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This article discusses how President Trump acted as commander-in-chief by giving the orders to assassinate a top Iranian General who was believed to pose a threat to American interests in the region of the Middle East. The president is vested with the power to authorize force when acting in this role. There is debate whether Trump should have made this order, but alas, this is an example of the President acting as Commander-in Chief.

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Obama awarded Ernie Banks the presidential medal of freedom

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The signature moment in Kennedy's presidency.

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Abraham Lincoln fills the role of being the head of state by giving a speech to mourn all of the fallen soldiers during the Civil War. He is an advocate and a symbol for peace.

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Soldiers National Cemetery

&copy Abraham Lincoln Online

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 1863

On June 1, 1865, Senator Charles Sumner referred to the most famous speech ever given by President Abraham Lincoln. In his eulogy on the slain president, he called the Gettysburg Address a "monumental act." He said Lincoln was mistaken that "the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here." Rather, the Bostonian remarked, "The world noted at once what he said, and will never cease to remember it. The battle itself was less important than the speech."

There are five known copies of the speech in Lincoln's handwriting, each with a slightly different text, and named for the people who first received them: Nicolay, Hay, Everett, Bancroft and Bliss. Two copies apparently were written before delivering the speech, one of which probably was the reading copy. The remaining ones were produced months later for soldier benefit events. Despite widely-circulated stories to the contrary, the president did not dash off a copy aboard a train to Gettysburg. Lincoln carefully prepared his major speeches in advance; his steady, even script in every manuscript is consistent with a firm writing surface, not the notoriously bumpy Civil War-era trains. Additional versions of the speech appeared in newspapers of the era, feeding modern-day confusion about the authoritative text.

Bliss Copy

Ever since Lincoln wrote it in 1864, this version has been the most often reproduced, notably on the walls of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. It is named after Colonel Alexander Bliss, stepson of historian George Bancroft. Bancroft asked President Lincoln for a copy to use as a fundraiser for soldiers (see "Bancroft Copy" below). However, because Lincoln wrote on both sides of the paper, the speech could not be reprinted, so Lincoln made another copy at Bliss's request. It is the last known copy written by Lincoln and the only one signed and dated by him. Today it is on display at the Lincoln Room of the White House.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
Nicolay Copy
Named for John G. Nicolay, President Lincoln's personal secretary, this is considered the "first draft" of the speech, begun in Washington on White house stationery. The second page is writen on different paper stock, indicating it was finished in Gettysburg before the cemetery dedication began. Lincoln gave this draft to Nicolay, who went to Gettysburg with Lincoln and witnessed the speech. The Library of Congress owns this manuscript.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle field of that war. We come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate we can not consecrate we can not hallow, this ground The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.

It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Hay Copy
Believed to be the second draft of the speech, President Lincoln gave this copy to John Hay, a White House assistant. Hay accompanied Lincoln to Gettysburg and briefly referred to the speech in his diary: "the President, in a fine, free way, with more grace than is his wont, said his half dozen words of consecration." The Hay copy, which includes Lincoln's handwritten changes, also is owned by the Library of Congress.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense, we can not dedicate we can not consecrate we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here.

It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Everett Copy
Edward Everett, the chief speaker at the Gettysburg cemetery dedication, clearly admired Lincoln's remarks and wrote to him the next day saying, "I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes." In 1864 Everett asked Lincoln for a copy of the speech to benefit Union soldiers, making it the third manuscript copy. Eventually the state of Illinois acquired it, where it's preserved at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives, that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here, have, thus far, so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Bancroft Copy
As noted above, historian George Bancroft asked President Lincoln for a copy to use as a fundraiser for soldiers. When Lincoln sent his copy on February 29, 1864, he used both sides of the paper, rendering the manuscript useless for lithographic engraving. So Bancroft kept this copy and Lincoln had to produce an additional one (Bliss Copy). The Bancroft copy is now owned by Cornell University.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives, that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Source for all versions: Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler and others.

Related Links

A Teacher's Tour of the Battle of Gettysburg (Matthew Pinsker/Gilder Lehrman Institute)
Battlefield Maps (Library of Congress)
Civil War Institute (Gettysburg College)
Edward Everett's Gettysburg Speech (University of Maryland)
Gettysburg Address Exhibit (Library of Congress)
Gettysburg Address Eyewitness (National Public Radio)
Gettysburg Address News Article (New York Times)
Gettysburg Address Teacher Resource (C-SPAN)
Gettysburg Address Text
Gettysburg Civil War Photographs (Library of Congress)
Gettysburg Discussion Group (Bob & Dennis Lawrence)
Gettysburg Foundation
Gettysburg National Military Park (NPS)
How Some Few "Remarks" Became the Gettysburg Address (LAP/ALI)
David Wills's Letter of Invitation to Lincoln (Library of Congress)
Lincoln and the Gettysburg Awakening (JALA)
Lincoln and Gettysburg Timeline
Lincoln Fellowship of Pennsylvania
Lincoln's Invitation to Stay Overnight (Library of Congress)
Edward Everett's Letter to Lincoln (Library of Congress)
Photograph of Lincoln at Gettysburg (Library of Congress)
Reading of the Gettysburg Address (NPR)
Recollections of Lincoln at Gettysburg (Bob Cooke)
Response to a Serenade
Robert Todd Lincoln's "Gettysburg Story" (JALA)
Seminary Ridge Museum
Solving the Mysteries of the Gettysburg Address (LAP/ALI)
The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation (Peter Norvig)
Who Stole the Gettysburg Address? (JALA)
Wills House

Related Books

Boritt, Gabor. The Gettysburg Gospel: The Lincoln Speech That Nobody Knows. Simon & Schuster, 2006.

Graham, Kent. November: Lincoln's Elegy at Gettysburg. Indiana University Press, 2001.

Hoch, Bradley R. and Boritt, Gabor S. The Lincoln Trail in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001.

Johnson, Martin P. Writing the Gettysburg Address. University Press of Kansas, 2013.

Kunhardt, Philip B., Jr. A New Birth of Freedom - Lincoln at Gettysburg. Boston: Little, Brown, 1983.

Mearns, David C., Dunlap, Lloyd A., Wilson, Douglas L., and Sellers, John R., contributors. Long Remembered: Lincoln and His Five Versions of the Gettysburg Address. Levenger Press, 2011.

Wills, Garry. Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America. Touchstone Books, 1993.

Wilson, Douglas L. Lincoln's Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words. Alfred A. Knopf, 2006
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Lincoln speech text is in the public domain; the organization, remaining text, and photo on this page are copyright 2020 Abraham Lincoln Online. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy

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The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln

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Soldiers National Cemetery &copy Abraham Lincoln Online Gettysburg, Pennsylvania November 19, 1863 On June 1, 1865, Senator Charles Sumner referred to the most famous speech ever given by President Abraham Lincoln. In his eulogy on the slain president, he called the Gettysburg Address a "monumental act."

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Joe Biden took a legislative dub while the house passes a bill to get 1.9 trillion dollars for COVID-19 relief.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Joe Biden scored his first legislative win as the House of Representatives passed his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package early Saturday, though Democrats face challenges to their hopes of using the bill to raise the minimum wage.

Democrats who control the chamber passed the sweeping measure by a mostly party-line vote of 219 to 212 and sent it on to the Senate, where Democrats planned a legislative maneuver to allow them to pass it without the support of Republicans.

The American Rescue Plan would pay for vaccines and medical supplies and send a new round of emergency financial aid to households, small businesses and state and local governments. The bill's big-ticket items include $1,400 direct payments to individuals, a $400-per-week federal unemployment benefit through Aug. 29, and help for those in difficulty paying rents and home mortgages during the pandemic.

In brief remarks on Saturday from the White House's Roosevelt Room, Biden said he called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to thank her for her support and urged the Senate to take up the bill quickly.

"I hope it will receive quick action. We have no time to waste," Biden said, without taking questions. "The people of this country have suffered far too much for far too long."

Democrats said the package was needed to fight a pandemic that has killed more than 500,000 Americans and thrown millions out of work.

"The American people need to know that their government is there for them," Pelosi said in a debate on the House floor.

Republicans, who have broadly backed previous COVID-19 spending, said much of the current package was not necessary, highlighting elements such as a subway near Pelosi's San Francisco district. Only 9% of the total would go directly toward fighting the virus, they said.

"It just throws out money without accountability," House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy said.

Democrats pointed to a recent Quinnipiac University poll showing 68% of Americans supported the package, including 47% of Republicans, with just 37% of Republicans opposing it.

"This critical legislation has support from Americans across the country and the political spectrum, and yet Republicans in Congress are trying to stand in the way," said Jamie Harrison, chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

The House vote amounted to a successful first test for Democrats, who hold a narrow 221-211 majority in the chamber. Progressives and moderates in the party who are often at odds will face tougher battles ahead on immigration and climate change initiatives that Biden wants to push.

The president has focused his first weeks in office on tackling the greatest U.S. public health crisis in a century, which has upended most aspects of American life.

Democrats aim to get the bill to him to sign into law before mid-March, when enhanced unemployment benefits and some other types of aid are due to expire.

The action now moves to the Senate, where Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris may have to cast a tie-breaking vote in a chamber where Republicans control 50 seats and Democrats and their allies control the other 50.

FATE OF MINIMUM WAGE HIKE UNCLEAR

Democrats will have to sort out how to handle a proposed minimum-wage increase, which may have to be stripped from the bill due to the complicated rules that govern the Senate.

The House-passed bill would raise the national hourly minimum wage for the first time since 2009, to $15 from $7.25. The increase is a top priority for progressive Democrats.

However, the Senate's rules expert said on Thursday that the wage hike did not qualify for special treatment that allows the rest of the bill to be passed with a simple majority, rather than the 60 votes needed to advance most legislation in the 100-seat chamber.

Pelosi predicted the relief bill will pass Congress with or without the increase, and said Democrats would not give up on the matter.

It is not clear whether the minimum-wage hike would have survived the Senate even if it were to be kept in the bill. At least two Senate Democrats oppose it, along with most Republicans.

Some senators are floating a smaller increase, to the range of $10 to $12 per hour, while Democrats are considering a penalty for large corporations that do not voluntarily pay a $15 wage, according to a Democratic aide.

Efforts to craft a bipartisan coronavirus aid bill fizzled early on, shortly after Biden was sworn in as president on Jan. 20, following a series of bipartisan bills enacted in 2020.

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Biden scores legislative win as House passes $1.9 trillion COVID relief plan

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Joe Biden scored his first legislative win as the House of Representatives passed his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package early Saturday, though Democrats face challenges to their hopes of using the bill to raise the minimum wage.

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President Joe Biden, held rallies and spoke to his supporters about his campaign.

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Biden used his position of Commander in Chief by ordering an airstrike in Syria.

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The Biden administration conducted an airstrike against alleged Iranian-linked fighters in Syria on Thursday, signaling its intent to push back against violence believed to be sponsored by Tehran.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the attack, the first action ordered by the Biden administration to push back against alleged Iranian-linked violence in Iraq and Syria, on a border control point in eastern Syria was "authorized in response to recent attacks against American and coalition personnel in Iraq, and to ongoing threats."

