title: Martin Luther King III

text: Alongside Kerry Kennedy, King opposed the death penalty in 1989, stating "If we believed in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, most of us would be without eyes and without teeth". In 1993, King helped found the Estate of Martin Luther King Jr. Inc., the company that manages the license of Martin Luther King Jr.'s image and intellectual property. King remains a commissioner in the company as of 2008. During his service as a commissioner in Fulton County, King expressed appreciation to an officer who potentially saved his mother from harm from a crazed man. In February 2009, King and his wife traveled to India, fifty years after his father and mother made the trip. During his stay in India, King led a delegation, which included John Lewis and Andrew Young. In New Delhi, King visited museums on Mahatma Gandhi's life and answered questions from students. King denounced the war in Iraq and the Mumbai attacks during a lecture at the Indian Council for Cultural Relations.


title: Martin Luther King III

text: King urged Texas to grant a reprieve to death row inmate Rodney Reed in 2019 and urged Alabama to stop the execution of Nathaniel Woods in 2020.


title: Martin Luther King III

text: Martin Luther King III spoke on behalf of the 2008 Democratic Party presidential nominee, Senator Barack Obama, at the Democratic National Convention on August 28, 2008. The event marked the 45th anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech and the first time an African American accepted the presidential nomination of a major party. King said his father would be "proud of Barack Obama, proud of the party that nominated him, and proud of the America that will elect him". However, he also warned that his father's dream would not be completely fulfilled even if Obama won the presidency, because the country was suffering from a poor health care system, education system, housing market and justice system, and that "we all have to roll up our sleeves and do work to ensure that the dream that he shared can be fulfilled".


title: Martin Luther King III

text: On January 19, 2009, the Martin Luther King Jr. national holiday, King joined Obama in painting and refurbishing the Sasha Bruce Youthwork shelter for homeless teens in Northeast Washington for the nationwide day of community service.


title: Martin Luther King III

text: Martin Luther King III gave a tribute at Michael Jackson's memorial service on July 7, 2009, and spoke at Jackson's funeral at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California, alongside his sister, Bernice. He also spoke as a campus guest speaker at SUNY Canton on February 23, 2010, at the College Union Board's invitation.


title: Martin Luther King III

text: On Monday, February 3, 2020, Kenneth Starr, a member of President Donald Trump's legal counsel in the Impeachment Trial, quoted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the Senate floor in his defense of the President. Martin Luther King III responded in a public statement released the following day. "The Hill" reported that "King accused the Trump administration of invoking his father while failing to address the political issues most important to him and his civil rights advocacy". In his statement, King stated: "Martin Luther King Jr.’s name is synonymous with justice and fairness. He certainly believed that justice and fairness should be available to everyone. But what mockery, what hypocrisy, and rank opportunism to equate my father’s views about 246 years of enslavement and almost 100 year[s] of segregation and their client’s intent to undermine constitutional governance".


title: Martin Luther King III

text: In 1997, King was unanimously elected to head the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a civil rights organization his father founded. King was the fourth president of the group, which sought to fight police brutality and start new local chapters during the first years of his tenure. Under King's leadership, the SCLC held hearings on police brutality, organized a rally for the 37th anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech and launched a successful campaign to change the Georgia state flag, which previously featured a large Confederate cross.


title: Martin Luther King III

text: Within only a few months of taking the position, however, King was criticized by the SCLC board for failing to answer their correspondence or to take up issues important to the organization. The board also felt he failed to demonstrate against national issues the SCLC would previously have protested, including the disenfranchisement of black voters in the Florida election recount and time limits on welfare recipients implemented by then-President Bill Clinton. King was further criticized for failing to join the battle against AIDS, allegedly because he feels uncomfortable talking about condoms. He also hired Lamell J. McMorris, an executive director who, according to "The New York Times", "rubbed board members the wrong way". In January 2000, King joined members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in getting tested for prostate cancer during a program of the group aimed encouraging aging African-American men to do the same. Comedian Dick Gregory participated in the program as well. On April 4, 2000, the thirty-second anniversary of his father's death, King joined his mother, brother, sister Bernice and aunt Christine King Ferris in going to his father's tomb.


title: Martin Luther King III

text: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference suspended King from the presidency in June 2001, concerned that he was letting the organization drift into inaction. The group's national chairman at the time, Claud Young, sent a June 25 letter to King that read, "You have consistently been insubordinate and displayed inappropriate, obstinate behavior in the (negligent) carrying out of your duties as president of SCLC." King was reinstated only one week later after promising to take a more active role. Young said of the suspension, "I felt we had to use a two-by-four to get his attention. Well, it got his attention all right." After he was reinstated, King prepared a four-year plan outlining a stronger direction for the organization, agreeing to dismiss McMorris and announcing plans to present a strong challenge to the Bush administration in an August convention in Montgomery, Alabama. In a rally on August 5, 2001, in Montgomery, SCLC leaders, including Rev. Joseph Lowery, former United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young and Rev. Jesse Jackson all pledged their support for King. "I sit beside my successor, to assure him of my love and support," said Rev. Lowery. King said he also planned to concentrate on racial profiling, prisoners' rights and closing the digital divide between whites and blacks. However, King also suggested the group needed a new approach, stating, "We must not allow our lust for 'temporal gratification' to blind us from making difficult decisions to effect future generations."


title: Martin Luther King III

text: In 2006, King founded an organization called Realizing the Dream, which has been absorbed into The King Center under King as president. CEO Dexter King had accused Martin of establishing the foundation to make money off their parents' legacy that should go to the King Center. On April 4, 2008, the fortieth anniversary of his father's death, King and Al Sharpton led a march around Memphis, Tennessee. There, he visited the Lorraine Motel for the first time since his father's death and placed a wreath where he stood before being shot. As he spoke to those who participated in the march, King called for them to continue his father's fight and promoted Realizing the Dream, which he said sought to eliminate poverty.


title: Martin Luther King III

text: In July 2008, King and his sister Bernice filed a lawsuit against their brother Dexter, accusing him of improperly taking money from the estate of their late mother and transferring it to the Estate of Martin Luther King Jr. Inc., where Dexter serves as president. According to the suit, Dexter failed to keep Martin and Bernice informed about the company's financial affairs. It alleged the company's assets were being "misapplied or wasted", and demanded that Dexter produce documents pertaining to the 2006 sale of some of their father's documents. In response, Dexter accused his siblings of continuously using their parents' legacy for their own benefit and "to further their own personal and religious agendas". Although critics said the lawsuit was at odds with their father's message and legacy, King III maintained it was in keeping with his history of negotiation and nonviolent direct action, claiming, "My father also used the court system."


title: Martin Luther King III

text: Dexter filed a similar countersuit against Martin and Bernice on August 18, 2008, claiming they breached their duties to the King Center and their father's estate, misused assets belonging to the center and kept money that should have gone back to the center and estate. Among the claims in the suit were that Martin improperly kept a $55,000 Lincoln Navigator SUV donated to the King Center for his own personal use, and that he "commandeered a reception" being held at the King Center and "turned it into his own wedding reception". Dexter claimed he made numerous attempts to get his siblings to stop such misuses of power but was unsuccessful. King III's lawyer, Jock Smith, denied the allegations as petty and misguided, and said the suit demonstrates Dexter King's misuse of power and his history of making poor decisions involving the Center without seeking proper input from his siblings.


title: Martin Luther King III

text: In October 2008, King III had not seen his brother since June, and Dexter had yet to meet his niece, Yolanda. Martin, Bernice, and Dexter have each expressed love for each other and hope that they will reconcile once their legal matters have been resolved. In October 2009, Martin and his siblings settled the lawsuit out of court.


title: Martin Luther King III

text: On April 6, 2010, Martin Luther King III, brother Dexter King, and sister Bernice King issued a joint statement, announcing the re-election of Martin Luther King III as president and CEO of The King Center. "It's the right time, and Martin is in the right place to take this great organization forward," Dexter King said in a statement. Bernice King said she is "proud that my brothers and I are speaking with one voice to communicate our parents' legacy to the world". Martin King added, "We are definitely working together. My brother and sister and I are constantly in communication. ... It's a great time for us." As president of The King Center, King has been credited with spearheading an innovative "King Center Imaging Project" in partnership with JPMorgan Chase, which is digitizing and photographing an estimated 200,000 historic documents, including his father's speeches, sermons, correspondence and other writings and making the documents available on-line to the world. In addition, King launched "The King Center Audio and Visual Digitization Project" in partnership with Syracuse University which will "preserve and digitize some 3,500 hours of audio and video footage" of his father. He has also developed a $100 million renovation plan to upgrade The King Center's Freedom Hall Complex, the first major improvement in the center's site and facilities in its 30-year history.


title: Martin Luther King III

text: Along with Reverend Al Sharpton and a number of other civil rights leaders, on August 28, 2010, King took part in the 'Reclaim the Dream' commemorative march, marking the 47th anniversary of the historic Great March on Washington. They spoke at Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C. followed by a reassemblage at the site of the future Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial location in the center of the National Mall. The event coincided with Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor rally planned for the same day on the eastern part of the Mall. King wrote a "Washington Post" op-ed column offering measured criticism of Beck's event:


title: Martin Luther King III

text: On April 4, 2011, the 43rd anniversary of the assassination of his father, King helped to lead nationwide demonstrations against initiatives to eliminate and undermine collective bargaining rights of public workers in Wisconsin and other states. King led a mass march in Atlanta and spoke to a crowd of supporters at the Georgia state capitol, urging them to "defend the collective bargaining rights of teachers, bus drivers, police, firefighters and other public service workers, who educate, protect and serve our children and families". On November 17, 2011, King and AFL–CIO President Richard Trumka co-authored an article for CNN, calling for reforms to end oppressive immigration laws.


title: Martin Luther King III

text: In August 2013, King went to Philadelphia, where he joined Mayor Michael Nutter in announcing the city's joining of a national campaign on poverty, jobs and education. To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington, King traveled to Washington, along with other civil rights leaders. On November 21, 2013, King spoke at DePauw University regarding his memories of John F. Kennedy's assassination.


title: Martin Luther King III

text: King appeared on MSNBC's "The Cycle" on May 9, 2014. He was asked by co-host Touré if he believed that Democratic Party has done enough to get the overwhelming support from African-Americans it receives. King's answer is said to have shocked the host. "The party does not do enough," he said. "It's our responsibility to hold the party accountable. And I'm not sure we do that. I think we have to find a way to hold the parties accountable." He went on to say that he believed there should be communication between African-Americans and the Tea Party Movement, saying "the only way you change is you have to be at least communicating".


title: Martin Luther King III

text: In August 2014, King addressed the shooting of Michael Brown and reported that he would come to Ferguson, Missouri. King was present at a rally with Michael Brown's parents on August 17. On an interview with Fox News, King said his father would be "greatly disappointed" with the violence that occurred in Ferguson after the grand jury verdict.


title: Martin Luther King III

text: In January 2011, it was reported that King will attempt to become a "strategic partner" in the New York Mets baseball team. "This was blown up way out of proportion," King told the Associated Press. "While I'm not leading a group and I'm not having direct conversations ... I think it is very important to promote diversity in ownership." King was among the co-founders of Bounce TV, a black-oriented digital broadcasting network. He currently serves on the Board of Advisors of Let America Vote, an organization founded by former Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander that aims to end voter suppression.


title: Martin Luther King III

text: On August 28, 2017, King marched with Al Sharpton in Washington D.C. for the Ministers March for Justice leading over 3,000 ministers to protest the policies of President Donald Trump. King was under major controversy when he agreed to meet with Trump in January 2017.


title: Martin Luther King III

text: On Martin Luther King Jr. Day January 18, 2021, a video was released in which King announced his endorsement of New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang, praising Yang's plan to provide a guaranteed minimum income like his father had wanted and declaring that he was joining the campaign as a co-chair.


title: Martin Luther King III

text: In May 2006, Martin Luther King III married his longtime partner, Arndrea Waters. On May 25, 2008, the couple had a daughter, Yolanda Renee King, the first and only grandchild of Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King. She was named after her aunt, Yolanda King, who had died of a heart condition at age 51 in Santa Monica, California, the previous year. At age 9, Yolanda Renee King spoke at the March for Our Lives demonstration in Washington, D.C. on March 24, 2018.


title: Martin Luther King III

text: On February 5, 2006, King, accompanied by the nieces and nephews of Rosa Parks, presented the ceremonial coin at Super Bowl XL. The coin was then tossed by New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady to end the pregame ceremonies, which included a dedication and moment of silence to the memories of Parks and Scott-King and a performance of the Star-Spangled Banner by Dr. John, Aaron Neville and Aretha Franklin accompanied by the Alabama State and Clark Atlanta University choirs.


title: Martin Luther King III

text: On September 19, 2010, King received the Ramakrishna Bajaj Memorial Global Award for outstanding contributions to the promotion of human rights at the 26th Anniversary Global Awards of the Priyadarshni Academy in Mumbai, India.


title: General Zod

text: General Zod is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics, commonly known as an adversary of the superhero Superman. The character, who first appeared in "Adventure Comics" #283 (April 1961), was created by Robert Bernstein and initially designed by George Papp. As a Kryptonian, he exhibits the same powers and abilities as Superman and is consequently viewed as one of his greatest enemies alongside Lex Luthor, Darkseid and Brainiac. He is also well known for his famous catchphrase, “Kneel before Zod!”


title: General Zod

text: Originally depicted as bald and clean-shaven, Zod's look in popular culture was defined by the character's depiction by Terence Stamp in the films "Superman" and "Superman II" starring Christopher Reeve. Eventually, the character was reintroduced to the DC Multiverse with black hair and a goatee beard. This character was portrayed by Michael Shannon in "Man of Steel" and "The Flash", set in the DC Extended Universe.


title: General Zod

text: Dru-Zod is a megalomaniacal Kryptonian, in charge of the military forces on Krypton. He knew Jor-El, Superman's father, when Jor-El was an aspiring scientist. When the space program was abolished after the destruction of the inhabited moon Wegthor (engineered by renegade scientist Jax-Ur), Zod attempted to take over Krypton using an army of robotic duplicates of himself, all bearing a resemblance to Bizarro. He was sentenced to exile in the Phantom Zone for 40 years for his crimes. Zod was eventually released by Superman when his term of imprisonment was up. However, he attempted to conquer Earth with the superpowers his Kryptonian body acquired under the yellow sun (the source of Superman's own super-powers). With Zod's threat now obvious, Superman was forced to oppose him and ultimately returned him to the Zone.


title: General Zod

text: During the remaining years before the Crisis on Infinite Earths, Zod and other Zone inmates such as Jax-Ur, Faora Hu-Ul and others, escaped from the Phantom Zone and battled Superman and Supergirl numerous times, always being defeated in the end and returned to the Zone.


title: General Zod

text: After DC's continuity-altering crossover special "Crisis on Infinite Earths" (1985), DC editorial maintained for a number of years that no Kryptonians were to be depicted in "current day" comics aside from Superman, to reinforce his status as the last Kryptonian. This meant that characters like Supergirl and Power Girl were reimagined as non-Kryptonians and Superman's Kryptonian canine Krypto became an ordinary house pet. However, writers of DC Comics still attempted to get around the no-Kryptonians rule by introducing "new" versions of Zod. Many of these were Zods of alternate universes. None persisted in DC continuity. After publishing its sequel to "Crisis on Infinite Earths", "Infinite Crisis" (2005), DC reintroduced the real General Zod in its 2006-2008 storyline "Superman: Last Son". For this, it brought on board writer Richard Donner, director of "Superman", the film which introduced Zod to the moviegoing public.


title: General Zod

text: The first Zod to be introduced following "Crisis on Infinite Earths" was the Zod of a so-called "pocket universe" resembling the universe in which the comics took place; this allowed for a "Kryptonian" Zod to be introduced while maintaining Superman's status as the last of his race in the universe proper. This Zod came from a Krypton in a pocket universe, the universe itself having been created by the Time Trapper. Zod (along with companions Quex-Ul and Zaora) devastated the Earth of that universe following the death of its Superboy, despite the best efforts of a Supergirl created by that world's heroic Lex Luthor. Eventually, the survivors of this world managed to contact the Superman of the main universe to help them, and he was able to take away the powers of the three super-criminals with only Gold Kryptonite (since he was not from that universe, the Kryptonite of that reality would have no effect on him).


title: General Zod

text: However, the three vowed to some day regain their powers and return to Superman's world to kill him. Acknowledging that he could neither afford to leave them on the now-dead pocket Earth to let them die on their own nor imprison them on his world, Superman was forced to execute them with Green Kryptonite.


title: General Zod

text: A second incarnation of General Zod was introduced in the 2001 storyline "Return to Krypton"; this Zod was portrayed as that of an alternate reality that was created by the character Brainiac 13. He was the head of the Kryptonian military in the alternate reality. Like the Pre-"Crisis" version, Zod held the Kryptonian equivalent of fascist beliefs. He sent aliens to the bottle city of Kandor and planned a military coup. Zod was defeated by Superman and the Jor-El of Zod's alternate reality Krypton.


title: General Zod

text: The third attempt to bring Zod to Modern Age comics was the "Russian" Zod, a Zod of human origin whose origin story was connected to Superman's. This General Zod (born Avruiskin) is a Russian who was affected before his birth by Kryptonite radiation, since he was the son of two cosmonauts whose ship was too close to Kal-El's rocketship. This Zod is unnaturally weak under a yellow sun, but superpowered under a red sun (the opposite of Superman). After his parents died from radiation, he grew up in a KGB laboratory under the name "Zed". Apparently spoken to by the spirit of the Pocket Universe Zod, Russian Zod created a suit of red armor which filtered the sunlight, and declared himself ruler of the fictional former Soviet state of Pokolistan. After several inconclusive encounters with Superman, he revealed his long-range plan to turn the sun red and take Superman's place. This was temporarily successful until Lex Luthor rescued Superman, gave him a blast of yellow solar radiation to regain his powers, and worked to restore the sun. Superman returned to battle Zod, but refused to kill him. When the sun turned yellow again the now-vulnerable Zod struck Superman with all his power at super-speed, but was killed due to Superman's invulnerability.


title: General Zod

text: The final Zod before the character was finally reintroduced, the Zod of an alternate Phantom Zone appeared in the twelve-issue "" storyline, written by Brian Azzarello and penciled by Jim Lee. This Zod lives alone in an alternate Phantom Zone and resents Superman for tampering with it. By his own account he comes from the same Krypton as Superman and was exiled to the Phantom Zone by Superman's father, Jor-El. This Zod wears large, spiked black armor and when unmasked, is a bald, white-bearded old man. This incarnation also uses a variation of "Kneel before Zod". He appeared in Metropia, a version of the Phantom Zone created by Superman to resemble a living world (including apparently-living beings). After this storyline, he has been superseded by the present storyline (which features a new Zod, freed from the Phantom Zone).


title: General Zod

text: General Zod appeared in the "" storyline (written by Geoff Johns and Richard Donner, the director of "Superman: The Movie" and most of ""). In a similar story to that of "Superman II", Zod, Ursa, and Non escape from the Phantom Zone and come to Earth to try to turn it into a "New Krypton". This incarnation is the first Post-Crisis Zod who came from Superman's Krypton, and not from an alternate reality.


title: General Zod

text: The backstory for the three Kryptonians was recounted in "Action Comics" Annual #10 (April 2007), and Zod's origin was revealed in "Countdown" #30 (October 2007). Prior to the destruction of Krypton, Zod, his wife Ursa, and accomplice Non rebelled against their planet's oppressive government, but soon became lawless would-be tyrants who lusted for power. After an ill-fated insurrection led by Zod, the government sentenced the trio to death. However, Superman's father Jor-El pleaded for the government to mitigate their sentence to imprisonment in the Phantom Zone, accepted on the condition that he would assume responsibility as their jailer. While in the Phantom Zone, Zod and Ursa were able to have a child who was born immune to the Phantom Zone's effects, ultimately facilitating their escape, and named him Lor-Zod. On Earth, the boy was discovered by Superman and his wife Lois Lane, who adopted him as their own son and named him Christopher Kent. For the duration of 2007's "Last Son" storyline in "Action Comics", Chris Kent is depicted as an adopted son of Superman and his wife Lois across DC titles.


title: General Zod

text: Alongside Zod, Ursa and Non, 25 other Kryptonian criminals also escape the Zone and defeat a number of Earth's heroes, beginning their quest to conquer the planet. Zod ambushes Superman in revenge for Jor-El's actions and traps him in the Phantom Zone, which he later escapes with the help of the heroic Phantom Zone prisoner Mon-El. With assistance from his traditional enemies Lex Luthor, Metallo, Parasite and Bizarro, Superman takes on Zod's army. Out of nearly thirty Kryptonians, Superman's temporary allies successfully kill several, driving the rest back into the Phantom Zone alongside Zod and Ursa, who take Chris Kent with them.


title: General Zod

text: In the later "" arc storyline however, Zod is freed from the Phantom Zone once again by Supergirl's mother Alura. The "bottled city of Kandor" is transformed into a populated Kryptonian planet ("New Krypton"), and Zod is appointed the leader of its army. In the "World of New Krypton" "Action Comics" storyline, when Superman decides to see what life is like on New Krypton, he is drafted into the Military Guild under General Zod. Zod and Superman maintain a mistrustful professional relationship. Despite their past, neither seems prepared to behave with marked aggression toward the other. Later, during a Kryptonian ceremony, Zod is shot by the Kryptonian Ral-Dar (who is working with Lois's father General Sam Lane), leading Zod to appoint Superman as temporary General until his recovery. The two are involved in a Kryptonian political plot, but ultimately apprehend the planet's traitor and see a reform of New Krypton's Council.


title: General Zod

text: Peace is short-lived, however, due to an attack by the alien Brainiac, who had been responsible for the bottling of Kandor in the first place. In "Last Stand of New Krypton", New Krypton comes under attack by Brainiac, and Zod engineers a plan to defeat him; Zod is driven by an urge to avenge his prior defeat at the hands of the Coluan Brainiac, when Kandor was bottled from Old Krypton. The storyline ends with the planet's destruction, leading Zod to declare war on Earth, sparking the "War of the Supermen" storyline. After a fierce conflict between Superman and Zod in defence of Earth, Zod is pushed back into the Phantom Zone by his son, Chris Kent, who had freed himself from the Phantom Zone and became active as an adult superhero on planet Earth.


title: General Zod

text: In 2011, DC chose to revamp its continuity, rebooting many characters while retaining the histories for some others, as part of its The New 52 publishing event. Following this, Zod is hinted at several times. A character resembling Zod made a cameo in "Action Comics" #5 (March 2012), as a prisoner in the Phantom Zone; in "Action Comics" #13 (December 2012) a ghost in the Phantom Zone says "Kneel before..." multiple times while attacking Superman, a reference to Zod's iconic saying. Zod makes his first full appearance in "Action Comics" #23.2: "General Zod" (September 2013), written by Greg Pak, with art by Ken Lashley.


