Washington, D.C.
Washington, D. C. formally the District of Columbia and referred to as Washington or D. C. is the capital of the United States. Founded after the American Revolution as the seat of government of the newly independent country, Washington was named after George Washington, first President of the United States and Founding Father; as the seat of the United States federal government and several international organizations, Washington is an important world political capital. The city is one of the most visited cities in the world, with more than 20 million tourists annually; the signing of the Residence Act on July 16, 1790, approved the creation of a capital district located along the Potomac River on the country's East Coast. The U. S. Constitution provided for a federal district under the exclusive jurisdiction of the U. S. Congress, the District is therefore not a part of any state; the states of Maryland and Virginia each donated land to form the federal district, which included the pre-existing settlements of Georgetown and Alexandria.
The City of Washington was founded in 1791 to serve as the new national capital. In 1846, Congress returned the land ceded by Virginia. Washington had an estimated population of 702,455 as of July 2018, making it the 20th most populous city in the United States. Commuters from the surrounding Maryland and Virginia suburbs raise the city's daytime population to more than one million during the workweek. Washington's metropolitan area, the country's sixth largest, had a 2017 estimated population of 6.2 million residents. All three branches of the U. S. federal government are centered in the District: Congress and the U. S. Supreme Court. Washington is home to many national monuments, museums situated on or around the National Mall; the city hosts 177 foreign embassies as well as the headquarters of many international organizations, trade unions, non-profit, lobbying groups, professional associations, including the World Bank Group, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization of American States, AARP, the National Geographic Society, the Human Rights Campaign, the International Finance Corporation, the American Red Cross.
A locally elected mayor and a 13‑member council have governed the District since 1973. However, Congress may overturn local laws. D. C. residents elect a non-voting, at-large congressional delegate to the House of Representatives, but the District has no representation in the Senate. The District receives three electoral votes in presidential elections as permitted by the Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1961. Various tribes of the Algonquian-speaking Piscataway people inhabited the lands around the Potomac River when Europeans first visited the area in the early 17th century. One group known as the Nacotchtank maintained settlements around the Anacostia River within the present-day District of Columbia. Conflicts with European colonists and neighboring tribes forced the relocation of the Piscataway people, some of whom established a new settlement in 1699 near Point of Rocks, Maryland. In his Federalist No. 43, published January 23, 1788, James Madison argued that the new federal government would need authority over a national capital to provide for its own maintenance and safety.
Five years earlier, a band of unpaid soldiers besieged Congress while its members were meeting in Philadelphia. Known as the Pennsylvania Mutiny of 1783, the event emphasized the need for the national government not to rely on any state for its own security. Article One, Section Eight, of the Constitution permits the establishment of a "District as may, by cession of particular states, the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States". However, the Constitution does not specify a location for the capital. In what is now known as the Compromise of 1790, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson came to an agreement that the federal government would pay each state's remaining Revolutionary War debts in exchange for establishing the new national capital in the southern United States. On July 9, 1790, Congress passed the Residence Act, which approved the creation of a national capital on the Potomac River; the exact location was to be selected by President George Washington, who signed the bill into law on July 16.
Formed from land donated by the states of Maryland and Virginia, the initial shape of the federal district was a square measuring 10 miles on each side, totaling 100 square miles. Two pre-existing settlements were included in the territory: the port of Georgetown, founded in 1751, the city of Alexandria, founded in 1749. During 1791–92, Andrew Ellicott and several assistants, including a free African American astronomer named Benjamin Banneker, surveyed the borders of the federal district and placed boundary stones at every mile point. Many of the stones are still standing. A new federal city was constructed on the north bank of the Potomac, to the east of Georgetown. On September 9, 1791, the three commissioners overseeing the capital's construction named the city in honor of President Washington; the federal district was named Columbia, a poetic name for the United States in use at that time. Congress held its first session in Washington on November 17, 1800. Congress passed the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801 that organized the District and placed the entire territory under the exclusive control of the federal
United States Code
The Code of Laws of the United States of America is the official compilation and codification of the general and permanent federal statutes of the United States. It contains 53 titles; the main edition is published every six years by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the House of Representatives, cumulative supplements are published annually. The official version of those laws not codified in the United States Code can be found in United States Statutes at Large; the official text of an Act of Congress is that of the "enrolled bill" presented to the President for his signature or disapproval. Upon enactment of a law, the original bill is delivered to the Office of the Federal Register within the National Archives and Records Administration. After authorization from the OFR, copies are distributed as "slip laws" by the Government Printing Office; the Archivist assembles annual volumes of the enacted laws and publishes them as the United States Statutes at Large. By law, the text of the Statutes at Large is "legal evidence" of the laws enacted by Congress.
