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White House photographer Pete Souza's iconic photo of President Barack Obama and top officials watching the raid that eventually killed Osama Bin Laden.Pete Souza/The White House via AP

Multiple outlets reported small conference room where Obama watched the Bin Laden room has been preserved.

But the reports about sending it in its entirety to Obama's library in Chicago aren't true, according to an Obama spokesperson.

The removal came amid a massive $50 million renovation of the White House Situation Room complex.

Correction: September 8, 2023 After this story's publication, a spokesperson for the Obama Foundation sent a statement refuting PBS's reporting. "There are no plans for the Situation Room to be rebuilt at the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago," Courtney D. Williams, the communications director for the Obama Foundation, said in an email. The original story is below.

The small, secured conference room where President Barack Obama watched history unfold as US forces hunted down Osama Bin Laden will be reassembled in Chicago at his presidential center after it was stripped out of the White House earlier this summer, according to multiple reports.

According to PBS, the room was preserved in its entirety and was sent to Chicago. The decision will easily guarantee that the room will join the list of major and weird inclusions at the sites dedicated to immortalizing modern presidents. For example, Reagan's presidential library includes the Air Force One plane that served him and his successors all the way through President George W. Bush.

Obama White House photographer Pete Souza's photo of Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton watching the May 1, 2011 raid is one of the most famous photos of Obama's presidency. Souza's shot was also a rare public look into the Situation Room complex.

The preservation of the room came amid reports about the future of the Situation Room. First started after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the Situation Room is actually a series of secured conference rooms where presidents and their top military advisors and aides can discuss classified national security information. Over the summer, the entire complex was shut down as workers completed a massive $50 million renovation of the entire complex. Reporters from multiple outlets were allowed a rare tour of the classified space.

Obama's presidential library previously made waves by moving to exclude the actual "library" part of the presidential center. Unlike the 13 other presidential libraries operated by the National Archives and Records Administration, the Obama Library aims to be a fully digital facility, meaning there will not be a reading room to examine records on the complex's grounds. It's unclear what the plans are for former President Donald Trump's library given that he is still seeking a second term in office.

Traditionally, taxpayers are only responsible for the library portion of what have become massive presidential centers. A former president's foundation, in this case, the Obama Foundation, runs and operates the museum portion that is filled with artifacts loaned to it by the National Archives.

Obama himself has said that he does not want his center to be an "ego" trip focused solely on the past.

"When Michelle and I started talking about the Presidential Center, we were really firm that what we want to do was create something for the future," he said during a 2017 interview after plans for his center were unveiled.

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The room where Obama watched the Bin Laden raid was stripped out of the White House will not be rebuilt at his Chicago library - Yahoo News

Follow live updates from Googles antitrust trial

A trial to determine if Google abused its monopoly in online search, which begins on Tuesday, is set to lay bare how the internet search giant cemented its power, featuring testimony from top tech executives, engineers, economists and academics.

The trial will unfold in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, where a core group of individuals will command the courtroom and direct the day-to-day legal strategies. Here are the key people to know in U.S. et al. v. Google:

Judge Mehta, who was appointed to the bench in 2014 by President Barack Obama, will referee and decide the case in the nonjury trial.

In more than three years of pretrial hearings, Judge Mehta hasnt tipped his hand on his views of the case. In a proceeding last month, he narrowed the lawsuit by the Justice Department and states while preserving the core argument that Google maintained its monopoly in search through deals with smartphone makers that cut out competitors.

Judge Mehta, 52, was randomly assigned to U.S. et al. v. Google. He may be more familiar with Google than other federal judges, whose average age reached 69 in 2020, according to a study at the time by The Ohio State Law Journal. He received his law degree from the University of Virginia in 1997, a year before Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google.

Judge Mehta previously worked in private practice in San Francisco and Washington, focusing on white-collar criminal defense, complex business disputes and appellate advocacy.

Mr. Kanter, the top antitrust official at the Justice Department, is overseeing the governments case.

President Biden appointed Mr. Kanter, a longtime tech and media lawyer who received his law degree from Washington University in St. Louis, to the Justice Department in July 2021. Mr. Kanter is among a group of progressive Big Tech critics whom Mr. Biden has placed in top government positions for antitrust enforcement. He inherited the Google case from the Trump administration.

Mr. Kanter, 50, is also overseeing a separate antitrust lawsuit against Google in the ad tech market. Google has raised concerns that his history of representing its rivals, including Microsoft and News Corp, makes him biased, and the company has protested his involvement in the ad tech case.

Its unclear how often Mr. Kanter will appear in court. Doha Mekki, the Justice Departments principal deputy assistant attorney general, and Hetal Doshi, the deputy assistant attorney general for antitrust, have helped quarterback the lawsuit and will be in the courtroom daily.

Mr. Dintzer, a 30-year veteran of the Justice Department, will give opening statements and is leading the governments case in the courtroom.

