Frak Reynolds

Fraklin Reynolds (born November 2nd, 1984) was an American statesman, lawyer, and politician who served as the 49th President of the United States from 2033 to 2037, until his assassination. Prior to that, he served as Senator of New Hampshire, Secretary of Energy, and governor of Pennsylvania. Historians agree that his presidency had positive effects on the economy, diplomacy, and America as a whole. He decreased the national debt, balanced the budget, unearthed massive corruption, and fought for civil rights. He is frequently placed in the upper-tier of American presidents.

Early life and education
Reynolds was born in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on November 2nd, 1984. He was part of a half-Italian, half-Irish family of 5, with 2 old brothers. His father worked as an engineer for manufacturing firms, while his mother stayed at home. When he was 5 years old, Reynolds moved up to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, so that his father could get a job at a steel mill. This is where he spent most of his life. Reynolds became a smart student, interested in books and world affairs. He tested out of high school at age 16, at which point he attended university.

Reynolds went to Hillsdale College in Michigan in 1999. He initially studied for an English Major. However, the conservative teachings of Hillsdale convinced him to get into politics. He transferred from Hillsdale in the second semester of 2001 to attend Pennsylvania State University. This was partly so he could live closer to his family, but also so that he could get a joint major in both law and business. He graduated magna cum laude in 2005.

Legal Career
Straight out of college, Reynolds got a job as an auditor for a global auditing firm. This allowed him to work from his home in Pittsburgh, and provide for his aging parents. He made good money, yet Reynolds wasn't happy reviewing paperwork all day. He worked as an auditor for slightly under three years before sending his parents to stay with his older brother. A connection from one of his Hillsdale Professors allowed Reynolds to get a job working for the corporate law firm Smith & Ryan out of Detroit.

S&R had major clients in Michigan, like the Detroit Steel Company, Ford Automobiles, mattress-makers in Grand Rapids, and farm moguls. Reynolds became one of the best lawyers in the firm for getting big-name companies to join S&R. It is estimated he made the firm almost 500 million dollars when working there. Reynolds personally represented many companies in court and was seen as a passionate and strong civil defendant. He argued in front of the Michigan Supreme Court twice while working as a corporate lawyer. In 2012, the board of S&R elected to make Reynolds a partner at the firm, hence renaming it SRR. Both of the original founders, Ed Smith and Rick Ryan retired a few months after, at which point Reynolds was chosen as the managing partner of the law firm.

He served as the head of what was renamed Northeast Law for 10 years. Reynold's biggest contribution to Northeast was in expanding the firm. He created offices in Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, and New York. The latter was where Reynolds lived for most of that time period, in an apartment right above Central Park. Despite being the managing partner of the company, Reynolds himself didn't hesitate from arguing in court. In those 10 years, he gained clients from major big tech companies, Wall Street investment firms, and even some political organizations.

Reynolds got involved in politics while leading Northeast Law. He personally donated to both Republican and Democratic officials, becoming instrumental in the election of senators John Fetterman and Chris Sununu. In late 2020, he met the District Attorney for New York, Duey Ellis Long, and the two partnered up to prosecute the Wall Street firm Melvin Capital for SEC violations. Long would go on to get elected Mayor of New York in 2021, and Senator in 2024. They remained close political allies for years after that.

In his 30s, Reynolds announced that he was retiring from Northeast Law. He got a job as a law professor at Columbia University for a few semesters, but in 2025, Reynolds decided to move back to his native state of Pennsylvania, where he began to work on his own. He specialized in constitutional, civil, and criminal prosecution straight from his office in Philadelphia. One of his biggest cases was the counsel of the Energy Worker's Union in a civil prosecution against the Pennsylvania Energy Company. Under his direction, the PEC was convicted on breaking union contracts, and as a result, was forced to pay a massive settlement. The Energy Worker's Union named Reynolds as a board member after that.

Reynold's biggest case was in 2027. The recently elected Pennsylvania Governor Arc attempted to break up the PEC on the grounds of being a monopoly. Reynolds realized that, if the company was broken up, it would hurt the Energy Worker's Union particularly, and would cause a drop in pay. He called a truce between the company and the union. Not long after, Reynolds sued the state of Pennsylvania on constitutional grounds for breaking the 8th amendment and the Contract Clause. This case, though improbable, was appealed to the United States Supreme Court, where the vote was 5-4 in Reynold's favor. His argument put him on the political map. He later said that his visit to Washington DC convinced him to begin a political career.

In 2027, the PEC announced that Reynolds was their new corporate president. Reynolds had never run an energy company before, but he got the hang of it quickly. He once again expanded the business, like he did with Northeast Law, into the American Energy Company, with his office located in Dover, New Hampshire. His first act was to promise that the AEC would specialize in green and renewable energy. After gaining a reputation as a "businessman with a heart, and pockets of gold", Reynolds finally announced his entry in politics by running in the 2028 presidential election.

