71BEN SASSE
48 • Forging his path
BY MITT ROMNEY
A number of U.S. Senators have impressive résumés, political skills and
admirable personal qualities; what distinguishes Ben Sasse is that he
combines them all and excels in each of them.
Sasse draws upon impressive scholarship and academic experience
at Harvard, Oxford, Yale and as president of Midland University to iden-
tify and dissect the challenges faced by our country. Today, his focus
includes the rise of China, its malevolent actions and the responses re-
quired to confront them.
With a mix of self-deprecating humor, historical anecdotes and com-
pelling logic, Sasse grabs and holds audiences from the Senate floor to
the Nebraska campaign trail.
But Sasse’s rising national influence is derived less from his oratory
skills and education than from his character.
Senator Sasse does not shrink from speaking the truth regardless of
the political consequence. His state party’s efforts to censure him are a
testament to his honor. Ben Sasse is one of our best.
Romney is a Republican Senator from Utah
VijayaGadde46 • Tech
decisionmakerTwitter CEO Jack Dorsey was
on a private island in the Pacific
when he found out President
Trump had been suspended
from his platform. Conveying
the news, on Jan. 6, was Vijaya
Gadde, Twitter’s top lawyer and
head of policy. In a phone call,
first reported by the New York
Times, Gadde told Dorsey that
the decision had been taken
to reduce the risk of further
violence after the attack on the
Capitol earlier that day. Within
two days, Gadde and a team of
other employees had persuaded
a hesitant Dorsey to ban Trump
permanently.
Gadde, 46, is one of Twitter’s
most powerful executives. Her
boss, Dorsey, has delegated to
her Twitter’s content- moderation
decisions; she was the architect
of the 2019 decision to ban
all political advertising, and
is responsible for the warning
labels that Twitter applied
to COVID-19 and election-
interference misinformation in- While Twitter is still home
to much misinformation and
harassment, Gadde’s influence is
slowly turning the company into
one that sees free speech not
as sacrosanct—but as just one
human right among many that
need to be weighed against one
another. —B.P.
SUNAK: ISABEL INFANTES—AFP/GETTY IMAGES; AKI-SAWYERR: ILLUSTRATION BY ALEXIS FRANKLIN FOR TIME; SASSE: SARAH
SILBIGER—THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX; GADDE: MARTINA ALBERTAZZI—BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES