Imperial presidency is a term applied to the modern presidency of the United States. It became popular in the 1960s and served as the title of a 1973 book by historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., who wrote The Imperial Presidency to address two concerns: that the presidency was uncontrollable and that it had exceeded its constitutional limits. According to professor of political science Thomas E. Cronin, author of The State of the Presidency, the imperial presidency is a term used to define a danger to the American constitutional system by allowing presidents to create and abuse presidential prerogatives during national emergencies. This was based on: (1) presidential war powers vaguely defined in the Constitution, and (2) secrecy – a system used that shielded the Presidency from the usual checks and balances afforded by the legislative and judicial branches.
John David Podesta Jr. is an American political consultant who has served as senior advisor to the president for clean energy innovation and implementation since September 2022. Podesta previously served as White House chief of staff to President Bill Clinton from 1998 to 2001 and counselor to President Barack Obama from 2014 to 2015. Before that, he served in the Clinton administration as White House staff secretary from 1993 to 1995 and White House deputy chief of staff for operations from 1997 to 1998.
Robert Michael Gates is an American intelligence analyst and university president who served as the 22nd United States secretary of defense from 2006 to 2011. He was appointed by President George W. Bush and was retained by President Barack Obama. Gates began his career serving as an officer in the United States Air Force but was quickly recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Gates served for twenty-six years in the CIA and at the National Security Council, and was director of central intelligence under President George H. W. Bush from 1991 to 1993. After leaving the CIA, Gates became president of Texas A&M University and was a member of several corporate boards. Gates served as a member of the Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan commission co-chaired by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton that studied the lessons of the Iraq War.
The National Security Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located on the campus of the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1985 to check rising government secrecy. The National Security Archive is an investigative journalism center, open government advocate, international affairs research institute, and the largest repository of declassified U.S. documents outside the federal government. The National Security Archive has spurred the declassification of more than 15 million pages of government documents by being the leading non-profit user of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), filing a total of more than 70,000 FOIA and declassification requests in its over 35+ years of history.
Charlie Savage is an American author and newspaper reporter with The New York Times. In 2007, when employed by The Boston Globe, he was a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize. He writes about national security legal policy, including presidential power, surveillance, drone strikes, torture, secrecy, leak investigations, military commissions, war powers, and the U.S. war on terrorism prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton is an American politician and diplomat who served as the 67th United States secretary of state in the administration of Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a U.S. senator representing New York from 2001 to 2009, and as the first lady of the U.S. to president Bill Clinton from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party, she was the party's nominee in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, becoming the first woman to win a presidential nomination by a major U.S. political party and the first woman to win the popular vote for U.S. president.
William James "Jim" Haynes II is an American lawyer and was General Counsel of the Department of Defense during much of 43rd President George W. Bush's administration and his war on terror. Haynes resigned as general counsel effective March 2008.
Barack Obama, President of the United States from 2009 to 2017, served as a U.S. senator from Illinois from 2005 to 2008 and as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004. A member of the Democratic Party, he made his presidential run in 2008. He was elected President in 2008 and re-elected in 2012.
"Enhanced interrogation techniques" or "enhanced interrogation" was a program of systematic torture of detainees by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and various components of the U.S. Armed Forces at remote sites around the world—including Bagram, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and Bucharest—authorized by officials of the George W. Bush administration. Methods used included beating, binding in contorted stress positions, hooding, subjection to deafening noise, sleep disruption, sleep deprivation to the point of hallucination, deprivation of food, drink, and medical care for wounds, as well as waterboarding, walling, sexual humiliation, rape, sexual assault, subjection to extreme heat or extreme cold, and confinement in small coffin-like boxes. A Guantanamo inmate's drawings of some of these tortures, to which he himself was subjected, were published in The New York Times. Some of these techniques fall under the category known as "white room torture". Several detainees endured medically unnecessary "rectal rehydration", "rectal fluid resuscitation", and "rectal feeding". In addition to brutalizing detainees, there were threats to their families such as threats to harm children, and threats to sexually abuse or to cut the throat of detainees' mothers.
Jack Landman Goldsmith III is an American legal scholar. He serves as the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he has written extensively in the fields of international law, civil procedure, federal courts, conflict of laws, and national security law. Writing in The New York Times, Jeffrey Rosen described him as being "widely considered one of the brightest stars in the conservative legal firmament".
Barack Obama's tenure as the 44th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 2009, and ended on January 20, 2017. Obama, a Democrat from Illinois, took office following his victory over Republican nominee John McCain in the 2008 presidential election. Four years later, in the 2012 presidential election, he defeated Republican nominee Mitt Romney, to win re-election. Obama is the first African American president, the first multiracial president, the first non-white president, and the first president born in Hawaii. Obama was limited to two terms and was succeeded by Republican Donald Trump, who won the 2016 presidential election.
The term Obama Doctrine is frequently used to describe the principles of US foreign policy under the Obama administration (2009–2017). He relied chiefly on his two highly experienced Secretaries of State—Hillary Clinton (2009–2013) and John Kerry (2013–2017)—and Vice President Joe Biden. Main themes include a reliance on negotiation and collaboration rather than confrontation or unilateralism.
Michael Signer is an American attorney, author, and politician who served as mayor of Charlottesville, Virginia.
Criticism of the United States government encompasses a wide range of sentiments about the actions and policies of the United States.
The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy is the graduate school of international affairs of Tufts University, in Medford, Massachusetts. Fletcher is one of America's oldest graduate schools of international relations and is well-ranked in its masters and doctoral programs. As of 2017, the student body numbered around 230, of whom 36 percent were international students from 70 countries, and around a quarter were U.S. minorities. The school's alumni network numbers over 9,500 in 160 countries, and includes foreign heads of state, ambassadors, diplomats, foreign ministers, high-ranking military officers, heads of nonprofit organizations, and corporate executives.
Benjamin J. Rhodes is an American writer, political commentator and former Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting under President Barack Obama. With Jake Sullivan, he is the co-chair of National Security Action, a political NGO. He contributes to NBC News and MSNBC regularly as a political commentator. He is also a Crooked Media contributor, and co-host of the foreign policy podcast Pod Save the World.
Rajesh "Raj" De is an American lawyer and former U.S. government official who later became the managing partner for the Washington, D.C., office of the law firm Mayer Brown. During the presidency of Barack Obama, he served in three significant government roles—as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy, as White House Staff Secretary, and finally as general counsel of the U.S. National Security Agency.
Michael J. Glennon is professor of international law at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He is the author of National Security and Double Government (2014).
According to an American political conspiracy theory, the deep state is a clandestine network of members of the federal government, working in conjunction with high-level financial and industrial entities and leaders, to exercise power alongside or within the elected United States government.
Planning for the presidential transition of Donald Trump, led by then vice president-elect, former governor Mike Pence of Indiana, began before Donald Trump won the United States presidential election on November 8, 2016, and became the president-elect. Trump was formally elected by the Electoral College on December 19, 2016. The transition was formerly led by Chris Christie until he and a number of his supporters were replaced or demoted on November 11. The results were certified by a joint session of Congress on January 6, 2017, and the transition ended when Trump was inaugurated at noon EST on January 20, 2017.
