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Luc(as) de Groot in Berlin.

Sonja Knecht

On Thursday, Microsoft announced a change coming soon to some of its most visible software. It will choose a new default font for its Office applications, such as Word and Excel. And that means people will no longer be seeing so much of the font that's held the default spot since 2007 a sans-serif font called Calibri.

The change is another indication that this is not the old Microsoft. Since the measured Satya Nadella replaced the loud and proud Steve Ballmer as CEO in 2014, Microsoft has become easier for partners to work with, has strategically embraced third-party platforms instead of stubbornly ignoring them, and has morphed into a formidable contender in the ever-expanding cloud computing business. Arguably a change to the look of Microsoft software is in order.

But Luc(as) de Groot, the Dutch type designer behind Calibri, was caught by surprise.

"I had not expected it to kind of be replaced already," he said during a video interview from his home in Berlin.

He did not expect to be consulted about the decision, and says he's glad Microsoft invests in new fonts to make its software more valuable. He figures the choice to change was more about keeping up with contemporary style trends than about improving the legibility of Calibri.

De Groot began working on Calibri all the way back in 2002. An intermediary had asked him to come up with a proposal for a monospace typeface for an unnamed client. He was not informed that the client had also sought proposals from other people. He was also asked to come up with a sans-serif font, and so he sent off some sketches for Calibri in addition to the monospace work.

The client turned out to be Microsoft, which accepted both of his proposals, and in 2003 de Groot traveled to Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, to meet with designers, advisors and members of the company's typography team.

At the meeting, de Groot said, he argued that the company should include old-style figures -- characters with varying heights -- to help with reading, and Microsoft employees agreed.

The five new fonts Microsoft commissioned are available in Word for Office 365 subscribers. The first paragraph of text is shown in Calibri, and the second paragraph appears in the new Seaford font.

Jordan Novet | CNBC

Coming up with the name was not easy. For both of his fonts, Microsoft wanted names that started with the letter C.

As de Groot put it in an email, "I had proposed Clas, a Scandinavian first name and associated with 'class,' but then the Greek advisor said it meant 'to fart' in Greek. Then I proposed Curva or Curvae, which I still like, but then the Cyrillic advisor said it meant 'prostitute' in Russian, it is indeed used as a very common curse word." Microsoft legal workers also checked each possible name to see if it had not already been trademarked.

The company came up with the name "Calibri," and when de Groot first heard it, he found it odd. It was similar to Colibri, a genus of hummingbirds. But then Microsoft employees said that it related to the calibrating the rasterizer in the company's ClearType font rendering system.

Once he sent over Calibri, he didn't know how it would be used. At first he heard it would be included in a programming environment. It wasn't until a few years later that he learned it would become the default in Office, which has 1.2 billion users. By default, Calibri worked with lining figures with uniform characters, although users can enable old-style figures in Word.

Calibri came to millions of PCs with the release of Office 2007, succeeding the staid 20th-century serif font Times New Roman. Soon, it was everywhere. It became a popular choice for resums. It has been used to solve forgery cases, and in 2017 it figured in a Pakistani corruption probe ensnaring then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Former President Donald Trump's son Donald Trump Jr. used Calibri to release an email exchange about a meeting with a Russian lawyer to gather information on Hillary Clinton, who had run for president against Trump in 2016.

Over the years, de Groot has done additional work on Calibri. He came up with heavier weights, added support for Hebrew, and three years ago, he said, he submitted a prototype for a variable Calibri font, which includes several styles in a single font file, although Microsoft has not released it. He was working on Calibri updates as recently as two weeks ago.

Then he started receiving emails from journalists about the news: Microsoft's design team had published a blog post on Thursday revealing five fonts it had commissioned, one of which will eventually replace Calibri. Calibri, they wrote, "has served us all well, but we believe it's time to evolve."

De Groot couldn't help but have a look at the five fonts. He downloaded them to his PC and tested them out.

He said he was fond of Seaford, a font developed by Tobias Frere-Jones, Nina Stssinger and Fred Shallcrass of the New York studio Frere-Jones Type. "It has a very strong design, and I would love to see this as the new default," he said. "It's not absolutely neutral, but I think it's a very nice design."

