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President Trump and his daughter Ivanka does a Diwali greeting and a message of a ahead India visit.

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US President Donald Trump's entrepreneur daughter Ivanka, who joined him in Tuesday's Diwali celebrations at the White House, also took to Twitter to wish Indians across the globe a joyous Diwali. Her "Saal Mubarak" greeting was accompanied by a reminder that she will be in India next month for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES).

Wishing Hindus, Sikhs & Jains around the world a joyful #Diwali. Saal Mubarak to all! Looking forward to my visit to India for #GES2017. pic.twitter.com/O1tmiFzECc
- Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) October 18, 2017

President Trump yesterday kicked off Diwali festivities at the Oval Office by lighting a diya. He wished all Indian-American members of the administration, including Nikki Haley, Seema Verma and Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai a great Diwali and stressed that he greatly values his relationship with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi

While expressing his appreciation for Indians "who have built the world's largest democracy", he wrote in a Facebook post, "Today, I was deeply honoured to be joined by so many administration officials and leaders of the Indian-American community -- to celebrate Diwali -- the Hindu Festival of Lights."

Calling Indians "treasured and beloved members of our great American family", he said, "Our Indian-American neighbours and friends have made incredible contributions to our country - and to the world. You have made extraordinary contributions to art, science, medicine, business and education. America is especially thankful for its many Indian-American citizens who serve BRAVELY in our armed forces and as first responders in communities throughout our great land."

A video of the White House celebrations and Trump's message was posted to the President's Facebook page.

Last year, Ivanka, a presidential adviser, had visited Hindu temples in Virginia and Florida as part of Diwali. She will be in Hyderabad for two days to attend the annual Global Entrepreneurship Summit. She is leading the American delegation at the summit that will be co-hosted by India and the US. Ivanka will speak at the inaugural session along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the evening of November 28.

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From Ivanka Trump - Diwali Greetings And A Message Ahead Of India Visit

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US President Donald Trump's entrepreneur daughter Ivanka, who joined him in Tuesday's Diwali celebrations at the White House, also took to Twitter to wish Indians across the globe a joyous Diwali. Her "Saal Mubarak" greeting was accompanied by a reminder that she will be in India next month for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES).

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Chief of state                    Trump sends $25,000 check to fallen soldier's family on same day as Washington Post report 

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Chief of state                    Trump sends $25,000 check to fallen soldier's family on same day as Washington Post report 

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Washington Post made a post accusing Trump of making disrespectful comments about a fallen soldier and Trump decided to send them $25,000 as an apology even though he denied saying any of that.

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A White House official confirms to CNN that the President sent a personal check to the family of Army Cpl. Dillon Baldridge Wednesday. Baldridge, 22, was killed in June by an Afghan police officer.

According to the Post, Trump called Chris Baldridge in June, weeks after his son was killed. During the call, the Post reported, Trump offered him $25,000 and said he would instruct his staff to establish an online fundraising page for the family.

"The check has been sent," Lindsay Walters, White House spokeswoman, told CNN on Wednesday. "It's disgusting that the media is taking something that should be recognized as a generous and sincere gesture, made privately by the President, and using it to advance the media's biased agenda."

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told CNN that it was a personal check from Trump.

The timing of Trump's donation raised questions because the Post reported Wednesday that White House official initially declined to discuss the events in detail but later told them the check had been sent.

"'I'm going to write you a check out of my personal account for $25,000,' and I was just floored," Baldridge told the Post of his conversation with Trump. "I could not believe he was saying that, and I wish I had it recorded because the man did say this. He said, 'No other president has ever done something like this,' but he said, 'I'm going to do it. "

A White House spokesperson, speaking on background, said the check has been "in the pipeline" since the President's conversation with the father.

"The President has personally followed up several times to ensure that the check was being sent. As stated earlier the check has been sent," the spokesperson said.

When asked why it took so long for the funds to be sent, the spokesperson added: "There is a substantial process that can involve multiple agencies anytime the President interacts with the public, especially when transmitting personal funds. In this situation there were other agencies involved."

The spokesperson did not say which agencies were involved or elaborate on the process.

Knowledge of Trump's pledge to Baldridge comes amid the ongoing flap about how presidents handle condolence calls to families of those killed in action and Trump's feud with a Democratic congresswoman over his call with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, who was killed earlier this month in Niger.

Trump called Myeshia Johnson on Tuesday and, according to Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson, the President said that the serviceman killed "knew what he signed up for, but I guess it still hurt."

Trump denied that he ever said that.

"I didn't say what that congresswoman said. Didn't say it at all," Trump told reporters during a Wednesday meeting on tax reform in the Cabinet Room. "She knows it. And she now is not saying it. I did not say what she said."

At the same time, the White House is dealing with Trump stating that President Barack Obama didn't call all the families those killed during his presidency and suggesting that reporters ask his chief of staff, retired Gen. John Kelly, whether Obama called him after his son died in Afghanistan.

Kelly's son Robert died when he stepped on a landmine in Afghanistan in 2010. Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general, was a lieutenant general at the time.

CNN's Jeremy Diamond contributed to this report.

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000 check to fallen soldier's family on same day as washington post report - cnnpolitics

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Trump cuts check amid report he didn't follow up

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A White House official confirms to CNN that the President sent a personal check to the family of Army Cpl. Dillon Baldridge Wednesday. Baldridge, 22, was killed in June by an Afghan police officer. According to the Post, Trump called Chris Baldridge in June, weeks after his son was killed.

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Trump thanks Vladimir Putin for kicking US Diplomats out of Russia because the US will now have a smaller payroll.

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Trump Thanks Putin for Expelling U.S. Diplomats from Russia

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President Trump said that he is "very thankful" to Russian President Vladimir Putin for expelling 755 U.S. diplomats

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Again Obama has made some bad policy's.

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international relations and national security

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Obama pats himself on the back over foreign policy | CNN

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Frida Ghitis: Barack Obama thinks highly of himself, as he should, but lacks the humility to fully see others' views and recognize his mistakes on Syria.

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Chief Diplomat Calls Trump a moron and threatens to resign.

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If the President of the United States is a moron, as his Secretary of State reportedly asserts, we have a question for Rex Tillerson: At what moment did you find yourself in accord with the rulers of both Iran and North Korea?

