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The ad, stitched together from Obamas speech presenting Biden the Presidential Medal of Freedom before they left office together in January 2017, is part of Bidens closing argument in the days leading up to the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 3. Its a way to convince Democratic voters that they should put him in the Oval Office because Obama the most popular figure in the party put him a heartbeat away from it.

This a very effective ad ... it is a clever way of signifying Obamas feelings about Biden, implying an endorsement the president has not made, said David Axelrod, a top Obama adviser.

His testimonial from the Medal of Freedom speech goes to what are perhaps the most salient and appealing qualities of Biden: character, empathy, decency, Axelrod continued. Barack Obama is a highly esteemed figure in the Democratic Party and perhaps nowhere more than Iowa, which really embraced him and launched him to the presidency.

Iowa has been a tough haul for Biden, who has quit two previous presidential campaigns after failing to catch fire there. But this time, Biden began as a frontrunner in the first-in-the-nation caucus state, and he is now locked in a four-way race for first place, according to the averages of recent polls in the state.

Knowing Obama wouldnt endorse before a clear winner emerged in the crowded Democratic primary, Biden began the campaign saying he privately told Obama he didnt want him to endorse anyway. Those who have spoken to Obama about Biden have issued conflicting accounts about whether Obama wanted him to run, with some saying the former president approved especially because Biden is running on a platform of unabashedly furthering his legacy to those who said Obama wasnt enthusiastic.

One Democrat who is neutral in the 2020 race and spoke to Obama about Bidens gaffe-prone nature recalled the former president saying: Dont underestimate Joes ability to fuck things up.

An Obama spokesman said his team does not discuss private conversations but raised no objections with the ad. A Biden adviser said Obama was made aware of the ad beforehand. The Biden campaign used a Medal of Freedom clip in a campaign announcement video last year, but that announcement video wasnt solely based on Obama lavishing praise on Biden

Even without endorsing, Obama has been central to Bidens standing in the presidential primary. Obama offered kind words praising Biden when he announced his 2020 campaign, and Bidens role as Obamas vice president has contributed to Bidens crucial and outsized edge among black voters, which has kept him atop the primary polls for the last year. And when Bidens campaign was hitting a low point, Biden leaned into his past with Obama.

Biden later said he didnt need Obamas endorsement to win though he seldom misses a chance to call the former president by his first name to emphasize their personal friendship, a liberty none of the other dozen candidates can take.

The new ads release coincides with the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday and Bidens ongoing efforts to consolidate the support of black voters. At the same time his campaign released this ad which comes in 30-second and 60-second versions it announced Bidens 11th endorsement from a Congressional Black Caucus member: Rep. Terri Sewell, whose Alabama district is the home of the Civil Rights movement, stretching from Birmingham through Selma to Montgomery.

The use of a presidents speech and likeness to intimate an endorsement that hasnt been made is nothing new in politics. In 2004, during Mel Martinezs successful first bid for U.S. Senate in Florida, he used an excerpt of President George W. Bush announcing his selection as housing secretary. The ad was cut in such a way that it looked like an endorsement, prompting primary rival Bill McCollum to bitterly complain because of the crucial edge it gave Martinez.

In this primary, none of Bidens opponents have raised objections.

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Clever: Biden plays the Obama card - POLITICO

Throughout the Democratic presidential primary, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have been careful not to criticize Barack Obama directlya wise move given his popularity in the party. But their campaign proposals leave little doubt that they view the former U.S. presidents domestic legacy as a series of quarter-measures shaped by a fatalistic centrism. Medicare for All is predicated on the notion that Obamacarethe presidents towering legislative achievementwas not close to enough. Where Obama made it easier for college students to reduce their monthly loan repayments, Sanders and Warren propose to forgive student debt and make it free to attend public college. The list goes on.

But is the gulf so wide between Obama and the lefts standard-bearers on the issue of foreign policy? Not nearly as wide as they like to suggest, or their supporters like to think.

When it comes to international trade agreements, its certainly true that Sanders and Obama are miles apart, with Warren splitting the difference. Sanders has consistently viewed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as an unalloyed disaster for American workers. He opposed Obamas Trans-Pacific Partnership and was the only Senate-based candidate to vote against Trumps successor to NAFTA, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USCMA), on Jan. 16. (With rare bipartisanship, the Senate passed it 89-10.)