WATCH: Microsoft Office 2016 'leapfrogging' Google: CMO

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Microsoft is rolling out a new default font to 1.2 billion Office users after 14 years and the designer of the old one is surprised - CNBC

Manu Raju at home in Chevy Chase, D.C., with his wife, Archana Mehta, and their 5-year-old twins. Photo by Michael Ventura

Just after 4 p.m. on Jan. 6, Manu Raju, CNNs chief congressional correspondent, was in his recording booth in the Senate press gallery when he heard a pounding on the door. The U.S. Capitol Police had come to evacuate Raju, his two producers, and the 18 or so other media people in the room and escort them to a more secure location in the building. A few hours earlier, Raju and the others had been ordered to stay in the gallery for their protection as insurgents stormed the halls of Congress. Raju couldnt see the rioters from his windowless booth. Instead, he was going on the air every few minutes with reports that he was receiving via texts from lawmakers and congressional aides on the House floor and in ransacked offices in the Capitol. Until he was being evacuated, he had no idea that rioters had been just down the hall from where he was broadcasting.

It was the first time that I fully got a sense of how much danger we were in. That entire third floor was trashed. There were hand sanitizer stands knocked over. Desks were knocked over. There was this slippery film on the ground and the railings, all this white film that had been the result of tear gas that had been shot all around the third floor, Raju says. The whole area smelled of smoke grenades. The reality was that none of us were secure, and we just didnt know that until later.

Since joining CNN in 2015, Raju has appeared on camera five days a week (often more), chasing lawmakers through the U.S. Capitol and around the country on campaign stops. In 2016 he traveled with Marco Rubio during the Florida senators presidential run. Its nonstop, Raju, 41, says. But thats what we signed up for.

A first-generation Indian American, Raju was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs. His parents emigrated from India in the 1970s, and his father, a neonatologist, spent 30 years at the University of Illinois Hospital. His mom worked at a local library. In high school, Raju ran track and played on the football and basketball teams, and was president of his Hindu temple youth group. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison he majored in business administration but covered sports on the side for his college newspaper, The Badger Herald. He interned at two TV stations before deciding to forgo business and give reporting a shot. I started to enjoy it, I started to learn it. I was about to graduate, and I was thinking to myself, maybe I should try this journalism thing and see what happens, he says. The beauty of being a journalist is that you dont necessarily have to have a journalism degree.

Rajus parents moved to Gaithersburg during his senior year of college, when his dad took a position at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. After graduating in 2002, Raju moved in with them for a few months before landing a job covering environmental policy for Inside EPA, a website and weekly newsletter owned by Inside Washington Publishers. He joined the staff of Congressional Quarterly in 2004, then worked at The Hill for a couple of years before taking a job at Politico in 2008. He worked there for seven years until a job opened up at CNN covering Congress and the timing was right, he says.

Raju met his wife, Archana Mehta, in 2005 while living in Washington, and the couple eventually settled in Chevy Chase, D.C. A year and a half ago they moved to a larger house less than two blocks away to give their now 5-year-old twins more room to run around in. With the couples son and daughter mostly in Zoom school and Mehta, vice president of marketing and business strategy for Gaithersburg-based Recovery Point Systems, working from home, Raju says being on the Hill most days keeps him out of their hair.

In late February, on one of Rajus rare days off, Bethesda Magazine caught up with him on Zoom.

Was the insurrection at the U.S.Capitol the scariest story youve ever covered as a correspondent?

Ive gone to rowdy rallies and political eventsnothing even comes close to this. [CNN anchor] Jake Tapper said to me, I never thought [talking to] our Capitol Hill correspondents would be like talking to war correspondents. Thats what it felt like.

At what point did you realize this wasnt just a regular protest but an unprecedented situation?

The first scare we got was as the [election] certification was starting [about 1 p.m.]. We were getting reports from the Capitol Police about a potential bomb scarebut that does happen from time to time. At one point we were hearing from sources that things were getting pretty out of hand outside and that were on lockdown. That was a little nerve-racking. This was only the second time thats happened. Then we started hearing reports that the protesters have breached the barricade around the Capitol. But it was still not a real concern in my mind that they could actually get inside the Capitolits one of the most fortified buildings in the whole country. Then I got an email from the Capitol Police saying, internal security threatgo into your office, lock your doors and dont leave. That was a pretty alarming alert. The truth is, I didnt know the full extent of things until days later.

What was your wife doing while the insurgence was going on?

She was texting me a lot, nervous about what was going on. I was getting texts from family, a lot of friends, staffers, people I havent heard from in years, reaching out, saying, Are you all right? The good thing for my family was that I was on TV reporting, so that gave them some level of assurance.

What time did you get home that night?

I got home about 3 a.m. and was back on air at 8 a.m. I only got about two hours of sleep. I probably could have told my bosses I needed to sleep for a few more hours, but it was too big of a story, and I wanted to be back in the middle of it again to tell people what I saw.

Youve been on the Hill practically every day during the pandemic. What changes have you seen since the start of COVID-19?

We used to be able to walk around with our own camera crews. Id walk around with my own chase camera, and thats where we would buttonhole lawmakersin the hallway. Wed put the camera in their face and get them to respond. During the pandemic, all the networks have cut back on those camera crews, for social distancing, and as a result I dont have as many of those moments when I can grab someone in the hallway and put a camera in their faceour camera locations are all pooled. Were still running around asking questions, its just mostly off camera now. Its different when a viewer actually watches someone dodge a questionthat has a different impact.

Has that made it harder to do your job?

Typically, members who are running for reelections in difficult races want to avoid the press. In the run-up to the 2020 election, the Senate was at stake and members were trying to avoid any press whatsoever. There are senators-only elevators where senators can go in and not answer your question because you have to get permission to ride with them. There are back stairways all throughout the Capitollawmakers use those back entrances and exits to leave the Capitol so they can avoid your line of questioning. It was easier for them to do it because there were just fewer of us around, and fewer cameras around.

Until you joined CNN, you were a print reporter. What made you decide to transition to TV?

[At Politico], Id been doing more guest appearances on television shows. I was on Meet the Press, I did CNN a lot, I did the Sunday shows, Face the Nation. I was appearing as a panelist, and I was enjoying it. A big moment for me was when I was sole moderator [in 2014] for the Colorado gubernatorial and Senate debates. They were two big races and it made a ton of news, and I realized the importance of reporting on air and the impact it could have. That was a pretty revelatory moment in my career.

A lot of lawmakers have contracted COVID over the past year. Have you felt at risk when youre on the Hill?

The Capitol has been a hot spot. The good thing is they just put testing in at the Capitol. Thats finally available, so I get tested now almost every day of the week when Im up there. So at least I have some level of security that Im not carrying it back home. For a while, there was no mask mandate requirement on the House side. I would interview members who were not wearing masks. Id be wearing a mask. I always wear a mask everywhere I go thereI have tobut they dont. There were some members who refused to; now theres a requirement that they have to. On the Senate side, most membersexcept for onewear a mask everywhere they go. But still, masks are not 100% effective.

Whos the senator that wont wear a mask?

[Kentucky Sen.] Rand Paulhe says because hes had COVID before he believes hes immune now. Thats possible, but of course we dont quite know the science behind that fully, whether hes 100% immune.

What was the most important lesson you learned covering Capitol Hill during the Donald Trump years?

One thing I try to do as a reporter is tune out the noise, and during the Trump years the noise was intense. Being called an enemy of the people. What I learned is to ignore that, as hard as it can be at times. Its a distraction. You really have to have thick skin or really just tune it out. The Twitter mobs are intense, but ignore the Twitter mobs the best you can and just try to move forward to report and do the job you were hired to do.

In January 2020, Martha McSally, then Arizonas junior senator, called you a liberal hack during her campaign. What were you thinking at the time?

The moment that happened I was not thrilled about it, not because it hurt my feelings in any waybecause it did notbut because I knew it would become a news story, and I do not like to be in the center of the story. I like to cover the news. I like to drive the news cycle. I dont want to be the subject of an attack by a senator whos just trying to get attention for herself. But the moment she said it I knew it was going to be a story and I had a duty to report it. She said it not just in front of me but in front of other reportersit was going to be reported one way or [the] other. And she had her spokesperson walking around with her cellphone camera recording itso it may have been planned to some extent. They tweeted out their own video of it.

How did the incident with McSally begin?

