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Im Ezra Klein, and this is The Ezra Klein Show.

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So in preparation for this episode, I have spent the last few weeks very deep in the mind of Barack Obama. I read the first volume of his presidential memoirs, A Promised Land. But Ive also been listening to his podcast and other interviews hes given, and reading interviews hes given.

And spending a lot of time there, there were a few things I noticed that really became the core of this conversation and that Ive actually just been struggling with myself since. The first is Obamas many mindedness. Its almost pathological how much he tries, in his memoirs, to grant the points of his critics and even the really unfair points of some of his attackers, how much he doubts his own motivations and righteousness.

There are times when it almost feels self-lacerating, like when you want to take him aside and say, look, you won the presidency. You passed the Affordable Care Act. You dont need to keep wondering if you should have gotten into politics at all.

But that personal tendency or maybe its almost better described as a personal discipline, I came to think it really contributes to something deep in what made his presidency possible. Barack Hussein Obama understood, in his bones at that time, that the odds were not good that majority white electorates in the age of the War on Terror were going to vote for him. And he didnt approach that fact resentfully, as a flaw that other people needed to fix in their politics. He saw comforting their fears as his work to do, the work of his politics.

He saw, also, avoiding the issues, and sometimes even the truths that would awaken their suspicions, as just part of the job. And so you can see in the book that hes not just trying to convince them to vote for him as he is. Hes also trying to turn himself, through what he says, and then very importantly, what he doesnt say into the kind of candidate and even person they want to vote for.

Thats an important difference. Its subtle in a way, but its important. And its a whole style of politics that I think is really contested now.

Anyway, so as you can hear in this conversation, for him, it came with a cost, both psychic and eventually, in some ways, political. That is the paradox of his book, and of his career, and to me his presidency. He puts everything into this project of persuasion, of trying to convince America to do something it has never done before. And he so profoundly succeeds and fails.

His win, it simultaneously proves this politics he believes in is possible, which was not obvious then. And at the same time, his win and his presidency begin reshaping the Republican Party into a much more direct antithesis of that politics. It turns into something that more powerfully threatens his vision of America.

Obama is this triumph of political persuasion and compromise. And then he also leaves behind, certainly a less persuadable Republican Party and a more fractured and polarized political system. And Im not saying thats his fault. But it is part of the whole thing, in this really, I think, difficult way that is shaping our politics now. That, to me, is a question his career and his book sets up.

I think a lot of people have more or less given up on the kinds of politics Obama pursued. On the right, of course, thats true with Donald Trump and everything that he has made the Republican Party into. But on the left, in a different way, I do think theres a move towards a politics more of confrontation, of forcing people to face hard truths and saying that, if you dont see where history is going, and you will not admit where our history has been, then you are the problem, that its our job to beat you not accommodate you.

And so when I sat with Obama this week, I wanted to see how he reflected on both the successes and the failures of his approach to politics, how he held the contradictions of his own career together, and where he thought Democrats had something to learn from what he did right, and then also, from what he did wrong. And so thats where we began. As always, my email is ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. Here is President Barack Obama.

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So something I noticed again and again in the book is this very particular approach to persuasion that you have. I think the normal way most of us think about it youre winning an argument with someone. And you seem to approach it with this first step of making yourself a person the other person will feel able to listen to, which means sympathizing with their argument, sanding off some of the edges of your own. Tell me a bit about how you think about that.

No, thats interesting. I forget whether it was Clarence Darrow, or Abraham Lincoln, or some apocryphal figure in the past who said, look, the best way to win an argument is to first be able to make the other persons argument better than they can. And for me, what that meant was that I had to understand their world view. And I couldnt expect them to understand mine if I wasnt extending myself to understand theirs.

Now, why that is the way I think about things generally partly is temperament. Partly its biographical. As Ive written not just in this recent book but in past books, if youre a kid whose parents are from Kansas and Kenya, and youre born in Hawaii, and you live in Indonesia, you are naturally having to figure out, well, how did all these pieces fit together? How do all these perspectives, cultures, blind spots, biases, how do you reconcile them to approximate something true?

And I think that carries over into my adulthood, and into my politics, and how I approach the world generally. It presumes that none of us have a monopoly on truth. It admits doubt, in terms of our own perspectives.

But if you practice it long enough, at least for me, it actually allows you then to maybe not always persuade others but at least have some solid ground that you can stand on, that you can with confidence say, you know what? I know what I think, and I know what I believe. It actually gives me more conviction rather than less if I listen to somebody elses argument.

One of the things that strikes me about it, though, is that you see in the book sometimes it means not calling out arguments that I think you think are really wrong, in the same way that you might normally. So in a section about the Tea Party, you mull over whether the reaction they had to you was racist. And clear you think it, at least partly, was. And then you say quote, whatever my instincts might tell me, whatever truth the history books might suggest, I knew I wasnt going to win over any voters by labeling my opponents racist. How do you decide when the cost of that kind of truth outweighs the value of it?

Well, now youre describing something a little bit different, which is, how do you move large segments of the population politically towards an outcome you want, whether its universal health care, or lets do something about climate change? Versus how I might persuade somebody one on one, right? The premise of persuading somebody who you can build some trust with, and have a history with and relationship, then there might be times where you say, you know what? Youre just full of it. And let me tell you why.

And you can be very logical and incisive about how you want to dismantle their arguments. Although I should add, by the way, do not try that at home. Because thats not a recipe for winning arguments with Michelle.

But look, when youre dealing at the macro level, when youre dealing with 300 million people with enormous regional, and racial, and religious, and cultural differences, then now you are having to make some calculations. So lets take the example you used. And I write extensively about the emergence of the Tea Party. And we could see that happening with Sarah Palin. She was sort of a prototype for the politics that led to the Tea Party, that in turn, ultimately led to Donald Trump, and that were still seeing today.

There were times where calling it out would have given me great satisfaction personally. But it wouldnt have necessarily won the political day in terms of me getting a bill passed. And I think every president has to deal with this.

