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Black America Web
02-07-2025
- Politics
- Black America Web
100 Things You Didn't Know About Barack Obama
Source: Tom Williams / Getty Former President Barack Obama made history in 2008 when he was elected the 44th president of the United States, becoming the first Black person to hold the nation's highest office. His election marked a transformative moment in American history—one shaped by hope, resilience, and a belief in the power of collective progress. Obama's life story reflects the promise of the American dream. Born Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii, to a Kenyan father and a mother from Kansas, he was raised by his mother and grandparents. His grandfather served in World War II under General Patton, and his grandmother rose from a secretary to a middle-management position at a bank, instilling in him the values of hard work, education, and perseverance, according to The Obama White House Archives. With the support of scholarships and student loans, Obama worked his way through college and later moved to Chicago, where he began his career as a community organizer. There, he helped empower neighborhoods hit hard by the decline of the steel industry, an experience that shaped his lifelong commitment to public service. He went on to earn his law degree from Harvard, where he became the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review . After graduating, Obama returned to Chicago to teach constitutional law, lead a voter registration drive, and remain deeply involved in grassroots activism. His political career began in the Illinois State Senate, where he championed ethics reform, tax relief for working families, and expanded access to healthcare. As a U.S. Senator, he forged bipartisan efforts on issues such as government transparency, nuclear nonproliferation, and lobbying reform. Elected president in 2008 and reelected in 2012, Obama's presidency focused on economic recovery, healthcare reform, environmental action, and restoring America's standing on the global stage. His leadership was defined by a message of unity, dignity, and progress, and a belief that public service is one of the highest callings. Since leaving office, Obama has continued to inspire and lead through the Obama Foundation, promoting civic engagement, leadership development, and global dialogue for the next generation of changemakers. You knew him as president, but here are 100 surprising facts you might not know about our former commander in chief. 1. He liked HBO's Entourage . 2. He predicted UNC to win the Final Four. 3. He rooted for the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowl. 4. His favorite basketball player is his daughter, Sasha. 5. He plans to vacation on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. 6. He and Bill Cosby are the only people to ever get free food from Ben's Chili Bowl. 7. He reads Harry Potter stories to his daughters. 8. He went to Wizards games and rooted for the Chicago Bulls. 9. He cursed and used the N-word in his audiobook, Dreams From My Father . 10. He has Jay-Z and Ludacris on his iPod. 11. He is a fan of show-tunes and gave an iPod full of them to the Queen of England. 12. He loves playing Scrabble. 13. He moved to Chicago and worked as a director of the Developing Communities Project after college. 14. The top contributors to his presidential campaign include Goldman Sachs, University of California, Citigroup Inc., Harvard University, and Time Warner. 15. He was introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper in Indonesia. 16. 'His first car had so much rust that there was a rusted hole in the passenger door'- Michelle Obama. 17. He says his favorite children's book is Where the Wild Things Are . 18. He calls himself a mutt. 19. His favorite president is Abraham Lincoln. 20. During his first date with his wife, Michelle Obama, the duo went to see Do The Right Thing . 21. His height is 6 feet and a half inch. 22. His sister is a teacher. 23. He learned how to play cricket in Trinidad and Tobago. 24. He owns a pair of boxing gloves signed by Muhammad Ali. 25. He was born at the Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women & Children. Source: Pool / Getty 26. He traveled to Kenya in 1988 and met many of his paternal relatives. 27. He traveled back to Kenya as a Senator in 2006 and was given a hero's welcome. 28. He has a beer named after him in Kenya. 29. He directed Illinois' Project Vote in 1992. 30. He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics. 31. He has a comic book with Spider-Man and a Barack the Barbarian comic book. 32. His favorite meal is his wife Michelle's shrimp linguini. 