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♪ is extremely rare. but friends do not have to be. when you are connected that you are not alone. >> cox along these television companies support c-span2 as a public service. >> good evening. welcome and thank you for joining us this evening for what i am sure will be a very stimulating session. my name is susan i'm the president. this evening's program will address the leadership and a legacy of first lady show obama. tonight will hear about the role the first lady played in supporting president obama's electionpa campaign, advising hm during his time in the white house and how she continues to influence american politics today. i want to thank the women and leadership advisory board for

cosponsoring this event. many of them are with us today. [applause] a roll this evening is to moderate a panel discussion with ms. tina chin who served as chief of staff to the first lady from 2011 until 2017 and conversation were several members of the faculty. i will begin with brief introductions. tina currently serves as executive vice president chief strategy impact officer for the obama foundation. she served for eight years in the obama white house first as the inaugural director of the white house office of public engagement and then as chief of staff to mrs. obama. she also served executive director of the white house counsel on women and girls for eight years. after the white house sheus word in a chicago office of the buckley law firm later served as

president and ceo times upp now and the times up foundation. the panel this evening also includes three professors who have scholarly expertise in women's studies, public communication, policy education and mental health counseling. all priorities of michelle obama when she served as first lady. so for this to your left doctor lisa is professor of writing studies in rhetoric and college of liberal arts and sciences. her research and publications are in the field of performance studies, critical race, and cultural studies women lgbtq history. professors publications have been awarded the book prize, the essay prize in the center visitingam professorship in norh american studies at the british library. sitting next to her instructor tamika roberson she is a

professor of rhetoric and public advocacy senior associate dean in the honors college. her scholarship focuses primarily in the areas of health, culture, argumentation isand debate. she is frequently invited to give lectures throughout the u.s. and brazil and regularly gives commentary to regional and national news organizations about issues of politics, health, and race. holds a joint a professor in the department of counseling and mental health professions and educational leadership. she's an active member of numerous professional and community organizations, has presented at regional, national and international conferences and has authored or coauthored articles on topics ranging from the impact of hope, grit and resilience. behavioral health, college persistence and online pedagogy. so we will engage in this conversation with tina tchen for about 40 minutes, after which we

will welcome questions from the audience, and we will conclude around 815. so. so mr. chen. here we are. i will lead off and i will just simply ask you, what were your responsibilities as the chief of staff to first lady michelle staff to first lady michelle obama? >> thank you for having me. i'm going to answer a different question first because to answer the chief of staff responsibility she has to ask what are the responsibilities of first lady because one of the first things we have to talk about is there is no statute, no statutory responsibilities, there is no regulation that sets up the office of the first lady and there is no salary that comes with the office.

so entering into this you come up with a blank slate. that's one piece that is the context. obviously you are the manager of the staff and we have kept very carefully at the same number because we knew that it was inevitable and it would have been where she has such a huge staff. we obviously had scheduling but then we had the various

initiatives and that has morphed over time so we have staff work with us on that. so there's that management piece but then there's the strategizing and helping figure out the message. how do we communicate and project ourselves out into the world and that morphed over time because we are the first to social media presidency and she was a big part of the leading uredge. they knew this question was coming. particularly for black and brown girls how did she feel about this framing and how it was portrayed in the media?

i've experienced this you live if your wholewa life. she was the first or the only when she went to princeton. soof it became sort of a part oi think who she was knowing that. but her commitment also began when she didpu her work with public allies which was a not-for-profit in chicago that she spent time working on for social service and that connection shows if she were tired or cranky and that would

bebe the solution. and overseas with young girls from the neighborhoods and she would explain when i did a roundtable in chicago that experienced a tremendous amounta of violence. she explained a couple of times i grew up a half a mile from

here. i walk the streets of the neighborhood and now here i am and you can do that too. that is the message and making it clear explaining to the overseas audience to say i understand that and it paints the picture so using her platform to do thator was importantg. this is an exciting time for alr of us. i am a performance historian a so it's going to be a question based on that. frederick douglass famously said if there is no struggle, there is no progress. those who favor freedom and men