But on military intervention, the differences are far less clear. Both Warren and Sanders also critique U.S. militarism as a force that enriches elites and harms the masses in terms that Obama never deployed. As Warrens campaign platform bluntly puts it: Washingtons foreign policy today serves the wealthy and well-connected at the expense of everyone else.

Such rhetoric about the military sounds compelling, but what exactly does it mean in practice? The answer is less radical than it might appear. Setting international trade agreements to one side, Sanders and Warren share more on foreign policy with Obama than supporters of each might care to admit.

During last weeks presidential debate in Iowa, Sanders fielded CNN host Wolf Blitzers first question: Why are you the best prepared person on this stage to be commander in chief? Sanderss answer was a near carbon copy of Obamas response to similar questions in 2007 and 2008: In 2002, when the Congress was debating whether or not to go into war in Iraq, invade Iraq, I got up on the floor of the House and I said that would be a disaster, it would lead to unprecedented chaos in the region. The parallel continues. As Obama had Hillary Clinton, Sanderss foil was Joe Biden: Joe and I listened to what Dick Cheney and George Bush and Rumsfeld had to say. I thought they were lying. I didnt believe them for a moment. I took to the floor. I did everything I could to prevent that war. Joe saw it differently. In 2002, Obama was an Illinois state senator (albeit with grand ambitions), not a member of the House of Representatives. But he, like Sanders today, repeatedly invoked his opposition to the Iraq War, with direct comparison to his principal opponent, to persuade voters that his foreign-policy instincts were best.

Later in the debate, Blitzer asked Sanders about the escalating crisis in Iran, noting archly that he and the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, share a view that U.S. troops should be withdrawn from the Middle East. After observing that the United States two biggest foreign-policy catastrophes, Vietnam and Iraq, were launched based on lies, Sanders argued, What we need to do is have an international coalition. We cannot keep acting unilaterally. As you know, the nuclear deal with Iran was worked on with a number of our allies. For Sanders, Obamas Iran deal represents exemplary foreign-policy making.

The homage to Obama (of varying vintages in both policy and rhetoric) continued as the debate progressed. Responding to whether the United States should withdraw all forces from the Middle East, Warren observed: We should stop asking our military to solve problems that cannot be solved militarily.Our keeping combat troops there is not helping. We need to work with our allies. We need to use our economic tools. We need to use our diplomatic tools. In 2014, during a signature speech at West Point, Obama expressed similar caution. To say that we have an interest in pursuing peace and freedom beyond our borders, he declared, is not to say that every problem has a military solution. Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.

Elaborating on the advantages of Middle East retrenchment, Sanders connected domestic challenges directly to those abroad. In America today, our infrastructure is crumbling. Half of our people are living paycheck to paycheck, Sanders said. The American people are sick and tired of endless wars, which have cost us trillions of dollars. In June 2011, announcing the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan, Obama observed: We have spent a trillion dollars on war, at a time of rising debt and hard economic times. Now we must invest in Americas greatest resourceour people. America, it is time to focus on nation building here at home. Let us responsibly end these wars and reclaim the American dream that is at the center of our story.

Responsibly may be the operative word here. Responsible Foreign Policy is the title of Sanderss foreign relations campaign issue section. Sanders and Warren would strenuously deny that any hypothetical withdrawal from the Middle East that they might endorse would be irresponsible. And their supporters at likeminded think tanks like the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft might note that responsibly, when deployed by Obama on how to withdraw from conflicts, is a rather establishment notionone with a tendency to ensnare the United States in endless war.

But this is neither very new nor very different. Obama was no admirer of what he dismissed as the Washington playbook. Eying the presidency in 2007, he, too, urged bringing a responsible end to this war in Iraq and refocusing on the critical challenges in the broader region. He now regards the 2009 surge in Afghanistan and the 2011 intervention in Libyathe two instances when he followed that playbookas his two gravest foreign-policy mistakes.

But, even then, Libya in 2011 was not Iraq in 2002-2003. Sanderss own response to the prospect of Muammar al-Qaddafi perpetrating atrocities against his people reinforces this point. Sanders co-sponsored a Senate resolution that called for the United Nations Security Council to take such further action as may be necessary to protect civilians in Libya from attack, including the possible imposition of a no-fly zone over Libyan territory. Creating a no-fly zone does not happen bloodlesslyit is a military intervention. As a skeptical defense secretary, Robert Gates, clarified at the time: Lets just call a spade a spade. A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defenses. Thats the way you do a no-fly zone.