33. He worked in a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop as a teenager. Now he can't stand ice cream. 34. His daughter, Sasha, on the other hand, is a big fan of ice cream. 35. His favorite snacks are chocolate-peanut protein bars. 36. He is the first president with a Blackberry. 37. He uses an Apple Mac laptop. 38. He is left-handed. 39. His daughter's name, Malia, is Hawaiian. 40. He gets his hair cut once a week. 41. His favorite musical artists are Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan. 42. His favorite show is The Wire. 43. His favorite artist is Pablo Picasso. 44. His grandfather was affiliated with the Kenyan revolutionary Mau Mau movement. 45. He and his wife donated $25,000 to the United Negro College fund. 46. He changed his name from Barry back to Barack in College to assert his identity. 47. He majored in Political Science at Columbia University. 48. He was in the Black Students' Union at both Occidental and Columbia. 49. His late father was a senior economist for the Kenyan government. 50. He keeps on his desk a carving of a wooden hand holding an egg, a Kenyan symbol for the fragility of life 51. His favorite drink is black forest berry iced tea 52. In high school, he was known as 'Barry.' Source: Brooks Kraft / Getty 53. He likes Beyonce's song, 'Single Ladies' 54. His daughter, Malia's godmother, is Jesse Jackson's daughter, Santita. 55. He can't bowl. 56. He hit three straight three-pointers at a military base. 57. He would have liked to be an architect if he were not a politician. 58. He can speak Spanish. 59. He kept a pet ape called Tata while in Indonesia. 60. He can bench press an impressive 200lbs. 61. He applied to appear in a Black pin-up calendar while at Harvard but was rejected by the all-female committee. 62. He was given the code name 'Renegade' by his Secret Service handlers. 63. He doesn't like young people wearing baggy pants. 64. He can't grow facial hair, only whiskers. 65. He wears Hart Schaffner Marx suits. 66. His father grew up herding goats. 67. His maternal grandfather fought in World War II. 68. He was only 1 of 3 black students at Punahou Academy in Hawaii. 69. He saw his father only once in 1971 for a Christmas visit. 70. He is distantly related to former Vice President Dick Cheney. 71. His high school yearbook picture inscription thanks 'Tut,' 'Gramps,' and the 'Choom Gang.' Choom is Hawaiian slang for 'pot smoking.' 72. His paternal grandfather was outright opposed to his son's marriage to Ann Durnham because he thought his son was neglecting his ex-wife and two children in Kenya. He was also concerned that Ann was white. 73. Some of his maternal ancestors were slave owners. 74. He did a good imitation of Jesse Jackson while he was at Harvard. 75. He does a good job imitating Marlon Brando in The Godfather . 76. His schoolmates in Indonesia nicknamed him 'Curly Eyelashes.' 77. He used to work in construction. 78. He once said the three men he admired the most were Mahatma Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King, Jr. 79. His name means 'one who is blessed' in Swahili. 80. His favorite book is Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. 81. His parents met in Russian class. 82. He enjoys playing poker. 83. He is distantly related to Brad Pitt. 84. He used to drive a Chrysler 300m. 85. He watches his daughter Sasha's basketball games. 86. He is the first president to appear on a late-night talk show. 87. He has said many of his friends in Indonesia were 'street urchins.' 88. He was nicknamed 'Bear' by his late grandmother. 89. He owns four identical pairs of black, size 11 shoes. 90. He carries a tiny Madonna and child statue and a bracelet belonging to a soldier in Iraq for good luck. 91. He promised Michelle he would quit smoking before running for president. He didn't. 92. Before he moved to the White House, he drove a Ford Escape Hybrid. 93. His cousin on Michelle's side is a rabbi. 94. His old desk in his Senate office once belonged to Robert Kennedy. 95. His daughter Sasha's real name is Natasha. 96. He has seven half-brothers and sisters in Kenya from his father's other marriages. 97. He worked as a summer associate at the Sidley Austin law firm in Chicago. 98. He lost a congressional election in Illinois to Bobby Rush in 2000. 99. He answers one letter a day from people across the country. 100. His favorite dish to cook is chilli. SEE ALSO: SEE ALSO 100 Things You Didn't Know About Barack Obama was originally published on
Fox News
03-06-2025
- General
- Fox News
DOJ Probing Harvard Law Review, Which Decides Hiring and Publication Based on Race and Gender
Howie Kurtz on the DOJ conducting a probe into Harvard Law Review, Ukraine embarrassing Russia with drone attack and Andrew Cuomo saying he regrets resigning as Governor. Follow Howie on Twitter: @HowardKurtz For more #MediaBuzz click here