He said the facilities were used by Iranian-linked militias including Kaitib Hezbollah and Kaitib Sayyid al-Shuhada.

The operation follows the latest serious attack on U.S. locations in Iraq that American officials have attributed to Iranian-linked groups operating in Iraq and Syria. Earlier this month, a rocket attack in northern Iraq killed a contractor working with the U.S. military and injured a U.S. service member there.

"President Biden will act to protect American and Coalition personnel," Kirby said in a statement. "At the same time, we have acted in a deliberate manner that aims to de-escalate the overall situation in both eastern Syria and Iraq."

A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to provide additional details, said the single strike targeted a cluster of buildings and was believed to have killed up to a handful of people.

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Biden administration conducts strike on Iranian-linked fighters in Syria

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The Biden administration conducted an airstrike against alleged Iranian-linked fighters in Syria on Thursday, signaling its intent to push back against violence believed to be sponsored by Tehran.

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Theodore Roosevelt reinvented presidency. He believed that as President, he had a unique relationship with and responsibility to the people, and therefore wanted to challenge prevailing notions of limited government and individualism; government, he maintained, should serve as an agent of reform for the people.

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Theodore Roosevelt is widely regarded as the first modern President of the United States. The stature and influence that the office has today began to develop with TR. Throughout the second half of the 1800s, Congress had been the most powerful branch of government. And although the presidency began to amass more power during the 1880s, Roosevelt completed the transition to a strong, effective executive. He made the President, rather than the political parties or Congress, the center of American politics.

Roosevelt did this through the force of his personality and through aggressive executive action. He thought that the President had the right to use any and all powers unless they were specifically denied to him. He believed that as President, he had a unique relationship with and responsibility to the people, and therefore wanted to challenge prevailing notions of limited government and individualism; government, he maintained, should serve as an agent of reform for the people.

His presidency endowed the progressive movement with credibility, lending the prestige of the White House to welfare legislation, government regulation, and the conservation movement. The desire to make society more fair and equitable, with economic possibilities for all Americans, lay behind much of Roosevelt's program. The President also changed the government's relationship to big business. Prior to his presidency, the government had generally given the titans of industry carte blanche to accomplish their goals. Roosevelt believed that the government had the right and the responsibility to regulate big business so that its actions did not negatively affect the general public. However, he never fundamentally challenged the status of big business, believing that its existence marked a naturally occurring phase of the country's economic evolution.

Roosevelt also revolutionized foreign affairs, believing that the United States had a global responsibility and that a strong foreign policy served the country's national interest. He became involved in Latin America with little hesitation: he oversaw the Panama Canal negotiations to advocate for U.S. interests and intervened in Venezuela and Santo Domingo to preserve stability in the region. He also worked with Congress to strengthen the U.S. Navy, which he believed would deter potential enemies from targeting the country, and he applied his energies to negotiating peace agreements, working to balance power throughout the world.

Even after he left office, Roosevelt continued to work for his ideals. The Progressive Party's New Nationalism in 1912 launched a drive for protective federal regulation that looked forward to the progressive movements of the 1930s and the 1960s. Indeed, Roosevelt's progressive platform encompassed nearly every progressive ideal later enshrined in the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Fair Deal of Harry S. Truman, the New Frontier of John F. Kennedy, and the Great Society of Lyndon B. Johnson.

In terms of presidential style, Roosevelt introduced "charisma" into the political equation. He had a strong rapport with the public and he understood how to use the media to shape public opinion. He was the first President whose election was based more on the individual than the political party. When people voted Republican in 1904, they were generally casting their vote for Roosevelt the man instead of for him as the standard-bearer of the Republican Party. The most popular President up to his time, Roosevelt used his enthusiasm to win votes, to shape issues, and to mold opinions. In the process, he changed the executive office forever.

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Theodore Roosevelt: Impact and Legacy | Miller Center

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Theodore Roosevelt is widely regarded as the first modern President of the United States. The stature and influence that the office has today began to develop with TR. Throughout the second half of the 1800s, Congress had been the most powerful branch of government.

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The transfer of power from Barack Obama to trump. But trump didn’t do it for Biden. https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/10/politics/obama-trump-biden-white-house-meeting-2016-trnd/index.html

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Joe bidder boy. Demolishes Syria in an air strike over trying out bully Iran into giving us oil juices.

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WASHINGTON - President Joe Biden on Thursday ordered airstrikes on buildings in Syria that the Pentagon said were used by Iranian-backed militias, in retaliation for rocket attacks on U.S. targets in neighboring Iraq.

The strikes killed at least 22 people, London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday, citing unconfirmed local reports.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby portrayed the bombing in eastern Syria as carefully calibrated, calling it "proportionate" and "defensive."

Kirby told reporters Friday the bombing caused "casualties" but said it was too early to say precisely how many militia fighters might have been killed or wounded.

"We have preliminary indications of casualties on site, I'm not going to go any further than that," Kirby said.

The operation was the first known use of military force by the Biden administration, which has for weeks emphasized plans to focus more on challenges posed by China.

The president's decision appeared aimed at sending a signal to Iran and its proxies in the region that Washington would not tolerate attacks on its personnel in Iraq, even at a sensitive diplomatic moment.

Three rocket attacks in one week in Iraq, including a deadly strike that hit a U.S.-led coalition base in the northern Iraqi town of Irbil, presented a test for Biden only weeks after assuming the presidency. The rocket assaults coincided with a diplomatic initiative launched by the administration to try to revive a 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers.

Kirby said two F-15 fighter jets dropped seven precision guided munitions on buildings used by the Iranian-backed militias, totally destroying nine structures and partially destroying two. The buildings were located in Abu Kamal, near the Iraqi border, a location known as a hub for the Iraqi Shiite militias supported by Iran, he said.

"This location is known to facilitate Iranian-aligned militia group activity," Kirby said.

The airstrikes were ordered in response to a series of rocket attacks against American and coalition personnel in Iraq, "and to ongoing threats to those personnel," the Pentagon said in a statement on Thursday evening.

The buildings near the border were used by militias including Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, according to the Pentagon.

Iranian officials did not immediately react to the strikes.

The Syrian government condemned the attack Friday, calling it "cowardly U.S. aggression" in a statement from the country's foreign ministry that was published by state media.

The strikes violate international law and "will lead to consequences that will escalate the situation in the region," the foreign ministry said, according to state news agency SANA.

Russia, one of Syrian President Bashar Assad's chief backers, said it was given just four or five minutes' warning before the strikes.

"This kind of notification does nothing when the strike is literally already on its way," Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters in Moscow.

The U.S. was operating in Syria "illegally," he said, and called for better communication with the Biden administration.

The Pentagon defended the legality of the strikes, arguing Article II of the Constitution grants the president powers as commander in chief, and citing article 51 of the U.N. charter, providing countries the right to "self-defense" in response to an attack.

"I would tell you that the president acted well within his constitutional authorities under Article II as commander in chief of the United States to protect American service members involved in operations. Clearly, there's a constitutional authority here," Kirby told NBC News' Andrea Mitchell on Friday.

The Biden administration did inform Russia in advance of the air raid, Kirby said, but indicated it could not do so too far in advance without jeopardizing "operational security."

The strikes provoked criticism from some Democrats in Congress, who questioned the legal rationale and demanded to know why the White House did not consult with lawmakers more closely beforehand.

"The American people deserve to hear the Administration's rationale for these strikes and its legal justification for acting without coming to Congress," said Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, a member of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees.

"Offensive military action without congressional approval is not constitutional absent extraordinary circumstances," he said. "Congress must be fully briefed on this matter expeditiously."

The administration said officials did brief congressional leadership before the air strikes.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said most of the 22 people killed in the bombings were members of Iraqi militias. The monitoring group did not provide details about how it obtained that figure but Rami Abdulrahman, head of the rights organization, told NBC News it was based on speaking to sources inside Syria.

He added that the death toll was expected to rise, due to the number of people seriously wounded.

Iran's state broadcaster IRIB news, meanwhile, said 17 "resistance fighters" were killed in the strikes, but also didn't provide detail about the source of that figure other than citing "reports."

A senior U.S. defense official told NBC News on Thursday evening that the target was a transit hub near the Iraqi-Syrian border used by the militia fighters, and it was too early to say what casualties might have been inflicted on the militants.
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"The operation sends an unambiguous message: President Biden will act to protect American and coalition personnel. At the same time, we have acted in a deliberate manner that aims to de-escalate the overall situation in both eastern Syria and Iraq," the Pentagon said on Thursday.

Shortly after the strike, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters travelling with him that the administration had been "very deliberate about our approach."

"We're confident that target was being used by the same Shia militia that conducted the strikes," Austin said, referring to the recent rocket attacks in Iraq on U.S. and coalition personnel.

The Pentagon had said previously that it was awaiting the results of an Iraqi investigation into the Irbil rocket attack.

"We allowed and encouraged the Iraqis to investigate and develop intelligence and that was very helpful to us in refining the target," said Austin, who spoke en route to Washington after a visit to California and Colorado.

Biden had approved the operation on Thursday morning, he said.

A civilian contractor was killed in the Irbil rocket assault, and a U.S. service member and others were wounded. At least two 107mm rockets landed on the base, which also hosts Irbil's civilian international airport.

NBC News had previously reported that Iranian-backed militias were most likely behind the Irbil rocket attack, and that the weapons and tactics resembled previous attacks by the Iranian-linked militias. However, it was unclear if Iran had encouraged or ordered the rocket attack.

An obscure group called Saraya Awliya al-Dam, or Custodians of the Blood, claimed responsibility for the Irbil attack. But former diplomats and regional analysts said the group was merely a front organization created by the main Shiite militias in Iraq.

Following the rocket attack on the Irbil base, Iraq's Balad air base came under rocket fire days later, where a U.S. defense firm services the country's fighter jets, and then two rockets landed near the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad.

Iran has rejected any connection to the rocket attacks.

In a phone call Tuesday between Biden and Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, the two leaders agreed that "that those responsible for such attacks must be held fully to account," according to a White House readout of the conversation.

Dennis Ross, a former senior U.S. diplomat who worked on Middle East policy under several presidents, said the administration had lowered the risk of causing friction with the Iraqi government by hitting targets in Syria.

"By striking facilities used by the militias just across the border in Syria, the risk of blowback against the Iraqi gov is reduced," Ross tweeted.
Dan De Luce, Mosheh Gains and Kristen Welker reported from Washington; Ali Arouzi and Adela Suliman reported from London; Amin Hossein Khodadadi reported from Tehran; and Charlene Gubash reported from Cairo. The Associated Press contributed.

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Biden orders strikes in Syria, retaliating against Iran-backed groups

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WASHINGTON - President Joe Biden on Thursday ordered airstrikes on buildings in Syria that the Pentagon said were used by Iranian-backed militias, in retaliation for rocket attacks on U.S. targets in neighboring Iraq. The strikes killed at least 22 people, London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday, citing unconfirmed local reports.

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An example of a president being a party chief is when Reagan helped George H.W. Bush get into office.