Tillerson did not specifically address this revelation during the hostage video he released Wednesday, but the prospect that our top diplomat's opinion of Donald Trump matches assessments of dire enemies carries an ominous foreboding.

The secretary did not arrive at this conclusion casually, an NBC report suggests. It occurred shortly after a classified two-hour meeting in July about options in Afghanistan - one in which Trump complained about NATO allies, inquired about grabbing Afghanistan's mineral wealth, and called for the top commander there to be sacked.

Trump then compared the military advice he received from cabinet officials to advice given to the management of Manhattan's 21 Club. He noted that he had received better advice from junior troops days before, and likened these troops to waiters, who he said had better renovation ideas than the consultants hired by 21 Club management.

In other words, strategizing about a 16-year war made our Commander in Chief think about the makeover of a trendy eatery.

So after Trump left the room, the NBC story goes, Tillerson dropped the M-bomb, with a colorful adjective preceding it, and pondered resignation.

Large gaps between these two men in personality and policy emerge regularly now, some of them petty - as the Secretary regards the name-calling, without denying he used it - and many terrifying.

Most urgent is the Iran nuclear deal, which Trump repeatedly calls an "embarrassment," and must be recertified by Oct. 15. In eight consecutive reports, the International Atomic Energy Agency confirms the deal is working. Secretary of Defense James Mattis and the Joint Chiefs support it.

But if Tillerson is unable to persuade Trump to certify to Congress that Iran is in compliance, the deal could come apart. That would alienate our allies, empower Russia and China, theoretically give Tehran a chance to resume its nuclear program, and tell the world that we don't keep our agreements.

There is no margin for error there, or in North Korea, where Tillerson attempted to open diplomatic channels last weekend before the President publicly trolled him: Trump tweeted that Tillerson should stop "wasting his time trying to negotiate with that little Rocket Man," which is one way of informing the world that our chief diplomat doesn't speak for him.

Now Kim Jung Un knows any overtures from the U.S. Secretary of State are worthless.

Tillerson reportedly never wanted this job. He is a career CEO drenched in Russian oil money whose only discernible skill is cost-cutting. He cut the foreign policy budget by 30 percent, imposed a hiring freeze, kept key diplomatic positions vacant in the face of a nuclear crisis, and has no policy in Afghanistan or Syria.

But he also serves an impulsive and ill-informed boss who threatens to start wars from Venezuela to North Korea and reshapes decades of foreign policy in 140 characters or less, at a time when hard-right lunatics are gaining influence in European governments and Russia is undermining democracies worldwide.

Maybe the name-calling was a cheap headline, but it is apparent that this president has little interest in educating himself above the moron level of foreign policy.

That makes him impossible to serve and advise, and it compromises U.S. interests and security around the globe. No matter how unseemly the language, it was refreshing to hear our chief diplomat tell the whole truth.

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Yes, Trump is a 'moron' with foreign policy | Editorial

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If the President of the United States is a moron, as his Secretary of State reportedly asserts, we have a question for Rex Tillerson: At what moment did you find yourself in accord with the rulers of both Iran and North Korea?

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In this instant Trump had choice words for congress. This shows he doesn't t understand Separation in power but this article still shows the separation.

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Here's the key part of Trump's statement after signing the sanctions bill -- which he did out of public sight and with little fanfare:
"The bill remains seriously flawed -- particularly because it encroaches on the executive branch's authority to negotiate," he said in the statement. "Congress could not even negotiate a health care bill after seven years of talking. By limiting the executive's flexibility, this bill makes it harder for the United States to strike good deals for the American people, and will drive China, Russia, and North Korea much closer together. ... I built a truly great company worth many billions of dollars. That is a big part of the reason I was elected. As President, I can make far better deals with foreign countries than Congress."
Set aside for a moment that Trump was outmaneuvered by Congress on the sanctions bill; both the House and Senate passed the bill with overwhelming supermajorities and that Trump was forced to either sign it or watch it become law without his signature.

Trump is hardly the only president ever to blanch at what he believed to be an encroachment on his executive powers. George W. Bush clashed regularly with Congress over warrantless wire-tapping of US citizens. And Barack Obama enraged members of Congress with his willingness to end-run them with executive actions.

What makes Trump's derision of the division of power between the executive, legislative and judicial branches different is both how brazen he is about it and how many times he has expressed sentiments in his first six-plus months in office that suggest he simply doesn't understand the fact that everyone in the government doesn't work for him.

Let's start with Trump's Russia statement. At its root, what Trump is saying is this: Congress doesn't know what it's doing! They wouldn't even listen to me and pass a health care bill! And I made a bunch of phone calls! They shouldn't get to have a veto over me on anything! Especially not when I am a great businessman of a "truly great company worth many billions of dollars!"

This is not an isolated incident.

In the wake of the failure of the attempted overhaul of the health care law in the Senate last week, Trump repeatedly scolded senators for not following his orders.

"Unless the Republican Senators are total quitters, Repeal & Replace is not dead! Demand another vote before voting on any other bill!," he tweeted on Saturday. In another tweet, Trump wrote: "Republicans in the Senate will NEVER win if they don't go to a 51 vote majority NOW. They look like fools and are just wasting time...."

Then there is what Trump has said about Attorney General Jeff Sessions' decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. "It's extremely unfair, and that's a mild word, to the president," Trump told The New York Times of Sessions' recusal.

Never in that Times interview -- or anywhere else -- does Trump acknowledge that Sessions might have been considering the American public when he made his decision. As in, Sessions thought that anyone with such a prominent role in one of the two presidential campaigns shouldn't oversee an investigation into that election because of the way it might look to people. That is simply not a thought that occurs to Trump.

That same mentality was on display when Trump reacted earlier this year to the rulings by federal courts that held up the enforcement of his travel ban.

"The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!," he tweeted on February 4 in response to a federal appeals court ruling that refused to lift a lower court's stay on the ban. The next day, Trump doubled down with this tweet: "Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system. People pouring in. Bad!"

Again, Trump's view is clear: These people work for me! (They don't.) They should do what I want! I am the president!

Want one more example? How about "my generals"?

In announcing his decision last week to ban all transgender people from serving in the military, Trump tweeted out that he came to that conclusion " after consultation with my Generals and military experts."