It may have been more noticeable with me, in part because, as the first African American president, there was a presumption, not incorrect, that there were times where I was biting my tongue. Thats why the skit that Key and Peele did with the anger translator, Luther, was funny. Because people assumed, you know Baracks thinking something other than what hes saying in certain circumstances.

I think that, a lot of times, one of the ways I would measure it would be: is it more important for me to tell a basic historical truth, lets say, about racism in America right now? Or is it more important for me to get a bill passed that provides a lot of people with health care that didnt have it before? And theres a psychic cost to not always just telling the truth, as I think I describe in the book, using your prophetic voice as opposed to your coalition building political voice. And I think there were times where supporters of mine would get frustrated if I wasnt being as forthright about certain things as I might otherwise be.

And then there are also just institutional constraints that I think every president has to follow on some of these issues. And it was sort of on a case by case basis, where you try to make decisions. Sometimes, youd get sufficiently disappointed. Lets say for example, with gun safety issues after Newtown, for example, and Congresss complete unwillingness to do anything about the slaughter of children.

There were times, where I would just go off. Because I felt that deeply about how wrongheaded we were in a basic fundamental way. But that was, lets face it, after I had exhausted every other possibility of trying to get Congress to move on those issues.

I set up that kind of persuasion and pluralism tension, because something that really struck me about the book is how much it lives in paradoxes, how much its comfortable with the idea, that youre comfortable with the idea that something and its opposite are true at the same time. And I think of a politics of persuasion as being the central paradox of your presidency. So you accomplished this massive act of persuasion, winning the presidency twice, as a Black man with the middle name Hussein. And now that, in retrospect, its like, oh yeah, of course, Barack Obama was president.

Yeah, no. I think its fair to say that wasnt a given.

It wasnt as obvious at the time.

Yeah.

But at the same time, your presidency made the Republican Party less persuadable. It opened the door, in certain ways, to Donald Trump. And it further closed the door on the kind of pluralistic politics that you try to practice. And Im curious how you hold both of those outcomes together.

Look, thats been the history of America. Right? There is abolition and the Civil War. And then theres backlash and the rise of the KKK. And the Reconstruction ends, and Jim Crow arises.

And then you have a civil rights movement, a modern civil rights movement and desegregation. And that, in turn, leads to pushback and, ultimately, Nixons Southern strategy. And what I take comfort from is that in the traditional two steps forward, one step back, as long as youre getting the two steps, then the one step back is the price of doing business.

In my case, lets say, I get elected. We have a spurt of activity that gets things done. Even after we lose Congress, during the course of those eight years, we manage the government, restore some sense of that it can work on behalf of people.

We regain credibility internationally, but youre right. It unleashes and helps to precipitate a shift in the Republican Party that was already there but probably accelerates it. And were still playing out how this works to this day.

On the other hand, during that period, youve got an entire generation thats growing up and taking for granted, as you just described, that youve got a Black family in the White House, taking for granted that that administration can be competent, and have integrity, and not be wrought with scandal. And it serves as a marker. Its planted a flag from which then the next generation builds.

And by the way, the next generation can then look back and say, yeah, we do take that for granted. We can do a lot better than that and go even further. And that is, I wouldnt say, an inevitable progression.

Sometimes, the backlash can last a very long time, and you can take three steps back after two steps forward. But it does seem to be in the nature of things that any significant movement of social progress, particularly those aspects of social progress that relate to identity, race, gender, all the stuff that is not just dollars and cents and transactional. That, invariably, will release some energy on the other side by folks who feel threatened by change.

But one lesson Ive seen a lot of folks on the left take, I think particularly in the aftermath in the Trump years, is that theres just some core of this you cant do through persuasion, that you cant do through pluralism. And I think some of the rise of shaming and social pressure, what I think people call cancel culture, ends up partly as a reaction to this. But also, just some of the move towards a politics of, I would say, more confrontation, that theres not a virtue in letting some things lie unsaid, to both the coalition. That you really do have to confront the country.

You really do have to confront others with the ugliest pieces of it. So that light can come in, and it can heal. And Im curious if you think they have a point, or thats the wrong lesson to take.

No. I dont think its well, lets take, since were on the topic of race, what we saw after George Floyds murder was a useful bit of truth telling that young people led. And I think, opened peoples eyes to a renewed way of thinking about how incomplete the process of reckoning has been in this country when it comes to race.

But even after, I think, a shift in perspective around George Floyd, were still back into the trenches of how do we get different district attorneys elected? And how do we actually reform police departments? And now, were back in the world of politics. And as soon as we get back into the world of politics, its a numbers game. And you have to persuade, and you have to create coalitions.

So I dont think its an either/or proposition. I think there are times, where theres what we might describe as a teachable moment. And George Floyds tragic death was an example of that, in very stark terms.

In some ways on the economic front, part of what happens as a result of the pandemic is theres a teachable moment about hey, maybe this whole deficit hawk thing of the federal government just being nervous about our debt 30 years from now, while millions of people are suffering, maybe thats not a smart way to think about our economics. Again, a teachable moment. So there are times where, when thats presented, I think you try to drive it home as much as possible and get a reorientation of the body politic.

But at some point, in this country, in our democracy, you still have to cobble together majorities to get things done. And that is particularly true at the federal level, where although reconciliation has now presented a narrow window to do some pretty big things, the filibuster apparently, if it does not get reformed, still means that maybe 30 percent of the population potentially controls the majority of Senate seats. So if you say that that 30 percent of the country is irreconcilably wrong, then its going to be hard to govern.

Theres a pretty fundamental asymmetry that brings out. So I think, at the presidential level, you have about a three and a half point advantage for Republicans in the electoral college. At the Senate level, its now about five points, and the House level, its about two points.

So you have this real difference now between the parties, where Democrats need to win right of center voters to win national power. But Republicans do not need to win left of center voters to win national power. And thats really changed the strategic picture for both of them.

Its enormous. And this is part of what I write about in the book. Its one of those things thats in the background of folks in Washington and people who follow politics closely. But the average American, understandably, isnt spending a lot of time thinking about Senate rules, and gerrymandering, and you know

How dare you?

