Barack Obama was born on the 4th of August 1961 at Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children in Honolulu, Hawaii, making him the only U.S. president born outside the contiguous 48 states. His birth marked the beginning of a life that would straddle two vastly different cultures, as his mother, Ann Dunham, was an 18-year-old American of English, Welsh, German, Swiss, and Irish descent, while his father, Barack Obama Sr., was a 27-year-old Kenyan from the Luo tribe. The couple met in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa in 1960, married in Wailuku on the 2nd of February 1961, and divorced in March 1964, just months before Obama Sr. returned to Kenya to work as a senior economic analyst for the Kenyan government. Obama Sr. visited his son only once, at Christmas 1971, before dying in an automobile accident in 1982 when Obama was 21 years old. This absence left a void that Obama would spend decades trying to fill, describing his early childhood as a time when the fact that his father looked nothing like the people around him barely registered in his mind. The family dynamic shifted again in 1967 when his mother and stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, moved to Indonesia, where Obama lived from age six to ten. He was registered in local Indonesian schools as Barry Soetoro and wrongly recorded as an Indonesian citizen and a Muslim, a misclassification that would later fuel conspiracy theories despite his clear American birth. During these formative years, Obama learned to speak Indonesian fluently and absorbed a hardheaded assessment of how the world works from his stepfather, who taught him resilience in the face of poverty and political instability. When he returned to Honolulu in 1971 to live with his maternal grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Dunham, he attended Punahou School, a private college preparatory institution, where he navigated the complexities of being a mixed-race child in a predominantly white environment. The opportunity that Hawaii offered to experience a variety of cultures in a climate of mutual respect became an integral part of his worldview, yet it was also a place where he struggled with his identity, admitting in later years that he used alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine during his teenage years to push questions of who he was out of his mind. He was a member of the Choom Gang, a self-named group of friends who spent time together smoking marijuana, a period of rebellion that he would later acknowledge as a way to cope with the confusion of his multiracial heritage. His mother, Ann Dunham, spent the next two decades in Indonesia, divorcing Lolo Soetoro in 1980 and earning a PhD in anthropology before dying in 1995 from ovarian and uterine cancer, leaving Obama to grapple with the loss of both parents and the weight of their legacies.
The Scholar And The Organizer
After graduating from high school in 1979, Obama moved to Los Angeles to attend Occidental College on a full scholarship, where he made his first public speech in February 1981 calling for disinvestment from South Africa in response to apartheid. He transferred to Columbia University in New York City as a junior, majoring in political science with a specialty in international relations and English literature, graduating in 1983 with a 3.7 GPA. His early career was marked by a search for purpose, leading him to work as a financial researcher at Business International Corporation and a project coordinator for the New York Public Interest Research Group. In 1985, he moved to Chicago to work as a community organizer for the Developing Communities Project, a faith-based organization on the South Side of Chicago. For three years, from June 1985 to May 1988, he helped set up job training programs, college preparatory tutoring, and tenants' rights organizations in neighborhoods like Altgeld Gardens. This work grounded him in the realities of urban poverty and gave him a practical understanding of the power of community organizing, a skill he would later refine as a consultant for the Gamaliel Foundation. In 1988, despite being offered a full scholarship to Northwestern University School of Law, Obama enrolled at Harvard Law School, where he lived in nearby Somerville, Massachusetts. His time at Harvard was transformative, as he was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review at the end of his first year and became its first black president in his second year. This achievement gained national media attention and led to a publishing contract for a book about race relations, which evolved into his personal memoir, Dreams from My Father, published in 1995. He graduated from Harvard Law in 1991 with a Juris Doctor magna cum laude, and his election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review opened doors that would shape his future. After graduation, he accepted a two-year position as a Visiting Law and Government Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School to work on his first book, then taught constitutional law there for twelve years, first as a lecturer from 1992 to 1996 and then as a senior lecturer from 1996 to 2004. During this period, he directed Illinois's Project Vote, a voter registration campaign that registered 150,000 of 400,000 unregistered African Americans in the state, earning him a spot on Crain's Chicago Business's 1993 list of 40 under Forty. His legal career was not just academic; it was deeply rooted in the communities he served, and his ability to connect with people from all walks of life would become a hallmark of his political style. He also began to build a network of allies and mentors, including Sheila Miyoshi Jager, with whom he had a long-term relationship that ended in 1989, and Michelle Robinson, whom he met in 1989 while working at the law firm Sidley Austin. Their relationship would evolve from a professional advisory role to a personal one, leading to their engagement in 1991 and marriage on the 3rd of October 1992. The couple's first daughter, Malia Ann, was born in 1998, followed by a second daughter, Natasha, known as Sasha, in 2001. The Obamas' life in Chicago was marked by a commitment to public service, and their financial situation improved significantly after the success of his books, with their 2009 tax return showing a household income of $5.5 million, mostly from book sales. Obama's legal and academic career provided the foundation for his political ambitions, but it was his work as a community organizer that gave him the grassroots experience and the personal stories that would define his political identity.