At his inauguration, Trump said something similar. "I see my generals ... these are central casting," he said. "If I'm doing a movie, I'd pick you general, Gen. Mattis."

While Trump is the commander-in-chief, presidents don't usually tend to describe the military as working for them. And they very rarely use the descriptor "my" to describe military men and women.

Whether Trump's seeming lack of concern with the traditional separation of powers is purposeful or him simply not knowing is immaterial. Either option equals the same thing -- an executive who believes everyone in the US government (and beyond) works directly for him and should do what he says at all times.

You can understand why Trump sees things this way. He comes from the world of business. In the Trump Organization, everyone did report to him and their jobs were, generally speaking, to do what he said.

That's the world he's used to. It's the only world he knows.

But this is not that. Senators and members of Congress are elected to represent their citizens, not to do the bidding unquestioningly of the chief executive. "We work for the American people. We don't work for the president," South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott told the Washington Post on Tuesday. "We should do what's good for the administration as long as that does not in any way, shape or form make it harder on the American people."

Ditto for members of the judiciary, whose job it is to see how well legislation measures up to the law, not rubber-stamp the laws the president likes.

The expansion of executive power has been a trend in the modern-day presidency. Each successive president in the past few decades has worked to broaden their powers -- particularly in relation to Congress.

But no president has shown such total disregard for the separation of powers as Trump. None are even close.

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trump's russia statement proves he doesn't understand separation of powers - cnnpolitics

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Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large

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Trump's Russia statement proves he doesn't understand separation of powers

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On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed the Russia sanctions bill that the Republican-led Congress had approved overwhelmingly. But he made sure everyone knew he wasn't happy about it -- and in so doing revealed, again, that he has either little understanding of or little care for the separation of powers built into the US government.

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The courts where reviewing if two men could be charged with offenses not placed when congress passed the anti-terror.

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Military terror convictions to get high-profile judicial review | CNN

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Military convictions of two terror suspects will get a full federal appeals court review, testing whether the men could be charged with offenses that were not in place when Congress passed a 2006 anti-terror law.

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Trump is talking with Iran about how they violated an agreement.

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The deadline to certify Iran's compliance to Barack Obama's landmark nuclear deal was nearing. Trump had campaigned as an ardent opponent of the accord, proclaiming to raucous rallies of supporters that he'd tear the deal to shreds.

By that point in his term, Trump had already been convinced to certify the agreement once. But with his legislative agenda stalled and a scant few of his campaign promises fulfilled, he was loath to delay yet another core promise.

In Washington for only a few days in between back-to-back visits to Europe, Trump huddled with his top national security aides -- including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary James Mattis, and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster -- to hear their recommendations. To a person, all recommended Trump keep the deal intact to preserve leverage over Tehran and avoid isolating the United States among its allies.

It was an answer he didn't like. Trump made known in "forceful, not uncertain" terms that he was disappointed by the options his team had been presenting him, according to a person familiar with the discussions, who described Trump's reaction as an "extended outburst." The session lasted close to an hour.

The advisers regrouped, developed a plan they believed would satisfy Trump's demands, and presented it to him a week later after he'd returned from a quick visit to Paris and a weekend at his golf resort in New Jersey.

But that plan was insufficient in his mind, too. And so on July 17, Trump again went forward with certifying the agreement, notifying his team it would be the last time he did so. In an interview a few days later, Trump aired his resentments publicly, saying he was reluctantly taking his team's advice -- this time.

In the months since then, his aides -- under angry orders from the President -- devised a solution that would allow Trump to publicly reject the deal while stopping short of withdrawing from a global agreement that even his top advisers believe is working to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

"As I have said many times, the Iran deal was one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into," Trump said in remarks from the White House diplomatic reception room on Friday, conceding later: "But what's done is done, and that's why we are where we are."

What Trump announced on Friday amounts to a middle road, crafted by a team of advisers who have warned the President that a full withdrawal from the deal -- which he would prefer -- could destabilize the region further and isolate the United States from its allies.

Spearheading the plan was Tillerson, who has suffered a testy relationship with Trump over the past several months. Part of the President's irritation centered on the Iran deal, which he felt had been insufficiently confronted by his top diplomat. Tillerson, meanwhile, felt Trump had only a loose grasp on global affairs, the Iran deal included.

Over the late summer and early fall, Tillerson discussed a path forward with lawmakers. He offered the broad outlines of a strategy to foreign ministers on the sidelines of last month's United Nations meetings in New York.

The plan he formulated does "as much to contain Trump as it does Iran," according to a senior official involved in the planning, meaning it forestalls Trump immediately throwing out the nuclear agreement.

"Trump has essentially forced his own national security team to fall into line with the decision that they don't agree with, and to find some rationale for that decision," said Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to Obama who helped shepherd to nuclear agreement. "And so you're looking at an administration that is contorting itself in order to justify the irrational decision of the President of the United States."

Trump's anger at his team over the matter lays bare some of the divisions within the administration, which has been pulled in opposing directions on a range of topics since Trump took office in January.

While Trump and his close circle of aides are intent on achieving the goals he laid out on last year's campaign, other members of his team -- including those who didn't play a role on his successful bid for president -- have taken sometimes differing views.

On the Iran deal, Trump faced the inconvenient reality that Iran is technically complying with the provisions laid out in the 2015 deal, which was signed by six countries and which still enjoys ardent support from American allies in Europe.

Trump decertified Iran's compliance with the deal, but passed the buck to Congress, which now has 60 days to either impose new economic sanctions -- and scuttling the deal as a result -- or do nothing, which would keep the deal in place. The administration is pressuring lawmakers to pass new "triggers" that would prompt mandatory sanctions on Iran, as well as address the "sunset" provision, considered by Trump a major weakness of the deal.

But the prospects of Congress agreeing on parameters to improve the deal aren't considered high. For starters, the man responsible for shepherding a plan through -- Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker -- is embroiled in a bitter feud with the President, who has impugned his height. And Democrats will likely be required for passage of any measure, and have shown little appetite for helping Trump undermine Obama's legacy.

If they don't pass something, Trump has been clear that he'll scrap the deal for good.

