Free Republic

The Walt Disney Co. has named Kristina Schake as its new lead spokesperson. The political operative who worked as an aide in the Obama White House and again as deputy communications director for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign will start immediately. The appointment comes after President Joe Biden tapped Schake last year to lead the coronavirus vaccination campaign at the Department of Health and Human Services, where she was counselor to secretary for strategic communications. She departed at the end of 2021. Schake also co-founded the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which challenged the state’s ban on same sex marriage and...

To get a brief reprieve from the pressures of working in the White House, Kristina Schake, a former aide to the first lady, Michelle Obama, took a class about her favorite painter, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. She noticed that the Italian painter often showed Christ with bare feet, portraying his subject as a common man. It was a lesson that informed Ms. Schake’s job in the East Wing when, as Mrs. Obama’s communications chief, she encouraged the first lady to take an undercover shopping trip to a Target in suburban Alexandria, Va., to showcase her dance moves on “Late Night...