In 2011, then, Sanders was more hawkish on Libya than Gates, the incumbent George W. Bush-appointed Pentagon chief. Indeed, Sanders is not a straightforward anti-war candidate. In 1999, Sanders supported U.S.-led NATO military action against Slobodan Milosevics Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to prevent ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. In 2001, Sanders backed the Bush administrations military action against Afghanistan in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. In 2014, in her first major national security speech, Warren called for better training programs and decried civilian casualties as well as excessive force but made little or no reference to overall drone policy itself. While in a 2015 interview with ABCs George Stephanopoulos, Sanders said he would continue to use drones very, very selectively and effectively. This suggests that the difference from Obama is one of degree, not of type.

In fact, if a President Sanders or President Warren came to resemble Obama in the sense that their plans for limiting U.S. commitments abroad and responsible use of hard power are complicated, say, by the renascence of the Islamic State or proxy conflicts or acts of terrorism stemming from the strike on Iranian military commander Qassem Suleimani, it would scarcely reflect poorly on them.

And it is worth remembering that Obama departed sharply from his post-Cold War presidential predecessors in many respects. Critics of U.S. empire and perpetual war tend to place Obama on a seamless post-Cold War continuumStephen Wertheim and Samuel Moyn wrote in the Washington Post that Obama cemented more than reversed Americas disregard of international constraints on warmaking. Yet Obama also opened relations with Cuba, negotiated a comprehensive nuclear deal with Iran, withdrew troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and pursued a very lonely path when he pulled back from the brink of military action against Syria, erasing the red line he had drawn after Bashar al-Assads use of chemical weapons breached it. On troop withdrawals, Sanders once told Obama advisor Ben Rhodes, Obama doesnt get enough credit for how many troops Obama took out from Afghanistan.

These are no small things. They riled not just Republicans who reflexively opposed everything he did but also figures at the heart of the Democratic Party establishment. In 2013, Vali Nasr, then-dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, wrote an entire book that criticized Obama for reducing United States to a lowly position as a dispensable nation. He lamented that cautious Obamian statecraft had ensured that [g]one is the exuberant American desire to lead the world. Hillary Clinton famously chided Obama for nominating dont do stupid shit as his core strategic doctrine, noting grandly that great nations need organizing principles, and dont do stupid stuff is not an organizing principle. Obamas foreign policies surely made the right enemies.

Mainstream critiques of Obama, then, share common elements with those leveled at Warren and Sanders. Biden presents himself as the Obama continuity-candidate, but Warren and Sanders have at least as strong a claim. In seeking out a model for pragmatic, retrenchment-inclined, diplomacy-prioritizing foreign-policy leadership, Sanders and Warren could certainly do a lot worse than Americas 44th president. They all share a common desire to do less in the world in order to achieve more at homeeven if they sharply disagree on how much more is possible in a political system designed to check ambitious reform. If Warren or Sanders is elected president, she or he will face similar dilemmas to those that confronted Obama regarding the use of force. Previous form suggests that they may well respond in similar ways. The burdens of office have a way of sullying the purest-sounding pre-presidential intentions.

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Obama's Foreign Policy Is Beating Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in the 2020 Democratic Primary - Foreign Policy

WASHINGTONDenouncing his predecessors water regulations as overly restrictive, President Donald Trump announced Thursday he was lifting protections enacted by the Obama administration to permanently entomb Gangthor the Malevolent in a murky trench deep below the Pacific Ocean. These horrible rules created by Barack Obama are one of the worst examples of government overreach in our nations history, and they are totally unfair to the deadly leviathan known as Gangthor, said Trump, who was later overheard muttering ancient incantations reportedly intended to loosen the cursd chains that shackle the nefarious shadow-behemoth to the ocean floor. I will personally swim to the bottom of the Pacific and use a golden key inscribed with mysterious runes to unlock Gangthors lair, where he has slumbered since the destructive Clean Water Rule of 2015 was issued. This shape-shifting, multi-tentacled monster will then once more be unleashed upon the waters of the United States, restoring the property rights of American farmers, fossil fuel companies, and real estate developers. The president went on to criticize prophets of doom who have predicted Gangthor the Malevolent will rise in a column of smoke and fire upon his release, blocking out the sun and blighting the earth with a thousand years of darkness.

