Barack Hussein Obama II ( (listen) bə-RAHK hoo-SAYN oh-BAH-mə; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician and attorney who served as the 44th pres...
Barack Hussein Obama II ( (listen) bə-RAHK hoo-SAYN oh-BAH-mə; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician and attorney who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the United States. He previously served as a U.S. senator from Illinois from 2005 to 2008 and an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004.
Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. After graduating from Columbia University in 1983, he worked as a community organizer in Chicago. In 1988, he enrolled in Harvard Law School, where he was the first black person to be president of the Harvard Law Review. After graduating, he became a civil rights attorney and an academic, teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. Turning to elective politics, he represented the 13th district from 1997 until 2004 in the Illinois Senate, when he ran for the U.S. Senate. Obama received national attention in 2004 with his March Senate primary win, his well-received July Democratic National Convention keynote address, and his landslide November election to the Senate. In 2008, he was nominated for president a year after his presidential campaign began, and after a close primary campaign against Hillary Clinton, Obama was elected over Republican nominee John McCain and was inaugurated alongside Joe Biden on January 20, 2009. Nine months later, he was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
Obama signed many landmark bills into law during his first two years in office. The main reforms that were passed include the Affordable Care Act (commonly referred to as ACA or "Obamacare"), although without a public health insurance option, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, and the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 served as economic stimuli amidst the Great Recession. After a lengthy debate over the national debt limit, he signed the Budget Control and the American Taxpayer Relief Acts. In foreign policy, he increased U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan, reduced nuclear weapons with the United States–Russia New START treaty, and ended military involvement in the Iraq War. He ordered military involvement in Libya for the implementation of the UN Security Council Resolution 1973, contributing to the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi. He also ordered the military operations that resulted in the deaths of Osama bin Laden and suspected Yemeni Al-Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki.
After winning re-election by defeating Republican opponent Mitt Romney, Obama was sworn in for a second term in 2013. During this term, he promoted inclusion for LGBT Americans. His administration filed briefs that urged the Supreme Court to strike down same-sex marriage bans as unconstitutional (United States v. Windsor and Obergefell v. Hodges); same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide in 2015 after the Court ruled so in Obergefell. He advocated for gun control in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, indicating support for a ban on assault weapons, and issued wide-ranging executive actions concerning global warming and immigration. In foreign policy, he ordered military intervention in Iraq in response to gains made by ISIL after the 2011 withdrawal from Iraq, continued the process of ending U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan in 2016, promoted discussions that led to the 2015 Paris Agreement on global climate change, initiated sanctions against Russia following the invasion in Ukraine and again after Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, brokered the JCPOA nuclear deal with Iran, and normalized U.S. relations with Cuba. Obama nominated three justices to the Supreme Court: Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan were confirmed as justices, while Merrick Garland faced partisan obstruction from the Republican-led Senate led by Mitch McConnell, which never held hearings or a vote on the nomination. Obama left office in January 2017 and continues to reside in Washington, D.C.During Obama's term in office, the United States' reputation abroad, as well as the American economy, significantly improved. His presidency has generally been regarded favorably, and evaluations of his presidency among historians, political scientists, and the general public frequently place him among the upper tier of American presidents.
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Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger (; German: [ˈaʁnɔlt ˈʃvaʁtsn̩ˌʔɛɡɐ]; born July 30, 1947) is an Austrian-American actor, businessman, retired professional...
Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger (; German: [ˈaʁnɔlt ˈʃvaʁtsn̩ˌʔɛɡɐ]; born July 30, 1947) is an Austrian-American actor, businessman, retired professional bodybuilder and former politician who served as the 38th Governor of California from 2003 to 2011. As of 2021, he is the most recent Republican governor of California.
Schwarzenegger began lifting weights at the age of 15, and went on to win the Mr. Universe title at age 20 before winning the Mr. Olympia contest seven times; he remains a prominent presence in bodybuilding and has written many books and articles on the sport. The Arnold Sports Festival, considered the second-most important bodybuilding event after Mr. Olympia, is named after him. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest bodybuilders of all time, as well as the sport's most charismatic and famous ambassador.Schwarzenegger gained worldwide fame as a Hollywood action film icon. After appearing in the bodybuilding documentary Pumping Iron (1977), his breakthrough film was the sword-and-sorcery epic Conan the Barbarian (1982), a box-office hit that resulted in a sequel in 1984. He appeared as the title character in James Cameron's critically and commercially successful science fiction film The Terminator (1984), and subsequently played similar characters in the sequel films Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), Terminator Genisys (2015) and Terminator: Dark Fate (2019). He also starred in other successful action films such as Commando (1985), The Running Man (1987), Predator (1987), Total Recall (1990) and True Lies (1994), in addition to comedy films such as Twins (1988), Kindergarten Cop (1990), Junior (1994) and Jingle All the Way (1996).
As a Republican candidate, Schwarzenegger was first elected on October 7, 2003, in a special recall election to replace then-Governor Gray Davis, with 48.6% of the vote, 17 points ahead of Democrat runner-up Cruz Bustamante. He was sworn in on November 17 to serve the remainder of Davis' term. Schwarzenegger was re-elected in the 2006 California gubernatorial election with an increased vote share of 55.9%, to serve a full term as governor. In 2011, he reached his term limit as Governor and returned to his career in acting.
Schwarzenegger was nicknamed the "Austrian Oak" in his bodybuilding days, "Arnie" or "Schwarzy" during his acting career, and "The Governator" (a portmanteau of "Governor" and "Terminator") during his political career. He married Maria Shriver, the niece of 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy, in 1986. They separated in 2011 after he admitted to having fathered an illegitimate child with their housemaid in 1997, and their divorce was finalized in 2017. The name of his production company is Oak Productions.
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