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by: Rare.us Updated: Jul 12, 2017 - 10:40 PM

Former President Barack Obama will officially step back into the political realm for the first time since leaving office in January when heattends a fundraiser on Thursday to help raise funds for the Democrats efforts to draw new district lines.

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Obama will be the main attraction at a small fundraising event being hosted by former Attorney General Eric Holder, who is leading the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, at a private home in Washington, D.C.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who is also involved with the Democratic redistricting effort, will also be in attendance.

Obama and Holder have spoken about redistricting, which is focused on winning state legislative seats and court battles, numerous times, even before the former president left office.

In 2016, Holder laid out the reason for the redistricting push, saying in an interview, American voters deserve fair maps that represent our diverse communities and we need a coordinated strategy to make that happen. This unprecedented new effort will ensure Democrats have a seat at the table to create fairer maps after 2020.

The former president also released astatement on redistricting through his spokesperson, Kevin Lewis:

Restoring fairness to our democracy by advocating for fairer, more inclusive district maps around the country is a priority for President Obama. [] The President supports NDRC, Holders efforts to address unfair gerrymandering practices that leave too many American voters feeling voiceless in the electoral process.

This is the only political event on Obamas schedule in the near future as he continues to shy away from weighing in on too many political topics. He does, however, want to help balance out the inequities that he sees on political maps. As one top aide toldThe Chicago Tribune, Obama will be supporting efforts that tackle the inequities of our current political system.

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Barack Obama set to attend first post-presidency political event - icFlorida

By Christy Bowe/Corbis/Getty Images.

Back in 2014, President Obama professed his undying love to Meryl Streep while presenting the Oscar-winning actress with the Medal of Freedom. I love Meryl Streep, Obama announced, officially declaring himself Team Meryl. Her husband knows I love her. Michelle knows I love her. There's nothing they can do about it. Since then, Streeps relationship with both Obama and especially his wife, Michelle, has escalatedwith the actress and former First Lady, both fierce equal-rights advocates, teaming up for a joint interview; a trip to Africa; a hug; and a star-studded farewell party at the White House. And now, Streep has officially pledged her allegiance to the Obamas by debuting a snazzy custom accessory emblazoned with their visages.

The accessory: a purse printed with a photo of the Obamas smiling and dancing, superimposed over a graphic of the White House. E!, which has a photo of Streep stepping out with said bag, reports that the opposite side of the bag features Michelle posing with her hand against her head and a smirk on her face.

Streep carried the bag while leaving her trailer on the New York set of her upcoming political drama The Papers, directed by Steven Spielberg, co-starring Tom Hanks, and centering on The Washington Posts handling of the Pentagon papers.

Back in 2009, a journalist told Streep that she is Barack Obamas favorite actress. (You can watch her giddy response below.) I love him. I think hes fantastic, Streep gushed in response. I havent met him. . . but I think hes fantastic. Part of it is, just where weve been, Streep continued. The comparison [between past presidents]. A thoughtful person. A person who actually weighs several arguments before coming to a decision, who admits descent, who welcomes it. Its all the things that weve dreamed of, for too many years.

Fast-forward eight years later to 2016, when Streep and the Obamas had not only met, but collaborated, so much so that Michelle Obama paid tribute to her friend and fellow equal-rights advocate at a screening of the CNN documentary We Will Rise.

The great Meryl Streep has just devoted her not-a-lot-of time to this project, Obama said, referring to Streeps commitment to Obamas Let Girls Learn initiative. And she is a delightfulshe is delightful and is intelligent and is focused and engagedas you would imagine Meryl Streep to be. Thats what I tell everybody. Meryl Streep is exactly as awesome as you would imagine Meryl Streep to be.

When presenting Streep with the presidential medal of freedom, Barack Obama similarly praised the actress, saying, Shes done it all for her craft. Shes sung Abba, which you know, thats something. She learned violin. She wore a nuns habit, faced down a charging lion, mastered every accent under the sun. She inhabits her characters so fully and compassionately.

