flowed into the center of the trail, essentially in the same manner as a moving 3D version of a mushroom cloud. Photographs of this smoke trail portion, before it split into two plumes, show this cigar-shaped region glowing incandescently for a few seconds. This region is the area in which the maximum of material ablation occurred, with the double plume persisting for a time and then appearing to rejoin or close up.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: The blast created by the meteor's air burst produced extensive ground damage over an irregular elliptical area around a hundred kilometres wide, and a few tens of kilometres long, with the secondary effects of the blast being the main cause of the considerable number of injuries. Russian authorities stated that 1,491 people sought medical attention in Chelyabinsk Oblast within the first few days. Health officials reported 112 hospitalisations, including two in serious condition. A woman with a broken spine was flown to Moscow for treatment. Most of the injuries were caused by the secondary blast effects of shattered, falling or blown-in glass. The intense light from the meteor, momentarily brighter than the Sun, also produced injuries, leading to over 180 cases of eye pain, and 70 people subsequently reported temporary flash blindness. Twenty people reported ultraviolet burns similar to sunburn, possibly intensified by the presence of snow on the ground. Vladimir Petrov, when meeting with scientists to assess the damage, reported that he sustained so much sunburn from the meteor that the skin flaked only days later.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: A fourth-grade teacher in Chelyabinsk, Yulia Karbysheva, was hailed as a hero after saving 44 children from imploding window glass cuts. Despite not knowing the origin of the intense flash of light, Karbysheva thought it prudent to take precautionary measures by ordering her students to stay away from the room's windows and to perform a duck and cover maneuver and then to leave a building. Karbysheva, who remained standing, was seriously lacerated when the blast arrived and window glass severed a tendon in one of her arms and left thigh; none of her students, whom she ordered to hide under their desks, suffered cuts. The teacher was taken to a hospital which received 112 people that day. The majority of the patients were suffering from cuts.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: After the air blast, car alarms went off and mobile phone networks were overloaded with calls. Office buildings in Chelyabinsk were evacuated. Classes for all Chelyabinsk schools were cancelled, mainly due to broken windows. At least 20 children were injured when the windows of a school and kindergarten were blown in at 09:22. Following the event, government officials in Chelyabinsk asked parents to take their children home from schools.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: Approximately of a roof at a zinc factory collapsed during the incident. Residents in Chelyabinsk whose windows were smashed quickly sought to cover the openings with anything available, to protect themselves against temperatures of . Approximately 100,000 home-owners were affected, according to Chelyabinsk Oblast Governor Mikhail Yurevich. He also said that preserving the water pipes of the city's district heating was the primary goal of the authorities as they scrambled to contain further post-explosion damage.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: By 5 March 2013, the number of damaged buildings was tallied at over 7,200, which included some 6,040 apartment blocks, 293 medical facilities, 718 schools and universities, 100 cultural organizations, and 43 sport facilities, of which only about 1.5% had not yet been repaired. The oblast governor estimated the damage to buildings at more than 1 billion rubles (approximately ). Chelyabinsk authorities said that broken windows of apartment homes, but not the glazing of enclosed balconies, would be replaced at the state's expense. One of the buildings damaged in the blast was the Traktor Sport Palace, home arena of Traktor Chelyabinsk of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL). The arena was closed for inspection, affecting various scheduled events, and possibly the postseason of the KHL.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: The irregular elliptical disk shape/"spread-eagled butterfly" ground blast damage area, produced by the airburst, is a phenomenon first noticed upon studying the other larger airburst event: Tunguska.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: The Chelyabinsk meteor struck without warning. Dmitry Medvedev, the Prime Minister of Russia, confirmed a meteor had struck Russia and said it proved that the "entire planet" is vulnerable to meteors and a spaceguard system is needed to protect the planet from similar objects in the future. Dmitry Rogozin, the deputy prime minister, proposed that there should be an international program that would alert countries to "objects of an extraterrestrial origin", also called potentially hazardous objects.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: Colonel General Nikolay Bogdanov, commander of the Central Military District, created task forces that were directed to the probable impact areas to search for fragments of the asteroid and to monitor the situation. Meteorites (fragments) measuring were found from Chebarkul in the Chelyabinsk region.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: On the day of the impact, Bloomberg News reported that the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs had suggested the investigation of creating an "Action Team on Near-Earth Objects", a proposed global asteroid warning network system, in face of 's approach. As a result of the impact, two scientists in California proposed directed-energy weapon technology development as a possible means to protect Earth from asteroids. Furthermore, the NEOWISE satellite was brought out of hibernation for its second mission extension to scan for near-earth objects. Later in 2013, NASA began annual asteroid impact simulation testing.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: It is estimated that the frequency of airbursts from objects 20 metres across is about once in every 60 years. There have been incidents in the previous century involving a comparable energy yield or higher: the 1908 Tunguska event, and, in 1963 off the coast of the Prince Edward Islands in the Indian Ocean. Two of those were over unpopulated areas; however, the 1963 event may not have been a meteor.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: Centuries before, the 1490 Ch'ing-yang event, of an unknown magnitude, apparently caused 10,000 deaths. While modern researchers are skeptical about the 10,000 deaths figure, the 1908 Tunguska event would have been devastating over a highly populous district.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: Based on its entry direction and speed of 19 kilometres per second, the Chelyabinsk meteor apparently originated in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It was probably an asteroid fragment. The meteorite has veins of black material which had experienced high-pressure shock, and were once partly melted due to a previous collision. The metamorphism in the chondrules in the meteorite samples indicates the rock making up the meteor had a history of collisions and was once several kilometres below the surface of a much larger LL chondrite asteroid. The Chelyabinsk asteroid probably entered an orbital resonance with Jupiter (a common way for material to be ejected from the asteroid belt) which increased its orbital eccentricity until its perihelion was reduced enough for it to be able to collide with the Earth.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: In the aftermath of the air burst of the body, many small meteorites fell on areas west of Chelyabinsk, generally at terminal velocity, about the speed of a piece of gravel dropped from a skyscraper. Analysis of the meteor showed that all resulted from the main breakup at 27–34 km altitude. Local residents and schoolchildren located and picked up some of the meteorites, many located in snowdrifts, by following a visible hole that had been left in the outer surface of the snow. Speculators were active in the informal market that emerged for meteorite fragments.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: In the hours following the visual meteor sighting, a wide hole was discovered on Lake Chebarkul's frozen surface. It was not immediately clear whether this was the result of an impact; scientists from the Ural Federal University collected 53 samples from around the hole the same day it was discovered. The early specimens recovered were all under in size and initial laboratory analysis confirmed their meteoric origin. They are ordinary chondrite meteorites and contain 10 per cent iron. The fall is officially designated as the Chelyabinsk meteorite. The Chelyabinsk meteor was later determined to come from the LL chondrite group. The meteorites were LL5 chondrites having a shock stage of S4, and had a variable appearance between light and dark types. Petrographic changes during the fall allowed estimates that the body was heated between 65 and 135 degrees during its atmospheric entry.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: In June 2013, Russian scientists reported that further investigation by magnetic imaging below the location of the ice hole in Lake Chebarkul had identified a -size meteorite buried in the mud at the bottom of the lake. Before recovery began, the chunk was estimated to weigh roughly .


