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Three years after Barack and Michelle Obamas official portraits were unveiled at the Smithsonians National Portrait Gallery, the paintings have arrived at the Art Institute of Chicago, where the former President and First Lady had their very first date.

On display there through mid-August, the artworks by Brooklyn-based Kehinde Wiley and Baltimore-based Amy Sherald the first Black artists to be included in the National Portrait Gallery have drawn millions of visitors, with Sheralds portrait of Michelle Obama even inspiring Halloween costumes that year.

To commemorate the Chicago homecoming, the former First Lady and Sherald took part in a virtual conversation hosted by the Institute and moderated by Thelma Golden, the director and chief curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem. Reflecting on the artists interview process, which included personal visits to the Oval Office to speak with the couple, Obama said it must have been a little intimidating.

She and the President kept an open mind about who would paint their portraits until Amy walked in, she said. The artist and the First Lady appear to have clicked almost immediately.

The more she talked, the more she and I just started connecting ... Barack kind of disappeared from the conversation, she said with a laugh. Her presence, her aura is something that I connected with immediately, she explained, though she also noted the strength of her talent, creativity and purpose.

Though both Sherald and Baracks portraitist Wiley deal with the representation of Black figures in a historically White portrait tradition, Wileys depiction of the President was filled with verdant greenery and vibrant tones, while Sheralds take on the First Lady was more muted. Against a robin egg blue background, she painted her skin tones in grisaille, or grayscale; shes known for the technique in order to exclude the idea of color as race, as she has been quoted as saying.

I honestly had never even considered painting Barack. In my mind, it was like, Im going to paint Mrs. Obama, Sherald said in the recorded conversation. I think that Id never been more ready for that moment. I feel like everything Ive done in my life was to prepare me for that moment.

Telling the full story

When it came to choosing the dress that Obama would wear for the photo shoot that Sherald used as the basis of the painting, the artist and the First Ladys stylist, Meredith Koop, settled on a grid-patterned black and white Milly dress with accents of pink, yellow and red. Though there was no direct connection, Sherald saw a visual resemblance to the famed Gees Bend quilts made by a community of Black women in rural Alabama.

I realized that I had the opportunity for the whole painting to tell a story, and I wanted to be able to ground you, not only in art history and within the history of the United States, but within Black history too, Sherald told Obama.

Since painting the portrait, Sherald has become one of the most famous contemporary figurative painters, though her impact has stretched beyond the art world.

I remember visiting a school in Baltimore and walking into the art room, and the level of excitement was stunning, Sherald recalled. I might as well have been Jay-Z when I walked into that classroom.

During the virtual talk, the former First Lady also discussed her personal connection to the art world, and what the portrait has meant to her and her family.

Not many people know that my father was a budding artist and he had an opportunity to take some courses at the Art Institute, Obama said of her late father, Fraser Robinson. Now, like a lot of Black men his age, he didnt have the resources to invest and build a career in that area. He had to put down his paints and his clay and support his family.

She also revealed that one night, after the National Portrait Gallery had closed, the Obamas took their daughters and Michelles mother to see the paintings in the empty museum. (It was) quiet and (I was) watching my mom, Marian Robinson, sit at the base of my portrait and look up at it with such a level of awe, she recalled. And for me, watching her see me in that way meant the world to me.

The portraits are embarking on a five-city national tour until May 2022. After leaving the Art Institute of Chicago, they will head to the Brooklyn Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Atlantas High Museum of Art and The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.

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The Obama portraits are on display at the site of their first date - The Philadelphia Tribune

An MSNBC anchor,who will remain nameless,recently called the new book by Ben Rhodes, who served as Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser, "dark" inits descriptionof where our nation's democracy finds itself today. Rhodes's book, "After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made," is actually not dark.It's just a brutally honest look at where our nation is heading. Everything Rhodes writes, and everything he sharedin our Salon Talks conversation, should be seen both a warning and a clarion call to action for those who believe in our republic.

In defense of that MSNBC anchor, many people still don't fully grasp the nature of thethreat democracyfaces today. Not just from Donald Trump, but more broadly from today's Republican Party,which, as Rhodes and other experts have documented, have been embracing the autocratic playbook long before Trump slithered down that famous goldenescalator to launch his 2016 campaign. It's just that Trump made it impossible to ignore, especially given the Jan6 act of "domestic terrorism," as the FBI has defined it, andwhich himself Trump incited.