Gulf Today
01-06-2025
- Politics
- Gulf Today
Fundamental rights shouldn't depend on your ZIP code
Ronald Brownstein, Tribune News Service One of the most powerful trends in modern politics is the growing separation between red and blue states. Now, the Supreme Court looks poised to widen that chasm. Over roughly the past decade, virtually all Republican-controlled states have rolled back rights and liberties across a broad front: banning abortion; restricting voting rights; censoring how teachers can discuss race, gender and sexual orientation; and prohibiting transition care for transgender minors. No Democratic-leaning state has done any of those things. The result is the greatest gulf since the era of Jim Crow state-sponsored segregation between the rights guaranteed in some states and denied in others. The Republican-appointed Supreme Court majority has abetted this separation. Its decisions eviscerating federal oversight of state voting rules (in the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder case) and rescinding the national right to abortion (in 2022's Dobbs decision) freed red states to lurch right on both fronts. In oral arguments this month, the GOP-appointed justices appeared ready to push the states apart in a new way: by restricting federal courts from issuing nationwide injunctions. Concern about nationwide injunctions has been growing in both parties. Such injunctions remained relatively rare during the two-term presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, but Trump faced 64 of them in his first term and Joe Biden 14 in his first three years in office, according to a Harvard Law Review tabulation. Through the first 100 days of Trump's second term, federal courts have already imposed 25 nationwide injunctions against him. Trump has been uniquely vulnerable to this judicial pushback because he has moved so aggressively to challenge—and, in many instances, disregard — previously understood limits on presidential authority. But there's no question that each party now views nationwide injunctions as a critical weapon to stymie a president from the other party. Coalitions of red and blue state attorneys general have become especially reliant on the tactic. Each side has grown adept at challenging the incumbent president's actions primarily in district and circuit courts dominated by appointees from their own party, notes Paul Nolette, a Marquette University political scientist who tracks the state AG lawsuits. This aggressive forum shopping usually produces the desired result. Looking at the district court level, the Harvard analysis found that judges appointed by presidents of the other party imposed almost 95% of the nationwide injunctions directed against Biden or Trump in his first term. At the appellate court level, Adam Feldman, who founded the Empirical SCOTUS blog, calculated that the conservative 5th Circuit was much more likely to block presidential actions under Biden than Trump, while the liberal 9th circuit was, to an even greater extent, more likely to block Trump than Biden. These stark outcomes capture how the Supreme Court's verdict on injunctions could widen the distance between the states. If the Supreme Court hobbles their use, it will virtually guarantee that more federal courts simultaneously issue conflicting decisions to uphold or invalidate presidential actions. Trump's executive orders would be enforced in some places and not others. In the most extreme example—which plainly troubled the Court at its hearing—children born in the US to undocumented parents potentially would become citizens in some states, but not in others, depending on which courts allow Trump to overrule the 14th Amendment's guarantee of birthright citizenship. The Supreme Court would surely try to resolve more of these disputes, since conflicting appellate rulings are a big reason why it accepts cases. But the court would face practical limits on how many such disagreements it could referee. Across Trump's first term and Biden's four years combined, the Supreme Court considered only about 1 in 10 cases brought by attorneys general from the party out of power, Nolette calculates. Even if the court addressed more cases through its emergency docket, banning nationwide injunctions would likely result in more unresolved conflicts among the circuits on core questions of both presidential power and basic civil rights and liberties. That would harden the red-blue divide. Though the overlap isn't perfect, most Democratic-leaning states are covered by federal circuits in which Democratic presidents appointed most of the judges, and vice versa for Republican-leaning states. (The principal reason for this