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: Following an operation lasting a number of weeks, it was raised from the bottom of the Chebarkul lake on 16 October 2013. With a total mass of , this is the largest found fragment of the Chelyabinsk meteorite. Initially, it tipped and broke the scales used to weigh it, splitting into three pieces.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: In November 2013, a video from a security camera was released showing the impact of the fragment at the Chebarkul lake. This is the first recorded impact of a meteorite on video. From the measured time difference between the shadow generating meteor to the moment of impact, scientists calculated that this meteorite hit the ice at about per second, 64 per cent of the speed of sound.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: The Russian government put out a brief statement within an hour of the event. Serendipitously the news in English was first reported by the hockey site Russian Machine Never Breaks before heavy coverage by the international media and the Associated Press ensued, with the Russian government's confirmation less than two hours afterwards. Less than 15 hours after the meteor impact, videos of the meteor and its aftermath had been viewed millions of times.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: The number of injuries caused by the asteroid led the Internet-search giant Google to remove a Google Doodle from their website, created for the predicted pending arrival of another asteroid, . New York City planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson stated the Chelyabinsk meteor was unpredicted because no attempt had been made to find and catalogue every near-Earth object. Doing so would be very difficult, and current efforts only aim at a complete inventory of near-Earth objects. The Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, on the other hand, could now predict some Chelyabinsk-like events a day or so in advance, if and only if their radiant is not close to the Sun.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: On 27 March 2013, a broadcast episode of the science television series "Nova" titled "Meteor Strike" documented the Chelyabinsk meteor, including the significant contribution to meteoritic science made by the numerous videos of the airburst posted online by ordinary citizens. The "Nova" program called the video documentation and the related scientific discoveries of the airburst "unprecedented". The documentary also discussed the much greater tragedy "that could have been" had the asteroid entered the Earth's atmosphere more steeply.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: Multiple videos of the Chelyabinsk superbolide, particularly from the dashboard cameras and traffic cameras which are ubiquitous in Russia, helped to establish the meteor's provenance as an Apollo asteroid. Sophisticated analysis techniques included the subsequent superposition of nighttime starfield views over recorded daytime images of the same cameras, as well as the plotting of the daytime shadow vectors shown in several online videos.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: The radiant of the impacting asteroid was located in the constellation Pegasus in the Northern hemisphere. The radiant was close to the Eastern horizon where the Sun was starting to rise.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: The asteroid belonged to the Apollo group of near-Earth asteroids, and was roughly 40 days past perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) and had aphelion (furthest distance from the Sun) in the asteroid belt. Several groups independently derived similar orbits for the object, but with sufficient variance to point to different potential parent bodies of this meteoroid. The Apollo asteroid is one of the candidates proposed for the role of the "parent body" of the Chelyabinsk superbolide. Other published orbits are similar to the 2-kilometre-diameter asteroid to suggest they had once been part of the same object; they may not be able to reproduce the timing of the impact.


title: Chelyabinsk meteor

text: Preliminary calculations rapidly showed that the object was unrelated to the long-predicted close approach of the asteroid 367943 Duende, that flew by Earth 16 hours later at a distance of 27,700 km. The Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory, Russian sources, the European Space Agency, NASA and the Royal Astronomical Society all concluded that the two asteroids had widely different trajectories and therefore could not have been related.


title: Rick Perry

text: James Richard Perry (born March 4, 1950) is an American politician who served as the 14th United States secretary of energy from 2017 to 2019 and as the 47th governor of Texas from 2000 to 2015. Perry also ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for President of the United States in the 2012 and 2016 elections, losing to Mitt Romney and Donald Trump, respectively.


title: Rick Perry

text: Born into a family of cotton farmers in Haskell, Texas, Perry graduated from Texas A&M University in 1972 and entered into the United States Air Force, serving a five-year stint and achieving the rank of captain. After leaving the Air Force in 1977, Perry returned to Texas and entered politics, serving as a Democratic member of the Texas House of Representatives from 1985 to 1991. In 1989, Perry switched parties and became a Republican, and was elected Agriculture Commissioner of Texas the following year. In 1998, Perry was elected Lieutenant Governor of Texas, becoming the state's first Republican Lieutenant Governor since Reconstruction.


title: Rick Perry

text: Perry assumed the governorship of Texas in December 2000, after Governor George W. Bush resigned following his election as President. Perry was re-elected Governor three times, becoming the longest-serving Governor in Texas history. As Governor, Perry identified as a staunch conservative, enacting conservative fiscal policies, restrictions on abortion and expanded gun rights. Long considered a potential presidential candidate, Perry officially announced his candidacy for the 2012 Republican nomination for President in August 2011. Perry initially performed well in polling and showed strong fundraising prowess, leading to him being considered a serious contender for the nomination. However, his support declined following poor performances in debates and early primaries, and he withdrew from the race in January 2012.


title: Rick Perry

text: Perry declined to seek re-election to a fourth term as Governor and left office in 2015, launching a second presidential campaign shortly thereafter. Perry's second presidential campaign failed to garner substantial polling support, fundraising or media attention, leading him to withdraw from the race after only three months. Perry was initially a vocal opponent of Donald Trump's 2016 campaign for President, however, he later endorsed Trump after he secured the Republican nomination. After winning the presidency, Trump appointed Perry as Secretary of Energy, and he was confirmed by the United States Senate in a 62–37 vote on March 2, 2017. On October 17, 2019, Perry reported to Trump that he intended to resign as Secretary of Energy at the end of the year. He left office on December 1, 2019.


title: Rick Perry

text: A fifth-generation Texan, Perry was born on March 4, 1950, in Haskell, Texas, and raised in Paint Creek, Texas, the son of dryland cotton farmers Joseph Ray Perry (1925-2017) and Amelia June Holt Perry (born 1929). He has one older sister. Perry's ancestry is almost entirely English, dating as far back as the original Thirteen Colonies. His family has been in Texas since before the Texas Revolution.


title: Rick Perry

text: His father, a Democrat, was a long-time Haskell County commissioner and school board member. Perry has said that his interest in politics probably began in November 1961, when his father took him to the funeral of U.S. Representative Sam Rayburn.


title: Rick Perry

text: Perry was in the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) and earned the rank of Eagle Scout. The BSA has honored Perry with the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award.


title: Rick Perry

text: Perry attended Texas A&M University where he was a member of the Corps of Cadets and the Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity. He was elected senior class social secretary, a member and redpot in Aggie Bonfire, and one of A&M's five "yell leaders". He graduated in 1972 with a Bachelor of Science degree in animal science.


title: Rick Perry

text: In 1989, he said, "I was probably a bit of a free spirit, not particularly structured real well for life outside of a military regime, I would have not lasted at Texas Tech or the University of Texas. I would have hit the fraternity scene and lasted about one semester."


title: Rick Perry

text: In the early 1970s, Perry interned during several summers with Southwestern Advantage, as a door-to-door book salesman. "I count my time working for Dortch Oldham [then president of the Southwestern family of companies] as one of the most important formative experiences of my life", Perry said in 2010. "There is nothing that tests your commitment to a goal like getting a few doors closed in your face." He said that "Mr. Oldham taught legions of young people to communicate quickly, clearly and with passion, a lesson that has served me well in my life since then."


title: Rick Perry

text: Upon graduation from college in 1972, Perry was commissioned as an officer in the United States Air Force and completed pilot training in February 1974. He was then assigned as a Lockheed C-130 Hercules pilot with the 772nd Tactical Airlift Squadron at Dyess Air Force Base, located in Abilene, Texas. Perry's duties included two-month overseas rotations at RAF Mildenhall, located in Mildenhall, England, and Rhein-Main Air Base, located at Frankfurt am Main, Germany. His missions included a 1974 U.S. State Department drought relief effort in Mali, Mauritania and Chad, and, in 1976, earthquake relief in Guatemala. He left the Air Force in 1977 at the rank of captain, returned to Texas, and went into farming cotton with his father.


title: Rick Perry

text: In 1984, Perry was elected to the Texas House of Representatives as a Democrat from district 64, which included his home county of Haskell. He served on the House Appropriations and Calendars committees during his three two-year terms in office. He befriended fellow freshman state representative Lena Guerrero, a staunch liberal Democrat who endorsed Perry's reelection bid in 2006.


title: Rick Perry

text: Perry was part of the "Pit Bulls", a group of Appropriations members who sat on the lower dais in the committee room ("the pit") who pushed for austere state budgets during the 1980s. At one point, "The Dallas Morning News" named him one of the ten most effective members of the legislature.


title: Rick Perry

text: In 1987, Perry voted for a $5.7 billion tax increase proposed by Republican Governor Bill Clements. Perry supported Al Gore in the 1988 Democratic presidential primaries and worked for Gore's campaign in Texas. On September 29, 1989, Perry announced that he was switching parties, becoming a Republican. On a guest appearance on Fox show Hannity, he partially credits Reagan as part of the reason he became a Republican, also stating he switched political parties sooner in his life than Reagan.


title: Rick Perry

text: In 1990, as a newly minted Republican, Perry challenged Jim Hightower, the incumbent Democratic Agriculture Commissioner. Karl Rove was Perry's campaign manager.


title: Rick Perry

text: In the Republican primary on March 13, 1990, Perry polled 276,558 votes (47%), with Richard McIver garnering 176,976 votes (30%) and Gene L. Duke, who placed third, polling 132,497 votes (23%). Since Perry fell shy of the necessary 50% to win outright, a runoff was held between Perry and McIver set on April 10, 1990. In the runoff, he emerged victorious, garnering 96,649 votes (69%) to McIver's 43,921 votes (31%).


title: Rick Perry

text: During 1990, Hightower's office was embroiled in an FBI investigation into corruption and bribery. Three aides were convicted in 1993 of using public funds for political fundraising, although Hightower himself was not found to be involved in the wrongdoings. Perry narrowly defeated Hightower in November 1990, garnering 1,864,463 votes (49%) to Hightower's 1,820,145 votes (48%).


