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The Obamas have teamed up with the CEO of Airbnb to launch a $100 million scholarship, Bloomberg reports.

Barack and Michelle Obama have partnered with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky to launch The Voyager Scholarship. Focused on offering support to college students looking to start a career in public service, the fund will provide financial aid to students as well as stipends for travel and networking opportunities. Chesky donated $100 million to the Obama Foundation to kick off the scholarship.

The scholarship will support 100 students in their first year, available to college students entering their junior year of college at an accredited four-year college or university in the United States. Students must be US citizens, permanent residents, or DACA recipients and demonstrate a financial need.

Scholarship recipients will receive $50,000 in financial aid for their junior and senior year of college along with a Summer Voyage work-travel experience that includes a $10,000 stipend and free Airbnb housing. Upon graduating, Airbnb will provide students with an additional $2,000 travel credit every year for 10 years, with participants gathering every fall for an annual summit to meet with President Obama, Chesky, and their peer Voyagers.

So many people have a passion for public service, but they dont go into public service because they cant afford to. They have too much financial burden looming over themWe need a generation of leaders who are willing to cooperate and build bridges, but its hard to build a bridge if you haven't seen the other side of the river, said Chesky.

The CEO, worth $9.45 billion, is part of 40 of Americas wealthiest people who signed the Giving Pledge by Warren Buffet and Bill and Melinda Gates, committed to giving away most of their fortune to tackle societal issues. The goal of the Obama-Chesky Scholarship for Public Service is to help alleviate the burden of college debt so that people will be able to serve their community and expand their perspective on the world.

Applications for the Voyager Scholarship are currently open. The deadline for submissions is June 14 with students expected to be notified in September. To learn more about the scholarship, click here.

Photo Courtesy of Jim Young/AFP/Getty Images

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The Obamas Have Teamed Up With Airbnb CEO To Launch $100M College Scholarship - Because of Them We Can

Former President Obama is urging Americans not to get frustrated by the slow pace of progress, while discussing the federal government and showing off his sandwich-making skills in a new Netflix show he produced.

Heres the thing that we have to remind ourselves: By design, change is hard in this country, Obama told host Adam Conover in the sixth and final episode of Netflixs The G Word.

The limited series premiered Thursday on the streaming site and pulls back the curtain on the surprising ways the US government impacts our everyday lives, from the mundane to the life changing, according to a promotional site. The documentary-style comedy show is produced by the Obamas company, Higher Ground Productions, as part of the multiyear Netflix deal the former first family inked in 2018.

I guarantee you that theres no president who was ever elected who doesnt at some point think, Ah, make me king for a day and I can just issue my edicts, Obama said during a discussion with Conover about change taking time.

We dont want a situation where an all-powerful, all-knowing individual or small set of individuals are able to make decisions for everybody. So were going to disperse power, which means things happen slower, Obama said.

The only thing we cant do is lapse into cynicism and say, well, because this hasnt changed at the pace that it should, theres nothing we can do about it.

Conover pressed the ex-commander in chief after he said that when a president is elected, theres a window of opportunity for us to make some changes.

Typically its not going to be 100 percent of what you want, but if we make things 10 percent better Obama said, before Conover interjected, Yeah, but 10 percent for climate change isnt enough.

When you ran in 08 you were the change guy, Conover told Obama. You didnt run on, Hey, if we made things 10 percent better.'

Thats completely fair, Obama replied.

It turns out [former Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell [(R-Ky.)] was elected, too. Precisely because the country is a big, diverse, complicated place.

Obama advised Americans to find the thing that youre passionate about, that angers you, that frustrates you, and you try to get some like-minded citizens to start changing.

You also have to remind yourself that government isnt just the federal government government is state government, government is city government, government is county government. So a whole bunch of decisions that are being made, arent being made by the president, theyre being made by somebody whos probably elected by 1,000 [or] 10,000 voters.

Obamas chat with Conover came after the pair crafted a snack suggested by the 44thpresident: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Im very particular about how you make PB&J, Obama said during the lighthearted segment. You have to get every corner, he advised as he spread the ingredients on the bread.

Originally posted here:
Obama discusses why change is hard in this country - The Hill

If you want to find somebody to blame for the current rise of populism, which is fueling the rise of unorthodox candidates who appeal to voters by defying the ruling consensus, dont just blame former President Donald Trump. Blame Barack Obama as well.

If that seems counterintuitive, remember that while Obama may not have been much of a populist, he wasnt much of an insider, either. In fact, to many Democrats who loathed Hillary Clinton, he was in some ways both an outsider and an insider.

Obama built much of his campaign on being more progressive than Clinton (even if he wouldnt be considered particularly progressive today), organizing the grassroots, being less corrupt and being willing to oppose the war in Iraq early on, defying the Washington consensus in both parties. He was an insider in that he was at least, partially recruited to run for president by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Yet, he was also an outsider, in that he was just a first-term senator with little governmental experience and none in an executive role. Its astonishing to remember, but before Barack Obama, the most recent commander in chief who wasnt a governor or a vice president was John F. Kennedy.

In the first two decades of the 21st century, weve had two presidents who werent governors or vice presidents, and had little to no governmental experience before running for president: Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Now, depending on your party, youre probably already registering a couple objections here. If youre a Democrat, youll probably argue that Obama had already been a state senator and a United States senator before running for president. Thats a fair point, but he hadnt served in either position for long: He first ran for public office in 1996, and ran for president in 2008. His entire political career was just 12 years long.

Meanwhile, other than flirting with a run for president before and being a donor, Donald Trump had no political career at all. Hed never as much as run for selectman or school board in his hometown, never mind the state legislature. Now, its easy to say that he was able to skip over those earlier steps because he was the CEO of a big corporation, but the last guy who got a sniff at the presidency on the basis of business experience alone was Ross Perot, who never really got close to victory. America has had plenty of celebrity CEOs over the centuries Lee Iacocca, Henry Ford, Steve Jobs but none made a presidential bid from the cozy confines of a corner office. Trump is unique in that. Like Obama, he tapped into populist anger on a number of issues that defied the Washington consensus in both parties: trade and immigration.

All of this helps to explain why so many counties swung from Obama to Trump in 2016, and it counters the simple explanation that people voted for Trump because they were racist. Instead, they were rebelling against insiders, even though one had gone to Harvard and been anointed by the Beltway elite, while the other had been successful in business and was from New York City, the center of the worlds wealth. Neither had exactly started a small business from scratch or worked themselves up from nothing, yet they appealed to people who aspired to do both.

Obama and Trump shared at least one other commonality, apart from their mutual distrust of their respective partys insiders: An opponent. Both of them built the bulk of their short-lived political careers running against Hillary Clinton, the consummate political insider who was widely loathed by huge segments of the population in both political parties. While Obama managed to win reelection, neither did quite as well when they werent running against her: Under Obama, Democrats immediately lost huge majorities down-ballot nationwide, while Trump simply lost.

The real question here is whether populism, from the left or the right, is truly its own sustainable political movement in the United States or merely a convenient foil to one person, Hillary Clinton: a single uniquely flawed major-party candidate.

These midterm elections will be the first step in answering that question, and in determining whether the presidencies of both Barack Obama and Donald Trump were truly transformational, ushering in a new era, or merely momentary aberrations, with Joe Biden representing a return to the norm.

Jim Fossel, a conservative activist from Gardiner, worked for Sen. Susan Collins.He can be contacted at:[emailprotected]Twitter:@jimfossel

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Jim Fossel: Trump and Obama had much in common - Press Herald

A teacher has come under fire for handing out an assignment that asked students to identify primates in a grid of photos that included one of former president Barack Obama.

The teacher, who has not been named, was recently placed on leave by The Roeper School in Birmingham, Michigan, WDIV reported.

Students in a biology class were allegedly handed a piece of paper for the assignment titled: Which of the following are primates?

The former US president was pictured alongside monkeys and other animals including a peacock, and according to the report were expected to tick which of the images showed a primate.

Lessons at the school were cancelled on Thursday because of threats reportedly made online following the revelations. Police were also stationed outside the building.

When I saw it I couldnt believe it, the schools diversity director, Carolyn Lett, told WDIV. Im trying to understand this myself. But right away I had a reaction. like, its so wrong I cant understand it.