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An example of Obama being a legislative leader is when he vetoed a bill on the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act in 2016.

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A president boosted the economy was Franklin D. Roosevelt."President Franklin D. Roosevelt had the best single year of growth in 1942, when the economy grew 18.9%."

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The U.S. GDP growth rate measures the nation's economic growth. It is the percent change in the gross domestic product (GDP) from one quarter or year to the next. That makes it a good way to determine which president has had the biggest impact on the economy.

The business cycle explains why faster growth is not always better growth. If the economy expands too fast, it will create an asset bubble. When that bubble bursts, the resulting contraction leads to a recession. To create a healthy economy, growth must be sustainable. Economists agree that the ideal GDP growth rate is between 2% and 3%.﻿﻿﻿﻿

How a President Influences Growth

Presidents influence growth through fiscal policy. They boost the economy by lowering taxes and increasing government spending. They prevent a bubble by increasing taxes or cutting spending. To do either, they must work within existing laws or convince Congress to change those laws.﻿

Presidents don't control monetary policy or interest rates. That's the realm of the Federal Reserve, the nation's central bank.﻿ To stimulate growth, the Fed encourages borrowing by lowering interest rates. To slow growth, it reduces bank lending by raising interest rates.

Some may argue that monetary policy influences growth much more than fiscal policy does.﻿ If a president spurs growth too much, then the Fed may use monetary policy to prevent inflation or a bubble.

Presidents With the Best and Worst Annual GDP Growth

President Franklin D. Roosevelt had the best single year of growth in 1942, when the economy grew 18.9%. Herbert Hoover had the worst year in 1932 when the economy contracted 12.9%.﻿ The Great Depression affected both, but spending to gear up for the nation's entry into World War II boosted FDR's growth numbers. These unusual situations created extremes in economic growth.

World War II also affected President Harry Truman, as the economy contracted 11.6% in 1946. Government spending fell once the war ended.

Annual growth rates became more moderate after World War II. The fastest post-war year of growth was under President Ronald Reagan. In 1984, the economy grew by 7.2%, which was due to the end of the 1981-1982 recession. The worst annual post-war contraction was -2.5% in 2009, President Barack Obama's first year. That contraction was caused by the 2008 financial crisis.﻿﻿﻿

Looking at the best and worst years isn't really a good way to gauge a president's economic impact. These outliers are often caused by events outside of the president's control. In addition, if the economy grows too fast, it will create inflation or an asset bubble. Instead, the best president will maintain a steady rate that's sustainable over time.

Presidents With the Best and Worst Average Annual Growth

A method that reduces the impact of these extremes is the average annual growth rate. That's the sum of all the growth rates during a president's term in office, divided by the number of years.

Three presidents had average annual growth within this ideal range. They include Presidents Dwight Eisenhower at 3%, George H. W. Bush at 2.3%, and George W. Bush at 2.2%. Roosevelt's 9.3% annual average was the highest, while Hoover's decline was the lowest.

Post-World War II, President Lyndon B. Johnson had the highest average, at 5.2%. He boosted growth with government spending on the Vietnam War and the Great Society programs. The next was President John F. Kennedy, at 4.4%, who ended the 1960 recession.

The lowest post-World War II annual average will likely be under President Trump. Despite healthy growth during the first three years of his term, the economy was battered by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, which will likely bring down the 2020 annual GDP rate of growth.

Both Presidents Ford and Obama had average annual growth rates of 1.6%. Ford suffered from stagflation caused by President Nixon while Obama struggled with the financial crisis created under President Bush's term.

GDP Growth by President

Here's a more detailed look at each president's economic record, with summaries of their reactions to the recessions, wars, and other events they encountered.

Herbert Hoover (1929-1933)

Herbert Hoover's average annual GDP growth rate was -9.3%, the worst of all presidents (based on GDP rates from 1930 to 1933; the BEA does not include 1929 in its historical numbers). The Great Depression began in August of 1929 and the stock market crashed in October. Hoover's response was laissez-faire economics, as he believed government assistance would make people stop working. His policies did not work, causing unemployment to rise to 25% by 1933.﻿﻿﻿

In 1930, Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act to protect domestic industries. Other countries retaliated, shrinking global trade. As a result, the economy contracted 12.9% in 1932, the worst year of all presidents.﻿﻿

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945)

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt launched the New Deal to end the Depression. He created new agencies to stabilize banks, create jobs, and boost manufacturing. The New Deal subsequently ended the Depression in 1934. Afterward, FDR increased taxes to balance the budget but that resulted in a recession in 1937.﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿

In 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. FDR's increases to the defense budget finally ended the Depression, but growth came at a cost. Percent-wise, FDR added the most U.S. debt of any president.

Harry Truman (1945-1953)

President Harry Truman presided over two mild recessions.﻿ The 1945 recession was caused by a reduction in government spending due to the end of World War II.﻿﻿﻿ The 1948-1949 recession was a market adjustment within the post-war boom.﻿﻿﻿

The 1947 Truman Doctrine pledged U.S. aid to allies threatened by communism. The Marshall Plan spent $12 billion to rebuild Western Europe after the war.﻿﻿﻿

The Korean War began in June 1950. The resulting $30 billion in government spending helped boost economic growth during the rest of Truman's term.﻿﻿﻿

Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961)

President Dwight D. Eisenhower ended the Korean War in 1953, creating the 1954 recession. He then boosted growth with the 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act.﻿﻿﻿ By the time the construction was over, the federal government spent $119 billion of the $130 billion it cost to build the interstate highway system.﻿﻿﻿

In 1957, Eisenhower created NASA to advance U.S. leadership in space exploration. The 1957-1958 recession was caused by the Federal Reserve raising interest rates.﻿﻿﻿ Eisenhower's desire to balance the budget meant he refused to use fiscal policy to stimulate the economy.﻿﻿﻿

John F. Kennedy (1961-1963)

President John F. Kennedy helped end the 1960 recession by increasing spending.﻿﻿﻿﻿ In 1961, he created a food stamp pilot program in several states.﻿ He also improved Social Security benefits and increased the minimum wage.﻿

Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969)

President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in two hours after JFK's assassination. He won the 1964 election with 61% of the vote.﻿﻿﻿ His popularity allowed him to vastly increase government spending and avoid any recessions.

LBJ pushed through the passage of Kennedy's tax cuts and civil rights bill. His 1965 Great Society program created Medicare, Medicaid, and public housing. It also addressed crime, urban renewal, and conservation. LBJ escalated the Vietnam War but could not win it.

Richard Nixon (1969-1974)

President Richard Nixon's policies created a decade of stagflation, a combination of economic contraction and double-digit inflation. He also ended the Vietnam War.

Tariffs and relaxing the gold standard raised import prices. At the same time, price controls meant companies could not raise prices or lower wages. To stay in business, they were forced to lay off workers, slowing growth. In 1973, Nixon ended the gold standard entirely and the dollar's value plummeted.

Gerald Ford (1974-1977)

President Gerald R. Ford inherited stagflation. In 1975, he cut taxes and reduced regulation which ended the recession, but inflation continued.﻿﻿﻿

Jimmy Carter (1977-1981)

President Jimmy Carter's presidency was also overshadowed by stagflation. He deregulated oil prices to spur domestic production. He also deregulated the trucking and airline industries while expanding the national park system. In 1979, Iranians took Americans hostage, causing the economy to contract.﻿﻿﻿

Ronald Reagan (1981-1989)

President Ronald Reagan faced the 1981 recession. The Federal Reserve caused the recession by raising the fed funds rate to 20% to end inflation.﻿﻿﻿﻿ Reaganomics promised to end the recession by reducing the increase in government spending, cutting taxes, and deregulating.﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿

Instead, Reagan increased the budget by 2.5% annually.﻿﻿﻿﻿ He cut income and corporate taxes but increased the payroll tax to ensure the solvency of Social Security. He eased bank regulations, which eventually led to the 1989 Savings and Loan Crisis.

George H.W. Bush (1989-1993)

George H.W. Bush faced the 1990-1991 recession caused by the Savings and Loan crisis. He agreed to a $100 million bank bailout.﻿﻿﻿ The recession reduced revenue, creating pressure to cut spending and balance the budget. Instead, Bush raised taxes, costing him Republican support for his reelection. The first Gulf War also created mild inflation as gas prices spiked.

Bill Clinton (1993-2000)

President Bill Clinton faced no recessions or major wars. He signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which boosted growth by eliminating tariffs among the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Clinton created an almost $70 billion budget surplus, lowering the debt.﻿﻿ The 1993 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act raised taxes on the wealthy. He also briefly cut federal spending by reforming welfare in 1996.﻿

George W. Bush (2001-2009)

President George W. Bush faced the 9/11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, and the 2008 financial crisis. First, he fought the 2001 recession with tax cuts. He responded to the 9/11 attacks by creating Homeland Security and launching the War on Terror.

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina caused a record $170 billion in damage (adjusted for inflation).﻿﻿﻿

Bush responded to the 2008 financial crisis by sending out tax rebate checks.﻿﻿﻿ He nationalized mortgage agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and insurance giant AIG. He also approved a bank bailout package to prevent a financial collapse.

Barack Obama (2009-2017)

President Barack Obama ended the 2008 recession with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). It cut taxes, extended unemployment benefits, and funded public works projects. He bailed out the U.S. auto industry, saving jobs.

The 2010 Affordable Care Act expanded health insurance and Medicaid. It slowed the rise of health care costs by encouraging more people to receive preventive care so they didn't have to use expensive hospital emergency rooms as their primary care physician.

The 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act improved bank regulations. The Obama tax cuts fought ongoing slow growth. Obama ended the Iraq War and wound down the war in Afghanistan.

Obama began negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. He also brokered the International Climate Agreement to address climate change.

Donald Trump (2017-2020)

Before the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, President Donald Trump had no recessions and no new wars. Nevertheless, he increased spending and cut taxes. The Fed responded to those expansionary fiscal policies by raising interest rates.

Trump advocated protectionism. He withdrew the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, renegotiated NAFTA, and launched a trade war with China and other trading partners.

In March 2020, Trump declared a state of emergency as the pandemic broke out in the U.S. Nonessential businesses closed while Americans sheltered-in-place. Stimulus measures, such as the $2 trillion CARES Act, were not enough to keep the economy afloat. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts that the economy will contract 5.9% in 2020.﻿﻿﻿ As of November 2020, based on the first three-quarters of the year, GDP is an average of -1.1% per quarter.﻿﻿

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How Every President Since Hoover Has Affected the Economy

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The U.S. GDP growth rate measures the nation's economic growth. It is the percent change in the gross domestic product (GDP) from one quarter or year to the next. That makes it a good way to determine which president has had the biggest impact on the economy.

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Nixon vetoed the National Emergency Petroleum Act in 1974.
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/vetoes/NixonR.htm

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Bill Clinton raised increased taxes for the upper class.

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Donald Trump filled the roll of Chief Executive when he "hired" Amy Coney Barrett to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

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Barack  Obama nominated Merrick Garland to fill Scalia's seat on the Supreme Court in 2016.