title: Rick Perry

text: Rove raised $3 million to raise Perry's profile, "while tarnishing the name of Jim Hightower" resulting in Perry's name becoming a "household name in Texas—and Hightower's name synonymous with corruption".


title: Rick Perry

text: As Agriculture Commissioner, Perry was responsible for promoting the sale of Texas farm produce to other states and foreign nations, and for supervising the calibration of weights and measures, such as gasoline pumps and grocery store scales.


title: Rick Perry

text: In April 1993, Perry, while serving as Texas agriculture commissioner, expressed support for the effort to reform the nation's healthcare, describing it as "most commendable". The healthcare plan, first revealed in September, was ultimately unsuccessful due to Republican congressional opposition. In 2005, after being questioned on the issue by a potential opponent in the Republican governor primary, Perry said he expressed his support only in order to get Clinton to pay more attention to rural healthcare.


title: Rick Perry

text: In 1994, Perry was reelected Agriculture Commissioner by a large margin, getting 2,546,287 votes (62 percent) to Democrat Marvin Gregory's 1,479,692 (36 percent). Libertarian Clyde L. Garland received the remaining 85,836 votes (2 percent). Gregory, a chicken farmer from Sulphur Springs, Texas, was on the Texas Agricultural Finance Authority with Perry in the early nineties as a Republican, but became a Democrat before running against Perry in 1994.


title: Rick Perry

text: In 1998, Perry ran for lieutenant governor. During this election, Perry had a notable falling out with his previous top political strategist Karl Rove, which began the much-reported rivalry between the Bush and Perry camps. Perry polled 1,858,837 votes (50.04 percent) to the 1,790,106 (48.19 percent) cast for Democrat John Sharp. Perry became the state's first Republican lieutenant governor since Reconstruction, taking office on January 19, 1999.


title: Rick Perry

text: Perry assumed the office of governor on December 21, 2000, following the resignation of George W. Bush—who was preparing to become President of the United States. He won the office in his own right in the 2002 gubernatorial election, where he received 58% of votes to Laredo oilman and businessman Tony Sanchez's 40%. He was re-elected in the 2006 gubernatorial election against three major opponents, polling 39% of votes against runner-up former U.S. Congressman Chris Bell of Houston with 30%. Former Republican Comptroller, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, running as an independent, garnered 18% of the vote and comic/author/musician, Kinky Friedman, also running as an independent, garnered over 12%. In the 2010 gubernatorial election, Perry became the first Texas governor to be elected to three four-year terms, polling 55% of votes to former Houston Mayor Bill White's 42%.


title: Rick Perry

text: In the 2001 legislative session, Perry set a record for his use of the veto, rejecting 82 acts, more than any other governor in any single legislative session in the history of the state since Reconstruction.


title: Rick Perry

text: In 2003, Perry formed the non-profit organization, the OneStar Foundation, designed to connect non-profits with resources and expertise to accomplish their missions and to promote volunteerism. He tapped the state Republican chairman Susan Weddington, who stepped down from that position after six years, as the president of OneStar. She left in 2009, and he chose Elizabeth Seale as her successor.


title: Rick Perry

text: Perry is the fourth governor of Texas (after Allan Shivers, Price Daniel, and John Connally) to have served three or more terms, and the only one to do so as a Republican. He is the longest-serving governor in Texas history and, at the time he left office, had held office longer than every other then-current U.S. governor except Terry Branstad of Iowa.


title: Rick Perry

text: In his presidential campaign, Perry highlighted the economic success Texas achieved under his governorship. The efficacy of Perry's economic policies has been questioned by some sources.


title: Rick Perry

text: A proclaimed proponent of fiscal conservatism, Perry often campaigned on job growth and tax issues, such as his opposition to creating a state income tax. In 2002, Perry refused to promise not to raise taxes as governor, and in the following years did propose or approve various tax and debt increases. In 2009, Perry signed Grover Norquist's pledge to "oppose and veto any and all efforts to increase taxes".


title: Rick Perry

text: Texas began borrowing money in 2003 to pay for roads and was projected to owe $17.3 billion by the end of 2012, increasing total state debt from $13.4 billion in 2001 to $37.8 billion in 2011. The state's public finance authority sold $2 billion in bonds for unemployment benefits, and it was authorized to sell $1.5 billion more if necessary. Texas federal borrowing topped $1.6 billion in October 2010, before the bond sales.


title: Rick Perry

text: In 2003, Perry signed legislation that created the Texas Enterprise Fund, which has since given $435 million in grants to businesses. "The New York Times" reported that many of the companies receiving grants, or their chief executives, have made contributions to Perry's campaigns or to the Republican Governors Association. (Perry became chairman of the group in 2008 and again in 2011.) Perry was criticized for supporting corporate tax breaks and other incentives, while the state government was experiencing budget deficits.


title: Rick Perry

text: As governor, Perry was an opponent of federal health-care reform proposals and of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, describing the latter as "socialism on American soil". His focus in Texas was on tort reform, signing a bill in 2003 that restricted non-economic damages in medical malpractice judgments. Perry touted this approach in his presidential campaign, although independent analysts have concluded that it has failed to increase the supply of physicians or limit health-care costs in Texas.


title: Rick Perry

text: During Perry's governorship, Texas rose from second to first among states with the highest proportion of uninsured residents at 26%, and had the lowest level of access to prenatal care in the U.S. Perry and the state legislature cut Medicaid spending. The "Los Angeles Times" wrote that under Perry, "working Texans increasingly have been priced out of private healthcare while the state's safety net has withered."


title: Rick Perry

text: Perry's office said that Texas represents a model private-sector approach to health-care. His spokeswoman said, "Texas does provide an adequate safety net to those truly in need... and many individuals simply choose not to purchase healthcare coverage."


title: Rick Perry

text: Perry is anti-abortion and has signed bills with rules or restrictions for abortion procedures and funding for them.


title: Rick Perry

text: In December 2011, Perry said he had undergone a "transformation" and now opposed abortions, even in cases of rape and incest. The next day he clarified that he would allow an exception for abortions that would save a mother's life.


title: Rick Perry

text: In February 2007, Perry issued an executive order mandating that Texas girls receive the HPV vaccine, which protects against some strains of the human papilloma virus, a contributing factor to some forms of cervical cancer. Following the move, news outlets reported various apparent financial connections between Perry and the vaccine's manufacturer, Merck. Merck's political action committee has contributed $28,500 since 2001 to Perry's campaigns. Perry later reverses himself, calling the vaccine mandate a "mistake". In May 2007, the Texas Legislature passed a bill undoing the order; Perry did not veto the bill, saying the veto would have been overruled, but blamed lawmakers who supported the bill for the deaths of future Texan cervical cancer victims.


title: Rick Perry

text: On July 1, 2011, Perry both had adult stem cell surgery in Houston and started "laying the groundwork" for the commercialization of the adult stem cell industry in Texas.


title: Rick Perry

text: Perry grew up in the United Methodist Church. He and his family were members of Tarrytown United Methodist Church in Austin until 2010, when they began attending Lake Hills Church, a non-denominational evangelical megachurch in western Travis County. Perry told the "Austin American-Statesman" that he began attending Lake Hills because it was close to the rental home where he and his wife lived while the Governor's Mansion was being renovated.


title: Rick Perry

text: In 2006, Perry said he believed in the inerrancy of the Bible and that those who do not accept Jesus as their Savior will go to hell. A couple of days later, he clarified, "I don't know that there's any human being that has the ability to interpret what God and his final decision-making is going to be."


title: Rick Perry

text: In his 2008 book "On My Honor", Perry expressed his views on the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the U.S. Constitution. "Let's be clear: I don't believe government, which taxes people regardless of their faith, should espouse a specific faith. I also don't think we should allow a small minority of atheists to sanitize our civil dialogue of religious references."


title: Rick Perry

text: In June 2011, Perry proclaimed August 6 as a Day of Prayer and Fasting, inviting other governors to join him in a prayer meeting hosted by the American Family Association in Houston. The event was criticized as going beyond prayer and fasting to include launching Perry's presidential campaign.


title: Rick Perry

text: Perry has called himself "a firm believer in intelligent design as a matter of faith and intellect", and has expressed support for its teaching alongside evolution in Texas schools, but has also said that "educators and local school officials, not the governor, should determine science curriculum".


title: Rick Perry

text: In 2005, Perry said he would not "approve an education budget that shortchanges teacher salary increases, textbooks, education technology, and education reforms. And I cannot let $2 billion sit in some bank account when it can go directly to the classroom".


