In 1988, he went to Harvard Law School, where he attracted national attention as the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review. Returning to Chicago, he joined a small law firm specializing in civil rights. In 1992, Obama married Michelle Robinson, a lawyer who had also excelled at Harvard Law.
^ Ben Feller, Obama interviews Diane Wood for Supreme Court, Associated Press (May 4, 2010). ^ a b Shear, Michael D. (March 16, 2016). "Obama Chooses Merrick Garland for Supreme Court". The New York Times. Retrieved March 16, 2016. ^ "Grassley on Supreme Court Nomination: 'We have a constitutional responsibility".
Shaun Donovan is Barack Obama's choice for HUD secretary. In 2004, he became Commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD). During the Clinton administration and the transition to the Bush administration, Donovan was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Multifamily Housing at HUD.
In 1992, Obama married Michelle Robinson, a lawyer who had also excelled at Harvard Law. Their daughters, Malia and Sasha, were born in 1998 and 2001, respectively. Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, and then to the U.S. Senate in 2004. At the Democratic National Convention that summer, he delivered a much acclaimed keynote address.
White House CounselIncumbent Dana Remus since January 20, 2021Formation1943First holderSamuel Rosenman
The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) is an office in the United States Department of Justice that assists the Attorney General's position as legal adviser to the President and all executive branch agencies.
The United States attorney general (AG) leads the United States Department of Justice, and is the chief lawyer of the federal government of the United States. The attorney general serves as the principal advisor to the president of the United States on all legal matters.
White House OfficeCHIEF OF STAFFRonald A. KlainNational Security AdvisorJacob J. SullivanWhite House CounselDana A. RemusDeputy National Security AdvisorElizabeth D. Sherwood-RandallPress SecretaryJennifer R. Psaki6 more rows
Instead, the charges were announced by federal prosecutors within the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. Craig is the first former Democrat official to be charged in connection with the Mueller probe.
Craig deliberately hid the true nature and compensation of his work for Ukraine in order to maximize the public relations value of the report he wrote for the Eastern European government , according to the indictment.
The case against Craig stemmed from the wide-ranging probe overseen by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The indictment even alleges that several of Craig’s false statements were made during interviews conducted by Mueller’s investigative team. While Mueller charged multiple Trump affiliates — such as Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, and Michael Flynn — with false statements charges, he chose not to charge a prominent Democrat attorney who worked in the Obama White House with any wrongdoing. It is not clear why Mueller prosecuted alleged violations by Trump associates but not of a former high-ranking Obama administration official.
April 11, 2019 By Sean Davis. A federal grand jury on Thursday charged Greg Craig with conspiring to hide his paid collusion with a foreign government and lying about that work to federal officials. Craig, a high-powered Beltway lawyer, served as President Barack Obama’s top White House lawyer during the former president’s first year in office.
Sean Davis is the co-founder of The Federalist.
According to the formal indictment of Craig, which the Department of Justice released Thursday afternoon, the Democrat superlawyer “did unlawfully, knowingly, and willfully falsify, conceal, and cover up” his work on behalf of the Ukrainian government.
Biden's oath of office was administered by Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. As the presidential transition of Barack Obama began, Biden said he was in daily meetings with Obama and that McCain was still his friend. The U.S. Secret Service codename given to Biden is "Celtic", referencing his Irish roots.
On December 1, 2008, Obama announced that Eric Holder would be his nominee for Attorney General. Holder was formally nominated on January 20, 2009, and approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 28. Following his confirmation by the full Senate by a 75–21 vote on February 2, 2009, he became the first African-American Attorney General of the United States.
The Obama-Biden ticket won 365 electoral college votes to McCain-Palin's 173, and had a 53–46 percent edge in the nationwide popular vote. Biden became the 47th Vice President of the United States on January 20, 2009, when he was inaugurated alongside President Barack Obama. He succeeded Dick Cheney.
Hillary Clinton assumed the office of Secretary of State on January 21, 2009. In mid-November 2008, President-elect Obama and Clinton discussed the possibility of her serving as U.S. Secretary of State in his administration, along with rumored nominees such as Bill Richardson, John Kerry, Sam Nunn and Chuck Hagel and on November 21, reports indicated that she had accepted the position. Clinton was floated in emails by Obama transition officials as a possible secretary of health and human services. On December 1, President-elect Obama formally announced that Clinton would be his nominee for Secretary of State. Clinton said she was reluctant to leave the Senate, but that the new position represented a "difficult and exciting adventure". The appointment required a Saxbe fix, as Clinton was then a member of the United States Senate. As part of the nomination, Clinton's husband, former president Bill Clinton, agreed to accept a number of conditions and restrictions regarding his ongoing activities and fundraising efforts for the Clinton Presidential Center and Clinton Global Initiative.