Slip laws are competent evidence. The Statutes at Large, however, is not a convenient tool for legal research, it is arranged in chronological order so that statutes addressing related topics may be scattered across many volumes. Statutes repeal or amend earlier laws, extensive cross-referencing is required to determine what laws are in force at any given time; the United States Code is the result of an effort to make finding relevant and effective statutes simpler by reorganizing them by subject matter, eliminating expired and amended sections. The Code is maintained by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the U. S. House of Representatives; the LRC determines which statutes in the United States Statutes at Large should be codified, which existing statutes are affected by amendments or repeals, or have expired by their own terms. The LRC updates the Code accordingly; because of this codification approach, a single named statute may or may not appear in a single place in the Code. Complex legislation bundles a series of provisions together as a means of addressing a social or governmental problem.
For example, an Act providing relief for family farms might affect items in Title 7, Title 26, Title 43. When the Act is codified, its various provisions might well be placed in different parts of those various Titles. Traces of this process are found in the Notes accompanying the "lead section" associated with the popular name, in cross-reference tables that identify Code sections corresponding to particular Acts of Congress; the individual sections of a statute are incorporated into the Code as enacted. Though authorized by statute, these changes do not constitute positive law; the authority for the material in the United States Code comes from its enactment through the legislative process and not from its presentation in the Code. For example, the United States Code omitted 12 U. S. C. § 92 for decades because it was thought to have been repealed. In its 1993 ruling in U. S. National Bank of Oregon v. Independent Insurance Agents of America, the Supreme Court ruled that § 92 was still valid law.
By law, those titles of the United States Code that have not been enacted into positive law are "prima facie evidence" of the law in effect. The United States Statutes at Large remains the ultimate authority. If a dispute arises as to the accuracy or completeness of the codification of an unenacted title, the courts will turn to the language in the United States Statutes at Large. In case of a conflict between the text of the Statutes at Large and the text of a provision of the United States Code that has not been enacted as positive law, the text of the Statutes at Large takes precedence. In contrast, if Congress enacts a particular title of the Code into positive law, the enactment repeals all of the previous Acts of Congress from which that title of the Code derives; this process makes that title of the United States Code "legal evidence" of the law in force. Where a title has been enacted into positive law, a court may neither permit nor require proof of the underlying original Acts of Congress.
The distinction between enacted and unenacted titles is academic because the Code is nearly always accurate. The United States Code is cited by the Supreme Court and other federal courts without mentioning this theoretical caveat. On a day-to-day basis few lawyers cross-reference the Code to the Statutes at Large. Attempting to capitalize on the possibility that the text of the United States Code can differ from the United States Statutes at Large, Bancroft-Whitney for many years published a series of volumes known as United States Code Service, which used the actual text of the United States Statutes at Large. Only "general and permanent" laws are codified in the United States Code. If these limited provisions are significant, they may be printed as "notes" underneath related sectio
United States federal executive departments
The United States federal executive departments are the principal units of the executive branch of the federal government of the United States. They are analogous to ministries common in parliamentary or semi-presidential systems but they are led by a head of government, the head of state; the executive departments are the administrative arms of the President of the United States. There are 15 executive departments; the heads of the executive departments receive the title of Secretary of their respective department, except for the Attorney-General, head of the Justice Department. The heads of the executive departments are appointed by the President and take office after confirmation by the United States Senate, serve at the pleasure of the President; the heads of departments are members of the Cabinet of the United States, an executive organ that acts as an advisory body to the President. In the Opinion Clause of the U. S. Constitution, heads of executive departments are referred to as "principal Officer in each of the executive Departments".
The heads of executive departments are included in the line of succession to the President, in the event of a vacancy in the presidency, after the Vice President, the Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore of the Senate. Independent agencies of the United States government Canadian Federal government departments British government departments Cabinet of the Confederate States of America Media related to Executive Departments of the United States at Wikimedia Commons
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
United States Deputy Secretary of Defense
The Deputy Secretary of Defense is a statutory office and the second-highest-ranking official in the Department of Defense of the United States of America. The deputy secretary is the principal civilian deputy to the Secretary of Defense, is appointed by the President, with the advice and consent of the Senate; the deputy secretary, by statute, is designated as the DoD Chief Management Officer and must be a civilian, at least seven years removed from service as a commissioned officer on active-duty at the date of appointment. The Deputy Secretary of Defense position is held by Patrick M. Shanahan. Effective January 1, 2019, Shanahan became the Acting Secretary of Defense upon Jim Mattis's resignation from that office. While Shanahan serves in that role, he has selected David Norquist to perform the duties of Deputy Secretary of Defense, effective January 1, 2019. Public Law 81-36, April 2, 1949 established this position as the Under Secretary of Defense, however Public Law 81-2 16, August 10, 1949, a.k.a. the 1949 Amendments to the National Security Act of 1947, changed the title to Deputy Secretary of Defense.
Former assistant to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Stephen Early, became the first officer holder when he was sworn-in on May 2, 1949. Public Law 92-596, October 27, 1972, established a Second Deputy Secretary of Defense position, with both deputies performing duties as prescribed by the Secretary of Defense; the second deputy position was not filled until December 1975. Robert F. Ellsworth, serving from December 23, 1975, until January 10, 1977, was the only one to hold that office. Public Law 95-140, October 21, 1977, established two Under Secretaries of Defense and abolished the second deputy position. By delegation, the Deputy Secretary of Defense has full power and authority to act for the Secretary of Defense and to exercise the powers of the Secretary of Defense on any and all matters for which the Secretary is authorized to act pursuant to statute or executive order; the deputy secretary is first in the line of succession to the office of Secretary of Defense. The typical role of the Deputy Secretary of Defense is to oversee the day-to-day business and lead the internal management processes of the $500-billion-plus Department of Defense budget, as its chief operating officer.
Prior to February 1, 2018, the Deputy Secretary of Defense served as the department's chief management officer, to whom the deputy chief management officer reported, but those responsibilities were split into a new Chief Management Officer of the Department of Defense position. The deputy secretary, among the office's many responsibilities, chairs the Senior Level Review Group, before 2005 known as Defense Resources Board, which provides department-wide budgetary allocation recommendations to the Secretary and the President. Traditionally, the deputy secretary has been the civilian official guiding the process of the Quadrennial Defense Review; the Deputy Secretary of Defense chairs the Special Access Program Oversight Committee, which has oversight responsibilities and provides recommendations with respect to changes in status of the Department's Special Access Programs, for either the Deputy Secretary Defense or the Secretary of Defense to make. Defense Acquisition Board Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee Deputy's Advisory Working Group, a panel chaired by the Deputy Secretary of Defense Packard Commission Department of Defense Directive 5100.1: Functions of the Department of Defense and Its Major Components.
Department of Defense Directive. Washington, D. C.: U. S. Department of Defense. December 21, 2010. Department of Defense Key Officials 1947–2015. Washington, D. C.: Office of the Secretary of Defense, Historical Office. 2015. Deputy Secretary of Defense position profile at Prunes Online defense.gov
Main Interior Building
The Main Interior Building known as the Stewart Lee Udall Department of the Interior Building, located in Washington, D. C. is the headquarters of the United States Department of the Interior. Located in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood, it is bounded by 19th Street NW on the west, 18th Street NW on the east, E Street NW on the north, C Street NW on the south, Virginia Avenue on the southwest. Although the building takes up the entire block, the address is "1849 C Street, NW" to commemorate the founding of the Department of Interior in 1849. To the east is DAR Constitution Hall, the headquarters of the Daughters of the American Revolution, as well as the World Resources Institute and the American Red Cross National Headquarters. To the west is the Office of Personnel Management headquarters. To the north is Rawlins Park, which includes at its eastern end a statue of Major General John A. Rawlins. To the south is Triangle Park; the Building includes offices of the Secretary of the Department employees.
It includes the Interior Museum and Interior Library. From 1852 to 1917, the Interior Department was headquartered in the Patent Office building, which today houses the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum of the Smithsonian Institution. From 1917 until the completion of the Main Interior Building, the Interior Department was housed in what is now the U. S. General Services Administration Building, between E and F Streets and 18th and 19th Streets NW. By the time President Franklin D. Roosevelt took office, the Department of the Interior had outgrown its headquarters, satellite offices in 15 additional rented offices in Washington left employees scattered across the city and overcrowded. Plans for a new headquarters were undertaken by Roosevelt's Secretary of the Interior, Harold L. Ickes. Sworn in on March 4, 1933 after the Roosevelt administration took office, Ickes received permission from President Roosevelt to take over the soon-to-be finished Interstate Commerce Building in the Federal Triangle area, but this plan was difficult because it required an act of Congress.
As an alternative, Roosevelt recommended that funds be appropriated for a new building for the Department. In 1934 Ickes - who as Administrator of Public Works led the Public Works Administration in addition to his position of Secretary - allotted $12.74 million, with the approval of the President, for a new Interior building. Three sites were considered for the Interior Building: One on the National Mall facing Constitution Avenue between 12th and 14th Streets NW, the current site of the National Museum of American History. On March 21, 1934, the third proposed site was selected; the plot including the area between 18th and 19th Streets and C and E Streets NW and was one of the few double-block sites in the city where an intervening street could be eliminated for development. Prominent Washington architect Waddy Butler Wood was selected to design the new Interior Building. Secretary Ickes was involved in the design of the new building, the January 9, 1937 edition of the Washington Daily News stated that "Secretary Ickes has a paternal concern for the new Interior Building.
He designed most of it himself, financed it through PWA." Ickes did not design the building, but many of its features were a result of its influence in the planning and construction stages. The building designed aimed for economy. Significant aspects include wide central corridors, open courtyards, the movable steel office partitions, the acoustically treated ceilings, a floor reserved for mechanical equipment, fireproofing. Ickes had air conditioning installed in his office in the Old Interior Building and insisted that central air condition be included throughout the building so that all employees could enjoy it, the first such system in a large government building. Melding aspects of practicality and aesthetics, the Main Interior Building became "one of the most functional and innovative government office structures in Washington" in the 1930s. Ickes reported in a Cabinet meeting that the Interior Building cost 10 to 15 percent less to operate than the buildings in the Federal Triangle with air conditioning, cost less per square foot.