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Trump Lifts Obama-Era Protections Trapping Gangthor The Malevolent In Tomb Deep Within Murky Depths Of Pacific Ocean - The Onion

Friday marked the Trump administrations second attempt at loosening regulations governing school meals that were implemented under former President Barack Obama. The administrations latest target: fresh vegetables and fruit.

The current meal regulations were established under the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 spearheaded by former first lady Michelle Obama. That law set new standards for school meals for students in grades K-12 to ensure children were receiving more vegetables, fruits, whole-grain rich foods, and fat-free milk. For example, the law required students to have fruit with every school breakfast, and mandated schools serve a set amount of a variety of vegetables that include both leafy greens and starchy plants.

But the Department of Agriculture argues the Obama-era rules are leading to high costs and rampant food waste. On Friday Michelle Obamas birthday the department announced its proposal to change those rules.

Schools and school districts continue to tell us that there is still too much food waste and that more common-sense flexibility is needed to provide students nutritious and appetizing meals, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said in a statement to the New York Times. We listened and now were getting to work.

The Department of Agricultures own research on the effects of the Obama-era rules undercuts this claim, however. In its 2019 School Nutrition and Meal Cost Study, the department found no dramatic changes in the amount of food waste, and also found compliance with the rules led to better participation rates in school meal programs.

Experts fear that if the rules are changed, schools will try to substitute fresh fruit and vegetables with more cost-efficient foods that lack nutrition. They worry that baked sweets like muffins could be substituted for servings of fruit, and that potato products such as french fries could replace green vegetables.

The department has admitted new foods might be introduced, but has framed that as a good thing. It wants to lower financial barriers for schools serving la carte items like hamburgers in the hopes that expanding access to these items will limit waste. Perdue has argued that the most important thing is making sure students eat in 2017 he said he believes healthy meals are ending up in the trash because they simply arent appetizing to students.

If kids arent eating the food, and its ending up in the trash, they arent getting any nutrition thus undermining the intent of the program, he said.

But advocacy groups object to this sort of thinking. The National Alliance for Nutrition and Activity argues the new rules could create a giant junk food loophole because side dishes like cookies and fries, which could be offered once in a while as part of a balanced lunch, could be offered a la carte every day.

This isnt the first time the administration has rolled back parts of the Obama-era rules. In 2018, the Department of Agriculture finalized a rule that allowed schools to abandon their commitment to lowering sodium and increasing whole-grain foods.

That decision is now being challenged in court by a coalition of six states and Washington, DC, which claims the changes present health risks to children.

As with the 2018 rule, dissent around the newest regulation change is beginning to surface, primarily among Democrats. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) tweeted Friday, The Occupant is trying to play petty with the food our babies eat. Add it to the list affirming that the cruelty is the point with this White House.

With lawsuits against the first set of rollbacks to the lunch restrictions already in motion, if the new rules are successfully implemented, it may be merely a matter of time before they, too, are challenged in court.

For many low-income children, school is the only opportunity to access a nutritious meal. As Voxs Gaby Del Valle wrote when the Department of Agriculture first began relaxing the Obama-era rules:

For the 30 million students who depend on free and low-cost school lunches that are subsidized by the federal government, the relaxed nutrition standards could be hugely detrimental.

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act was a game-changing way of providing low-income students with healthy meals by relaxing these rules, the Trump administration is exacerbating a system where only those who can afford to eat healthy will be able to do so.

One of the consequences of the changes could be an increase in obesity rates, according to research from the Food Research and Action Center. And as Dr. Rachel Borton, the director of the Family Nurse Practitioner online program at Bradley University, argued in an op-ed for the Hill, poor eating in childhood can have lasting effects particularly if habits are formed, or if students remain on a nutrition-poor diet over the course of a number of years.

If those students dont have access to the nutritious options provided by the school, they may turn to low cost, processed foods that are high in calories but sparse in nutrients. Immediate effects of this type of diet include weight gain and poor physical health, Borton wrote. Long-term impacts range from increased risk of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and a slew of other unfortunate health outcomes.

The Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 was created to combat these health concerns and theres proof that it worked, according to the Department of Agricultures 2019 review of the program. That study found scores for the Healthy Eating Index (which measures the quality of the diet) shot up drastically, from 49.6 in 2009-2010 to 71.3 in 2014-2015.