Independent Candidate
Reynolds ran an independent 3rd party campaign against the incumbent president Plastic and the Governor of Pennsylvania Arc, both of whom had been renominated from 2024. His platform supported limited government, action on climate change, social liberalism, and balancing the budget. Due to his populist, radical centrist appeals, Reynolds was able to raise a massive amount of money in order to gain polling numbers, spending much of his own fortune. He and his running mate, the former DA, Mayor of New York, and Senator, Due Long, became the first independent candidates to enter the presidential debates since Ross Perot. In the end, Reynolds and Long got 60 electoral votes with 20% of the popular vote. Arc was elected in a landslide.

Political Career
Reynolds was selected to be the Secretary of Energy under Arc. After being confirmed by the senate he resigned from the AEC. While in the Energy Department, Reynolds passed bills like GNEET, which got the US to 50% Green Energy, and raised the federal excise tax on gasoline to 40 cents a barrel. Only a month after taking office he entered the special election for Pennsylvania Governor, where he won unopposed. Reynolds was one of two governors in that time to balance the budget, and he also passed bills to protect workers' rights. During the 2030 Summer War, he came up with the idea for NEMP technology and was instrumental in the nuclear attack on Beijing, as well as the ending of the war. Reynolds was given a Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions.

Reynolds ran in late 2029 to become the junior senator of New Hampshire. His opponent was the businessman J.J. Roamer, against whom he won in a landslide. Once in office, Reynolds passed bills to conserve natural parks, limit the two-party system, and repeal the PATRIOT Act. He was seen as a crucial swing vote for the 2031-2033 senate. Only after the 2030 midterms did he announce however that he would be effectively caucusing with the GOP, narrowly breaking the Democrat's supermajority.

In 2032, Reynolds entered the Republican Party Presidential Primaries. He faced off against his former VP pick, Due Long, and the former Vice President and Senator from Maine, Revan. Frak became the presumptive nominee in February of that year after both of his opponents conceded. He selected the one-term governor of Georgia, Artic, as his running mate. In the general election, Artic and Reynolds faced off against the incumbent president Arc, and his VP, Evan. They held a polling lead for much of the race, due to the fact that an inflation crisis was ravaging the nation, and Arc was blamed for inactivity. Reynolds ran a relatively similar campaign to 2028, with the same radical centrist policies, though he stressed more libertarian economics than before. This garnered him the joint nomination of the Libertarian Party as well.

Reynolds won the election with 52% of the popular vote and 281 Electoral Votes, getting elected the 49th president of the United States. The deciding state in the election was Pennsylvania, where both Arc and Reynolds had served as governor.

Presidency
As president, Reynolds ran an aggressive administration. His first major order of business was to get a grip on inflation, which he did by raising interest rates, reserve requirements, and freezing the coining of treasury bonds. The inflation rate steadily fell from 10% to 4% during his term. Afterward, he balanced the budget by raising taxes on the rich and cutting spending by 15%. Reynolds also legalized marijuana, restricted campaign donations, and effectively placed the Federal Reserve under the power of the US Treasury. Reynolds got the legacy as an anti-corruption president when he passed the Anti-Cronyism Act and the Bureaucracy Reform Act.

There were several disasters from 2033 to 2036, such as the flooding of coastal regions, and a hurricane that swept the southeastern area of the country. Reynolds passed the Ocean and Hurricane Relief Acts, which built seawalls along the US coast, planted kelp to stop rising ocean levels, directed ice in the polar glaciers to be refreezed, and built critical infrastructure to prevent hurricanes in the future. He also received much praise for his foreign policy, after the Greek government sent missiles at a US plane above their airspace. Reynolds was able to negotiate with the Greek government peacefully, resolving the issue without declaring war or spending American lives.

Reynolds was reelected in 2036 by a landslide margin. He faced off against the independent candidate Ironic Bepis, and the North Carolina Senator Jay. His democratic opponent had initially been the Delaware Senator Shy, however after Shy dropped out, the Democrats lost much momentum and turnout. Meanwhile, Ironic split a large number of votes away from Jay, hurting his chances severely. The final margin was 53%-40%-7%, with Reynolds winning 367 electoral votes. He became the first Republican to win Illinois, New York, and New Jersey since George HW Bush in 1988, due to strong union support, increased catholic turnout, and the fact that Senator Long had caused those states to swing more Republican.

In his second term, Reynolds initially focused on civil rights. He supported and signed several bills written by his Secretary of Labor Defiant Machine. These were the Equality Act and the Equal Rights Amendment, which protected the rights of LGBT people and women, as well as the Police Reform Act, which decriminalized all drugs and removed police immunity. Reynolds personally wrote the 30th Amendment to the Constitution, which altered the 13th amendment to prevent prison labor. This was his second amendment in office, after the 28th. Reynolds was unable to get the Abortion Freedoms Act, which he sponsored, to pass. It would later pass under his successor, Artic, in 2039.

