Texas Senator Ted Cruz said that he would support President Trump's reelection bid in 2020, almost two years after he raised hackles when he refused to endorse then-candidate Trump during the 2016 Republican National Convention.

"I was supportive of and campaigned for President Trump in 2016, and I am very encouraged with the substantive policy victories we are getting, whether it is an historic tax cut bill, whether it is regulatory reform that’s unleashing jobs, whether it is repealing the Obamacare individual mandate — which I led the fight to do in the United States Senate — whether it is nominating and confirming strong constitutionalists to the courts," Cruz told Breitbart.

"On all of those fights I’ve been working to lead the battle. I’m content to continue working to lead that battle and defend our freedoms and defend the Constitution." </s> Mitt Romney said Saturday that he could not yet commit to supporting Donald Trump's 2020 re-election campaign, making it clear that he intends to stake his claim as an independent voice for Utah.

"I will make that decision down the road," Romney, who is running for US Senate, said in an interview with CNN as he waited for his turn to speak at the Utah GOP convention where he was vying for his party's nomination. "As a person of political experience, if I endorse someone, I'll want to know what's in it for Utah and what help would he provide for us on key priorities in Utah."

"So I'm not a cheap date," he said.

Romney said he assumed there would be Republican contenders who will challenge Trump, but underscored, "I also assume that President Trump will be the nominee of our party in 2020."

As he has campaigned across Utah, Romney has pointed out that he largely agrees with Trump on policy but takes issue with some of his harsh rhetoric.

But he was a fierce critic of Trump during the primary phase of the 2016 presidential race, calling him out as an imposter and criticizing his harsh tone on immigrants from Mexico, and criticizing Trump's crude comments about women. </s> The 2020 presidential race is starting to heat up, and the Democratic field could get crowded — fast.

Elizabeth Warren, Julian Castro and a handful of other well-known Democrats have seemingly tossed their hats into the presidential ring, and more popular politicians are likely to follow suit in the coming weeks. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said he'd consider a comeback after aiming to inspire a progressive movement during his 2016 campaign.

“If there’s somebody else who appears who can, for whatever reason, do a better job than me, I’ll work my a-- off to elect him or her,” Sanders told New York Magazine in November. “If it turns out that I am the best candidate to beat Donald Trump, then I will probably run.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden — as predicted — has stayed silent about his plans thus far.

Apparently, Biden's advisers have floated Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, as a potential running mate, given his recent rise in popularity. Despite losing the Texas Senate race to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, O'Rourke is still considered a "rising star" in his party.

In a January op-ed in The New York Times, titled "Run, Joe, Run," a columnist advised Biden to enter the race because he has "strengths that no other Democratic candidate does," citing his decades of experience and ties to the Obama administration.

New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, an outspoken Trump critic, is expected to announce the formation of a 2020 exploratory committee during a Jan. 15 appearance on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," CBS News reports.

As some political heavyweights continue to mull it over, take a look at those who have already made moves ahead of the 2020 election.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren took a major step in her political career by launching an exploratory committee for president in late December.

She made a splash on Dec. 31 when she released a campaign-style video that slams the "corrupt" government, making an appeal to her party's base.

5 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT MASSACHUSETTS SENATOR ELIZABETH WARREN

"[The government] has been bought and paid for by a bunch of billionaires and giant corporations that think they get to dictate the rules that affect everyone," Warren tells supporters, adding, "that’s not how the government is supposed to work. You know it. I know it. And we know it is time to fight back."

Warren, who was reportedly a registered Republican well into her 40s, already tested out a stump speech in Sioux City, Iowa, telling a crowd in the first-in-the-nation caucus state "we need to make a structural change."

“We need to return politics to the people,” Warren said at the Jan. 4 event.

“I can’t stop Donald Trump from what he’s going to do, I can’t stop him from hurling racial insults, I don’t have any power to do that, but what I can do is I can be in this fight for all of our families,” she added.

The 69-year-old previously taught law at Harvard University. When Warren was hired at the Ivy League school in the early 1990s, there were only 60 tenured female professors, according to The Daily Beast. According to Harvard, Warren has written more than 100 educational articles and ten books. She’s also been awarded several teaching awards — at least two from Harvard.

Warren has also been a vocal critic of Wall Street — originally conceiving what became the government's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Former President Barack Obama appointed Warren to serve as assistant to the president and special advisor to the secretary of the treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in September 2010. Warren burst onto the national scene during the financial crisis with calls for greater consumer protections. She quickly became one of the party's more prominent liberals even as she sometimes fought with Obama administration officials over their response to the market turmoil.

