Tag: Obama

Obama Presidential Center Hits Jaw-Dropping Total Cost of Over $1 Billion, Tripling Past Estimates

The cost for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, Illinois, is now forecasted to exceed $1 billion, which is nearly three times the initial estimated cost for the project.

Fox News, which confirmed the figure on the basis of newly released financial information, reported that the project also opened five years past schedule.

“While we continue to reconcile costs and plan ahead for additional capital improvements, we anticipate our total cost for constructing the campus is approximately $1 billion — again, all raised in private contributions,” Emily Bittner, the Obama Foundation’s vice president of communications, told Fox News.

“This includes investments in additional public art, insurance, scope changes in our Home Court, project management and exhibit installation, among other categories.”

It was supposed to open in 2021 after between $300 million and $350 million in construction costs.

But the Obama Presidential Center ultimately opened in June of this year, when costs were estimated at $850 million.

Beyond serving as a museum about the Obama administration, the building serves as the headquarters for the Obama Foundation.

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Obama Defends Ilhan Omar After Federal Raid on Her Home

Former President Barack Obama defended Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) after agents with the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) unit conducted a raid on her home as part of an immigration fraud investigation.

In a post on X, Obama argued that “it is a basic principle of American democracy that the government can’t selectively target individuals simply because of their political beliefs,” saying that is “exactly” what President Donald Trump’s administration is doing to Omar.

Obama went on to note that Omar came to the United States “with her father when she was 12 years old,” and added that “five years later, her father became a naturalized citizen.”

“If Ilhan had been 18 at the time, she would have had to apply for citizenship separately,” Obama said. “But because she was 17, she became a naturalized citizen automatically.”

The former president went on to highlight how Omar graduated from college, worked “as a community organizer,” and became “the first Somali-American legislator elected to public office in the U.S.”

“Now the Administration is actively trying to deport Congresswoman Omar, seemingly based solely on the unsubstantiated theory that she was actually 18 when her father was naturalized, and therefore is not a citizen,” Obama continued. “Federal agents have raided her home, confiscated personal records, and seized her phone — all to try and uncover a nonexistent smoking gun from 20 years ago that will somehow make their case.”

“Think about that,” Obama added. “The full weight of the federal government is being brought down on a law-abiding elected official because she has dared to criticize the president. And it’s not the first time this has happened. Under President Trump, the Justice Department has repeatedly gone after those he considers his political enemies — from the Attorney General of New York, to the former head of the FBI, to members of the Federal Reserve.”

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Report: Obama Allies at His Foundation Get Six-Figure Pay While ‘Overworked’ Rank-and-File Seek to Unionize

The Obama Foundation appears to have an income inequality problem, with the former president’s political allies enjoying six-figure salaries while low-paid workers are fighting for union representation.

That’s the conclusion of an exclusive report by Fox News Digital, which tracked the top salary of CEO Valerie Jarrett at $771,000, a number of others in the half-a-million-dollars-a-year range and nearly 200 more pulling in six-figure salaries.

According to Fox:

The workplace disparity comes to light just as Fox News Digital reported that the long-delayed Obama Presidential Center’s price tag hit $1 billion — nearly triple the original estimate for the Chicago facility. The Obama Foundation, former President Barack Obama’s private nonprofit, reported 172 employees receiving more than $100,000 in salary in its 2025 tax filing — roughly half its 342 reported employees.

Jarrett, one of former President Barack Obama’s closest advisors and a former senior White House official, “has led the Obama Foundation since 2021, overseeing the final years of construction of the Presidential Center on Chicago’s South Side.”

Jarrett is one of the non-profit’s highest-paid executives with “previous ties to the Obama White House or campaign,” according to the outlet.

Approximate reported top salaries in the 2025 tax filing include:

• Christina Tchen, former chief of staff to first lady Michelle Obama — $431,000.
• Michael Strautmanis, a former Obama campaign and White House aide — $404,000.
• Laura Lucas Magnuson, a former White House communications official — $396,000.
• Robbin Cohen, former real estate executive of Gov. JB Pritzker family — $666,000
• Ammar Rizki, former Cook County chief financial officer — $400,000.

“The Foundation pays our employees rates that are competitive with the market,” Emily Bittner, the Obama Foundation’s vice president of communications, told Fox News Digital. “We have more than 500 employees worldwide, roughly 300 of whom are based at the Center.”