While it is unclear where Streep got this pursedid she design it herself?!we hope that somewhere, deep in the Obamas closet, there is some sort of Streep apparelperhaps a graphic teewith her face and name literally on it.

This is not the first explicitly patriotic article of clothing Streep has worn, for those keeping track at home. Last July, Streep wore a a gauzy, Catherine Malandrino American flag-style dress at the Democratic National Convention. Certainly the Obama bag wont endear Streep in the heart of sitting president Donald Trump, who called the actress overrated in Januarynot that she cares.

Meryl Streep in New York Citys Theater District,1978.

John Cazale and Streep during the filming of The Deer Hunter, 1977.

Justin Henry and Dustin Hoffman in 1979.

Streep in the films climactic courtroom sequence.

Hoffman, Streep, director-screenwriter Robert Benton, and producer Stanley Jaffe with their Academy Awards, 1980

Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman while filming 1979s Kramer vs. Kramer.

Streep in New York City, 1979.

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Meryl Streep in New York Citys Theater District,1978.

Photograph by Duane Michals; From the DC Moore Gallery, New York.

John Cazale and Streep during the filming of The Deer Hunter, 1977.

From the Core Collection Production Files of The Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

Justin Henry and Dustin Hoffman in 1979.

Photograph by Brigitte Lacombe.

Streep in the films climactic courtroom sequence.

Columbia Pictures/Photofest.

Hoffman and Henry in the film.

Columbia Pictures/Photofest.

Hoffman, Streep, director-screenwriter Robert Benton, and producer Stanley Jaffe with their Academy Awards, 1980

Columbia Pictures/Photofest.

Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman while filming 1979s Kramer vs. Kramer.

Columbia Pictures/Photofest.

Streep in New York City, 1979.

By Theo Westenberger/Theo Westenberger Archives, 1974-2008, Autry Museum, Los Angeles.

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Here's How Much Meryl Streep Loves the Obamas - Vanity Fair

The researchers used 14 hours of Obama's weekly address videos to train a neural network. Once trained, their system was then able to take an audio clip from the former president, create mouth shapes that synced with the audio and then synthesize a realistic looking mouth that matched Obama's. The mouth synced to the audio was then superimposed and blended onto a video of Obama that was different from the audio source. To make it look more natural, the system corrected for head placement and movement, timing and details like how the jaw looked. The whole process is automated save for one manual step that requires a person to select two frames in the video where the subject's upper and lower teeth are front-facing and highly visible. Those images are then used by the system to make the resulting video's teeth look more realistic.

The program isn't perfect yet, but in the video below you can see how much better it gets after three minutes, one hour, seven hours and 14 hours of training data. Some limitations the team has pointed out include occasional mistakes in mouth and facial alignment -- sometimes it gave Obama two chins -- an inability to match emotion and issues arising with sounds that require a particular placement of the tongue, like "th," which isn't currently covered by their program.

But, overall this artificial lip-syncing program creates a much more realistic image than others have. The work will be published in ACM Transactions on Graphics and you can see the researchers' process in the video below.

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Researchers make a surprisingly smooth artificial video of Obama - Engadget

The Trump administration took a step toward blocking stricter enforcement of estate and gift taxes Friday, describing a set of proposed rules as overly burdensome.

The new rules, put forward last year by the Obama administration, would increase the taxes owed by some wealthy families. Lawyers and experts on the estate tax say that taxpayers have substantial leeway in determining how much their estates are worth and, as a result, how much they have to pay.

The Obama administration's rules were intended to enforce the tax more strictly, but the new administration might prevent them from going into effect. The rules were among eight regulations put forward under Obama that Trump'sTreasury Department will try to modify or rescind, according to an interim report published last week.

Wealthy Americans pay estate and gift taxes when they die or when they pass wealth on to their heirs. The tax is primarily paid by the very richest families. Just 0.18 percent of people who died last year paid estate taxes, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. The center also estimates that 88 percent of the total estate taxes that are paid comes from people in the richest 10 percent of the income distribution.

