Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. Tracing its heritage back to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison's Democratic-Republican Party, the modern-day Democratic Party was founded around 1828 by supporters of Andrew Jackson, making it the world's oldest active political party; the Democrats' dominant worldview was once social conservatism and economic liberalism, while populism was its leading characteristic in the rural South. In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt ran as a third-party candidate in the Progressive Party, beginning a switch of political platforms between the Democratic and Republican Party over the coming decades, leading to Woodrow Wilson being elected as the first fiscally progressive Democrat. Since Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal coalition in the 1930s, the Democratic Party has promoted a social liberal platform, supporting social justice. Well into the 20th century, the party had conservative pro-business and Southern conservative-populist anti-business wings.
The New Deal Coalition of 1932–1964 attracted strong support from voters of recent European extraction—many of whom were Catholics based in the cities. After Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal of the 1930s, the pro-business wing withered outside the South. After the racial turmoil of the 1960s, most Southern whites and many Northern Catholics moved into the Republican Party at the presidential level; the once-powerful labor union element became less supportive after the 1970s. White Evangelicals and Southerners became Republican at the state and local level since the 1990s. People living in metropolitan areas, women and gender minorities, college graduates, racial and ethnic minorities in the United States, such as Jewish Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, Arab Americans and African Americans, tend to support the Democratic Party much more than they support the rival Republican Party; the Democratic Party's philosophy of modern liberalism advocates social and economic equality, along with the welfare state.
It seeks to provide government regulation in the economy. These interventions, such as the introduction of social programs, support for labor unions, affordable college tuitions, moves toward universal health care and equal opportunity, consumer protection and environmental protection form the core of the party's economic policy. Fifteen Democrats have served as President of the United States; the first was President Andrew Jackson, the seventh president and served from 1829 to 1837. The most recent was President Barack Obama, the 44th president and held office from 2009 to 2017. Following the 2018 midterm elections, the Democrats held a majority in the House of Representatives, "trifectas" in 14 states, the mayoralty of numerous major American cities, such as Boston, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Portland and Washington, D. C. Twenty-three state governors were Democrats, the Party was the minority party in the Senate and in most state legislatures; as of March 2019, four of the nine Justices of the Supreme Court had been appointed by Democratic presidents.
Democratic Party officials trace its origins to the inspiration of the Democratic-Republican Party, founded by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and other influential opponents of the Federalists in 1792. That party inspired the Whigs and modern Republicans. Organizationally, the modern Democratic Party arose in the 1830s with the election of Andrew Jackson. Since the nomination of William Jennings Bryan in 1896, the party has positioned itself to the left of the Republican Party on economic issues, they have been more liberal on civil rights issues since 1948. On foreign policy, both parties have changed position several times; the Democratic Party evolved from the Jeffersonian Republican or Democratic-Republican Party organized by Jefferson and Madison in opposition to the Federalist Party of Alexander Hamilton and John Adams. The party favored republicanism; the Democratic-Republican Party came to power in the election of 1800. After the War of 1812, the Federalists disappeared and the only national political party left was the Democratic-Republicans.
The era of one-party rule in the United States, known as the Era of Good Feelings, lasted from 1816 until the early 1830s, when the Whig Party became a national political group to rival the Democratic-Republicans. However, the Democratic-Republican Party still had its own internal factions, they split over the choice of a successor to President James Monroe and the party faction that supported many of the old Jeffersonian principles, led by Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren, became the modern Democratic Party. As Norton explains the transformation in 1828: Jacksonians believed the people's will had prevailed. Through a lavishly financed coalition of state parties, political leaders, newspaper editors, a popular movement had elected the president; the Democrats became the nation's first well-organized national party and tight party organization became the hallmark of nineteenth-century American politics. Opposing factions led by Henry Clay helped form the Whig Party; the Democratic Party had a small yet decisive advantage over the Whigs until the 1850s, when the Whigs fell apart over the issue of slavery.