As experts on democracy noted in the fall of 2020, the GOP now lessresembledan American political party than it does theauthoritarian ruling party in Hungary headed by Viktor Orbn.Indeed, in his book, Rhodes lays out how Orbn's right-wing party and today's Republicans utilizesimilar methods to attract support, from culture wars to the rejection of political correctness to an overt embrace of a right-wing interpretation of Christianity.As Rhodes explains, "None of this happened because of Donald Trump."

Rhodes also detailed how other authoritarian regimes,such as Russia and China,mandate teaching students not the accurate history of their nation but a mythology that helps them remain in power.This should sound familiar, since Republicans haverecently been enacting laws to ban"critical race theory," but what they're truly doing is copying the Chinese Communist Party tactic of only allowing the teaching of "history" that helps them politically.

Rhodes said something that has stayed with me since our talk:For the first time in his life he had "to consider what it meant to be an American while living in a country that no longer made sense to me." I share that sentiment. Neither of us isbeing "dark."We are simply being direct about where our nation finds itself.

Watch my Salon Talks episode with Ben Rhodeshere, or read a transcriptof our conversation below, lightly edited for length and clarity.

"After the Fall." It's intense. You went to several continents to write this, and it was written over four years, up until the pandemic. Share a little bit about that.

Yeah.Well, it's not enjoyable. The subject matter is why things are moving in the wrong direction in the world. But I hope what's enjoyable is it's told through the stories of other people. It's not just analysis. And the root of it for me essentially was, I was kind of knocked on my back after the 2016 election. I wanted tomake sense of what's happening in America, what's happening around the world. And I started to travel and meet people. I ended up going to Hong Kong and immersing myself with the Hong Kong protest movement there, talking to Alexei Navalny and opponents of Putin in Russia, talking to democracy activists in places like Hungary. And through their stories, trying to understand: Whyis the world all moving in this direction, and how is America connected to it?

The jumping off point for me was when I was meeting with a young anti-corruption activist from Hungary. Hungary has gone from being a democracy to a single-party autocracy in a decade. And I said, "Hey, how did this happen? How did Viktor Orbn, your prime minister, do this in 10 years?" And he said, "Well, it's simple. He got elected on a right-wing populist backlash to the financial crisis. He redrew the parliamentary districts to entrench his party in power. He changed the voting laws to make it easier for his supporters to vote. He packed the court with far-right judges. He enriched some cronies who then bought up the media and turned it into a right wing propaganda machine. And he wrapped it up in a national us vs. them message. Us, the real Hungarians, against them Muslims, immigrants, liberal leaders, George Soros."

And I'm listening and I'm thinking, "Well, he's describing America." So what I realized is, by traveling to all these places and kind of inhabiting all these stories, I can understand not just why democracy is threatened globally, but why it's threatened in the United States, what we may have done to contribute to that, and what people aredoing to fight back?

You have a great line, "In 2017, I was forced for the first time to consider what it meant to be an American while living in a country that no longer made sense to me." From your point of view, why didn't Americamake sense to you at that moment?

It's interesting because I mean, for me, that line also speaks to the fact that I've known people who live in countries where they're repulsed by their own government. They don't see themselves in the power that represents them. But even though I didn't agree with the Bush administration, it wasn't the same kind of visceral reaction that you have to someone like Trump, where you're like, "This person stands for the opposite of everything I believe in, and he's in the highest office." Apart of what I had to realize in writing this book is thatI came of age around the end of the Cold War. That's where my first political consciousness happened. And the narrative was that everything was moving in one direction. The history was settled that freedom and democracy and open markets were going to kind of continue to spread.

What we've experienced since then is the recognition that, "Well, no. History never ends." And the same conflicts over nationalism versus democracy, authoritarianism versus the capacity of people to have individual rights, those things are constantly playing themselves out through history. We're fighting those battles today, just like people have had to do in the past. While America doesn't offer the promise that that's all settled, it at least gives us the opportunity to have the fight. But it speaks to why we can't be complacent, given the threats to our democracy around us.

