Ted Cruz to announce presidential bid Monday 
 
 Sen. Ted Cruz plans to announce Monday that he will run for president of the United States, according to his senior advisers, accelerating his already rapid three-year rise from a tea party insurgent in Texas into a divisive political force in Washington. The firebrand Texan may have few Senate colleagues who will back his White House bid, but his appeal to his party's base who vote disproportionately in Republican primaries could make him competitive in Iowa and beyond. Joining the team Monday will be Cruz's wife, Heidi, a managing director at Goldman Sachs in Houston, who will take leave from the firm and accompany her husband on the campaign trail.
– If it seems like it's already gone on for years, we are currently 596 (five hundred ninety-six) days away from the election that will determine the next president of the United States of America. But we are only one day away from the first official hat getting tossed into the 2016 ring by one of the many who been circling it, and the Houston Chronicle reports that it belongs to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Unnamed senior advisers say the Republican will announce his candidacy tomorrow, skipping right past the exploratory committee fun (looking at you, Jim Webb) and going right for the hat-tossing. More unnamed sources confirm the pending announcement to the AP, which notes Cruz will likely be soon joined by the likes of Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio. And if 2016 doesn't work out for Cruz, he'll keep his current day job until 2019.