The school, who have been investigating the incident, said the assignment had been taken from a highly regarded universitys website, Fox 2 reported. No further details were issued about the work.

The assignment worksheet (Duke University Press)

On behalf of Roeper Schools leadership, we want to acknowledge the disturbing racial offence contained in an assignment with an upper school class last week, the school said in a statement on Friday.

The choice to use this piece of curriculum was completely inconsistent with our Schools philosophy and mission and we sincerely apologise for its use and the harm it has caused.

The school added that although the teacher in question had taken responsibility and admits the mistake of not properly vetting the resource, the action warranted the individual being placed on leave.

The Independent has approached the school for comment.

More here:
Michigan teacher placed on leave after including photo of Obama in assignment about primates - Yahoo! Voices

Days after Finland and Sweden formally applied to join NATO essentially ending decades of neutrality on the world stage former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates called the development "huge" and a major defeat for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Putin's decision to invade Ukraine was partly driven by a desire to prevent the country from joining NATO, which would put the military alliance right at Russia's border. But last week's move by Finland and Sweden suggests that plan has backfired, Gates told "Face the Nation" Sunday.

"I think it changes the geopolitics in Europe in a dramatic way. Now he's got NATO on his doorstep, not only in Ukraine and elsewhere," Gates said, referring to Putin.

"He's going to have them on his border in Finland. And it's an amazing thing he's done because he's gotten Sweden to abandon 200 years of neutrality," Gates said. "So I think one of his many, huge miscalculations in invading Ukraine is he has dramatically changed the geostrategic posture of Western Europe. And now that you have the Swedes and the Finns as part of that, he's really put Russia in a much worse strategic position than it had before the invasion."

NATO's 30 member countries are now reviewing Sweden's and Finland's applications. If their bids are accepted, the two once-neutral Nordic nations could become members within a few months.

When the leaders of the two countries visited the White House last Thursday, President Biden offered his "strong support" for their applications.

Gates, who served as defense secretary under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, said Putin's brutal invasion of Ukraine could continue to hurt Russia's economy and affect the country in other ways. He also doesn't believe Putin could win the war by taking over Ukraine and "absorbing it" into Russia, but he said Putin might still walk away with some strategic areas of Eastern Ukraine.

"He has the potential to hold on to a good part of the Donbas. But I think in terms of pushing on to Odessa or trying to bring a change of government in Kyiv or absorb Ukraine, I think if that's winning, I don't see that he can win," Gates said.

"His invasion has weakened Russia and it's got now long-term economic problems," Gates said. "Europe, I think, is very serious at this point about weaning itself away from dependence on Russian oil and gas. So that will weaken Russia significantly."

The former defense secretary expressed doubt that Putin's biggest ally, China, would do enough to rescue Russia's economy partly because it wouldn't want to become dependent on Russia for energy sources.

"China will want to remain diversified," Gates said. "They might buy some more Russian oil and gas, but nothing like what would be required to replace the European market. Putin will remain a pariah ... He has put Russia really behind the 8-ball economically, militarily, and because now people are going to look at the Russian military and say, 'You know, this was supposed to be this fantastic military. Well, they give a good parade, but in actual combat, not so hot.'"

Asked if he believes Putin could resort to using a tactical nuclear weapon against Ukraine, Gates said it's unlikely.

"I think the probability of him using a tactical nuclear weapon is low, but not zero," he said. "There are no large masses of Ukrainian forces that would be taken out by a tactical nuclear weapon. And if [there's no] military purpose, then the only purpose is as a terror weapon to try and break the will of the Ukrainian people. And I think that moment has come and gone. I don't think that there's anything at this point that will break the will of the Ukrainian people."

Gates noted that a nuclear attack on Ukraine could possibly affect Russia's mainland as well.

"In that part of the world, and particularly in eastern Ukraine, the winds tend to blow from the west," he said. "If you set off a tactical nuclear weapon in eastern Ukraine, the radiation is going to go into Russia. So I just hope somebody reminds him of that."

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Robert Gates says NATO expansion "changes the geopolitics of Europe in a dramatic way" - CBS News