In 1854, angry with the Kansas–Nebraska Act, anti-slavery Dem
Teaneck, New Jersey
Teaneck is a township of Bergen County in New Jersey, United States, a suburb in the New York metropolitan area. As of the 2010 United States Census, the township's population was 39,776, reflecting an increase of 516 from the 39,260 counted in the 2000 Census, which had in turn increased by 1,435 from the 37,825 counted in the 1990 Census; as of 2010 it was the second-most populous among the 70 municipalities in Bergen County, behind Hackensack, which had a population of 43,010. Teaneck was created on February 19, 1895 by an act of the New Jersey Legislature from portions of Englewood Township and Ridgefield Township, both of which are now defunct, along with portions of Bogota and Leonia. Independence followed the result of a referendum held on January 14, 1895, in which voters favored incorporation by a 46–7 margin. To address the concerns of Englewood Township's leaders, the new municipality was formed as a township, rather than succumbing to the borough craze sweeping across Bergen County at the time.
On May 3, 1921, June 1, 1926, portions of what had been Teaneck were transferred to Overpeck Township. Teaneck lies at the junction of Interstate 95 and the eastern terminus of Interstate 80; the township is bisected into north and south portions by Route 4 and east and west by the CSX Transportation River Subdivision. Commercial development is concentrated in four main shopping areas, on Cedar Lane, Teaneck Road, DeGraw Avenue, West Englewood Avenue and Queen Anne Road, more known as "The Plaza". Teaneck's location at the crossroads of river, road and other geographical features has made it a site of many momentous events across the centuries. After the American defeat at the Battle of Fort Washington, George Washington and the troops of the Continental Army retreated across New Jersey from the British Army, traveling through Teaneck and crossing the Hackensack River at New Bridge Landing, which has since been turned into a state park and historic site commemorating the events of 1776 and of early colonial life.
In 1965, Teaneck voluntarily desegregated its public schools, after the Board of Education approved a plan to do so by a 7–2 vote on May 13, 1964. Teaneck has a diverse population, with large Jewish and African American communities, growing numbers of Hispanic and Asian residents; the origin and meaning of the name "Teaneck" is not known, but speculation is that it could come from various Dutch or English words, or it could be Native American in origin, meaning "the woods". An alternative is from the Dutch "Tiene Neck" meaning "neck where there are willows"; the earliest uses of the word "Teaneck" were in reference to a series of Lenni Lenape Native American camps near the ridge formed by what became Queen Anne Road. Chief Oratam was the leader of a settlement called "Achikinhesacky" that existed along Overpeck Creek in the area near what became Fycke Lane. A neighborhood variously called East Hackensack or New Hackensack was established along a ridge on the east bank of the Hackensack River, site of a Native American trail that followed the river's path along what is now River Road, with the earliest known buildings constructed dating back as far as 1704.
Other early European settlements were established along what became Teaneck Road, the site of a number of Dutch stone houses that remain standing since their construction in the 1700s, several of which have been added to the National Register of Historic Places. During November 1776, General George Washington passed through Teaneck in the aftermath of the Battle of Fort Lee, as part of the hasty retreat of ragtag Colonial forces from Fort Lee on the Hudson River in the wake of the successful British invasion and defeat of Continental Army forces in Manhattan on the opposite side of the river during the Battle of Fort Washington. Early on the morning of November 20, 1776, Washington rode by horseback from his headquarters in Hackensack through Teaneck and across Overpeck Creek to Fort Lee. There he watched, he had his troops abandon their position on the Palisades in a poorly organized retreat in which most of their supplies were abandoned, with Washington's troops moving inland across Overpeck Creek and through Teaneck to New Bridge Landing and crossing the bridge, one of the few available at the time.
The soldiers, many poorly dressed, ill-equipped and without shoes, faced the cold rain, leading Thomas Paine to compose the pamphlet, The American Crisis, in which he captured the depth of the defeat by describing those days with the words "These are the times that try men's souls". Throughout the war, both British and American forces occupied local homesteads at various times, Teaneck citizens played key roles on both sides of the conflict. After the war, Teaneck returned to being a quiet farm community. Fruits and vegetables grown locally were taken by wagon to markets in nearby Paterson and New York City. New growth and development were spurred in the mid-19th century by the establishment of railroads throughout the area. Wealthy New Yorkers and others purchased large properties on which they built spacious mansions and manor houses, they traveled daily thus becoming Teaneck's first suburban commuters. The largest estate built in Teaneck belonged to William Walter Phelps, the son of a wealthy railroad magnate and New York City merchant.