correlation is a Senate tradition that makes confirmation votes for federal district court nominees contingent on their home-state Senators' approval; the Senate applied that rule to federal appeals court nominees as well until 2018.) The protection of Democratic-leaning circuit courts could allow blue states to mostly fend off Trump's attempts to erase basic rights (like birthright citizenship) within their borders, or blunt his efforts to force them to adopt conservative social policies (as he is attempting by threatening their federal funding.) Conversely, the receptivity of Republican-leaning circuit courts would likely allow Trump to impose his agenda across red America, except in the (probably rare) cases when the Supreme Court intervenes to stop him. The nation's legal landscape would trend even more toward a patchwork. 'We've seen a huge divergence in red and blue states in policy and law ... and a potential ban on nationwide injunctions would just accelerate this trend,' said Jake Grumbach, a University of California at Berkeley political scientist who has studied the growing differences among the states. In a long arc spanning roughly from the Supreme Court decision banning segregated schools in 1954 to its ruling establishing nationwide access to same-sex marriage in 2015, the courts and Congress mostly nationalized civil rights and limited states' ability to curtail them. Now we are reverting toward a pre-1960s nation in which your rights largely depend on your zip code. Nationwide judicial injunctions are a flawed tool, and in a perfect world the two parties would collaborate on bipartisan reforms to limit them for future presidents. At some point, it would make sense to consider proposals that have emerged in both parties to require that a three-judge panel, rather than a single judge, approve any nationwide injunction. But to abruptly ban them now risks further unraveling the seams of an already fraying America.
Fox News
31-05-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
DOUG SCHOEN: I'm a Harvard grad. Here's my take what Trump's doing right and wrong
The ongoing fight between the Trump administration and Harvard University has – unfortunately – taken on a life of its own. I say unfortunately, not because I believe the reforms President Donald Trump is demanding are wholly out of bounds – they are not, by any means. Rather, I say this because, as an alum of both Harvard undergrad and law school – and a longtime donor – the rampant antisemitism on campus, as well as the university's imperiousness, I cannot fault the White House for acting. Indeed, there is a legitimate argument to be made that Harvard must be reined in. That being said, there are concerns unique to Harvard that separate it from other universities. These concerns range from its handling of antisemitism, its silencing of voices who do not conform to far-left orthodoxy, as well as who it has hired. Notably, the concerns surrounding Harvard did not originate with its handling of antisemitism in the wake of Hamas' October 7th attack on Israel. It has long been the epicenter of Diversity, Education, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts in the U.S., to the point where the Supreme Court was forced to strike down its admissions criteria for being unfair to Asian students in June 2023. And yet, within just the past month, two serious incidents underscore how much further Harvard has to go in order to reform and redeem itself. First, the Harvard Law Review awarded a $65,000 grant to Ibraham Bharmal, after the Harvard Law School student was charged with assaulting an Israeli student, an incident caught on video. In effect, Harvard not only tolerated Bharmal's antisemitism, but rewarded it with a taxpayer-funded grant after he assaulted another student solely because of his nationality and Jewish identity. Second, Harvard recently revoked the tenure of Francesca Gino, a professor of business administration - who ironically is "well known for studying honesty" as Pilar Arias noted – after a four-year long fight over Gino's repeated falsification of data. To be clear, this is not to say that I agree with every action Trump has taken against Harvard. For example, blanket bans on accepting foreign students is excessive, but vetting their social media is inherently reasonable. Universities routinely do this for American students; thus it stands to reason Harvard should have the same – or even stricter – policy for foreigners. To that end, Harvard professor Steven Pinker recently published a piece in the New York Times which does a tremendous job at capturing the issues Harvard must address and the best ways to do so. Pinker, who makes his frustration towards the school's handling of antisemitism, free