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Im sorry, Ezra, but youre on the nerd side of the spectrum on this stuff, as am I. So people dont understand, well, if the Democrats win the presidency, or if theyre in control of the Senate, why arent all these things that they promised happening? Or why are they trimming their sails on single payer plan health care plans, or what have you?

And the answer is, well, the game is tilted in a way that partly arises out of very intentional desire for Southern states, for example, to maintain power and reduce the power of the federal government. Some of it has to do with demographic patterns and where populations distributed that its not surprising that the progressive party, the Democratic party, is more of an urban party. Because, by necessity, you got more different kinds of people, immigrants flooding urban areas and settling, and having a different perspective than folks who are in more rural, more homogeneous areas. And once you get Wyoming having the same number of senators as California, youve got a problem. That does mean Democratic politics is going to be different than Republican politics.

Now, look, the good news is I also think that has made the Democratic Party more empathetic, more thoughtful, wiser. By necessity we have to think about a broader array of interests and people. And thats my vision for how America ultimately works best and perfects its union.

We dont have the luxury of just consigning a group of people to say, youre not real Americans. We cant do that. But it does make our job harder, when it comes to just trying to get a bill passed or trying to win an election.

One of the ways this has reoriented, even just since your presidency, is around education. So for reasons that are complicated to explain here, when educational polarization becomes bigger, the Democratic disadvantage in the electoral college gets a lot worse.

Right.

But you did something unusual in 2008 and 2012. And you bucked a kind of international trend here, and educational polarization went down. In 2012, you won non-college whites making less than $27,000 a year.

But Donald Trump then wins them by more than 20 points in 2016. He keeps them in 2020. So what advice do you have to Democrats to bring educational polarization back down?

I actually think Joe Bidens got good instincts on this. And the current administrations pursuing policies that speak to the concerns and interests of folks who, if youre 45 and working in a blue collar job, and somebody is lecturing you about becoming a computer programmer, that feels abstract. That feels like something got spit out of some think tank, as opposed to how my real life is lived.

And I think, when you start talking about minimum wages, and when you start talking about union power, you are not soft pedaling social issues. I mean, the interesting thing is people knew I was left on issues like race, or gender equality, and LGBTQ issues, and so forth. But I think, maybe the reason I was successful campaigning in downstate Illinois, or Iowa, or places like that is they never felt as if I was condemning them for not having gotten to the politically correct answer quick enough. Or that somehow they were morally suspect, because they had grown up with and believed more traditional values.

And I think Joe has that same capacity, partly because of his biography and where he comes from. The challenge I have, and I know youve written about this, is when I started running in 2007, 2008, it was still possible for me to go into a small town, in a disproportionately white conservative town in rural America, and get a fair hearing. Because people just they hadnt heard of me.

Now, they might say, what kind of name is that? And they might look at me and have a set of assumptions. But the filter just wasnt that thick. Because rather than getting all their news from Fox News or Rush Limbaugh, they were the way Id describe it, the prototypical that I show up in a small town in Southern Illinois, which is closer to the South than it is to Chicago, both culturally as well as geographically. And usually, the local paper was owned by a modestly conservative, maybe even quite conservative usually guy.

Hed call me in. Wed have a cup of coffee. Wed have a conversation about tax policy, or trade, or whatever else he cared about. Or he might have a small editorial board of two or three writers.

And at the end of it, usually, I could expect some sort of story in the paper saying, well, we met with Obama. He seems like an intelligent young man. We dont agree with him on much. Hes kind of liberal for our taste but had some interesting ideas, and that was it.

And so then I could go to the fish fry, or the VFW hall, or all these other venues and just talk to people and have a conversation. And they didnt have any preconceptions about what I believe. They could just take me at face value. If I went into those same places now, or if any Democrat whos campaigning goes in those places now, almost all news is from either Fox News, Sinclairs news stations, talk radio, or some Facebook page. And trying to penetrate that is really difficult.

And its not that the people in these communities have changed. Its that if thats what you are being fed day in day out, then youre going to come to every conversation with a certain set of predispositions that are really hard to break through. And that is one of the biggest challenges I think we face. Because at the end of the day, I actually have found that, and this still sounds naive, I think a lot of people would still question this. But Ive seen it.

Most folks actually are persuadable in the sense of they kind of want the same things. They want a good job. They want to be able to support a family. They want safe neighborhoods.

And even on historically difficult issues like race, people arent going around thinking, man, how can we do terrible things to people who dont look like us? Thats not peoples perspective. What they are concerned about is not being taken advantage of, or is their way of life and traditions slipping away from them? Or is their status being undermined by changes in society?

And if you have a conversation with folks, you can usually assuage those fears. But they have to be able to hear you. And you have to be able to get into the room.

And I still could do that back in 2007, 2008. I think Joe, by virtue of biography and generationally, I think he can still reach some of those folks. But it starts getting harder, particularly for newcomers who are coming up.

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We had a conversation in 2015 about polarization.

Yeah.

And how it had gone up during your presidency, and something you said to me is something I wrestled a lot with my own book, which is that, look, people are pretty polarized when you start talking about national politics. But then you talk to them a bit more, and theyre soccer coaches. They go to church.

They got a business. Their friend down the street doesnt think like them or doesnt look like them. And I found that persuasive at the time and hopeful at the time. And one of the things

Things changed.

I began to think since is politics has become that much more nationalized. Our political identities become that much stronger. And this idea that these other identities are deeper seems less and less true. That like, when the political cue comes, you really know what side youre on. Do you think Americans have just become less persuadable?

What you just identified, in part because of the media infrastructure I described, and the siloing of media, in part because of, then, the Trump presidency and the way both sides went to their respective fortresses, absolutely. I think its real. I think its worse.

Im not the original in this. I think polling shows it. Anecdote shows it. Thanksgiving becomes a lot more difficult. What were seeing right now, with respect to vaccines.