However, Ohio State University accounting professor Brian Mittendorf, who specializes in nonprofit finances, told the news outlet that the percentage of employees earning more than $100,000 was striking compared to typical not-for-profit organizations.

“That’s clearly higher percentage than your average nonprofit,” Mittendorf told Fox News Digital. “But here we’re dealing with a nonprofit that’s probably very expertise heavy. It’s very heavy on like the think tank side. And as you look at a think tank, it would look very differently than say a local food bank.”

While the professor apparently offered a possible explanation for the higher salaries, the news outlet also reported the Obama foundation was an outlier compared to five other presidential nonprofits, starting with former presidents Jimmy Carter through George W. Bush, according to their tax filings.

The percentages of employees with $100,000 packages or more in those presidential centers were around 25 percent or below, with the exception of George W. Bush’s at 37 percent.

Fox also compared CEO salaries and found Jarrett’s comparable to the Reagan Foundation’s at $735,000, which includes overseeing the former president’s iconic library in Southern California, but well above other presidential foundation CEOs, which are more in the half-million range.

Meanwhile, “rank-and-file” employees are pushing to unionize, Fox reported. They allege rolled-back benefits and mounting workloads as well as “deteriorating conditions” that have driven experienced colleagues to leave, resulting in more work for those who remain, according to the outlet.

“Amidst increasing workloads we have seen our benefits rolled back and support from leadership to be minimal,” the workers wrote in a public letter, cited by Fox.

Not unexpectedly, some Republicans also took issue with the salaries.

Illinois Republican Party Chairman Bob Grogan in the past criticized the foundation’s use of public parkland for a private enterprise. He is no less critical of the salary revelations.

“The Obama Center is another far-left political operation that acts as a non-profit while using taxpayer dollars to make Barack Obama’s inner circle rich,” Grogan told Fox News Digital.

The Obama Foundation, however, maintains its construction and operational costs are paid for by revenues and private donations, though infrastructure improvements surrounding the center’s large campus were paid for by taxpayers.

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Obama to Stump for Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan — Having Once Put His Sister-in-Law on a Terror Watchlist!

Barack Obama is preparing to campaign for far-left Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.

Obama is scheduled to appear alongside El-Sayed in Detroit on October 24 as Democrats battle to retain the Michigan Senate seat against Republican Mike Rogers.

However, court records indicate El-Sayed’s sister-in-law previously sued the federal government over her alleged inclusion on a terrorism watchlist during Obama’s presidency.

Mariam Jukaku, the sister of El-Sayed’s wife, Sarah, participated in two federal lawsuits back in 2016 challenging her placement on the government’s Terrorist Screening Database.

The lawsuits were brought with assistance from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization that supports those with ties to Islamism.

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SURPRISE! Final Cost of Obama’s Hideous Presidential Center Now Projected at THREE TIMES the Original Estimate

Obama’s eyesore of a presidential center in Chicago opened barely three months ago and is now projected to cost three times more than originally estimated. How fitting!

Just weeks ago it was reported that employees at the center are already complaining about the working conditions and now this. Not to mention the contractors who were allegedly jilted out of money owed for work done.

At least Obama doesn’t have to worry about the extra costs. His party and all of their rich friends would never leave him hanging.

FOX News reports:

Obama’s billion-dollar baby: Chicago center’s price tag hits monumental milestone, tripling original estimate

The price tag for the beleaguered Obama Presidential Center is now projected to top $1 billion, nearly triple its original estimate, the foundation overseeing construction of the Chicago facility told Fox News Digital.

Confirmation of the 10-figure cost marks another chapter in the troubled history of the much-delayed project, which opened five years behind schedule amid controversy over its use of public parkland and claims that subcontractors were stiffed out of millions of dollars. It comes as newly released financial records reviewed by Fox News Digital offer a fresh look at the finances of the Obama Foundation, the former president’s private nonprofit that oversaw construction of the billion-dollar project.

The sprawling campus on the Windy City’s south side was originally expected to open in 2021, with construction costs estimated at $300 million to $350 million. But years of federal reviews, legal challenges and construction delays preceded its eventual opening in June 2026, by which time projected costs had skyrocketed to approximately $850 million.

Hailed by Democrats and supporters as a historic investment in the community and a tribute to the former president’s legacy, the center was promoted as a catalyst for jobs, economic growth and new opportunities for underserved communities.

Anyone want to take bets on how much this eventually ends up costing Chicago taxpayers?

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The Obama Death Star Is Out Of Hope

I’ve always thought Barack Obama was a race-hustling, egomaniacal, anti-American Communist and Islamist, and his actions and history have vindicated that belief. The media lauded him as the greatest orator in history, yet by the standards I taught my speech and debate students, he was mediocre at best. No Obama speech is remotely in the same league as those of Martin Luther King or Abraham Lincoln. He just didn’t have it in him, largely because he was entirely self-centered.

Obama was expert at self-promotion and self-aggrandizement, so much so that he was given a Nobel Peace Prize almost immediately after being elected for being Barack Obama. At least one member of the Nobel Committee that awarded that prize later admitted it was a stupid thing to do. As President of the Harvard Law Review, he did almost nothing, and only a single, 1990, unsigned article on abortion has been attributed to him. He obviously liked the title and prestige, but not the work. He could never explain to even his friends what he did as a “community organizer” in Chicago.

With that non-management background, it’s hardly surprising things have already taken a nosedive at his presidential library that isn’t. The Daily Mail reports:

Barack Obama is facing a fresh humiliation at his ‘eyesore’ presidential center with workers slamming the project’s bosses and moving to unionize just months after it opened.

In a letter to colleagues this week, staff at the Chicago library said they were organizing a union due to the institute’s ‘increasing workloads’ and benefit rollbacks.

Workers have grown frustrated with leadership at Obama’s foundation after their concerns were met with ‘vague responses,’ according to the letter, first shared by the Chicago Sun-Times.

Issues with workloads and benefits have led to a ‘high turnover rate’ among employees, with many more ‘continuing to leave (and) taking with them their institutional knowledge and expertise,’ the letter claimed.

Workers say they were recently told that their healthcare costs would increase, promotions were suspended, and paid time off was reduced, despite also learning they would get no pay increases this winter.

Luke Gilday, an Obama Foundation employee and member of the union organizing committee, told the Sun-Times that workers decided to unionize because they ‘don’t even have a seat at the table.’

‘What we’re hoping for, and really the reason why we’re forming our union, is just because we believe we should have a say in the decisions that are being made that impact all of our lives,’ Gilday said.

Should anyone be surprised that the man who lied about Obamacare and so much else is stiffing the employees he’s depending upon to man his bizarre legacy? In building it, he operated like a standard Democrat:

The Obama center cost upwards of $850 million, far beyond its initial budget of $300 million. But just days before its grand opening in June, contractors alleged that they had not been paid for work on the building.

Several subcontractors claimed they were owed millions in past-due invoices, and African American Contractors Association president Omar Shareef said several workers told him they ‘wished they had never done (the project).’

Here’s irony:

In the organizing committee’s open letter, the group quoted directly from a letter Obama circulated during the 2016 presidential election, which called on workers to join unions across the nation.

‘If I were looking for a good job that lets me build some security for my family, I’d join a union. If I saw a problem in my workplace, I’d organize my coworkers to do something about it,’ the quote read.

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Obama & The ‘Sinister Shadowland’ Behind Our Politics?

The Ripening

“Everybody’s restless and they got no place to go / Someone’s always trying to tell them something they already know / So their anger and resentment flow.”

– Warren Zevon, Mohammed’s Radio

In the stark October light, events and personalities skulk in the shadows like scavengers in an orchard of poison fruit. The dread builds as the dooryards get populated with the motorized effigies of blood-beasts, werewolves, phantoms, and ghouls. Halloween and Election Day have become the conflated celebration of a national death trip. How has it come down to our country, in a crucial election, seriously entertaining the antics of jihadis and Jacobin riffraff?

Some somebodies are orchestrating this frightful show from the sinister shadowland behind our politics. My guess would be Barack Obama and John Brennan, with a whole lot of help from a supporting cast of entrenched Deep State racketeers enlisted in their service, with their status and livelihoods at stake. Mr. Obama acts as if he is untouchable, probably due to being the personification of Liberalism’s “Best Camper” trophy it gave itself to validate the Civil Rights struggle session of the century gone by. We are good people, we really are, and President Obama is proof positive of our goodness!

The truth is, we know next to nothing about his real origins and his journey to power. His family on his mother’s side was pure CIA-connected, and his actual father is rumored to be Frank Marshall Davis (1905-1987), a Black American poet, journalist, and labor activist who was a member of the Communist Party USA – not the Kenyan Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. He went from nonentity to myth with no intervening storyline that makes any sense, just a set of rapid promotions with missing events between them: Occidental College in LA to Columbia U to Harvard Law to Chicago politics to Illinois State Senate, straight to the US Senate, and then, bang, into the White House only four years into his first Senate term.

