Barack Obama Biography
Barack Hussein Obama, an American politician who was born on August 4, 1961, presided over the country as its 44th president from 2009 to 2017. He was the first African-American president of the United States and a member of the Democratic Party.
Obama worked as a civil rights attorney prior to entering politics. He previously represented Illinois as a U.S. senator from 2005 to 2008 as well as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004.
Obama was born in Honolulu, 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.
Turning to elective politics, he represented the 13th district in the Illinois Senate from 1997 until 2004, when he ran for the U.S. Senate.
After a competitive primary battle against Hillary Clinton, he received the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 2008 and selected Joe Biden as his running mate.
Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009, after defeating Republican opponent John McCain in the presidential race.
He was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize recipient nine months later, which prompted both praise and condemnation.
Obama’s first-term actions addressed the global financial crisis and included a major stimulus package, a partial extension of George W. Bush’s tax cuts, legislation to reform health care, a major financial regulation reform bill, and the end of a major US military presence in Iraq.
Obama also appointed Supreme Court justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, the former being the first Hispanic American on the Supreme Court.
He ordered the counterterrorism raid which killed Osama bin Laden and downplayed Bush’s counterinsurgency model, expanding air strikes and making extensive use of special forces while encouraging greater reliance on host-government militaries.
After winning re-election by defeating Republican opponent Mitt Romney, Obama was sworn in for a second term on January 20, 2013.
In his second term, Obama took steps to combat climate change, signing a major international climate agreement and an executive order to limit carbon emissions.
Obama also presided over the implementation of the Affordable Care Act and other legislation passed in his first term, and he negotiated a nuclear agreement with Iran and normalized relations with Cuba.
The number of American soldiers in Afghanistan fell dramatically during Obama’s second term, though U.S. soldiers remained in Afghanistan throughout Obama’s presidency.
Despite the country’s extreme party division, the United States’ standing globally and economy both dramatically improved during Obama’s administration.
Obama resigned from his position on January 20, 2017, however he is still a resident of Washington, D.C.Construction on his presidential library in Chicago will start in 2021.
Obama has continued to be involved in Democratic politics while leaving office, including running for office in a number of American elections.
Obama has written three best-selling books that are unrelated to politics: Dreams from My Father (1995), The Audacity of Hope (2006), and A Promised Land (2020).
He has been included in rankings of American presidents by academics and historians since 2010, and they place him in the middle to high tier.
| Obama Wiki | |
|---|---|
| Born Name
& Date of Birth |
Barack Hussein Obama II
August 4, 1961 |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse |
Michelle Robinson
(m. 1992) |
| Children |
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| Parents |
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| Relatives | Obama family |
| Residence | Kalorama (Washington, D.C.) |
| Alma mater |
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| Occupation |
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| Awards | List of awards and honors |
| Signature |  |
| Website | |
Background and career
At Hawaii’s Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children in Honolulu, Obama was born on August 4, 1961.Only he was born outside of the 48 contiguous United States.
His parents were a Kenyan father and an American mother. His mother, Ann Dunham (1942-1995), was of English, Welsh, German, Swiss, and Irish ancestry and was born in Wichita, Kansas.
In 2007, it was established that her great-great-grandfather Falmouth Kearney had immigrated to the US in 1850 from the Irish hamlet of Moneygall.
In July 2012, Ancestry.com found a strong likelihood that Dunham was descended from John Punch, an enslaved African man who lived in the Colony of Virginia during the seventeenth century. Obama’s father, Barack Obama Sr. (1934–1982), was a married Luo Kenyan from Nyang’oma Kogelo.
Obama’s parents met in 1960 in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where his father was a foreign student on a scholarship. The couple married in Wailuku, Hawaii, on February 2, 1961, six months before Obama was born.
In late August 1961, a few weeks after he was born, Barack and his mother moved to the University of Washington in Seattle, where they lived for a year.
During that time, Barack’s father 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 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—barely registered in my mind.” He described his struggles as a young adult to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage.
At the University of Hawaii in 1963, Dunham met Lolo Soetoro, a graduate geography student from Indonesia’s East-West Center. On March 15, 1965, they got hitched on the island of Molokai.Lolo returned to Indonesia in 1966 after having his J-1 visa extended twice for one year each.
In 1967, his wife and stepson arrived after sixteen months. The family’s first home was in the Tebet area of South Jakarta’s Menteng Dalam neighborhood. Beginning in 1970, they resided in a more affluent section of Central Jakarta’s Menteng district.
Education
Obama and his mother relocated to Indonesia when he was six years old to be with his stepfather. He attended local Indonesian-language schools from the age of six to ten, including Sekolah Dasar Katolik Santo Fransiskus Asisi (St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Elementary School) for two years and Sekolah Dasar Negeri Menteng 01 (State Elementary School Menteng 01) for one and a half years.
His mother also homeschooled him in English using the Calvert School curriculum.He spent his first four years in Jakarta and learned to speak Indonesian well.
Obama’s stepfather imparted resilience and “a pretty hardheaded assessment of how the world works” to him while he was living in Indonesia.
In 1971, Obama returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Dunham. He attended Punahou School—a private college preparatory school—with the aid of a scholarship from fifth grade until he graduated from high school in 1979. In his youth, Obama went by the nickname “Barry.”
Obama lived with his mother and half-sister, Maya Soetoro, in Hawaii for three years from 1972 to 1975 while his mother was a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Hawaii.
Obama chose to stay in Hawaii when his mother and half-sister returned to Indonesia in 1975, so his mother could begin anthropology field work.
His mother spent most of the next two decades in Indonesia, divorcing Lolo in 1980 and earning a PhD degree in 1992, before dying in 1995 in Hawaii following unsuccessful treatment for ovarian and uterine cancer.
Obama wrote about his time in Honolulu: “The opportunity that Hawaii offered — to experience a variety of cultures in a climate of mutual respect — became an integral part of my world view, and a basis for the values that I hold most dear.”
Additionally, Obama has written and spoken about using drugs like cocaine, marijuana, and alcohol while he was a teenager to “push questions of who I was out of my mind.”Obama also belonged to the “choom gang,” a self-described group of pals who got together frequently and occasionally smoked marijuana.
College and research jobs
After graduating from high school in 1979, Obama moved to Los Angeles to attend Occidental College on a full scholarship.
In February 1981, Obama made his first public speech, calling for Occidental to participate in the disinvestment from South Africa in response to that nation’s policy of apartheid.
In mid-1981, Obama traveled to Indonesia to visit his mother and half-sister Maya, and visited the families of college friends in Pakistan for three weeks.
Later in 1981, he transferred to Columbia University in New York City as a junior, where he majored in political science with a specialty in international relations and in English literature and lived off-campus on West 109th Street.
In 1983, he earned a 3.7 GPA and a Bachelor of Arts degree. Obama worked as a financial researcher and writer for the Business International Corporation for about a year after receiving his degree.
He then spent three months in 1985 as the project coordinator for the New York Public Interest Research Group on the City College of New York campus.
Community organizer and Harvard Law School
When Obama was hired as the director of the Developing Communities Project, a religiously based community organization that at its inception included eight Catholic churches in Roseland, West Pullman, and Riverdale on Chicago’s South Side, he relocated from New York to Chicago two years after receiving his degree from Columbia.
From June 1985 to May 1988, he served as an organizer for the local community.In Altgeld Gardens, he worked to establish a tenants’ rights group, a college prep program, and a job training program.
Obama also served the Gamaliel Foundation, a school for community organizing, as a consultant and educator. He had his first trip in the middle of 1988, spending three weeks in Europe before spending five weeks in Kenya, where he first got to know many of his paternal ancestors.
Family and personal life
“It’s like a little mini-United Nations,” Obama said in a 2006 interview, highlighting the diversity of his large family. “I have relatives who resemble Bernie Mac and those who resemble Margaret Thatcher.”
Maya Soetoro-Ng, a half-sister with whom he was reared, and seven other half-siblings, six of whom are still alive, come from the Kenyan father’s family.
Madelyn Dunham, a Kansas native who had been Obama’s mother up until her passing on November 2, 2008—two days before he was elected president—was Obama’s mother.
Obama also has roots in Ireland; he met with his Irish cousins in Moneygall in May 2011. In Dreams from My Father, Obama ties his mother’s family history to possible Native American ancestors and distant relatives of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War.
He also shares distant ancestors in common with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, among others. Obama lived with anthropologist Sheila Miyoshi Jager while he was a community organizer in Chicago in the 1980s.
He proposed to her twice, but both Jager and her parents turned him down. The relationship was not made public until May 2017, several months after his presidency had ended.
In June 1989, Obama met Michelle Robinson when he was employed as a summer associate at the Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin.
Robinson was assigned for three months as Obama’s adviser at the firm, and she joined him at several group social functions but declined his initial requests to date. They began dating later that summer, became engaged in 1991, and were married on October 3, 1992.
Michelle used in vitro fertilization to conceive their children after having a miscarriage. Malia Ann, the couple’s first child, was born in 1998, and Natasha (“Sasha”), the second child, was born in 2001.
The Laboratory Schools at the University of Chicago were attended by the Obama girls. They enrolled the girls in Sidwell Friends School when they first arrived in Washington, D.C., in January 2009. The first Portuguese Water Dog, a male named Bo, was a gift from Senator Ted Kennedy. The Obamas had two of them.
In 2013, a girl named Sunny joined Bo. Cancer claimed Bo’s life on May 8, 2021. Obama is a fan of the Chicago White Sox, and in 2005, while he was still a senator, he threw out the opening pitch at the ALCS.
In 2009, he threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the All-Star Game while wearing a White Sox jacket.
He is also primarily a Chicago Bears football fan in the NFL, but in his childhood and adolescence was a fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and rooted for them ahead of their victory in Super Bowl XLIII 12 days after he took office as president.
In 2011, Obama invited the 1985 Chicago Bears to the White House; the team had not visited the White House after their Super Bowl win in 1986 due to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.
He plays basketball, a sport he participated in as a member of his high school’s varsity team,and he is left-handed.
In 2005, the Obama family applied the proceeds of a book deal and moved from a Hyde Park, Chicago condominium to a $1.6 million house (equivalent to $2.4 million in 2022) in neighboring Kenwood, Chicago.
The purchase of an adjacent lot—and sale of part of it to Obama by the wife of developer, campaign donor and friend Tony Rezko—attracted media attention because of Rezko’s subsequent indictment and conviction on political corruption charges that were unrelated to Obama.
Obama’s net worth was assessed by Money Magazine to be $1.3 million in December 2007 (equating to $1.8 million in 2022).
Their 2009 tax return revealed a household income of $5.5 million, primarily from the sales of his books, up from $4.2 million in 2007 and $1.6 million in 2005.
He donated 14% of his $1.7 million 2010 salary to nonprofits, including $131,000 to the Fisher House Foundation, which helps families of wounded warriors live close to the location of the veteran’s medical care. Obama’s 2012 financial report revealed that he may be worth up to $10 million.
Religion
Obama identifies as a Protestant Christian, and as an adult, his religious beliefs have grown. The Audacity of Hope quotes him as saying that he “was not raised in a religious household.” His mother, who was brought up by nonreligious parents, was described as disengaged from religion but also as “in many ways the most spiritually awakened person… I have ever known” and “a lonely witness for secular humanism.”
By the time his parents met, he claimed that his father had become “confirmedly atheist,” and that his stepfather “saw religion as not particularly useful.” In his speech, Obama described how his community organizing work with black churches in his 20s helped him see “the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change.”
In January 2008, Obama told Christianity Today: “I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
I believe that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life.” On September 27, 2010, Obama released a statement commenting on his religious views, saying:
I’m a Christian by choice. My family didn’t—frankly, they weren’t folks who went to church every week. And my mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew, but she didn’t raise me in the church.
So I came to my Christian faith later in life, and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead—being my brothers’ and sisters’ keeper, treating others as they would treat me.
Obama met Trinity United Church of Christ pastor Jeremiah Wright in October 1987 and became a member of Trinity in 1992. During Obama’s first presidential campaign in May 2008, he resigned from Trinity after some of Wright’s statements were criticized.
Since moving to Washington, D.C., in 2009, the Obama family has attended several Protestant churches, including Shiloh Baptist Church and St. John’s Episcopal Church, as well as Evergreen Chapel at Camp David, but the members of the family do not attend church on a regular basis.
In 2016, he claimed that a few things that remind him “of all the different people I’ve met along the way” and that he always carries with him inspire him.
Since I’m not particularly superstitious, I don’t feel the need to wear them constantly. “A whole bowl full” of artifacts were handed to him, including rosary beads from Pope Francis, a Hanuman figurine from Hinduism, a Coptic cross from Ethiopia, a tiny Buddha statue from a monk, and a metal poker chip that was formerly the lucky charm of an Iowa motorcycle rider.
Legal career
Civil rights attorney
He joined Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a 13-attorney legal practice with a focus on community economic development and civil rights litigation, where he served as an associate for three years, from 1993 to 1996, and as counsel from 1996 to 2004.
In the case Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank, 94 C 4094 (N.D. Ill.), he was mentioned as one of the attorneys. Selma Buycks-Roberson was the primary plaintiff in this class action complaint, which was brought in 1994.
It claimed that Citibank Federal Savings Bank had engaged in actions that were illegal under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and the Fair Housing Act.
The case was settled out of court. Final judgment was issued on May 13, 1998, with Citibank Federal Savings Bank agreeing to pay attorney fees.
Obama served on the boards of directors of the Joyce Foundation and the Woods Fund of Chicago from 1994 to 2002. The Woods Fund of Chicago was the first foundation to support the Developing Communities Project in 1985.
He was the founding president and board chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge from 1995 to 1999, and he served on the board of directors from 1995 to 2002. Obama lost the ability to practice law in 2007.
Presidency (2009–2017)
On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president. Obama directed the U.S. military to create plans for the withdrawal of soldiers from Iraq in his first few days in office by issuing executive orders and presidential memoranda.
He ordered the closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, but Congress prevented the closure by refusing to appropriate the required funds and preventing moving any Guantanamo detainee. Obama reduced the secrecy given to presidential records.
Additionally, he revoked President George W. Bush’s decision to reinstate the Mexico City policy, which forbade federal funding for international family planning groups that perform abortions or offer abortion counseling.
Domestic policy
The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which lowered the statute of limitations for equal-pay claims, was the first piece of legislation Obama signed into law.
In order to cover an extra four million uninsured children, he reauthorized the State Children’s Health Insurance Program five days later.
Obama promised to create “strict guidelines” for the research when he overturned a Bush-era ban that had restricted funding for embryonic stem cell research in March 2009.
Obama appointed two women to serve on the Supreme Court in the first two years of his presidency. He nominated Sonia Sotomayor on May 26, 2009, to replace retiring Associate Justice David Souter; she was confirmed on August 6, 2009, becoming the first Supreme Court Justice of Hispanic descent.
Obama nominated Elena Kagan on May 10, 2010, to replace retiring Associate Justice John Paul Stevens. She was confirmed on August 5, 2010, bringing the number of women sitting simultaneously on the Court to three for the first time in American history.
On March 11, 2009, Obama created the White House Council on Women and Girls, which formed part of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, having been established by Executive Order 13506 with a broad mandate to advise him on issues relating to the welfare of American women and girls.
The council was chaired by Senior Advisor to the President Valerie Jarrett. Obama also established the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault through a government memorandum on January 22, 2014, with a broad mandate to advise him on issues relating to sexual assault on college and university campuses throughout the United States.
The co-chairs of the Task Force were Vice President Joe Biden and Jarrett. The Task Force was a development out of the White House Council on Women and Girls and Office of the Vice President of the United States, and prior to that the 1994 Violence Against Women Act first drafted by Biden.
In July 2009, Obama launched the Priority Enforcement Program, an immigration enforcement program that had been pioneered by George W. Bush, and the Secure Communities fingerprinting and immigration status data-sharing program.
In a major space policy speech in April 2010, Obama announced a planned change in direction at NASA, the U.S. space agency. He ended plans for a return of human spaceflight to the moon and development of the Ares I rocket, Ares V rocket and Constellation program, in favor of funding earth science projects, a new rocket type, research and development for an eventual crewed mission to Mars, and ongoing missions to the International Space Station.
On January 16, 2013, one month after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Obama signed 23 executive orders and outlined a series of sweeping proposals regarding gun control.
He urged Congress to reintroduce an expired ban on military-style assault weapons, such as those used in several recent mass shootings, impose limits on ammunition magazines to 10 rounds, introduce background checks on all gun sales, pass a ban on possession and sale of armor-piercing bullets, introduce harsher penalties for gun-traffickers, especially unlicensed dealers who buy arms for criminals and approving the appointment of the head of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for the first time since 2006.
On January 5, 2016, Obama announced new executive actions extending background check requirements to more gun sellers. In a 2016 editorial in The New York Times, Obama compared the struggle for what he termed “common-sense gun reform” to women’s suffrage and other civil rights movements in American history. On January 5, 2016, Obama announced new executive actions extending background check requirements to more gun sellers.
The Patriot Act was renewed for a further four years by Obama in 2011. Obama criticized the leak as disloyal in the wake of whistleblower Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations about widespread eavesdropping, but he also advocated for tighter controls on the National Security Agency (NSA) to address privacy concerns.
Obama implemented certain adjustments while continuing and expanding the monitoring measures started by George W. Bush.
He backed legislation that would have restricted the NSA’s capacity to gather phone records in bulk through a single program, as well as legislation that would have increased the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s (FISC) level of transparency.
Racial issues
Obama did not make more overt allusions to racial issues in his speeches as president than his forerunners, but one research found that he took more aggressive policy measures in favor of African-Americans than any president since the Nixon administration.
After Obama’s victory, many people wondered whether “postracial America” even existed. However, persistent racial animosities soon emerged, and many African-Americans expressed outrage over what they perceived to be a strong racial hate directed at Obama.
The acquittal of George Zimmerman following the killing of Trayvon Martin sparked national outrage, leading to Obama giving a speech in which he noted that “Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.”
The shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri sparked a wave of protests.
These and other events led to the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement, which campaigns against violence and systemic racism toward black people.
Though Obama entered office reluctant to talk about race, by 2014 he began openly discussing the disadvantages faced by many members of minority groups.
Several incidents during Obama’s presidency generated disapproval from the African-American community and with law enforcement, and Obama sought to build trust between law enforcement officials and civil rights activists, with mixed results.
Some in law enforcement criticized Obama’s condemnation of racial bias after incidents in which police action led to the death of African-American men, while some racial justice activists criticized Obama’s expressions of empathy for the police.
In a Gallup poll conducted in March 2016, a higher percentage of Americans—nearly one third—said they worry “a great deal” about racial relations.
LGBT issues and same-sex unions
The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate acts Prevention Act, which Obama signed on October 8, 2009, extended the federal hate crime statute passed in the United States in 1969 to cover acts motivated by a victim’s actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.
On October 30, 2009, Obama lifted the ban on travel to the United States by those infected with HIV. The lifting of the ban was celebrated by Immigration Equality.
On December 22, 2010, Obama signed the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act of 2010, which fulfilled a promise made in the 2008 presidential campaign to end the don’t ask, don’t tell policy of 1993 that had prevented gay and lesbian people from serving openly in the United States Armed Forces.
In 2016, the Pentagon ended the policy that barred transgender people from serving openly in the military. As a candidate for the Illinois state senate in 1996, Obama stated he favored legalizing same-sex marriage.
During his Senate run in 2004, he said he supported civil unions and domestic partnerships for same-sex partners but opposed same-sex marriages. In 2008, he reaffirmed this position by stating “I believe marriage is between a man and a woman.
I am not in favor of gay marriage.” On May 9, 2012, shortly after the official launch of his campaign for re-election as president, Obama said his views had evolved, and he publicly affirmed his personal support for the legalization of same-sex marriage, becoming the first sitting U.S. president to do so.
Obama became the first American president in office to advocate for full equality for LGBT Americans during his second inaugural address on January 21, 2013, and the first to include gay rights or the word “gay” in an address.
In the 2013 cases of Hollingsworth v. Perry (concerning same-sex marriage) and United States v. Windsor (concerning the Defense of Marriage Act), the Obama administration filed filings pleading with the Supreme Court to find in favor of same-sex couples.
Legacy
Barack Obama is credited by historian Julian Zelizer for having “a keen sense of how the institutions of government work and the ways that his team could design policy proposals.” Zelizer mentions the Dodd-Frank financial and consumer protection measures, the Affordable Care Act, and the economic stimulus package that put an end to the Great Recession as examples of Obama’s successful policy initiatives.
Zelizer also points out that during Obama’s presidency, the Democratic Party lost influence and a significant number of elected officials. He claims that historians generally agree that Obama “turned out to be a very effective policymaker but not a tremendously successful party builder.” This is referred to as the “defining paradox of Obama’s presidency” by Zelizer.
The Brookings Institution noted that Obama passed “only one major legislative achievement (Obamacare)—and a fragile one at that—the legacy of Obama’s presidency mainly rests on its tremendous symbolic importance and the fate of a patchwork of executive actions.”
David W. Wise noted that Obama fell short “in areas many Progressives hold dear”, including the continuation of drone strikes, not going after big banks during the Great Recession, and failing to strengthen his coalition before pushing for Obamacare. Wise called Obama’s legacy that of “a disappointingly conventional president”.
Obama’s most significant accomplishment is generally considered to be the Affordable Care Act (ACA), provisions of which went into effect from 2010 to 2020. Many attempts by Senate Republicans to repeal the ACA, including a “skinny repeal”, have thus far failed.
However, in 2017, the penalty for violating the individual mandate was repealed effective 2019. Together with the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act amendment, it represents the U.S. healthcare system’s most significant regulatory overhaul and expansion of coverage since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965.
Many commentators credit Obama with averting a threatened depression and pulling the economy back from the Great Recession. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Obama administration created 11.3 million jobs from the month after his first inauguration to the end of his second term.
In 2010, Obama signed into effect the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Passed as a response to the financial crisis of 2007–2008, it brought the most significant changes to financial regulation in the United States since the regulatory reform that followed the Great Depression under Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, the first addition to the country’s existing federal hate crime law since Democrat President Bill Clinton signed the Church Arson Prevention Act of 1996, was included in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 that Obama signed into law in 2009.
The act strengthened already-existing federal rules against hate crimes in the US and made it illegal to assault someone because of their sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.
As president, Obama advanced LGBT rights. In 2010, he signed the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act, which brought an end to “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in the U.S. armed forces that banned open service from LGB people; the law went into effect the following year.
In 2016, his administration brought an end to the ban on transgender people serving openly in the U.S. armed forces. A Gallup poll, taken in the final days of Obama’s term, showed that 68 percent of Americans believed the U.S. had made progress on LGBT rights during Obama’s eight years in office.
Obama substantially escalated the use of drone strikes against suspected militants and terrorists associated with al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
In 2016, the last year of his presidency, the U.S. dropped 26,171 bombs on seven different countries. Obama left about 8,400 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, 5,262 in Iraq, 503 in Syria, 133 in Pakistan, 106 in Somalia, seven in Yemen, and two in Libya at the end of his presidency.
According to Pew Research Center and United States Bureau of Justice Statistics, from December 31, 2009, to December 31, 2015, inmates sentenced in U.S. federal custody declined by five percent.
This is the largest decline in sentenced inmates in U.S. federal custody since Democratic President Jimmy Carter. By contrast, the federal prison population increased significantly under presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.
“He has frequently treated human rights as a secondary interest — nice to support when the cost was not too high, but nothing like a top priority he championed,” Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement about Obama’s record on human rights.
Obama had a 60% approval rating when he stepped down from office in January 2017. The same Brookings Institution survey from 2015, which placed him as the 18th greatest American president, saw him rise 10 points. He scored a 63 percent approval rating in Gallup’s 2018 job approval survey for the ten previous presidents of the United States.
Presidential library
Obama’s future presidential library will be called the Barack Obama Presidential Center. It will take place in Jackson Park on Chicago’s South Side and be hosted by the University of Chicago.
Net Worth
Obama’s net worth is $70.00 million.
The former president reportedly has a net worth of $70 million, according to both Celebrity Net Worth and Business Insider.
Read about Jack Smith the lawyer
John Luman Smith, an American lawyer, was born on June 5, 1969. He has worked for the US Department of Justice (DOJ) as an assistant US attorney, acting US attorney, and head of the division’s Public Integrity Section.
In addition, he served as the chief prosecutor at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, a tribunal at The Hague that is charged with looking into and prosecuting war crimes committed during the Kosovo War.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith as an independent special counsel in November 2022.
Smith was charged with supervising two ongoing criminal investigations by the DOJ into former President Donald Trump: one into his alleged involvement in the attack on the U.S.
Capitol on January 6, and the other into possible improper handling of government records, including classified documents. In June 2023, Trump was charged on 37 counts as a consequence of the second case.
Early life and education
Smith’s birthdate is June 5, 1969. He was raised in the Syracuse suburb of Clay, New York. He played baseball and football while attending Liverpool High School, where he graduated in 1987.
At the State University of New York at Oneonta, he continued his studies in political science, earning a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, in 1991.
Smith then enrolled in Harvard Law School, where he earned his Juris Doctor in 1994.
Career
Smith joined the Manhattan District Attorney’s office as an Assistant District Attorney after earning his law degree. He worked for the district attorney’s office’s sex crimes and domestic abuse departments.
In 1999, he started working for the Eastern District of New York’s US Attorney’s Office. He directed the prosecution of the police officers who sodomized Abner Louima and the case that led to Ronell Wilson’s death sentence, which was later reversed, in his capacity as an assistant U.S. attorney at the Brooklyn office.
From 2008 to 2010, Smith worked as Investigation Coordinator for the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. In that position, he oversaw cases against government officials and militia members accused of war crimes and genocide.
In 2010, Smith returned to the U.S. to become chief of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section (PIN). Among his first responsibilities was evaluating current investigations, and he recommended closing investigations into several members of Congress.
He spent five years as chief of PIN, where he prosecuted a variety of corruption cases, including those against Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, U.S.
Representative Rick Renzi, New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, and Jeffrey Sterling, a CIA agent who shared national secrets. Smith became an assistant U.S. attorney in the Middle District of Tennessee, at Nashville in 2015.
He became the Acting United States Attorney in March 2017 upon the resignation of David Rivera, and resigned effective September 2017 after the nomination of Donald Q. Cochran. Smith became the vice president and head of litigation for Hospital Corporation of America in 2017.
Smith was appointed to a four-year term as the chief prosecutor for the Kosovo Specialist Chambers at The Hague on May 7, 2018, with responsibility for looking into war crimes committed during the Kosovo War, including the case of Salih Mustafa.
He assumed the position on September 11, 2018, and on May 8, 2022, he was appointed to a second term. On November 18, 2022, he announced his resignation.
United States special counsel
The criminal investigations into Donald Trump’s actions regarding the attack on the US Capitol on January 6 as well as Trump’s handling and storage of government records, including classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate, will be overseen by Smith, who was appointed special counsel by US Attorney General Merrick Garland on November 18, 2022.
While healing from a shattered leg sustained when he was hit by a scooter while riding, he originally worked from the Netherlands. Smith has subsequently traveled back to the USA.
Trump was indicted by a grand jury on June 8, 2023, marking the first occasion in American history that a former president has been accused of a federal crime.
In reaction, Smith was referred to by Trump as a “raging and uncontrolled Trump hater” and a “deranged lunatic”.
Defunding Smith, the special counsel, and the investigation would be accomplished by an appropriations rider, which was also made public by representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Personal life
Despite starting to swim in his mid-thirties, Smith is an accomplished triathlete.
He wed Katy Chevigny, a documentary filmmaker best known for the 2020 film Becoming about Michelle Obama, in July 2011. Their daughter exists.
From 2018 until Jack Smith went to Washington in December 2022, the pair resided in the Netherlands.
Read about Walt Nauta
Waltine Torre Nauta, an American assistant to former president Donald Trump, was born in 1982 .
He served as Trump’s valet at the White House while a petty officer in the U.S. Navy, and after Trump’s administration, he continued to work for Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club and residence.
A federal grand jury indicted Trump and Nauta in June 2023; Nauta was accused of six criminal offenses.
Early life
Nauta was raised in Guam’s Hgat. In the nearby village of Snta Rita-Sumai, he received his diploma from Southern High School.
Career
In July 2001, Nauta enrolled in the American Navy. He was a culinary specialist and a cook in the Navy. In 2012, he started working for the White House Military Office’s Presidential Food Service.
Nauta became Donald Trump’s personal valet during his time in office. He was in charge of reacting when the Presidential call button was pressed.
In September 2020, he received a promotion to senior chief petty officer.
As his butler and bodyguard, Nauta accompanied Trump to Mar-a-Lago when he resigned from office in January 2021. He routinely accompanied Trump on his campaign trips and public engagements.
His time in the Navy came to an end in September 2021, and he started working for the Save America PAC in August 2021. Additionally, Trump’s 2024 campaign for president compensated him.
Investigation and indictment
In the FBI investigation of Donald Trump’s handling of official documents, Nauta was called as a witness.
According to the ensuing indictment, both Trump and Nauta packed belongings from the White House to transport to Mar-a-Lago in Florida in the final weeks of Trump’s administration.
According to the indictment, between November 2021 and January 2022, Nauta allegedly carried boxes containing illegally kept secret documents from a Mar-a-Lago storage area to Trump’s residence.
The indictment also alleges that, after a federal grand jury issued a subpoena in May 2022 requiring the return of the government documents, Nauta assisted Trump in concealing documents from the grand jury, the FBI, and Trump’s own lawyers.
It specifically alleges that Trump and Nauta misled a lawyer (referenced in the indictment as “Attorney 1,” and identified as Evan Corcoran) who was working on gathering documents to comply with the subpoena.
According to the indictment, between May 23, 2022 (when Trump met with his attorneys) and June 2, 2023 (when Corcoran told Trump he planned to search a storage room in Mar-a-Lago for documents sought by the subpoena), Nauta was seen on surveillance video removing 64 boxes from a storage room and delivering them to Trump’s residence, then returning only 30 boxes to the room.
The indictment states that Nauta lied to FBI investigators in May 2022, by falsely claiming he was not aware of boxes being brought to Trump’s residence for his review.
Investigators with the independent special counsel investigation led by Jack Smith had come to doubt Nauta’s account of his activities, and beginning in fall 2022 considered whether to charge him with crimes. He declined to cooperate with prosecutors, and on May 24, 2023, the special counsel formally notified Nauta that he was a target of the investigation.
In the same case that resulted in the indictment of Donald Trump, a federal grand jury indicted Nauta on June 8, 2023, in Miami’s U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
Nauta was charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document in a federal inquiry, plot to hide, corruptly concealing a document, and making false statements and representations, among other offenses.
Nauta was present when the indictment was made; they were both at Trump’s club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Stanley Woodward is anticipated to represent Nauta in court.
Union
In 2012, Savannah Rogers and Walt Nauta got married. Waltine Torre Nauta Jr. is listed in the Mayors Council of Guam’s monthly report on civil weddings.
Parents
Walt Nauta Parents. His mother is known as Pauline Torre while his father is under review.
Net Worth
Walt Nauta is said to be worth at least $30 million.