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So much has happened in the past two years that many may have forgotten what happened to Merrick Garland in the spring of 2016.

But filling in that recollection goes some distance in explaining a lot of what has happened since.

To recap, Garland was nominated to fill the 2016 vacancy on the Supreme Court created by the death that February of Justice Antonin Scalia, an icon of conservative jurisprudence.

President Barack Obama quickly named Merrick Garland, then 63, to fill the seat. Garland had long been considered a prime prospect for the high court, serving as chief judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit - a frequent source of justices that is sometimes called the "little Supreme Court."

Widely regarded as a moderate, Garland had been praised in the past by many Republicans, including influential senators such as Orrin Hatch of Utah.

But even before Obama had named Garland, and in fact only hours after Scalia's death was announced, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared any appointment by the sitting president to be null and void. He said the next Supreme Court justice should be chosen by the next president - to be elected later that year.

"Of course," said McConnell, "the American people should have a say in the court's direction. It is a president's constitutional right to nominate a Supreme Court justice, and it is the Senate's constitutional right to act as a check on the president and withhold its consent."

Supreme Court picks have often been controversial. There have been contentious hearings and floor debates and contested votes. But to ignore the nominee entirely, as if no vacancy existed?

There was no precedent for such an action since the period around the Civil War and Reconstruction. No Democratic president had made an appointment while Republicans held the Senate since 1895.

In a speech that August in Kentucky, McConnell would say: "One of my proudest moments was when I looked Barack Obama in the eye and I said, 'Mr. President, you will not fill the Supreme Court vacancy.' "

McConnell was not alone. The 11 Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee signed a letter saying they had no intention of consenting to any nominee from Obama. No proceedings of any kind were held on Garland's appointment.

The court had to convene that October with only eight justices, divided often between the four appointed by Democrats and the four appointed by Republicans. Short-handed, the court deadlocked on a number of issues and declined to hear others.

Democrats were outraged, of course, but were short of tools with which to respond. As the minority party - following a disastrous midterm in 2014 - they could not force a committee or a floor vote. They gave speeches, and they urged voters to turn out in protest in the November elections.

Scores of scholars - law professors, historians and political scientists - urged the Senate to at least have a process for Garland as a duly appointed nominee with impeccable qualifications. But some lawyers and academics pointed out that the Constitution empowered the Senate to "advise and consent" but did not require it do so. (Some adding that they thought the Senate still ought to do so.)

A federal lawsuit was filed to compel McConnell to hold a vote on Garland. It was thrown out because a judge said the plaintiff, as an ordinary voter, had no standing to sue.

For his part, McConnell argued that the Democrats had at least contemplated a similar tactic back in 1992, when Obama's vice president, Joe Biden, was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and mused about urging President George H.W. Bush to withhold any nominees to the high court until the end of the "political season."

At the time, the Senate had just been through a bruising battle over the 1991 confirmation of Justice Clarence Thomas.

As it happened, no vacancy occurred in 1992. But McConnell and others referred to the "Biden rule" nonetheless in justifying the blockade of Garland.

With or without such justification, McConnell's blockade was doubly effective just as a power move.

First, it prevented the seating of a Democratic president's choice. Had he been considered, Garland might have pulled a few majority-party members across the aisle. Supreme Court nominees nearly always win at least some votes from the party opposing the president, and Garland had a strong law-and-order history. Had he performed well on TV, voting against him might have been harder - especially for Republicans seeking re-election in competitive states.

Second, and more important, the vacancy became a powerful motivator for conservative voters in the fall. Many saw a vote for Trump as a means to keep Scalia's seat away from the liberals and give the appointment to someone who promised to name anti-abortion justices supportive of Second Amendment gun rights.

Again and again in the fall, candidate Donald Trump treated the Supreme Court as a touchstone, sometimes simply shouting the two words to his rally crowds. And indeed, polling has shown the court vacancy did mean a great deal to Trump voters, especially those religious conservatives who had personal misgivings about him.

Now, of course, McConnell's calculus has changed. With a slim but steady majority of the Senate, and Vice President Mike Pence available to break a tie, McConnell feels confident he can confirm Trump's nominee and get his people out to vote again - this time, in gratitude.

Democrats see all this as what their Senate leader Chuck Schumer called "the height of hypocrisy." But will that move voters in their direction more now than it did in 2016 or motivate the disaffected within their base?

Some say the Democrats hurt themselves two years ago, first with a nominee who would not excite the party's base. Whatever his evident virtues, Garland was another white male who, as a 63-year-old moderate, could not promise decades as a liberal warrior.

There is also ample evidence that the Supreme Court motivates conservatives more than it does progressives. That has often been the case since the Roe v. Wade abortion legalization decision in 1973 launched an era of social issue backlash that split the old Democratic coalition.

It also has been argued that the Democrats caved to McConnell's pressure tactics in the Garland case. They should have found a way to force a vote or "shut down the Senate" to light a spark.

But Democrats are generally averse to government shutdown strategies, especially considering the potential blowback on their own candidates. In 2016, it was still the Obama era and the Democrats' executive administration. Shutdowns rarely help the party perceived to be in power, even if it's not really in control.

So it was safer, in the judgments of spring and summer 2016, to let the Republicans look intransigent and unfair and hope somebody noticed. Perhaps the injustice to Garland would help Democrats win seats in supposedly blue states such as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and even red ones such as Missouri and North Carolina.

Instead, the country moved on. There were highly contentious primaries in both parties and plenty of other news to preoccupy everyone.

Besides, and lest we forget, the Senate Democrats and most everyone else thought they had an insurance policy on the Scalia vacancy. The assumption was that Hillary Clinton would be elected. Clinton, who did, after all, win the popular vote by several million votes, might even have helped carry in a Democratic Senate. And then she could have renominated Garland, or someone younger and more liberal.

As it sorted out, the Democrats were cautious, overconfident and misinformed about the mood of the country. They lost in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Missouri and North Carolina, winding up still in the minority.

That left them powerless to stop McConnell from eliminating the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees in 2017, paving the way to confirmation of Trump's first choice and probably his second.

And that is the predicament in which they find themselves today.

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What Happened With Merrick Garland In 2016 And Why It Matters Now

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Back then, Mitch McConnell boasted: "One of my proudest moments was when I looked Barack Obama in the eye and I said, 'Mr. President, you will not fill the Supreme Court vacancy.' "

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Donald Trump meets with North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un to sign a peace treaty to end the Korean War.

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SEOUL, South Korea - Taking an unprecedented step onto North Korean soil, President Donald Trump announced Sunday that Washington and Pyongyang will relaunch stalled nuclear talks. The statement came during an extraordinary last-minute meeting with Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader.

Side-by-side with Kim in the heavily-fortified demilitarized zone, Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to cross the 1953 armistice line separating North and South Korea, then joined Kim for a roughly 50-minute meeting.

It was their third since Trump took office, but none have yet yielded a nuclear deal.

"Stepping across that line was a great honor," Trump said, later adding that it was "something incredible."

Trump deemed the meeting a victory, announcing that nuclear talks would resume "within weeks" and that the two countries were designating teams of officials to take the lead.

He even invited Kim, who rarely leaves the country, to visit him at the White House.

Yet for all the fanfare, there were no signs that the U.S. and the North had made any concrete progress on denuclearization, the issue that has led to North Korea's estrangement from the world.

And veteran nuclear negotiators and North Korea experts immediately questioned whether Trump, by staging a high-profile photo-op absent nuclear concessions, was bestowing legitimacy on Kim and undermining global pressure to force the North to accept a denuclearization deal.

"We can only call it historic if it leads to something," said Victor Cha, a former Asia director at the White House and an NBC News contributor.

'Things can happen'

The meeting capped an unpredictable three days of diplomacy in which Trump, while in nearby Japan for the G-20 summit of world leaders, issued an invitation to Kim on Twitter to meet him in the DMZ.

North Korea reacted positively, calling the proposal "interesting," but did not confirm that Kim would accept until the last minute.

Even as Trump traveled by helicopter to the DMZ accompanied by a massive security contingent, U.S. officials had told NBC News they were unsure whether Kim would really show up.

And when he did, his handshake with Trump and their ensuing talks unfolded in chaotic fashion under overcast skies. Journalists jostled to capture the historic encounter and even White House officials accompanying the president seemed unsure what would happen next.

"This means that we can feel at ease," Kim said of the meeting through a translator. "I believe that this will have a positive force on all of our discussions in the future."

In a nod to the unforeseen nature of their rendezvous in the DMZ, Kim told Trump that he "never expected" to see the president "at this place."

Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in landed mid-afternoon in the DMZ and rushed to a vista overlooking North Korea. Sean Morrow, commander of the U.N. Security Battalion, briefed Trump about the security situation, gesturing toward North Korean territory.

Minutes later, Trump and Kim were side by side posing for photos and taking a step together over the line into North Korea. They then spoke briefly to reporters inside a nearby room before holding talks that Trump had predicted would last just a few minutes but went on for close to an hour.

Both leaders predicted it would lead to better things to become between their two countries.

Of striking a nuclear deal, Trump said: "We're not looking for speed, we're looking to get it right."

Trump was already the first U.S. president to meet a North Korean leader while in office, having met with Kim twice before. This marks the first meeting in the no-man's-land between North and South since the end of the Korean War.

Trump's last summit with Kim - in Hanoi, Vietnam, in February - collapsed abruptly, with a planned signing ceremony scrapped and Trump explaining to reporters that "sometimes you have to walk."

At the center of that failure, U.S. officials have said, was Kim's insistence that all nuclear sanctions be lifted in exchange for only some concessions sought by the U.S. from Pyongyang related to its nuclear program.

But a senior Trump administration official told NBC News ahead of the meeting Sunday that the administration was hoping that even a handshake might jump-start negotiations at a lower level led by Stephen Biegun, the U.S. special representative for North Korea.

Those talks could then focus on making more substantive progress on the nuclear issues.

Indeed, Trump said after the meeting that Biegun and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would be handling the relaunched nuclear talks between the countries.

And while Trump said that sanctions on the North would remain in place for now, he seemed to leave open the possibility that some could be removed during the talks, a shift from the longstanding U.S. position that all sanctions remain in place until a denuclearization deal is struck.

"At some point during the negotiation, things can happen," Trump said.

National security hawks and many of Trump's critics have warned that such meetings plays into Kim's hands, boosting him domestically and providing room for Pyongyang to continue to stall while it moves ahead with its nuclear program.

North Korea is believed to have dozens of nuclear warheads and the ability to mount them on missiles, but has yet to prove it can deliver those nuclear-tipped missiles successfully to distances as remote as the U.S. mainland.

'He understands me'

Yet Trump projected no sense of urgency on Sunday as he argued there was plenty of time to reach a deal with North Korea, echoing an argument he'd made about resolving the Iran nuclear issue the day before.

"I'm never in a rush," Trump said. "If you're in a rush, you get yourself in trouble."

Both Trump and Kim offered invitations to the other to visit their capitals, with Trump saying, "I'll invite him to the White House right now." Kim said it would be a "great honor" if Trump visited Pyongyang.