I was in the middle of covering [former President Trumps January 2020] impeachment trial. I was asking her very fair questions. I asked her, Do you support subpoenaing witnesses and documents? She was a Republican senator up for election in a difficult race, and she had not said where she was on that, and that was a key question. The Democrats needed 51 votes to move forward, so of course I was going to ask her that question, and she did not want to answer that.

There was also some controversy around a story you reported in 2017that Donald Trump Jr. had access to WikiLeaks information about Hillary Clinton before the public did during the 2016 campaign. It turned out not to be true.

Sometimes bad information comes your way and you do your best job to make sure you dont report bad information. But if it happens, we have to acknowledge that. What we did was we reported a story inaccurately, and when we found out we were wrong, we ran a correction. No reporter likes to make a mistake, and I made a mistake and we corrected it. It also shows you that our job is to report honestly, and when you make a mistake you own up to it, and thats basically what we did.

You were honored with the prestigious Joan S. Barone Award at the 2017 Radio and Television Correspondents Association dinner for a story you did on the 2016 New Hampshire Senate race. What made that story so special?

What I really like to do is sit down with politicians and press them with direct questions, and when theyre not answering, I like to press them until they actually respond. In the 2016 New Hampshire Senate race, both candidates refused to express their views on their [respective presidential candidates]. The Republican [then-Sen. Kelly Ayotte] wouldnt say whether she endorsed Donald Trump, and the Democratic candidate [Sen. Maggie Hassan] wouldnt say whether she thought Hillary Clinton was honest and trustworthy. That became a really good story because it revealed how the candidates were struggling with their presidential candidates.

Any other favorite stories youve done at CNN?

During Donald Trumps first impeachment trial, there was a moment when a key witness was behind closed doors and I got to break the news of what he was sayingand it was bombshell stuff. The witness had heard [Gordon Sondland, the former] ambassador to the European Union, and Donald Trump talking about Ukraine launching an investigation into Joe Biden. [The testimony] was central to the impeachment trial, and my competitors were all sitting there listening to me report it. We had just broken this huge story.

How did you get exclusive access to that witness testimony?

From years of source development.

Your brother, Sharat, is a television director in Los Angeleshes directed episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Criminal Minds. Was there any pressure on you or him to go into medicine like your father?

For a lot of Indian kids, their parents tell them they want them to be doctors or engineers and the like. My parents, to their credit, did not pressure methey let me pursue whatever I wanted to do, and I really am grateful for that.

What was it like growing up in the Midwest as a first-generation Indian American?

There werent that many Indian people. It was a very white, very Catholic community that we grew up in, and for my parents, they really had a lot to learn. This was a foreign land for them. They didnt know anybody when they moved here. I really hand it to themcoming to a brand-new culture, trying to figure it out. For me, I grew up assimilating into U.S. culture but also having a lot of connections to India. My parents wanted to ensure our Indian heritage stuck with us even as we were growing up in this country. We did a lot of stuff with the Indian community in the area.

Were there times for you as a kid when it was difficult to balance the two cultures?

When youre a kid, its hard because you are trying to fit in, but it got easier as I grew up and understood why my parents were pushing to ensure that I stayed connected to my roots. In high school, I really started to appreciate my roots and my Indian identity and to feel very grounded. I was very comfortable on Saturdays playing sports, going to practice or playing games, and on Sundays going to temple and doing youth group activities. I was able to merge the two different aspects of my life.

How do you think being the child of immigrants has impacted you as an adult?

Coming from an immigrant family I think helps with your work ethic because my parents worked so hard and I watched them work so hard to achieve everything they did. My dad, in particular, came from pretty humble means.

Being on the Hill every day, youve missed your son and daughter doing remote learning. What are you hearing from themor your wifeabout that?

[My kids have] suddenly become totally adept at using their iPads for Zoom meetingsthey are on Zoom meetings for virtual school all day. Its funny watching how they navigate it. I watched them do show-and-tell on Zoom and it was hilarious watching them call on other kids asking questions. At 5 years old, they know how to use Zoom better than I do. But still, they need help. Thankfully we have a nanny whos been a huge help in getting us through.

How does your family handle it on those nights when news breaks and you have to dash back to the Hill right after youve gotten home?

When Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, it was Friday night about 7 p.m. Id been cleared for the nightnothing on my beat was popping. Id gotten home about an hour before and was settling in for a relaxing evening. Suddenly I get a call from the desk saying RBG has died. Can you call in immediately? She was such a momentous figure and had a huge impact on society, but the immediate question was: With weeks to go until the election, what will happen with the replacement? Will the Republicans be able to confirm a new nominee? Will they actually do that? Will any Republicans break rank, and will they stop it? I had a quick phone interview with [CNN anchor] Erin BurnettI have my at-home studio, but it takes like five to seven minutes to set up and there was no time to do it. I said goodbye to my family and headed to Capitol Hill. This is a job where you cant predict your schedulethankfully I have an understanding family.

Do your wife and kids watch you on TV?

My wife watches a fair amount of CNN. My kids see me, but theyre not blown away or interested. They just think its normal. When were out and someone comes up and recognizes me, the kids think its really funnytheyll laugh about it after.

Are you ever able to get a total break from politics?

When we go on [family] trips I really try to tune out. Last year, during the pandemic, we went to Virginia Beach for a week and I completely tuned out. That was August. Its been awhile.

What are your favorite neighborhood haunts?

Comet Ping Pongwe love Comet. And [the Italian restaurant] Im Eddie Cano. The kids love going out. We miss doing that, having a nice long lunch with the kids, going to museums at the Mall, going to bounce houses. Now we try to go to parks and playgrounds that arent too crowded.

Whats the first trip you and your wife are going to take with the kids when things are normal again?

I have a lot of extended family in India. We have not gone as a family yetwe had hoped to go this year, but I dont know if thats going to happen. At some point I want to take the kids to see their extended family. I used to go there a lot when I was a kidevery few years to see my uncles and aunts and cousins. We want to start doing that once we get past all of this.

Now that you cant go out, how have you and your wife been surviving the pandemic?

[My wifes] a phenomenal cook. Im her sous-chefIll cut vegetables for her and wash the dishes afterward. I try to [cook] every once in a while, but it takes me twice as long, I make twice the mess and it tastes half as good.

Amy Halpern is a journalist who has worked in print and television news, and as the associate producer of an Emmy award-winning documentary. She lives in Potomac. The Bethesda Interview is edited for length and clarity.

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CNN's Manu Raju talks about US Capitol riots, covering the Hill - BethesdaMagazine.com

Former President Donald Trump has claimed at times that hell start a third political party called the Patriot Party. In fact, most Americans 62% in a recent poll say theyd welcome the chance to vote for a third party.

In almost any other democracy, those Americans would get their wish. In the Netherlands, for instance, even a small third party called the Party for the Animals composed of animal rights supporters, not dogs and cats won 3.2% of the legislative vote in 2017 and earned five seats, out of 150, in the national legislature.

Yet in the U.S., candidates for the House of Representatives from the Libertarian Party, the most successful of U.S. minor parties, won not a single House seat in 2020, though Libertarians got over a million House votes. Neither did the Working Families Party, with 390,000 votes, or the Legalize Marijuana Now Party, whose U.S. Senate candidate from Minnesota won 185,000 votes.

Why dont American voters have more than two viable parties to choose among in elections, when almost every other democratic nation in the world does?

As Ive found in researching political parties, the American electoral system is the primary reason why the U.S. is the sole major democracy with only two parties consistently capable of electing public officials. Votes are counted in most American elections using plurality rules, or winner take all. Whoever gets the most votes wins the single seat up for election.

Other democracies choose to count some or all of their votes differently. Instead of, say, California being divided into 53 U.S. House districts, each district electing one representative, the whole state could become a multi-member district, and all the voters in California would be asked to choose all 53 U.S. House members using proportional representation.

Each party would present a list of its candidates for all 53 seats, and you, as the voter, would select one of the party slates. If your party got 40% of the votes in the state, then it would elect 40% of the representatives the first 21 candidates listed on the partys slate. This is the system used in 21 of the 28 countries in Western Europe, including Germany and Spain.

In such a system depending on the minimum percentage, or threshold, a party needed to win one seat it would make sense for even a small party to run candidates for the U.S. House, reasoning that if they got just 5% of the vote, they could win 5% of the states U.S. House seats.

So if the Legalize Marijuana Now party won 5% of the vote in California, two or three of the partys candidates would become House members, ready to argue in Congress for marijuana legalization. In fact, until the 1950s, several U.S. states had multi-member districts.