who want crops without allowing the ground. during the obama term in the white house, which particular struggles did you see the first lady regard as necessary to take on? >> some struggled in terms of what we say. there werean a lot. the question of what did the first lady and our team view as necessary struggles shaped by something that was the guiding principle for our work that was articulated and from the very beginning she said only one

person elected. and everything we do on our side of the house needs to be in the service and if not, then we've got to ask ourselves the question of why are we doing this. and so what we did and the initiative we did and how she spent her time when she went out was very much shaped by the agenda and not doing what was goingyo on. that framing of the struggles which the two of them are so instrumental and it was something necessary to illuminate. i helped her put together a moment to highlight and make

sure she could be a unique messenger to women and what the importance was in the affordable care act and what they would do so there are moments we knew we could be a unique messenger and that is probably how we approached those necessary struggles. >> we know mrs. obama was a strong advocate for postsecondary education and with the goal to have the united states have one of the highest proportionse of graduates. can you share the role to make that a reality? >> mrs. obama and the president

felt education led to their success and shaped their lives. first generation. she really understood how critical it was and how difficult the path is yes you may recall. she expressed that a lot.

during 2012, during the reelection campaign most of my staff wouldn't work on the reelection work and so when i had the policy to think about if we were so fortunate we had the initiatives and we knew there was the word to the third initiative. when you are the first lady and everything in front of you and you a could do anything with of the platform you find it exceedingly difficult to find the places you can make a unique ocontribution and it will havea deep enough effect. that is the elements it tried to put together so we hit on the

education because the president already articulated that goal and keeping with the president's agenda that became they had already articulated. it was for first generation and disadvantaged kids on the messageo of why you should go o college or to the technical school, something postsecondary. we did a lot of talking in the universities.

one of the things we talked about a lot was obviously access, the increasing financial aid and reaching down into high school with several programs in to bring kids to college campuses and we partnered with google who did theseno virtual tourss. for the places like howard and elsewhere so the school could do more of that. when they are here the first person to go to school if your family is struggling, the

pressure was tremendous. as you are the administrators you need to pay attention and help support those to be able to stay in school and experience. you have to help them manage that and the scholarship and then make the kids feel like they belong. those are some of the things the institutions of higher learning can do to promote that access. >> i think that we know that

those have because with the universities are doing right now. it's pervasive i would say. >> in your full response, i'm going to refrain. you mentioned the new book. i'm going to ask questions. she talks about when she's taking on the huge issue of children, now i have the benefit of operating from a huge platform the vagueness of the job description could be marshaled in service. you mentioned there wasn't a prescription. i wondered she went on to say

this is my real self. can you talk about how she perceives r that and the lack of the approach. >> she helped us sort of get it wasn't just we will do something with childhood obesity and a garden. specific steps. and i learned of this from her. actually it is the type of questions that i learned from her that she asked as we were planning the program. to be very precise, to really

increase vegetables and if so, we went to walmart, cvs. we got sugaryy drinks reduced ad worked with policies, so it was trying to translate this goal with into some tangible outcomes that would happen. what was funhi over time there s a whole policy agenda and what people forget is a lot that came out of the study on the various policy things. then there was this other way to useou her voice which was how do you aspire kids to do it and be

determined by the time they are teenagers it's too hard. and witnessed by the trouble we got into, so the pitch was you start early and teach them young. sesame street early since they were talking about fruits and vegetables. we did all these fun things with kids to do that like fruits and vegetables and a dinner with a national competition and picked winners from all 50 states on what their recipes were and they got to h come to the white house with full on east room state dinner for the recipes and cookbook. and so i don't go on a cnn to ck about it. don't go on kids shows.