Your former boss and your good friendBarack Obamawas on CNNtalking about how democracy is not self-executing, and informing us you can't take things for granted. Oddly enough, thatconjured up Ronald Reagan's famous line, "Freedom is just one generation away." The idea we'll be telling our children one day what freedom was like.

And if Ronald Reagan were alive today, might say the same things, if he was not part of TrumpWorld. Freedom House says Hungary is no longer a democracy.At one point it was. Where do you think we're sliding, objectively as a nation and in terms of our government now? Not so muchunder Biden, but when you look at the Republican states and their continuing effort to make it harder to vote, to suppress peaceful protests, to ban what kids can learn in school unless it fits their mythology, which I can't believe. If you read about it in another country, you'd go, "That's not a democracy. That's some kind of authoritarian and fascist state." What is going on?

One of the things I did was to tracehow the Chinese government has gotten even more authoritarian over the last several decades. And one of the principalways was beginning tocontrol the curriculum in the schools. We have to recognize these kind of common tactics of authoritarianism in different places. You mentioned Obama. He's kind of a character in this book. He comes in and out of these conversations we've been having. And I relayed the eerie timing. He gave a speech to the Democratic convention, as people may remember, where he said, "Don't let them take your power away. Democracy is on the line here." I describe watching that speech and then I'm looking at my phone and getting the news thatAlexei Navalny, the opponent to Putin inRussia, has been poisoned. And in a way, that kind of drove home the stakes, that the extreme darkness where this strain can lead was evident in what happened to Navalny.

I think the takeaway from this book is, you've got people like Orbn, who kind of represent how nationalism has gotten a foothold again all over the world. People like Putin, who represent the lengths that autocrats are going to in the world today, the kind of steadily escalating behavior that we see on a regular basis from authoritarians. And then you look at China, and they have an alternative way of organizing society. That's kind of where the future is going, where youblend together capitalism and technology with this reallytotalitarian and intrusive government. America was the one force that was supposed to figure this out, to set an example of multiracial, multiethnic democracy.

And when you talk to people in all these other places and ask,"What do you need from America?" It's less our foreign policy and more like, what are we modeling at home? What are we doing?When you see people methodically passing laws, trying to prevent people from voting, whenyou see peoplemethodically trying to set the premise that elected officials could actually overturn a democratic election.

If America can't get it right, then I don't think anybody else can. Not because we're perfect, not because we're so much better than everybody, but because we're supposed to be the place that, again, figured out how to do this. And we're the country made up of people from everywhere. So I think the stakes are incredibly high and they're going to stay high. Joe Biden's election obviously didn't end this. The stakes are going to stay high for a few years here.

Florida just banned critical race theory, even though they don't use that term. We've seen more than20 Republican states introduce legislation to ban a topic because they don't like it. You touched briefly on China and authoritarianism and education. How was that intertwined? Why should people be concerned this is not just culture-war stuff, where you can roll your eyes at it?

Here's why, Dean. I wrote about Viktor Orbn in Hungary, and his efforts to control the past. I mean, autocrats always want to determine how people understand the past to suit their politics and the present. And what Orbn did, on everything from statues to curriculum Hungary in the20th centuryhad a bad right-wing history and a left-wing history. On the left, we had the excesses of the communist regime after World War II. But you also had Nazi collaborators. You had a far-right movement in Hungary. They collaborated with the Holocaust. Orbnhas slowly been whitewashing that history and he's been elevating the nationalist history of Hungary. And what does that do? It whitewashes understanding where certain kinds of politics go.

The kind of far-right turn Orbn's taken, history should teach us that leads to bad places. That leads to repression, that leads to conflict. Here in the United States, it's so important to understand the full dimensions of our history. In part, so that you understand just how dark a place white supremacy can lead, or an us vs,themxenophobic politics can lead. If you're whitewashing that stuff, then the expressions of white nationalism we see around us, people have not had the context for why that's so damaging and so dangerous. Obviously, it shouldn't happen anyway, but part of this is the guardrails. So what do you learn from history about what not to do? Partof that is learning the history of how people overcome those things and how you better a society.