Former Maryland Rep. John Delaney was the first person — by far — to announce his 2020 campaign. Delaney announced his intent to run for president in July 2017, just six months into Trump's presidency.

“I'm running for President,” Delaney, a wealthy former bank executive, tweeted on July 28, 2017.

Delaney, who is socially liberal, emphasized his pro-business views in his announcement.

PRESIDENT TRUMP GETS HIS FIRST 2020 CHALLENGER

“We need to encourage a more just and inclusive form of capitalism and reduce barriers to small-business formation, start-ups, job creation, investment and growth,” Delaney said.

He has already invested considerable time and money in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro is hoping to make history as the country's first Latino president. Castro, who served under Obama, announced his campaign for president in his hometown, San Antonio, on Jan. 12.

"I’m running for President because it’s time for new leadership and to make sure opportunities I had are available to every American," he said during his announcement speech, which focused on immigration.

Castro, the grandson of a Mexican immigrant, mocked Trump for claiming that the U.S. faces an "invasion" from its ally to the south. "He called it a national security crisis," Castro said. "Well, there is a crisis today. It's a crisis of leadership. Donald Trump has failed to uphold the values of our great nation."

Castro, 44, became San Antonio's youngest-ever city councilman in 2001 at just 26 years old, The Atlantic Journal-Constitution reports. Years later, he became the city's mayor, serving from 2009 to 2014. During that time, he was thrust into the limelight. In 2012, he delivered the Democratic National Convention keynote speech, leading political pundits to grant him the nickname "Latino Barack Obama," according to the Texas Tribune.

The Stanford University and Harvard Law School graduate was in the running to become Hillary Clinton's potential presidential running mate but ultimately lost to Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine.

Democrat Richard Ojeda, a retired Army paratrooper and West Virginia lawmaker, formalized his campaign for the presidency on Veterans Day 2018. He announced he was going to resign his state Senate seat on Jan. 12 to focus on campaigning for president in 2020.

The so-called "Trump Democrat," who has been branded as a "JFK with tattoos and a bench press" by Politico Magazine, is of Mexican descent and became a champion of teachers during their fight for better pay and benefits. He sponsored successful legislation to make medical marijuana legal and has stressed health care and economic issues.

Ojeda came under fire in September 2018 for allegedly threatening state delegate Rupie Phillips, writing in a Facebook message, "When I'm done with you, you will beg me to ease up. I’m going to make you famous… and it’s not going to be in a good way."

At the time, the Ojeda campaign didn't deny the message was sent but pushed back against its meaning.

“This is absurd and obviously not a threat of physical violence,” the campaign’s spokeswoman told Fox News. “Richard was speaking about exposing Del. Phillips for his corruption in the West Virginia legislature."

Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii is also planning to run for president in 2020.

"There are a lot of reasons for me to make this decision,” Gabbard told CNN on Jan. 12, though she plans to make a more formal announcement within the week. “There are a lot of challenges that are facing the American people that I'm concerned about and that I want to help solve.”

The 37-year-old Iraq War veteran, who served two tours of duty in the Middle East, is the first Hindu elected to Congress and the first member born in the U.S. territory of American Samoa. She has visited early primary and caucus states New Hampshire and Iowa in recent months and has written a memoir that’s due to be published in May.

The lawmaker made news during the 2016 presidential campaign when she opted to back Sanders instead of Clinton.

TULSI GABBARD, HAWAII DEMOCRAT, SAYS SHE WILL RUN FOR PRESIDENT IN 2020

“As a veteran of two Middle East deployments, I know first hand the cost of war,” Gabbard explained in a YouTube video in February 2016, per The New York Times. “I know how important it is that our commander-in-chief has the sound judgment required to know when to use America’s military power and when not to use that power.

“As a vice chair of the D.N.C., I am required to stay neutral in Democratic primaries, but I cannot remain neutral any longer. The stakes are just too high. That’s why today I’m endorsing Senator Bernie Sanders to be our next president and commander in chief of the United States," she concluded.

Gabbard’s run would not be without controversy.

In 2016, she alarmed fellow Democrats when she met with Donald Trump during his transition to president and later when she took a secret trip to Syria and met with President Bashar Assad, who has been accused of war crimes and genocide. She questioned whether he was responsible for a chemical attack on civilians that killed dozens and led the U.S. to attack a Syrian airbase.

She said she doesn’t regret the trip and considers it important to meet with adversaries if “you are serious about pursuing peace.” She also noted that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was based on faulty intelligence and said that she wanted to understand the evidence of the Syria attack.