"I may do that. I may do that. The deal is terrible," Trump told reporters on the White House south lawn on Friday before boarding his idling helicopter. "We'll have Congress take a look at it, and I may very well do that. But I like a two-step process much better."

CNN's Elise Labott contributed to this report.

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the white house backstory: president trump's decision on iran  - cnnpolitics

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How Trump was guided to take a middle road on Iran

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The deadline to certify Iran's compliance to Barack Obama's landmark nuclear deal was nearing. Trump had campaigned as an ardent opponent of the accord, proclaiming to raucous rallies of supporters that he'd tear the deal to shreds. By that point in his term, Trump had already been convinced to certify the agreement once.

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Trump Helped free people kept as hostages for 5 years. He also claims that "America is being respected again", and that this is the reason the hostages were freed.

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8:19 P.M.

Last week, veering off script in a speech ostensibly about his tax plan, President Donald Trump touted yet another new accomplishment by his Administration. "America is being respected again," Trump proclaimed at a campaign-style rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. "Something happened today where a country that totally disrespected us called with some very, very important news. And one of my generals came in, they said, 'You know, I have to tell you, a year ago they would have never done that.' "

"It was a great sign of respect," Trump added. "You'll probably be hearing about it over the next few days."

The "very, very important news" was that Pakistan's military had freed a Canadian man, his American wife, and their three young children, who had been held hostage for five years by a Taliban faction known as the Haqqani network. The sudden raid by the Pakistani military-which, for more than a decade, has permitted the Haqqanis to operate a safe haven and hold captives in Pakistan-sparked surprise, conspiracy theories, and hope among current and former U.S. officials.

"Pakistan stepped up in this case," a U.S. intelligence official told me. "The question is whether this will be the beginning of a change in attitude or just a one-off gesture."

On Tuesday, the Times reported a version of events that contradicted several of Trump's boasts. Last month, an American drone spotted a young woman playing with her children in a Haqqani encampment in Kurram Valley, sources told the Times. American officials initially considered a raid by U.S. Special Forces soldiers, but called it off over concerns that the family might not, in fact, be captives. Days later, U.S. officials grew alarmed when they saw the family placed in a car and driven deeper into Pakistan, and they drew up a plan to pressure the Pakistanis. Trump was briefed; Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis agreed that U.S. diplomats and military officials would tell Pakistani officials that, if Pakistan did not intercept the vehicle, U.S. forces would carry out a rescue operation themselves. Within hours, Pakistani forces stopped the vehicle and found Joshua Boyle, his wife, Caitlan Coleman, and their three children, ages four, two, and six months, stuffed in the car's trunk. Pakistani officials initially claimed that the captors riding in the car were killed or captured. A Pakistani journalist told me that the Pakistanis fired at the car's tires and allowed the kidnappers to flee.

After the family was freed, Trump and his aides claimed that the Pakistanis acted because of Trump's recent public demands for Islamabad to do more to counter terrorism. They also said that the case was an example of the personal investment Trump and Tillerson have made in bringing imprisoned Americans home. A White House spokesperson told me that Trump has "made it clear to his national-security team that the safe recovery of our citizens is one of his highest priorities," and that Trump had been "highly engaged in monitoring the status and progress of" the Boyle case since taking office. R. C. Hammond, a spokesman for Tillerson, said that the Secretary of State keeps a list of all Americans currently imprisoned abroad, and regularly raises the cases with foreign leaders.

Current and former U.S. officials praise the release of the Boyles but tell a different story about the Administration's role in it. According to them, Trump's hostage policy has largely followed the same pattern as his other policy initiatives: he has exaggerated his achievements, played to his political base, failed to fill a key appointment, and limited his impact by taking an ad-hoc approach that focusses on his own personal intervention.

After James Foley and three other Americans were murdered in Syria by ISIS, in 2014 and 2015, the Obama Administration enacted sweeping reforms designed to integrate the freeing of hostages into the U.S. government's foreign-policymaking process.

James O'Brien, a veteran diplomat who was named the first U.S. Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, as part of the Obama reforms, credited Trump with raising the cases of individual captives with foreign leaders. But he said that Trump's limited understanding of how government works curtails the impact of these personal efforts. The centralized nature of decision-making around Trump and a handful of his key aides means that hostage cases aren't fully integrated into foreign-policymaking, O'Brien said; Trump's speech last week confronting Iran, for example, could have linked sanctions to the safe return of the seven Americans currently missing or imprisoned in the country.

"I would give Trump credit for raising the cases he raises, but I think every President does that," O'Brien said. "Obama made the whole government work on this. Trump is willing to intervene where he can, and that is always going to be a narrower approach."

The families of current and former captives say that the U.S. must do more to aid captives. "I want Americans who are taken captive hostage to become a national priority," Diane Foley, the mother of James Foley, told me.

Since 2001, American Presidents have struggled with how to respond to Islamic militants' increased use of kidnapping as a source of publicity and ransom. Government officials declined to give the exact number of Americans currently held overseas in what are considered to be "political" kidnappings, saying that the information is classified. The cases range from abductions by extremist groups to the jailing of Americans on false charges by foreign governments that then use the captives as bargaining chips. Current and former officials said that the number fluctuates between roughly a dozen and twenty.

Kidnapping emerged as a tactic for extremist groups after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, where insurgents began abducting American contractors and journalists. Over time, the tactic spread to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the Haqqanis became leading practitioners. In 2008, the Haqqanis kidnapped me and two Afghan colleagues and held us captive in Pakistan for seven months. In 2009, the Haqqanis abducted a U.S. soldier, Bowe Bergdahl, and held him captive in Pakistan for five years. In 2012, they kidnapped Boyle and Coleman, who were backpacking in Afghanistan and trying to provide aid to rural villagers. Before his abduction, Boyle had been married for a year to the sister of Omar Khadr, a Canadian who was jailed in Guantánamo for more than a decade after being captured fighting alongside the Taliban. After returning to Canada on Friday, Boyle accused the Haqqanis of "stupidity" and "evil," said that the family had been imprisoned underground for years, and accused guards of raping his wife and murdering his infant daughter-charges the Taliban denied.