title: Rick Perry

text: Following a second rejection of Perry's bill, Perry asked John Sharp to head a task force charged with preparing a bipartisan education plan, which was subsequently adopted.


title: Rick Perry

text: In 2001, Perry expressed his pride in the enactment of the statute extending in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants who meet Texas' residency requirements. It also required the undocumented students to pledge to apply for permanent residency or citizenship if this became a possibility for them. In September 2014, Gov. Perry stated during a debate his continuous support for the program.


title: Rick Perry

text: Perry is a firm opponent of LGBT rights and as both Governor of Texas and Secretary of Energy became controversial for his homophobic comments and anti-LGBT positions.


title: Rick Perry

text: In 2002, Perry described the Texas same-sex anti-sodomy law as "appropriate". The following year, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the statute in "Lawrence v. Texas", determining that it violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.


title: Rick Perry

text: In his 2010 book, Perry referenced the "Lawrence" decision, writing "Texans have a different view of the world than do the nine oligarchs in robes." In 2011, Perry admitted that he did not know about the "Lawrence" decision; when told that the Supreme Court case had struck down Texas's anti-sodomy law, Perry said: "I'm not taking the bar exam [...]I don't know what a lot of legal cases [...] My position on traditional marriage is clear [...] I don't need a federal law case to explain it to me."


title: Rick Perry

text: Perry supported Texas Proposition 2 in 2005, a ballot proposition that amended the Texas constitution by defining marriage as "only a union between a man and a woman" and prohibiting the state from creating or recognizing "any legal status identical or similar to marriage" (such as civil unions).


title: Rick Perry

text: In 2011, after New York legalized same-sex marriage, Perry said it was their right to do so under the principle of states' rights in the Tenth Amendment. A spokesman later reiterated Perry's support for a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, saying that position was not inconsistent, since an amendment would require ratification by three-fourths of the states.


title: Rick Perry

text: After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in "Obergefell v. Hodges" in 2015 that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by the Constitution, Perry condemned the decision, saying: "I'm a firm believer in traditional marriage, and I also believe the 10th Amendment leaves it to each state to decide this issue."


title: Rick Perry

text: In his first book, "On My Honor", published in 2008, Perry compared homosexuality to alcoholism, writing that he is "no expert on the 'nature versus nurture' debate" but gays should simply choose abstinence. Perry's comments created immense controversy and drew ire from several LGBT rights groups.


title: Rick Perry

text: During the 2012 presidential campaign, he criticized the repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy for the U.S. military. Perry said using foreign aid as a policy tool against foreign countries that violate the human rights of homosexuals was "not in America's interests" and was part of a "war on traditional American values".


title: Rick Perry

text: Perry, an Eagle Scout, has called on the Boy Scouts to continue their ban on homosexuality and blamed America for not living up to the ideals of the Scouts.


title: Rick Perry

text: In July 2017, Perry strongly expressed his support for Donald Trump's ban on transgender people from serving in the U.S. military stating that "The idea that the American people need to be paying for these types of operations to change your sex is not very wise from a standpoint of economics."


title: Rick Perry

text: Perry's campaigns for lieutenant governor and governor focused on a tough stance on crime. He has supported block grants for crime programs.


title: Rick Perry

text: Jeff L. Blackburn, chief counsel of the Innocence Project of Texas, said of Perry that "He has done more good than any other governor we've ever had [...] unless, of course, it involves the death penalty. On the death penalty, Rick Perry has a profound mental block."


title: Rick Perry

text: Perry supports the death penalty. In June 2001, he vetoed a ban on the execution of mentally retarded inmates. In 2011, during a televised debate for presidential candidates, he said he had "never struggled" with the question of the possible innocence of any of the 234 inmates executed to date while he was governor.


title: Rick Perry

text: Cases in which Perry has been criticized for his lack of intervention include those of Cameron Todd Willingham and Mexican nationals José Medellín and Humberto Leal Garcia.


title: Rick Perry

text: Perry commuted the death sentence of Kenneth Foster, who was convicted of murder despite evidence that he was only present at the scene of the crime. Foster was convicted under a Texas law that makes co-conspirators liable in certain cases of homicide. In this case, it tied Foster to the triggerman. Perry raised doubts about the law and urged the legislature to re-examine the issue. "I believe the right and just decision is to commute Foster's sentence from the death penalty to life imprisonment," Perry said.


title: Rick Perry

text: Perry also refused to grant a stay of execution in 2004 in the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, even though an investigation by the Texas Forensic Science Commission determined parts of the original investigation may not have looked at all of the evidence correctly. Perry said in 2009 that "Willingham was a monster. He was a guy who murdered his three children, who tried to beat his wife into an abortion so that he wouldn't have those kids. Person after person has stood up and testified to facts of this case that quite frankly you all aren't covering" and later replaced the chairman and other members of the Science Commission prior to a meeting on the case. The replacements were believed to potentially related to the election slated for the following year.


title: Rick Perry

text: In 2002, Perry proposed the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC), a $175 billion transportation network that would include a 4,000-mile network of highways, rail, and utility lines and would be funded by private investors. Plans for the project were dropped in 2009 in favor of more incremental road projects. Opposition to the project, also called the "NAFTA super highway" garnered opposition from rural Texans, labor and environmentalists, the project became a major issue in the 2006 gubernatorial campaign.


title: Rick Perry

text: Perry has an A+ rating from the National Rifle Association. He possesses a Concealed Carry License (CCL) and has signed a number of bills that increased CCL access.


title: Rick Perry

text: In 2005, Perry launched Operation Linebacker, which was intended to prevent terrorists from exploiting the Texas-Mexico border. There was no evidence that terrorists attempted to exploit the border. Perry touted the border security efforts as he campaigned for re-election. During Perry's governorship, he launched additional operations and persuaded the Texas legislature to devote more taxpayers resources to border security. According to a 2022 investigative report by the Texas Tribune, "The way the governors and their administrations have tracked success has fluctuated over the years, offering little clarity into whether the state is closer to securing the border today than it was nearly 20 years ago. Neither the governor’s office nor the DPS, the main agency leading border security efforts, can provide a full breakdown of the state-led operations since 2005, their duration, their cost to taxpayers and their accomplishments."


title: Rick Perry

text: During a large surge in illegal immigration through the U.S. southern border in the summer of 2014, Perry criticized U.S. President Barack Obama, saying the surge was "a humanitarian crisis that he has the ability to stop". On July 21, 2014, Perry announced he would send in 1,000 National Guard troops to secure the border. Although illegal immigration levels declined over 70% after Perry deployed the National Guard, PolitiFact.com rated his claim that the decline resulted from the surge as "mostly false".


title: Rick Perry

text: In 2016, "The Texas Tribune" wrote that "Perry has long been a critic of building a wall or fence along the border." After Trump won the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, Perry fully embraced Trump's proposed border wall.


title: Rick Perry

text: On August 15, 2014, Perry was indicted by a Travis County grand jury. The first charge of the indictment was abuse of official capacity, which has since been ruled unconstitutional, for threatening to veto $7.5 million in funding for the Public Integrity Unit, a state public corruption prosecutors department. The second charge, which has also since been ruled unconstitutional, was coercion of a public servant, for seeking the resignation of Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg, a Democrat, after she was convicted of drunk driving and incarcerated.


title: Rick Perry

text: Perry pleaded not guilty to both charges. Perry's supporters called the charges political and partisan, and several Democratic commentators, including David Axelrod, believed charges were weak.


title: Rick Perry

text: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that courts could not limit veto power and that prosecuting Perry over his action violates "the separation of powers provision of the Texas Constitution" and infringed on Perry's First Amendment right to freedom of speech.


title: Rick Perry

text: By the end of his third full term, he had served more than 14 consecutive years in office. A University of Texas at Austin–"Texas Tribune" poll released in June 2013, showed Perry leading potential primary challenger Attorney General Greg Abbott by double digits, 45–19%. In February, the same poll had Perry leading by a 3-to-1 margin (49–17%) of 32 points over Abbott.


title: Rick Perry

text: However, Perry decided not to run for re-election to a fourth full term, announcing in front of family and supporters at the Holt Cat headquarters in San Antonio on July 8, 2013, that he would retire instead.


title: Rick Perry

text: Perry retired with the 10th longest gubernatorial tenure in United States history at the end of his term on January 20, 2015, at days as well as the record of the longest serving Texas Governor.


title: Rick Perry

text: Perry was considered as a potential candidate since as early as the 2008 presidential election, initially denying he was interested in the office but later becoming more open-minded. He formally launched his campaign on August 13, 2011, in Charleston, South Carolina.


