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The founder of a national charter school network who once served as a White House adviser under President Barack Obama has pleaded guilty to a charge alleging he stole $218,000 from the network to get a lower interest rate on a multimillion-dollar luxury Manhattan apartment. Seth Andrew, 42, a founder of Democracy Prep, on Friday entered the plea in Manhattan federal court to wire fraud, admitting that he moved money in 2019 from the charter school network to other bank accounts without authorization. 'I am truly sorry for what I have done,' Andrew told Judge John P. Cronan. 'What I...

resident Barack Obama argued in defense of the filibuster on the Senate floor in 2005 despite now referring to the Senate tactic as a “Jim Crow relic” in a comment that resident Joe Biden echoed on Thursday. "If the majority chooses to end the filibuster, if they choose to change the rules and put an end to Democratic debate, then the fighting and the bitterness and the gridlock will only get worse," then-Sen. Obama stated in 2005, a clip of which has gone viral on social media this week. Obama argued that ending the filibuster would "change the rules in...

**SNIP** “I’m ecstatic about the Presidential Center’s location in Woodlawn, especially since Obama was our first African American president,” said Woodlawn homeowner John Odom in an interview with The Maroon during the town hall. “I just hope he doesn’t unintentionally displace his own African American community and cause an influx of Gold Coast residents. 63rd Street was once a thriving, safe African American community, and I would like to see the Obama library bring back some of that.” Patricia Tatum, a longtime Woodlawn homeowner and former nurse at UChicago Medicine, suspects that rising property taxes and pressure from land developers...

“The Seventh Circuit was skeptical Thursday of a parks advocacy organization’s arguments opposing the construction of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago’s Jackson Park, in a case that has left many supporters of the former president bewildered and angry. “If the Clinton Foundation had approached New York City and asked for 20 acres of Central Park for its Harlem headquarters, it would have been laughed out of court. “But that is essentially what the Obama Foundation asked of Chicago - and got, in a sweetheart deal inked under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who previously served as Obama’s chief of staff....

WASHINGTON — For the first time, the Obama Foundation released a list of its super mega donors — 11 gifts of $25 million or more — while also on Thursday announcing how top donors will be using their naming rights to honor others. Last month, the foundation disclosed that Jeff Bezos, one of the richest people in the world, is donating $100 million, its biggest individual contribution to date. On Thursday, the foundation announced: * Obama Foundation board member and foundation finance chair Michael Sacks, the CEO of GCM Grosvenor? * Foundation board member Penny Pritzker — a former Commerce...

When Yad Vashem exhibits were redone, a telling photo was not returned to the prominent position it had had before. Why not? ... a notorious Nazi SS general, a leading Muslim cleric and the father of a nation - all in one. This person is Haj Amin al Husseini. Husseini was the powerful patriarch of the leading Arab clan in Palestine in the first half of the twentieth century. He used his political power and religious influence for his life's motif - the murder of Jews. ... in 1929, there was no Zionist "apartheid occupation”, no "occupied territories" nor "settlers";...

Barack Obama has called on young people to "stay angry" in the fight against climate change at the COP26 summit. The former US president urged them to apply political pressure to make a change, but warned they would need to accept compromises along the way. Perhaps a little unsure of his location in Scotland, Obama referred to being in the "Emerald Isles", seemingly a mistaken reference to Ireland, which is known poetically as the Emerald Isle. He also quoted Shakespeare, who was English. He admitted there is still a lot of hard and messy work to do to reduce the...

Former President Barack Obama plans to criticize former President Donald Trump on Monday in a speech to the COP26 summit in Glasgow, Scotland. Obama will blame the “rise of nationalism and tribal impulses around the world,” for hurting the global response to climate change, blaming “a lack of leadership on America’s part for four years on a host of multilateral issues,” according to a preview of his speech provided to CNN.

**SNIP** A longtime friend of Barack Obama, Marty Nesbitt has led the fundraising efforts for the Center, whose price tag is now an estimated $830 million. In 2017, Nesbitt’s private equity fund Vistria and two other investors purchased the University of Phoenix at a bargain price. This, after Obama administration regulations caused the price of the company to crater. Years earlier, the Obama Department of Education began threatening for-profit universities with regulations which could cause damage to their profitability. In 2015, the Pentagon suspended GI Bill funding eligibility for the school as well. With the college’s income at risk, stock...

Ray Odierno, the retired Army general who led U.S. troops through the Iraq War and later served as the Army’s chief of staff, has died of cancer at the age of 67. Odierno’s death Friday was announced in a statement by his family, according to The Associated Press. “The general died after a brave battle with cancer; his death was not related to COVID,” the family said. Odierno, a West Point graduate, served in the military for nearly 40 years, a decorated career that included three tours of duty in Iraq. He began the war in command of the 4th...

