title: Harry Warner

text: In the wake of United Artists' successful 3-D film "Bwana Devil", Jack decided to expand into 3-D films with the studio's film "House of Wax" (1953). While the film proved successful for the studio, 3-D films soon lost their appeal among moviegoers. After the downfall of 3-D films, Warner decided to use CinemaScope in future Warner Bros. films. One of the studio's first CinemaScope films, "The High and Mighty", brought the studio some profit.


title: Harry Warner

text: In 1954, Warner and his brother Jack were finally able engage in the new television medium, providing ABC with a weekly show, "Warner Bros. Presents". "Warner Bros. Presents" was not a success. In 1955, the studio was able debut a very successful western television drama, "Cheyenne" The studio then followed up with a series of Western dramas such as "Maverick", "Bronco" and "Colt .45". The studio's television westerns would, indeed, help compensate for the net losses that the studio was now given at the box office Within a few years, Warner, who was accustomed to dealing with actors in a high-handed manner, provoked hostility among emerging television stars like James Garner, who filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros. over a contract dispute. Jack Warner was angered by the perceived ingratitude of television actors who seemed to show more independence than film actors, and this deepened his contempt for the new medium. Through this success, Warner began to be known as the "Strategic Generalissimo" by his employees.


title: Harry Warner

text: By 1956, the studio's profits had dropped to new lows. Warner and Jack's tumultuous relationship worsened when Warner learned of Jack's decision to sell the Warner Bros.' pre-1949 films to Associated Artists Productions for the modest sum of $21 million. "This is our heritage, what we worked all our lives to create, and now it is gone," Warner exclaimed, upon hearing of the deal. Shortly after doing this, Jack took a long vacation in southern France. The brothers' fragile relationship was now worsening even more.


title: Harry Warner

text: In May 1956, the brothers announced they were putting Warner Bros. on the market. Jack, however, had secretly organized a syndicate, headed by Boston banker Serge Semenenko, which purchased 90% (800,000 shares) of the company's stock; Harry had at first rejected Semenenko's earlier offer to purchase his stock in February 1956, but later accepted the offer after Semenenko increased his bid and agreed to make Simon Fabian—the head of Fabian Enterprises who had also become a friend of the Warners—the new Warner Bros. President. After the three brothers sold their stock, Jack (through his under-the-table deal with Sememenko) joined Semenenko's syndicate and bought back all his stock, which consisted of 200,000 shares. The deal was completed in July 1956 After which, Jack, who was now the company's largest stockholder, officially appointed himself as the new company President.


title: Harry Warner

text: Warner found out about Jack's dealing while reading an article in "Variety" magazine on May 31, 1956 and collapsed after reading the news. The next day, he checked into Cedars of Lebanon Hospital and doctors told him he had a suffered a minor heart attack the previous day. While at the hospital, Warner also suffered a stroke that impaired his walking ability and forced him to use a cane for the rest of his life. Six days after his stroke, he left the hospital and decided to sell 42 of his thoroughbred racehorses. This subterfuge proved too much for Warner and he and his family never spoke to Jack again; when Jack made a surprise appearance at Harry's San Fernando ranch, to attend Harry's 1957 wedding anniversary to Rea Levinson, nobody in the Warner family attending the event spoke to Jack. All Warner was now dedicated to doing was raising horses.


title: Harry Warner

text: Shortly after this, when Jack was away one day, Warner made one last visit to the studio to take US$6 million (about $ today) out of his old studio account. He gave $3 million to his wife Rea, and $1.5 million each to his two daughters Doris and Betty. In the meantime, he sold a large portion of the remaining studio stock he had to Semenenko and made sure he would never come near the Burbank studio ever again.


title: Harry Warner

text: On August 23, 1907, Warner married his girlfriend, Rea Levinson. It has been reported by family members that Harry dedicated a huge chunk of his life to make Rea happy. Together, the couple also had three children: Lewis Ethan (b. October 10, 1908), Doris (b. September 13, 1913), and Betty Leah (b. May 4, 1920). Harry and his family were also very faithful to Jewish customs and traditions.


title: Harry Warner

text: On April 5, 1931, Warner's son Lewis, whom he appointed as head of Warner Bros. Music, died following the extraction of an infected, impacted wisdom tooth, which led to sepsis and then double pneumonia. Following Lewis' death, Warner, who was now left without a recognized heir to his empire, landed into an extreme state of depression. The following year, the Warners donated a theater in Lewis' honor to Worcester Academy, Lewis' alma mater.


title: Harry Warner

text: Warner also felt his brother Sam's widow, actress Lina Basquette, was a tramp and not worthy of raising a child with the last name Warner. While Jack didn't mind that Lina was Catholic, Harry and the rest of the Warner family did. They refused to have any part in Lina's life, and did not acknowledge her as a member of the Warner clan.


title: Harry Warner

text: In 1930, Basquette went broke and Warner decided to file for guardianship over Sam and Lina's daughter, Lita. On March 19, 1930, Warner and his wife Rea became the legal guardians of Lita through a $300,000 settlement in Lita's trust fund. Basquette was never financially able to take care of or regain custody of Lita and in 1931, she tried to commit suicide by poison. Following her suicide attempt, Basquette would only see her daughter on two occasions in the next twenty years. In 1947, Basquette filed for a large share of Sam's estate, which was by now worth $15,000,000 in stocks alone. Basquette claimed that the Warner brothers reorganized Sam's will under New York statutes, while Sam died while living in the state of California, where, at the time of Sam's death in 1927, laws gave widows a larger share in their husband's wills. The lawsuit eventually ended when Basquette settled for a $100,000 trust fund from Harry's fortune.


title: Harry Warner

text: Warner's daughter, Doris, was married to director Mervyn LeRoy on January 3, 1934. Because of their wedding, Warner, with no male heir to his studio after Lewis died, made LeRoy his new heir to the Warner Bros. studio. Together, the couple gave Harry two grandchildren, Warner Lewis LeRoy (1935-2001) and Linda LeRoy Janklow (b. 1939) (married to Morton L. Janklow). On one occasion, in the late 1930s, Doris read a copy of Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" and became interested making a film adaption of the book for the studio as well; Doris then offered Mitchell $50,000 for the book's screen rights. However, Uncle Jack refused to allow the deal to take place, after seeing how expensive the film's budget would have been for the studio. The couple would later divorce on August 12, 1945, and Warner was left without an heir again. Two months after her divorce from LeRoy, Doris would marry director Charles Vidor. Together the couple had three sons, Michael, Brian and Quentin. The two remained married until Vidor's death in 1959.


title: Harry Warner

text: In 1936, Betty Warner began an affair with one of Darryl F. Zanuck's assistants Milton Sperling. The two would marry on July 13, 1939. Through this marriage, the couple would also give Warner four more grandchildren, Susan (b. December 4, 1941), Karen (b. April 8, 1945), and Cass (b. March 8, 1948), and Matthew. The two remained married for twenty-four years. In 1964, Betty married Stanley Sheinbaum. His granddaughter, Cass Warner Sperling, and her husband, actor Wings Hauser, are the parents of actor Cole Hauser.


title: Harry Warner

text: Warner died on July 25, 1958 from a cerebral occlusion. Some people close to Harry, however, believed he died of a broken heart; Harry's wife Rea even stated, after Harry's funeral took place, that "he didn't die, Jack killed him." He was entombed at Home of Peace Cemetery in East Los Angeles, California. He left an estate valued at $6,000,000 with 50% bequeathed to his wife and 25% to each of his daughters, Doris and Betty (married to producer Milton Sperling). For his contributions to the motion picture industry, Harry Warner has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6441 Hollywood Boulevard.


title: Harry Warner

text: In 2004, Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania dedicated a film institute to him. The university also hosts an annual Harry Warner film festival.


title: John Kasich

text: John Richard Kasich Jr. ( ; born May 13, 1952) is an American politician, author, and television news host who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1983 to 2001 and as the 69th governor of Ohio from 2011 to 2019. A Republican, Kasich unsuccessfully sought his party's presidential nomination in 2000 and 2016.


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich grew up in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, moving to Ohio to attend college. After a single term in the Ohio Senate, he served nine terms as a member of the United States House of Representatives from . His tenure in the House included 18 years on the House Armed Services Committee and six years as chairman of the House Budget Committee. Kasich was a key figure in the passage of both 1996 welfare reform legislation and the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. Kasich decided not to run for re-election in 2000 and ran for president instead. He withdrew from the race before the Republican primaries.


title: John Kasich

text: After leaving Congress, Kasich hosted "Heartland with John Kasich" on Fox News from 2001 to 2007 and served as managing director of the Lehman Brothers office in Columbus, Ohio. He ran for governor of Ohio in 2010, defeating Democratic incumbent Ted Strickland. He was re-elected in 2014, defeating Democratic challenger Ed FitzGerald by 30 percentage points. Kasich was term-limited and could not seek a third gubernatorial term in 2018; he was succeeded by fellow Republican Mike DeWine.


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich ran for president again in 2016, finishing in third place in the Republican primaries behind Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. He won the primary in his home state of Ohio and finished second in New Hampshire. Kasich declined to support Trump as the Republican presidential nominee and did not attend the 2016 Republican National Convention, which was held in Ohio. In 2019, following the end of his second term as governor, Kasich joined CNN as a contributor. Kasich is known as one of Trump's most prominent critics within the Republican Party, and he endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden for president in a speech at the 2020 Democratic National Convention.


title: John Kasich

text: John Richard Kasich Jr. was born and raised in the Pittsburgh suburb of McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania. He is the son of Anne (née Vukovich; 1918–1987) and John Richard Kasich (1919-1987), who worked as a mail carrier.


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich's father was of Czech descent, while his mother was of Croatian descent. Both his father and mother were children of immigrants and were practicing Roman Catholics. He has described himself as "a Croatian and a Czech".


title: John Kasich

text: After attending public schools in his hometown of McKees Rocks, Kasich later left his native Pennsylvania, settling in Columbus, Ohio in 1970 to attend Ohio State University, where he joined the Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity.


title: John Kasich

text: As a freshman, he wrote a letter to President Richard Nixon describing concerns he had about the nation and requesting a meeting with the President. The letter was delivered to Nixon by the university's president Novice Fawcett and Kasich was granted a 20-minute meeting with Nixon in December 1970.


title: John Kasich

text: Earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from Ohio State University, in 1974, he went on to work as a researcher for the Ohio Legislative Service Commission. From 1975 to 1978, he served as an administrative assistant to then-state Senator Buz Lukens.


title: John Kasich

text: In 1978, Kasich ran against Democratic incumbent Robert O'Shaughnessy for State Senate. A political ally of Kasich remembers him during that time as a persistent campaigner: "People said, 'If you just quit calling me, I'll support you.'" At age 26, Kasich won with 56% of the vote, beginning his four-year term representing the 15th district. Kasich was the second youngest person ever elected to the Ohio Senate.


title: John Kasich

text: One of his first acts as a State Senator was to refuse a pay raise. Republicans gained control of the State Senate in 1980, but Kasich went his own way, for example, by opposing a budget proposal he believed would raise taxes and writing his own proposal instead.


title: John Kasich

text: In 1982, Kasich ran for Congress in Ohio's 12th congressional district, which included portions of Columbus as well as the cities of Westerville, Reynoldsburg, Worthington, and Dublin. He won the Republican primary with 83% of the vote and defeated incumbent Democratic U.S. Congressman Bob Shamansky in the general election by a margin of 50%–47%. He would never face another contest nearly that close, and was re-elected eight more times with at least 64 percent of the vote.


title: John Kasich

text: During his congressional career, Kasich was considered a fiscal conservative, taking aim at programs supported by Republicans and Democrats. He worked with Ralph Nader in seeking to reduce corporate tax loopholes.


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich was a member of the House Armed Services Committee for 18 years. He developed a "fairly hawkish" reputation on that committee, although he "also zealously challenged" defense spending he considered wasteful. Among the Pentagon projects that he targeted were the B-2 bomber program (teaming up with Democratic representative Ron Dellums to cut the program, their efforts were partly successful) and the A-12 bomber program (ultimately canceled by defense secretary Dick Cheney in 1991). He participated extensively in the passage of the Goldwater–Nichols Act of 1986, which reorganized the U.S. Department of Defense. He also pushed through the bill creating the 1988 Base Realignment and Closure Commission, which closed obsolete U.S. military bases, and successfully opposed a proposed $110 million expansion of the Pentagon building after the end of the Cold War. He also "proposed a national commission on arms control" and "urged tighter controls over substances that could be used for biological warfare."


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich said he was "100 percent for" the first Persian Gulf War as well as the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, but said that he did not favor U.S. military participation in the Lebanese Civil War or in Bosnia. In 1997, with fellow Republican representative Floyd Spence, he introduced legislation (supported by some congressional Democrats) for the U.S. to pull out of a multilateral peacekeeping force in Bosnia. In the House, he supported the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, a U.S. Representative Ron Dellums (D- CA)-led initiative to impose economic sanctions against apartheid-era South Africa.


title: John Kasich

text: In 1993, Kasich became the ranking Republican member of the House Budget Committee. Kasich and other House Budget Committee Republicans proposed an alternative to President Bill Clinton's deficit reduction bill, the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993. That proposal included funds to implement Republican proposals for health care, welfare, and crime control legislation and for a child tax credit. The Penny-Kasich Plan, named after Kasich and fellow lead sponsor Tim Penny, was supported by Republicans and conservative Democrats. It proposed $90 billion in spending cuts over five years, almost three times as much in cuts as the $37 billion in cuts backed by the Clinton administration and Democratic congressional leaders. About one-third ($27 billion) of the proposed Penny-Kasich cuts would come from means-testing Medicare, specifically by reducing Medicare payments to seniors who earned $75,000 or more in adjusted gross income. This angered the AARP, which lobbied against the legislation. Another $26 billion of the Penny-Kasich plan's cuts would have come from the U.S. Department of Defense and foreign aid, which led Secretary of Defense Les Aspin to say that the plan would destroy military morale. Another $27 billion in savings would have come from federal layoffs. The proposal was narrowly defeated in the House by a 219–213 vote.


title: John Kasich

text: As ranking member of the Budget Committee, Kasich proposed his own health care reform plan as a rival to the Clinton health care plan of 1993 championed by First Lady Hillary Clinton, but more market-based. As journalist Zeke Miller wrote in "Time" magazine, "The Kasich plan would have covered all Americans by 2005, using a form of an individual mandate that would have required employees to purchase insurance through their employers. (The mandate was an idea initially supported by conservative groups like The Heritage Foundation.)"


title: John Kasich

text: On November 17, 1993, Kasich voted to approve the North American Free Trade Agreement, casting a "yea" vote for the North American Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act.


title: John Kasich

text: In 1994, Kasich was one of the Republican leaders to support a last-minute deal with President Bill Clinton to pass the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. After a series of meetings with Clinton's Chief of Staff, Leon Panetta, a longtime friend of Kasich, the assault weapons ban was passed when 42 Republicans crossed party lines and voted to ban assault weapons with the Democrats. His support of the assault-weapons ban angered the National Rifle Association, which gave Kasich an "F" rating in 1994 as a result.


title: John Kasich

text: In 1995, when Republicans gained the majority in the United States Congress following the 1994 election, Kasich became chair of the House Budget Committee. In 1996, he introduced the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act in the House, an important welfare reform bill signed into law by President Clinton.


title: John Kasich

text: During the 1996 presidential campaign, Republican nominee Bob Dole was reported to have considered Kasich as a vice presidential running mate but instead selected Jack Kemp, a former congressman and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.


title: John Kasich

text: In 1997, Kasich rose to national prominence after becoming "the chief architect of a deal that balanced the federal budget for the first time since 1969"—the Balanced Budget Act of 1997.


title: John Kasich

text: In 1998, Kasich voted to impeach President Clinton on all four charges made against him. In 1999, while the Senate prepared to vote on the charges, he said: "I believe these are impeachable and removable offenses."


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich did not seek re-election in 2000. In February 1999, he formed an exploratory committee to run for president. In March 1999 he announced his campaign for the Republican nomination. After very poor fundraising, he dropped out in July 1999, before the Iowa Straw Poll, and endorsed governor George W. Bush of Texas.


title: John Kasich

text: After leaving Congress, Kasich went to work for Fox News, hosting "Heartland with John Kasich" on the Fox News Channel and guest-hosting "The O'Reilly Factor", filling in for Bill O'Reilly as needed. He also occasionally appeared as a guest on "Hannity & Colmes".


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich served on the board of directors for several corporations, including Invacare Corp. and the Chicago-based Norvax Inc. In 2001, Kasich joined Lehman Brothers' investment banking division as a managing director, in Columbus, Ohio. He remained at Lehman Brothers until it declared bankruptcy in 2008. That year, Lehman Brothers paid him a $182,692 salary and a $432,200 bonus. He stated that the bonus was for work performed in 2007.


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich's employment by Lehman Brothers was criticized during his subsequent campaigns in light of the firm's collapse during the financial crisis. Kasich responded to critics by saying: "I wasn't involved in the inner workings of Lehman, I was a banker. I didn't go to board meetings or go and talk investment strategy with the top people. I was nowhere near that. That's like, it's sort of like being a car dealer in Zanesville and being blamed for the collapse of GM."


title: John Kasich

text: Republicans made efforts to recruit Kasich to run for Ohio governor in 2006, but he declined to enter the race.


title: John Kasich

text: In 2008, Kasich formed Recharge Ohio, a political action committee (PAC) with the goal of raising money to help Republican candidates for the Ohio House of Representatives and Ohio Senate, in an effort to retain Republican majorities in the Ohio General Assembly. Kasich served as honorary chairman of the PAC.


title: John Kasich

text: On May 1, 2009, Kasich filed papers to run for governor of Ohio against incumbent Democratic governor Ted Strickland. He formally announced his candidacy on June 1, 2009. On January 15, 2010, Kasich announced Ohio State Auditor Mary Taylor as his running mate.


title: John Kasich

text: During a speech before Ashtabula County Republicans in March 2009, Kasich talked about the need to "break the back of organized labor in the schools," according to the Ashtabula "Star Beacon".


title: John Kasich

text: Ohio teachers' unions supported Strickland, and after Kasich's gubernatorial victory, he said, "I am waiting for the teachers' unions to take out full-page ads in all the major newspapers, apologizing for what they had to say about me during this campaign."


title: John Kasich

text: On May 4, 2010, Kasich won the Republican nomination for governor, having run unopposed. On November 2, 2010, Kasich defeated Strickland in a closely contested race to win the governorship. He was sworn in at midnight on January 10, 2011, in a private ceremony at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus. It was then followed by a ceremonial inauguration at the Ohio Theatre at noon on the same day.


title: John Kasich

text: In November 2014, Kasich won re-election, defeating Democrat Ed FitzGerald, the county executive of Cuyahoga County, 64% to 33%. He won 86 of 88 counties.


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich, who was elected with Tea Party support in 2010, faced some backlash from some Tea Party activists. His decision to accept the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's expansion of Medicaid caused some Tea Party activists to refuse to support his campaign. Kasich supported longtime ally and campaign veteran Matt Borges over Portage County Tea Party chairman Tom Zawistowski for the position of chairman of the Ohio Republican Party. Zawistowski secured just three votes in his run for the chairmanship. Tea Party groups announced they would support a primary challenger, or, if none emerged, the Libertarian nominee.


title: John Kasich

text: Ultimately, Zawistowski failed to field anyone on the ballot and the Libertarian nominee (former Republican State Representative Charlie Earl) was removed from the ballot after failing to gain the required number of valid signatures necessary for ballot access.


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich is considered by some to be a moderate Republican due to his strong condemnation of far-right conservatives and his endorsement of Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. However, his record in the House and as governor of Ohio has led others to point out that his views place him to the right of most moderate politicians. Larry Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, who has known Kasich for years, says that "If you had asked me in the 90s about Kasich I would have said he was a Gingrich conservative." Kasich's friend Curt Steiner, former chief of staff to former Republican Ohio governor and U.S. senator George Voinovich, described Kasich as a "solid Republican" with "an independent streak."