And where I end this book is saying that American identity is supposed to be,not that we were born perfect, but that in America we do the work. It's about trying to live up to the story that we tell about ourselves. So in every way, shapeor form, banning critical race theory and trying to look away from the darkest parts of our past, that makes it more likely to happen again in the future. And it actually negates what I think is the better American story, which is that those things happened and people tried to make it better.

I find it alarming that we're seeing the people who claim they want academic freedom, who say they despise "cancel culture," have no problem literally defunding school. The Idaho law is to defundschools if they teach you about systemic racism. I find this deeplydistressing.

I mean, this is why I ended up having the subtitle of this book "Being American in the World We've Made." What the "Being American" refers to is thatwe have to figure out what our national identity is. That's not settled. I think the reason why you see such intensity in our politics right now isthat people can sensethat's kind of what's being debated right now. And by the way,thistoois something that's happening everywhere. It's a common political trend. But the reality is, when you hear, "Make America Great Again" when only certain people were in certain rooms and had certain amounts of power and thenthey're looking at a future where this is going to be a majority nonwhite nation, unless they arrest immigration entirely.

Which is part of what Donald Trump was trying to do, in the relatively near future. Is it a coincidence that the Republican Party is trying to entrench itself through minority rule, essentiallyleveraging the courts and the Senate and voting laws and other things, right when that demographic shift is taking place? I'm not sure that's a coincidence.One of the points I make in the book is that, in a way, we've always lived this competition.And Trump and Obama kind of represent them perfectly in opposition to one another. Is America's story of progress and greater inclusivity and extension more rights to more people? Or is it "We want to wind back the clock," and this is an exclusively white Christian nation that is only for some?

We've been living these two lives throughout our history. I mean, the Declaration of Independence says that"All men are created equal," bit it was written by a guy who owned slaves. At every step of progress, there's been a reaction. So I think that is happening right now, and that speaks to onereasonwhy the political debate is so intense right now.

Initially, President Biden kept talking about, "America's always been a push and pull between these two forces." He's right. We're seeing it now. Maybe it's not that new, what's going on, it just seems more intense because I'm living through it as an adult who follows politics closely.

Yeah,I think the stakes are higher right now. Again, part of why I wrote this book is because one reasonwhy the stakes are higher is that this is happening all around the world right now,and things are moving in the wrong direction. I mean, while I'm writing this book, the Hong Kong protest movement that I was kind of profiling, gets swallowed up essentiallyby the Chinese Communist Party. Alexei Navalnygets poisoned and put in prison. America has Jan.6.This is happening and it's not a coincidence. It's happening because there is this kind of drift towards nationalism and authoritarianism, for a lot of reasons that I described in the book.

I focus on the 30-year period after the Cold War. I feel like the Cold War was one particular period where America wasn't perfect, but we were for freedom and the Soviets were for the other thing, for communism and dictatorship. Then you have this 30-year period of American dominance. Trump clearly was a bit of a pivot point. Now we have to decide who we're going to be next. I think that's a very hotly contested question right now.

You write about the way the GOP became the one we see today, and you say,"None of this happened because of Donald Trump."Share a little bit more aboutthat idea.

Well, it's kind of the mirror image of that story I told about Hungary. I know people can go back and look at Newt Gingrich and look atthe things that Bush did. But this particular virulent strain of the Republican Party, I'd have the starting point be the Tea Party. And if you make it the mirror image of what happened in Hungary, the collapse of the financial system in 2008 generated a lot of anger and a sense of grievance,like, "Hey, this whole system is just kind of rigged." People, I think, were open to different kinds of appeals than they might've listened to in the past. You get all this anger and then you compound thapwith the fact that there's a Black President, and there's clearly a racialized component.

The Tea Party demonstrations, they're chanting, "Take our country back," and we're being told that it's about deficit spending. I'm not sure you "take your country back" because you're concerned about the deficit. But it breeds this kind of new andmuch more belligerent Republican Party, the people who got elected there. And at the same time, you have Citizens United, which takes away any guardrails on dark money in politics. So this kind of bottom-up anger is being fueled by a lot of top-down money from people like the Koch brothers, who are just dumping money into politics,at the same time that you have Republicans getting much more aggressive in passing voter suppression laws. I talkabout this in the book, there were like 25 passed at the state level while Barack Obama was president. The Supreme Court that the Republicans had designed guts the voting rights legislation, which allows those sorts of suppression laws to go forward and have a greater impact.