Obama's political career began in earnest when he was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, succeeding Democratic state senator Alice Palmer from Illinois's 13th District, which spanned Chicago South Side neighborhoods from Hyde Park, Kenwood south to South Shore and west to Chicago Lawn. Once elected, he gained bipartisan support for legislation that reformed ethics and health care laws, sponsored a law that increased tax credits for low-income workers, negotiated welfare reform, and promoted increased subsidies for childcare. In 2001, as co-chairman of the bipartisan Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, he supported Republican governor George Ryan's payday loan regulations and predatory mortgage lending regulations aimed at averting home foreclosures. He was reelected to the Illinois Senate in 1998, defeating Republican Yesse Yehudah, and again in 2002. In 2000, he lost a Democratic primary race for Illinois's 1st congressional district to four-term incumbent Bobby Rush by a margin of two to one, a setback that did not deter him from pursuing higher office. In January 2003, Obama became chairman of the Illinois Senate's Health and Human Services Committee when Democrats regained a majority after a decade in the minority. He sponsored and led unanimous, bipartisan passage of legislation to monitor racial profiling by requiring police to record the race of drivers they detained, and legislation making Illinois the first state to mandate videotaping of homicide interrogations. His work on death penalty reforms earned him credit from police representatives for his active engagement with police organizations. In May 2002, Obama commissioned a poll to assess his prospects in a 2004 U.S. Senate race, created a campaign committee, and began raising funds, lining up political media consultant David Axelrod by August 2002. He formally announced his candidacy in January 2003 and was an early opponent of the George W. Bush administration's 2003 invasion of Iraq, speaking out against the war at high-profile rallies. The race for the Senate was wide-open, with 15 candidates in the Democratic primary, but Obama won in an unexpected landslide in March 2004, which overnight made him a rising star within the national Democratic Party. His victory led to the reissue of his memoir, Dreams from My Father, and speculation about a presidential future. In July 2004, Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, seen by nine million viewers. His speech was well received and elevated his status within the Democratic Party, with many seeing it as a turning point in his career. In the November 2004 general election, Obama won with 70 percent of the vote, the largest margin of victory for a Senate candidate in Illinois history, taking 92 of the state's 102 counties, including several where Democrats traditionally do not perform well. He was sworn in as a senator on the 3rd of January 2005, becoming the only Senate member of the Congressional Black Caucus. He introduced two initiatives that bore his name: the Lugar, Obama, which expanded the Nunn, Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction concept to conventional weapons, and the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, which authorized the establishment of USAspending.gov, a web search engine on federal spending. His time in the Senate was marked by a focus on foreign policy, with official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa, and a speech at the University of Nairobi in which he condemned corruption within the Kenyan government. He resigned his Senate seat on the 16th of November 2008 to focus on his transition period for the presidency, leaving behind a legacy of bipartisan cooperation and a reputation as a rising star in the Democratic Party.