With the rise of the Islamic State, the abduction of Americans has grown more brutal. ISIS militants murdered Foley, the journalist Steven Sotloff, and the aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller, but freed European captives after their governments reportedly paid large ransoms. As Lawrence Wright wrote in this magazine in 2015, the parents of American captives received conflicting advice from Obama Administration officials before their children were murdered: a National Security Council official told the families that they would be prosecuted if they paid a ransom to ISIS, but F.B.I. officials told them that the government would turn a blind eye to ransom payments. Unable to raise the kinds of vast ransoms paid by European governments, the four families watched their children die, one by one, in Syria in late 2014 and early 2015.

In 2015, in an attempt to improve the U.S. government's efforts to bring hostages home and coördinate between agencies, Obama created the Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell in the F.B.I., a Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs in the State Department, and a Hostage Response Group in the National Security Council. O'Brien, the former diplomat, said that, under the new system, he or officials from the Fusion Cell, as well as the most senior N.S.C. staff overseeing hostage-affairs issues, attended policy meetings and argued that the release of hostages be integrated into U.S. foreign policy in countries where captives were held. (The Foleys and other families, including my own, helped establish a nonprofit group to help advise and support families during and after kidnappings, called Hostage US.) Communications and coördination between government officials and families improved during Obama's final year in office. Left unchanged, however, was the core dynamic haunting the families of American captives: European governments pay ransoms, while the U.S. government does not.

Families and former officials enthusiastically praised the work done under Trump by the Fusion Cell, which is staffed by career civil servants. But the State Department post of Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs has been filled by an acting official, Julia Nesheiwat, a former military-intelligence officer, since O'Brien left, the day before Trump's Inauguration. As part of a State Department reorganization carried out by Tillerson, the Envoy no longer reports directly to the Secretary of State, weakening the post's influence inside the government. Hammond, the State Department spokesman, said that the reorganization had an impact on offices across the department and that being only an acting envoy did not limit Nesheiwat's effectiveness. Diane Foley called for the position to be filled immediately. "We desperately need this envoy," she told me.

Trump and his aides have tried various methods to bring home the roughly twenty Americans currently imprisoned by militant groups or foreign governments. They've had mixed results. In February, the C.I.A. director, Mike Pompeo, secretly spoke by phone with the director of Syria's intelligence service to try to win the release of Austin Tice, a journalist who was kidnapped in Syria five years ago, who is believed to be held by loyalists of the Assad regime. Hopes for this back channel ended in April, after a nerve-gas attack by Syrian government forces and retaliatory U.S. cruise-missile strikes by Trump.

That same month, Trump Administration officials won the release of Aya Hijazi, a thirty-year-old American aid worker, and her Egyptian husband and four other aid workers, who had been imprisoned in Egypt for three years. Former U.S. diplomats say that the release of Hijazi was a fig leaf from the Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, which gave Trump a "win" weeks after Sisi visited the White House. (The Egyptian military ruler had never received such an invitation from the Obama White House, because of his widespread human-rights abuses.) After the release of Hijazi, Sisi intensified a draconian crackdown on journalists and aid groups in Egypt in advance of elections next year.

In late April, Senator Ted Cruz said that Trump had provided "leadership" in the Chinese government's decision to expel Sandy Phan-Gillis, a businesswoman from Houston, who had been sentenced to three and a half years in prison on espionage charges. U.S. officials declined to say how many American citizens remain imprisoned in China. In May, during a White House meeting with Turkey's President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Trump asked three times for the release of the jailed American Andrew Brunson, according to Administration officials. Brunson is an evangelical pastor from North Carolina who was arrested last October; he was accused of being a follower of a Turkish cleric whom Erdoğan blames for a failed military coup. Brunson remains imprisoned in Turkey.

In June, Trump Administration officials negotiated the release from North Korea of Otto Warmbier, a twenty-one-year-old American student who was imprisoned for seventeen months for allegedly stealing a propaganda poster in his hotel. Beaten and tortured in captivity, Warmbier returned home in a coma and died a week later. Three other Americans, Tony Kim, Kim Hak-song, and Kim Dong-chul, remain jailed in North Korea. The country's continued nuclear- and ballistic-missile tests, and Trump's belligerent rhetoric, make any future release unlikely.

Last Friday, Trump announced that he would stop certifying that Iran is abiding by the nuclear accord negotiated by the Obama Administration, which is likely to increase tensions with Tehran. Seven American citizens and green-card holders-Robert Levinson, Nizar Zakka, Xiyue Wang, the father and son Baqer and Siamak Namazi, and the husband and wife Karan Vafadari and Afarin Nayssari-are imprisoned or missing in the country. Jason Rezaian, an American journalist who was jailed in Iran for eighteen months, and whose wife, Yeganeh, was detained for two months, tweeted after Trump's speech, "I hope I'm wrong, but it looks to me as though Americans being held hostage in#Iran were just abandoned by@realDonaldTrump."

Whether or not the freeing of the Boyles shows that Trump's approach will work is the subject of debate. Jere Van Dyk, a journalist who was held captive by the Haqqanis in 2008 and the author of " The Trade," a new book on the spread of political kidnapping, said that Trump's rhetoric "definitely put pressure on the Pakistanis to find ways to draw closer again to the U.S." But Peter Bergen, an Afghanistan and Pakistan expert at the New America Foundation, said that he was "not convinced" that the raid was more than a one-off, because the intelligence provided by the U.S. presented an "extraordinary opportunity" to free the hostages while they were being moved.

One measure of the that Trump's tough talk has had on Islamabad will be what the Pakistani military does regarding American captives still held by the Haqqanis. Paul Overby, a seventy-four-year-old freelance journalist, disappeared three years ago, after entering northwestern Pakistan in the hopes of interviewing Siraj Haqqani, the leader of the network. Kevin King, a sixty-one-year-old American, and Timothy Weeks, a forty-eight-year-old Australian, were abducted fourteen months ago in central Kabul, while teaching at the American University there. In two videos released by the Haqqanis, the professors begged for their lives, wept, and appeared to have been held underground for long periods No video, or message of any kind, has been released showing Overby.

Foley told me that she welcomed the return of the Boyles, but she said that too many American remain in captivity. She believes more research is needed on whether the U.S. government paying ransoms would save lives. An organization that her family established to honor her son, the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, tracks the cases of every American imprisoned or held hostage overseas and advocates for their release. "We must not forget our citizens kidnapped abroad," she told me. Whether Trump deserves credit or not for doing the right things, the Boyle family's return is a bright spot in a still bleak landscape for captives and their families.

