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Josh Turek
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Josh Turek speaks into a microphone from his wheelchair, gesturing before an American flag and red, white, and blue bunting. Josh Turek smiles while wearing a black cap and tan jacket. Josh Turek of the United States men's wheelchair basketball team shoots the ball from his sports wheelchair on an indoor court. Iowa Democratic Senate candidate Josh Turek sits beside his wheelchair in the open door of a gray car outside a polling place, with wet pavement and umbrellas behind him.
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Josh Turek speaks into a microphone from his wheelchair, gesturing before an American flag and red, white, and blue bunting.
Olympian and senator Josh Turek addressing supporters in Iowa in the days before the 2026 midterm elections.

Josh Turek

Born with a birth defect and cut six times from the U.S. Paralympic team, the Iowa senator-elect doesn’t believe in “impossible.”
Also known as: Joshua Peter Turek
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Tracy Grant
Tracy Grant is a senior editor at Encyclopaedia Britannica. She previously served as editor in chief, the first woman to hold that title. 
Tracy Grant
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Britannica Editors
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
Britannica Editors
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•History

When Democrat Josh Turek decided to run for the U.S. Senate in Iowa, a state that hadn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since 2008 and had given Donald Trump a 13-point margin of victory in the 2024 presidential election, it wasn’t the hardest or most audacious thing he had done in his life. Not by a long shot. Turek, born with spina bifida, had undergone 21 operations by the time he was 12. Doctors...

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