Fox News' Madeleine Rivera, Alex Pappas, Lukas Mikelionis and The Associated Press contributed to this report. </s> Becoming the fourth official Democrat candidate for a White House bid in 2020, Democrat Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has announced her intention to run for President.

Senator Gillibrand made the announcement in a rather goofy and awkward appearance on the Late Show with Steven Colbert. Senator wind-tester doesn’t stand a chance; no-one likes her, but it is a fun intellectual exercise to start putting the various candidate parallels together in the growing field of Democrats against the prior 2016 field of 17 Republicans.

Knowing it’s likely the ♦UniParty DNC is following a similar ♦UniParty RNC strategy, we can start to put the personal characteristics and political traits together and contrast them against 2016. Here’s the way it looks so far:
• Senator Ted Cruz was to 2016…. as Senator Elizabeth Warren is to 2020
• Senator Rand Paul was to 2016…. as Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is to 2020
• Senator Rick Santorum was to 2016…. as Senator Sherrod Brown is to 2020
• Governor Bobby Jindal was to 2016…. as Julian Castro is to 2020
• Governor Jim Gilmore was to 2016 as Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is to 2020

Once we get a few more names on the DNC side, we can start to have fun with the celebrity squares graphics: </s> (CNN) The Senate voted Thursday to confirm Ben Carson and Rick Perry to Cabinet position in President Donald Trump's administration.

The chamber confirmed retired neurosurgeon as the next secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and then later in the afternoon approved the former Texas governor as the next energy secretary.

The vote for Carson was 58-41. The vote for Perry was 62-37.

Both Carson and Perry ran against President Donald Trump during a crowded Republican presidential primary, before dropping out and both eventually endorsing Trump.

Read More </s> Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson said Thursday morning that it's too early to say whether he'll support a re-election bid for Donald Trump in 2020, adding to a growing list of conservatives on Capitol Hill who are holding out their endorsements for their party's President.

"It's way too early to be talking about 2020," Johnson told CNN's "New Day" co-anchor Chris Cuomo. "It could be a completely different world by 2020. We have a 2018 election first."

Johnson called the prompt for Trump's endorsement a "gotcha question," adding that he thinks "it's unusual that members of the media would be talking about the 2020 election in 2018."

Johnson joins a wide array for House and Senate GOP members not yet ready to endorse Trump. CNN reported Thursday that Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander and South Carolina Rep. Mark Sanford are among the Republicans who are holding out their official support for Trump in 2020. </s> SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Former Obama Cabinet member Julian Castro joined the 2020 presidential race Saturday as the rush of Democrats making early moves to challenge President Donald Trump accelerates, while anticipation grows around bigger names still considering a White House run.

“I’m running for president because it’s time for new leadership, because it’s time for new energy and it’s time for a new commitment to make sure that the opportunities that I’ve had are available to every American,” he told cheering supporters.

Castro, who could end up being the only Latino in what is shaping up to be a crowded Democratic field, officially kicked off his campaign with a rally in his hometown of San Antonio, where he was mayor for five years. The ex-housing secretary became the second Democrat to formally enter race, after former Maryland Rep. John Delaney.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has also started an exploratory committee for president, and four other Democratic senators are taking steady steps toward running. Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, the first Hindu elected to Congress, is planning a bid, too.

Castro, the 44-year-old grandson of a Mexican immigrant, made the campaign announcement at Plaza Guadalupe on San Antonio’s middle-class west side, less than 200 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. The impasse over a border wall that Trump made a central promise of his 2016 campaign has led to the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. Trump was at the Texas border on Thursday to press his case for a wall that he said would help solve a humanitarian and security crisis at the border.

Joining Castro at the campaign kickoff was his twin brother, Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro, chairman of the Hispanic congressional caucus and a frequent Trump critic.

The Democratic field is starting to take shape even though the first primary elections are more than a year away.

Sen. Kamala Harris of California this past week published a memoir , a staple of presidential candidates. Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke is doing little to dim speculation that he might jump into a field that has no clear front-runner.

Castro is aware he lacks the name recognition of potential 2020 rivals or the buzz surrounding O’Rourke, whose flirtations with 2020 have tantalized donors and activists after a close race last year against Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

But Castro, who has repeatedly dismissed talk that an O’Rourke candidacy would complicate his own chances, has framed the neighborhood and his upbringing as the story of an underdog.

Castro was raised by a local Latina activist. After a brief career in law, he was elected mayor of the nation’s seventh-largest city at 34. It wasn’t long before Democrats nationally embraced him as a star in the making, particularly one from Texas, where a booming Hispanic population is rapidly changing the state’s demographics and improving the party’s fortunes.