we went on a bunch. my daughter that was her favorite things t and all the disney stars would show up. do you think why people feel connected to her now is what we stumbled on was you can feel connecteddi to michelle obama by feeding your kids something different at lunch, go to a place, a rally, sign up for an organization. all you have to do is just put more vegetables on the table and then that empowers you and connected you to this broad movement. 96% now have zero sugar i think came from us to try to put that

message out there. i hope i've answered your question. i'm going around a bit. but that was to sort of help and then became the model for joining forces. >> that is the perfect segue into my next question. ino know it is no longer your re now that you are in the obama foundation. can you share what things mrs. obama may be up to? >> having read various layer biographies, the thing i had the advantage of doing was -- mrs. bush chief of staff.

they were true advisors in this job that had no job description and one of the things i learned from them was to think about where you want to put your initiativess and the reading initiatives so i spent a good chunk of 2016 talking about where these would go so it's been created as a part of let's move. so that went to them. they can call it let's move but

joining forces we determined it was a job that came with the building. that is a job that is part of what needs to be the commander-in-chief and in military culture if you are the commander ofsp the unit, the spouse actually supports and so that is very much what we were doing ind that role. president bush was already doing a great job. i'm happy to say doctor biden continued it. it's still happening at the white house now. so that's what happened to joining forces. and also that it continues not

-- plea to still do college signing day where we celebrate where they are going to college. one she said she personally wanted to save was the fourth initiative in the last few years in the administration it started at a 96 and they are not able to complete their high school education. it was inspired by a visit to the president and first lady visiting the united states. as she and her father came in and it is the only meeting she asked to attend.

she asked if she could come and i' turned out the timing there was a very laconic picture of the three of them together in the oval office. we are sitting on the other side ofd the camera but the three of us walked out and said now we've got to do and what we needed this is another power of the first lady that i learned by that point the ability to pull people inn and so we were able o marshal between the state department, the peace corps, a billion dollars worth of investment. we were able to travel to japan

when the pre- minister came down from their visit he made a hcommitment and said we contine to do that but then we have our own initiative that we learned from and abroad in activists whenever we started and an initiativest we did a lot of research not just literature about meeting with people because we never wanted to do something somebody was already doing. we wanted to respect people and fill whatever space was there. so we brought in a lot of activists including folks from africaid and what they said into this voice always rings in my ear who has a great program don't come tell us what to do. we know what to do. to support us in our efforts and then second, help us connect because it's great you bring us every now and thenn but then we

go home and we are by ourselves and creating a way to provide them a fundus individually. whenha we came out of the white house we had a two reengineerind reimagineti that but now it's a girls opportunity line with of the same model we have the network of fort madison and in country activists connected with each other and we provide them curriculum with care and others to help them do their work better and then we have a go fund me page where we feature these programs. but to make sure they all get funded we will now actually expand it into the u.s. into

this year with more networking in chicago. but that is something that we launched in october of last year in new york a partnership between the gates foundation and the clooney foundation. mrs. obama, clooney and gates, on one of the huge barriers to completingth education around te world. so that's funny to have the three of them together and share this passion. they co-wrote an op-ed around international women's day. soso we are excited about what e will keep doing in the future. >> thank you. it's all exciting. >> i was originally going to ask about the move and particularly theth white house kitchen garden but i'm going to move on because i think you answered some of

those. >> i will plug the presidential center. >> of course. well, let me switch a bit. i wanted to -- supporting of military families and the focus on wellness and particularly mental health by advocating for the campaign to change direction. promoting the awareness and education regarding mental healthwa issues which a major sp in the national discussion on mental health and military families. can you share more about the campaign and of those short and long-term outcome? >> so again this came about through one of the things about joining forces is mrs. obama and we are changedy very much by our time in the white house except for one thing and that is our understanding and appreciation of the military. so we both came from nonmilitary families. from chicago it's not a military

town. very separated from it and that's how we came here. and it was really eye-opening during the campaigns from mrs. obama first and around the tables with military spouses during the campaign. and i'd heard about it and multiple deployments. remember in these twoe, decadesf war at the time. and the strain on kids to go to school before and spouses who are juggling this all by themselves, while their loved one is deployed. so it's verype eye-opening. and it was to me as we went through the joining forces. one of the critical things, joining with employment which is huge to get companies to realize this and hire veterans, all of the pressure that started.