speech, hiring practices, and more very clear, makes one more key point: while Harvard has its "serious ailments," the reaction must also be calibrated. In other words, while Harvard should not have unfettered access to billions of dollars of taxpayer money, there is a real risk that across-the-board cuts harm America's scientific prowess without producing the – very necessary – reforms Trump is demanding. There is ample opportunity for a more targeted approach that can force Harvard to make these necessary changes without destroying the school's leadership in many vital fields. For instance, grants to social sciences can be canceled without touching money that funds medical or scientific research into cancer or other diseases. And while I agree with Pinker on that and other points he makes, perhaps the most important thing he points out is that the only thing thus far that has spurred Harvard to take any steps towards change has been Trump. As Pinker puts it, "The uncomfortable fact is that many of these reforms followed Mr. Trump's inauguration and overlap with his demands." Of course, it should not take the President of the United States to bring American universities inline with their own codes of conduct. Nor should it take the power of the White House to force Harvard to crackdown on the scourge of antisemitism and anti-American extremism that has overrun its campus. And yet, this is where we now find ourselves. It is my hope, as an alum, and as an American, that the Trump administration and Harvard come to a solution whereby the university realizes it cannot continue to permit – or reward – students who so blatantly violate the code of conduct, either of the university or of the United States.
Boston Globe
30-05-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Former chief justice of SJC, Herbert P. Wilkins, dies at 95
Wilkins died Tuesday, the statement said. Wilkins was a Harvard University graduate, and editor of the Harvard Law Review, who went on to chair Concord's Board of Selectman for six years in the early '60s and to work as town counsel in Acton and Concord in the late '60s and early '70s. 'Appointed in 1972, Justice Wilkins served on the Supreme Judicial Court with great distinction for almost three decades,' the justices said in their collective statement. 'As a jurist, he was known for his incisive rulings and meticulous attention to detail,' the statement said. 'His respectful and polite demeanor on and off the bench earned him the respect and admiration of all who worked with him.' 'The people of the Commonwealth are fortunate that a person of his intellect, dignity and commitment to justice was willing to devote his talents in their service,' the justices said. Advertisement They offered their 'deep condolences' to Wilkins' family. When Wilkins was nominated as chief justice in July 1996, he had been an associate justice for 24 years, the longest tenure of any associate at the time. Governor William F. Weld appointed Wilkins to the position later that year. Wilkins served as chief justice until he retired in 1999. In retirement, Wilkins taught law at Boston College. Advertisement Wilkins followed in his father's footsteps. Both men graduated from Harvard, and Raymond Sanger Wilkins also served as chief justice of the state's high court, from 1956 to 1970. The younger Wilkins earned his undergraduate degree at Harvard in 1951 and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard law School in 1954. Before he was a judge, Wilkins was an associate and partner in the Palmer & Dodge law firm in Boston. It was while Wilkins was chair of the planning board in Concord that the National Historic Sites Commission set its sights on the Lexington and Concord area for the creation of a national park. At that point, Wilkins said he 'was already deeply involved with the plans for the park,' according to In January 1959, Wilkins 'outlined the general scheme' for the park for the Concord Journal, which included a map 'which is pretty much along the lines of exactly what the park now consists of,' Wilkins said in the interview. Nine months later, on Sept. 21, 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a bill establishing Minute Man National Historical Park as a national park. As a jurist, Wilkins was twice recognized by the Boston Bar Association. In 1991, the association presented Wilkins with the prestigious Haskell Cohn Award for distinguished judicial service, and in 1997 he received a citation of judicial excellence. Wilkins is a former president of Harvard College's board of overseers and former trustee of Milton Academy and Phillips Exeter Academy. No information was immediately available about funeral services. Advertisement Tonya Alanez can be reached at
