Barack Obama

Barack Obama is an American politician, former Illinois and US senator, and the forty-fourth president of the United States. He served two consecutive terms from 2009–2017; he was first elected in 2008 and reelected in 2012. Obama was the nation's first Black president. Several significant historical events took place during his presidency, including the passing of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the killing of Osama bin Laden, the repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, and the nationwide legalization of same-sex marriage.

Obama was born Barack Hussein Obama II to parents Barack Obama Sr. and Stanley Ann Dunham on August 4, 1961, in Hawaii. His parents divorced when he was a child, and Obama continued to live with his mother, who soon married a man from Indonesia. The three of them moved there when Obama was six. At age ten, he returned to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents and attend the fifth grade at Punahou School on a scholarship. He continued to attend the school and eventually graduated with his high school diploma in 1979. Obama has a half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, on his mother's side.

After graduating high school, Obama enrolled in Occidental College for his first two years of college. He then attended Columbia University as a political science major and graduated in 1983, after which he spent another year in New York as a researcher with Business International Group. Following this, Obama moved to Chicago to work as a community organizer on the South Side. His main priority was to launch the city's church-funded Developing Communities Project. He was also encouraged to organize the residents of Altgeld Gardens to pressure the Chicago city hall to improve public housing conditions. Despite his efforts, he achieved little success, and the experience led him to believe he needed a law degree to succeed in that position. He proceeded to enroll in Harvard Law School, which he attended from 1988 to 1991. He received a juris doctor degree and graduated magna cum laude.

In the summer after his first year at Harvard, Obama met Michelle Robinson during an internship he worked at Chicago's Sidley & Austin law office, where she was his supervisor. They married in 1992.

In 1992, Obama was approached to lead Project Vote!, an initiative that promoted voter registration among minority voters in Illinois. He received positive attention for his success in leading the campaign. Several people involved with Project Vote! said it was likely that he could go on to run a successful political campaign. From 1993 to 2004, Obama served as a senior lecturer in law at the University of Chicago Law School. Over the years, he was invited several times to join the school's full-time faculty in a tenured position, but he declined. While teaching law, he worked at a small law firm called Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Gallan starting in 1993. He worked there full-time until 1996, when he was elected to the Illinois Senate; he then began working there part-time as a counsel until 2004.

In 1996, Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate as a Democrat. He used harsh but legal tactics to eliminate the other Democratic candidates from the race by invalidating their voting petition signatures so he could run unopposed. During his term, he helped create a state-earned income tax credit benefiting the working poor, promoted early childhood education program subsidies, and worked with law enforcement to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital crime cases. He was re-elected in 1998 and 2002. In 2000, he lost the Democratic primary for Bobby Rush's seat in the House of Representatives. Obama cast over four thousand votes during his time in the Illinois Senate.

Obama ran for the US Senate in 2004 when Republican Peter Fitzgerald gave up his seat after serving only one term. He won 52 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary and 70 percent in the general election. During his term in the Senate, he introduced a total of 133 new bills, most of which––119––failed to make it out of committee review. He introduced the Global Poverty Act of 2007 (S. 2433), a bill that would require the president to create a strategy to fight global poverty. He sponsored the Transparency and Integrity in Earmarks Act in 2006 (S. 2261), which would require earmarks attached to bills to be more explicitly detailed. In 2007, he co-sponsored a bill that would increase the child tax credit for low-income and working-class families (S. 218).

Obama voted along Democratic party lines 97 percent of the time in 2007, which was 10 percent more than the average Democratic senator. However, he missed the most votes––282 out of 630––of the leading Democrat candidates during the 109th Congress session. He voted in favor of bills that expanded funding for public health insurance programs, stem cell research, and family planning. Bills he voted against included ones that funded the Iraq War without providing timetables for American troop withdrawals; he voted in favor of similar funding bills with timetables. He also voted against bills that decreased funding for defense programs. Obama continued to serve as a senator throughout his presidential campaign in 2007 and 2008. He resigned shortly after winning the election in November 2008.

