Will Hurd

Fiscal policy

In 2019, Hurd was one of seven Republicans to break with the Trump administration position and vote with Democrats to end a government shutdown.

Foreign policy and national security

Hurd called for a ramp-up of U.S. military action against ISIS in Libya and in Syria, using the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan as a model. He blamed ISIL's rise on the Obama administration, accusing it of underestimating the threat. Hurd has written that Islamic extremists "are in it for the long haul, which means that we have to be also". On the broader Syrian civil war, Hurd has written that "the brutal dictator Bashar al-Asad must go".

Hurd has called for greater U.S. defenses against foreign cyber-attacks. Following the Office of Personnel Management data breach, he wrote that federal cybersecurity was woefully inadequate. He opposes applying the Wassenaar Arrangement to cyber technologies, arguing that "attempting to regulate cybersecurity technologies through export controls is a fundamentally flawed approach" that places the U.S. at risk and "will not achieve the goal of curbing human rights violations".

Hurd opposed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (an international agreement with Iran over its nuclear program), calling it "short-sighted and ultimately dangerous", and called for the U.S. to reimpose various sanctions against Iran, arguing that Iran violated its obligations under the agreement. He has spoken out against Russian aggression, calling the Russian government "our adversary".

Hurd favored the lifting of a longstanding U.S. ban on the export of crude oil.

Hurd opposes the normalization of Cuba–U.S. relations.

Along with Martha McSally and Michael McCaul, Hurd helped draft the Final Report of the Task Force on Combating Terrorist and Foreign Fighter Travel of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee.

Hurd questioned FBI director James Comey's recommendation not to seek prosecution of then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton over the Clinton e-mail controversy. Referencing his experience in the CIA, Hurd said he knew the importance of classified information because he had seen his friends killed and assets put in harm's way to obtain such sensitive information.

In January 2018, Hurd voted down Democratic motions in the House Intelligence Committee to allow the Justice Department and FBI to review the Devin Nunes memo, a document alleging FBI abuses of surveillance powers in the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, before releasing it to the public. The FBI said it had "grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo's accuracy". Hurd voted against the release of a related memo authored by Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee.

Hurd has opposed the CIA's efforts to mandate weaker encryption on smartphones and other devices to make it easier for federal agents to unlock them, arguing that stronger encryption thwarts hackers and protects national security.

Immigration

Hurd spoke out against Trump's 2017 executive order to build a wall along the southern border with Mexico, saying it was a "third-century solution to a 21st-century problem" and the "most expensive and least effective way to secure the border". Hurd instead advocated for a "flexible, sector-by-sector approach that empowers Border Patrol agents on the ground with the resources they need". He proposed using "a mix of technology. It's going to be significantly cheaper than building a wall. Let's focus on drug traffickers... and human smugglers".

Hurd criticized Trump's 2017 executive order to bar the entry of nationals of seven Muslim-majority countries to the U.S., describing it as the "ultimate display of mistrust".

Donald Trump

In February 2017, Hurd voted against a resolution that would have directed the House to request ten years of President Trump's tax returns, which would then have been reviewed by the House Ways and Means Committee in a closed session. In February 2019, on Real Time with Bill Maher, Maher pressed Hurd about his vote against the February 2017 resolution to request Trump's tax returns. Hurd said that the resolution had not been on the floor for a vote, but that he would support renewed efforts by the House to obtain the returns.

In July 2019, Hurd was one of four Republican House members to vote in support of a motion to condemn tweets by Trump calling for the members of the Squad to "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came".

Hurd did not openly support impeachment for the Trump-Ukraine scandal of fall 2019. He said, "some of these things are indeed damning. However, I want to make sure we get through this entire investigation before coming to some kind of conclusion". In December 2019, he voted against both articles of impeachment.

In a July 2020 interview, Hurd said he might not vote for Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

Other views

According to a 2016 analysis by Vote Smart, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization that collects and distributes information on candidates for public office in the United States, Hurd generally supports anti-abortion legislation, opposes an income tax increase, opposes federal spending that doesn't benefit the military or state security, and supports lowering taxes as a means of promoting economic growth, supports building the Keystone Pipeline, opposes the federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, opposes gun-control legislation, and supports increased American intervention in Iraq and Syria beyond air support.