Robert Gates (2006–2011) Robert Gates. Robert Gates assumed the office of Secretary of Defense on December 18, 2006, under his predecessor then-President George W. Bush. The retention of Gates fulfilled Obama's pledge made on the campaign trail to have a Republican in his Cabinet.
On December 5, 2014, President Obama nominated former Deputy Secretary of Defense Ash Carter as his fourth Secretary of Defense. On February 12, 2015, the Senate confirmed Carter in a 93–5 vote.
On January 10, 2013, Jacob Lew, then the President's Chief of Staff was nominated as the replacement for retiring Treasury Secretary Geithner, to serve in President Obama's second term. Lew's nomination was confirmed by the full Senate on Wednesday, February 27, 2013, by a vote of 71 to 26. At the White House on the next day (Thursday, February 28), Vice President Joe Biden swore in Lew as the 76th Secretary of the Treasury.
Following graduation in 1983, Obama worked in New York City, then became a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, coordinating with churches to improve housing conditions and set up job-training programs in a community hit hard by steel mill closures.
In 1988, he went to Harvard Law School, where he attracted national attention as the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review. Returning to Chicago, he joined a small law firm specializing in civil rights. In 1992, Obama married Michelle Robinson, a lawyer who had also excelled at Harvard Law.
His story is the American story — values from the heartland, a middle-class upbringing in a strong family, hard work and education as the means of getting ahead, and the conviction that a life so blessed should be lived in service to others.
The Middle East remained a key foreign policy challenge. Obama had overseen the killing of Osama bin Laden, but a new self-proclaimed Islamic State arose during a civil war in Syria and began inciting terrorist attacks. Obama sought to manage a hostile Iran with a treaty that hindered its development of nuclear weapons.
When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, he became the first African American to hold the office. The framers of the Constitution always hoped that our leadership would not be limited to Americans of wealth or family connections.
In 1992, Obama married Michelle Robinson, a lawyer who had also excelled at Harvard Law. Their daughters, Malia and Sasha, were born in 1998 and 2001, respectively. Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, and then to the U.S. Senate in 2004. At the Democratic National Convention that summer, he delivered a much acclaimed keynote address. Some pundits instantly pronounced him a future president, but most did not expect it to happen for some time. Nevertheless, in 2008 he was elected over Arizona Senator John McCain by 365 to 173 electoral votes.
Nevertheless, in 2008 he was elected over Arizona Senator John McCain by 365 to 173 electoral votes. As an incoming president, Obama faced many challenges—an economic collapse, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the continuing menace of terrorism.
Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack is the choice for secretary of agriculture in the Obama administration.
The President's cabinet is composed of the most senior appointed officers of the Executive Branch of government. Cabinet officers are nominated by the President and confirmed or rejected by the Senate. A cabinet is authorized in Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution.
The Secretary of State is the head of the U.S. Department of State, which focuses on foreign affairs.
The Secretary of Energy cabinet position was created with the formation of the Department of Energy on 1 October 1977 by President Jimmy Carter.
The Department of Homeland Security was created after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
The U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development runs HUD, which was founded in 1965 to develop and execute federal policy on urban housing.
Susan Rice is Barack Obama's choice for United Nations Ambassador; he plans to reinstate the Ambassador as a cabinet-rank position. During President Bill Clinton's second term, Rice served on the staff of the National Security Council and as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. 19. of 20.
By that time Michelle had turned her energies to public service. She was assistant commissioner of planning and development in Chicago’s City Hall before becoming the founding executive director of the Chicago chapter of Public Allies, an AmeriCorps program that prepares young people for public service. In 1996, she joined the University of Chicago as associate dean of student services, where she developed the university’s first community service program. In 2002, she went to work for the University of Chicago Medical Center, where in 2005 she became the vice president of community and external affairs. During these years the Obamas’ daughters Malia and Sasha were born.
During Barack Obama’s second term Michelle spearheaded the Reach Higher Initiative to help students understand job opportunities and the education and skills they need for those jobs.
Through it, elected officials, business leaders, educators, parents, and faith leaders worked together to provide more nutritious food in schools, bring healthy and affordable food into underserved communities, plant vegetable gardens across America, and provide new opportunities for kids to be more active. Each year local schoolchildren helped plant and harvest the garden she started on the White House South Lawn. Its vegetables and fruits were served at the White House and donated to soup kitchens and food banks.