A graduate of the University of Michigan law school, Mr. Dintzer, 59, was assigned to the Google case during the Trump administration. He has argued in pretrial hearings before Judge Mehta that Google destroyed instant messages depriving the department of a rich source of candid discussions between Googles executives, including likely trial witnesses.

He has worked on antitrust cases in the past, including the Justice Departments lawsuit to block AT&Ts proposed merger with T-Mobile in 2011. The companies eventually dropped the deal.

Mr. Weiser is overseeing a coalition of 38 state and other attorneys generals that joined the Justice Department in its search lawsuit.

Mr. Weiser, 55, a former deputy assistant attorney general of antitrust at the Justice Department for the Obama administration, has been a vocal critic of big tech companies for stifling competition. After graduating from New York University Law School, he became a counsel to Joel Klein, the Justice Departments head of antitrust during the agencys Microsoft monopoly lawsuit in the 1990s. He didnt work directly on the case but said in an interview that it had influenced him.

Mr. Weiser has picked Jonathan Sallet, a former deputy head of antitrust at the Justice Department, and William Cavanaugh, a lawyer at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler and a former Justice Department official, as the lead litigators for the states.

Mr. Pichai, the chief executive of Google, is widely expected to testify during the trial.

He joined Google in 2004 as a product management leader of Chrome and other tools, and was named chief executive in August 2015.

A measured and calm speaker who has at times been called boring, Mr. Pichai, 51, was largely unruffled when testifying in congressional hearings over content moderation and antitrust in recent years. That may serve him well in the trial.

Googles founders, Mr. Page and Mr. Brin, arent expected to be called as witnesses. But the Justice Department and Google are likely to call other tech executives to testify, including Eddy Cue, Apples senior vice president of services, to discuss the companys search deals with Google.

Mr. Walker, Googles president of global affairs and chief legal counsel, is overseeing the companys defense.

Mr. Walker, 62, received his law degree from Stanford and joined Google in 2006. He led Googles policy and legal strategy through an antitrust investigation by the Federal Trade Commission that began in 2009. The agency decided not to proceed with a lawsuit after the company agreed to some changes.

Mr. Walker is overseeing a big team of in-house and outside lawyers and will be in and out of the courtroom. Googles daily legal representative in the courtroom, who has supervised strategy on the case, is Lara Kollios, a director in regulatory response and investigations.

Mr. Schmidtlein, a co-chair of antitrust at Williams & Connolly, is Googles lead lawyer in the courtroom.

Google has turned to lawyers like Mr. Schmidtlein, 57, who fought against Microsoft in antitrust cases two decades ago, to defend it in court. In 2002, Mr. Schmidtlein represented states that sued Microsoft for using its dominance in Windows software to block rival media players.

Mr. Schmidtlein, who received his law degree from Georgetown University, also has a long track record working for tech companies. This year, he helped Amazon defeat an antitrust lawsuit that consumers brought against its logistics practices.

Googles litigation team also includes Susan Creighton, a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati who represented Netscape in the governments 1998 antitrust suit against Microsoft, and Mark Popofsky, a partner at Ropes & Gray who was a senior counsel to the Justice Department in that suit against Microsoft.

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Whos Who in the Google Antitrust Trial - The New York Times

Vince Staples fired off a timely drone joke in response to the latest appearance of a man widely referred to as a con artist whos again trying to revive unsubstantiated claims about former POTUS Barack Obama.

The individual in question, Larry Sinclair, recently spoke with former Fox News shill Tucker Carlson (who else?) for an interview in which he purported to have done cocaine with a person introduced to me as Barack Obamaa peculiar way of wording that should be notedin 1999. Sinclair further purported, without evidence, to have had sex with this person and to have witnessed them smoke crack.

Before we go any further, its always worth pointing out that cocaine and crack are the same substance, pharmacologically speaking. The separation of the two, of course, is merely part of an unjust war on drugs-related federal push known for facilitating extreme sentencing disparities and racist policies. The Fox News crowd eats that kind of shit up, so its no surprise to see Carlson and Sinclair trying to get more mileage out of it.

As Staples pointed out in a tweet on Tuesday in response to homophobic meanderings spurred by the Carlson teaser, its actually the crack aspect of Sinclairs statements that make this all top tier smut against the president.

I hope Barry drone this n***a, Staples wrote in one tweet.

In another, he added, "Yall focused on the wrong things he tried to put the crack rock on Obama."

For readers who were around for the 2008 presidential election, Sinclairs name likely rings a bell.As highlighted in a recent Media Matters piece from Matt Gertz, Sinclair previously failed a polygraph and even reportedly claimed terminal illness in a 2004 affidavit. As this article makes clear, Sinclair is still alive. As reported by Politico during the initial (and almost exclusively conspiracy sites-oriented) round of coverage surrounding Sinclair, his then "27-year criminal record" included multiple forgery-related charges.