In 1865, Phelps arrived in Teaneck and enlarged an old farmhouse into a large Victorian mansion on the site of the present Municipal Government Complex. Phelps' "Englewood Farm" encompassed nearly 2,000 acres of landscaped property within the central part of Teaneck, on which some 600,000 trees were planted. Subsequent develo
Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies
The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies is a division of Johns Hopkins University based in Washington, D. C. United States, with campuses in Bologna, Italy, it is considered one of the top graduate schools for international relations in the world. The institution is devoted to the study of international affairs, economics and policy research and education. Among the political scientists and economists based here are former World Bank Chief Economist Anne Krueger. S. Department of State Eliot Cohen, its students are selected from a large pool of applicants from all parts of the world. The SAIS Washington D. C. campus is located on Massachusetts Avenue's Embassy Row, just off Dupont Circle and across from the Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, next to the Center for Global Development and the Peterson Institute. The school has hosted world leaders on a regular basis for public debate in international affairs; the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies was founded in 1943 by Paul H. Nitze and Christian Herter as a standalone graduate school and became part of The Johns Hopkins University in 1950.
The school was established during World War II by a group of statesmen who sought new methods of preparing men and women to cope with the international responsibilities that would be thrust upon the United States in the postwar world. Nitze feared the diplomatic and economic expertise developed in World War II might get lost if the nation became isolationist; the founders assembled a faculty of scholars and professionals to teach international relations, international economics, foreign languages to a small group of students. The curriculum was designed to be both practical; the natural choice for the location of the school was Washington, D. C. a city where international resources are abundant and where American foreign policy is shaped and set in motion. When the school opened in 1944, 15 students were enrolled. In 1955 the school created the Bologna Center in Italy, the first full-time graduate school located in Europe under an American higher-education system. By 1963 Johns Hopkins SAIS outgrew its first quarters on Florida Avenue and moved to one of its present buildings on Massachusetts Avenue.
In 1986, the Hopkins–Nanjing Center was created in Nanjing, completing the school's global presence. Johns Hopkins SAIS is a global school with campuses in three continents, it has nearly 700 full-time students in Washington, D. C.. Of these, 60 percent come from 37 percent from more than 70 other countries. Around 50% are women and 22% are from U. S. minority groups. SAIS Europe is home to the Bologna Center and the only full-time international relations graduate program in Europe that operates under an American higher-education system, the Hopkins–Nanjing Center, which teaches courses in both Chinese and English, is jointly administered by Johns Hopkins SAIS and Nanjing University; the school offers multidisciplinary instruction leading to the degrees of master of arts for early and mid-career professionals, as well as a doctor of philosophy program. 300 students graduate from the Washington, D. C. campus each year from the two-year master of arts program in international relations and international economics.
Unlike most other international affairs graduate schools that offer professional master's degrees, Johns Hopkins SAIS requires its master of arts candidates to fulfill the International Ecopass a one-hour capstone oral examination synthesizing and integrating knowledge from the student's regional or functional concentration and international economics. The oral examination and international economics requirements of the master of arts curriculum have been the signature aspects of the school's education. A study conducted in 2005 examined graduate international relations programs throughout the United States, interviewing over a thousand professionals in the field, with the results subsequently published in the Foreign Policy magazine. 65 percent of respondents named Johns Hopkins University–SAIS as the best terminal master's program in international relations. SAIS received the most votes, followed by Georgetown University, Harvard University, Tufts University, Columbia University; the latest edition of the study was produced in 2014, with the master's program at SAIS ranking second globally after Georgetown.