Obama announced his candidacy for president on February 10, 2007. During his campaign, he discussed plans to introduce an economic reform through tax breaks for small businesses, tax credits for low-income individuals, tax rebate checks, and the reduction of tax cuts for the highest income earners. He talked about health care reform, including a plan that would require all children to have health insurance. He also stated that upon election, he would begin the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, though he supported a troop surge in Afghanistan due to the Taliban. Obama's fundraising efforts during his campaign were very successful. He raised a total of $750 million, more than any other candidate. His campaign was later fined $375,000 in January 2013 after an audit by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) revealed they had omitted the names of several large-scale donors from their records in 2008. Furthermore, they misreported the dates of $85 million worth of donations and held onto excessive contributions that were above the maximum amount permitted for a federal campaign.

Obama's main rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination were Joseph Biden and Hillary Clinton. Biden dropped out of the race in January 2008, as did Clinton in June. Obama won the Democratic party nomination on June 3. In August, Obama declared Biden his running mate. His Republican opponent was John McCain. On November 4, 2008, Obama was elected president of the United States. With nearly 69.5 million votes, he received more votes than any other presidential candidate in US history. He won 365 electoral votes. Obama announced his resignation from the US Senate on November 13 to take effect on November 16.

Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009. His inauguration ceremony drew a record-breaking crowd of 1.8 million people. He was sworn in using the same Bible as former President Abraham Lincoln. Obama replaced President George W. Bush, who served two terms from 2001 to 2009.

Obama being sworn into office at his inauguration in 2009.

Obama signing his first legislation, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, on January 29, 2009.

The first legislation Obama signed in office was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. The law amended part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which gave workers who received discriminatory pay 180 days to file a complaint, starting from the first day their employer decided to administer said pay. This applied even if the employee did not know that the pay was discriminatory during this period. Through the Lilly Ledbetter Act, the complaint window of 180 days now resets after the issuance of each discriminatory paycheck.

Obama repealed several Bush-era decisions during his first few days in office, including a funding bar on stem cell research and restrictions on government funding for groups providing abortion services or counseling. He reversed an order that restricted access to White House records and changed the government's stance towards the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to make information more accessible to the public.

On January 22, 2009, Obama issued an executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp within one year. The order ultimately failed because there were no suitable alternative locations to hold the camp's detainees of approximately 240 people. Sending them to their home countries or other nations was found to be too difficult. There was little evidence against most detainees to successfully prosecute them, and dozens were deemed too dangerous to release from custody. The order faced animosity from Congress, which passed legislation several months later prohibiting the president from moving Guantanamo Bay detainees to other countries, including to the US. The camp remains open as of 2022, although the number of detainees was reduced significantly during Obama's time in office from 242 to 55.

On February 17, 2009, Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. It provided major tax cuts to most Americans, direct financial relief to both states and individuals, and significant funding for upgrading infrastructure. The Act was intended to ease the financial stress caused by the Great Recession, the biggest financial crisis that hit the US since the Great Depression. On February 27, Obama announced that he would remove all American combat troops stationed in Iraq by the end of August 2010. In March 2009, he dispatched 21,000 troops to Afghanistan.

On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare, into law. The ACA was a major reform of the American health care system thus far. It was the biggest change to the system since the establishment of Medicaid and Medicare in 1965. The ACA required all US citizens and legal residents to have health insurance with few exceptions. Those who were required to have health insurance but didn't were fined a hefty tax penalty, a term that Obama did not agree with but later accepted in order to pass the bill. People who already had health insurance on the date of the ACA's passing were allowed to keep their plans under the "grandfathered" status for as long as the insurance company continued to provide them. The deadline for the new requirement of health insurance was January 1, 2014, or the day of an existing plan’s renewal within the 2014 plan year. The ACA extended health care coverage to approximately 32 million Americans who were previously uninsured.

The ACA ended health care discrimination based on pre-existing conditions. Health insurance companies were previously allowed to deny or limit coverage and benefits to people with pre-existing conditions, a practice that affected over 100 million Americans. The ACA also eliminated annual and lifetime limits on insurance, required certain preventive care procedures like annual physicals to be covered, and required coverage for dependent children who wished to remain on their parent's health plan up to age twenty-six. In addition, it expanded coverage of Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

Approval of the ACA was heavily divided among party lines. It passed 219–212 in the House of Representatives wi,th zero Republicans voting in its favor. There were several groups exempt from the mandate, including those with documented hardships, members of exempt religious organizations, Native Americans, undocumented or incarcerated people, and people with incomes below the tax filing threshold. The tax penalty was phased in over the course of three years, beginning in 2014 when the ACA first took effect. In 2016, it reached $695 per individual or 2.5 percent of a household's taxable income, whichever was greater. That amount was then set to be adjusted annually by cost-of-living adjustments.