At every stage along the way he was somebody’s chore boy. But whose? My guess would be US Central Intelligence. . . that he was groomed to be the untouchable front man looking out for the agency’s interests in dicey times. His quick political rise coincided with the rise of John Brennan through the ranks of the CIA. Early on, Brennan was drawn to Arabic culture, sojourned in Egypt as a student, and later served as the CIA’s station chief in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He speaks Arabic fluently and is rumored to have converted to Islam (from Catholicism), though it has never been proven. At a 2010 New York University forum, he praised “the goodness and beauty of Islam.”

The CIA, I would suppose, is composed of two great clans: one is made of the employees actually carrying out real intel-gathering and analysis. The other is of employees (current and former) looking out for the CIA’s own black op activities and the immense fortunes connected with it – with plenty of overlap between the two clans. I’d guess that John Brennan, who was CIA Director between 2013 and 2017 (under President Obama), still runs a large rogue contingent of the CIA clan that does the black ops, sits on a large fortune, and acts like a sovereign organism outside the control of the elected US government.

That would explain why no one has been held accountable for the ten-year-long coup against Donald Trump. Brennan, and the forces he represents, appear to be outside the control of the regular government, including the DOJ and FBI, and to some extent able to control people throughout government by subterfuge, intimidation, and blackmail. All that nearly came apart during Donald Trump’s first term with the bungled RussiaGate caper followed by the bungled Impeachment No. 1 operation. But Brennan’s dark CIA clan triumphed with the 2020 election “victory” of non compos mentis “Joe Biden,” followed by the successful Jan 6, 2021, fake “insurrection” at the US Capitol.

They stumbled badly again with the patently ridiculous court cases against former President Trump in 2023 and 2024. And now here we are in the middle of Mr. Trump’s second term, with a titanic struggle going on, largely out of public view, for the soul of the nation. John Brennan is still at large, but a month ago he was served with a subpoena to appear before a federal grand jury in the Southern District of Florida. It looks like he will finally have to do some ‘splainin’ about events he’s been involved with. You can be sure that President Trump means to see that it happens – whatever was signified by the departure of Joe diGenova last month.

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Employees at Obama’s Presidential Center ALREADY Complaining About Poor Working Conditions – Trying to Form Their Own Union

Obama’ presidential center and library opened in June, a little more than three months ago, and the employees who work there are already complaining about poor working conditions, cuts in pay, hours, and benefits, and saying that their concerns are being ignored by the people in charge.

After just three months? Really?

They claim that the situation is so bad that they’re trying to form their own union. Well, at least Obama supports unions. Right?

From the Daily Mail:

Barack Obama is facing a fresh humiliation at his ‘eyesore’ presidential center with workers slamming the project’s bosses and moving to unionize just months after it opened.

In a letter to colleagues this week, staff at the Chicago library said they were organizing a union due to the institute’s ‘increasing workloads’ and benefit rollbacks.

Workers have grown frustrated with leadership at Obama’s foundation after their concerns were met with ‘vague responses,’ according to the letter, first shared by the Chicago Sun-Times.

Issues with workloads and benefits have led to a ‘high turnover rate’ among employees, with many more ‘continuing to leave (and) taking with them their institutional knowledge and expertise,’ the letter claimed.

Workers say they were recently told that their healthcare costs would increase, promotions were suspended, and paid time off was reduced, despite also learning they would get no pay increases this winter.

The New York Post has more:

Some of the complaints suggested the $900 million presidential center — often maligned for resembling the Star Wars Death Star or a huge trash bin — could already be facing financial trouble.

They included the center’s recent halting of raises and promotions, an increase in their healthcare costs and a reduction of paid time off — all of which the letter said have led to a “high turnover rate” and exiting employees “taking with them their institutional knowledge and expertise.”

Just how vital those four months of “institutional knowledge” was remains unclear, but the workers included an ace-in-the-hole in their pitch: President Obama’s own glowing words endorsing unions in 2016.

“If I were looking for a good job that lets me build some security for my family, I’d join a union. If I saw a problem in my workplace, I’d organize my coworkers to do something about it,” the letter quoted Obama.

Do you think these workers will get any attention from CNN or MSNOW?