Since 1990, SAIS and the Fletcher School have been the only nonlaw schools in the United States to participate in the prestigious Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition. Competing against full-time law students, SAIS generalists have performed well. SAIS has twice placed second overall out of 12 schools and advanced to the "final four" in its region. In head-to-head competitions, SAIS has defeated elite law schools such as Georgetown University and the University of Virginia. SAIS students have demonstrated their versatility by competing in the Sustainable Innovation Summit Challenge hosted by the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Arizona. Two different SAIS teams won first place in both 2007 and 2008, besting teams of MBA students from some of the world's top business schools. A joint team from SAIS and the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business received second place in the first "Global Challenge" competition, a first-of-its-kind competition that challenged teams of MBA and other graduate students to develop a public–private venture to support development and the tourism industry in
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump is the 45th and current president of the United States. Before entering politics, he was a television personality. Trump was born and raised in the New York City borough of Queens and received an economics degree from the Wharton School, he was appointed president of his family's real estate business in 1971, renamed it The Trump Organization, expanded it from Queens and Brooklyn into Manhattan. The company built or renovated skyscrapers, hotels and golf courses. Trump started various side ventures, including licensing his name for real estate and consumer products, he managed the company until his 2017 inauguration. He co-authored several books, including The Art of the Deal, he owned the Miss Universe and Miss USA beauty pageants from 1996 to 2015, he produced and hosted The Apprentice, a reality television show, from 2003 to 2015. Forbes estimates his net worth to be $3.1 billion. Trump entered the 2016 presidential race as a Republican and defeated sixteen opponents in the primaries.
His campaign received extensive free media coverage. Commentators described his political positions as populist and nationalist. Trump has made many misleading statements during his campaign and presidency; the statements have been documented by fact-checkers, the media have described the phenomenon as unprecedented in American politics. Trump was elected president in a surprise victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, he became the oldest and wealthiest person to assume the presidency, the first without prior military or government service, the fifth to have won the election despite having lost the popular vote. His election and policies have sparked numerous protests. Many of his comments and actions have been perceived as racially charged or racist. During his presidency, Trump ordered a travel ban on citizens from several Muslim-majority countries, citing security concerns, he enacted a tax cut package for individuals and businesses, which rescinded the individual health insurance mandate and allowed oil drilling in the Arctic Refuge.
He repealed the Dodd-Frank Act that had imposed stricter constraints on banks in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. He has pursued his America First agenda in foreign policy, withdrawing the U. S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations, the Paris Agreement on climate change, the Iran nuclear deal. He recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, imposed import tariffs on various goods, triggering a trade war with China, negotiated with North Korea seeking denuclearization, he nominated two justices to the Supreme Court: Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. The Justice Department investigated links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government regarding its election interference; when Trump dismissed FBI Director James Comey, in charge of the investigation, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel to proceed with the probe. The Special Counsel investigation led to guilty pleas by five Trump associates to criminal charges including lying to investigators, campaign finance violations, tax fraud.
Trump denied accusations of collusion and obstruction of justice, calling the investigation a politically motivated "witch hunt". Attorney General William Barr wrote that the special counsel's final report did not find that Trump or his campaign had "conspired or coordinated" with Russia during the 2016 election, but did not reach a conclusion regarding obstruction of justice, neither implicating him regarding obstruction of justice nor exonerating him. Donald John Trump was born on June 14, 1946, at the Jamaica Hospital in the borough of Queens, New York City, his parents were Frederick Christ Trump, a real estate developer, Mary Anne MacLeod. Trump grew up in the Jamaica Estates neighborhood of Queens, attended the Kew-Forest School from kindergarten through seventh grade. At age 13, he was enrolled in the New York Military Academy, a private boarding school, after his parents discovered that he had made frequent trips into Manhattan without their permission. In 1964, Trump enrolled at Fordham University.
After two years, he transferred to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. While at Wharton, he worked at Elizabeth Trump & Son, he graduated in May 1968 with a B. S. in economics. When Trump was in college from 1964 to 1968, he obtained four student draft deferments. In 1966, he was deemed fit for military service based upon a medical examination and in July 1968, a local draft board classified him as eligible to serve. In October 1968, he was given a medical deferment that he attributed to spurs in the heels of both feet, which resulted in a 1-Y classification: "Unqualified for duty except in the case of a national emergency." In the December 1969 draft lottery, Trump's birthday, June 14, received a high number that would have given him a low probability to be called to military service without the 1-Y. In 1972, he was reclassified as 4-F. In 1973 and 1976, The New York Times reported that Trump had graduated first in his class at Wharton. However, a 1984 Times profile of Trump noted.