The Campaign For Change
On the 10th of February 2007, Obama announced his candidacy for President of the United States in front of the Old State Capitol building in Springfield, Illinois, a choice of site viewed as symbolic, as it was also where Abraham Lincoln delivered his House Divided speech in 1858. The field of Democratic Party presidential primaries narrowed to Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton after early contests, with the race remaining close throughout the primary process. Obama gained a steady lead in pledged delegates due to better long-range planning, superior fundraising, dominant organizing in caucus states, and better exploitation of delegate allocation rules. On the 2nd of June 2008, Obama had received enough votes to clinch his nomination, and after an initial hesitation to concede, Clinton ended her campaign on the 7th of June and endorsed him. On the 23rd of August 2008, Obama announced his selection of Delaware senator Joe Biden as his vice presidential running mate, choosing him from a field speculated to include former Indiana governor and senator Evan Bayh and Virginia governor Tim Kaine. At the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado, Hillary Clinton called for her supporters to endorse Obama, and she and Bill Clinton gave convention speeches in his support. Obama delivered his acceptance speech at Invesco Field at Mile High stadium to a crowd of about 84,000, and the speech was viewed by over three million people worldwide. During both the primary process and the general election, Obama's campaign set numerous fundraising records, particularly in the quantity of small donations. On the 19th of June 2008, Obama became the first major-party presidential candidate to turn down public financing in the general election since the system was created in 1976. John McCain was nominated as the Republican candidate, and he selected Sarah Palin as his running mate. Obama and McCain engaged in three presidential debates in September and October 2008, and on the 4th of November, Obama won the presidency with 365 electoral votes to 173 received by McCain, winning 52.9 percent of the popular vote to McCain's 45.7 percent. He became the first African-American to be elected president, and he delivered his victory speech before hundreds of thousands of supporters in Chicago's Grant Park. He is one of the three United States senators moved directly from the U.S. Senate to the White House, the others being Warren G. Harding and John F. Kennedy. In 2011, Obama filed election papers with the Federal Election Commission and announced his reelection campaign for 2012 in a video titled It Begins with Us that he posted on his website. As the incumbent president, he ran virtually unopposed in the Democratic Party presidential primaries, and on the 3rd of April 2012, Obama secured the 2,778 convention delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination. At the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, Obama and Joe Biden were formally nominated by former president Bill Clinton as the Democratic Party candidates for president and vice president in the general election. Their main opponents were Republicans Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, and Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. On the 6th of November 2012, Obama won 332 electoral votes, exceeding the 270 required for him to be reelected as president, with 51.1 percent of the popular vote, becoming the first Democratic president since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win the majority of the popular vote twice. He addressed supporters and volunteers at Chicago's McCormick Place after his reelection, saying, Tonight you voted for action, not politics as usual. You elected us to focus on your jobs, not ours. And in the coming weeks and months, I am looking forward to reaching out and working with leaders of both parties. His campaigns were marked by a focus on grassroots organizing, digital innovation, and a message of hope and change that resonated with a wide range of voters, from young people to minorities to independents.
The Economy And The Law
The inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president took place on the 20th of January 2009, and in his first few days in office, he issued executive orders and presidential memoranda directing the U.S. military to develop plans to withdraw troops from Iraq. 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 and revoked President George W. Bush's restoration of President Ronald Reagan's Mexico City policy, which prohibited federal aid to international family planning organizations that perform or provide counseling about abortion. The first bill signed into law by Obama was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, relaxing the statute of limitations for equal-pay lawsuits, and five days later, he signed the reauthorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Program to cover an additional four million uninsured children. In March 2009, Obama reversed a Bush-era policy that had limited funding of embryonic stem cell research and pledged to develop strict guidelines on the research. He appointed two women to serve on the Supreme Court in the first two years of his presidency, nominating Sonia Sotomayor on the 26th of May 2009 to replace retiring associate justice David Souter, and she was confirmed on the 6th of August 2009, becoming the first Supreme Court Justice of Hispanic descent. He nominated Elena Kagan on the 10th of May 2010 to replace retiring Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, and she was confirmed on the 5th of August 2010, bringing the number of women sitting simultaneously on the Court to three for the first time in American history. On the 11th of March 2009, Obama created the White House Council on Women and Girls, which formed part of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, having been established 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 the 22nd of January 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, ending 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 the 16th of January 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, urging Congress to reintroduce an expired ban on military-style assault weapons, 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 the 5th of January 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. In 2011, Obama signed a four-year renewal of the Patriot Act, and following the 2013 global surveillance disclosures by whistleblower Edward Snowden, Obama condemned the leak as unpatriotic, but called for increased restrictions on the National Security Agency to address violations of privacy. He continued and expanded surveillance programs set up by George W. Bush, while implementing