I mean, I think its fair to say that the difference in how George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama administration wouldve approached the basic issue of a pandemic and vaccines, there might be differences in terms of efficacy, or how well programs were run, et cetera. But its hard to imagine a previous Republican administration completely ignoring science. Right?

Yeah. I thought a lot about if this were second term Mitt Romney. How would that have gone?

Yeah, exactly. And so that is a fundamental shift. And I think peoples identities have become far more invested as a result in which side are you on politically? It spills over into everyday life and even small issues, what previously were not considered even political issues.

And so if youre a soccer coach now, there might be a conversation about, why are all the refs white? Suddenly, theres a long argument. And youve got each side immediately tweeting about it. And it becomes fraught with all sorts of political stuff.

And then Fox News might grab the story and run with it in the most sensational way. And next thing you know, Joe Bidens being asked about a soccer game in Maryland. And we see that pattern playing itself out in our daily lives in a way thats unhealthy.

Some people have remarked, and I think theres some merit to this, that the decline of other mediating institutions that provided us a sense of place and who we are, whether it was the church, or union, or neighborhood, those used to be part of a multiple set of building blocks to how we thought about ourselves. And the way the national conversation evolves, suddenly, theres a right answer across all those lines, which is part of the reason why you dont get ticket splitting these days. Being a moderate Republican, and I write about this in Promised Land, you could see it happening even when I first came in. What was striking was the degree to which the conservative Democrat, or the pro-choice Republican, they were getting winnowed out of each respective party.

And whats interesting is how it filtered. Rather than the public saying, we dont like that. Lets try something else. In some ways, the publics come to see themselves individually in those terms as well.

Well, also, the choices get starker for them. Something I was thinking about while you were talking was this idea that I think about sometimes that I call ricochet polarization. And Im not asserting symmetry between two sides. I dont want to

Good.

Get flack on that.

Yeah, well. I would jump on you in a second. Dont worry.

But theres a dynamic here. You were saying a couple of minutes ago that you thought people knew you were pretty left on social issues, on LGBTQ issues, on a bunch of issues. But they thought you respected them.

But you, also, because its either what you believed, or also because, and the Democratic Party broadly, thought folks who are movable. You were restrained on a lot of these issues. You ran in 2008, and you were opposed to gay marriage. Im not saying that wasnt true to you, but publicly, that was the position.

You talk in the book about how Axelrod and Plouffe were very careful about avoiding issues that would exacerbate racial conflict. And you guys focused a lot on economics. But then as people feel that stuff not working as the other they see the worst of the outside coming at them. Theres a dynamic that happens.

And I see it among Democrats too, where its like, well, you know what? Then heres what I really believe. And heres what I really believe about you. And the parties become a little more each day less restrained, because the benefits of restraint seem lower. Like, if theyre still going to say Im a socialist, then, well, maybe I am a socialist.

Yeah.

Theyre still going to say I want to raise taxes on middle class people, then, maybe I do, actually.

As you said though, it is first of all, and you already offered this caveat. But I want to reemphasize its not symmetrical. Because Joe Manchins still a Democrat in our party.

Here is the original post:
Opinion | Barack Obama Interview: Joe Biden Is Finishing the Job - The New York Times

During an interview with New York Times opinion writer Ezra Klein, former President Barack Obama took aim at the filibuster the Senate procedural tool that allows a minority of 41 senators to block action on a bill on the grounds that its undemocratic.

"The filibuster, if it does not get reformed, still means that maybe 30% of the population potentially controls the majority of Senate seats," Obama told Klein. "And so if you say that 30% of the country is irreconcilably wrong, then its going to be hard to govern."

It wasnt the first time that Obama has criticized the filibuster since leaving office. At the eulogy for John Lewis, the civil rights activist and congressman from Georgia who died in 2020, Obama called the filibuster a "Jim Crow relic."

In the transcript of the interview with Klein, this passage about the filibuster included a link to a Washington Post analysis of the differences between population and representation in the Senate. However, the Post article doesnt precisely support what Obama said.

We reached out to Obamas post-presidential press office but did not hear back. Instead, we crunched the numbers from the 2020 Census and concluded that Obamas overall point had merit but that he misstated the details.

In particular, Obama said that states with a small percentage of the population could control "the majority of Senate seats." Given todays partisan tendencies in each state, controlling an actual majority of seats would not be feasible for that small a percentage. However, a small percentage of the population could control enough seats to successfully wield the filibuster, which effectively gives them control over whether a majority can pass legislation.

What the Post article said

The Constitution gives each state two senators, regardless of population, so Wyoming and Vermont have the same representation in the chamber as California and Texas, which have more than 30 times as many people.

The Post article cited in the transcript was headlined, "By 2040, two-thirds of Americans will be represented by 30% of the Senate." Thats 20 years in the future, but the article goes on to note that even today, the largest 15 states have 66% of the nations population, but just 30 seats in the Senate.

While the articles conclusion is generally consistent with Obamas point, it doesnt have anything to do with the filibuster or the 60-vote threshold to end one. Rather, the article looked at representation throughout the entire chamber.

More importantly, the headline finding from the article is purely numerical, and ignores which party currently holds the smallest states Senate seats. In reality, those 35 smaller states have selected a mix of Republican and Democratic senators, so these states would not be likely to form a unified coalition.

Taking into account party affiliation

But there are ways to look at the question of whether senators from a bloc of smaller states could effectively use the filibuster to steer the Senate for one party. One way is to ask: What is the smallest share of the U.S. population whose senators could block legislation by mounting a successful filibuster, once you factor in the prevailing party affiliation?

For this analysis, we used the current partisan breakdown of the Senate. The results could change if seats flip in the next election, or if partisan trends in some states evolve.

We looked at the smallest 21 states that currently have two senators from the same party 21 because thats the minimum number of states that would allow one party to prevail in a filibuster, and the same party because in the six states with mixed delegations, the senators votes would likely cancel each other out. (We counted the Senates two independent members, Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, as Democrats, since they caucus with the Democrats.)