Soon after, Reynolds passed the General Tax Reform Act, to raise tax revenue. This established a nationwide sales tax while lowering the income tax to its lowest rate in history, 18%. As a result, the US budget surplus grew substantially. Not long after, Reynolds attended the United Nations summit, where the US agreed to three treaties, the UNITE Agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, and the UNCLOS Treaty. The latter two dealt with climate change by preventing bottom trawling, carbon emissions, and other pollutant activities. Meanwhile, the UNITE Agreement was responsible for the creation of hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the US, eventually leading the country to full employment.

The first major challenge of Reynold's second term came when a viral outbreak began to spread from England and Canada. Reynolds was quick to close borders. Once it became apparent that the virus was waterborne, and was thriving around regions like the Colorado River, and the Great Lakes, he quarantined those states and temporarily shut down their water supply. Within a period of slightly over 4 months, the virus died down. Reynolds himself contracted it, having to quarantine for a few weeks. It was later found that the virus adversely affected LGBTQ people.

Approaching the end of 2037, Reynolds approved the Government Audit Act. This employed hundreds of private investigators and special prosecutors to act on behalf of the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Department of Treasury. Its initial goal was to root out government waste and cut pork spending from the budget. About a month later, however, Reynolds signaled that a much larger discovery had been found.

Him and Vice President Artic held an interview with CNBC Reporter Strom Thurmond in late October. In this interview, Reynolds revealed the findings of the Government Audit. Ever since the 1990s and earlier, about 175 billion dollars had been meticulously stolen from taxpayer revenue. It was put into a massive, untraceable slush fund, used for political campaigns, organizations, military endeavors, research operations, and other secret activities. The evidence of this, as well as details about the presence of aliens, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and fraud pertaining to the 2000 Presidential Election, were released later that day.

Assassination
After the corruption was unearthed, many feared for President Frak's safety. He remained in Camp David, protected by private bodyguards until the protests surrounding the events had died down. Evidently, Reynolds had been threatened by high-up operatives to not release the finding of the government audit. He suspected that, after he already had, they wouldn't dare do anything to him.

Reynolds emerged from hiding on his birthday, November 2nd. He traveled to his hometown of Philadelphia, at which point he made a speech announcing that "we have just scratched the surface of corruption." Sure enough, he had been called to testify in front of congress by the newly created Auditgate Committee. Meanwhile, Director of the CIA, Revan, had recently been provided with an even more telling book relating to government secrets. In the late evening of November 2nd, Reynolds drove to his home in downtown Philadelphia, where he had invited many of his friends for a calm birthday celebration. He exited his motorcade with Secret Service agents close behind him at 6:15 PM EST. Members of the press swarmed nearby him, bombarding the president with questions. At that moment, an unknown shooter from one of the many high-story buildings in Philadelphia shot three times at Reynolds, hitting him in the torso, abdomen, and chest. He was rushed to the hospital, where, at 7:10, he was pronounced dead.

Political opinions
Reynolds was a registered Independent throughout his entire life. He was frequently characterized as a moderate Republican, a Rockefeller Republican, a liberal republican, and a centrist. However, he had a number of libertarian and left-wing beliefs. Ultimately, Reynolds described himself as a classical liberal, built in the mold of people such as Congressman John Anderson.

On social issues, Reynolds was reliably left-wing. He openly supported LGBT rights, as well as gay marriage, and called for the passing of the Equality Act. He was also a known feminist, and anti-racist, supporting the BLM and #MeToo Movements. On abortion rights, Reynolds was largely pro-choice and opposed measures to ban abortion on the grounds that they infringed on the 14th amendment, as well as the separation of church and state. That being said, he supported the Hyde Amendment and government-sponsored measures to reduce abortion throughout the country. He did not support mandatory prayer in schools or methods to establish Christianity as the official religion of the US. Frequently, Reynolds clashed with the Religious Right of the Republican Party, and criticized the GOP for being too accepting of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

As for foreign policy, Reynolds was largely a non-interventionist. He strongly supported Israel, Taiwan, and the Tibetan Independence movement. Most of his work in foreign policy came as Secretary of Energy, during which he was extremely influential in creating NEMP technology and fighting the Chinese forces in the 2030 Summer War. When Greece shot down a US passenger plane, Reynolds peacefully resolved the situation by getting the President of Greece to resign. During his term, there were no major wars that the US became involved in, though he did not do much in the way of drawing back military troops from other countries.

Personal Life
Reynolds had no children or spouses. He frequently took time off from the presidency to his homes in Philadelphia, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and Dover, New Hampshire. In his free time, he enjoyed reading science fiction novels, hiking, and cooking. Friends of Reynolds remarked that, "he really had no personal life outside of his career."

In 2023, Reynolds came out as homosexual. This made him the first openly LGBTQ+ president in history. He was a practicing catholic, but called himself "philosophically Buddhist." The Catholic Church itself clashed with Reynolds frequently, on issues such as his sexuality, and his position on abortion rights. Following his death, it was revealed that Reynolds was a member of the Freemasons, an organization strictly forbidden for Catholics. There was a movement to posthumously excommunicate him, but it was stopped by Pope Gregory XIII.