some reforms, supporting legislation that would have limited the NSA's ability to collect phone records in bulk under a single program and supporting bringing more transparency to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Racial issues were a central theme of his presidency, with Obama implementing stronger policy action on behalf of African-Americans than any president since the Nixon era, despite not making more overt references to race relations in his speeches. The acquittal of George Zimmerman following the killing of Trayvon Martin sparked national outrage, leading to Obama giving a speech in which he said that Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago. The shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, sparked a wave of protests, and 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 March 2016 Gallup poll, nearly one third of Americans said they worried a great deal about race relations, a higher figure than in any previous Gallup poll since 2001. On the 8th of October 2009, Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a measure that expanded the 1969 United States federal hate-crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. On the 30th of October 2009, Obama lifted the ban on travel to the United States by those infected with HIV, a move celebrated by Immigration Equality. On the 22nd of December 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, and 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 the 9th of May 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. During his second inaugural address on the 21st of January 2013, Obama became the first U.S. president in office to call for full equality for gay Americans, and the first to mention gay rights or the word gay in an inaugural address. In 2013, the Obama administration filed briefs that urged the Supreme Court to rule in favor of same-sex couples in the cases of Hollingsworth v. Perry regarding same-sex marriage and United States v. Windsor regarding the Defense of Marriage Act. Economic policy was a central focus of his presidency, with Obama signing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 on the 17th of February 2009, a $787 billion economic stimulus package aimed at helping the economy recover from the deepening worldwide recession. The act included increased federal spending for health care, infrastructure, education, various tax breaks and incentives, and direct assistance to individuals. In March 2009, Obama's Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, took further steps to manage the 2008 financial crisis, including introducing the Public, Private Investment Program for Legacy Assets, which contains provisions for buying up to $2 trillion in depreciated real estate assets. Obama intervened in the troubled automotive industry in March 2009, renewing loans for General Motors and Chrysler to continue operations while reorganizing. Over the following months, the White House set terms for both firms' bankruptcies, including the sale of Chrysler to Italian automaker Fiat and a reorganization of GM giving the U.S. government a temporary 60 percent equity stake in the company. In June 2009, dissatisfied with the pace of economic stimulus, Obama called on his cabinet to accelerate the investment, and he signed into law the Car Allowance Rebate System, known colloquially as Cash for Clunkers, which temporarily boosted the economy. The Bush and Obama administrations authorized spending and loan guarantees from the Federal Reserve and the Department of the Treasury, totaling about $11.5 trillion, but only $3 trillion had been spent by the end of November 2009. On the 2nd of August 2011, after a lengthy congressional debate over whether to raise the nation's debt limit, Obama signed the bipartisan Budget Control Act of 2011, which enforced limits on discretionary spending until 2021, established a procedure to increase the debt limit, created a Congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to propose further deficit reduction with a stated goal of achieving at least $1.5 trillion in budgetary savings over 10 years, and established automatic procedures for reducing spending by as much as $1.2 trillion if legislation originating with the new joint select committee did not achieve such savings. By passing the legislation, Congress was able to prevent a U.S. government default on its obligations. The unemployment rate rose in 2009, reaching a peak in October at 10.0 percent and averaging 10.0 percent in the fourth quarter, and following a decrease to 9.7 percent in the first quarter of 2010, the unemployment rate fell to 9.6 percent in the second quarter, where it remained for the rest of the year. Between February and December 2010, employment rose by 0.8 percent, which was less than the average of 1.9 percent experienced during comparable periods in the past four employment recoveries. By November 2012, the unemployment rate fell to 7.7 percent, decreasing to 6.7 percent in the last month of 2013. During 2014, the unemployment rate continued to decline, falling to 6.3 percent in the first quarter. GDP growth returned in the third quarter of 2009, expanding at a rate of 1.6 percent, followed by a 5.0 percent increase in the fourth quarter, and growth continued in 2010, posting an increase of 3.7 percent in the first quarter, with lesser gains throughout the rest of the year. In July 2010, the Federal Reserve noted that economic activity continued to increase, but its pace had slowed, and chairman Ben Bernanke said the economic outlook was unusually uncertain. Overall, the economy expanded at a rate of 2.9 percent in 2010. The Congressional Budget Office and a broad range of economists credit Obama's stimulus plan for economic growth, with the CBO releasing a report stating that the stimulus bill increased employment by 1 to 2.1 million, while conceding that it is impossible to determine how many of the reported jobs would have existed in the absence of the stimulus package. Although an April 2010 survey of members of the National Association for Business Economics showed an increase in job creation over a similar January survey for the first time in two years, 73 percent of 68 respondents believed the stimulus bill has had no impact on employment. The economy of the United States has grown faster than the other original NATO members by a wider margin under President Obama than it has anytime since the end of World War II, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development credits the much faster growth in the United States to the stimulus plan of the U.S. and the austerity measures in the European Union. Within a month of the 2010 midterm elections, Obama announced a compromise deal with the congressional Republican leadership that included a temporary, two-year