CHICAGO - Less than 3 miles from where former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama broke ground last week on their long-awaited presidential center on the South Side of Chicago, Tahiti Hamer lies awake at night thinking about the limited time she and her family have left in the neighborhood where she's lived her whole life. Following the announcement of the center in 2015, neighborhoods adjacent to the 19-acre planned site have seen skyrocketing rents and housing prices, and Hamer, 42, a single mother of three, is one of several facing displacement. Hamer, a teacher at a local...

Removal of trees from the Obama Presidential Center (OPC) site commenced Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021. Felled trees and stumps could be seen along the northern edge of the Jackson Park Women's Garden. Further south within the OPC footprint more trees had been cut, their stumps remaining in the ground. Earlier in the week, trees in the OPC site had been marked with bands of different colors: blue, green and white. According to a contractor doing a survey of the trees on the site, the trees with green and blue bands were to be "repurposed" and those with white bands were...

A Chicago park advocacy group asked the Supreme Court to block construction on former President Obama’s presidential library, on the same day that shovels broke ground on the project. Protect Our Parks and several other plaintiffs made the 11th hour plea to the high court Monday over environmental concerns, according to The Hill. The group asked the court to issue an emergency halt on construction in the city’s Jackson Park on the South Side, claiming that federal, state and local governments broke the project into smaller pieces to sidestep a full environmental assessment, according to the report. The emergency request...

President Barack Obama was just finishing up 18 holes at the Vineyard Golf Club around noon Saturday when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived by private jet to attend Obama’s big 60th birthday party set to kick off at 7 p.m., sources told The Post. The ex-president, who hit the links with pals Don Cheadle and NBA coach Steve Kerr, flew in Friday for the supposedly scaled-down party, while Pelosi got the VIP treatment at Martha’s Vineyard Airport when she arrived. Sources told The Post that the Secret Service made special arrangements for the private plane she came in to taxi...

A Chicago group made up of residents and environmentalists suing to stop construction of the Obama Presidential Center was dealt a blow Thursday after a federal judge, nominated by Obama, denied their request to halt this month's groundbreaking. Judge John Robert Blakey denied a request by several local residents and the nonprofit group Protect Our Parks, which filed the lawsuit. The suit, among other things, argues that the batch of federal reviews into the former president's $700 million center was faulty. The group claims construction would cause "irreparable harm" to the park by tearing up roads, cutting down trees, and...

Former President Obama is now limiting the guest list for his 60th birthday party to family and close friends amid COVID-19 concerns. The former president's spokesperson, Hanna Hankins, told The New York Times that the Obamas will “significantly scale back” the event amid concerns of the Delta variant of the coronavirus. “Due to the new spread of the Delta variant over the past week, the President and Mrs. Obama have decided to significantly scale back the event to include only family and close friends,” Hankins said. “He’s appreciative of others sending their birthday wishes from afar and looks forward to...

Barack Obama's upcoming birthday celebration has been scaled back as the delta variant of COVID-19 is spreading across parts of the United States. **SNIP** It's unclear how many people will now be in attendance at the party. Outlets like Axios had reported the original guest list had around 475 confirmed attendees, but the Obama camp would not attach numbers or names to the shrunken guest list. A source no longer going to the party tells PEOPLE that "no one needs to feel sorry for Barack Obama." "This is the reality so many people are facing with COVID and it's the...

**SNIP** Another plaintiff, Bren Sheriff, who has lived for nearly 50 years in the South Shore neighborhood near Jackson Park, told me that the center was initially marketed as a presidential library. But after obtaining the lease to build in Jackson Park, the foundation changed course and decided to build a private entity with no official connection to the National Archives. According to Sheriff, many south-siders have been misled into believing that the POP lawsuit is an attempt by white people to stop President Obama from building his presidential library. Second, construction of the OPC in the wooded parkland of...

CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Construction is to begin next month on the Obama Presidential Center unless a court challenge delays it. The group Protect Our Parks has asked a federal court to hold up the start of construction of the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park on Aug. 16. In the lawsuit filed in April, the group asked the court to review and enforce the federal laws designed to “to protect local historic sites, environmental impacts, impairment of dedicated public parkland, and related community natural resources.” According to Crain’s, the matter is back in court Tuesday. Protect Our Parks has...

Protect Our Parks - now suing the city, federal agencies, the Chicago Park District and the Obama Foundation to block construction of the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park in favor of a site of their choosing in Washington Park - is asking the federal district court to block planned roadwork on Hayes Drive and excavation on the planned OPC campus site. The move comes after the city, Park District and Obama Foundation filed a motion to dismiss the state law claims in the Protect Our Parks case, invoking the multitude of other buildings devoted to public use in Jackson...