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich's tenure as governor was notable for his expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, his work combating the opioid addiction crisis, his attempt (later reversed by Ohio voters in a 2011 referendum) to curtail collective bargaining for public sector employees, his local government funding cuts, his passage of several anti-abortion laws, his veto of a six-week abortion ban, his tax cuts, and his evolving position on gun control.


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich opposes abortion except in cases of rape, incest, and danger to the mother's life. As governor, he signed 18 abortion-restrictive measures into law. In June 2013, Kasich signed into law a state budget, HB 59, which stripped some $1.4 million in federal dollars from Planned Parenthood by placing the organization last on the priority list for family-planning funds; provided funding to crisis pregnancy centers; and required women seeking abortions to undergo ultrasounds. The budget also barred abortion providers from entering into emergency transfer agreements with public hospitals, requiring abortion providers to find private hospitals willing to enter into transfer agreements. Another provision of the bill requires abortion providers to offer information on family planning and adoption services in certain situations. Under the budget, rape crisis centers could lose public funding if they counseled sexual assault victims about abortion.


title: John Kasich

text: In 2015, Kasich said in an interview that Planned Parenthood "ought to be de-funded", but added that Republicans in Congress should not force a government shutdown over the issue.


title: John Kasich

text: In December 2016, Kasich approved a ban on abortions after 20 weeks, except when a pregnancy endangers a woman's life, but vetoed HB 493, a six-week abortion ban. Kasich cited the cost to taxpayers of defending the legislation in court, and the likelihood that the six-week bill would be struck down in federal court as reasons for vetoing the more restrictive bill. In December 2018, Kasich again vetoed a proposed six-week abortion ban, citing the cost to taxpayers and previous rulings by the federal courts. He did sign a bill into law that bans the dilation and evacuation procedure commonly used for abortion.


title: John Kasich

text: In a speech in April 2012, Kasich acknowledged that climate change is real and is a problem. In the same speech, however, Kasich said that the Environmental Protection Agency should not regulate carbon emissions and that instead states and private companies should be in charge of regulating coal-fired power plant emissions. In 2015, Kasich stated that he did not know all the causes of climate change, and that he did not know the extent to which humans contribute to climate change.


title: John Kasich

text: In 2014, Kasich signed into law a bill freezing Ohio's renewable portfolio standard (RPS) program for two years. Ohio's RPS program was created by 2008 legislation and required the state to acquire 12.5 percent of its energy portfolio from renewable sources and to reduce energy consumption by 22 percent by 2025. The legislation signed by Kasich to stop the program was supported by Republican legislative leaders, utility companies, and some industry groups, and opposed by environmentalists, some manufacturers, and the American Lung Association. In 2016, Kasich broke with fellow Republicans in the state legislature by vetoing their attempt to continue blocking the RPS standards; as a result, the freeze ended on December 31, 2016, and the clean-energy mandate resumed. This veto won Kasich praise from environmentalist groups, and angered Republicans in the state legislature.


title: John Kasich

text: In his 2015 budget plan, Kasich proposed raising the tax rate on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) activities. Specifically, Kasich's plan called for imposing a 6.5 percent severance tax on crude oil and natural gas extracted via horizontal drilling and sold at the source (about $3.25 per $50 barrel of oil), and for an additional 4.5 percent tax per thousand cubic feet on natural gas and liquefied natural gas (about $0.16 per thousand cubic feet). The proposal would not affect conventional drilling taxes.


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich formerly supported fracking in Ohio state parks and forests, signing legislation in mid-2011 authorizing him to appoint a five-member commission to oversee the leasing of mineral rights on state land to the highest bidders. In 2012, Kasich aides planned a campaign with a stated goal to "marginalize the effectiveness of communications by adversaries about the initiative" to bring fracking to state parks and forests, naming in an email the Ohio Sierra Club and state Representatives Robert F. Hagan and Nickie Antonio as adversaries of the plan. Kasich never appointed the commission, and the promotional plan was never put into effect. A memo and email relating to the 2012 promotional campaign were publicly released for the first time in February 2015, which according to the "Columbus Dispatch" attracted criticism from state environmental and liberal groups, as well as Democratic state legislators, who called for an investigation. On the same day the governor reversed himself, with a spokesman saying, "At this point, the governor doesn't support fracking in state parks. We reserve the right to revisit that, but it's not what he wants to do right now, and that's been his position for the past year and a half."


title: John Kasich

text: In April 2015, Kasich signed a bill aimed at protecting Lake Erie's water quality. The bill places restrictions on the spread of manure and other fertilizers that contribute to toxic algal blooms and requires large public water treatment plants to monitor phosphorus levels. The bill had been unanimously approved by both chambers of the Ohio Legislature the previous month.


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich supported the Keystone XL oil pipeline project and, along with other Republican governors, signed an open letter in February 2015 urging federal approval for the project. In 2016, in response to a request from South Dakota under the terms of an interstate compact, Kasich dispatched 37 Ohio state troopers to South Dakota, where they were stationed around Dakota Access Pipeline protests near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. This controversial deployment prompted unsuccessful petitions to Kasich (from members of the public, Cincinnati City Council members, environmentalists, and some state legislators), who asked Kasich to recall the troopers.


title: John Kasich

text: To offset a state budget deficit, Kasich proposed selling five state prisons to the for-profit prison industry. The Lake Erie prison was sold for $72.7 million to the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), generating savings of $3 million. Kasich's Director of Corrections, Gary Mohr, whom he had hired in January 2011, had previously worked for CCA, but he said that he removed himself from the sales process. In an audit in October 2012, CCA was cited for 47 contractual violations, and failed a second audit later that year. In July 2015, the Kasich administration announced its intent to sell the North Central Correctional Institution at Marion, in order to recoup the state's original investment in the facility and invest the proceeds in community-based alternatives to prison.


title: John Kasich

text: Following the separate fatal police shootings of John Crawford III and Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy in Ohio, while each were holding BB guns, grand juries decided not to indict any of the officers involved. Following this, Kasich created the Ohio Collaborative Community-Police Advisory Board "to address what he described as frustration and distrust among some Ohioans toward their police departments, particularly among the black community." The 23-member task force (with 18 members appointed by Kasich) was appointed in January 2015 and issued its 629-page final report and recommendations in April 2015. The report recommended greater accountability and oversight for police agencies and officers, further community education and involvement in policing, and new use-of-force and recruitment, hiring, and training standards for police agencies.


title: John Kasich

text: In April 2015, Kasich created the Ohio Collaborative Community-Police Advisory Board, a twelve-member board tasked (in conjunction with the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services and the Ohio Department of Public Safety) with developing statewide standards for the recruiting, hiring and screening of police officers, and for the use of force (including deadly force) by police. The advisory board, the first of its kind in Ohio, was also tasked by Kasich with developing "model policies and best practice recommendations to promote better interaction and communication between law enforcement departments and their home communities." In August 2015, the board issued its recommendations, which placed "an emphasis on the preservation of human life and restrict officers to defending themselves or others from death or serious injury."


title: John Kasich

text: In August 2015, Kasich said that he was open to the idea of requiring police officers to wear body cameras.


title: John Kasich

text: As governor, Kasich presided over the executions of fifteen inmates and commuted the death sentences of seven inmates. The last execution in Ohio took place in July 2018. In January 2015, Kasich announced that, due to pending litigation and other issues, he was delaying all seven executions scheduled through January 2016. The delay was largely attributed to European pharmaceutical companies, which have refused to supply the state with deadly drugs necessary for executions. In February 2017, Kasich again delayed Ohio executions for an additional three months, after a federal judge ruled that Ohio's three-drug lethal injection protocol is unconstitutional.


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich used his power of executive clemency sparingly. He has the lowest clemency rate of any Ohio governor since at least the 1980s, when records began to be kept. In six years in office, Kasich granted 86 of the 2,291 requests that he acted upon. In 2016, Kasich granted executive clemency to 13 people; in all of the cases, the Ohio Adult Parole Authority had recommended clemency.


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich supports various criminal justice reform efforts; according to conservative "Washington Post" columnist George Will, Kasich "favors fewer mandatory minimum sentences and has instituted prison policies that prepare inmates for re-integration into communities." In 2011, Kasich signed sentencing reform legislation which allowed judges to sentence defendants convicted of non-violent fourth- and fifth-degree felonies to "community-based halfway house facilities" instead of prison; expanded the earned credit system to allow inmates to reduce their sentences; and allowed felons who have already served 80 percent or more of their sentences to be immediately released.


title: John Kasich

text: In 2012, Kasich signed into law a bill, sponsored by Cleveland Democratic Senator Shirley Smith and Cincinnati Republican Senator Bill Seitz, easing the collateral consequences of criminal conviction.


title: John Kasich

text: In September 2014, Kasich touted the Ohio's prison system's recidivism rate, which is one of the lowest in the nation. U.S. Senator Rob Portman, a Republican, attributed a drop in Ohio's recidivism rate "to the bipartisan work of the state legislature, Governor Kasich, Ohio's reentry leaders and the success of programs made possible at the federal level by the Second Chance Act," which Portman sponsored.


title: John Kasich

text: In 2015, Kasich proposed a state budget including $61.7 million for addiction treatment services for prisoners.


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich initially expressed opposition to medical marijuana in 2012, saying "There's better ways to help people who are in pain." However, in late 2015 and early 2016, Kasich said he was open to the legalization of medical marijuana.


title: John Kasich

text: In March 2014, in an effort to address the opioid epidemic, Kasich signed legislation (passed unanimously in both chambers of the state legislature) expanding the availability of naloxone, a lifesaving antidote to opioid overdoses; the measure allowed friends and family members of addicts to obtain access to naloxone and for first responders to carry naloxone. In July 2015, Kasich signed legislation further expanding the availability of naloxone, making it available without a prescription.


title: John Kasich

text: In a 2015 interview with radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt, Kasich said he was opposed to the legalization of recreational marijuana in some states and equated the drug to heroin, stating: "In my state and across this country, if I happened to be president, I would lead a significant campaign down at the grassroots level to stomp these drugs out of our country."


title: John Kasich

text: When Kasich was asked by Hewitt whether, if elected president, he would federally enforce marijuana laws in states which have legalized marijuana, Kasich characterized it as a states' rights issue and said that "I'd have to think about it." When asked the same question later in 2015, Kasich said: "I would try to discourage the states from doing it...but I would be tempted to say I don't think we can go and start disrupting what they've decided."


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich opposed "Issue 3," an Ohio ballot measure in 2015 that proposed the legalization of recreational marijuana, saying it was a "terrible idea."


title: John Kasich

text: During Kasich's tenure, the state has eliminated a budget shortfall that his administration has estimated at $8 billion, but which the "Cleveland Plain Dealer" estimated at closer to $6 billion. (The "New York Times" put the number at $7.7 billion). Ohio also increased its "rainy day fund" from effectively zero to more than $2 billion.


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich "closed the budget shortfall in part by cutting aid to local governments, forcing some of them to raise their own taxes or cut services. And increasing sales taxes helped make the income tax cuts possible." An analysis by the "Plain Dealer" in March 2016 found that more than 70 cities and villages had lost at least $1 million a year due to Kasich's budget and taxation policy.


title: John Kasich

text: During Kasich's time as governor, Ohio ranked 22nd out of the 50 states for private-sector job growth, at 9.3%.


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich signed a state budget in 2011 which eliminated the state's estate tax effective January 1, 2013.


title: John Kasich

text: In 2013, Kasich signed into law a $62 billion two-year state budget. The budget provided for a 10-percent state income tax cut phased in over three years, and an increase in the state sales tax from 5.5 percent to 5.75 percent. It also included a 50% tax cut for small business owners on the first $250,000 of annual net income. Kasich used his line-item veto power to reject a measure that would stop the Medicaid expansion (which Kasich had accepted from the federal government) to cover nearly 275,000 working poor Ohioans.


title: John Kasich

text: In 2015, Kasich signed into law a $71 billion two-year state budget after using his line-item veto power to veto 44 items. The overall 2015 budget provides a 6.3 percent state income-tax cut as a part one component of a $1.9 billion net tax reduction and lowers the top income-tax rate to slightly below 5 percent. The budget also "spends $955 million more in basic state aid for K-12 schools than the last two-year period"; "boosts state funding for higher education to help offset a two-year tuition freeze at public universities"; expands the Medicaid health program; increases cigarette taxes by 35 cents a pack; and "prohibits independent health care and child care workers under contract with the state from unionizing."


title: John Kasich

text: On March 31, 2011, in his first year as governor, Kasich signed into law Senate Bill 5, a controversial labor law which restricted collective bargaining rights of public employees, such as police officers, firefighters, and teachers. The legislation, championed by Kasich, prohibited all public employees from striking and restricted their ability to negotiate health care and pension benefits. The final version of the legislation signed by Kasich had passed the state Senate in a 17–16 vote (with six Senate Republicans joining all of the Senate Democrats in voting no) and the state House in a 53–44 vote, with two members abstaining.


title: John Kasich

text: Democrats and labor unions opposed the legislation and placed a referendum on the November 2011 ballot to repeal SB 5. SB 5 also "sparked numerous protests with thousands of union workers and other opponents descending on the Statehouse, mirroring similar demonstrations in Wisconsin and injecting Ohio into the national debate over Republican governors' attempts to curb public workers' collective bargaining rights." Kasich and other supporters of SB 5 characterized the legislation as a necessary measure "to help public employers control labor costs" and reduce tax burdens to make Ohio more competitive with other states, while labor unions and other opponents characterized the bill as "a union-busting attack on the middle class."


title: John Kasich

text: Ohio voters rejected Senate Bill 5 in a 61 percent to 39 percent vote, which was viewed as a rebuke to Kasich. On election night, Kasich said in a speech at the Ohio Statehouse that "It's clear the people have spoken. I heard their voices. I understand their decision. And frankly, I respect what the people have to say in an effort like this." Following this defeat, Kasich dropped efforts to pass broad-based collective bargaining restrictions, although in 2012 he supported a bill including "provisions reminiscent of Senate Bill 5" but applying only to the Cleveland Metropolitan School District.


title: John Kasich

text: In May 2015, Kasich rescinded executive orders issued by his predecessor Ted Strickland in 2007 and 2008 that provided the right to home health care contractors and in-home child care contractors to collectively bargain with the state.


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich has campaigned for a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Kasich created a 501(c)(4) group, Balanced Budget Forever, to promote the cause.


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich said in 2016 that "I have never been an ideological supporter of free trade," but has long supported free trade agreements. He is a strong supporter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and participated with others in a meeting with President Obama in support of the agreement.


title: John Kasich

text: In speaking in the 2016 campaign on domestic surveillance, Kasich has "straddled the line," praising Rand Paul for saying that "we need to get warrants," but also saying "if there's information they need, the government needs to get it." Kasich has said there needs to be "a balance between good intelligence and the need to protect Americans from what can become an aggressive government somewhere down the road."


title: John Kasich

text: On one occasion, Kasich spoke out against proposals to mandate that technology companies provide a "backdoor" for the government to access encrypted devices, saying that this could end up aiding hackers. On a subsequent occasion, Kasich said that encryption was dangerous because it could stymie government antiterrorism investigations.


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich proposed new legislation which would increase funding to charter schools and poor school districts. He canceled the school-funding formula put into place by his Democratic predecessor, Governor Ted Strickland.


title: John Kasich

text: During Kasich's tenure as governor, he pushed to expand charter schools, increase the number of school vouchers that use public money to pay for tuition at private schools, implement a "merit pay" scheme for teachers, and evaluate teachers by student standardized test scores in math and reading. Kasich supports the Common Core State Standards and has criticized Republicans who turned against it.


title: John Kasich

text: During Kasich's tenure, funding for traditional public schools declined by about $500 million, while funding for charter schools has increased at least 27 percent. As calculated by the Howard Fleeter/Education Tax Policy Institute, total school funding under Kasich (including both charter and district schools) has ranged from a low of $7.1 billion in fiscal year 2013 to $7.8 billion in fiscal year 2015, which was higher than its previous peak under Kasich's predecessor, Ted Strickland. As calculated by the Howard Fleeter/Education Tax Policy Institute, Kasich has proposed total school funding of $8.0 billion in fiscal year 2016 and fiscal year 2017. The Ohio Department of Education—which includes more spending areas than Fleeter's does and so reports higher numbers—projects total school funding for Ohio schools to rise to slightly under $10.5 billion by the end of fiscal year 2017.


title: John Kasich

text: Analysts disagree "on whether Kasich's education budgets give increases beyond inflation." In the 2015 state budget, Kasich used his line-item veto power "to cut more than $84 million of funding from public schools."


title: John Kasich

text: According to a September 2014 story in the "Columbus Dispatch", Kasich favored allowing public school districts "to teach alternatives to evolution—such as intelligent design—if local school officials want to, under the philosophy of 'local control.'"


title: John Kasich

text: In 2011, Kasich had the idea of establishing a Holocaust memorial on the grounds of the Ohio Statehouse. Kasich successfully secured approval of the proposal from the Capital Square Review and Advisory Board. The $2 million Ohio Holocaust and Liberators Memorial, designed by Daniel Libeskind, is located across from the Ohio Theatre; the memorial was dedicated in 2014.


title: John Kasich

text: In November 2002, Kasich urged the invasion of Iraq, telling a crowd of students at Ohio State University: "We should go to war with Iraq. It's not likely that (Saddam) Hussein will give up his weapons. If he did he would be disgraced in the Arab world."


title: John Kasich

text: In an interview in August 2015, Kasich said: "I would never have committed ourselves to Iraq." A Kasich spokesman subsequently said that "Kasich was not revising history" but was instead saying that the Iraq War was a mistake given the facts available now.


title: John Kasich

text: In 2015, Kasich said that airstrikes were insufficient to combat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and he would send U.S. ground troops to fight ISIL.


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich opposed the landmark 2015 international nuclear agreement with Iran, and in September 2015 was one of fourteen Republican governors who sent a letter to President Obama stating "that we intend to ensure that the various state-level sanctions [against Iran] that are now in effect remain in effect," despite the agreement.


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich has expressed support for the U.S.'s drone program. He has said, however, that the program should be overseen by the Department of Defense, and not by the CIA.


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich has said that he wants to lift budget sequestration for military spending, and "spend more if necessary."


title: John Kasich

text: In November 2015, Kasich said that if elected president, he "would send a carrier battle group through the South China Sea" to send a message to China regarding their claims of sovereignty there.


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich supports continued U.S. support of Saudi Arabia, but he criticized Saudi Arabia's "funding and teaching of radical clerics who are the very people who try to destroy us".


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich favors strong relations between the U.S. and its NATO allies. He supported Senator John McCain's call for maintaining existing U.S. sanctions on Russia, and condemned the Trump administration's consideration of lifting sanctions. Like McCain, Kasich supports imposing "tougher sanctions against Russia and Putin's inner circle." He supports a bipartisan investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.


title: John Kasich

text: By the mid-2010s, Kasich had shown much more support for LGBT rights than many of his Republican counterparts. However, during his time in Congress, Kasich was much less accepting, and voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, which barred federal recognition of same-sex marriage. During this period, Kasich supported a ban on same-sex marriage in Ohio and stated that he did not approve of the "gay lifestyle." As governor of Ohio, Kasich signed an executive order banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation for state employees; this was more narrow than the previous executive order signed by his predecessor because it omitted protections for gender identity.


title: John Kasich

text: During the 2016 presidential campaign, Kasich struck a more moderate tone compared to his Republican opponents. In June 2015, following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in "Obergefell v. Hodges", which held that there is a fundamental right to same-sex marriage under the Fourteenth Amendment, Kasich said that he was "obviously disappointed" and that he believes in "traditional marriage," but that the ruling was "the law of the land and we'll abide by it" and that it was "time to move on" to other issues. During his time as Ohio governor, Kasich appointed Richard Hodges as Ohio Director of Health, who was the lead-respondent in the case.