The 21 smallest states that have two Republican senators account for 29% of the U.S. population. So, by themselves, these states could muster 42 votes to sustain a filibuster, thereby overruling the 71% of the population represented by the other 58 senators.

The 21 smallest states with two Democratic senators account for 39% of the U.S. population, meaning that Democrats from these states could mount a filibuster that thwarts senators representing the remaining 61% of the population.

So Obamas remark is a reasonable assessment of how much muscle a fraction of states can flex in order to block legislation in the Senate.

How much population is needed to control a majority of Senate seats?

But Obamas claim that "30% of the population potentially controls the majority of Senate seats" overreaches. In the Senates current makeup, 29% to 39% of the population could control 42 seats but not a majority of seats in the 100-seat chamber.

In reality, neither party today can muster an actual majority,51 seats,using just states that have unified partisan control of their Senate delegation.

Adding Texas and California to the previous tally, the 22 states that currently have two Republican senators represent 38% of the population, and the 22 states with two Democratic senators represent 51% of the population. (The other six states have mixed representation.)

These groupings of states produce only 44 seats for either party not a majority.

In the big picture, however, Obama has a legitimate point, said Josh Ryan, a Utah State University political scientist and specialist in Congress.

"Essentially a very small population of the country gets to veto legislation preferred by a large majority," Ryan said. "They don't get to control the Senate, but they get to control what passes the Senate."

Our ruling

Obama said, "The filibuster, if it does not get reformed, still means that maybe 30% of the population potentially controls the majority of Senate seats."

In the Senates current makeup, senators representing 29% to 39% of the U.S. population would be sufficient to mount a filibuster and block a vote on legislation, in a sense controlling what can be passed in the chamber.

However, an alliance of states with a combined population that small couldnt secure a majority of seats in the chamber, unless you ignore todays strong partisan leanings in most states.

We rate the statement Half True.

Read more here:
Fact-checking Barack Obama on the Senate filibuster - PolitiFact

Included in Your General Admission TicketAccess to The Obama Portraits is included in a general admission ticket; it does not require a separate exhibition ticket.However, we are predicting this exhibition will reach capacity on a daily basis, so while we will do our best to get everyone in, entry will be first-come, first-served.

Free Week for Illinois ResidentsDuring the first week of The Obama Portraits, June 1825, general admission will be free to Illinois residentsbut tickets must be reserved online in advance. Tickets for this week will be available June 4 (learn more below). Youll receive your ticket via email and can show it on your phone or as a printout when you arrive at the museum.

Ticket ReleaseGeneral admission tickets for the eight-week period the portraits are on view will be released in batches to provide multiple opportunities for visitors to get tickets.

Sign up for our emails at the bottom of this page or follow us on social media to learn the exact date and time of the release.

A small number of tickets will be available on-site for those groups who qualify for unreserved free admissionChicago teens under 18, LINK/WIC card holders, military members and their families, and Illinois educators, as well as families who have a free family pass or a Kids Museum Passport from the Chicago Public Library. Please check our free admission page to be sure you bring your qualifying identification, and stop by an admissions counter when you arrive to receive your free ticket(s).

Virtual LinesThe exhibition has a virtual line in order to manage capacity and promote physical distancing. Please join the line as soon as you arrive by scanning the QR code posted on signs throughout the museum. Museum staff will be available to assist you in joining the virtual line.

Wait Times and Best Days to VisitWe also encourage you to check live wait times on the exhibition page and consider visiting on a weekday when the galleries tend to be less busy.

While you wait, pick up our special Obama self-guided tours pamphlet, which uses the portraits as a starting point to explore the rest of the museum.

Go here to see the original:
How to Visit The Obama Portraits | The Art Institute of Chicago - Art Institute of Chicago

Seth Andrew during a TEDx Talks

Source: TEDx Talks | YouTube

Federal prosecutors and a lawyer for former Obama White House education advisor Seth Andrew are in initial talks about potentially disposing of the criminal case that accuses him of ripping off a charter school network that he founded of $218,000, a court filing by a prosecutor says.

Those discussions came to light just a month after Andrew was arrested on a criminal complaint in New York City on charges of wire fraud, money laundering and making false statements to a financial institution.

But a person familiar with those discussions, who requested anonymity because of the nature of the talks, said they do not relate to a possible plea deal, but instead are giving Andrew's new lawyer time to get up to speed in the case.

Andrew, 42, who is free on a $500,000 bond, is founder of Democracy Prep Public Schools, which he left in 2013 to join the administration of then-President Barack Obama.

Prosecutors last month accused Andrew of looting a series of escrow accounts belonging to individual schools in the Democracy Prep network in 2019.

Andrew then allegedly used most of that money to maintain a bank account minimum, which in turn gave him a more favorable interest rate on the $1.776 million mortgage for the Manhattan residence that he shares with his wife, CBS News anchor Lana Zak.

Andrew and Zak obtained a mortgage rate of just 2.5%, or 0.5% less than they would have had to pay, as a result of having more than $1 million on deposit with the lender.

Without the more than $142,000 in allegedly stolen funds that he deposited with the lender, "Andrew would have been eligible for only a 0.375% interest rate deduction," the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York noted last month.

Democracy Prep has said it learned of the unauthorized withdrawals and then contacted authorities.

Zak, who has three children with Andrew, is not accused of wrongdoing.

Thursday was the legal 30-day deadline for Andrew to be charged in the case by either a grand jury indictment or another type of charging document, known as an information, which is typically filed when a defendant has signaled his willingness to plead guilty.

On Thursday, the prosecutor in the case asked Manhattan federal court Magistrate Judge Barbara Moses to extend that deadline.

"Defense counsel and the Government are discussing a potential disposition to this case and other matters," Assistant U.S. Attorney Ryan Finkel wrote in a court filing.

"Therefore, the Government is requesting a 30-day continuance until June 27, 2021, to continue the foregoing discussions. The undersigned personally spoke with defense counsel who specifically consented to this request."

Moses granted the request for a continuance in an order which was made public Friday.