In 1988, New York magazine reported Trump conceding, "Okay, maybe not'first,' as myth has it, but he had'the highest grades possible.'" Michael Cohen, Trump's former attorney, testified to the House Oversight Committee in February 2019 that Trump "directed me to threaten his high school, his colleges and the College Board to never release his grades or SAT scores." Days after Trump stated in 2011, "I heard [Barack O
C-SPAN
Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network is an American cable and satellite television network, created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a nonprofit public service. It televises many proceedings of the United States federal government, as well as other public affairs programming; the C-SPAN network includes the television channels C-SPAN, C-SPAN2, C-SPAN3, the radio station WCSP-FM, a group of websites which provide streaming media and archives of C-SPAN programs. C-SPAN's television channels are available to 100 million cable and satellite households within the United States, while WCSP-FM is broadcast on FM radio in Washington, D. C. and is available throughout the U. S. on SiriusXM via Internet streaming, globally through apps for iOS, BlackBerry, Android devices. The network televises U. S. political events live and "gavel-to-gavel" coverage of the U. S. Congress, as well as occasional proceedings of the Canadian and British Parliaments and other major events worldwide, its coverage of political and policy events is unmoderated, providing the audience with unfiltered information about politics and government.
Non-political coverage includes historical programming, programs dedicated to non-fiction books, interview programs with noteworthy individuals associated with public policy. C-SPAN is a private, non-profit organization funded by its cable and satellite affiliates, it does not have advertisements on any of its networks, radio stations, or websites, nor does it solicit donations or pledges; the network operates independently, neither the cable industry nor Congress has control of its programming content. Brian Lamb, C-SPAN's chairman and former chief executive officer, first conceived the concept of C-SPAN in 1975 while working as the Washington, D. C. bureau chief of the cable industry trade magazine Cablevision. It was a time of rapid growth in the number of cable television channels available in the United States, Lamb envisioned a cable-industry financed nonprofit network for televising sessions of the U. S. Congress and other public affairs event and policy discussions. Lamb shared his idea with several cable executives.
Among them were Bob Rosencrans, who provided $25,000 of initial funding in 1979, John D. Evans, who provided the wiring and access to the headend needed for the distribution of the C-SPAN signal. C-SPAN was launched on March 19, 1979, in time for the first televised session made available by the House of Representatives, beginning with a speech by then-Tennessee representative Al Gore. Upon its debut, only 3.5 million homes were wired for C-SPAN, the network had just three employees. The second C-SPAN channel, C-SPAN2, followed on June 2, 1986 when the U. S. Senate permitted itself to be televised. C-SPAN3, the most recent expansion channel, began full-time operations on January 22, 2001, shows other public policy and government-related live events on weekdays along with weekend historical programming. C-SPAN3 is the successor of a digital channel called C-SPAN Extra, launched in the Washington D. C. area in 1997, televised live and recorded political events from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time Monday through Friday.
C-SPAN Radio began operations on October 9, 1997, covering similar events as the television networks and simulcasting their programming. The station broadcasts on WCSP in Washington, D. C. is available on XM Satellite Radio channel 120 and is streamed live at c-span.org. It was available on Sirius Satellite Radio from 2002 to 2006. Lamb semi-retired in March 2012, coinciding with the channel's 33rd anniversary, gave executive control of the network to his two lieutenants, Rob Kennedy and Susan Swain. On January 12, 2017, the online feed for C-SPAN1 was interrupted and replaced by a feed from the Russian television network RT America for 10 minutes. C-SPAN announced that they were troubleshooting the incident and were "operating under the assumption that it was an internal routing issue." C-SPAN celebrated its 10th anniversary in 1989 with a three-hour retrospective, featuring Lamb recalling the development of the network. The 15th anniversary was commemorated in an unconventional manner as the network facilitated a series of re-enactments of the seven historic Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, which were televised from August to October 1994, have been rebroadcast from time to time since.