Neither of those are likely to occur in the short term given the immense logistical and security challenges of arranging such a visit between countries that do not have diplomatic relations.

Yet as he talked up his own diplomatic achievements, Trump took significant liberties with history.

He said inaccurately that former President Barack Obama had wanted to meet with Kim but been rejected. He also claimed that tensions with the North had dissipated as soon as he took office, when in fact Trump engaged in a war of words with the North - including his threat to unleash "fire and fury" - that caused significant alarm across Asia and beyond.

"We've had peace for two and a half years," Trump said Sunday.

The president also glossed over reports that Kim had ordered some of his negotiators executed following the failed Hanoi summit. Asked whether they were still alive, Trump said "I think they are," adding that the main person the U.S. was familiar with was still living.

"I would hope the rest are too," Trump said. "I would really hope the rest are too. "

Earlier, standing with Moon at the Blue House, South Korea's equivalent of the White House, Trump said that he and Kim "understand each other, I do believe."

He said that both he and Kim wanted to hold the meeting "from the beginning."

"He understands me, and I believe I maybe understand him," Trump said. "Sometimes that can lead to very good things."

Moon, a liberal in South Korea's political world who has pushed hard for more engagement with the North, had said ahead of the Trump-Kim meeting that he planned to let the two leaders meet privately, saying that "as for an inter-Korean dialogue, this will happen a later time."

North Korea, after all, had publicly admonished South Korea for trying to mediate between it and the U.S.

But in the end, Moon did join the U.S. and North Korean leaders for part of their meeting.

Former NBA star Dennis Rodman, who has played an unusual role in U.S.-North Korea diplomacy, wrote on Twitter that he was wishing "my friends" Trump and Kim "a very good meeting."

"Much love to you both and keep up the wonderful progress!" Rodman wrote, appending the hashtag: "#PEACEANDLOVE."

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Trump meets Kim Jong Un, steps into North Korea

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President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met in the demilitarized zone dividing North and South Korea.

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As of 2019, America gave Israel around $4 billion in military aid and Israel sees America as a country that they can heavy rely on.

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The United States stands out to many around the world as the country their own nation can rely on most, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Pluralities or majorities in around half of the 17 countries where an open-ended question was asked named the U.S. as their most dependable ally going forward. At the same time, substantial shares of people in some countries also perceive Washington as their greatest threat.

Israelis are the most likely to name the U.S. as a reliable partner (82%) among the countries surveyed. In fact, no more than 2% of Israelis name any other country as a dependable ally. In recent years, Israelis have diverged from people in most other countries surveyed with their widespread sense that relations with the U.S. have improved in recent years and that the U.S. is doing more to address global problems.

Many of China's neighbors name the U.S. as their most dependable ally by a wide margin, including South Korea (71%), the Philippines (64%) and Japan (63%).

People in Australia and Canada - countries that, like South Korea, are American allies by treaty - are also more likely to name the U.S. as their top ally than any other country, though fewer than half hold that view. In Canada, this reflects a drop of 8 percentage points since people were last asked their top ally in 2007, from 54% to 46%. At the same time, large minorities of people in these treaty ally countries say the U.S. represents the greatest threat to them going forward, including 20% of Canadians, 13% of South Koreans and 12% of Australians.

There is much more ambiguity over the role of the U.S. in the Latin American and sub-Saharan African countries surveyed. While the U.S. tends to be seen as an ally by the largest share in each of these countries, only around a third or fewer say that (in part because substantial numbers in many of these countries do not offer a response). And, in countries like Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa, nearly as many name China as their most dependable ally as name the U.S. In Kenya, there was a 28 percentage point drop in those naming the U.S. as an ally since 2007 (35%, down from 63%). Only in Lebanon, Tunisia and Turkey do fewer name the U.S. as their most dependable ally than other countries.

Substantial shares in some countries also perceive Washington as their greatest threat - even in some in which the U.S. is the most named top ally. In Mexico, 56% say the U.S. is the greatest threat to their country, while 27% cite the U.S. as their most dependable ally (around 5% say both, concurrently). Recent Pew Research Center surveys found that Mexicans have almost no confidence in U.S. President Donald Trump, and there is widespread opposition to the proposed border wall. The other countries with the biggest shares of people naming the U.S. as a threat include Turkey (46%), Argentina (40%), Brazil (18%), Nigeria (14%) and Tunisia (12%).

China

Majorities in most countries agree China's influence on the world stage has grown markedly, and nearly as many see China as the world's leading economic power as the U.S. But in no country surveyed does more than a third see China as their country's top ally. Across the 17 non-U.S. countries surveyed, only a median of 6% cite China as their most dependable partner, compared with 27% who name the United States.

China stands out as a danger particularly among its regional neighbors. It is the country most named as a threat by 62% of Filipinos, 50% of Japanese, 40% of Australians, 32% of South Koreans and 21% of Indonesians. In South Korea and Indonesia, perceived threats from China have also increased by 15 points and 11 points, respectively, since the countries were last asked in 2014. Over the same period, the perceived threat in Japan has fallen 18 percentage points.

China is also the top named threat in both the U.S. (24%) and Canada (32%), up substantially since 2007 in both countries (by 12 and 20 points, respectively). These increased threats are accompanied by record-high unfavorability numbers in both countries and trade-related tensions with the U.S.

Russia

Recent surveys find that Russia's global image is poor, even as people see it playing a more important role in international affairs today than it did a decade ago. But, outside of India (15%) and Turkey (9%), no more than 4% in any country surveyed name Russia as their most dependable ally.

While around a quarter of Americans cite Russia as the greatest threat facing the country, few other countries see Moscow's role in comparable terms. For example, in Canada, 10% name Russia as their country's greatest threat - fewer than the 20% who name the U.S. or the 32% who say the same of China.

North Korea

While many in 2018 saw North Korea's nuclear program as a major threat to their country, no country surveyed in 2019 names North Korea as the top threat. In Japan, the perceived threat from North Korea (20%) trails that of China (50%) by a wide margin. In the United States, North Korea is the third-most named country, following both Russia (24%) and China (24%). Even in South Korea - a country frequently within the flight path of North Korean test missiles - North Korea only rates as the third-most named country (21%), following both China (32%) and Japan (23%).

North Korea is not named as a top ally by more than 1% in any country surveyed except South Korea, where 4% name their neighbor.

Pakistan, Iran, Israel and Somalia

While China and the United States are seen as the top threats for most countries surveyed, there are a few regional threats that are of particular concern to specific publics. For example, 60% of Indians name Pakistan as the country that most threatens their own - and this is up from the 45% who said the same in 2014. There is a growing sense that relations in Kashmir - a disputed region between the two powers - has gotten worse in recent years.

Israelis are most apt to name Iran as the greatest threat facing their country (58%), while few in any other country surveyed say the same (only 10% of Lebanese and 6% of Americans cite Iran). Outside of Iran, only Syria (7%) is named by more than 5% of the Israeli population. In contrast, Israel itself ranks as the top threat for Lebanese (49%) and one of the top most named threats in the other majority-Muslim countries surveyed: Turkey (10%), Tunisia (5%) and Indonesia (3%).

Kenyans are most likely to name their neighbor, Somalia (26%), as the top threat facing their country.
Note: See full topline results (Excel) and methodology.

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U.S. is seen as a top ally in many countries - but others view it as a threat

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The United States stands out to many around the world as the country their own nation can rely on most, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Pluralities or majorities in around half of the 17 countries where an open-ended question was asked named the U.S.

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President Trump did an awful job at being commander in chief. He promised to bring and end to ‘ongoing wars’ and really did nothing. He ruined the people’s relationship with the armed forces and also the police.

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Donald Trump campaigned hard on military issues.

He vowed to bring "endless wars" to a close, "rebuild" the fighting forces and compel allies to pay their fair share, saying the U.S. would no longer be "suckers."

That message resonated among voters and helped propel him to the White House in the 2016 election. Among troops, he seemed to enjoy fairly strong support. A Military Times poll showed that 46% had a favorable view of him at the start of his term, 10 points higher than President Barack Obama had in January 2017.

Still, Trump was unable to end those endless wars. He leaves a military that is still fighting and advising in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, though in smaller numbers.

He provided a significant budget boost, made the troops more ready and created a U.S. Space Force. NATO members did end up paying more for their defense - for many years a source of official Washington grumbling - though there were fractures within the alliance over Trump's abrasive nature and abrupt decisions, such as withdrawing troops from Afghanistan without consulting NATO leaders.

But in the end, several analysts say, what stands out is the damage Trump did to civilian-military relations. He used troops - and senior officers - in clearly political events, at times referring to "my generals." One senior officer, who is not authorized to speak publicly, recalled that in his dealings with Trump, the president was surprised to learn the military is apolitical.

Moreover, Trump brushed aside a military justice system that found service members guilty of war crimes, granting them pardons.

Trump "was constantly undermining civilian-military relations around the bounds of what is acceptable behavior," says Peter Feaver, a Duke University professor who focuses on those relations. "This, combined with the fact that he has a tin ear for all things in the civil-military domain, means that Trump did lots of damage to this crucial pillar of the republic."

Aaron O'Connell agrees. He was a Marine Corps officer who served in Afghanistan and in Obama's National Security Council.

The "biggest thing," says O'Connell, who now teaches at the University of Texas, is Trump's pardons for Navy Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher and Army 1st Lt. Clint Lorance. Both were convicted of war crimes by the military.

"They were not close calls on the merits," O'Connell says. "Why get involved with this? It only hurts the military, hurts the rule of law and hurts the image of the U.S. as a law-abiding nation."

Trump also tested civilian-military relations by urging that active-duty troops be used to quell street protests following the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police last year.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper strongly and publicly opposed such a move, saying it was a job for local police and possibly the National Guard. Trump soured on Esper after that, and their relationship never survived. Months later, Esper was "terminated" by Trump in a tweet.

"Trump's willingness to use the military against legitimate protests in America [last] year stands out as particularly significant and damaging," says Carter Malkasian, a former senior Defense Department official. "The backlash was thankfully great, so hopefully our institutions have emerged undamaged."

Michael O'Hanlon, a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution, acknowledged he is no "Trump fan," seeing him as "an extremely dangerous commander in chief" and citing his saber rattling and his threatening a war with North Korea.

But O'Hanlon sees Trump's overall legacy as relatively positive.

"The increase in budgets, readiness levels and modernization efforts will be sort of like a 'mini Reagan period,' " O'Hanlon says. "Fifteen years of war and several years of budgetary dysfunction had left things frayed."

Brad Bowman, a defense analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, credits the Trump administration with prioritizing military research and development with the largest budget increase ever, saying the Pentagon recognized the growing technological prowess of China and Russia as well as the changing character of warfare.

"To its credit," says Bowman, "the Trump administration explicitly shifted the Pentagon's focus to great-power competition," meaning China and Russia, no longer making anti-terrorism efforts a priority. That came through a National Defense Strategy crafted by Trump's first defense secretary, James Mattis.

Mackenzie Eaglen of the American Enterprise Institute says the three-year "Trump bump" defense increases were "significant and helpful, particularly to restoring readiness."