education and especially for kids that are transferring and all the military spouse education programs. end of the third pillar was health and it started sort of broad house a little continuation and the army initiative in changing the dining hall. if you've ever been on a military n base, my son is now marine so i am not part of it, but it's taco bell and not to say anythingt bad about any of the food chains, but it's a lot of change in the food. the army did and an initiative that we went and c visited and highlighted to make things healthier. but it became clear that the crippling issue is mental health. this is when the rate of suicide was going up, the acknowledgment of ptsd and a traumatic brain injury was going up and so that became very important. one of the things we did as the initiative to get medical schools and nursing schools to

incorporate in their curriculum training for ptsd and traumatic brain injury with respect to military service and those traumas. we had a retired general leading one of the initiatives we had a meeting and he said to me i thought this was just going to be another feel-good awareness raising campaign and he said you've completely changed my mind with of that initiative and curriculum. then we wanted to do something broader. so it was a great campaign and again we learned the five signs of cancer and how to recognize a

heart attack and things like cpr. we don't treat mental health llikely to physical health. mrs. obama used to say you would never tell someone with a broken leg to shake it off, go back to work. of course you can get up and walk around. but that's what we do to people with serious mental health. like shake it off. and we don't learn the signs. one of the things we've tragically learned is there are a lot of signs if a loved one is deteriorating, how they are behaving and interacting. if they are losing weight or gaining weight and so learning the five signs like the five signs of cancer. she has continued theee discussion.n this morning i saw her with

gayle king talking about her own mental health struggles and the struggles during covid and being openn about that even with her relationship and that is what we needou to do is treat it like physical health and acknowledge it and empower and change direction to understand and take action on their own mental health and i think it is changing. it's led to the realization of how lives spread. at some point they feel depressed or have mental health issues. so clearly this is an issue and we are very proud of the work we

did. of questionsouple that have occurred to me. you've been talking aboutut allf these initiatives and it sounds like you did so independently to the administration. to what extent was mrs. obama a real advisor on these issues did she play that role because the ayfirst lady has a very even tht way. >> i'm not going to speak to what happened, but as a general matter, no. and i think she's said this publicly that what she's all upstairs in the family space one of her roles when she came up the stairs was to give him that

break. that's one of the things she felt was important for her to do. we both were cognizant. one of the things that helped incoordination and understanding is when i became chief of staff in january 2011 and we made the decision i would be one of the senior advisers tosi the presidt and therefore be there at the chief of staff meeting that enabled me to sit there so that was another reason to sit there but it allowed us to be in sync

with what he was doing. ifra there was an issue in veterans i did a lot on that and spearheaded networks to make the changes in the department of veterans affairs. when there were issues that would touch upon, the food policy, together running smooth. we had those moments but always integrated with the policy team for the folks doing military family work because that is where we saw ourselves working as a template and whenever we thwere going to do an initiative or be out there on the south lawn, we always made sure to be very coordinated in our scheduling and communication strategy. we are not going to do jumping jacks while you have a national

security policy conference happening on the other side of the building. in keeping with what we should do we wanted to be actually counterproductive. that was the main concern that we had. >> to open up to questions in the audience, and i think there are microphones here on each side. last night we had a talk and i won't put it's nearly as it neas eloquently or interestingly as she did but one of the things said is barack obama did not have this sort of classic black

american story. his father was from kenya, he grew up in hawaii. it wasn't a classic story. michelle had a classic story and at some level even though he didn't literally appropriate her story he couldn't have gotten away with that, he sort of presented himself and performed the story but he was able to communicate in and way that he kind of appropriated her story and that serves very well. then he could also do the performance of the voters so that has been going on. my question is first of all, do you agree with that and to an extent you agree with it, how

does that sort of work in how michelle has thought about it and is there anything that you observed or have comment on? >> the way i think about it, it's true he had a very different upbringing. his mother was gone for much of his life, raised by grandparents having left his mom who stayed back in indonesia. so what i think he found when she became part of mary robinson's family is he started as a community organizer in

chicagoho. so i guess i would think of it that way. and you would see that story with aev little preview of the presidential center that is how the story reads. there's a story with its personal history and how that shaped him and he's talked about it and that organizing experience through chicago and the election of harold washington which is transformative and at the political activism and becoming a part of this extended family. that extended black family with the quintessential great migration african-american family story.