Five years the series American presidents: Life Portraits, which won a Peabody Award, served as a year-long observation of C-SPAN's 20th anniversary. In 2004, C-SPAN celebrated its 25th anniversary, by which time the flagship network was viewed in 86 million homes, C-SPAN2 was in 70 million homes and C-SPAN3 was in eight million homes. On the anniversary date, C-SPAN repeated the first televised hour of floor debate in the House of Representatives from 1979 and, throughout the month, 25th anniversary features included "then and now" segments with journalists who had appeared on C-SPAN during its early years. Included in the 25th anniversary was an essay contest for viewers to write in about how C-SPAN has influenced their life regarding community service. For example, one essay contest winner wrote about how C-SPAN's non-fiction book programming serves as a resource in his charitable mission to record non-fiction audio books for people who are blind. To commemorate 25 years of taking viewer telephone calls, in 2005, C-SPAN had a 25-hour "call-in marathon", from 8:00 pm.
Eastern Time on Friday, October 7, concluding at 9:00 pm. Eastern Time on Saturday, October 8; the network had a viewer essay contest, the winner of, invited to co-host an hour of the broadcast from C-SPAN's Capitol
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is an American attorney and politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American, he served as a U. S. senator from Illinois from 2005 to 2008. Obama was born in Hawaii. After graduating from Columbia University in 1983, he worked as a community organizer in Chicago. In 1988, he enrolled in Harvard Law School, where he was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. After graduating, he became a civil rights attorney and an academic, teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004, he represented the 13th district for three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 until 2004 when he ran for the U. S. Senate, he received national attention in 2004 with his March primary win, his well-received July Democratic National Convention keynote address, his landslide November election to the Senate. In 2008, he was nominated for president a year after his campaign began and after a close primary campaign against Hillary Clinton.
He was elected over Republican John McCain and was inaugurated on January 20, 2009. Nine months he was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Regarded as a centrist New Democrat, Obama signed many landmark bills into law during his first two years in office; the main reforms that were passed include the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, Job Creation Act of 2010 served as economic stimulus amidst the Great Recession. After a lengthy debate over the national debt limit, he signed the Budget Control and the American Taxpayer Relief Acts. In foreign policy, he increased U. S. troop levels in Afghanistan, reduced nuclear weapons with the United States–Russia New START treaty, ended military involvement in the Iraq War. He ordered military involvement in Libya in opposition to Muammar Gaddafi.
He ordered the military operations that resulted in the deaths of Osama bin Laden and suspected Yemeni Al-Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki. After winning re-election by defeating Republican opponent Mitt Romney, Obama was sworn in for a second term in 2013. During this term, he promoted inclusiveness for LGBT Americans, his administration filed briefs that urged the Supreme Court to strike down same-sex marriage bans as unconstitutional. He advocated for gun control in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, indicating support for a ban on assault weapons, issued wide-ranging executive actions concerning climate change and immigration. In foreign policy, he ordered military intervention in Iraq in response to gains made by ISIL after the 2011 withdrawal from Iraq, continued the process of ending U. S. combat operations in Afghanistan in 2016, promoted discussions that led to the 2015 Paris Agreement on global climate change, initiated sanctions against Russia following the invasion in Ukraine and again after Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, brokered a nuclear deal with Iran, normalized U.
S. relations with Cuba. During his term in office, America's reputation in global polling improved. Evaluations of his presidency among historians, political scientists, the general public place him among the upper tier of American presidents. Obama left office and retired in January 2017 and resides in Washington, D. C. A December 2018 Gallup poll found Obama to be the most admired man in America for an unprecedented 11th consecutive year, although Dwight D. Eisenhower was selected most admired in twelve non-consecutive years. Obama was born on August 4, 1961, at Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children in Honolulu, Hawaii, he is the only president, born outside of the contiguous 48 states. He was born to a black father, his mother, Ann Dunham, was born in Kansas. His father, Barack Obama Sr. was a Luo Kenyan from Nyang'oma Kogelo. Obama's parents met in 1960 in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was a foreign student on a scholarship; the couple married in Hawaii, on February 2, 1961, six months before Obama was born.