title: Rick Perry

text: While he was initially successful in fundraising and was briefly considered a serious contender for the nomination, he struggled during the debates and his poll numbers began to decline. After finishing fifth with just over 10% of the vote in the Iowa caucuses on January 3, 2012, Perry considered dropping out of the presidential race but did not. After a poor showing in New Hampshire and with "lagging" poll numbers in South Carolina, Perry formally announced he was suspending his campaign on January 19, 2012.


title: Rick Perry

text: Almost immediately following the 2012 election, Perry was mentioned as a potential candidate for the presidency in the 2016 presidential election, with a "Time" magazine article in July 2013 saying that "everything is aligned for Rick Perry to be the Republican nominee for president in 2016."


title: Rick Perry

text: Perry officially launched his 2016 presidential candidacy on June 4, 2015, in Addison, Texas. A version of the Colt Ford song "Answer To No One" boomed from loudspeakers, as Perry took to the stage. He then announced his candidacy at the scheduled press conference.


title: Rick Perry

text: Perry withdrew on September 11, 2015—becoming the first in the field of major candidates to drop out—following poor polling after the first debate. In the weeks before he dropped out of the race, Perry's campaign was in dire financial straits, spending nearly four times as much as it raised.


title: Rick Perry

text: On January 25, 2016, Perry endorsed United States Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) for president. On May 5, 2016, following the suspension of Cruz's presidential campaign, Perry endorsed Donald Trump for the presidency.


title: Rick Perry

text: On December 12, 2016, multiple sources reported that President-elect Trump would nominate Perry to serve as Secretary of Energy. On December 14, 2016, it was officially announced that Perry would be nominated as Secretary of Energy by President-elect Trump. The nomination initially faced heavy criticism as Perry had called for the Department of Energy to be abolished during his 2012 presidential campaign and had been unable to remember the name of the department during a Presidential debate. His nomination was approved by a 16–7 vote from the United States Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on January 31, 2017.


title: Rick Perry

text: On March 2, 2017, the United States Senate voted 62–37 to confirm Perry. The next month, Perry ordered a study of the U.S. electric grid with particular consideration to coal power.


title: Rick Perry

text: In a CNBC interview on June 19, 2017, when asked about the role of human activity in the recent rise of the Earth's temperature, Perry said, "The fact is this shouldn’t be a debate about, ‘Is the climate changing, is man having an effect on it?’ Yeah, we are. The question should be just how much, and what are the policy changes that we need to make to effect that?"


title: Rick Perry

text: In November 2017, Perry suggested that using fossil fuels to light dangerous places in Africa could reduce sexual assault, saying, "When the lights are on, when you have light that shines the righteousness, if you will, on those types of acts." Perry was criticized by the Sierra Club for "exploiting the struggle of those most affected by climate change".


title: Rick Perry

text: For one week in November 2018, it was reported that the U.S. had become a net exporter of oil, temporarily ending nearly 75 continuous years of dependence on foreign oil.


title: Rick Perry

text: On October 4, 2019, the "New York Times" reported that he was expected to resign as Secretary of Energy by the end of 2019, based on information from anonymous sources. On October 17, 2019, Perry told Trump he would resign by the end of the year, ultimately departing at the beginning of December.


title: Rick Perry

text: A little more than a month after Perry attended Zelenskiy's May 2019 inauguration, Ukraine awarded the contract to Perry's supporters after Perry recommended one to be Zelensky's energy adviser. The recommendation was made as Zelensky was attempting to secure the nearly $400 million in U.S. military aid. A week after Perry attended the inauguration, "Ukrainian Energy", a new joint venture between Michael Bleyzer's investment firm SigmaBleyzer and Alex Cranberg's Aspect Energy, submitted a bid for a 50-year drilling contract at a Ukraine government-controlled site called Varvynska.


title: Rick Perry

text: A July 25, 2019 telephone call between Trump and Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky led in September to a whistleblower complaint and an impeachment inquiry against Trump. Two weeks after the inquiry was launched, Trump claimed in a conference call with Congressional Republican leaders that he had only made the telephone call at Perry's urging. Perry's spokesperson said that Perry had suggested Trump discuss energy security with Zelensky, but energy was not mentioned in the publicly released memo about the conversations, which instead focused on Trump asking Zelensky to launch investigations into Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Crowdstrike, and the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Per Trump's direction earlier that year, Perry spoke with Rudy Giuliani about Ukraine, which Mick Mulvaney confirmed. Perry denied ever mentioning the Bidens in his discussions with Trump or Ukrainian officials. Mulvaney had put Gordon Sondland, Kurt Volker, and Perry in charge of managing the Ukraine–United States relations instead of diplomats at the National Security Council and the US Department of State.


title: Rick Perry

text: Perry was mentioned in October 2019 by former U.S. officials in relation to reports he planned to have Amos Hochstein replaced as a member of the board at Naftogaz with someone aligned with Republican interests. Perry denied the reports. In November 2019, both Sondland and David Holmes, who serves as counselor of political affairs at the U.S Embassy in Ukraine, testified that Perry had played a senior role in the Ukraine campaign, with Holmes even describing Perry, along with Sondland and Volker, was one of the "Three Amigos" who directly assisted both Trump and Giuliani.


title: Rick Perry

text: In February 2015, Perry announced that he would join the board of directors of Energy Transfer Partners, which owns and operates one of the largest energy asset portfolios in the United States, and Sunoco Partners, another major Dallas energy company. According to SEC filings, Perry resigned from the boards of both companies on December 31, 2016. In early January 2020, Perry joined the board of LE GP, general partner of Energy Transfer. In February 2020, Perry rejoined MCNA Dental's board of directors as chief strategy officer and vice chairman.


title: Rick Perry

text: On August 30, 2016, Perry was announced as one of the celebrities who would compete on season 23 of "Dancing with the Stars". He was partnered with professional dancer Emma Slater. Perry and Slater were eliminated on the third week of competition and finished in 12th place out of 13 competitors.


title: Rick Perry

text: In 1982, Perry married Mary Anita Thigpen, his childhood sweetheart whom he had known since elementary school. They have two adult children, Griffin and Sydney. Anita attended West Texas State University and earned a degree in nursing. She has spearheaded a number of health-related initiatives such as the Anita Thigpen Perry Endowment at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, which focuses on nutrition, cardiovascular disease, health education, and early childhood development. She helped develop and host the Texas Conference for Women.


title: Rick Perry

text: Perry played himself in minor roles for several feature films, including "Man of the House", "Deep in the Heart", and "Hating Breitbart".


title: Rick Perry

text: In 2001, the American Cowboy Culture Association, based in Lubbock, handed Perry its "The Top Cowboy of Texas" award. In accepting the honor, Perry cited the importance of his father, Ray Perry, and a former neighbor in Haskell County, the late Watt R. Matthews (born 1899), who Perry said taught him "not only about Texas and [its] history [...] but also about the importance of the values that we learned growing up in a rural environment".


title: Rick Perry

text: Perry is a member of the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution and was awarded its Gold Good Citizenship Medal.


title: Hilary Farr

text: Hilary Elizabeth Farr (née Labow; 31 August 1951) is a British-Canadian designer, businesswoman, television host and former actress. She is known as the co-host of the HGTV and W Network television series "Love It or List It" with David Visentin.


title: Hilary Farr

text: Born in Toronto and raised in London, Farr began her career in Los Angeles working as a home renovator as well as designing film and television sets. During this time, she occasionally worked as an actress, appearing in minor roles in such films as "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" (1975), "City on Fire" (1979), and "The Return" (1980).


title: Hilary Farr

text: She continued to work in home renovation and design in the ensuing years before establishing herself as a designer and co-host of "Love It or List It" in 2010. She is president of Hilary Farr's Designs, established in Toronto and in New York City.


title: Hilary Farr

text: Farr was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada to a British mother and a Canadian father. Her mother was an Anglican and a member of the Church of England, and her father was Jewish. Farr was raised celebrating both Jewish and Christian religious traditions.


title: Hilary Farr

text: Farr was raised in London, where she attended the Royal Ballet School until age 11, and aspired to have a career as a ballerina. She took an interest in theatre and was introduced to interior design by helping her mother to decorate her childhood home.


title: Hilary Farr

text: Farr began her career in Los Angeles, where she began purchasing and renovating homes, as well working as a film and television set designer. Acting under the name Hilary Labow, Farr made small appearances in "Layout for 5 Models" (1972), "Sex Farm" (1973), "Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width" (1973), "Legend of the Werewolf" (1975), "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" (1975), "City on Fire" (1979) and "The Return" (1980). She also performed a singing role in "Grease" in London in 1973. In the early 1980s, she had small parts in television sitcoms.