that's what he became a part of, a part off that family. that also became a part of his work. it's a district he represented when he went to the illinois senate. the organizing somewhere that's wheresi i met him doing that kid of progressive political organizing. that's where that came from. it wasn't as o adoptive and i don't know quite how melissa said it but it is true because of that both starting in the community organizing in chicago and then extending it through and joining the robinson family and extending it through which

from one parochial aid chicago if you do grow up in chicago politics that gives you a different appreciation for the race politics in the rough and tumble community organizing politics because of chicago voters are not shy and will let you know about that. that is what i think enabled that piece. and you're right he went to columbia, the stars school. he had that ability also which is to speak to a nonblack audience in that way that what he was doing to speak to that

authentically from his own background from his high school days. it's probably what enabled him, with someone who had grown up with 1 foot in multiple worlds who had the agility and incredible mental capacity to understand the different environments and huge emotional iqof.

please feel free to line up and we will take questions from anybody. >> i come from an army family so i appreciate speaking about military families and mental health and i thought it was excellent. i remember whenn the first lady came to my graduation banquet at west point and she spoke particularly about the hardships and dangers. you can really hear her speaking not only as a first lady but as a mother. not only addressing cadets but

also if she engaged with military families. we did that a lot and saw that as a responsibility as the commander-in-chief the president did. he made regular visits to walter reed on several occasions and had a special place at the white house frequently as a family that lost a loved one. we created goldstar if you were a visitor to the white house and came in through the east wing

gates which would come to visit that are invited to the holiday celebrations to write the name of their loved ones and put that on the tree. also the large featured tree for christmas was entirely done and we asked goldstar families so the story would be displayed on the tree to bring awareness because they don't know about that. we would invite military imams that have a loved one for other events and i especially spend some time with my family who and

so those interactions have profound effects on the president and mrs. obama that weighed upon him the most for the situation room into combat and was acutely aware of that it's important and i will say.

it was really important to not bubble to not shy away from it, to not not see what the effects are in remember now it's hard but the pacing of combat at that point in time wass pretty high o we had a lot. walter reed was very full and it was tough when we would all go but it was something both of them thought you had to look at and it was their responsibility as president and first lady a big part of it is not just the ordering' out it's also to care for them and their families.

throughout the presidency and beyond, michelle obama certainly used her power for good. however, i was so struck during the presidency and even during the elections the pushback and backlash that occurred right from the beginning and planting vegetables as a terrible political activism kind of way, dealing with childhood obesity, how could that be bad, but my question is i guess i was taken aback by some of those responses. to what extent, to what kind of pushback was surprising to michelle obama and to you?

what surprised you about it? >> that is a really good question. but you don't get prepared for, i don't think the glare that you get when you're on a presidential stage running for national office in a very tough race i think that was unexpected. in that first part of the country going down the list and led to the angry black woman meme and the level was surprising at first. but then we came to expect it and we knew it was going to happen.