At every turn, the Republicans are busting norms and not even confirming a Supreme Court justiceif they'renominated by a Democrat. And by the time Trump rides down the escalator at Trump tower, he was the logical nominee. Of course he was the nominee. He was the frontrunner from the time he came down. Because the other thing that happened in this period was that with the collapse of traditional media, you have not just Fox Newsbut the explosion of Facebook and people getting fed, just on talk radio and online, more and moreconspiracy theory-based garbage about what's happening in the world, about Barack Obama, about Democrats.

So by the time Trump comes down the escalator, he's like the product of that. It's like suddenlythe Fox News viewer is the head of the party. And ever since then, at every turn, people are surprised when the Republicans take the dark path. "Oh, my gosh, I can't believe that they still believe the Big Lie. They won't even have a commission." Well, of course. Who do you think these people are? They've been telling you who they are for the last decade.

What do we do? Near the end of your book, you write, "We live in a time when the world is emerging into a single history, and we can feel the currents of that history moving in thewrong direction." So how do we move this in the right direction?

I have lessons that I took away from all these people I talked to around the world.What are people doing that is working in different places? One thing for instance, in Hungary, is for the first time there's an election next year. They do have elections. Orbn dominates the media. It makes it hard for people but the opposition has their first real chance of beating him. And one of the reasons why is they've completely united. They've said, "Look, we have differences, but everything is on the line here. We're just going to put a big tent over all of our differences and we have to win this election." And I profile a young person who started a political party, but it's a very strange kind of polyglot coalition. But that's one lesson for us too, because part of what autocrats need to do is keep the opposition divided,apathetic or cynical.

I think we have to stay, despite all our differences, from the center to the left in our country. On the core things, particularly when it comes time to vote, people need to be absolutely united because there are more of us than them. If we vote and don't give up and don't get apathetic and stay with this, we will win. So one of those things is unity. Another is, if you look at even failed movements, like the Hong Kong protest movement, movements fail and fail and fail until they succeed. And they usually succeed in a big waywhen they do. They create a kind of culture around democratic participation and a culture around standing up for your rights. This can't be leftjust to politicians. Joe Biden alone can't fix this.

I think we need that kind of whole-of-society commitment to democracyas well. If you look at Navalny, the reason he was such a sore spot for Putin, the reason he's in prison, is that he'd found this huge vulnerability in exposing Putin's corruption. I think corruption is a common thread between all these autocratic movements, includingthe Republican Party.Because a lot of those voters that supported Trump are angry at a corrupt system. This is why Trump always talks about the "deep state."

Trump always talks about the system being rigged, but he is the ultimate beneficiary of the system. He's a white guy, a fake billionairewho can do whatever he wants, who's fabulously corrupt. We need to continue to drive home the message to some of those Obama-Trump voters about the absolute corruption of a political party that speaks one language and then just shovels tax cuts to corporations and breaks the rules themselves all the time. I thinkthat's the most potent argument we have to make.The last thing I'd say, though,is that the bigger structural problem is that the reason people are having an insurrection at the Capitol on Jan.6, the reason people believe in QAnon, is because of the radicalization that's happening online. We have to get our arms around that in this country, social media and disinformation.I'd like to see the Biden team take that on more. Because so long as our entire media is structured to mainline rage and conspiracy theories to people, we're going to be in this spot.

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Obama aide Ben Rhodes on the global crisis of democracy: It's real, and we have to fight back - Salon

What does a shift in rules for fair housing practices say about the Biden administrations approach to controversial education issues?

Moves by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to bring back Obama administration rules provides insight into how the Biden administration will likely approach key K-12 issues, including guidance about racial disparities in school discipline. Its also connected to broader debates about segregation in education.

And the move underscores how little certainty teachers as well as state and local education officials have about the federal policy and regulatory front beyond a few years.

Heres the backstory: In 2013, the Obama administration introduced a rule under the Fair Housing Act that effectively made it easier for plaintiffs to seek legal redress for discriminatory housing practices, regardless of whether the intent of certain practices was intentionally discriminatory. This focuses on the disparate impact of policies on different groups, regardless of the motivation behind them.

In 2020, the Trump administration finalized its own rule about disparate impact in housing policy that departed significantly from the 2013 rule by shifting more of the legal burden back onto plaintiffs. (A judges subsequent ruling blocked the Trump rule from taking effect.)

That shift came amid former President Donald Trumps big push to win suburban voters, who he said would be harmed by then-candidate Joe Bidens support for high-density housing.

As we reported last year, Trumps rhetoric that Biden would destroy the Suburban Lifestyle Dream was met with outrage from those who said his rhetoric was rooted in race and class prejudices that damaged education for students of color. Alongside that sentiment was skepticism that some who declared opposition to Trumps position would support greater racial integration in their own neighborhoods and schools.

Now the Biden administration has proposed bringing back the 2013 Obama rule. Facially neutral practices that have an unjustified discriminatory effect on the basis of a protected characteristic, regardless of intent, violate the [Fair Housing Act], the Department of House and Urban Development wrote last last month in background material explaining its move to recodify the rule from eight years ago.

Bidens Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Marcia Fudge, by the way, was a champion of school integration policies when she served as an Democratic congresswoman from Ohio.

A separate Obama-era housing rule from 2015 is also making a comeback under Biden, although there the situation is less straightforward.

That 2015 rule required state and local governments to demonstrate how their policies were complying with HUD rules meant to break down residential barriers to fair housing access, among other information, in order to receive certain Housing and Urban Development grants. As one analysis put it, the rule did not mandate any outcomes or require governments to amend their zoning laws or build affordable housing or take other actions.

You likely wont be surprised to read at this point that the Trump administration suspended and then scrapped Obamas 2015 rule. We found it to be unworkable and ultimately a waste of time for localities to comply with, too often resulting in funds being steered away from communities that need them most, Ben Carson, Trumps HUD Secretary, said in 2020 when he announced his decision to terminate the 2015 rule.

Although the Biden administration announced an interim final rule last month reviving Obamas 2015 policy, the Washington Post noted that Bidens rule would remove the Obama-era requirement for governments to submit plans to HUD explaining how they would address residential segregation.

In housing, of course, racial discrimination has a long and ugly history with lasting consequences for the segregation of American schools. To the extent federal policy can affect housing, there are obviously downstream effects on the demographic makeup of schools that experts say are tied to patterns in K-12 funding and other issues. But theres also a connection to other education policy decisions from the Biden administration.

The focus on disparate impact was at the heart of the Obama Education Departments guidance intended to address racial disparities in school discipline policies, irrespective of any demonstrable bias or prejudice on the part of educators. Its become one of the most contentious issues in education civil rights circles.

Following the Trump administrations 2018 school safety report from the administration spurred by the school shootings in Parkland, Fla., that called for an end to that guidance, Trumps Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos rescinded it.

In early June, the Biden administration said it will revisit the issue of racial equity in school discipline. That could be a prelude to a revival of the Obama discipline guidance, something Biden pledged to do during his 2020 presidential campaign, although what precise form any such comeback would take remains to be seen.

Separately, the Biden administration announced in June that LGBTQ students are protected by federal anti-discrimination law, an issue where Trump took the opposite view.

As numerous courts have recognized, a schools policy or actions that treat gay, lesbian, or transgender students differently from other students may cause harm, Bidens Education Department notice said explaining its interpretation of the law.

Biden officials have also started a review of federal protections from sex discrimination for students. That review could lead to the reversal of a Trump administration rule finalized last year governing how schools must address sexual misconduct under Title IX.

As one expert on Title IX enforcement put it in an recent Education Week interview, school officials are sort of a little punch drunk in a way from how political shifts inside the Beltway have affected their work.

Many federal agencies beyond the Education Department and HUD have significant influence on K-12 education in ways that often dont attract tons of attention.

Original post:
How Biden's Revival of Obama Housing Rules Connects to Divisive Issues in Schools - Education Week

Does the Biden administration plan to strengthen trans-Atlantic relations apply to all of Europe, or only to Berlin and Brussels?Thats a question the Poles, among others, are asking. Recently, Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau gave an interview to the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita on the state of U.S.-Polish relations under U.S. President Joe Biden. In short: Theyre not good. When asked how he learned about Bidens decision to forgo sanctions on Nord Stream 2the Baltic pipeline that Warsaw and Washington have fought for years to stopRau replied: From the media. Our American allies did not find time to consult with the region most exposed to the consequences of that decision.

Raus criticism will come as a revelation to much of the U.S. media and foreign-policy commentariat, for whom it is received wisdom that Biden is overseeing a comprehensive resuscitation of trans-Atlantic relations following four years of supposed neglect by former President Donald Trump.

Does the Biden administration plan to strengthen trans-Atlantic relations apply to all of Europe, or only to Berlin and Brussels?Thats a question the Poles, among others, are asking. Recently, Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau gave an interview to the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita on the state of U.S.-Polish relations under U.S. President Joe Biden. In short: Theyre not good. When asked how he learned about Bidens decision to forgo sanctions on Nord Stream 2the Baltic pipeline that Warsaw and Washington have fought for years to stopRau replied: From the media. Our American allies did not find time to consult with the region most exposed to the consequences of that decision.

Raus criticism will come as a revelation to much of the U.S. media and foreign-policy commentariat, for whom it is received wisdom that Biden is overseeing a comprehensive resuscitation of trans-Atlantic relations following four years of supposed neglect by former President Donald Trump.

In reality, U.S. ties with many European allies dont need resuscitation. In fact, many of these relationships significantly improved under Trump following years of neglect under the Obama administration. Biden now risks repeating his Democratic predecessors mistake of conflating Europe with Germany and the European Union leadership in Brussels, while consigning other strategically important European allies to the back of the bus.

The problem is especially pressing for Poland, because its geography makes it very sensitive to shifts in U.S.-Russian relations. Rau notes in his interview that the decision not to sanction Nord Stream 2, which runs from Russia to Germany, came on the cusp of Bidens meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The administration also block[ed] a NATO-Ukraine summit, Rau said, presumably to create space for its opening to Russia. He could have added that the U.S. Defense Departments latest aid package for Ukraine, announced just days before the Biden-Putin meeting, inexplicably omitted Javelin anti-tank missilesthe same weapons the Democrats demanded Trump provide to Ukraine as proof that he was willing to stand up to Putin. Poles might also wonder: Will Biden reverse Trumps buildup of U.S. troops in Poland as well?

But Poland is not the only country with questions about Bidens focus in Europe. With the exception of Germany, most of Central Europe was treated as flyover territory during the Obama years and now risks returning to that status. Then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry went to France 34 times but made zero trips to Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, or the Czech Republic. In his 11 trips to Vienna, primarily to meet with the Iranians and the Russians, Kerry never found time for a state visit to Austria itself. Compare this to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who devoted considerable attention to Austria and the Visegrad countriesPoland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. In the case of Slovakia, Pompeo was the first secretary of state to visit in 20 years. During the same period, senior Chinese and Russian officials assiduously cultivated their countries influence in these places.

The Trump administration didnt just rectify this imbalance; it brought concrete projects to advance U.S. interests. Its recapitalization of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and support for the Three Seas Initiative created alternatives to Chinese and Russian investment; Pompeos Clean Network initiative to counter the Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei enlisted all but one of the 27 EU member states; and a deepening of ties with often overlooked partners, such as Austria, helped gain their support for U.S. goals in the Balkans and elsewhere. Will that continue? Will countries like the Czech Republic, whose government took political risks supporting Trumps push against Huawei, find their relations downgraded under Biden in the same way that Obama downgraded them for their previously close relationship with former President George W. Bush?

The problems with Bidens approach reach far beyond Central Europe. Consider Greece and Cyprus. Both countries saw U.S. administrations since the mid-1970s shrink from deepening ties for fear of upsetting Turkey. This changed dramatically with Trumps Eastern Mediterranean strategy, which upgraded U.S. defense ties with Greece and ended the ban on security aid to Cyprus. Or Spain and Portugal, both of which saw intensified U.S. commercial diplomacy that culminated in these two countries rebuffing Chinese plans for 5G wireless network infrastructure and expanding trade with the United Statesby around 40 percent in Portugals case. Or take strategically important Norway, whose defense ties with the United States expanded significantly as part of the Trump administrations efforts to staunch Russian and Chinese inroads in the Arctic. Will any of this continue under Biden?