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A disposition in a criminal case typically refers to a guilty plea, an acquittal at trial, or, less commonly, the dismissal of charges by prosecutors.

It is common for prosecutors and defense attorneys to discuss a possible plea agreement, but such talks do not always end with a deal.

And the person familiar with the discussions in Andrew's case said the postponement of the indictment deadline stems from the fact that his lawyer, Edward Kim, only recently was retained to represent him in this case, not from a move to resolve the case as of now by a plea.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York declined to comment.

Kim declined to comment as well.

Andrew until his arrest had been CEO of Democracy Builders, a group that bills itself as a "social sector studio that has launched more than $1b in enterprises that are changing the face of education, democracy, and technology around the world."

Democracy Builders in 2020 bought the former campus of Marlboro College in Marlboro, Vermont, for more than $1.7 million, with the goal of setting up a school there dubbed Degrees of Freedom.

The group removed Andrew as chairman of its board of directors and restricted his access to all financial accounts after learning of his arrest.

Natasha Trivers, current CEO of the charter school network Democracy Prep, last month said in an email to the network's families that Andrew's "alleged actions are a profound betrayal of all that we stand for and to you and your children, the scholars and families that we serve."

Trivers added, "The network's finances remain strong, and at no time did any of the activity by Seth Andrew have any adverse effect on our scholars or the functioning of our schools."

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Former Obama education advisor Seth Andrew in talks to resolve charter school theft case - CNBC

During Youngstown, Ohios industrial heyday, the box-like building on West Boardman Street was home to the printing plant of the Vindicator, a venerable broadsheet that took on big business, corrupt politicians, and organized crime. Today its home to the future of American manufacturingor the company behind at least one version of it: the JuggerBot Tradesman P3-44, a 3,400-pound, $225,000 3D printer built for industrial tasks such as turning thermoplastics into foundry molds. The sheer volume of what you can do on these-style machines completely changes the game, says Zac DiVencenzo, a Youngstown-area native whos JuggerBot 3Ds president.

JuggerBots DiVencenzo says he wants to get Youngstown on the map.

Photographer:Ross Mantle for Bloomberg Markets

DiVencenzo grabs a felt-tipped pen, finds some empty space on a whiteboard, and begins charting up cost curves. Hes making an economic case for whats known as additive manufacturing and for the bright future of his six-year-old startup, its six employees, and a former steel town of 65,000 people thats been battling for decades to find a new place in a U.S. economy running away from it. Im just working to get Youngstown on the map, DiVencenzo says.

For decades, this corner of Ohio has been held up by everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Donald Trump as an emblem of industrial decline and whats gone wrong in America. A succession of presidents has promisedand failedto turn around Youngstown, which, despite all the political attention and federal dollars lavished upon it, doesnt have a supermarket in the residential neighborhoods closest to downtown.

In his 2013 State of the Union address, Barack Obama singled out Youngstown as an example of one route to industrial revival. Four years later, Trump came to town. The jobs are coming back, he told a crowd of supporters: Dont sell your house. In 1990 more than 61,000 people were employed in manufacturing in the Youngstown metropolitan area. When Obama gave that address to Congress, the number was 29,895. By March of this year, the number was 23,128.

Now comes Joe Biden with his plans for $4 trillion in new Big Government spending. The two packages on which hes betting his economic legacy cover everything from roads, bridges, and 21st century energy infrastructure to bringing home semiconductor and pharmaceutical production, not to mention greater access to free education and child care for workers. His biggest long-term economic bet is that an industrial pivotfrom an economy driven by internal combustion engines and fossil fuels to one powered by electric vehicles, wind turbines, and solar cellswill generate enoughjobs to make up for those lost when older industries faded away.

In Youngstown and the surrounding Mahoning Valley (once known as Steel Valley, its been hopefully rebranded as Voltage Valley by local politicians), theyve been betting on EVs for a while. This collective goal, together with the pivot envisioned by Biden and his advisers, may well be more grounded in reality than the hollow Trump-era promises to bring back steel that were showered on the region, says Albert Sumell, an economist at Youngstown State University.

But the history of grand revitalization plans doesnt bode well for actually generating the jobs needed or being promised. The fact is theres the political narrative, and then theres the economic reality, Sumell says. Theyre never the same, and they are often just factually opposed to one another.

A worker in a Juggerbot machine

Photographer:Ross Mantle for Bloomberg Markets

JuggerBot, founded by DiVencenzo and a few friends out of the engineering program at Youngstown State, wouldnt exist without Big Government. As a student, DiVencenzo interned at America Makes, the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute, which opened in Youngstown in 2012 as part of Obamas efforts to spur the creation of new manufacturing jobs. Today it operates out of a federally subsidized building attached to the institute, which is also an arm of the Pentagon-affiliated National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining. The company will derive half its expected $2.2 million 2021 revenue from government projects.

DiVencenzo says his plan is to move JuggerBot out of subsidized premises and away from government work within five years, by which time hed like to have 40 to 60 employees. In the meantime, it shares space with other government-nurtured 3D companies, including Fitz Frames, which 3D-prints $95-a-pair custom eyeglasses using an app that registers facial measurements.

America Makes exterior at left

Photographer:Ross Mantle for Bloomberg Markets

America Makes, which has 13 employees of its own in Youngstown, has received $195 million in federal funding since its inception. Much of that has gone to exploratory 3D printing projects such as seeing whether the technology could enable the manufacturing of now-obsolete parts for aging Lockheed C-130 Hercules military transport planes. In 2019 the U.S. Department of Defense committed to $322 million in funding over seven years for America Makes.

Theres an inescapable contradiction in the mission of America Makes, whose network includes more than 200 companies in the U.S. and only 12 in the Mahoning Valley. It may be creating jobs in a new industry. Yet, given the realities of modern manufacturing, every productivity advancement created by an innovation such as 3D printing tends to mean fewer jobs overall.

Thats evident in Leetonia, a rural town 25 minutes south of Youngstown, where Mark Lamoncha is plotting the 3D printing future of his own family-owned company, Humtown Products, part of the America Makes network. In a former Mitsubishi tire-mold factory, five German-made 3D printers whir away 24 hours a day printing sand molds and cores for foundries that will use them to manufacture engine blocks and other cast-metal components.

Lamoncha, CEO and head coach of Humtown Products, is an evangelist for 3D printing and new productivity-driven management techniques.

Photographer:Ross Mantle for Bloomberg Markets

Lamoncha is an evangelist for 3D printing and new productivity-driven management techniques. He has rebranded his employees industrial athletes. They work six-hour shifts. A payroll system monitors their performance and adjusts their hourly earnings accordingly. On his business card, it states Lamoncha is president, chief executive officer, and head coach.

The athletes have struggled in recent times. When the last recession hit, in 2008, Humtown, using traditional techniques to make its molds, employed 225 or so people. Today it employs 48, most of whom work at a facility in neighboring Columbiana, where they still use traditional tooling and yet produce more than the old workforce did.

Humtown is a classic illustration of how productivity-focused business interests can clash with jobs-focused economic policies. Lamoncha isnt shy about saying hed love to eventually move to an entirely 3D printing-driven model. Thats unlikely to involve expanding his workforce, given that only eight of the companys employees work in Leetonia now.

Polyethylene granules made for Humtown

Photographer:Ross Mantle for Bloomberg Markets

Lamoncha is also exploring the idea of 3D-printing metal components directly and venturing into other materials, presaging an even bigger disruption of the local industrial economy. On a recent tour of his Leetonia plant, he stops to reach into a large cardboard box filled with what looks like white sanda batch of polyethylene granules made for Humtown by Exxon Mobil Corp. Its meant for a trial to see if a relatively old-school moldmaker can be turned into a high-speed producer of plastic components.

Its a science experiment, Lamoncha says. Its the power of what if?

When you drive by the former General Motors Co. plant in Lordstown, northwest of Youngstown, what strikes you isnt the complex of buildings that once housed 6.2 million square feet of production lines but the vast tarmac tundra of empty parking lots. After the steel industry collapsed in Youngstown in the late 1970s and 80s, GMs Lordstown facility became the biggest employer in the area. At its peak, in 1968, it had a workforce of more than 12,000. Then GM closed the plant in 2019. Surveying the scene, you realize how much the economic future of this place depends on filling those parking lots.

A vast, empty parking lot surrounds the Lordstown assembly plant that GM shut down in 2019.

Photographer:Ross Mantle for Bloomberg Markets

Thats not going to happen anytime soon, if ever. Lordstown Motors Corp., an EV startup, bought the assembly site at the end of 2019 with the help of a loan from GM, thus becoming an anchor of the Voltage Valley idea. It promised the state of Ohio that it would employ more than 1,500 people over the next 15 years and in exchange got a tax credit. Even in its dying days, GM had three times that many people on its payroll making Chevrolet Cruze sedans at the plant.

Lordstown Motors has said it would start turning out electric pickup trucks by the end of this year. But doubts have been raised over its plans. A March report by short-seller Hindenburg Research questioned the companys business strategy, prompting a shareholder lawsuit and a Securities and Exchange Commission probe. Lordstown Motors says that Hindenburgs allegations about inflated sales figures and other questionable practices are unfair and that its on track to begin production.

Nearby, Ultium Cells LLC, a GM joint venture with South Koreas LG Chem Ltd., is building a new plant to produce batteries. Its pledging to hire more than 1,100 workers. A distribution center for big-box discount retailer TJX HomeGoods staged a partial opening at the end of April and has promised to eventually employ around 1,000 people. Add in ventures like JuggerBot that might be attracted to the area by the promise of working with either Ultium or Lordstown Motors, and you might come up with a few thousand more jobs.

To boosters, the new jobs are a sign of a local economy righting itself. But the bounce isnt enough, says Tim Francisco, who runs Youngstown States working-class studies program. While GM has announced a strategic shift to EVs, he says, its relegated the Mahoning Valley to a supporting role. Its significant that GM isnt building the vehicles here and is only building components, Francisco says.

The fact is theres the political narrative, and then theres the economic reality. Theyre never the same, and they are often just factually opposed to one another

When Candidate Biden passed through Ohio last year, one of the people he sat down with was Youngstown Mayor Jamael Tito Brown. Please dont forget places like Youngstown, Brown says he told Biden at the time. Brown, a Democrat whos up for reelection in November, is confident that wont happen. Bidens $1.9 trillion Covid rescue plan is sending $88 million to the city. But the real proof of Bidens commitment, Brown says, will come if the presidents pending infrastructure plans yield the federal funding Youngstown needs to fix its roads and rip up the lead pipes below them that still carry much of the citys water.

For its part, Youngstown is focused heavily on training the workers needed to turn the vision of Voltage Valley into something concrete. Weve got to make sure that we take this opportunity to get a workforce that is ready, Brown says.

ExcellenceTraining Center

Photographer:Ross Mantle for Bloomberg Markets

The latest part of that effort is taking place at Youngstown States Excellence Training Center, situated in a former county jail across from the Greyhound bus station and funded by $12 million in state and federal grants. The plan is for Youngstown State engineering students to learn applied skills alongside future machinists and other factory-floor workers enrolled in programs run by Eastern Gateway Community Collegethe program may even include students from local high schools. Its a Disneyland of advanced manufacturing, says David Sipusic, the centers executive director.

Its part of a bigger effort to transform downtown Youngstown into an industrial training hub, says Art Daly, senior vice president in charge of the community colleges Youngstown campus. Eastern Gateway already works with the Mahoning Valley Manufacturers Coalition to create training classes tailored to companies willing to pay trainees and work with local public agencies to sort out things such as free child care and transportation. But what comes next will be bigger than that.

On the frontlines of the training efforts are people like Vicki Young, a welding instructor at Eastern Gateway. As a Black Youngstown native, she grew up hearing her mother urge her to get an education and target white-collar careers. She took an indirect route and worked as a welder at Delphi Automotive, a parts maker, before turning to education almost two decades ago.