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich indicated that he did not support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to overturn the decision. In response to a debate question about how he would explain his position on same-sex marriage to one of his daughters if she were gay, Kasich responded, "The court has ruled, and I said we'll accept it. And guess what, I just went to a wedding of a friend of mine who happens to be gay. Because somebody doesn't think the way I do doesn't mean that I can't care about them or can't love them. So if one of my daughters happened to be that, of course I would love them and I would accept them. Because you know what? That's what we're taught when we have strong faith."


title: John Kasich

text: In September 2015, Kasich commented on the highly publicized case of Kim Davis (the Rowan County, Kentucky clerk who refused to comply with a federal court order directing her to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples), saying: "Now, I respect the fact that this lady doesn't agree but she's also a government employee, she's not running a church, I wouldn't force this on a church. But in terms of her responsibility I think she has to comply. I don't think — I don't like the fact that she's sitting in a jail, that's absurd as well. But I think she should follow the law."


title: John Kasich

text: In a March 2018 interview on "The Rubin Report", Kasich passively came out in support of same-sex marriage saying "I'm fine with it," but stated that he now preferred to show himself as someone in the "Billy Graham tradition" that "avoided social issues". In December 2018, Kasich signed an executive order extending non-discrimination protections for gender identity, including trans and non-binary identities, to state employees in Ohio.


title: John Kasich

text: While in the U.S. House of Representatives, Kasich had a mixed record on gun policy. He was one of 215 Representatives to vote for the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which became law in 1994, but voted against the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act ("Brady Bill"), which established current background check laws.


title: John Kasich

text: As governor, Kasich shifted to more pro-gun positions. In 2011, he signed one bill permitting concealed handguns in bars and another making it easier for people with misdemeanor drug convictions to purchase guns. In 2012, Kasich signed a bill allowing gun owners to transport weapons with loaded magazines in their vehicles and expanding concealed carry permit reciprocity. In December 2014, Kasich signed legislation that reduced the numbers of hours of training required to obtain a concealed carry permit and eliminated the training requirement for permit renewals.


title: John Kasich

text: After the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in February 2018, Kasich called for restrictions on the sales of AR-15 style rifles.


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich opted to accept Medicaid-expansion funding provided by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA or "Obamacare") in Ohio. This decision angered many Statehouse Republicans, who wanted Kasich to reject the expansion.


title: John Kasich

text: Total spending on Medicaid by the state was almost $2 billion (or 7.6 percent) below estimates for the fiscal year ending in June 2015, according to a report by Kasich's administration. The lower-than-expected costs were attributed to expanded managed care, shorter nursing home stays and increased in-home care for seniors, capitated reimbursement policies, increased automation to determine eligibility for the program and pay care providers, and an improving economy in the state which allowed some participants to move out of the program.


title: John Kasich

text: In an October 2014 interview, Kasich said that repeal of the ACA was "not gonna happen" and stated that "The opposition to it was really either political or ideological. I don't think that holds water against real flesh and blood, and real improvements in people's lives." Kasich later said that he was referring solely to the law's Medicaid expansion, and that "my position is that we need to repeal and replace" the rest of the law. In 2015, Kasich expressed support for many provisions of the ACA (ensuring coverage for people with preexisting conditions, the use of insurance exchanges, and Medicaid expansion), but opposed mandates.


title: John Kasich

text: In 2017, after Donald Trump took office and congressional Republicans maneuvered to repeal the ACA, Kasich criticized Republican hard-liners in Congress who demanded a full ACA repeal, saying that full repeal was "not acceptable" when 20 million people gained insurance under the ACA and that doing so would be a "political impossibility." Kasich urged that the Medicaid expansion be preserved in some form, criticizing the House Republican legislation that would cut the Medicaid expansion and phase out health insurance subsidies for low-income Americans. Kasich said that the nation's "soul" was at stake if Republicans passed legislation that left millions without health insurance. After the failure of the House Republican health-care legislation, Kasich met in Washington with members of the Republican Tuesday Group and urged fellow Republicans to work with Democrats to make more modest changes to the Affordable Care Act. In May 2017, Kasich said that the version of the Republican health care bill that passed the House was "inadequate" and would harm patients; Kasich said that Republicans "should've worked with the Democrats" on the bill rather than passing legislation merely to fulfill a campaign pledge.


title: John Kasich

text: In June 2017, Kasich said that he didn't "have a problem" with gradually phasing out the ACA's expansion of Medicaid over a seven-year period, but only if Congress provided states with significantly more, more than the House Republican bill provided for, and only if Congress granted states more authority to manage the program. Along with three other Republican governors (Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, Brian Sandoval of Nevada, and Rick Snyder of Michigan), Kasich signed a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell with an outline of their wishes for a health care bill. Kasich and the others specifically called upon Congress to "end the requirement that state Medicaid programs cover nearly every prescription drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration." Kasich and the other governors' views were seen as influential, because their states have Republican senators and the Republicans have only a narrow majority in the Senate.


title: John Kasich

text: In 2010, while running for governor, Kasich expressed support for amending the U.S. Constitution to abolish the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of "jus soli" (birthright) citizenship for people born in the United States. Kasich also told the "Columbus Dispatch" at the time that "One thing that I don't want to reward is illegal immigration."


title: John Kasich

text: In 2014, Kasich acknowledged that his stance on immigration has "evolved" because "maybe [I'm] a little smarter now," stating: "I don't want to see anybody in pain. So I guess when I look at this now, I look at it differently than I did in '10. ... When I look at a group of people who might be hiding, who may be afraid, who may be scared, who have children, I don't want to be in a position of where I make it worse for them." That year, Kasich expressed openness to a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, saying at a Republican Governors Association (RGA) meeting in Florida, "I don't like the idea of citizenship when people jump the line, [but] we may have to do it." Kasich was the only governor at the RGA conference "to express openly a willingness to create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants."


title: John Kasich

text: In August 2015, while running for president, Kasich called for a path to legal status (but not necessarily citizenship) for undocumented immigrants and for a guest worker program. Kasich also appeared to disavow his earlier stance against birthright citizenship, stating "I don't think we need to go there"; called for completion of a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border; and noted that undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as young children may obtain driver's licenses in Ohio.


title: John Kasich

text: In October 2015, Kasich criticized Donald Trump's "plan to build a wall along the Mexican border and remove immigrants who entered the United States illegally," calling these notions "just crazy."


title: John Kasich

text: In September 2015, Kasich said that the U.S. had a moral responsibility to accept refugees fleeing war and violence in Syria. Subsequently, however, Kasich moved to the right, and in November 2015 wrote a letter to President Obama asking that no additional Syrian refugees be resettled in Ohio. Kasich opposed Trump's executive order on travel and immigration, which Trump signed one week after taking office in January 2017. Kasich said that the order was "ham-handed" because it "sowed so much confusion" and "sent a message that somehow the United States was looking sideways at Muslims."


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich has a "long-standing political partnership" with his lieutenant governor, Mary Taylor. In 2014, Kasich defended Taylor after her chief of staff, and that chief of staff's administrative assistant, resigned following a timesheet probe. Kasich said of Taylor's handling of the matter: "Mary did the right thing and I support her."


title: John Kasich

text: In 2017, the Kasich-Taylor relationship frayed after Taylor abandoned Kasich ally Matt Borges in his bid for chairman of the Ohio Republican Party, and instead chose to support Jane Timken, who was actively supported by Donald Trump, who sought revenge against Kasich for his choice not to endorse Trump. Nevertheless, Kasich indicated that Taylor had "been a good partner" over his term and indicated that he would support her if she chose to run for governor in 2018.


title: John Kasich

text: Upon taking office in 2011, Kasich received criticism for appointing an initial all-white cabinet of 22 members. Responding to criticism for not appointing any black, Hispanic, or Asian Cabinet members, Kasich said: "I don't look at things from the standpoint of any of these sort of metrics that people tend to focus on, race or age, or any of those things. It's not the way I look at things... I want the best possible team I can get." Shortly afterward, on February 2, 2011, Kasich made his first minority appointment to the Cabinet, naming Michael Colbert, a black man, to lead the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.


title: John Kasich

text: Throughout his first gubernatorial campaign, Kasich opposed the Ohio Hub higher-speed passenger rail project (a proposed 258-mile Cleveland-to-Cincinnati train) and promised to cancel it, claiming that it would average speeds of merely 36 mph. In his first press conference following his election victory, Kasich declared "That train is dead...I said it during the campaign: It is dead."


title: John Kasich

text: As governor-elect, Kasich lobbied the federal government to use $400 million in federal dollars allocated for high-speed rail for freight rail projects instead. In a November 2010 letter to Kasich, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood wrote that the federal funding was specifically allocated by the 2009 economic stimulus act for high-speed rail, and could not be used for other purposes. In a December 2010 meeting with President Barack Obama, Kasich again unsuccessfully lobbied to use the grant money for freight rail rather than high-speed rail.


title: John Kasich

text: In December 2010, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced that Ohio would lose the $385 million in grant funds allocated for high-speed passenger rail, since Kasich had informed them that he had no intention of ever building high-speed rail projects. (Almost $15 million had already been spent for preliminary engineering.) The $385 million was instead diverted to other states, such as California, New York, and Florida, which planned high-speed rail using the grant money for its congressionally intended purpose. Outgoing governor Ted Strickland, who championed the project, expressed disappointment, saying that the loss of funding for the project was "one of the saddest days during my four years as governor" and that "I can't understand the logic of giving up these vital, job-creating resources to California and Florida at a time when so many Ohioans need jobs."


title: John Kasich

text: In April 2015, Kasich signed a two-year transportation budget bill which allocated $7.06 billion for highway construction and maintenance, $600 million to local governments for road and bridge projects, and an additional million over the last budget for public transportation.


title: John Kasich

text: In February 2014, Kasich signed into law a bill which cut six days from Ohio's early voting period, including the "golden week" (a period at the beginning of early voting when voters could both register to vote and cast an in-person absentee ballot). The measures were hotly contested in the state legislature, passing on a party-line vote, with Republicans in favor and Democrats opposed. This measure prompted two federal lawsuits. The first lawsuit, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio on behalf of the NAACP and League of Women Voters of Ohio, resulted in a settlement in April 2015, in which the state agreed to provide evening and Sunday hours for early voting in elections in Ohio through 2018. The second lawsuit, "Ohio Democratic Party v. Husted", was brought in May 2015 by Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias; plaintiffs argued that the Ohio bill eliminating "golden week" violated the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act because it disproportionately burdened black, Latino and young voters. The federal district court agreed and struck down the legislation, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed that decision in a 2–1 vote, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal. In July 2015, Kasich said that it was "pure demagoguery" for Hillary Clinton to "say that there are Republicans who are deliberately trying to keep people from voting."


title: John Kasich

text: In April 2015, Kasich used his line-item veto power to veto a provision added to a highway-budget bill by Republicans in the state legislature that would have required college students who register to vote in Ohio to obtain a state driver's license and vehicle registration, imposing an estimated $75 in motor vehicle costs on out-of-state college students who wanted to vote in the state. The veto was celebrated by voting rights advocates, Ohio Democrats, and the "Cleveland Plain Dealer" editorial board, which viewed the proposal as effectively a "poll tax" motivated by a partisan desire to limit college-town voting.


title: John Kasich

text: In Ohio, justices of the Ohio Supreme Court are elected, but the governor can fill unexpired terms. In May 2012, Ohio Supreme Court Associate Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton announced she would retire at the end of 2012. In December 2012, Kasich appointed Judge Judith L. French to Stratton's unexpired term, which ran from January 1, 2013, through January 1, 2015.


title: John Kasich

text: On October 18, 2019, Kasich publicly stated that Donald Trump should be impeached. He had previously said there was not enough evidence to impeach the President.


title: John Kasich

text: In April 2015, Kasich announced the formation of his "New Day For America" group. Formerly a 527 group, it filed as a super PAC in July 2015. Between April 20 and June 30, 2015, the super PAC raised over $11.1 million from 165 "reportable contributions," including 34 contributions of $100,000 or more. Major contributors to the PAC include Floyd Kvamme, who donated $100,000, and Jim Dicke, chairman emeritus of Crown Equipment Corporation, who donated $250,000. According to FEC filings, Kasich's campaign had $2.5 million on hand at the beginning of 2016.


title: John Kasich

text: In May 2015, sources close to him had said he was "virtually certain" to run for the Republican nomination for president. On July 21, 2015, Kasich announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination during a speech at the Ohio Union, the student union of his alma mater, the Ohio State University.


title: John Kasich

text: On January 30, 2016, the "New York Times" endorsed Kasich for the Republican nomination. The "Times" editorial board strongly rebuked leading candidates Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz and wrote that Kasich, "though a distinct underdog, is the only plausible choice for Republicans tired of the extremism and inexperience on display in this race."


title: John Kasich

text: On the campaign trail, Kasich sought to project a sunny, optimistic message, describing himself as "the prince of light and hope." This marked a change in tone for Kasich, who had developed a reputation as an abrasive governor. Viewed as a long-shot contender, Kasich took an "above-the-fray approach to his rivals" and "ran unapologetically as a candidate with experience" even as others ran as "outsider" contenders.


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich came in second place in the New Hampshire primary on February 9, 2016, behind winner Trump. The "Cincinnati Enquirer" reported that this was "the best possible result" for Kasich and lent "credence to the notion that he can emerge" as a Republican alternative to Trump and Cruz.


title: John Kasich

text: Ultimately, however, Kasich's message "never caught on in a campaign that ... exposed the anger and frustration coursing through the electorate" and he "found himself stuck in fourth place in a three-man race, trailing Senator Marco Rubio of Florida in the delegate count" although Rubio had dropped out of the race in March.


title: John Kasich

text: The only state won by Kasich was his home state of Ohio, which gave him 66 delegates in its March 2016 winner-take-all primary but still left him with "a steep delegate deficit against his rivals." Kasich's unsuccessful campaign strategy hinged on the possibility of a contested (or brokered) Republican National Convention, in which no single candidate has enough delegates to win the nomination on the first ballot, something that has not happened in either of the two major parties' presidential nominating conventions since 1952. Kasich suspended his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination on May 4, 2016, one day after Trump won the Republican primary in Indiana. The third remaining contender, Cruz, quit the race shortly before Kasich did, leaving Trump as the only candidate remaining in the Republican field and hence the party's presumptive nominee.


title: John Kasich

text: A 2018 study on media coverage of the 2016 election noted "the paradox of the Kasich campaign's longevity while it lacked public interest provides some evidence for the idea that Kasich's biggest supporters were the media".


title: John Kasich

text: Following his withdrawal from the race, Kasich did not extend his support to Trump. In May and June 2016, Kasich said that Trump was a divisive figure rather than a "unifier," said he had no plans to endorse Trump in the near future, and ruled out the possibility of seeking the Vice Presidency as Trump's running mate.


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich said it was "hard to say" whether he would ever endorse Trump; he added, "I can't go for dividing, name calling, or somebody that doesn't really represent conservative principles." Kasich said he had ruled out voting for Clinton but lacked the enthusiasm to fully back Trump.


title: John Kasich

text: In August 2016, Kasich repeated an earlier claim that the Trump campaign had offered him a powerful vice presidency, "putting him in charge of all domestic and foreign policy". The Trump campaign denied that such an offer had been made. Kasich also doubted whether Trump could win Ohio, a critical state in the election. It was speculated that Kasich was looking towards a 2020 campaign. This speculation was strengthened by a report that Kasich had planned to give a speech to the American Enterprise Institute less than 48 hours after the election but cancelled it the morning after the election when it was clear that Trump had won.


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich received an electoral vote for the presidency from one faithless elector, Christopher Suprun of Texas, who had been pledged to vote for Trump. An elector in Colorado also attempted to vote for him, but that vote was discarded; the elector was replaced by an alternate elector who voted, as pledged, for Clinton.


title: John Kasich

text: In February 2017, Kasich met with Trump at the White House in a private meeting that followed a bitter feud. Kasich indicated that he hoped for Trump's success, but would continue to be critical when he thought it was necessary. The same month, Kasich's chief political advisors launched a political group, Two Paths America, in an effort to promote Kasich and his views and draw a contrast with Trump. In April 2017, Kasich also released a book, "Two Paths: America Divided or United", written with Daniel Paisner. The creation of the group prompted speculation he could possibly run for president again, but Kasich said that he had no plans to seek elected office in the future.


title: John Kasich

text: In April 2017, during a CNN town hall, Kasich, while stating that he was "very unlikely" to do so, reopened the possibility that he might run for president in 2020. On August 20, however, he reiterated his previous statement that he had no plans to run; rather, he stated that he was "rooting for [Trump] to get it together."


title: John Kasich

text: In October 2017, during an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, Kasich said he had not "given up" on the Republican Party, but added that "if the party can't be fixed ... I'm not going to be able to support the party. Period. That's the end of it." In March 2018, he told "The Weekly Standard" that he was "increasingly open" to running for president in the 2020 presidential election; however, in May 2019, he again declared that he would not seek the presidency in 2020.


title: John Kasich

text: In October 2019, Kasich expressed support for the impeachment inquiry against Trump, saying that the "final straw" for him was when Trump's acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney admitted that Trump had withheld U.S. aid from Ukraine in part to pressure the country to investigate Trump's domestic political rivals, a statement that Mulvaney later said were misconstrued.


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich confirmed on August 10, 2020, that he would be speaking at the 2020 Democratic National Convention in support of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. Kasich said that his conscience compelled him to speak out against Trump and in support of Biden, even if it resulted in blowback against him, adding, "I've been a reformer almost all of my life. I've been very independent and I'm a Republican but the Republican Party has always been my vehicle but never my master. You have to do what you think is right in your heart and I'm comfortable here."


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich has been married twice. His first marriage was to Mary Lee Griffith from 1975 to 1980, and they had no children. Griffith has campaigned for Kasich since their divorce. Kasich and his current wife, Karen Waldbillig, a former public relations executive, were married in March 1997 and have twin daughters, Emma and Reese.


title: John Kasich

text: Kasich was raised a Catholic, but considers denominations irrelevant, while stating that "there's always going to be a part of me that considers myself a Catholic." He drifted away from his religion as an adult, but came to embrace an Anglican faith after his parents were killed in a car crash by a drunk driver on August 20, 1987. He joined the Episcopal Church (United States) as an adult. Kasich has said he "doesn't find God in church" but does belong to St. Augustine's in Westerville, Ohio, which is part of the Anglican Church in North America, a conservative church with which he remained when it broke off from the Episcopal Church (United States).


title: Suno Chanda

text: Suno Chanda () is a 2018 Pakistani Ramadan special romantic comedy series developed by Shahzad Javed, Head of Content, HUM TV directed by Ahson Talish and written by Saima Akram Chudhery. The series celebrates the Pakistani wedding traditions and relates the story of a couple who are in Nikaah, living separately as the Rukhsati is yet to happen, and the relationship between their families. It aired everyday on Hum TV.


title: Suno Chanda

text: It features Iqra Aziz and Farhan Saeed as Jiya and Arsalan respectively in the leading roles while Samina Ahmad, Syed Mohammed Ahmed, Sami Khan, Nadia Afgan, Farah Shah, Sohail Sameer, Farhan Ali Agha, Mizna Waqas, Ali Safina, Tara Mahmood, Adnan Shah Tipu Mashal Khan and Nabeel Zuberi in recurring roles. The series is produced by Momina Duraid under their production banner MD Productions.


title: Suno Chanda

text: The series received five major nominations at the 18th Lux Style Awards, including Best Television Play for Momina Duraid, Best Writer for Choudhary, Best Actress (Critics and Viewers) for Aziz and Best Emerging Talent for Zuberi. It won three Lux Style Awards, including Best Series and Best Actress for Aziz.