Under the current electoral system, however, if the Legalize Marijuana Now party gets 5% of the states House vote, it wins nothing. It has spent a lot of money and effort with no officeholders to show for it. This disadvantage for small parties is also built into the Electoral College, where a candidate needs a majority of electoral votes to win the presidency and no non-major-party candidate ever has.

Theres another factor working against third-party success: State legislatures make the rules about how candidates and parties get on the ballot, and state legislatures are made up almost exclusively of Republicans and Democrats. They have no desire to increase their competition.

So a minor-party candidate typically needs many more signatures on a petition to get on the ballot than major-party candidates do, and often also pays a filing fee that major party candidates dont necessarily have to pay.

Further, although many Americans call themselves independents, pollsters find that most of these independents actually lean toward either the Democrats or the Republicans, and their voting choices are almost as intensely partisan as those who do claim a party affiliation.

Party identification is the single most important determinant of peoples voting choices; in 2020, 94% of Republicans voted for Donald Trump, and the same percentage of Democrats voted for Joe Biden.

The small number of true independents in American politics are much less likely to show interest in politics and to vote. So it would not be easy for a third party to get Americans to put aside their existing partisan allegiance.

The idea of a center party has great appeal in theory. In practice, few agree on what centrist means. Lots of people, when asked this question, envision a center party that reflects all their own views and none of the views they disagree with.

Thats where a Trump Party does have one advantage. Prospective Trump Party supporters do agree on what they stand for: Donald Trump.

[The Conversations newsletter explains whats going on with the coronavirus pandemic. Subscribe now.]

Yet theres an easier path for Trump supporters than fighting the U.S. electoral system, unfriendly ballot access rules and entrenched party identification. Thats to take over the Republican Party. In fact, theyre very close to doing so now.

Trump retains a powerful hold over the partys policies. His adviser, Jason Miller, stated, Trump effectively is the Republican Party. This Trump Party is very different from Ronald Reagans GOP. Thats not surprising; the U.S. major parties have always been permeable and vulnerable to takeover by factions.

There are good reasons for Americans to want more major parties. Its hard for two parties to capture the diversity of views in a nation of more than 300 million people.

But American politics would look very different if the country had a viable multi-party system, in which voters could choose from among, say, a Socialist Party, a White Supremacist Party and maybe even a Party for the Animals.

To get there, Congress and state legislatures would need to make fundamental changes in American elections, converting single-member districts with winner-take-all rules into multi-member districts with proportional representation.

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Why Trump is more likely to win in the GOP than to take his followers to a new third party - The Conversation US

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Republicans Susan Wright and state Rep. Jake Ellzey of Waxahachie are heading to a runoff in the special election to replace the late U.S. Rep. Ron Wright, R-Arlington, in Texas' 6th Congressional District.

The race to replace Ron Wright after he died this year drew 23 candidates: 11 Republicans, 10 Democrats, one Libertarian and one independent. The district spreads southeast from the Dallas-Fort Worth area to rural Ellis and Navarro counties.

With all precincts reporting, Susan Wright, a veteran GOP activist and Ron Wright's widow, led with 19% of the vote. Ellzey, the leading Republican fundraiser in the race, received nearly 14% of the vote. Jana Lynne Sanchez, the leading Democratic candidate, had about 13% of the vote and fell just short of qualifying for the runoff, which has not been scheduled.

The homestretch of the special election was highlighted by former President Donald Trumps late decision to get involved and endorse Susan Wright, even as some of her GOP rivals campaigned as pro-Trump stalwarts. Trump backed Susan Wright on Monday the second-to-last day of early voting and starred in a tele-town hall for her Thursday night.

The district was once strongly Republican, but it has quickly trended blue in recent statewide election results, and former President Donald Trump won it last year by only 3 percentage points. However, Ron Wright won reelection by 9 points in 2020, when he was a national Democratic target.

The race for Ron Wrights unfinished term never drew the level of national Democratic attention one would expect for a truly competitive district. Many Democrats hoped that would change this year if they could get a candidate in the runoff.

Susan Wright, who serves on the State Republican Executive Committee, easily had the most institutional and elected official support. Her list of backers grew to include not only Trump but also the SREC a rare endorsement by the body in a race with multiple Republicans and eight members of Congress, including six from Texas.