The ACA has been challenged many times since its inception. In November 2011, the US Supreme Court heard arguments against the ACA from twenty-six states. They argued that certain parts of the Act were unconstitutional. In June 2012, the Supreme Court upheld all major provisions of the ACA. 2016 presidential nominee Donald Trump stated he would repeal the ACA upon election. On his first day in office, he signed an executive order reversing the ACA's implementation. A new health care bill, the American Health Care Act (AHCA), was passed in the House of Representatives in May 2017. The AHCA did not repeal the ACA, but made changes including a significant cut in taxes on higher-income taxpayers and insurance companies. It also ended the fee mandates imposed by the ACA. The bill did not pass in the Senate, but the individual and employer fee mandates were ended at the end of 2018 with the exception of a few states.

In December 2010, Obama signed a bill repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the long-standing US policy regarding homosexuality in the armed forces. Prior to its repeal, people who were openly homosexual were prohibited from serving in the armed forces. "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" allowed non-heterosexual people to serve in the armed forces so long as they did not openly display homosexual behaviors. The policy was officially ended on September 20, 2011, after all repeal requirements were met.

One of the biggest accomplishments during Obama's presidency was Operation Neptune Spear, the mission that resulted in the killing of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden for his planning of the September 11 terrorist attacks. US intelligence officials were able to locate bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan in late 2010 after they linked one of his couriers to the location in 2007. On April 29, 2011, Obama authorized SEAL Team Six, a US government counter-terrorism group, to carry out a raid on the compound. The team underwent intense training for the mission, which involved practicing the raid inside a life-size replica of the building.

President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and other political leaders watching live video of Operation Neptune Spear in the Situation Room.

Operation Neptune Spear took place in the early morning of May 2, 2011; it was during the afternoon of May 1 in the US due to the time zone difference between the two countries. After receiving approval from Obama to begin the mission, a group of twenty-five Navy SEALs was dispatched in a helicopter from Afghanistan. They reached the compound about ninety minutes after takeoff. The helicopter crashed upon landing, but with no injuries to the team inside. They proceeded to storm the compound where they found bin Laden on the third floor; SEAL Team Six members then shot and killed him. Four other people in the compound were killed during the mission, including one of bin Laden's sons. The time from SEAL Team Six entering the compound to the killing of bin Laden was approximately nine minutes.

The team carried bin Laden's body out of the compound. One helicopter arrived to pick up most of the team. The remaining members destroyed the crashed helicopter they arrived in, and were then picked up by a second helicopter. Both returned to Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden's body was buried at sea nine hours later in order to comply with Islamic law, which requires a burial as soon as possible after death––ideally within twenty-four hours. Bin Laden's body was positively identified through DNA the next day. Obama addressed the nation about bin Laden's death on May 11 at 11:35 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). The announcement resulted in an outbreak of celebration across the country, especially in front of the White House and Ground Zero. Some people were publicly skeptical about his death because a picture of his corpse was never released.

On May 27, 2011, Obama extended several provisions of the Patriot Act regarding roving wiretaps, the tracking of alleged "lone wolf" terrorists, and law enforcement's ability to obtain records relevant to investigations. In June 2011, Obama ordered the withdrawal of the surge troops he had sent to Afghanistan in 2009. He called for the withdrawal of 10,000 troops by the end of 2011 and 23,000 by the end of the summer of 2012. In October 2011, he announced that the remaining troops in Iraq would be brought back home to the US by December. This marked the end of the Iraq war.

In April 2011, Obama announced his intention to run for reelection in 2012. He said his next term would focus on issues such as energy and immigration reform. On September 6, 2012, Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for president and spoke at the Democratic National Convention. His Republican opponent was Mitt Romney. The 2012 presidential election was the most expensive election in US history at the time, with both candidates raising over one billion dollars. Obama raised slightly more money than his opponent at $1.123 billion compared to Romney's $1.019 billion. Obama was reelected for a second term on November 6, 2012. He received 332 electoral votes and 51 percent of the popular vote. His second inauguration was on January 21, 2013, although he was officially sworn into office the day before.