Ickes included that group assembly space and employee amenities be added to the building, including the Conference Hall, the Activity Space, the Cafeteria with courtyard, the Employees Lounge with soda fountain, the Interior Museum, the Art Gallery, the Indian Arts and Crafts Shop, the Broadcasting Studio, the parking garage. Systems for maintainable and fire protection were included in the design; these included a central vacuum system, a floor between the fifth and sixth floors for mechanical equipment and fire and security systems. Despite the functionalism of the building and architecture are featured, including decorative detailing such as bronze grilles and hardware, the light fixtures, plaster moldings, "reflecting the architect's and his client's concern for design materials and craftsmanship." Some architectural details feature Interior Department symbols, including a buffalo motif on doors. The building contains more Public Work Administration artwork than any other government building and includes the work
Bureau of Land Management
The Bureau of Land Management is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior that administers more than 247.3 million acres of public lands in the United States which constitutes one eighth of the landmass of the country. President Harry S. Truman created the BLM in 1946 by combining two existing agencies: the General Land Office and the Grazing Service; the agency manages the federal government's nearly 700 million acres of subsurface mineral estate located beneath federal and private lands severed from their surface rights by the Homestead Act of 1862. Most BLM public lands are located in these 12 western states: Alaska, California, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming; the mission of the BLM is "to sustain the health and productivity of the public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations." BLM holdings were described as "land nobody wanted" because homesteaders had passed them by. All the same, ranchers hold nearly 18,000 permits and leases for livestock grazing on 155 million acres of BLM public lands.
The agency manages 221 wilderness areas, 27 national monuments and some 636 other protected areas as part of the National Conservation Lands, totaling about 36 million acres. In addition the National Conservation Lands include nearly 2,400 miles of Wild and Scenic Rivers, nearly 6,000 miles of National Scenic and Historic Trails. There are more than 63,000 gas wells on BLM public lands. Total energy leases generated $5.4 billion in 2013, an amount divided among the Treasury, the states, Native American groups. The BLM's roots go back to the Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787; these laws provided for the survey and settlement of the lands that the original 13 colonies ceded to the federal government after the American Revolution. As additional lands were acquired by the United States from Spain and other countries, the United States Congress directed that they be explored and made available for settlement. During the Revolutionary War, military bounty land was promised to soldiers who fought for the colonies.
After the war, the Treaty of Paris of 1783, signed by the United States, England and Spain, ceded territory to the United States. In the 1780s, other states relinquished their own claims to land in modern-day Ohio. By this time, the United States needed revenue to function. Land was sold. In order to sell the land, surveys needed to be conducted; the Land Ordinance of 1785 instructed a geographer to oversee this work as undertaken by a group of surveyors. The first years of surveying were completed by error. In 1812, Congress established the General Land Office as part of the Department of the Treasury to oversee the disposition of these federal lands. By the early 1800s, promised bounty land claims were fulfilled. Over the years, other bounty land and homestead laws were enacted to dispose of federal land. Several different types of patents existed; these include cash entry, homestead, military warrants, mineral certificates, private land claims, state selections, town sites, town lots. A system of local land offices spread throughout the territories, patenting land, surveyed via the corresponding Office of the Surveyor General of a particular territory.
This pattern spread across the entire United States. The laws that spurred this system with the exception of the General Mining Law of 1872 and the Desert Land Act of 1877 have since been repealed or superseded. In the early 20th century, Congress took additional steps toward recognizing the value of the assets on public lands and directed the Executive Branch to manage activities on the remaining public lands; the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 allowed leasing and production of selected commodities, such as coal, oil and sodium to take place on public lands. The Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 established the United States Grazing Service to manage the public rangelands by establishment of advisory boards that set grazing fees; the Oregon and California Revested Lands Sustained Yield Management Act of 1937 referred as the O&C Act, required sustained yield management of the timberlands in western Oregon. In 1946, the Grazing Service was merged with the General Land Office to form the Bureau of Land Management within the Department of the Interior.
It took several years for this new agency to reorganize. In the end, the Bureau of Land Management became less focused on land disposal and more focused on the long term management and preservation of the land; the agency achieved its current form by combining offices in the western states and creating a corresponding office for lands both east of and alongside the Mississippi River. As a matter of course, the BLM's emphasis fell on activities in the western states as most of the mining, land sales, federally owned areas are located west of the Mississippi. BLM personnel on the ground have been oriented toward local interests, while bureau management in Washington are led by presidential guidance. By means of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, Congress created a more unified bureau mission and recognized the value of the remaining public lands by declaring that these lands would remain in public ownership; the law directed that these lands be managed with a view toward "multiple use" defined as "management of the public lands and their various resource values so that th
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