title: Suno Chanda

text: The series received the highest ratings and positive reviews on its premiere, and was the slot leader for the entire time it was on air. Its sequel "Suno Chanda 2" was released on 7 May 2019 and ended 5 June 2019 after airing 30 episodes on Hum TV. The show was followed by two sequels "Suno Chanda 2" (2019) and an upcoming spinoff "Chanda Tara" (2023).


title: Suno Chanda

text: Arsalan Jamshed Ali (Farhan Saeed) and Ajiya Nazakat Ali (Iqra Aziz) are cousins and live in a joint family. Their family had got them married when they were kids, but the rukhsati is yet to happen. Bi Jaan (Samina Ahmad), their grandmother and head of the family, has two sons, Jamshed Ali (Farhan Ally Agha) and Nazakat Ali (Sohail Sameer) and a daughter Masooma (Tara Mahmood) who is married to Jalal Khan. They live in Peshawar. Jamshed Ali is married to Shahana and Nazakat Ali to Naeema. Jiya has a younger brother Daniyal Nazakat Ali (DJ), who is an aspiring news reporter. Jiya dreams of joining the London School of Economics for higher studies after her BBA.


title: Suno Chanda

text: Arsal and Jiya are childhood companions who play pranks on each other. Bi Jaan decides to get Arsal and Jiya's formal wedding and rukhsati done to honour her husband's last wish. Arsal and Jiya are against the marriage plan and team up with Kinza (Mashal Khan), Masooma's daughter, to stop the wedding.


title: Suno Chanda

text: Shah Jahan, Bi Jaan's brother-in-law, and his grandson Shehryar (Nabeel Zuberi) who lives in London, visit Pakistan for Arsal and Jiya's planned wedding after Eid. Sherry is close to his cousins and a co-conspirator in their plots to stop the marriage. Sherry asks Arsal and Jiya to resolve their problem amicably. Sherry also helps Jiya to fulfil her dream of joining the London School of Economics, and they plan to study together. Sherry eventually develops feelings for Jiya, which makes Arsal jealous.


title: Suno Chanda

text: Arsal and Jiya create misunderstandings between their parents. Meanwhile, Sherry falls in love with Jiya. Arsal and Jiya's parents want Arsal to divorce Jiya, but Arsal denies it. Jiya's father sends divorce notice to Arsal, who then confesses his feelings to Jiya.


title: Suno Chanda

text: Later the family discover that Arsal and Jiya have fallen in love. Arsal and Jiya's parents eventually give in to their love, and the wedding preparations begin. Sherry and Kinza also start liking each other.


title: Suno Chanda

text: Jiya and Arsal argue again on their wedding night but later realise their foolishness and say sorry to each other. They promise not to repeat the same mistakes and confess their love for each other.


title: Suno Chanda

text: The series was broadcast by channel's international versions in UK, USA, New Zealand, Australia and Canada. Dubbed versions of the series including, Arabic version aired on MBC Drama under titled "زفاف بلا زوجين" and Persian debbed version aired on MBC Persia under the title "عروسی بی عروسی". It aired in UK on Zee TV UK also.


title: Suno Chanda

text: It was rebroadcast on national television, PTV Home. It started airing on 21 August 2019 and both seasons were broadcast without a break between them.


title: Suno Chanda

text: The series break previous records of Hum TV and is one of the most successful and watched drama during Ramadan. It is praised for its tune of reality and culture mixed-up with humor and was applauded with positive reviews. Last Episode of the drama aired on 1st day of Eid-ul-Fitr. Aziz and Saeed are praised for their on-screen chemistry, speaking to "The Express Tribune", Aziz said that she is overwhelming and was not expect the series to be the massive hit. She further said about the character she played, "Jiya made me feel happy and I was really intrigued by the fact that these two people, married to each other, know each other inside and out, but still don't want to live their lives together. Then, when I found out about their Tom & Jerry dynamic and absolutely loved it!" Farhan Saeed told in an interview "It makes me really happy, audience are really appreciating me for my work, the best part about this is I feel more confident now about choosing my scripts". Actress Mahira Khan also confess her love for the show.


title: Suno Chanda

text: Due to its immense popularity and ratings, the makers announced Season 2. Iqra Aziz confirmed being part of the Season. On 2 October 2018, it was reported that Farhan Saeed had signed up for the project opposite Aziz. On 10 October, it was reported that Nabeel Zuberi had also signed up. The series episodes were aired from the first day of Ramadan, 7 May 2019 and the last episode was aired on 6 June 2019. In October 2019, the third season of Suno Chanda was announced. In an interview with Fuchsia Magazine, Aehsun Talish confirmed that the new season would be coming in Ramadan 2022. However, it was later revealed by writers that there was no season 3 of the show.


title: Sajida Talfah

text: Sajida Khairallah Talfah (; born c. 1935) is the widow and cousin of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, and mother of two sons (Uday and Qusay) and three daughters (Raghad, Rana, and Hala). She is the oldest daughter of Khairallah Talfah, her husband's maternal uncle.


title: Sajida Talfah

text: Sajida and her cousin Saddam had five children together. Their marriage was arranged when they were children. She was said to have been 2 years older than him. They met when Saddam was about 21 years old.


title: Sajida Talfah

text: In 1964, their first son Uday was born followed by Qusay in 1966. In 1968 their first daughter Raghad was born, followed by Rana in 1969, and finally their youngest daughter Hala in 1972.


title: Sajida Talfah

text: In 1986, Saddam married another woman, Samira Shahbandar, while still married to Sajida. Sajida was enraged, and Uday Hussein, son of Saddam and Sajida, was also angry over his father's new wife. Uday believed that his inheritance was endangered by the new wife. He also took it as an insult to his mother. In October 1988, at a party thrown in the honor of Suzanne Mubarak, the wife of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Uday beat and stabbed Kamel Hana Gegeo to death. Uday believed that it was Kamel who introduced Saddam and Samira, and that he arranged their meetings. Some say the murder of Gegeo was a request of Sajida. Although her husband married another woman, Sajida and Saddam never divorced.


title: Sajida Talfah

text: Sajida hardly ever appeared in public with her husband, so for many years her existence was obscure to the Iraqi people. However, when rumors surfaced that Saddam had married another woman, and that his family life was now strained, more pictures and videos appeared in the Iraqi media of Saddam and Sajida, as well as them with their children. These pictures and videos were intended to make it seem as if Saddam's family life was not strained.


title: Sajida Talfah

text: In 1989, Sajida's brother Adnan, an Iraqi Army general, was killed in a supposed helicopter crash in the desert during a sandstorm. Many people believe that Saddam ordered one of his bodyguards to plant a bomb in the helicopter because of Adnan's growing popularity. Sajida was furious, and blamed Saddam, believing her brother's death wasn't an accident.


title: Sajida Talfah

text: Sajida, along with many members of her family, fled Iraq in 1990 because of the Gulf War, leaving Iraq before the bombings began. There are many different reports on where the Hussein family settled, but a possible location is Switzerland. The Hussein family returned to Iraq after the war was over.


title: Sajida Talfah

text: Sajida is believed to have fled to Qatar hours before the bombing of Baghdad began on 20 March 2003. Her youngest daughter Hala is believed to have gone with her, while Raghad and Rana Hussein fled to neighbouring Jordan.


title: Sajida Talfah

text: In July 2004, she hired a multilingual and multi-national defence team of some 20 lawyers to defend her husband during his trial for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other offences. However, on August 8, 2005, Saddam's family announced that they had dissolved the Jordan-based legal team and that they had appointed Khalil al-Duleimi, the only Iraq-based member, as sole legal counsel.


title: Sajida Talfah

text: On July 2, 2006, Iraq national security advisor Muwaffaq al-Rubaie announced that Sajida and her daughter Raghad are placed 16th and 17th on the Iraqi government's most wanted list for financing Sunni Muslim insurgents under Saddam's reign.


title: Sajida Talfah

text: It is also believed that Sajida and her daughter Raghad have been funding the insurgency in Iraq with money they took with them as they fled the country. The lawyer leading Saddam's defence team stated that "the charges against Raghad and Sajida are baseless" and that Sajida "lives in her house in Qatar alone and has no contact with anyone, not even the lawyers". He also stated that Sajida "is undergoing medical treatment".


title: Sajida Talfah

text: She was played by Shohreh Aghdashloo in the BBC adaptation "House of Saddam" in 2008, in which her character played a major role.


title: United Center

text: United Center is an indoor arena on the Near West Side of Chicago, Illinois, United States. It is home to the Chicago Bulls of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the Chicago Blackhawks of the National Hockey League (NHL). It is named after its corporate sponsor United Airlines, which has been based in Chicago since 2007. With a capacity of nearly 21,000, the United Center is the largest arena by capacity in the NBA, and second largest arena by capacity in the NHL. It also has a seating capacity of 23,500 for concerts.


title: United Center

text: Opening in 1994, the United Center replaced the Chicago Stadium, which was located across the street. The first event held at the arena was WWF SummerSlam. Due to the lockout, the Blackhawks did not move in until January 1995. In 1996, the United Center hosted the Democratic National Convention, where it first introduced a new style four-screen speech prompting system for speakers consisting of two glass teleprompters, accompanied by an inset lectern monitor, and for the first time, a large under-camera confidence monitor.


title: United Center

text: The arena is home to an iconic statue of Michael Jordan built in 1994. Originally located outside the arena, it now stands inside an atrium which was added in 2017. The statue has since been joined by statues of Blackhawks legends Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita, while a statue of various Blackhawks players is located across the street on the site of Chicago Stadium.


title: United Center

text: On March 25, 2021, the United Center became Chicago's logistical hub to support the city's efforts against COVID-19.