there were various animal terms and that we came to expect she never watches cable news and sportscenter was on tv during workouts. hg tv is what we were watching when we were traveling places. that is one way to manage it. it was our job to read it all if it was something that rose to levels a lot of it to you make the calculus to do this together for the overall communications team and it's a very careful balance and more often than not we decided on the site of don't and iba tell you it was taken a

little bit by surprise. i think it was early on they were on their way and they were going to make this official stop. she got off the plane in shorts and you would have thought who knows what on their way to family vacation so that would be so ridiculous and out of normal discourse like we got a smart and we were careful. how she was going to get off the plane, what she was going to

wear. a fabulous stylist to think of this. so we got really good at that and so that was the surprising part. but a lot of it you just manage it and when they go low, we go hi. that phrase came out of a lot of the ways we operated which is your the first lady in the unitedhe states and there's some things you are not going to engage in you've just got to let it roll off your back. my question is very similar to the last one. i was going to ask especially

the first woman of color that we'd ever had as a first lady getting an exceptional amount of kncriticism for every person ina public standing it's a an exceptional amount of criticism but for her a little bit worse and i was going to ask how she dealt with it mechanically but you did touch on that a little. and also how she dealt with it emotionally dealing with all of the racism that america has to throw at you and how one handles that. she wrote about this in becoming. it was hard and in addition to dealing with it first of all she like au lot of celebrities was n the spotlight so there's a lot of tension as the social media took hold there's a lot of that.

what celebrities don't have is being in the white house where any action you take is the potential to reverberate. we all felt it. it wasn't just for her about any of us who worked there felt you just knew at any given moment, any slip-up, here are your papers. name your thing that could happen that all of a sudden contributes. that is the worst thing any of us would want to do and was exponentially the case from mrso things but don't harm things going on.

and as i say she writes about thissh in becoming an felt this acutely. it wasn't something we talked about. she was incredibly strong. when we were on a plane from dc where she cried for an hour and a half and all of a sudden the relieflu of eight years plus, really ten years of that kind of stress every day you are in the public eye it did way and was really hard. we used to say to people that would come towh work at the whie house there's no job you've done in your life that will prepare you for being in the white house because the level of execution

that is required down to how yourib letting people in the ga, we didn't have a good system for how we cleared people throughe the case. and one little slip up they are stuck at the gate. coming to visit and of course through the most visible gates over on pennsylvania avenue. she was stuck. we couldn't get her in. the press are watching on pennsylvania avenue trying to get in. it's little things like that that get reported on the level of execution that you have to. the tight rope was tremendous and therefore it's on everybody that works there too obviously do the best because the country

is reliant to make the decision about how to make a policy decision and how to interact to gett a bill passed and then also the level of scrutiny isn't like anything anyone will ever experience. i don't care if you are the ceo of a company, you will not get that other than in the white house. >> thank you. >> good evening. i am a resident at the home of hofstra university and i just want to thank you for bringing inside into one of the most graceful first ladies to ever serve. i have to say there's no classic

story. i'm grateful for that. my mom who was here in the audience was the first african-american to be elected to the town council in over a 300 year history as the deputy supervisor and a senior counsel woman as well. she did come as a part of the great migration. her and my dad from the rural south were able to raise us in a life of service that i'm so grateful for. i took that to wall street and i've been a private equity investor. i was on my way to raising my first official fund and was stopped in my tracks when i went

toto carnegie hall on february . robert smith is like my brother, and it wass my mother's birthday as well. they had a fireside chat called the black power network, and they talked about this deadline of june 30th. i really didn't know what it meant. i knew it had something to do with theut broadband. we weren't going to miss out on something else that could help us elevate our communities. we had at the g.i. bill, the homestead act so i didn't know what it was. ..

70 of those hbcu are banned deserts. the dissent of doctors, lawyers, other professionals of color come from those agencies . a friend of mine who went to alabama state said they had to bring a bus to put the kids on so they could do their homework because there is no broadband. so i say on that day my wife was interrupted from raising my first official sun to being in a place where i've been tasked with $30 million to eradicate that, just the

staff, the offices that have to fill out thegrant application , then to the federal level so i have stopped what i'm doing because it's like being deployed call it is. she is a graduate of west point, tracy lloyd. we've dedicated the funds we are raising two (. she was the first black woman to be killed in iraq. and that's a system of hours so better to dedicate this to then someone who has protected us as a nation? but that's a lot to say because anything asked you been thinking about this issue because there's going to be a generation that could possibly be left far behind if this isn't addressed.