extension of the 2001 and 2003 income tax rates, a one-year payroll tax reduction, continuation of unemployment benefits, and a new rate and exemption amount for estate taxes. The compromise overcame opposition from some in both parties, and the resulting $858 billion Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 passed with bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress before Obama signed it on the 17th of December 2010. In December 2013, Obama declared that growing income inequality is a defining challenge of our time and called on Congress to bolster the safety net and raise wages, coming on the heels of the nationwide strikes of fast-food workers and Pope Francis' criticism of inequality and trickle-down economics. Obama urged Congress to ratify a 12-nation free trade pact called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Environmental policy was another key focus, with Obama visiting the Gulf of Mexico after the 20th of April 2010, explosion that destroyed an offshore drilling rig at the Macondo Prospect, causing a major sustained oil leak. He announced a federal investigation, formed a bipartisan commission to recommend new safety standards, and then announced a six-month moratorium on new deepwater drilling permits and leases, pending regulatory review. As multiple efforts by BP failed, some in the media and public expressed confusion and criticism over various aspects of the incident, and stated a desire for more involvement by Obama and the federal government. Prior to the oil spill, on the 31st of March 2010, Obama ended a ban on oil and gas drilling along the majority of the East Coast of the United States and along the coast of northern Alaska in an effort to win support for an energy and climate bill and to reduce foreign imports of oil and gas. In July 2013, Obama expressed reservations and said he would reject the Keystone XL pipeline if it increased carbon pollution or greenhouse emissions, and on the 24th of February 2015, Obama vetoed a bill that would have authorized the pipeline, the third veto of his presidency and his first major veto. In December 2016, Obama permanently banned new offshore oil and gas drilling in most United States-owned waters in the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans using the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Act. Obama emphasized the conservation of federal lands during his term in office, using his power under the Antiquities Act to create 25 new national monuments during his presidency and expand four others, protecting a total of federal lands and waters, more than any other U.S. president. Health care reform was a key campaign promise and a top legislative goal, with Obama proposing an expansion of health insurance coverage to cover the uninsured, cap premium increases, and allow people to retain their coverage when they leave or change jobs. His proposal was to spend $900 billion over ten years and include a government insurance plan, also known as the public option, to compete with the corporate insurance sector as a main component to lowering costs and improving quality of health care. It would also make it illegal for insurers to drop sick people or deny them coverage for pre-existing conditions, and require every American to carry health coverage. The plan also includes medical spending cuts and taxes on insurance companies that offer expensive plans. On the 14th of July 2009, House Democratic leaders introduced a 1,017-page plan for overhauling the U.S. health care system, which Obama wanted Congress to approve by the end of 2009. After public debate during the congressional summer recess of 2009, Obama delivered a speech to a joint session of Congress on the 9th of September where he addressed concerns over the proposals. In March 2009, Obama lifted a ban on using federal funds for stem cell research, and on the 7th of November 2009, a health care bill featuring the public option was passed in the House. On the 24th of December 2009, the Senate passed its own bill without a public option on a party-line vote of 60 to 39. On the 21st of March 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, colloquially Obamacare, passed by the Senate in December was passed in the House by a vote of 219 to 212, and Obama signed the bill into law on the 23rd of March 2010. The ACA includes health-related provisions, most of which took effect in 2014, including expanding Medicaid eligibility for people making up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level starting in 2014, subsidizing insurance premiums for people making up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level ($88,000 for family of four in 2010) so their maximum out-of-pocket payment for annual premiums will be from 2 percent to 9.5 percent of income, providing incentives for businesses to provide health care benefits, prohibiting denial of coverage and denial of claims based on pre-existing conditions, establishing health insurance exchanges, prohibiting annual coverage caps, and support for medical research. According to White House and CBO figures, the maximum share of income that enrollees would have to pay would vary depending on their income relative to the federal poverty level. The costs of these provisions are offset by taxes, fees, and cost-saving measures, such as new Medicare taxes for those in high-income brackets, taxes on indoor tanning, cuts to the Medicare Advantage program in favor of traditional Medicare, and fees on medical devices and pharmaceutical companies, and there is also a tax penalty for those who do not obtain health insurance, unless they are exempt due to low income or other reasons. In March 2010, the CBO estimated that the net effect of both laws will be a reduction in the federal deficit by $143 billion over the first decade. The law faced several legal challenges, primarily based on the argument that an individual mandate requiring Americans to buy health insurance was unconstitutional. On the 28th of June 2012, the Supreme Court ruled by a 5 to 4 vote in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius that the mandate was constitutional under the U.S. Congress's taxing authority. In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby the Court ruled that closely-held for-profit corporations could be exempt on religious grounds under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act from regulations adopted under the ACA that would have required them to pay for insurance that covered certain contraceptives. In June 2015, the Court ruled 6 to 3 in King v. Burwell that subsidies to help individuals and families purchase health insurance were authorized for those doing so on both the federal exchange and state exchanges, not only those purchasing plans established by the State, as the statute reads.