title: Hilary Farr

text: Farr designed and renovated properties in Australia, the United Kingdom, California, New York and later Toronto. She renovated homes for notable celebrities, including Jenna Elfman's home and Jennifer Hudson's loft in Chicago.


title: Hilary Farr

text: Farr returned to Toronto in 2008 after a divorce. She was signed as a co-host of "Love It or List It" by the W Network, Big Coat Productions and Corus Entertainment, along with David Visentin. The show was broadcast on HGTV and W Network. In Spain, the show was broadcast with a dual soundtrack on Divinity.


title: Hilary Farr

text: Farr also served as a judge on W Network's "Search for the Next W Expert 2010". In 2011, she made a number of guest appearances at the Canadian International Interior Design Show, hosted in the cities of Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver. She also made guest appearances on "The Marilyn Denis Show" and is a regular contributor to the "Huffington Post".


title: Hilary Farr

text: In June 2014, Farr was a guest and design expert along with CNN and "USA Today" pundit and journalist Amy Tara Koch at the Art Van Furniture convention in Orland Park and Chicago, Illinois.


title: Hilary Farr

text: In 2016, Farr appeared in Ross Petty's stage version of "Sleeping Beauty" at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto, in the role of Malignicent. (Although the character is more commonly known as Maleficent, she was renamed "Malignicent" for this production.)


title: Hilary Farr

text: In 2017, Farr co-founded Rules of Renovation, a real estate investment seminar series held at locations across North America for aspiring investors.


title: Hilary Farr

text: Farr married Canadian TV producer Gordon Farr in 1982. She gave birth to their son, Joshua, in Los Angeles on 7 March 1983. The couple divorced in 2008.


title: Hilary Farr

text: Farr has noted she has a passion for animal rescue, and in 2017 volunteered in Nairobi with an organization protecting orphaned elephants.


title: Hilary Farr

text: In December 2021, Farr revealed publicly for the first time that she had been diagnosed with and treated for breast cancer in 2014. She had previously been diagnosed with a precancerous tumor in 2012, which she had surgically removed. A subsequent mammogram revealed Farr had developed malignant breast cancer. She underwent radiation therapy and further surgical intervention, but, as of 2022, is in remission.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: "Stop and identify" statutes are laws in several U.S. states that authorize police to lawfully order people whom they reasonably suspect of a crime to state their name. If there is not reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed, is being committed, or is about to be committed, an individual is not required to provide identification documents, even in these states.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and requires warrants to be supported by probable cause. In "Terry v. Ohio" (1968), the U.S. Supreme Court established that it is constitutional for police to temporarily detain a person based on "specific and articulable facts" that establish reasonable suspicion that a crime has been or will be committed. An officer may conduct a patdown for weapons based on a reasonable suspicion that the person is armed and poses a threat to the officer or others. In "Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada" (2004), the Supreme Court held that statutes requiring suspects to disclose their names during a valid Terry stop did not violate the Fourth Amendment.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: However, some "stop and identify" statutes that are unclear about how people must identify themselves violate suspects' due process right through the void for vagueness doctrine. For instance, in "Kolender v. Lawson" (1983), the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated a California law requiring "credible and reliable" identification as overly vague. The court also held that the Fifth Amendment could allow a suspect to refuse to give the suspect's name if he or she articulated a reasonable belief that giving the name could be incriminating.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: The Nevada "stop-and-identify" law at issue in "Hiibel" allows police officers to detain any person encountered under circumstances which reasonably indicate that "the person has committed, is committing or is about to commit a crime"; the person may be detained only to "ascertain his identity and the suspicious circumstances surrounding his presence abroad." In turn, the law requires that the officer have a reasonable and articulable suspicion of criminal involvement, and that the person detained "identify himself," but the law does not compel the person to answer any other questions by the officer. The Nevada Supreme Court interpreted "identify" under the state's law to mean merely stating one's name.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: As of April 2008, 23 other states had similar laws. Additional states (including Texas and Oregon) have such laws just for motorists.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: In the United States, interactions between police and others fall into three general categories: consensual ("contact" or "conversation"), detention (often called a "Terry" stop, after "Terry v. Ohio", ), or arrest. "Stop and identify" laws pertain to detentions.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: Different obligations apply to drivers of motor vehicles, who generally are required by state vehicle codes to present a driver's license to police upon request.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: At any time, police may approach a person and ask questions. Police may suspect involvement in a crime, but may lack knowledge of any "specific and articulable facts" that would justify a detention or arrest, and hope to obtain these facts from the questioning. The person approached is not required to identify themselves or answer any other questions, and may leave at any time.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: Police are not required to tell a person that he or she is free to decline to answer questions and go about his or her business; however, a person can usually determine whether the interaction is consensual by asking, "Am I free to go?".


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: A person is detained when circumstances are such that a reasonable person would believe the person is not free to leave.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: Police may briefly detain a person if the police have a reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime. Many state laws explicitly grant this authority. In "Terry v. Ohio", the U.S. Supreme Court established that police may conduct a limited search for weapons (known as a "frisk") if the police reasonably suspect that the person to be detained may be armed and dangerous.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: While the police officer must have reasonable suspicion to detain a person, the officer has no obligation to inform the person what that suspicion was. The only time the officer would have to articulate the suspicion is when the person was arrested, and the person later challenged the validity of the stop in court.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: Police may question a person detained in a Terry stop but, in general, the detainee is not required to answer. However, many states have "stop and identify" laws that explicitly require a person detained under the conditions of "Terry" to identify themselves to police, and in some cases, to provide additional information.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: Before "Hiibel", whether a detainee could be arrested and prosecuted for refusing to disclose their name was an unresolved issue. Authority on this issue was split among the federal circuit courts of appeal, and the U.S. Supreme Court twice expressly refused to address the question. In" Hiibel", the Court opinion implied that a detainee was not required to produce written identification, but could satisfy the requirement merely by stating the detainee's name. Some "stop and identify" laws do not require that a detainee identify himself or herself, but allow the refusal to do so to be considered along with other factors in determining whether there is probable cause to arrest.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: , the Supreme Court has not addressed the validity of requirements that a detainee provide information other than their name. Some states, such as Arizona, however, have specifically codified that a detained person is not required to provide any information aside from a full name.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: A detention requires only that police have reasonable suspicion that a person is involved in criminal activity. However, to make an arrest, an officer must have probable cause to believe that the person has committed a crime. Some states require police to inform the person of the intent to make the arrest and the cause for the arrest. But it is not always obvious when a detention becomes an arrest. After making an arrest, police may search a person, their belongings, and their immediate surroundings.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: Whether an arrested person must identify himself or herself may depend on the jurisdiction in which the arrest occurs. On June 23, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States voted six to three in the decision "Vega v. Tekoh" that police may not be sued for failing to administer Miranda warning. However, "Miranda" does not apply to biographical data necessary to complete booking. It is not clear whether a "stop and identify" law could compel giving one's name after being arrested, although some states have laws that specifically require an arrested person to give their name and other biographical information, and some state courts have held that refusal to give one's name constitutes obstructing a public officer. As a practical matter, an arrested person who refused to give their name would have little chance of obtaining a prompt release.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: States not listed do not have a requirement to show Identification to law enforcement officers. Some states listed have "stop and ID" laws which may or may not require someone to identify themself during an investigative detention.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: While Wisconsin statutes allow law enforcement officers to "demand" ID, there is no statutory requirement to provide them ID nor is there a penalty for refusing to; hence Wisconsin is not a must ID state. Annotations for Wisconsin §968.24, however, state "The principles of "Terry" permit a state to require a suspect to disclose his or her name in the course of a "Terry" stop and allow imposing criminal penalties for failing to do so", citing "Hiibel" as authority. Hiibel held that statutes requiring suspects to disclose their names during police investigations did not violate the Fourth Amendment if the statute first required reasonable and articulable suspicion of criminal involvement. The Wisconsin Supreme Court held in "Henes v. Morrissey" that "A crime is made up of two parts: proscribed conduct and a prescribed penalty. The former without the latter is no crime..." In this case no statute penalizes a refusal to identify oneself to a law enforcement officer, and no penalty is set forth in the statute for refusing to identify oneself. This statute is part of Chapter 968 entitled "Commencement of Criminal Proceedings. By its very terms sec. 968.24 empowers a law enforcement officer to stop and question 'in the vicinity where the person was stopped'. The statute does not authorize a law enforcement officer to make an arrest." (These quotes come from the dissenting opinion but is in line with the majority opinion.) Additionally "Henes v. Morrissey" held that a detained person not providing their name isn't on its own a violation of 946.41 Resisting or obstructing officer as the act of not identifying oneself is not a false statement with intent to mislead the officer in the performance of their duty.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: Neither is Illinois, since the Illinois Second District Appellate Court Decision in "People v. Fernandez", 2011 IL App (2d) 100473, which specifically states that section 107-14 is found in the Code of Criminal Procedure of 1963, not the Criminal Code of 1961, and governs only the conduct of police officers. There is no corresponding duty in the Criminal Code of 1961 that a suspect who is the target of such an order must comply.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: , there is no U.S. federal law requiring that an individual identify themself during a "Terry" stop, but "Hiibel" held that states may enact such laws, provided the law requires the officer to have reasonable and articulable suspicion of criminal involvement, and 24 states have done so. The opinion in "Hiibel" implied that persons detained by police in jurisdictions with constitutional "stop and identify" laws listed are obligated to identify themselves, and that persons detained in other jurisdictions are not. The issue may not be that simple, however, for several reasons:


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: , the validity of a law requiring that a person detained provide anything more than stating their name has not come before the U.S. Supreme Court.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: In states whose "stop and identify laws" do not directly impose penalties, a lawful arrest must be for violation of some other law, such as one to the effect of "resisting, obstructing, or delaying a peace officer". For example, the Nevada "stop and identify" law challenged in "Hiibel" did not impose a penalty on a person who refused to comply, but the Justice Court of Union Township, Nevada, determined that Hiibel's refusal to identify himself constituted a violation of Nevada "obstructing" law.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: A similar conclusion regarding the interaction between Utah "stop and identify" and "obstructing" laws was reached in "Oliver v. Woods" (10th Cir. 2000).


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: "Stop and identify" laws in different states that appear to be nearly identical may be different in effect because of interpretations by state courts. For example, California "stop and identify" law, Penal Code §647(e) had wording similar to the Nevada law upheld in "Hiibel", but a California appellate court, in "People v. Solomon" (1973), 33 Cal.App.3d 429 construed the law to require "credible and reliable" identification that carries a "reasonable assurance" of its authenticity. Using this construction, the U.S. Supreme Court held the law to be void for vagueness in "Kolender v. Lawson", .


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: Some courts have recognized a distinction authorizing police to demand identifying information and specifically imposing an obligation of a suspect to respond. Other courts have apparently interpreted "demand" to impose an obligation on the detainee to comply.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: Wording and interpretation by state courts of "obstructing" laws also varies; for example, New York "obstructing" law apparently requires physical rather than simply verbal obstruction; likewise, a violation of the Colorado "obstructing" law appears to require use or threat of use of physical force. However, the Colorado Supreme Court held in "Dempsey v. People", No. 04SC362 (2005) that refusing to provide identification was an element in the "totality of the circumstances" that could constitute obstructing an officer, even when actual physical interference was not employed. Utah "obstructing" law does not require a physical act, but merely a failure to follow a "lawful order... necessary to effect the... detention"; a divided court in "Oliver v. Woods" concluded that failure to present identification constituted a violation of that law.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: It is not universally agreed that, absent a "stop and identify law", there is no obligation for a detainee to identify themself. For example, as the U.S. Supreme Court noted in "Hiibel", California "stop and identify" statute was voided in "Kolender v. Lawson". But in "People v. Long", decided four years after "Kolender", a California appellate court found no constitutional impropriety in a police officer's demand for written identification from a detainee whom they reasonably suspect of having committed a crime. The issue before the "Long" court was a request for suppression of evidence uncovered in a search of the defendant's wallet, so the issue of refusal to present identification was not directly addressed; however, the author of the "Long" opinion had apparently concluded in a 1980 case that failure to identify oneself did not provide a basis for arrest. Nonetheless, some cite "Long" in maintaining that refusal to present written identification constitutes obstructing an officer. Others disagree, and maintain that persons detained by police in California cannot be compelled to identify themselves.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: Some courts, e.g., "State v. Flynn" (Wis. 1979) and "People v. Loudermilk" (Calif. 1987), have held that police may perform a search for written identification if a suspect refuses to provide it; a later California decision, "People v. Garcia" (2006), strongly disagreed.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: In the case of "Utah v. Strieff" (2016), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that an officer's stop of Edward Strieff and his demand for identification from Strieff was unlawful under Utah state law, but that the evidence collected pursuant to the stop was admissible due to the determination that Strieff was subject to a pre-existing arrest warrant. Therefore, the pre-existing warrant "attenuated" the unlawful stop-and-identify.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: In North Carolina, "State v. White" interpreted North Carolina's "Resisting officers" statute to apply to suspects who fail to identify themselves to police officers. Conversely, West Virginia's courts decided that their resisting arrest statute did not include individuals who refused to identify themselves.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: Some legal organizations, such as the National Lawyers Guild and the ACLU of Northern California, recommend to either remain silent or to identify oneself whether or not a jurisdiction has a "stop and identify" law:


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: In a more recent pamphlet, the ACLU of Northern California elaborated on this further, recommending that a person detained by police should:


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: Many countries allow police to demand identification and arrest people who do not carry any (or refuse to produce such). Normally these countries provide all residents with national identity cards, which have the identity information the police would want to know, including citizenship. Foreign visitors need to have their passport available to show at all times. In some cases national identity cards from certain other countries are accepted.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: For example, in Portugal it is compulsory to carry the state ID card at all times. This card is called the Cartão de Cidadão (Citizen Card); it is an electronic card which includes biometric information, ID number, social security number, fiscal information, et cetera. Police can only ask for the ID card in public or a place open to public and only if there is a reasonable suspicion the person committed a crime. A certified copy of the ID card can be presented in such situations. If a citizen does not carry the ID card or its certified copy, the police will escort the person to the police department to remain detained until clear identification can be obtained.


title: Stop and identify statutes

text: In other countries like Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom police generally have no power to demand identification unless they have a statutory power to do so. For example, these countries have laws that require pedestrians, drivers, and passengers to produce their licence (for drivers) or state their name, address, etc. when stopped by police. Police may also require people to identify themselves if they have reasonable grounds to believe that they have committed a crime.


title: Bruce Banner (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

text: Bruce Banner is a fictional character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) media franchise originally portrayed by Edward Norton and subsequently by Mark Ruffalo—based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name—known commonly by his alter ego, the Hulk. Banner is depicted as a genius physicist who after a failed experiment to replicate a super soldier program using gamma radiation, transforms into a large, muscular creature with green skin whenever his heart rate goes above 200 beats per minute or when facing mortal danger. As the Hulk, he possesses superhuman abilities including increased strength and durability. Over time, Banner demonstrates an increasing ability to control the transformation, and he becomes a founding member of the Avengers. Following the conflict with Ultron, Banner is unintentionally transported to Sakaar, where he remains the Hulk for a number of years until eventually returning to Earth to participate in the battle against Thanos. In the years after Thanos erases half of all life, Banner learns to retain the Hulk form with his mind still intact, and he is instrumental in the Avengers' mission to use time travel to obtain the Infinity Stones from the past. After the Avengers succeed, Banner himself restores trillions of lives across the universe using the Stones in a specially made gauntlet. After his metafictional cousin Jennifer "Jen" Walters is accidentally imbued with his blood, becoming a "She-Hulk", Banner trains her to handle her transformations before departing again to Sakaar, returning months later with his son (born during his time there): Skaar.


text: , Banner has appeared in nine films after being introduced in the titular film "The Incredible Hulk" (2008). The character has been generally well-received by critics and audiences alike, but Norton's recasting and the inconsistent characterization of the character in latter films have some criticism. Ruffalo reprised the role in the television series "" (2022).


text: The Hulk first appeared as a comic book character in "The Incredible Hulk" #1 (cover dated May 1962), written by Stan Lee, penciled and co-plotted by Jack Kirby, and inked by Paul Reinman. Lee cited influence from "Frankenstein" and "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" in the Hulk's creation, while Kirby recalled as inspiration the tale of a mother who rescues her child who is trapped beneath a car. Lee gave the Hulk's alter ego the alliterative name "Bruce Banner" because he found he had less difficulty remembering alliterative names. The Hulk was initially grey, but coloring problems led to the creature being made green. Banner and his alter ego appeared in a 1978 live-action TV series, and in a 2003 film that received mixed reviews, with Marvel Studios regaining the film production rights for the character in February 2006.