These scores, however, are likely to decrease following the Trump administrations new rollbacks. And if schools fail to properly serve their students, it is students whose only meals come during the school day who will be hit the hardest.

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The Trump administration wants to weaken Obamas school lunch rules. Again. - Vox.com

The federal government is restoring funding for Texas publicly funded womens health programs, bringing as much as $350 million into state coffers and sending a clear message to conservative states: Its OK to defund providers affiliated with abortion.

The Wednesdayannouncementfrom the Trump administration reverses an Obama-era decision to cut federal womens health funding to Texas starting in 2013. That came as punishment after the Texas Legislature excluded Planned Parenthood from the Healthy Texas Women program in 2011 because of the organizations affiliation with abortion providers, though the womens health program does not fund abortion.

"The Lone Star State is once again in partnership with the federal government to provide meaningful family planning and health services while fostering a culture of life," Gov.Greg Abbottsaid in a Wednesday statement.

The decision was long awaited; Texas first asked the federal government perceived under Trump as more sympathetic to Texas anti-abortion crusade to help pay for its womens health programs in 2017.

Healthy Texas Women offersfamily planning and health servicessuch as pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease testing to low- and middle-income women. In 2018, it served approximately 173,000 people, according to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. State officials said the restored federal funding, approved through 2024, would allow the program to reach more than 200,000 clients per year.

The federal government will pay 90% of costs for family planning services and a little more than half of the costs for other womens health services. State funds will cover the rest.

With Gov. Abbotts strong leadership, we continue making significant strides in improving access to womens health and family planning services in Texas, said Courtney Phillips, executive commissioner of Texas health and human services agency.

Womens health advocates, who have long condemned the states defunding of Planned Parenthood, criticized the decision.

"This waiver is a sham process meant to condone the targeting of Planned Parenthood and other womens health care providers without actually improving services for women, said Stacey Pogue, a womens health expert from the left-leaning Center for Public Policy Priorities think tank.

Pogue said the federal funds will merely supplant money the state already spends and will not actually improve services for Texas women.

Roughly half of states have programs largely paid for by the federal government that offer family planning services to women who dont qualify for full health insurance benefits through Medicaid. Texas has opted for years not to expand its Medicaid coverage to poor adults; most women who are eligible for the public insurance program are pregnant or disabled.

Eligibility for Healthy Texas Women is significantly broader, covering women whose family income is at or below 200% of the federal poverty level. Texas expects to spend about $100 million in state funds on the program through 2024, in addition to the $350 million from the federal government.

Texas isnt the first state to ask for permission to continue receiving Medicaid funds despite excluding certain womens health providers. Tennessee and South Carolina have similar requests outstanding with the federal government, according to Usha Ranji, associate director for womens health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health policy think tank.

This is certainly a change, Ranji said. Once one has been approved, it could pave the way for other states.

Nationwide, 12% of women of reproductive age are uninsured, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. In Texas, the rate is 24%.

Texas rebranded its state-funded services as the Healthy Texas Women program in 2016. Since then, the program has been no stranger to controversy. State health officials that year announced they would invest more than $1 million in an anti-abortion organization, the Heidi Group, toestablish a network of clinics, doctors and and crisis pregnancy centersto help fill the void of womens health providers left after Planned Parenthoods defunding.

But the Heidi Group managed to reach only a tiny fraction of the number of women it said it would, andTexas canceled its contractin 2018.

In its 2017 application, Texas sought permission to dramatically overhaul Healthy Texas Women. On Wednesday, the federal government announced that it did not approve many of the requested changes, such as stricter income-eligibility criteria and a requirement that legal guardians review womens health services provided to 15- to 17-year-olds. (The federal government will only fund Healthy Texas Women services to Texans age 18 or over.)

But as far as the exclusion of Planned Parenthood is concerned, federal officials made clear they were on board with Texas plan.

The federal government believes that it would promote the objectives of Medicaid to provide the coverage of family planning services at issue even with the restrictions on freedom of choice required by Texas state law in place, Seema Verma, Trumps Medicaid chief, wrote to Texas health officials.

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Obama cut women's health money in Texas for the state's targeting of Planned Parenthood. Trump just restored it. - Paris News