Very few Americans are rich enough to pay the estate tax, but the tax could affect many of Trump's wealthy advisers. The majority of Trump's Cabinet, including 13 of the 24 members, are potentially subject to the estate tax, according to an analysis by The Washington Post.

Republicans have long argued that the estate tax creates unacceptable burdens on middle-class taxpayers who have substantial assets, such as farmers or owners of small businesses. Trump has also proposed eliminating the tax entirely, although doing so would require an act of Congress.

"This hurts a lot of farmers. It hurts a lot of people who have businesses that they want to pass on," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told CNBC in May. "Many people have to sell their family business. Many people have to sell their family farm."

Mnuchin's reported net worth of $621 million would make his estate liable for the tax if he were to pass away. Whether the Obama administration's new rules would increase his estate's bill if his department allowed them to take effect depends on whether he is using a certain legal strategy to save money. That information is not publicly available.

The maneuver in question relates to how small businesses and similar entities are appraised for purposes of the estate tax. When a person dies and divides up a business to give each heir a stake, authorities allow the heirs to mark down the value of their share in the business, because each stake might be difficult to sell individually.

Yet some wealthy taxpayers have exploited this rule by putting stocks, bonds or other securities under the control of a legal entity and then claiming that the entity represents a family-owned business in order to bring down the value. When the heirs take control of the entity, they can easily sell off their individual stakes in the assets.

"This is a pretty common technique for the very wealthy," said attorney Beth Shapiro Kaufman, the president of Caplin and Drysdale in Washington.

Kaufman said that the rules the Obama administration proposed were overly broad and could negatively affect legitimate businesses as well, but she also said that the loophole will be costly if it is not closed. Taxpayers using this approach could reduce the value of their estates by roughly one-third, she said.

"If you think that the estate tax is evil, then anything that pokes giant holes in it is a good thing," Kaufman said.

Last week's report is a response to an order from Trump, who instructed his deputies to identify regulations proposed or implemented under Obama that were excessively costly or beyond the authority of the executive branch. The Treasury Department will issue proposals for scaling back or throwing out the regulations in a final report to Trump in September.

That process could be complicated by the fact that the Treasury Department is severely understaffed, said Mark Mazur, who served as assistant treasury secretary for tax policy under Obama.

The posts for the officials who would ordinarily be responsible for writing the rules in this area are still vacant. For instance, Trump has nominated David Kautter, an attorney, to serve in Mazur's position as assistant secretary, but Kautter has not yet been confirmed. The delays are part of a pattern of unusually slow confirmations across Trump's new administration.

Among the other regulations slated to be modified or eliminated is a rule designed to prevent foreign companies from stripping the earnings out of their U.S. subsidiaries to avoid federal taxes.

A common practice among foreign firms that own U.S. subsidiaries is to make loans to the subsidiaries just so that the subsidiaries can pay the owners back. The interest paid is not subject to tax in the United States, reducing the subsidiary's tax bill. While that interest counts as income for the foreign owner, foreign companies often pay taxes at lower rates than they would in the United States.

The Obama administration hoped the rule would prevent companies from using this technique to shift income abroad, out of the reach of U.S. tax authorities.

The rule was scheduled to take effect next year, which would make buying U.S. firms less attractive to foreign investors, said Mazur, who now directs the Tax Policy Center. "We all knew that there was a lot of angst about this from the business community, especially some of the groups that lobby for offshore companies, and so not surprised to see it on the list," he said.

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The Obama administration had a plan to crack down on estate tax dodgers. Trump's team is looking to block it. - Washington Post

A revised Senate Republican health care bill will likely retain a pair of tax boosts President Barack Obama imposed on wealthier Americans that have helped finance his law's expansion of coverage, a leading Senate Republican said Tuesday.