Even with the endorsement, Susan Wright had to confront challenges presented by other Republicans. Despite becoming the target of virtually all attacks on the Republican side, Ellzey built momentum throughout the race and ultimately ended up earning just slightly less votes than Wright in the special election.

There was one Republican candidate who openly rejected Trump: Michael Wood, a Marine Corps combat veteran and Arlington businessman.

In the Democratic field, most fundraising and endorsements were split between Sanchez, the 2018 nominee for the seat; Lydia Bean, a 2020 candidate for a battleground state House seat nearby; and Shawn Lassiter, the leader of an education nonprofit in Fort Worth.

Sanchez had the most national support, including from the political arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Bean stood out as the only candidate with the backing of organized labor, including the Texas AFL-CIO. And Lassiter also drew some national support, while emerging as the strongest fundraiser among the Democrats.

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Republicans Susan Wright, Jake Ellzey headed to runoff for North Texas congressional district - The Texas Tribune

For years now the well known economist and gold bug Peter Schiff has continuously spoken out against bitcoin, as he claims precious metals are far superior. A great number of people have rebutted Schiffs statements about bitcoin but during the last year, the gold bug has had a different thorn on his side. In recent days, Schiffs nemesis on Twitter is his own son Spencer Schiff, a young entrepreneur who is interested in finance, Austrian economics, libertarianism, [and] anarcho-capitalism.

During the last year, Bitcoin.com News has reported on Peter Schiff on numerous occasions and one time our newsdesk did a report on his father Irwin Schiff. His now-deceased father Irwin was a very popular libertarian and tax resistance advocate who published a number of books.

In other instances this year, our newsdesk also covered Peters son as well. Peters son, Spencer Schiff, is an advocate for bitcoin (BTC) and he always has something to say when his father tweets about the leading crypto asset.

On Sunday morning (ET), when his Father tweeted a reply to a Zerohedge article about inflation, Spencer wrote: Better get yourself some sats, in reply to his Dads tweet.

When Peter wrote a tweet about the Federal Reserve and its Chair Jerome Powell not showing concern about inflation, Spencer replied with a laser eyes picture of his dad and said join us.

However, when someone told Peter that he raised a smart kid the gold bug wrote:

He may be smart, but when it comes to Bitcoin, hes a complete fool.

A few days prior, Peter Schiff tweeted about his other favorite precious metal, silver, while also sharing an article about the subject. His son responded to the tweet, as he often does every few days, with a tweet about bitcoin coming after silver.

In another instance, a person was discussing with Spencer how he would likely have more bitcoin if he didnt listen to his father.

Im sure I wouldve had more sats had I stopped listening to his bitcoin advice earlier, Spencer said.

When his father shared an article that talked about the beginning or the end of the so-called bitcoin bear market, Spencer replied without reading the article. Ill go out on a limb and bet you think its the beginning, his son remarked.

Lets just say, similar to Peter Schiffs constant tweets about how much he dislikes bitcoin, Spencer tweets back at his dad just as much.

If [Microstrategys] Michael Saylor is correct that the higher the bitcoin price rises the less risky it is to buy, then it must also be true that the lower the bitcoin price falls the riskier it is to own. Thats an extremely dangerous characteristic for an asset to have during a bear market, Peter wrote on April 22 tagging the Microstrategy CEO.

Like clockwork, a few hours later, Spencer Schiff gave his father an amusing response, and oftentimes Spencer gets a lot more likes and retweets.

Spencer replied:

Do you need a reminder that bitcoin has appreciated 600% in the past year?

Peter Schiff and his son Spencer seem to have a solid and fun-loving relationship, and everything said is mostly an attack against BTC or gold. The gold bug has been against bitcoin for a very long time and it doesnt seem like he will be convinced any time soon, even by his own son.

Bitcoiners have formed an alliance with Spencer Schiff to a degree, as they know he is quick to respond to one of his fathers anti-bitcoin tweets. Despite the disagreements about bitcoin, both Spencer and Peter are free-market advocates and both have followed Irwins libertarian ideals.

What do you think about Peter and Spencer Schiffs bitcoin relationship? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

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Gold Bug vs. Bitcoin Bug: A Look at the Curious Relationship Between Peter and Spencer Schiff Featured Bitcoin News - Bitcoin News