"But not nearly enough to completely rebuild the military," she says, "as he claimed in his State of the Union address [last] year."

Eaglen also says that despite the increases, Trump's souring on those who disagreed with him - including Defense Secretaries Mattis and Esper - was one of the big reasons Trump could not oversee the buildup of the Navy during his tenure, a buildup that would have reflected the focus on Asia and the growing threat from China.

She also faults Trump for using Pentagon money to build his wall on the border with Mexico. Such action, Eaglen says, "sets up the budget to be raided by any future president for any self-declared 'emergency.' "

Todd Harrison, a budget expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, echoed those concerns, calling the shift in funds for the wall one of the "worst legacies" of the Trump years.

"I think Congress will need to rethink many of the provisions it routinely puts into law," says Harrison, "that allow the president to reallocate certain types of funding in a crisis without prior approval from Congress."

Despite Trump's talk of building up the military, some analysts say he's overstating his efforts.

"Obama in his first term spent more than [Trump] did," says Larry Korb of the Center for American Progress. Obama spent $3.3 trillion on the military in his first term, Korb points out, compared with $2.9 trillion during Trump's term.

Moreover, Trump's claim of a military that was lagging under Obama was not the case, Korb says. Back in the summer of 2016, retired Gen. David Petraeus and O'Hanlon wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal titled, " The Myth of a U.S. Military 'Readiness' Crisis," saying there were areas of concern but no crisis.

One retired senior officer who served under three presidents and who asked not to be identified because he still works in government says in the end Trump was someone who in the national security realm was chaotic and transactional, often tweeting policy changes.

Such tweets announced that all troops would be withdrawn from Syria - a decision that angered both U.S. Special Forces on the ground and their Kurdish partners fighting the remnants of the Islamic State. In the end, Trump was convinced by military leaders to keep hundreds of troops to continue the fight - and protect oil fields.

"No one could trust that what he said was true - the old 'your word is your bond' didn't hold true with the president," the retired officer adds.

On Afghanistan, Trump was successful in getting a U.S.-Taliban peace deal that would mean the withdrawal of all American troops by this spring, as long as the Taliban agreed to abide by certain conditions, such as breaking with al-Qaida and not attacking cities. That would mean America's longest war - at 19 years - would come to an end.

"It's hard to see how the February 2020 agreement with the Taliban would have come about without Trump's drive to get out, not to detract from [U.S. negotiator] Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad's diplomatic skills," says Malkasian, the former Pentagon official.

Korb, of the Center for American Progress, said removing U.S. troops from Afghanistan made sense - but not the way it was handled by the administration.

Trump ordered reductions in U.S. troop levels from 4,500 to 2,500, even though military officials wanted to maintain that higher number into 2021. Military officials privately acknowledged that the Taliban had failed to meet the conditions called for in the agreement, but it appeared Trump was intent on maintaining a campaign pledge to bring the troops home.

Both Afghan officials and NATO allies were caught off guard by the reductions. And when acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller made the troop cut announcement in the Pentagon briefing room, he swiftly left without answering any questions.

Trump's constant policy by tweet and abrupt decisions, with little deliberation among officials and allies, left others to handle the fallout.

"Military and some civilian leaders have been in constant damage control over the last four years," the retired officer says. "The old 'cleanup on aisle 4, then 6, then 8.' "

And in the end, there were signs that those within the military were souring on Trump.

A Military Times poll taken before the election showed that earlier 46% approval rating for Trump dropping by 8 points.

Retired Adm. James Stavridis, the former top officer at NATO, says Trump will have "a very mixed legacy." He was a strong advocate for funding the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs, but his crude language, his pardoning of war criminals and his sudden removal of troops will be remembered negatively.

"Strategically, the military will remember him as a very political commander in chief who basically wanted to pull back from our overseas commitments and international alliances - an approach not well regarded by many in the force," Stavridis says. "To the degree there was a 'Trump Doctrine,' it seemed to be withdraw and come home."

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Trump And The Military: What An Erratic Commander In Chief Leaves Behind

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Donald Trump campaigned hard on military issues. He vowed to bring "endless wars" to a close, "rebuild" the fighting forces and compel allies to pay their fair share, saying the U.S. would no longer be "suckers." That message resonated among voters and helped propel him to the White House in the 2016 election.

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Bill Clinton was shown to be quite successful with party building and influence. The Republican Party was more successful with party building efforts than Democrats in six areas.

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President Obama may be the standard bearer of the Democratic Party, but his unpopularity in some parts of the country means there are certain places on the campaign trail where it's best for him to stay away.

Enter former President Clinton, who can go where Obama fears to tread.

The ex-president recently made his first campaign foray of the 2014 election cycle in an unlikely state - Kentucky, where Obama won just 38 percent in 2012 (but where Clinton won twice in the 1990s). Clinton appeared there last week on behalf of Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes, who is running to unseat Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Few will be surprised to see him appear in other Republican-friendly states where Senate Democrats face tough re-election campaigns - places like his native Arkansas, North Carolina and Louisiana.

It's hard to know how much of Clinton's campaigning is aimed at improving wife Hillary Clinton's 2016 chances if she runs for president and how much it is the former president simply reveling in the art of politicking, with him at the center of attention.

But one useful lens through which to view Clinton's travels is as an extension of his longstanding party-building efforts.

Daniel Galvin, a Northwestern University political scientist who has studied presidents as party-builders, argues that modern Republican presidents have done much better at building up their party's organizational and competitive capacity than their Democratic counterparts. Clinton, however, was an exception.

In his book, Galvin compared the party-building efforts of recent presidents in six areas - among them, the financing of party operations, the recruitment of candidates and the development of human capital. Republican presidents rated far better than Democrats, who tended to be consumers - sometimes ravenously so - of party resources rather than creators.

Democratic presidents, for decades, could rely on organized labor and big-city machines and their control of Congress, Galvin says. Lacking those advantages, Republican presidents focused on building up their national and state party structures.

The one Democratic exception was Clinton during his second term. (During his first term and 1996 re-election, Clinton followed the traditional Democratic pattern of being a net consumer of party resources.)

But in the last two years of his presidency, that changed. Galvin speculates that the realization that Democrats weren't going to soon regain the House, and the Lewinsky scandal, both played a role in the repositioning.

Clinton went on a torrid money raising pace for the party. And he pushed the Democratic National Committee to create a national voter database that Democratic candidates could use in races from the federal level down to the local level.

The Clintons' recent commitment to help the DNC raise money to pay down its nearly $16 million debt - and to help expand the electorate and increase voter protections - are in keeping with that interest in long-term party-building.

The former president's current efforts are "consistent with the recognition that we saw in the Clinton White House during his second term that party organization building is one of the ways that presidents can really help their party and its competitive fortunes in the future," Galvin said. "It's important for all candidates up and down the ballot, to have a common stock of resources."

Like Clinton in his first term, Obama has also followed the Democratic pattern of being a taker, rather than a maker of party resources. That has caused years of grumbling among Democratic Party officials, dating back to 2008 even before he became president.

There are signs that could be changing in Obama's second term.

Obama's campaign organization recently moved to share the data it collected about voters and volunteers with the DNC, so that the party can help candidates across the ballot in 2014.

But it's still too early to know if Obama will ultimately match Clinton's efforts in building up the party.

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The former president's political portfolio is in keeping with his longstanding efforts to build the Democratic Party into a more powerful organizational force.

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The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was signed into law by President Obama on March 23, 2010. It is more commonly known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or its nickname, Obamacare. The ACA significantly changed the healthcare system in the U.S. by reducing the amount individuals and families paid in uncompensated care. The act requires every American to have health insurance and provides assistance to those who cannot afford a plan.

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History of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)

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See the history of the Affordable Care Act (ACA or "Obamacare")-and how this health-care law affects you-in this timeline from eHealth.

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The president is a public figure and often throws the first pitch at Major League Baseball games

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How many consecutive U.S. Presidents have thrown out a first pitch?

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How many consecutive U.S. Presidents have thrown out a first pitch?

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Mr. Donald’s duckery picked a new judge to sit on the bench of the Supreme Court.

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Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett arrives at the inauguration of President Biden on Jan. 20. (Win McNamee/via AP)

More than a dozen federal district court judges have announced that they plan to take senior status or retire since President Biden took office. Total judicial vacancies have grown from 46 to more than 60 (out of nearly 875 seats), and that number is likely to increase substantially over the next few months, as judges who did not want President Donald Trump to replace them vacate their seats. By the end of his term, Trump had appointed more than a quarter of all active judges, and now Biden will have his own chance to reshape the judiciary.

Since Democrats control both the White House and the Senate, and because the filibuster has been abolished for judicial appointments, Biden has significant freedom to choose whom to appoint. Progressive groups have urged him to pick nominees who are diverse in terms of race, gender and professional background - all important goals. But there's another characteristic that Democrats, unlike Republicans, have long neglected: age.

Trump maintained his support among mainstream Republicans in part by appointing conservative judges, but his appointments also stand out for their youth. His nominees to the federal courts of appeals, for example - the tier just below the Supreme Court - were the youngest of any president since at least the beginning of the 20th century. According to our calculations, drawing on data compiled by the Federal Judicial Center (the research agency of the federal courts), his appellate judges were, on average, 47 years old when nominated - five years younger than President Barack Obama's. In just one term, Trump appointed 54 appellate judges, of which six were in their 30s, 20 were under age 45 and only five were older than 55.

By comparison, in two terms, Obama nominated 55 appellate judges, with none in their 30s, only six under age 45 - and 21 over age 55.

John Roberts's self-defeating attempt to make the court appear nonpolitical

At a glance, these age differences might not seem like much. But given that such positions are lifetime appointments, they give Republicans a significant advantage over the long term. And the pattern of GOP presidents choosing younger judges did not begin with Trump, even if he took the practice to a new level. Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan have appointed all of the youngest 25 federal appellate judges (at the time of their nomination), 45 of the youngest 50 and 76 of the youngest 100.

We can do some rough calculations to put the age advantage for Republican-appointed judges in perspective. Recall that Obama and Trump nominated almost the same number of appellate judges (55 and 54, respectively). Assume these judges all serve to the same retirement age, which is usually about 68 years old for appellate judges. Based on their ages at nomination - and assuming that other factors such as early death don't affect one group more than the other - Trump's judges will serve on the bench for 270 more years than Obama's judges. Take it a step further: Assuming that federal appellate judges decide, on average (and conservatively), at least several hundred cases per year, Trump's judges will decide tens of thousands more cases than their Obama-appointed counterparts. To put it bluntly: The age of judges matters.

But Democrats still aren't getting the message. At a Brookings Institution event in January, former attorney general Eric Holder touted racial and ethnic diversity - and diversity of professional background - but also said judges should be appointed only if they are at least 50 years old. If Biden followed that advice, he'd be repeating an error that Obama made. The Obama administration made substantial progress in diversifying the bench but took a misguided approach when it came to age.

In an attempt to depoliticize judicial nominations, Obama mostly appointed highly experienced sitting judges and federal prosecutors during his first term. Senate Republicans rejected the olive branch and in fact escalated obstruction of his nominees. Biden also wants to lower the temperature of partisan conflict, but there is no reason to think choosing older judges will have that effect.

Nominating younger judges is also crucial for developing leaders on the federal bench, including future Supreme Court justices. When presidents look for nominees to elevate to the high court, they usually select judges from the federal appellate courts. For example, Neil M. Gorsuch was a mere 38 years old when nominated (by President George W. Bush) to become an appellate judge, Brett M. Kavanaugh was 41 (also Bush), and Amy Coney Barrett was 45 (Trump). When later elevated to the Supreme Court they were 49, 53 and 48, respectively (average age: 50). Meanwhile, because Obama selected older judges, Biden will find only three Democratically appointed judges across the entire federal courts of appeals who are at that age or younger.

Younger federal judges have more time to build up a jurisprudence - a body of legal values, principles and judgments - as well as a professional network of other judges, lawyers and clerks who can develop, share and amplify their legal views. Republicans have long understood this: Many of their most famous and influential appointees were put on the appellate bench at young ages, including Frank Easterbrook (nominated at age 36), Michael Luttig (36), Kenneth Starr (37), Samuel Alito (39), Douglas Ginsburg (40), Clarence Thomas (41), Richard Posner (42), Antonin Scalia (46) and John Roberts (46).

If Democrats hope to shape the law for the next generation, they, too, need younger judges who have both the energy and a sufficiently long tenure on the bench to leave lasting legacies. Consider the example of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who was one of President Bill Clinton's youngest appellate nominees, at age 43; she was 54 when Obama nominated her to the Supreme Court in 2009. Over the past two decades, she has developed a distinctive and powerful voice on the bench. It's unlikely she would have done so had she been nominated to the appellate court in her early to mid-50s.

The Biden administration has made an admirable commitment to diversifying the bench - signaling the president's intention to depart from Trump's example. Not a single one of Trump's 54 appointments to the appellate courts was African American. But there is no trade-off between youth and diversity. If anything, there are more women and more members of minority groups represented in the legal profession now than at any time in the past. At least when it comes to putting judges on the bench, this president can have it all. He can diversify the bench while appointing people who will be influential for decades, narrowing the partisan age gap in the judicial branch.

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Perspective | Trump picked the youngest judges to sit on the federal bench. Your move, Biden.

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More than a dozen federal district court judges have announced that they plan to take senior status or retire since President Biden took office. Total judicial vacancies have grown from 46 to more than 60 (out of nearly 875 seats), and that number is likely to increase substantially over the next few months, as judges who did not want President Donald Trump to replace them vacate their seats.

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Biden is taking to Mexican president about migration issues for Mexico and the us.

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WASHINGTON (AP) - President Joe Biden met virtually Monday with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador - a chance for the pair to talk more fully about migration, confronting the coronavirus and cooperating on economic and national security issues.
Watch the meeting in the player above.
"This is what I know, the United States and Mexico are stronger when we stand together," Biden told López Obrador at the outset of the meeting, alluding to past differences between the two countries. "We're safer when we work together. Whether it's addressing the challenges of our shared border, or getting this pandemic under control."

Mexico's president had said he intends during the meeting to propose to Biden a new immigrant labor program that could bring 600,000 to 800,000 Mexican and Central American immigrants a year to work legally in the United States.

A senior Biden administration official declined to say whether the U.S. president would back or oppose the proposal, saying only that both countries agree on the need to expand legal pathways for migration. The official insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations. Asked about the Mexican president's proposal. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that reinstituting the Bracero program would require action by Congress.

The original "Bracero" program allowed Mexicans to work temporarily in the United States to fill labor shortages during World War II and for a couple of decades after the war. López Obrador said the U.S. economy needs Mexican workers because of "their strength, their youth."

On Monday, López Obrador said his new proposal would be a program not only for agriculture workers but for other sectors and professionals.

The White House also signaled that Biden was not willing to budge on another López Obrador request - to send U.S. manufactured coronavirus vaccines to his country. Psaki said Biden would not agree to the move, saying the president was first focused on getting Americans vaccinated. A similar posture toward Canada has also proved to be a wrinkle in that relationship.

The Biden official said the meeting will help Biden begin to institutionalize the relationship with Mexico, rather than let it be determined by tweets - a preferred form of diplomacy by his predecessor, Donald Trump.

The United States shares a trade agreement - most recently updated in 2018 and 2019 - with Mexico and Canada, which are its second- and third-biggest trade partners after China. The trade agreement could complicate López Obrador's efforts to possibly defund and eliminate independent regulatory, watchdog and transparency agencies in Mexico.

There are also questions of whether López Obrador will warm to Biden's efforts to address climate change and move to cleaner energy sources. The Mexican president supports a measure to make that country's national grids prioritize power from government plants, many of which burn coal or fuel oil.

At Monday's news conference, López Obrador confirmed they would discuss climate change, but he said "Biden is respectful of our sovereignty" because "he doesn't see Mexico as America's backyard."

The Trump era was defined by the threat of tariffs, crackdowns on migration and his desire to construct a wall on the U.S. southern border, yet Trump appeared to enjoy an amicable relationship with his Mexican counterpart.

Mexico paid nothing for Trump's cherished border wall, despite the U.S. leader's repeated claims that it would. But López Obrador's government did send troops to Mexico's southern border with Guatemala to deal with an unprecedented wave of asylum-seekers bound for the U.S. Mexico hosted about 70,000 people seeking U.S. asylum while they waited for dates in immigration courts, a policy known as Remain in Mexico and officially as Migrant Protection Protocols.

The Biden administration immediately began to unwind Remain in Mexico, suspending it for new arrivals on the president's first day in office and soon after announcing that an estimated 26,000 people with still-active cases could be released in the United States while their cases played out.

But Biden, through the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has kept extraordinary pandemic-related powers in place to immediately expel anyone arriving at the U.S. border from Mexico without an opportunity to seek asylum.

Mexicans and many Central Americans are typically returned to Mexico in less than two hours under Title 42 authority - so named for a section of a 1944 public health law. Biden aides have signaled they have no immediate plans to lift it.

Yet Biden has also shown an openness to immigrants who previously came to the country illegally. He is backing a bill to give legal status and a path to citizenship to all of the estimated 11 million people in the country who don't have it. Biden also broke with Trump by supporting efforts to allow hundreds of thousands of people who came to the U.S. illegally as young children to remain in the country.

López Obrador said Saturday that an aging United States will also need temporary immigrant workers from Mexico to sustain economic growth.

He said he plans to tell Biden, "It is better that we start putting order on migratory flows."

But pressures are building at the U.S. southern border with an increase in children crossing into the country without visas. This has created a challenge for the Biden administration. Border Patrol agents are apprehending an average of more than 200 children crossing the border without a parent per day, but nearly all 7,100 beds for immigrant children maintained by the Department of Health and Human Services are full.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Monday sought to push back against the notion that the crisis at the border was spinning out of control.

"The men and women of the Department of Homeland Security, are working around the clock seven days a week to ensure that we do not have a crisis at the border, that we manage the challenge as acute as the challenge is, and they are not doing that alone," Mayorkas said.

The Biden administration has preserved a policy, imposed at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, of quickly expelling people captured along the border and has tried to dissuade people from attempting the journey. Mayorkas, who is expected to take part in Monday's bilateral meeting, reiterated the administration's message to migrants that now is not the time to come to the United States.

"We are not saying don't come," Mayorkas said. "We are saying don't come now."

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WATCH: Biden meets with Mexican president amid migration issues

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WASHINGTON (AP) - President Joe Biden met virtually Monday with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador - a chance for the pair to talk more fully about migration, confronting the coronavirus and cooperating on economic and national security issues. Watch the meeting in the player above.

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Joe Biden is making relationships with foreign countries and their leaders.

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Joe Biden raised concerns about China's "coercive" behaviour and human rights abuses with Xi Jinping, in the first call between the US and Chinese presidents since Biden entered office three weeks ago.

The White House said the two leaders spoke on Wednesday evening Washington time. It added that Biden offered well wishes to Xi for the lunar new year but also registered his unease over a range of issues.

"President Biden underscored his fundamental concerns about Beijing's coercive and unfair economic practices, crackdown in Hong Kong, human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and increasingly assertive actions in the region, including toward Taiwan," the White House said.

Xi told Biden that "China-US confrontation will hurt both sides - co-operation is the only choice", according to a summary of the call released by Chinese state television.

The tone of Xi's comments was less confrontational than those of Yang Jiechi, China's top foreign affairs official, in a call last week with Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state.

But China's president warned that Hong Kong, Taiwan and Xinjiang were all "internal affairs related to China's sovereignty and territorial integrity". Xi said the US should "respect China's core interests and act cautiously".

The White House said the leaders also discussed how to tackle the coronavirus pandemic and climate change, and to prevent the proliferation of weapons.

"President Biden affirmed his priorities of protecting the American people's security, prosperity, health, and way of life, and preserving a free and open Indo-Pacific," the White House said in its public account of the discussion.

The call came hours after Biden announced the creation of a Pentagon task force to help craft a comprehensive strategy for dealing with China.

A senior US official said ahead of the call that Biden had planned to raise a number of issues with Xi, including China's crackdown on Hong Kong and its repression of Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang. The president would "indicate that this is not just about American values, it's about universal values", the person said.

During the Trump administration, US-China relations reached their lowest point since diplomatic ties were established four decades ago. The former president took an aggressive stance over everything from Beijing's trade practices to concerns about cyber espionage.

The official said that although Biden did not support how Donald Trump implemented his China policy, the president agreed with his predecessor that the US was engaged in an "intense strategic competition" with Beijing.

Another senior US official who has spent the past two weeks talking to American allies in Europe and Asia said there was a growing consensus that China's behaviour was a concern, including "unprecedented economic attacks" towards Australia and "really aggressive actions" against Taiwan.

The Financial Times reported that Chinese warplanes entered Taiwan's air defence zone just after Biden's inauguration and simulated missile attacks on the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier in the South China Sea.

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"The Chinese have sent Biden some tough warnings," said Willy Lam, a China expert at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. "The aggressive tactics they have shown towards Taiwan have escalated since Biden became president."

Chinese officials had hoped Biden's election victory would help stabilise relations. But early signs suggest the path will not be smooth. There is also bipartisan consensus in Congress that Washington must be tougher on China.

Blinken told Yang last week the US would stand up for democracy and human rights, signalling a hawkish stance towards China.

"I made clear the US will . . . hold Beijing accountable for its abuses of the international system," Blinken wrote on Twitter following the call.

In response, Yang warned the US not to interfere in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, saying "no one can stop the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation".

Biden told CBS News on Sunday that China would face " extreme competition " from the US. While he praised his Chinese counterpart - whom he knows from his time as Barack Obama's vice-president - as "very bright", he said Xi "doesn't have a democratic . . . bone in his body".

Jake Sullivan, US national security adviser, has said Biden was prepared to "impose costs for what China is doing in Xinjiang, what it is doing in Hong Kong, for the bellicosity and threats that it is projecting towards Taiwan".