The two levies one on investment income and another on the payroll tax that helps finance the Medicare health insurance program for the elderly are among the biggest that Obama's 2010 statute imposed. Some of the money would be used to increase a fund the GOP bill would disperse to states to help insurers contain consumers' premiums and deductibles, said No. 2 Senate GOP leader John Cornyn of Texas.

Preserving those taxes "seems to be where we're headed," Cornyn told reporters. He said the reworked bill will also provide $45 billion over a decade to help states combat abuse of drugs including opioids, and make it easier for states to get federal waivers to decide how to spend money under their Medicaid health programs for the poor, elderly and nursing home patients.

Cornyn spoke after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., announced he will introduce his party's altered health care bill Thursday and begin trying to muscle it through the Senate next week. The effort comes with the fate of the GOP measure in doubt, with internal divisions threatening to mortally wound their top-tier goal of repealing much of Obama's overhaul.

"Hopefully everything we're doing now helps another member get to 'yes,'" Cornyn said. "There's really no other reason to tweak this thing."

In the face of unanimous Democratic opposition, the health care bill will crash if just three of the 52 GOP senators oppose it. McConnell suddenly canceled a doomed vote last month on an initial version of the legislation, and at least a dozen Republicans have said they oppose the initial package or distanced themselves from it.

Since his June retreat, McConnell has been reshaping the measure in hopes of winning GOP votes. Even so, no GOP leaders were yet predicting passage.

McConnell also said he will delay the chamber's August recess for two weeks, a rare move he said would give lawmakers time to break logjams on health care, defense and executive branch nominations. Growing numbers of Republicans, chagrined at Congress' failure to send any major bills to President Donald Trump, had called on McConnell to make that move.

The GOP bill would ease coverage requirements Obama's 2010 statute placed on insurers, like paying for maternity services; erase his tax penalties on people who don't buy policies and cut Medicaid. The measure will also eliminate most of Obama's tax increases, including boosts on insurers, pharmaceutical manufacturers and medical device makers.

Obama's law has added around 20 million to the ranks of the country's people with health insurance. An analysis of McConnell's initial bill by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected it would increase the number of people without coverage by 22 million by 2026.

Kelsey Snell, Sean Sullivan and Juliet Eilperin

The updated legislation is also expected to ease some of its earlier Medicaid cuts, a move aimed at assuaging GOP senators from states that expanded the program by millions of people under Obama's law.

According to Cornyn, the refashioned GOP measure will probably keep Obama's 3.8 percent tax boost on investment income for couples earning over $250,000 annually. It would also retain a payroll tax increase of 0.9 percent on the same earners that helps finance Medicare.

Together, retaining the two levies would produce $231 billion over the next 10 years, according to Congress' nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation.

Republicans generally oppose tax boosts, and it was unclear whether preserving those tax increases would threaten support by any conservatives for the health bill. But Cornyn said some of the money perhaps around $50 billion would be used to buttress around $100 billion already in the measure for states to help insurers hold down insurance costs, and he said the move might help defend against Democratic attacks that the GOP package will help the rich and hurt the poor.

"We're trying to take at least one sharp stick off the table," Cornyn said. "I don't think it will change the narrative."

A study released Tuesday by two bipartisan groups estimated that the country's poorest families would lose more than $2,500 in average annual health care benefits once the GOP legislation was fully phased in. Families making more than $1 million a year would get tax cuts averaging about $50,000, according to the analysis by the Health Policy Center and the Tax Policy Center.

Still at issue is a plan by conservatives led by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to let insurers sell low-price policies with bare-bones coverage if the company also sells a policy covering a list of services like maternity care that Obama's law mandates.

It's received pushback from GOP moderates warning it would inflate premiums for sicker people buying generous plans because younger, healthier customers would flock to skimpier policies. To ease the price boosts people with serious illnesses might face, some Republicans said changes were being discussed that would link the premiums insurers would charge for both types of coverage.

Associated Press reporters Erica Werner, Andrew Taylor and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar contributed to this report.

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New GOP health bill likely keeping Obama tax boosts on rich - Chicago Tribune