In late August 1961, Barack and his mother moved to the University of Washington in Seattle, where they lived for a year. During that time, the elder Obama completed his undergraduate degree in economics in Hawaii, graduating in June 1962, he left to attend graduate school on a scholarship at Harvard University, where he earned an M. A. in economics. Obama's parents divorced in March 1964. Obama Sr. returned to Kenya in 1964, where he married for a third time and worked for the Kenyan government as the Senior Economic Analyst in the Ministry of Finance. He visited his son in Hawaii only once, at Christmas time in 1971, before he was killed in an automobile accident in 1982, when Obama was 21 years old. Recalling his early childhood, Obama said, "That my father looked nothing like the people around me – that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milk – registered in my mind." He described his struggles as a young adult to reconcile social perceptions of his multira
Presidential transition of Donald Trump
Planning for the presidential transition of Donald Trump, led by Vice President-elect, former Governor Mike Pence of Indiana, began before Donald Trump won the United States presidential election on November 8, 2016, became the President-elect. Trump was formally elected by the Electoral College on December 19, 2016; the transition was led by Chris Christie until he and a number of his supporters were replaced or demoted on November 11. The transition ended when Trump was inaugurated at noon EST on January 20, 2017. In accordance with the Pre-Election Presidential Transition Act of 2010, candidate transition teams are provided office space by the General Services Administration. Transition teams are eligible for government funding for staff. S. government. Under existing federal law and custom, the Republican Party's nominee became eligible to receive classified national security briefings once his/her nomination was formalized at the party's national convention. Key responsibilities of a presidential transition include the identification and vetting of candidates for 4,000 non-civil service positions in the U.
S. government whose service is at the pleasure of the president. A law enacted by the United States Congress in 2016 amending the Presidential Transition Act requires the incumbent President to establish "transition councils" by June of an election year to facilitate the eventual handover of power; the National Academy of Public Administration, launched a new program called "Transition 2016" in 2016. Led by Ed DeSeve and David S. C. Chu, the program was described by NAPA as one which provides management and procedural advice to the leading candidates in establishing transition teams. In April 2016, representatives from the Trump campaign, as well as the campaigns of four other then-running Republican candidates, met in New York with representatives of the Partnership for Public Service to receive a two-day briefing and overview of the transition process. According to Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, the campaign shortly thereafter began implementing the recommendations provided at the meeting.
In early May 2016, after Trump became the presumptive nominee, campaign officials announced they would name the members of a presidential transition team within the "upcoming weeks". On May 6, The New York Times reported that Trump had asked Jared Kushner to begin work on putting a transition team together. Corey Lewandowski and Paul Manafort worked with Kushner in the selection of a transition chief. Three days Trump announced that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie had agreed to head the effort. On Friday, June 3, 2016, the Agency Transition Directors Council first assembled at the White House to review transition plans of each of the major executive departments. At about the same time, the White House began transferring its preceding eight years of accumulated electronic files to the National Archives and Records Administration's Electronic Record Archive for preservation; the transition planning came under heavy criticism for lagging behind other recent transition planning efforts when it was shown to have hired only a "handful" of staff by late July.
At that time, Chris Christie named Bill Palatucci, a corporate attorney from New Jersey and the state's Republican National Committeeman, as general counsel. Meanwhile, on July 29, White House chief of staff Denis McDonough led a conference call with Chris Christie to discuss transition procedures. During the call, McDonough informed Christie that Anita Breckenridge and Andrew Mayock will be the administration's primary "points of contact" with the Trump campaign moving forward; the pair discussed the planned availability of office space at 1717 Pennsylvania Avenue for the Trump transition team, which the General Services Administration was to make available beginning August 2, 2016. During the first week of August, the Trump transition office was opened; the same month, William F. Hagerty, a former member of Mitt Romney's transition team, was named director of appointments while John Rader, a senior aide to United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Bob Corker, was retained in the position of deputy director of appointments.
In an example of "how removed the transition process is from the tumult and rancor of the campaign", representatives of the Trump and Clinton transition teams began holding a series of meetings with each other, with White House officials, to plan details of the transition process. By October, it was reported the transition team had grown to more than 100 staff, many of whom were policy experts brought aboard to compensate for a dearth of policy staff employed by the Trump campaign. For example, in October 2016, Robert Smith Walker, former chairman of the House Science Committee, was appointed space policy adviser. In the early hours of November 9, 2016, media outlets reported Trump would secure enough votes in the Electoral College to win the presidential election, become the 45th president of the United States. Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton conceded the election to him that day. Prior to Trump's return to his private residence at Trump Tower, the United States Secret Service initi
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