David Rohde is the news director of newyorker.com.
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Is Trump Helping to Free American Hostages Worldwide?

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8:19 P.M. Last week, veering off script in a speech ostensibly about his tax plan, President Donald Trump touted yet another new accomplishment by his Administration. "America is being respected again," Trump proclaimed at a campaign-style rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. "Something happened today where a country that totally disrespected us called with some very, very important news.

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Obama wishes America A happy fourth of July.

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See the President's daily schedule, explore behind-the-scenes photos from inside the White House, and find out all the ways you can engage with the most interactive administration in our country's history.

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Trump is making his first trip to China after China tells him to "abandon his prejudices" about the communist country.

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"China firmly upholds the international order with the United Nations at its core," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said Thursday.

"China is dedicated to developing long-term healthy and stable relations with the United States."

Speaking Wednesday at a forum for US-India ties, Tillerson said Beijing's "provocative actions in the South China Sea directly challenge the international law and norms that the United States and India both stand for."

China has reclaimed a large amount of land in the disputed waters of the South China Sea, turning reefs into military bases in defiance of an international court ruling.

Lu said the country would "never give up its legitimate rights and interests."

Tillerson's latest comments represent something of a return to form for the top US diplomat, who was a strident critic of China during his confirmation hearings in January.

He called on China to be denied access to islands it was occupying in the South China Sea, and compared Beijing's actions to Russia's military intervention in Ukraine.

"Building islands and then putting military assets on those islands is akin to Russia's taking of Crimea. Its taking of territory that others lay claim to," Tillerson said, sparking an angry reaction from Chinese state media.

In a subsequent visit to Beijing however, he took a far softer tone, echoing Chinese language on the need to "expand cooperative areas and achieve win-win results."

On Wednesday, Tillerson said that while the US wants a constructive relationship with China, "we will not shrink from China's challenges to the rules-based order, and where China subverts the sovereignty of neighboring countries and disadvantages the US and our friends."

Tillerson's latest remarks came just three weeks before US President Donald Trump makes his first official trip to China.

They also coincided with China's 19th party congress -- a massive gathering of Communist Party members during which President Xi Jinping said China should "take center stage in the world," adding that "no one should expect China to swallow anything that undermines its interests."

Trump was full of praise for Xi when the pair met in Florida in April, but the relationship between the two leaders has apparently cooled in the wake of the ongoing North Korean crisis, for which Trump has blamed Beijing for failing to take more stringent action against Pyongyang.

Foreign ministry spokesman Lu directly quoted Xi Thursday, saying China "will never pursue development at the expense of other countries' interests, but China will also never give up its legitimate rights and interests."

Tillerson praised Delhi's mode of development in comparison to Beijing, setting out a vision of an "Indo Pacific" order stretching from the US west coast to India that would be underpinned by the US and its allies, a move that could be seen in Beijing as an attempt at containment or as a challenge in a region that China sees as falling under its sphere of influence.

"We are pleased to see the US and India -- and indeed all countries of the world -- develop normal relations, as long as such relations are conducive to peace, stability and development of the region, as well as the improvement of mutual trust between countries in the region," Lu said.

CNN's Nicole Gaouette contributed reporting from Washington.

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china calls on us to 'abandon its prejudices' after tillerson rebuke - cnnpolitics

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China calls on US to 'abandon its prejudices' after Tillerson rebuke

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"China firmly upholds the international order with the United Nations at its core," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said Thursday. "China is dedicated to developing long-term healthy and stable relations with the United States."

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President Trump pulls back from endorsement deal for a Senate proposal to stabilize health insurance market.

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And on Wednesday, he took to Twitter to say he and Mr. Trump are in agreement on the cost-sharing reductions, or CSRs.

He and I absolutely agree that CSRs should benefit consumers and not insurance companies.
- Sen. Lamar Alexander (@SenAlexander) Oct. 18, 2017

The Alexander-Murray agreement has strong language to do that, and I will work with the president to see if we can make it even stronger.
- Sen. Lamar Alexander (@SenAlexander) Oct. 18, 2017

The measure is creating friction. Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, reflecting his most conservative members, came out against the deal on Wednesday.

"The speaker does not see anything that changes his view that the Senate should keep its focus on repeal and replace of Obamacare," said Doug Andres, a spokesman for Mr. Ryan.

But the authors of the measure may be gaining support for the moment that they have the most leverage. In December, the government will run out of money, and no bill to keep it funded can pass without Democratic votes. At that point, supporters of the Alexander-Murray measure can insist on its inclusion in any spending bill and threaten to shut down the government if they do not prevail. Already, several Republicans have backed the agreement, including Senators John McCain of Arizona, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana and the co-author with Senator Lindsey Graham of the most recent legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, offered his qualified support: "If combined with greater flexibility to allow states to lower costs, this will set the stage for replace through a mechanism such as Graham-Cassidy. I will study this proposal to see if it accomplishes these goals."

Mr. Alexander, speaking Wednesday at a forum convened by Axios, a news website, said: "The president engineered the bipartisan agreement by calling me and asking me to work with Senator Murray to do it. I've talked with him three times in the last 10 days about it."

Mr. Alexander predicted that the plan would "pass in some form before the end of the year." And he said the deal included several victories for conservatives, making it easier for states to revamp their insurance markets and allowing people of any age to buy low-cost, high-deductible health plans providing catastrophic coverage.

A federal judge ruled in 2016 that the federal payments to insurance companies, known as cost-sharing reductions, violated the Constitution because Congress never provided money for them. Citing that ruling, Mr. Trump announced last week that he would stop the payments.

Mr. Trump says he still supports longer-range efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with block grants to the states.

Such big changes would not take effect until 2020 or 2021, Mr. Alexander said. "What do you do in the meantime?" he asked. "What you don't want to do in the meantime is create chaos and hurt millions of Americans."

"What does chaos do?" Mr. Alexander asked. "It's a four-lane highway to a single-payer solution. It's a birthday present for Bernie Sanders," the independent Vermont senator and leading advocate for a single-payer "Medicare for all" health care system.