War And Diplomacy
In February and March 2009, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made separate overseas trips to announce a new era in U.S. foreign relations with Russia and Europe, using the terms break and reset to signal major changes from the policies of the preceding administration. Obama attempted to reach out to Arab leaders by granting his first interview to an Arab satellite TV network, Al Arabiya, and on the 19th of March, he continued his outreach to the Muslim world, releasing a New Year's video message to the people and government of Iran. On the 4th of June 2009, Obama delivered a speech at Cairo University in Egypt calling for A New Beginning in relations between the Islamic world and the United States and promoting Middle East peace. On the 26th of June 2009, Obama condemned the Iranian government's actions towards protesters following Iran's 2009 presidential election. In 2011, Obama ordered a drone strike in Yemen which targeted and killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American imam suspected of being a leading Al-Qaeda organizer. al-Awlaki became the first U.S. citizen to be targeted and killed by a U.S. drone strike, and the Department of Justice released a memo justifying al-Awlaki's death as a lawful act of war, while civil liberties advocates described it as a violation of al-Awlaki's constitutional right to due process. The killing led to significant controversy, and his teenage son and young daughter, also Americans, were later killed in separate U.S. military actions, although they were not targeted specifically. In March 2015, Obama declared that he had authorized U.S. forces to provide logistical and intelligence support to the Saudis in their military intervention in Yemen, establishing a Joint Planning Cell with Saudi Arabia. In 2016, the Obama administration proposed a series of arms deals with Saudi Arabia worth $115 billion, and Obama halted the sale of guided munition technology to Saudi Arabia after Saudi warplanes targeted a funeral in Yemen's capital Sanaa, killing more than 140 people. In September 2016, Obama was snubbed by Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party as he descended from Air Force One to the tarmac of Hangzhou International Airport for the 2016 G20 Hangzhou summit without the usual red carpet welcome. On the 27th of February 2009, Obama announced that combat operations in Iraq would end within 18 months, and the Obama administration scheduled the withdrawal of combat troops to be completed by August 2010, decreasing troop's levels from 142,000 while leaving a transitional force of about 50,000 in Iraq until the end of 2011. On the 19th of August 2010, the last U.S. combat brigade exited Iraq, and remaining troops transitioned from combat operations to counter-terrorism and the training, equipping, and advising of Iraqi security forces. On the 31st of August 2010, Obama announced that the United States combat mission in Iraq was over, and on the 21st of October 2011, President Obama announced that all U.S. troops would leave Iraq in time to be home for the holidays. In June 2014, following the capture of Mosul by ISIL, Obama sent 275 troops to provide support and security for U.S. personnel and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. ISIS continued to gain ground and to commit widespread massacres and ethnic cleansing, and in August 2014, during the Sinjar massacre, Obama ordered a campaign of U.S. airstrikes against ISIL. By the end of 2014, 3,100 American ground troops were committed to the conflict and 16,000 sorties were flown over the battlefield, primarily by U.S. Air Force and Navy pilots. In early 2015, with the addition of the Panther Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division, the number of U.S. ground troops in Iraq increased to 4,400, and by July, American-led coalition air forces counted 44,000 sorties over the battlefield. In his election campaign, Obama called the war in Iraq a dangerous distraction and that emphasis should instead be put on the war in Afghanistan, the region he cites as being most likely where an attack against the United States could be launched again. Early in his presidency, Obama moved to bolster U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan, announcing an increase in U.S. troop levels to 17,000 military personnel in February 2009 to stabilize a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, an area he said had not received the strategic attention, direction and resources it urgently requires. He replaced the military commander in Afghanistan, General David D. McKiernan, with former Special Forces commander Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal in May 2009, indicating that McChrystal's Special Forces experience would facilitate the use of counterinsurgency tactics in the war. On the 1st of December 2009, Obama announced the deployment of an additional 30,000 military personnel to Afghanistan and proposed to begin troop withdrawals 18 months from that date, which took place in July 2011. David Petraeus replaced McChrystal in June 2010, after McChrystal's staff criticized White House personnel in a magazine article. In February 2013, Obama said the U.S. military would reduce the troop level in Afghanistan from 68,000 to 34,000 U.S. troops by February 2014, and in October 2015, the White House announced a plan to keep U.S. Forces in Afghanistan indefinitely in light of the deteriorating security situation. Regarding neighboring Pakistan, Obama called its tribal border region the greatest threat to the security of Afghanistan and Americans, saying that he cannot tolerate a terrorist sanctuary. In the same speech, Obama claimed that the U.S. cannot succeed in Afghanistan or secure our homeland unless we change our Pakistan policy. Starting with information received from Central Intelligence Agency operatives in July 2010, the CIA developed intelligence over the next several months that determined what they believed to be the hideout of Osama bin Laden, who was living in seclusion in a large compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a suburban area from Islamabad. CIA head Leon Panetta reported this intelligence to President Obama in March 2011, and meeting with his national security advisers over the course of the next six weeks, Obama rejected a plan to bomb the compound, and authorized a surgical raid to be conducted by United States Navy SEALs. The operation took place on the 1st of May 2011, and resulted in the shooting death of bin Laden and the seizure of papers, computer drives and disks from the compound. DNA testing was one of five methods used to positively identify bin Laden's corpse, which was buried at sea several hours later. Within minutes of the President's announcement from Washington, DC, late in the evening on the 1st of May, there were spontaneous celebrations around the country as crowds gathered outside the White House, and at New York City's Ground Zero and Times Square. Reaction to the announcement was positive across party lines, including from former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Since the spring of 2013, secret meetings were conducted between the United States and Cuba in the neutral locations of Canada and Vatican City, and the Vatican first became involved in 2013 when Pope Francis advised the U.S. and Cuba to exchange prisoners as a gesture of goodwill. On the 10th of December 2013, Cuban President Raúl Castro, in a significant public moment, greeted and shook hands with Obama at the Nelson Mandela memorial service in Johannesburg. In December 2014, after the negotiations, Obama and Castro normalized relations with Cuba, marking a significant shift in U.S. foreign policy. The number of American soldiers in Afghanistan decreased during Obama's second term, though U.S. soldiers remained in the country throughout his presidency. He also promoted inclusion for LGBT Americans, becoming the first sitting U.S. president to publicly support same-sex marriage, and he ordered military intervention in Iraq after gains made by ISIL following the 2011 withdrawal from Iraq, negotiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a nuclear agreement with Iran, and normalized relations with Cuba. The number of American soldiers in Afghanistan decreased during Obama's second term, though U.S. soldiers remained in the country throughout his presidency. He also promoted inclusion for LGBT Americans, becoming the first sitting U.S. president to publicly support same-sex marriage, and he ordered military intervention in Iraq after gains made by ISIL following the 2011 withdrawal from Iraq, negotiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a nuclear agreement with Iran, and normalized relations with Cuba. He left office in 2017 with high approval ratings both within the United States and among foreign advisories, and he continues to reside in Washington, D.C., and remains politically active, campaigning for candidates in various American elections, including in Biden's successful presidential bid in the 2020 presidential election. Outside politics, Obama has published three books: Dreams from My Father in 1995, The Audacity of Hope in 2006, and A Promised Land in 2020. His presidential library began construction in the South Side of Chicago in 2021, and historians and political scientists rank Obama highly in historical rankings of U.S. presidents.