One of Obama's first goals after reelection was to reform the US immigration system. On January 29, 2013, he spoke publicly of a four-part proposal for immigration reform. The parts included strengthening the US's borders, cracking down on companies with undocumented workers, streamlining the immigration system, and requiring undocumented workers to meet a series of requirements before earning citizenship. In 2013, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act was introduced. It passed in the Senate 68-32, but it was never brought to the House of Representatives. Obama later made other major changes to the immigration system in November 2014 by extending protection from deportation to 4.3 million undocumented immigrants and expanding legal immigration for skilled workers.

On June 25, 2013, Obama announced the Climate Action Plan, a plan to fight climate change by reducing greenhouse gas and carbon dioxide emissions. He pledged to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent below their levels in 2005 by 2020 and by 26 to 28 percent by 2025. To achieve these goals, annual emissions had to be reduced by over 600 million metric tons of carbon dioxide below 2014 levels by 2020, and by more than 1.3 billion metric tons by 2025. As of June 2015, the US was on target to double its renewable energy use from the start of Obama's first term to 2020. An additional climate act, the Clean Power Plan, was passed in 2015 with the intention of cutting carbon emissions from power plants by 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. Between 2008 and 2015, the use of wind-generated electricity tripled, and solar power increased thirty times. Carbon dioxide emissions from energy use and production in the US fell 9.5 percent between 2008 and 2015. Emissions were at their lowest level in twenty-five years during the first half of 2016. The Clean Power Plan was repealed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in June 2019 and replaced with the less restrictive Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule.

On February 12, 2014, Obama signed an executive order that raised the minimum wage for federal contract employees from $7.25 to $10.10. He was unable to achieve enough support for raising the national minimum wage, which remains at $7.25 as of 2022.

Executive Order 13672 was signed by Obama on July 21, 2014. It protected LGBT people in the workplace by disallowing federal contractors from discriminating against LGBT employees. The order amended Executive Order 11246, which prohibited discrimination due to race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It also changed the previous order's words from “sex or national origin" to "sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin.” The new order did not take effect until April 8, 2015.

In January 2015 Obama proposed America's College Promise, a bill that would provide two free years of community college tuition to those who met certain enrollment conditions. Economic concerns were raised over the plan, which would cost $60 billion per decade. It reached Congress in July 2015 but never made it out. While it didn't pass nationwide, several communities proceeded to establish their own free two-year college programs. Obama continued to push for free community college. In September 2015, he established the College Promise Advisory Board, an independent coalition of educators, politicians, foundations, and businesses designed to raise awareness about existing free two-year college models.

On June 26, 2015, the US Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in a 5–4 ruling after hearing the case Obergefell v. Hodges. Same-sex marriage was previously allowed in thirty-seven states; the Supreme Court's decision legalized it in every state. Obama praised the ruling and called it a "victory for America." Obama was opposed to same-sex marriage for the majority of his first term in office. He later came out in support of it in May 2012. A 2017 study found that the legalization of gay marriage resulted in a 7 to 14 percent decrease in youth suicide attempts.

A major omnibus appropriations bill worth $1.15 trillion was passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate on December 18, 2015. The bill was sent along to Obama to sign. It included $680 billion in permanent and short-term extensions of various tax breaks, permanent extensions of several of Obama's signature incentives for workers, and the delaying of three taxes from the ACA in order to offset costs of coverage expansion. The bill was criticized by Democrats for failing to provide bankruptcy relief to Puerto Rico and lifting a ban on crude oil exports. Republicans criticized it for its environmental agenda and for not restricting the immigration of Syrian refugees.

In late July 2016, Obama spoke at the Democratic National Convention in support of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Clinton later lost to Republican Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Shortly after the election, Trump visited Obama at the White House for a press meeting.

Obama's last day in office was January 20, 2017. He attended Trump's inauguration. Shortly after, the Obama family went on vacation to Palm Springs. They announced they would continue to reside in Washington, D.C. until their youngest daughter (Sasha) graduated from high school. In the wake of his presidency, Obama gave several paid public speeches, charging as much as $400,000 for an appearance. He received criticism across party lines for this. In 2018, Barack and Michelle Obama started a production company called Higher Ground Productions, with which they entered into an agreement with Netflix to create a set of films and series. In April 2020, Obama publicly endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden for president. Construction of the Obama Presidential Center began in September 2021. In 2022, Obama hosted and narrated a documentary series about famous national parks called Our Great National Parks.