The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, quickly pushed back on the president's Twitter post, expressing exasperation in remarks on the Senate floor.

"Frankly, the president doesn't know what he's talking about in the compromise," Mr. Schumer said. "It doesn't bail out insurance companies. It helps people who are sick and who need health care."

Mr. Schumer said the president "keeps zigging and zagging, so it's impossible to govern."

"Our only hope is maybe tomorrow he'll be for this again," he added.

Indeed, Mr. Trump's exact views on the Senate measure have been hard to pin down over the past 24 hours or so.

At a news conference at the White House on Tuesday afternoon, virtually as the deal was being announced at the Capitol, Mr. Trump voiced support for the plan. He vowed to try again to repeal the Affordable Care Act but said the emerging bipartisan deal would "get us over this intermediate hump" in the meantime.

The president described the Senate plan as a "short-term solution so that we don't have this very dangerous little period."

Hours later, in a speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation, Mr. Trump commended the work of Mr. Alexander and Ms. Murray, but he said that Congress needed to "find a solution to the Obamacare mess instead of providing bailouts to insurance companies."

And with his Twitter post on Wednesday morning, he stepped back even further from the support he had offered just a day earlier.

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patient protection and affordable care act (2010)

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Trump Qualifies Support for Senate Deal to Fund Health Subsidies

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And on Wednesday, he took to Twitter to say he and Mr. Trump are in agreement on the cost-sharing reductions, or CSRs. The measure is creating friction. Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, reflecting his most conservative members, came out against the deal on Wednesday.

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Obama with executive order, is using government power to try to set a better economic policy.

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WASHINGTON - As he tries to increase the minimum wage, ensure paycheck fairness and provide paid time off for American workers, President Obama is turning to an arcane but powerful tool: the power of the purchaser.

If there's one industry that's been disproportionately impacted by President Obama's executive orders, it's federal government contractors. Since becoming president, Obama has signed at least 15 executive orders and presidential memoranda aimed at contractors, dictating their hiring and firing practices, compensation policies and working conditions. The orders also require contractors to meet energy efficiency goals, prohibit human trafficking and other exploitative hiring practices, and ban texting while driving.

Buyers have always used their ability to buy in bulk to leverage a better deal, and the federal government has more purchasing power than any other buyer in the world, awarding more than $445 billion in contracts in fiscal year 2014.

With his executive orders, Obama is using the government's buying power not just to get a better deal for the taxpayer, but also to set economic and social policy on minimum wage, paid leave and paycheck fairness - issues the Republican-controlled Congress has not acted on. The White House is hoping that the orders send a message to the economy at large, and have an effect far beyond the public sector.

"When the president issues an executive order, it reinforces that we care," said Anne Rung, administrator of the White House's Office of Federal Procurement Policy. "That kind of statement can not only drive greater economies and efficiency in the federal government, it can have a trickle-down or multiplier effect on the economy at large."

But critics of Obama's aggressive use of the executive order say the actions will kill off small businesses and may be unconstitutional.

"It's completely in line with his sort of pen-and-phone philosophy. Obama is trying to impose his will through his bureaucracy," said Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, the chairman of the House Small Business Committee. "The shame of it is that the people who are going to suffer are small businesses and families all across this country. The large corporations will find a way to deal with these new rules and regulations. ... Hiring a few more lawyers or accountants to deal with these things is not a huge deal for them."

Rung said the Obama administration is working with small businesses to reduce the burden, and has also made strides in making contracts more efficient by consolidating them throughout government. That allows the government to insist on higher standards and still save money, she said. "In the end, you can't always put a dollar figure on helping to advance human dignity fairness and safety in the workplace, as we're doing though many of these executive orders."

The use of executive orders on contracting to shape social policy goes back to President Franklin Roosevelt, who banned racial discrimination in war production in 1941. President Kennedy strengthened that order by requiring affirmative action, and Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Clinton and George W. Bush signed orders strengthening enforcement and expanding the classes of people protected from discrimination. Last year, Obama added sexual orientation and gender identity to that line of executive orders.

"Federal procurement is a powerful weapon by which American presidents attempt to expand their power and shape public policy in areas in which Congress has not acted or will not act," argues Daniel Gitterman, a professor of public policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in an article in Presidential Studies Quarterly. Obama is no different, he said.

"My sense is that he has clearly taken an interest in this particular tool," Gitterman said. And with Congress safely in Republican hands for most of the remainder of his presidency, "you'll probably see a spike now in terms of using that strategy."

Obama has also taken his executive power as purchaser further than his predecessors. Two recent executive orders expand the definition of contractors to include anyone who rents space from the federal government - including, for example, day care centers, military base concessionaires stands and vendors in national parks.

"In the context of these two executive orders, they've essentially rewritten what it means to be a contractor, to get maximum participation in these goals they're pursuing," said Marc Freedman, who directs labor law policy for the Chamber of Commerce.

And then there's the most controversial of the Obama contracting orders, called the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces executive order, which Freedman calls the "mother of executive orders." That order requires contractors to disclose any labor violations of city, state or federal labor laws - or executive orders - against themselves or their subcontractors.

Because the government can consider allegations of violations, businesses argue that the executive order deprives them of due process. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also argues that some of the orders violate the separation of powers because Congress passed the 1949 Procurement Act to ensure greater efficiency, while the orders impose additional rules "in pursuit of non-procurement objectives."

Rung says the Obama administration has had extensive consultations with businesses to make sure the rules implementing the orders can work. "When we do these executive orders, we do extensive outreach to industry even prior to developing a proposed rule," she said.

That's too late, said Stan Soloway of the Professional Services Council, a trade group of government contractors. "Executive orders are not by their nature consultative," he said. "Once the executive order comes out, the implementing rules have to adhere to the letter of the executive order. So you don't get flexibility."

Obama may not be done with his use of the tool. Interest groups are lobbying him to sign at least two more executive orders applying to federal contractors.

One, called the "ban the box" campaign, asks Obama to prohibit any company getting a federal contract from screening out job applicants by asking about their criminal history. "He's already endorsed 'ban the box' as a concept," said Scott Simpson of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. "He's been creeping so much closer, and we know they've been hearing us. We only have so much time in this administration to put this in place."