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Looks Like El-Sayed Is Blowing It With Black Voters. Obama to the Rescue?

The Abdul El-Sayed campaign, like all campaigns, is not sharing what its internal polling is telling the team, but if the campaign’s recent actions are any indication, El-Sayed is worried about the black vote.

My colleague Scott Pinsker and our fearless leader here at PJ Media, Chris Queen, have well documented the fact that hizzoner, the former president of the United States and number one in his own heart and mind, Barack Hussein Obama is jetting out to Michigan to help a fellow socialist out.

Scott believes that Obama’s making the trip for El-Sayed because he sees the Taylor Swift fan as representing the next generation of Democrats.

“We know Obama isn’t going there on a whim — because that’s not who he is,” Scott wrote. “Nothing he does is impromptu; everything about him is calculated. Clearly, this was something Obama had been considering for a while.”

I agree with Scott. Obama does know that if he wants to have any influence over this generation of Democrats and the rising Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), he’s got to play nice. But Obama is only one half of the equation. El-Sayed is the other half. What’s in it for him?

On the surface, El-Sayed can benefit from the endorsement of the only political heavyweight the party has right now. Obama can open a lot of doors for El-Sayed, but truth be told, Obama is not that kinda guy. He’s got a notorious reputation within the Democrat Party of not helping anyone other than himself.

El-Sayed strikes me as being cut from the same cloth. The one thing both El-Sayed and Obama can agree on, however, is that it’s not good for either of them if the Republicans hold a majority in the Senate, and Michigan is a must-win state for the Democrat Party.

A growing consensus is that what’s driving this Obama fly-by campaign stop is that El-Sayed isn’t doing too well specifically with black voters in Motown and throughout the state. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Leftist MS Now inadvertently exposed this vulnerability for the campaign.

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PETA Appears to Run Cover for Brutal Monkey Torturer After Obama-Appointed Judge Reverses Trump’s Harvard Funding Freeze

PETA has spent three years telling its donors that the “lights are out” on Harvard neurobiologist Margaret Livingstone’s cruel infant-monkey lab, but federal records say otherwise.

A new notice of funding, thanks at least in part to an Obama-appointed judge reversing President Donald Trump’s Harvard funding freeze, came just sixteen months after PETA toasted “the end of Margaret Livingstone’s career as tormenter of baby monkeys.”

NIH RePORTER still lists Livingstone as the contact principal investigator on a National Eye Institute award at Harvard Medical School with an award notice dated September 11, 2026, fiscal year 2026 funding of $850,148; a budget period running September 1, 2026, through August 31, 2027; and a project end date of August 31, 2028.

Livingstone was also awarded a new grant on April 17, 2025, with fiscal year 2025 funding of $576,474; a project start date of May 1, 2025; a subsequent award notice dated June 1, 2026, for fiscal year 2026 funding of $576,201; and a project end date of April 30, 2029.

PETA’s May 27, 2025, release claimed a “massive victory” and said funding for the baby-monkey experiments “has been terminated.”

A PETA news post updated May 28, 2025, said “the lights have finally gone out on Margaret Livingstone’s dark experiments on baby monkeys” and that the work was on Harvard’s list of canceled federal grants.

PETA2 told younger readers the same week, “the lights are finally out” and “NIH just pulled the plug.

NIH itself posted on May 29, 2025, that it had “terminated funding at Harvard University for studies that included sewing the eyes of young monkeys shut.”

Then, a Boston judge gave the money back.

On September 3, 2025, U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs, an Obama appointee, granted Harvard summary judgment, vacated the administration’s freeze orders and termination letters, and barred the government from giving those letters any force.

The NIH termination letter dated May 6, 2025, was among the letters she set aside. The judgment vacated “all freezes and terminations of funding to Harvard made pursuant to the Freeze Orders and Termination Letters on or after April 14, 2025.”

The Daily Caller reported this week that taxpayer money is still moving through multiple Livingstone grants, including the new $850,000 award posted this month and a multi-year grant running through 2029.

PETA’s own description of the “maternal deprivation” horrors in Livingstone’s lab includes infant macaques taken from their mothers, some raised with only a cloth surrogate, some fitted with vision-distorting goggles or strobe-like conditions for months, some with eyelids sewn shut, some implanted with electrode arrays, and many later killed and dissected.

Former NIH Director Francis Collins privately called related maternal-deprivation work “third-rate,” according to the Daily Caller.

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