title: United Center

text: The Bulls and Blackhawks own and operate United Center through the United Center Joint Venture (UCJV), a 50/50 partnership. It covers on a 46-acre (19 ha) parcel, west of the Chicago Loop. The arena is the largest in the United States in size, though not in capacity. Its exterior bears a striking resemblance to that of Chicago Stadium. It seats 19,717 for hockey, 20,917 for basketball and up to 23,500 for concerts. The United Center hosts over 200 events per year and has drawn over 20 million visitors since its opening. Attendance routinely exceeds seating capacity for Bulls and Blackhawks games.


title: United Center

text: United Center's acoustics were designed to amplify noise to replicate "The Roar" – the din that made Chicago Stadium famous, especially during hockey games. During hockey season, the Blackhawks use an Allen Organ that is a replica of the old arena's famous Barton organ. Recreating the old organ's notes took two years.


title: United Center

text: The building is tall, and cost $175 million to build from concrete and 3,500 tons of steel. While the Blackhawks and Bulls had long planned another arena, an inflated real estate market and the early 1990s recession delayed the project until financing was secured from an international syndicate, with funding by banks from Japan, Australia and France. Originally having 216 luxury sky-boxes, as of the 2009–10 renovation the arena has 169 executive suites on three levels.


title: United Center

text: Both the Chicago Blackhawks and the Chicago Bulls play their home games at the arena with some of them on back to back nights. The hardwood floor for the Bulls games is laid over the ice that the Blackhawks play on. The flooring is assembled like a puzzle and taken apart when the Blackhawks have a game. The Chicago Bulls operate their practice facility, the Advocate Center, named after the Advocate Medical Group, a block just to the east of the United Center. That facility opened in 2014.


title: United Center

text: The arena was the Bulls' home during their second run of three consecutive championships, hosting the , , and 1998 NBA Finals. The Bulls won the 1996 and 1997 series in the sixth game at home, but won the 1998 series at the Delta Center, now known as Vivint Arena, in Salt Lake City, Utah.


title: United Center

text: The arena has hosted the Stanley Cup Finals three times: in , , and . The Blackhawks won the first two Stanley Cups on the ice of their opponent in the sixth game of the series (Philadelphia's Wachovia Center in 2010 and Boston's TD Garden in 2013). However, they won the 2015 series against the Tampa Bay Lightning at home in the sixth game, the first time since 1938 the Hawks clinched the Cup in Chicago.


title: United Center

text: In addition to 41 Bulls and Blackhawks games each year, United Center has hosted other sporting events such as University of Illinois basketball, the Big Ten men's basketball tournament (from the first tournament in 1998 to 2001, then in odd-numbered years from 2003 to 2007 and again in 2013 and 2015), the Men's NCAA basketball tournament (hosted six times, including 2022), the Roundball Classic, and the Great Eight Classic.


title: United Center

text: United Center was also the site of the World Wrestling Federation pay-per-view SummerSlam in 1994—the first major event held inside the building, and also the only major event held in the building by WWE, as they have traditionally held their Chicago events at Allstate Arena. It also hosted the last of WCW's annual Spring Stampede pay-per-view in 2000. On March 3, 2018, WWE returned to United Center for the first time in over 20 years with a "Road to WrestleMania" house show.


title: United Center

text: On January 28, 2012, the Ultimate Fighting Championship held its first nationally televised event at the arena: UFC on Fox. UFC on Fox 2 was the UFC's 2nd live prime-time event on Fox. The headlining fight was former UFC Light-Heavyweight Champion Rashad Evans vs. Phil Davis, with Evans winning by unanimous decision. The UFC announced in mid-January 2015 that the United Center would be host of UFC on Fox 16. The United Center also hosted in 2013 and in 2014.


title: United Center

text: On the weekend of March 5–6, 2011, the Professional Bull Riders made their Built Ford Tough Series debut at the United Center. It was their third Chicago-area visit, having previously visited Rosemont's Allstate Arena in 2006 and 2008. The event at the United Center presented a unique scenario as instead of dirt, white crushed stone was used to cover the arena floor.


title: United Center

text: In September 2018, the United Center hosted the second edition of the Laver Cup. The tennis competition will feature Team Europe vs. Team World.


title: United Center

text: With a seating capacity of 23,500 for concerts, United Center has been a home to many concert performances. The first was Billy Joel, who stated the “...acoustics could use some work..” New Kids on the Block, Guns N' Roses, Prince, Adele, The Smashing Pumpkins, Taylor Swift, Madonna, U2, Rolling Stones, Tina Turner, Van Halen, Iron Maiden, Aerosmith, KISS, Bon Jovi, Barbra Streisand, Bruce Springsteen, Sir Paul McCartney, Janet Jackson, BLACKPINK,Celine Dion, Shakira, The Who, Pearl Jam, Green Day, Jay-Z, Mary J. Blige, Lady Gaga, and Dua Lipa have all had sold-out shows for their concerts in this arena, as well as Dave Matthews Band, who released its 1998 show at the venue, entitled Live in Chicago 12.19.98 at the United Center.


title: United Center

text: United Center has also provided a Chicago home for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus (last performance was 2016, and they permanently shut down on May 21, 2017) and Disney on Ice, which occur once per year; the Bulls and Blackhawks have a tradition of taking a two-week road trip when the circus is in town. After Ringling left Chicago for one final time in November 2016, the Bulls and Blackhawks allowed Ringling's sister production Disney on Ice to perform its last two-week show in February 2017, before being condensed to a one-week period effective February 2018.


title: United Center

text: On August 29, 1994, the newly opened United Center was home to the seventh annual WWF Summerslam Pay-Per-View event. Aired Live, attendance was at 23,000.


title: United Center

text: United Center was also the venue of the 1996 Democratic National Convention, where the Democratic Party nominated as its presidential and vice-presidential candidates Bill Clinton and Al Gore, the incumbent holders of the respective offices, who would be re-elected as a result of the general election held that November.


title: United Center

text: New for the 2009–10 season, United Center's 300 Level features a renovated concourse with 144 flat screen televisions, new food and beverage stations above select seating sections and two new bars that open up to panoramic views of the arena. During the 2010 off-season, two additional bars with panoramic views of the arena were added along with the other two. After the 2012–13 season, a third panoramic LED bar was installed around the 300 level, replacing the famous "Welcome To The Madhouse" signs.


title: United Center

text: A new court was added to the UC for the 2015–16 season and includes multiple changes. The iconic bull head logo at center court has increased in size by 75% and the image of a basketball that was previously behind the logo has been removed. The “CHICAGO BULLS” text on the endlines has been changed to the font used in the official Bulls logo to make the court design more consistent with the Bulls brand, and the same font has been applied to the “Bulls.com” and the “@ChicagoBulls” text on the north apron of the court. The lines on the court have been changed from red and white to all black to emphasize the bold colors of the Bulls brand. The four stars from the City of Chicago flag have been added to the south apron of the court to highlight the team's civic pride and incorporate the “Chicago Basketball” branding campaign.


title: United Center

text: In 2019, a new scoreboard manufactured by Mitsubishi Electric was added to United Center. At its unveiling, the scoreboard was the largest and highest-resolution scoreboard in any dual-purpose NHL/NBA arena. The scoreboard has a display with 4 mm pixel spacing, six independent moving panels, and a continuous inner ring display. New audio and lighting systems were installed alongside the scoreboard upgrade.


title: United Center

text: On February 1, 2022, the United Center and FanDuel Group announced a partnership to develop a sportsbook lounge located next to the United Center atrium. The two story venue will be built out as a non-wagering space complete with FanDuel branding with screens featuring other live sports events. The plan is contingent on approval from The Illinois Gaming Board.


title: United Center

text: The following banners hang from the rafters of United Center honoring past and present Bulls and Blackhawks.


title: United Center

text: The most noteworthy being the Michael Jordan Statue, also known as "The Spirit", on the east side of the arena in an atrium (opened in 2017) outside gate four. Originally installed in 1994, during Jordan's first retirement and just after the stadium's opening, the statue features Jordan mid-dunk over an opposing player, with his tenures with the Bulls and career stats engraved on the bottom. The statue was initially located directly in front of the arena.


title: United Center

text: In 2000, in honor of the team's 75th anniversary, a statue of various Blackhawks greats from different eras, along with the franchise's Indian head logo, was erected on the north side of the stadium across Madison Street, near the former Chicago Stadium site. The back of the statue features the names of all Blackhawks players up to that point, along with a marble plaque commemorating Chicago Stadium. In October 2020, the statue was vandalized in protest of the team's use of Native American iconography as a logo and was temporarily removed for repairs.


title: United Center

text: Blackhawks legends Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita received bronze statues in their honor outside of the United Center during the 2011–12 NHL season.


title: United Center

text: In 2011, a bronze bust of Bulls Great Scottie Pippen was dedicated in the stadium's first floor concourse.


title: United Center

text: United Airlines paid about $1.8 million per year until 2014 for its naming rights. United merged with Continental Airlines in October 2010, retaining Continental's logo and corporate look. The arena continued to use United's tulip logo for the duration of the 2010–11 season. For the 2011–12 season, all the previous United signs were replaced with the globe logo. Two new lit signs on the east and west ends of the arena saying "United Center" with the United globe in the middle were revealed below the upper level suites complementing the former "Madhouse" signs on the north and south sides.


title: United Center

text: In December 2013, it was announced that an agreement had been reached to keep United's naming rights for the arena for another 20 years. The United Center will see a series of updates and upgrades to the interior and exterior of the building. New signage, additional LED boards, and other elements have been added after reaching this agreement. LED screens have been installed on the north side of the arena along with a panoramic LED board on the 300 level, eliminating the "Welcome To The Madhouse" sign.


title: United Center

text: Anheuser-Busch has also established a sponsorship. They are partners with both the Chicago Bulls and Chicago Blackhawks and have gained rights to signage inside the arena along with a pub.


title: Christianity and Judaism

text: Christianity is rooted in Second Temple Judaism, but the two religions diverged in the first centuries of the Christian Era. Christianity emphasizes correct belief (or orthodoxy), focusing on the New Covenant as mediated through Jesus Christ, as recorded in the New Testament. Judaism places emphasis on correct conduct (or orthopraxy), focusing on the Mosaic covenant, as recorded in the Torah and Talmud.