text: In the mid-2000s, Kevin Feige realized that Marvel still owned the rights to the core members of the Avengers, which now included Hulk. Feige, a self-professed "fanboy", envisioned creating a shared universe just as creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had done with their comic books in the early 1960s. Louis Leterrier, who had expressed interest in directing "Iron Man", was brought on board to direct, with a screenplay by Zak Penn intended to serve as a loose sequel to the 2003 film, but keeping the story closer to the comics and the 1978 television series. David Duchovny was a front-runner for the film, and Leterrier's original choice for the role was Mark Ruffalo. In April 2007, Edward Norton was hired to portray Banner and to rewrite Penn's screenplay in order to distance itself from the 2003 film and establish its own identity as a reboot, although he would go uncredited for his writing. Producer Gale Anne Hurd recalled Norton's portrayals of duality in "Primal Fear" and "Fight Club", while Norton reminded Kevin Feige of Bill Bixby, who had played Banner in the 1978 TV series. Lou Ferrigno, who played the Hulk with Bixby, remarked Norton "has a similar physique [and a] similar personality". Norton was a "Hulk" fan, citing the first comic appearances, the Bixby TV show, and Bruce Jones' run on the comic, as his favorite depictions of the character. He had expressed interest in the role for the first film. He initially turned down the part, recalling "there [was] the wince factor or the defensive part of you that recoils at what the bad version of what that would be", as he felt the previous film "strayed far afield from a story that was familiar to people, [...] which is a fugitive story". When he met Leterrier and Marvel, he liked their vision, and believed they were looking to him to guide the project. During the 2008 New York Comic Con Leterrier publicly offered Lou Ferrigno the chance to voice the Hulk for the film. Originally, the Hulk's only line was "Betty" at the film's ending, which would have been his first word. Leterrier was aware that fans wanted him to speak normally, and added "leave me alone" and "Hulk smash!" The latter line received cheers during a screening he attended.


text: Mark Ruffalo began his role as Banner / Hulk in "The Avengers", after Feige said he chose not to bring back Norton. Norton has since asserted that it was his own decision never to play Hulk again because he "wanted more diversity" with his career, and did not want to be associated with only one character. "Screen Rant" has noted that, in part due to the change in actors, "many forget that "Incredible Hulk" is even canon within the MCU". In April 2012, despite Ruffalo being on board to play the Hulk in the sequel, Feige confirmed to Collider that Marvel had no plans at that time to film another Hulk film. In a Q&A session, Feige and Ruffalo confirmed that discussions were underway to produce another Hulk film due to the positive audience response to Ruffalo's performance in "The Avengers". However, Universal retained the distribution rights for "The Incredible Hulk" as well as the right of first refusal to distribute future Hulk films. In September 2012, Feige, while exploring all possible story options for a sequel film, including a film based on the "Planet Hulk" and "World War Hulk" storylines, stated, "everything [in terms of stories from the comics] is on the table. Do I think Hulk can carry a movie and be as entertaining as he was in "Avengers"? I do believe that. I do believe he absolutely could. We certainly are not even going to attempt that until "Avengers 2". So there's a lot of time to think about it".


text: In June 2014, Ruffalo said he believed the studio might be considering doing a new standalone Hulk film, saying, "I think they are, for the first time, entertaining the idea of it. When we did "The Avengers" it was basically 'No!', and now there is some consideration for it. But there's still nothing definitive, not even a skeletal version of what it would be". In July, Feige stated that the studio was not considering a "Planet Hulk" film at that time, due to wanting to feature Ruffalo's Banner in the film. However, he did not rule out a story that saw the Hulk and Banner end up in space and explained why a solo Hulk film did not occur in Phase Two of the MCU by saying, "After the first "Avengers", Iron Man had his own movie, Thor had his own movie, Captain America had his own movie, and Widow and Fury were in "". So it was really about, frankly, "saving" somebody so that the only place you could get Hulk between "Avengers" movies is the "next" "Avengers" movie, so [director Joss Whedon] could continue to play with that in ["Avengers: Age of Ultron"]. Where we go after that, we'll see".


text: In April 2015, Ruffalo noted that Universal holding the distribution rights to Hulk films may be an obstacle to releasing a future Hulk standalone film and reiterated this in October 2015, and July 2017. According to "The Hollywood Reporter", a potential reason why Marvel has not reacquired the film distribution rights to the Hulk as they did with Paramount Pictures for the Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America films is that Universal holds the theme park rights to several Marvel characters that Marvel's parent company, Disney, wants for its own theme parks. In December 2015, Ruffalo stated that the strained relationship between Marvel and Universal may be another obstacle to releasing a future standalone Hulk film. The following month, he indicated that the lack of a standalone Hulk film allowed the character to play a more prominent role in "", "", and "", stating, "We've worked a really interesting arc into "Thor[: Ragnarok]", "Avengers[: Infinity War]", and ["Avengers: Endgame"] for Banner that I think will—when it’s all added up—will feel like a Hulk movie, a standalone movie".


text: Charles Pulliam-Moore, writing for "Gizmodo", said of the earlier MCU films that "[w]hile there are a number of storylines from Marvel's comics that delve deeper into the duality of Banner/Hulk's identity... Marvel's movies have forgone those plot lines in favor of trotting Bruce out to babble about science and break things when necessary". One specific difference from the comic books is Banner's involvement in the creation of Ultron and the Vision, a character who in the comics was created solely by Ultron. The Vision, in the films, is created as a counter to Ultron, who had previously been created by Stark and Bruce Banner. In the comics, however, Ultron is created by a different member of the Avengers, Hank Pym.


text: Due to the lack of freestanding films about the Hulk, the character has been depicted in very few of the storylines shown in the comic books. In particular, the "Planet Hulk" storyline from the comic books is highly condensed and worked into ""; the comic book storyline has the heroes of Earth intentionally sending the Hulk into space due to his excessively dangerous nature, while the MCU Hulk leaves Earth of his own accord. The merged Banner/Hulk storyline depicted in "Avengers: Endgame" also differs from the comics, where a comparable merger was accomplished by hypnosis performed by superhero psychiatrist Doc Samson. In the MCU, Banner accomplishes the merger by himself, through experimentation with gamma radiation.


text: Bruce Banner is a renowned scientist, physicist, and medical doctor with seven Ph.D.s. While working at Culver University, Virginia, Banner meets with General Thaddeus Ross, the father of his colleague and girlfriend Betty, regarding an experiment that Ross claims is meant to make humans immune to gamma radiation, a field in which Banner is an expert. The experiment — part of the World War II-era supersoldier program that Ross hopes to recreate — fails, and the exposure to the gamma radiation causes Banner to transform into the Hulk for the first time. The Hulk goes on a rampage, destroying the lab, killing three people and injuring several others. Banner subsequently becomes a fugitive from the U.S. military and Ross in particular, who wants to weaponize the Hulk process.


text: Five years later in 2011, Banner works at a soda bottling factory in Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro while searching for a cure for his condition, collaborating on the internet with a colleague he knows only as "Mr. Blue", and to whom he is "Mr. Green". He also learns yoga techniques to help keep The Hulk under control, and has not transformed in five months. After Banner cuts his finger, a drop of his blood falls into a bottle, and is eventually ingested by an elderly consumer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, giving him gamma sickness. Ross tracks down Banner, sending a special forces team led by Russian-born British Royal Marine Emil Blonsky to capture him. Banner transforms into the Hulk and defeats Blonsky's team. Blonsky agrees to be injected with a similar serum, which gives him enhanced speed, strength, agility, and healing, but also begins to deform his skeleton and impair his judgment.


text: Banner returns to Culver University and reunites with Betty, but is attacked a second time by Ross and Blonsky's forces, again transforming into the Hulk. The Hulk seemingly kills Blonsky and flees with Betty. After the Hulk reverts to Banner, he and Betty go on the run, and Banner contacts Mr. Blue, who urges them to meet him in New York City. Mr. Blue, revealed to be cellular biologist Dr. Samuel Sterns, has developed a possible antidote to Banner's condition. After a successful test, he warns Banner that the antidote may only reverse each individual transformation. Sterns reveals he has synthesized Banner's blood samples, which Banner sent from Brazil, into a large supply, with the intention of applying its "limitless potential" to medicine. Fearful of the Hulk's power falling into the military's hands, Banner wishes to destroy the blood supply. Banner is caught, and Blonsky has Sterns use Banner's blood to turn him into the Abomination. Blonsky then rampages through Harlem. Realizing that only the Hulk can stop Blonsky, Banner jumps from Ross' helicopter and transforms after hitting the ground. After a long and brutal battle through Harlem, the Hulk defeats Blonsky and flees. Banner soon ends his relationship with Betty, realizing it can no longer work. A month later, in Bella Coola, British Columbia, Banner successfully transforms in a controlled manner.