Michelle earned a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and a juris doctor degree from Harvard Law School. In 1988, she returned to Chicago to join the firm of Sidley Austin. It was there that she met Barack Obama, a summer associate she was assigned to advise. They were married in 1992.
Michelle Obama’s journey began in the South Side of Chicago, where Fraser and Marian Robinson instilled in their daughter a heartfelt commitment to family, hard work, and education.
He held up Earl Warren, a former governor of California who later became Chief Justice, as an example. Mr. Warren, he said, had had the wisdom to recognize that segregation was wrong less because of precise sociological effects and more so because it was immoral and stigmatized blacks:
Bush 's nominees to the Supreme Court. In a speech announcing his opposition to John Roberts, Obama stated:
Obama telephoned Judge Sotomayor at 9 pm EST on May 25 to alert her that she was his choice. Later that night, he called the other three finalists and informed them of his decision. Obama announced the nomination the next morning in the East Room of the White House in a press conference alongside Sotomayor and Joe Biden.
With the retirement of Justice Stevens, some commentators directed focus on the religious make-up of the court. Upon Justice Stevens' retirement, the Court lacked any Protestant members, marking the first time in its history that it will be exclusively composed of Jewish and Catholic Justices.
Sotomayor was confirmed by the Senate on August 6, 2009, by a vote of 68–31, and was sworn in as an Associate Justice on August 8, 2009.
In the third and final presidential debate with Republican nominee John McCain on October 15, 2008, Obama also implied that he would look for a Supreme Court nominee with previous judicial experience:
Later, however, Obama seemed to step away from the example of Warren. In an interview with the editorial board of the Detroit Free Press on October 2, 2008, Obama said:
On November 6, 2008, Emanuel accepted the position of White House Chief of Staff for newly elected President Barack Obama. While he was characterized by The New York Times as being "perhaps the most influential chief of staff of a generation," Emanuel quickly gained a reputation for his abusive, disparaging tirades, especially toward the Democratic Party. In one particular incident, Emanuel made an inflammatory remark about conservative Democrats who didn't support President Obama's new health-care initiative, and his comments were leaked to the press. He later publicly apologized for his insensitive language.
Emanuel left the White House in 1998 to become the managing director of an investment banking firm, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, in Chicago. In 2000, President Clinton named Emanuel to the board of directors of the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, best known today as Freddie Mac.
When Hillary Clinton was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2001, she became the first American first lady to win a public office seat. In 2016, she became the first woman in U.S. history to become the presidential nominee of a major political party.
In 1988, Emanuel served as the national campaign director for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and in 1989, he became the senior advisor and chief fundraiser for Richard Daley's campaign for the Chicago mayorship. During this time, he raised an unprecedented $7 million for Daley.
Emanuel's fundraising abilities helped win him a job as director of finance for Bill Clinton 's presidential campaign in 1992. Following the campaign, Emanuel became a senior advisor in the Clinton White House, where he was responsible for organizing the meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 1993. He was also a leading strategist in the unsuccessful push for universal healthcare in 1994.
"Someone would contribute $500. He'd call back and say, 'Thank you very much ... we need $1,000,'" former Democratic National Committee Chairman David Wilhelm once recalled of Emanuel.
Barack Obama was the 44th president of the United States, and the first African American to serve in the office. First elected to the presidency in 2008, he won a second term in 2012.
MONIQUE DORSAINVIL, 29, Deputy Chief of Staff for the Office of Public Engagement & the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs
KATHERINE BRANCH, 48, Director of Special Projects for the Office of Public Engagement & the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs
The vice president is an elected official rather than an appointed position, and therefore does not require confirmation by the Senate.
Since shortly following Biden's withdrawal from the presidential race, Obama had been privately telling Biden that he was interested in finding an important place for him in a possible Obama administration. In a June 22, 2008, intervie…
President Obama has included members of his cabinet that are not traditionally considered members of the Cabinet.
On November 6, 2008, Rahm Emanuel accepted the Cabinet-level position of White House Chief of Staff under Barack Obama. He resigned his congressional seat effective January 2, 2009. A special primary to fill his vacated congressio…
On February 11, 2009, it was reported that Gil Kerlikowske had accepted an offer by President Obama to become Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, succeeding John P. Walters. On May 7, 2009, the Senate confirmed Kerlikowske's nomination by a vote of 91–1. However, prior to Kerlikowske's nomination, the position was downgraded from a Cabinet-level position to a non-Cabinet-level position.
• First inauguration of Barack Obama
• Presidential transition of Barack Obama
• List of Cabinet and Cabinet Level Officers at White House website