Another would require federal contractors to disclose their political spending. A draft of such an executive order was leaked to the Huffington Post in 2013, but nothing came of it, and advocates have renewed their campaign this year. "It's definitely under serious consideration inside the White House," said Public Citizen President Robert Weissman said. "I believe this is hotly under consideration but not yet decided upon. I don't have a god answer of why we don't already have it."

Some contracting regulations go back and forth depending on the party in power. President George H.W. Bush signed an executive order in 1992 requiring contractors to notify employees that they didn't have to join a union to keep their jobs. Clinton revoked that order shortly after his election, George W. Bush reinstated it, and Obama revoked it again.

Similarly, if a Republican is elected president next year, "my guess is that a number of these Obama ones will get reversed rather quickly," Gitterman said.

But other executive orders on purchasing have had a lasting impact. In 1997, as the National Rifle Association lobbied against legislation requiring trigger locks on all new guns, Clinton used his power of the purchaser to put pressure on the industry. He signed a presidential memorandum - a directive with the same force of law as an executive order - telling federal agencies to provide trigger locks with every handgun issued to federal law enforcement officers.

Seven months later, Clinton appeared in the White House Rose Garden with executives from eight gun manufacturers who agreed to voluntarily provide trigger locks with all new guns sold. State and federal legislation gradually followed.

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Through executive orders, Obama tests power as purchaser-in-chief

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WASHINGTON - As he tries to increase the minimum wage, ensure paycheck fairness and provide paid time off for American workers, President Obama is turning to an arcane but powerful tool: the power of the purchaser. If there's one industry that's been disproportionately impacted by President Obama's executive orders, it's federal government contractors.

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Obama gives his last Christmas speech . Him and is wife are having fun while addressing the holiday and giving thanks to military family's.

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Watch the Obamas' Last Christmas Address From the White House

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The President and First Lady wish the country a Merry Christmas in their last Christmas address from the White House. Watch the video

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This is just taking about Obama failures in this position . He was very confident in some of the policy that he had made but they turned out to be bad.

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Barack Obama took office as president with confidence that he could dramatically improve America's relationships with nations around the world. Eight years later, his foreign policy successes have been significant and his failures apparent. Not surprisingly, he has found campaigning and governing are two very different activities.

He inherited a tough set of difficult, even unprecedented, international challenges, including an unraveling in the Middle East, Russian aggression, the rise of China and North Korea's nuclear advances, among others. To expect any president to resolve all of these challenges is asking a lot, probably too much.

Obama's critics claim he has been weak toward Russia, China and ISIS; they fault him for "leading from behind." These criticisms, however, have been marked by a lack of specific alternative policies.

Obama has made modest progress on global nuclear security and climate change, with plenty more to do in both. He has engaged with longtime adversaries Cuba and Iran, producing positive results.

His trip to Cuba in March 2016 brought dramatic changes in U.S. policy. It signaled the end of America's 55-year-long Cold War with Cuba, a development that was punctuated last week by the death of Fidel Castro.

The visit was widely praised throughout Latin America. Obama criticized Cuba's human rights record, but he connected with its people. His premise in opening relations with Cuba was that engagement would bring about more change than decades of isolation.

The nuclear agreement that the U.S. and five allies reached with Iran in 2015 was a solid arms control achievement. Critics argued we shouldn't deal with Iran, but the Obama administration attacked the most critical problem -- Iran's march toward nuclear weapons -- and negotiated terms that paused Iran's quest to develop a nuclear strike capability.

By design, the agreement did not solve many other problems with Iran, including its support for the Syrian government and for insurgents in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. Efforts to improve our overall relationship with Iran have proven to be disappointing.

Obama also made progress on the environment. The 2015 Paris agreement on climate change has been signed by over 100 nations, including the United States, China and India, the three largest producers of greenhouse gases. If fully implemented, it should substantially curb greenhouse emissions over the next 15 years.

The president has had some notable missteps, however. He did not clearly, forcefully and patiently articulate America's role in the world to the American people. His surge of 60,000 troops in Afghanistan has not worked, with the Taliban resurgent and controlling more territory, and with no end in sight to the fighting. His initiatives in Egypt, Syria, Libya and Iraq and his efforts to counter the rise of the Islamic State have fallen short.

Philip Gordon of the Council on Foreign Relations points out that no one has developed a winning formula for dealing with the Middle East and Northern Africa. We have tried to intervene and occupy, as in Iraq; to intervene and not occupy, as in Libya; and to neither intervene nor occupy, as in Syria. And in all cases, the result has been a disaster.

So, the U.S. policy Obama inherited in the Middle East was a muddle and remains a muddle. The region is no better off now than at the beginning of the president's term, and may well be more turbulent and conflicted.

In our relations with Russia, which Obama tried to reset, tensions have escalated. Russia seized the Crimean peninsula and began providing military support to separatists in eastern Ukraine. Our response has been a rather porous sanction regime based on Obama's view that these areas are a core interest for Russia but marginal for the U.S.

Obama's approach to foreign policy has been marked by restraint, notably his reluctance to use force. He has used drones for surveillance, targeted terrorists with airstrikes and imposed sanctions on nations and individuals, but he has ruled out large-scale intervention.

To his credit, he has tried to ensure that our resources matched our goals. He has struggled to avoid "mission creep" and being sucked into conflicts. He has recognized there are problems we just can't solve -- that we should be helpful when we can but that we can't fix everything. He has insisted that indigenous leadership step up to its responsibilities.

By and large, Obama has supported the network of laws, institutions and agreements that have created a more connected, interdependent world. With some stops and starts, he has tried to make America a force for good so people can live, as he has often said, with the peace and dignity they deserve.

My impression is that, during his presidency, the United States has become stronger, safer and more prosperous. We remain the guarantor of global order and security. We are far from perfect, but America is unquestionably the world's leading power, with unrivaled military, technological and economic strength. The U.S. is still the indispensable nation, and our position in the world is paramount.

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Obama foreign policy: significant success and notable missteps

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Barack Obama took office as president with confidence that he could dramatically improve America's relationships with nations around the world. Eight years later, his foreign policy successes have been significant and his failures apparent. Not surprisingly, he has found campaigning and governing are two very different activities.