But perhaps the biggest question mark hangs over U.S. relations with Britain. Obama, famously, was no fan of the United Kingdom. He chafed at Britains imperial past, lectured the British about Brexit, and placed the U.K. at the back of the line in trade talks when it defied his advice. Trump undid a lot of this damage, launching talks for a bilateral free trade agreement and communicating to Britain and the EU alike that the special relationship would remain a priority regardless of the Brexit negotiations outcome.

Is the U.S.-British relationship still a priority? Biden seemed to say as much when he arrived in Britain last week. But his administrations actions suggest otherwise. Talks on a U.S.-U.K. trade agreement have been shelved. And while the administration says it is neutral on Britains dispute with the EU over Northern Ireland, its pressure appears to be directed only at London. The administration recently announced it was preparing retaliatory tariffs against the U.K. (plus Austria, Spain, and Italy) for a new digital taxthe very sort of retaliation that Biden criticized Trump for.

The point in all of this is not that the Trump administration got everything right. Nor is it that Biden shouldnt invest in strong ties with Germany and the EU. On the contrary, he should. Rather, the point is that Bidens narrative about Europe doesnt fit the facts. The United States gained considerable ground in many key bilateral relationships under Trump. Contrary to misconceptions, this was driven not by political affinity with the governments in questionwhich varied in ideological huebut by the need to compete for influence in the parts of Europe where China and Russia have made commercial and strategic inroads.

Biden should sustain and build on Trumps momentum, not reverse it. Focusing only on ties with a European core centered on Berlin and Brussels while neglecting the regions that are ground zero in great-power competition is a grave mistake. It will backfire, with long-term damage to U.S. national interests.

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Biden Is Falling Into the Same Trap With Europe as Obama - Foreign Policy

Barack Obama reveals how LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Derrick Rose were a part of a pick-up tournament organised by the former POTUS for his 49th birthday.

It is no surprise that Barack Obama was an avid basketball fan. The former President of the United States had a great relationship with the NBA and was often spotted at several league events.

Not many might know it, but apart from merely watching games, the 44th American President would quite often play basketball. Back in the 1970s, Obama had played on the junior and university teams at Hawaiis Punahou School and eventually won a state championship in 1979.

Even once he was elected as the President, the left-handed shooter would often play hoops, however this time he would play with and against some of the NBAs all-time greats. Magic Johnson and Scottie Pippen are some of the legends to have shared the court with Barack. In an interview on the Armchair Expert podcast, Obama revealed how he once played a secret pick-up tournament with LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Derrick Rose in the White House.

Also Read: NBA fans react to the Lakers superstar getting into it with an announcer for disrespecting Bronny

During his tenure as the president, Obama would often display his love for the game of basketball. One such event organised was on his 49th birthday, where a secret pick-up tournament was held inside the White House. On his recent podcast appearance, the 59-year-old disclosed:

For my 49th birthday, we had an All-Star Game that was just kind of for us. LeBron came. Dwyane Wade, and Derrick Rose; all these amazing NBA players. Each team had three NBA players and two amateurs. All my high school friends came over. We had this round-robin tournament, and we had Wounded Warriors who we invited to watch; we signed autographs and gave shoes away afterwards.

One of the perks of being president is, you can invite people to the White House and they show up.

Having LeBron suddenly guard you this mountain of a human you never feel so small and weak. You just pass the ball, or hand it to him and say here, Im not worthy.

Team sports at its best is a great equalizer, Obama said about his love for the sport. There were coaches favourites and some politics behind the scenesbut basically, when you were on the court it was like, how did you play, rather than who you were.

Also Read:3 Reasons Why Kawhi Leonard Will Stay With Clippers during 2021-22 NBA season

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"LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Derrick Rose featured in the All-Star Game": Barack Obama reveals that a secret... - The Sportsrush