In 2019, a 36-year-old Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), newly elected to Congress, was photographed for the inaugural Time 100 Next List, wearing a dashing eye patch and looking upwards with hope. A Harvard-educated Navy SEAL who’d lost his legs while fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, Crenshaw was in rarefied company, listed among the magazine’s candidates for tomorrow’s leaders: musicians like Billie Eilish and Bad Bunny; athletes like Coco Gauff and Alysa Liu; business leaders like Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong; fellow political stars like Pete Buttigieg.
Crenshaw was, Time declared, “what the Republican Party might look like after Donald Tru …