Castro delivered the keynote speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. Two years later, President Barack Obama picked him to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

He was on the short list of Hillary Clinton’s potential running mates in 2016. During Castro’s trip this past week to Nevada, one state Latino business leader told Castro that he should again be a top contender for vice president if his campaign falls short.

Like other Democrats running, Castro has said he will not accept money from political action committees tied to corporations and unions, and he has sought to introduce himself to voters as a champion for universal health care and affordable housing. </s> Sen. Michael Bennet announced on Thursday that he is running for President, launching a longshot campaign that makes the Colorado Democrat the seventh member of the Senate vying for a chance to take on President Donald Trump.

The announcement — made Thursday during an interview on CBS' "This Morning" — was delayed after the senator was diagnosed with prostate cancer in early April. Bennet had surgery shortly after the diagnosis and announced last month that doctors gave him a clean bill of health. That successful procedure set off a series of moves over the last two weeks that culminated in Thursday's announcement.

Bennet, who now enters a crowded field of 2020 Democrats that is likely to grow, had previously said that he hoped to run despite the cancer diagnosis. He told CNN in early April that he would "like to get on with this."

"I'm looking forward to running in 2020," Bennet said on CNN's "State of the Union" with Jake Tapper. "This obviously was unexpected, but we caught it early. It's something that I think we're going to be able to treat and I don't think it should keep me off the trail."

Bennet, a measured, wonky Democrat who is known for delving deeply into policy, plans to run a campaign centered around driving economic growth by expanding the Child Tax Credit, enacting paid family and medical leave, raising the minimum wage, modernizing the country by combating climate change and investing in infrastructure, according to a Bennet aide.

The senator and former educator also plans to make education central to his bid, the aide said, as well as electoral reform, which will include pushing to ban Members of Congress from ever becoming lobbyists, overturning the controversial Citizens United Supreme Court decision and fighting partisan gerrymandering.

The senator, whose name recognition with audiences outside of Colorado remains small, was boosted by a viral moment earlier this year, when he took to the Senate floor to lambast Texas Sen. Ted Cruz with a passionate speech that saw the usually mild-mannered senator raising his voice to accuse Cruz of crying "crocodile tears" for lamenting a tactic Cruz once used himself.

The speech vaulted Bennet, the former superintendent of Denver Public Schools, into the public eye and captured the attention of Democratic activists.

That was clear earlier this year when Bennet made his first trip to Iowa. His first event in the state — a house party in Dubuque — was also a viewing party for the speech: as Bennet spoke in the host's living room, a freeze frame of an enraged Bennet sat on the TV behind him.

"I am glad you are not playing that now," Bennet joked to the small audience, "because I would say, 'God, I don't want to follow that guy.'"

Bennet has pitched himself in pre-campaign appearances and speeches as a pragmatic lawmaker who has a progressive voting record, but who also knows what it takes to win in an electorally split state like Colorado.

While some of Bennet's policy proposals do fall in line with progressives in his party, his view of "Medicare for All" — the sweeping health care plan being pushed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and a host of other 2020 candidates — is more centrist, a fact that the senator doesn't run away from.

"I'm concerned about that bill," he told CNN earlier this year, noting he worries the bill would do to employer-backed insurance plans that most Americans have. "I don't think that is a good starting point."

Bennet, 54, was born in India while his father — Douglas J. Bennet — worked as an aide to the U.S. ambassador to the country. Bennet grew up in Washington, D.C., as his father worked as an aide to President Jimmy Carter and a host of other jobs around the capital.

Bennet went on to graduate from Wesleyan University in 1987 and received a law degree from Yale Law School in 1993, where he was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal.

After a brief legal career, Bennet became managing director of Anschutz Investment Corporation, a Denver-based holding company that has large investments in Anschutz Entertainment Group, The Regal Entertainment Group and a host of media companies.

Bennet entered public life in 2003 when he became then-Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper's chief of staff. Hickenlooper, who would go on to become governor of Colorado and is a central figure in Bennet's public life, is also running for President.

After four years of superintendent of Denver Public Schools, then-Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter tapped Bennet to fill the Senate seat vacated by Ken Salazar, who became the Interior secretary under President Barack Obama. Bennet then successfully ran for his first full term in 2010 and was re-elected in 2016.

Bennet is expected to make his ability to win in a state like Colorado, where there is a healthy share of both Democrats and Republicans, central to his bid, too, arguing that that ability to win in a swing state bodes well for his ability to defeat Trump. </s> Senator and 2020 contender criticized Trump for not discussing the climate emergency at his ‘Keep America Great’ campaign launch
Texas senator Ted Cruz said he will support Donald Trump in the 2020 elections.