College instructor Young says welding is how I handle stress.

Photographer:Ross Mantle for Bloomberg Markets

Young talks about welding in near-spiritual terms. Its how I handle stress, she says. I just go in there and turn on the welding machine, and everything just goes away. Mindful of how her own vocation evolved, she acknowledges that many of her students will end up operating precision robots rather than wielding torches. But thats OK, she says: From running that robot to repairing that robot to installing that robot to programming that robotthose are still jobs that are done by individuals in the welding field.

One night in April, Pastor Michael Harrison of Youngstowns Union Baptist Church logs on to his computer to host an online forum with Mayor Brown and two challengers in a May 4 Democratic primary, which Brown will go on to win easily. The questions range across topics youd expect in Youngstown, including the lack of a supermarket (a few discount grocery chains operate on the fringes of the city) and crime (the erstwhile power of mobsters once had newspapers dubbing the city Crimetown).

Pastor Harrison says hes wary of talk about industries of the future.

Photographer:Ross Mantle for Bloomberg Markets

Then Harrison asks about jobs: What are your plans to attract employment opportunities to the area that provide a living or a livable wage? One challenger says hed call every business in Youngstown from A to Z to ask them what they need. When Browns turn comes, he offers what sounds like a platitude: Weve got to let everyone know that Youngstown is open for business.

Harrison doesnt betray it during the candidate forum, but over the years hes grown skeptical of what feels like an endless procession of bets on industries of the future. His own congregation has halved in size over the years. All the while, politicians have peddled their promisesa new Youngstown that sounded a lot like an unobtainable version of a distant past or, as in Trumps case, a return of the steel mills. It gives you that hope, Harrison says. But it was a lie.

For all the talk about next big things or the notion that theres a Voltage Valley on the other side of that bleak hill, there are stories that drive home just how intractable some of Youngstowns ills are. Shortly after midnight one day last September, firefighters were called to a blaze at what used to be a Kroger supermarket. Which seems unremarkable. Until you learn from a local TV report on the incident that the store closed in 1982and that only weeks before the fire, Youngstowns blight remediation superintendent had told the TV station the city wanted to demolish the abandoned building but didnt have the money.

Pat Rosenthal and Jim Converse want to revive the city, one small business at a time.

Photographer:Ross Mantle for Bloomberg Markets

Pat Rosenthal and Jim Converse met during an ill-fated 1970s effort by an employee group to buy and revive a shuttered steel mill in Youngstown. Over the years, Rosenthal plied her trade as an activist lawyer, and Converse started a business with his brother recycling the detritus left behind in abandoned steel mills. In 1989, hoping to create jobs after the local steel industry collapsed, Rosenthal founded Common Wealth Inc., where Converse serves as community economic development director.

After decades of fighting for Youngstown, Rosenthal and Converse struggle to muster much optimism about the future of the city. Converse figures Youngstown is destined for a life as a haven for low-paying jobs. Rosenthal complains that for too long city leaders have failed to plan for the long haul. Thats my big disappointment, she says. It feels like they are always grabbing for the low-hanging fruit.

But together, as tens of millions of dollars in federal money flowed through Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley to mixed effect, Rosenthal and Converse have done the kind of work that suggests that community activism, though small in scale, may occasionally offer more durable solutions to local problems. Common Wealths Grow Elm Street project, for instance, has helped retrofit eight buildings for small businesses and created a dozen affordable apartments.

In one of its more unusual adventures, Common Wealth acquired a corner bar on Elm Street after a police bust and transformed it into a kitchen incubator, providing equipment, technical assistance, and marketing advice to food entrepreneurs in a space where a local Mafia figure once ran a cocaine ring. Since its creation, the incubator has helped some 260 businesses that make everything from hot sauce to gourmet dog food.

Prepared Wellness, which prepares meals for customers once a week, has provided jobs for a growing band of cooks and delivery drivers.

Photographer:Ross Mantle for Bloomberg Markets

Common Wealths biggest recent success story, Prepped Wellness, is a four-year-old subscription meal business that takes over the kitchen incubator each weekend to prepare as many as 2,500 meals for customers as far away as Pittsburgh. For a fee, Prepped Wellness cooks and delivers healthy meals to subscribers once a week. The menu recently included a Korean tofu rice bowl with green beans, cod cacciatore, and cilantro lime chicken, along with egg quiche cups and fruit for breakfast. Prepped Wellness is now the kitchens biggest user.

Gino West, the founder, came to Youngstown from Pennsylvania, a jazz drummer pursuing a music performance degree at the university only to become a nutritionist and health-food evangelist instead. His businesss success led him to take over the cafe attached to Common Wealths kitchen incubator earlier this year in a bid to cater to students from nearby Youngstown State. West is looking to expand Prepped Wellnesss client roster in the Pittsburgh suburbs, an hours drive away, and is talking to retirement communities about providing the service to their residents. Hes also setting up small grab-and-go locations where you can pick up, say, a coffee and a wrap. All of this means jobs in the form of a small but growing band of cooks and delivery drivers.

Entrepreneur West founded Prepped Wellness four years ago.

Photographer:Ross Mantle for Bloomberg Markets

West says hes come to realize that part of the key to his success is Youngstown itself. Its location means that he can see catering to bigger metropolises like Pittsburgh and Cleveland and their affluent suburbs, all within easy driving distance. Precisely because its seen and is still seeing hard times, Youngstown is also a cheap place to live and run a business.

It also helps, West says, that hes part of a new corps of entrepreneurs who all lean on each other for advice in Youngstown, whose environs have historically been a breeding ground for a surprising number of startups from Good Humor, the ice cream company, in the 1920s to Arbys, the sandwich chain, in the 1960s. He inhabits the sort of entrepreneurial ecosystem that the federal government is setting out to create for electric vehicles and 3D printing. Only its one growing up more organically. I need Youngstown as much as Youngstown needs me, he says.

Donnan covers economics from Washington.

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Biden's Plans Face Youngstown Test That Defeated Trump and Obama - Bloomberg