[applause] first of all around of applause for your mom which is amazing. thank you for being here, i am honored by the fact that you are here . so on hbcu, while we were in office i need a point during the graduation cycle we always gave a commencement address at a hbcu. we gave that speech at teske which i think was our last one so tshining a light on that was .something we did. in the current environment we are no longer in the policy spot but i know separately from other work that i do a little bit about what's going on now and i would direct you to choose these because i know the biden administration has put money directly to hbcu and we were unable to

make a big investment in hbcu so we want to be sure they get access to that. i know as part of the inflation reduction act, if there is a tremendous amount of money in reducing broadband deserts. i can't tell you how to access that money, i am not in the administration but comcast has invested a lot and is committed to racial equity and what they are doing with their own money as well as getting access to the federal broadband money so if you're not connected i would suggest doing so. okay. [inaudible] yeah.

>> it's about 430,000. >> we know. right. yeah, i know we have. it's been great. what robert did is amazing. so i know it's been a priority for the current administration and it's obviously something that we support. >> we have time maybe for one more question . >> graduate of hofstra and currently on the leadership board but i had a question. anytime we do work where we have a job and it's done we look back and say whatcould we have donedifferently ? that's maybe a lot .

but is there anything maybe that comes to mind at the top of the list that you would say michelle, i wish we could have done that differently? >> i don't know. i'm sure that there are and i am sure that we have talked about it but not in the immediate we should have done that differently type of conversation . i wish we had started the office earlier because there were several thingsgethat got started late . we had just sort of run up and there could have been more to dobut we ran out of time to do that . the, we do a lot of men touring work and we would like to do that more scale. we never scaled that, it's

hard to do, there's a lot of maintenance programs so we had to figure out how we expand that with the girls we brought in and that's probably one that she's trying to figure out how we could havedone more to scale that . that might be one thing. it's also been six years. so as we all know i will confess to a little memory loss on some of those things but the loss of runway, even though we had teachers and it was eight yoyears it is a short period of time because the time is broken up so for sure the first term because of the midterms andyou're running for reelection .

but even in the second term because you've got still legislative calendar you're trying to deal with and you are cognizant of what is happening at the end and how do you think about the legacy that you're leaving and the policies that won't immediately be overturned especially when we had trouble passing legislation that could be overturned . so a lot of regrets probably on that front. i know collectively, we regret not having immigration reform and not being able to get as far, we finally had to deliver and hope that still will be able to continue for those families but overall immigration reform remains something that we all wish we

could do. you run out of runway and when you think about the majority of what we were able to do you don't have enough time to put that together. it's something that i think they're actually handling quite well at the biden administration right now . and something we wish we had had a majority for longer than we did to be able to do that. >> please join me in thanking gina for a wonderful presentation. [applause] >> american history tv saturday on c-span2, exploring the american story. a look at the life and legacy of robert oppenheimer, author

of the atomic bomb. speakers include oppenheimer biographer tibor, jade a young and department of energy advisor. at 9:30 p.m. on the presidency a discussion about the lifetime friendship of gerald ford and jimmy carter who were rivals during the 1976 presidential campaign but found common cause in the decades after they left the lighthouse. watch saturdays on c-span2 or watch online anytime at c-span.org/history. >>. >> with this year's theme looking forward while

considering the past we are asking middle and high school students to create a 5 to 6 minute video addressing one of these questions, in the next 20 years what is the mostimportant change you'd like to see or over the past 20 years one has been the most important change . we're giving away $100,000 in total prizesith a grand prize of $5000 and every teacher who has students participate as the opportunity to share aportn of $50,000 . the deadline is friday, january19, 2024 . call for information visit our website at studentcams.org. >> listening to programs just got easier. tell your smart speaker play c-span radio and listen to washington journal, important congressional hearings and other events through the day and weekdays at 5 pm and 9 pm

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