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Vince Staples Jokes Obama Should Drone Man After Unsubstantiated Sex and Coke Claims in Tucker Carlson Video - Yahoo Entertainment

Explainer

19:10

by Oliver Bateman

The prince of the American Right has become a court jester. Credit: Tucker Carlson/X

Whats old is new again. In a move that underscores his continued trajectory from traditional conservative pundit to voice of populist outrage to social media provocateur, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson is now interviewing figures on the periphery of credibility, such as manosphere influencer Andrew Tate and Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy. Tonight, hes taking it a step further by speaking to Larry Sinclair, a man notorious for making unverified claims that he engaged in a drug-fuelled sexual encounter with former president Barack Obama in 1999.

Carlson teased this forthcoming interview on X. The promo clip featured Sinclair rehashing an old story about giving Obama $250 for drugs before they had a sexual encounter. In a bold move, Carlson deemed Sinclairs account to be credible information that [Obama is] smoking crack and having sex with dudes providing his interviewee with the biggest platform of his career in the process. Yet Sinclairs allegations have never been substantiated. His credibility is further marred by a lengthy criminal record, which includes convictions related to forgery, fraud and larceny. He even once claimed to be terminally ill, likely as a strategy to have an arrest warrant dismissed.

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By choosing to interview Sinclair and resuscitating decade-old theories once peddled by Jerome Corsi, Carlson appears to be trading intellectual rigour for sensationalism.Although these topics may excite a certain faction on the Right, theyre fundamentally recycled and unimportant tales that reveal more about Carlsons willingness to capitalise on controversy than they do about the state of American politics.

The evolution of Carlson from a bridge between traditional Republican orthodoxy and the burgeoning populist Right to his current persona is both striking and indicative of the broader shifts within conservative media. Once wearing the bowtie of establishment conservatism, Carlson was a figure who could comfortably navigate the worlds of both policy wonks and grassroots activists. His critiques of globalism, immigration, and the liberal elites had elements that could resonate across party lines, opening up conversations that had bipartisan relevance.

However, this previous image of him as a political intermediary seems to be fading into the rearview mirror. In its place is a provocateur who increasingly trades in National Enquirer-style sensationalism. The change isnt just cosmetic, involving the occasional wearing of flannel shirts and working in a woodshop: it signals a shift in focus from presenting issues of legitimate public concern to resurrecting salacious tabloid stories that were debunked or broadly dismissed years ago. The line between respectable journalism and gossip-mongering has not just been blurred: for Carlson, it appears in danger of being completely erased.

Whats particularly interesting is how this transformation is received by his viewership. For the based Right a faction that appreciates audacity and often eschews political correctness Carlsons latest antics may be a welcome development (save for those who believe he is an op, discrediting fringe stories by presenting them in ridiculous ways).

But this new tack seems more like a play to the lowest common denominator than a genuine attempt to enlighten the public discourse. By choosing to air interviews with fringe figures peddling old, discredited rumours, Carlson no stranger to evolving to grow his brand is completely embracing commercially-oriented opportunism. Its a move designed to draw eyes and clicks, not to encourage serious reflection on the state of American society or its politics.

While the presenters shift may be personally profitable in the short term, one cannot help but feel pessimistic about the prospects for political discourse in general and populism in America specifically. Carlson, who presented himself as a peoples champion during the peak of his Fox-era celebrity, now seems to be a free agent more interested in chasing engagement by any means necessary.

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Tucker Carlson's Obama interview is a conspiracy too far - UnHerd

Tafari Campbell, who was the Obama familys personal chef, drowned accidentally more than a month ago. But conspiracy theories and rumors linger online that cast aspersions on the former president.

"Barack Obamas late chefs wife comes out to expose Obama family," a video caption on a Sept. 1 Facebook post says.

But the video doesnt address a supposed "exposure." In fact, it doesnt mention Campbell or his wife at all.

This post was flagged as part of Metas efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

Rather than elaborating on the allegation that Campbells widow recently exposed the Obama family, the videos narrator delves into an old debunked claim that the late comedian, Joan Rivers, was killed after she made comments about former President Barack Obamas sexuality and former first lady Michelle Obamas gender identity.

Neither Obama was home when Campbell was seen July 23 struggling in the water while paddleboarding near the familys Martha Vineyards summer home off the Massachusetts coast.

The Massachusetts chief medical examiner ruled Campbells drowning death accidental.

We found no evidence or news reports that Campbells wife has exposed the family in any way or blamed the Obamas for her late husbands death.

On the Instagram account of her baking and catering business, she wrote July 25: "My heart is broken. My life and our familys life is forever changed. Please pray for our families as I deal with the loss of my husband."

We rate this post False.

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Tafari Campbells widow didnt expose the Obama family, contrary to ... - PolitiFact