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Joe Biden holds first call with Xi Jinping since taking office

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Joe Biden raised concerns about China's "coercive" behaviour and human rights abuses with Xi Jinping, in the first call between the US and Chinese presidents since Biden entered office three weeks ago. The White House said the two leaders spoke on Wednesday evening Washington time.

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President trump is taking credit for micha mconas reelection. Not very uhh presidenty of him.

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The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) audience on Sunday afternoon booed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as President Donald Trump took credit for the Kentucky senator's November election win.

"My endorsement of Mitch McConnell at his request, he asked for my endorsement," Trump said, prompting loud boos from the crowd, "brought him from one point down to 20 points up and he won his race in the great state and the great commonwealth of Kentucky. He won it very easily. And I said, 'I wonder if I'm doing the right thing here,' but you know what, I did what I did."

"But he went from one point down to 20 points up very quickly, immediately actually, and he won his race. If you compare that to his other elections, I'm sure you'll see something interesting. But you know what, we got a Republican elected," he added.

Newsweek reached out to McConnell's office for comment.

McConnell won reelection in 2020, defeating Democratic challenger Amy McGrath and her significant fundraising efforts to unseat him. Trump endorsed McConnell's campaign in July 2019 and worked closely with the Senate leader during his four years in office. But since President Joe Biden's inauguration, the two men have clashed repeatedly over the future of the GOP.

Seven GOP senators joined Democrats in voting to convict Trump earlier this month, but the 57-43 majority fell short of the two-thirds needed for a conviction. After voting to acquit, McConnell on February 13 publicly condemned the ex-president and his supporters for inciting the Capitol insurrection on January 6.

"There's no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day," he said on the Senate floor. "The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president. And having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth."

McConnell's rebuke of Trump broke his several year-long run of cautiously avoiding confrontations with the ex-president. He also strongly rejected Trump's baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election was "stolen" from him through widespread voter fraud.

Trump went after McConnell nearly a month later. On February 17, just days after the Senate voted to acquit him on his second impeachment, Trump called the senator "a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack" in a scathing statement.

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Mitch McConnell booed by CPAC audience as Trump takes credit for his reelection

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The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) audience on Sunday afternoon booed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as President Donald Trump took credit for the Kentucky senator's November election win.

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Reagan deregulated banking in 1980 and Congress passed the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act in 1982.16 The Act removed restrictions on loan-to-value ratios for saving and loan banks. Reagan's budget cut also reduced regulatory staff at the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. As a result, banks invested in risky real estate ventures. Reagan's deregulation and budget cuts contributed to the savings and loan crisis of 1989. The crisis ushered in the 1990 recession.

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Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th U.S. president, serving from Jan. 20, 1981, to Jan. 20, 1989.﻿﻿﻿﻿ His first task was to combat the worst recession since the Great Depression.

Reagan promised the "Reagan Revolution," focusing on reducing government spending, taxes, and regulation. His philosophy was, "Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem."﻿﻿﻿

Reagan was an advocate of laissez-faire economics. He believed that a free market and capitalism would solve the nation's woes. His policies matched the "greed is good" mood of 1980s America.

Reagan's Early Years

Ronald Reagan was born on Feb. 6, 1911.﻿﻿ He studied economics and sociology at Eureka College in Illinois, then he became a radio sports announcer and an actor, starring and appearing in 53 films. As president of the Screen Actors Guild, he became involved in rooting out Communism in the film industry. That led to him developing more conservative political views. He became a TV host and spokesman for conservatism, then served as Governor of California from 1966 to 1974.

Reagan was nominated as the Republican presidential candidate in 1980. George H.W. Bush was the nominee for vice president. Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter to become the 40th president of the United States.﻿

Reagan's Salary

Reagan's salary as president was $200,000.﻿﻿﻿﻿ Reagan's net worth was estimated at $10.6 million before he became president and $15.4 million at the time of his death in 2004.﻿﻿﻿﻿

1980-1981: The Recession

Reagan inherited an economy mired in stagflation, a combination of double-digit economic contraction and double-digit inflation. He aggressively cut income taxes from 70% to 50% for the top tax bracket to combat the recession.﻿﻿﻿ He cut the corporate tax rate from 46% to 34%.﻿﻿﻿ He promised to slow the growth of government spending and to deregulate business industries. At the same time, he encouraged the Federal Reserve to combat inflation by reducing the money supply.

Reaganomics and Tax Cuts

Congress cut the top tax rate from 70% to 50% in 1982.﻿﻿﻿ This helped spur growth in gross domestic product for the next several years. The economy grew 4.5% in 1983, 7.2% in 1984, and 4.1% in 1985.

Economic growth reduced unemployment for the next several years. It was 8.5% in December 1981. The minimum wage was $3.35 an hour.﻿﻿﻿ Congress passed the Job Training Partnership Act in 1982, establishing job training programs for low-income people.﻿﻿﻿ The unemployment rate rose to 10.8% by December 1982, then it fell to 8.3% in 1983, 7.3% in 1984, and 7% by December 1985. Reagan cut the tax rate again, to 38.5% this time, in 1987.

Growth was a healthy 3.463% by the end of 1986, but the unemployment rate was 6.6%.﻿﻿﻿ It was still higher than the natural rate of unemployment. Reagan cut taxes again to 28%.﻿﻿﻿ Growth remained at a similar rate at 3.46% in 1987 and rose to 4.18% in 1988.﻿﻿﻿ Unemployment fell to 5.7% in 1987 and then fell to 5.3% in 1988.﻿﻿﻿

The Policies of Reaganomics

Reagan based Reaganomics on the theory of supply-side economics. This theory proposes that tax cuts encourage economic expansion enough to broaden the tax base over time. The increased revenue from a stronger economy is supposed to offset the initial revenue loss from the tax cuts.﻿﻿﻿

According to the Laffer Curve, this only works if the initial tax rates are high enough to fall in the "Prohibitive Range."﻿﻿﻿ Reagan's first tax cuts worked because tax rates were so high. The 1986 and 1987 tax cuts weren't as effective because tax rates were already reasonable at that time.

Reagan also offset these tax cuts with tax increases elsewhere. He raised Social Security payroll taxes and some excise taxes, and he cut several deductions.

Reagan cut the corporate tax rate from 46% to 34%, but the effect of this break was unclear.﻿﻿﻿ He changed the tax treatment of many new investments. The complexity meant that the overall results of his corporate tax changes couldn't be measured.

Reagan and Deregulation

Reagan was applauded for continuing to eliminate Nixon-era price controls.﻿﻿﻿ They constrained the free-market equilibrium that would have prevented inflation. Reagan removed controls on oil and gas, cable television, and long-distance phone service. He further deregulated interstate bus service and ocean shipping.﻿﻿﻿

Reagan deregulated banking in 1980 and Congress passed the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act in 1982.﻿﻿﻿ The Act removed restrictions on loan-to-value ratios for savings and loan banks. Reagan's budget cut also reduced regulatory staff at the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. As a result, banks invested in risky real estate ventures. Reagan's deregulation and budget cuts contributed to the savings and loan crisis of 1989. The crisis ushered in the 1990 recession.﻿﻿﻿

Reagan did little to reduce regulations affecting health, safety, and the environment. In fact, he reduced these regulations at a slower pace than the Carter administration did.

Reagan's enthusiasm for the free market did not extend to international trade. Instead, he raised import barriers. Reagan almost doubled the number of items that were subject to trade restraint from 12% in 1980 to 23% in 1988.﻿

Government Spending

Despite campaigning on a reduced government role, Reagan wasn't as successful with this as he was with tax cuts. He cut domestic programs, but he increased defense spending to achieve "peace through strength" in his opposition to Communism and the Soviet Union.﻿﻿

Though the Soviet Union didn't dissolve until 1991, he helped end the Cold War with famous quotes like, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."﻿﻿﻿ Reagan wound up increasing the defense budget by 35% to accomplish these goals.﻿﻿﻿

He did not reduce other government programs. He expanded Medicare and increased the payroll tax to ensure the solvency of Social Security.

Government spending still grew, just not as fast as under President Jimmy Carter. Reagan increased spending by 9% a year, according to the Office of Management and Budget's historical tables. It grew from $678 billion at Carter's final budget in fiscal year (FY) 1981 to $1.14 trillion at Reagan's last budget for FY 1989. Carter increased spending by 16% a year, from $409 billion in FY 1977 to $678 billion in FY 1981.﻿﻿﻿

Under Reagan, defense spending grew faster than general spending. It increased 11% a year, from $154 billion in FY 1981 to $295 billion in FY 1989.﻿﻿﻿

Reagan and the Debt

Reagan's first budget was for the fiscal year 1982. As the chart below reveals, he incurred substantial deficits for each year of his presidency. As a result, debt also increased each year. Reagan's budgets tripled the national debt from $998 billion at the end of Carter's last budget to $2.9 trillion at the end of Reagan's last budget.﻿﻿﻿﻿

Check the chart below to see how that debt contributed to the deficit as it related to GDP.﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿

Beating Inflation

Reagan captured the mood of voters when he said, "Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber, and as deadly as a hitman." The inflation rate was 13.5% in 1980 and 10.3% in 1981. It fell to 6.1% in 1982. Inflation remained below 5% for the remaining years of Reagan's presidency.﻿﻿﻿

But Reagan can't take all the credit for combating inflation. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker steadily raised the fed funds rate to 20% in 1980.﻿﻿﻿ High-interest rates ended double-digit inflation, but this also triggered the recession.

The Council of Economic Advisers

During his eight-year term, Reagan brought many well-known economists to the Council of Economic Advisers. New chairmen included Murray Weidenbaum, Martin Feldstein, and Beryl Sprinkel. The Council also included William Niskanen, Jerry Jordan, William Poole, Thomas Gale Moore, and Michael Mussa. Niskanen was one of the architects of Reaganomics. The staff included Nobel Prize winner and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and Harvard professor Larry Summers.﻿﻿﻿ Summers later became President Obama's Director of the National Economic Council.﻿﻿﻿

Other Presidents' Economic Policies

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How President Reagan Ended the 1980s Recession

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Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th U.S. president, serving from Jan. 20, 1981, to Jan. 20, 1989.﻿﻿﻿﻿ His first task was to combat the worst recession since the Great Depression. Reagan promised the "Reagan Revolution," focusing on reducing government spending, taxes, and regulation. His philosophy was, "Government is not the solution to our problem.

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Scooter Libby, Vice President Cheney’s Chief of Staff, is convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in the case of CIA operative, Valerie Plame Wilson, whose covert identity was exposed. Bush later commutes Libby’s sentence.

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George W. Bush - Key Events | Miller Center

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US foreign policy will now focus more on multilateral diplomacy and working with other nations in a more positive way. But Biden stressed this should not be considered a soft approach, insisting that diplomacy would be the best way to get what the US wants:

Investing in our diplomacy isn’t something we do just because it’s the right thing to do for the world … We do it because it’s in our naked self-interest.

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Joe Biden’s first foreign policy speech – an expert explains what it means for the world

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There were messages for friend and foe alike, but Biden was strangely silent on Brexit.