title: General Zod

text: A new origin for Zod was introduced. Zod was born to scientist parents. When he was a young boy, Zod and his parents traveled to Krypton's wilderness in order to discover new creatures. Their ship was attacked by creatures, leaving the family stranded in the jungle. While his parents were killed by the animals, Zod managed to survive for one year until Jor-El and his older brother Zor-El saved him. After reaching adulthood, Zod became one of Krypton's best soldiers, attaining the rank of general. Zod developed a hatred towards an alien species called the Char and secretly ordered the creation of a Char-looking creature, unleashing it on Krypton's population, so he could justify a war against the Char. Jor-El discovered the deception and turned Zod over to the authorities. The council found Zod guilty of treason and banished him and his closest followers, Faora and Non, to the Phantom Zone.


title: General Zod

text: Many years later, a mysterious event caused the Phantom Zone to weaken, allowing some of its prisoners to escape into normal space. Zod traveled to Earth, landing in the Sahara Desert. There, Zod's Kryptonian powers began to manifest for the first time, brutally slaughtering a group of travelers. Zod was soon attacked by the Justice League of America until Superman and Wonder Woman arrived, the latter restraining him with her magic lasso. Zod recognized Superman as Kal-El, the son of Jor-El. Superman decided to keep Zod in the Fortress of Solitude's alien zoo. While there, he reveals to Superman that Faora also traveled to Earth with him, and vows to track her down.


title: General Zod

text: In June 2016, the "DC Rebirth" event relaunched DC Comics' entire line of comic book titles, in which General Zod continues to appear within DC titles. In December 2017, DC Comics ended the "Rebirth" branding, opting to include everything under a larger "DC Universe" banner and naming. As part of the DC Rebirth relaunch, General Zod is once again imprisoned within the Phantom Zone. Zod was trapped within the boundaries of the Black Vault, a secret facility hidden in the Laptev Sea. Amanda Waller sent the Suicide Squad to steal the contents of the Black Vault and bring them back to her; however, in unlocking the previously hermetically sealed area, they unwittingly allowed Zod to tear open the now unstable link between Earth and the Phantom Zone and once again break free. She attempts to 'recruit' Zod by implanting a kryptonite explosive in his head, but he finally proves too dangerous when he uses a mirror and his heat vision to literally cut the bomb out of his own skull, forcing Rick Flag to sacrifice himself to seal the Zone before Zod can release his army. Zod manages to retrieve his family from the Zone while fighting alongside the Superman Revenge Squad- Cyborg Superman, Eradicator, Mongul and Metallo- and escapes Earth to establish himself as a dictator on another planet with his family, nearly killing Hal Jordan when the Green Lantern Corps discover his presence on the planet before both sides are forced to withdraw and recuperate.


title: General Zod

text: Like all Kryptonians under a yellow sun, General Zod possesses high-level superhuman strength, speed and endurance sufficient to stand against Superman and other Kryptonians; super hearing; x-ray vision; telescopic, microscopic and heat vision; super-breath and freeze-breath; virtual invulnerability; accelerated healing and flight. Due to his background as a Kryptonian general, Zod possesses a detailed knowledge of military tactics, battle strategy, and is a competent military leader. Because he was trained in fighting arts long before receiving his abilities, he typically has an edge over Superman's brawling skills, over-reliance on superhuman strength, and basic knowledge of advanced human and Kryptonian hand-to-hand combat. However, Zod's powers are often inferior to those of Superman, due to the latter being exposed to the yellow sun over the course of his entire life, while Zod typically only gets exposed for a short period of time before being defeated and returned to the Phantom Zone. This greater power combined with his superior control and experience with it gives Superman an edge over Zod's superior fighting skills. Additionally, similar to Superman, his strength is inferior to the likes of Doomsday and his speed is inferior to Speedsters such as the Flash. Like all Kryptonians, he is vulnerable to Kryptonite and red solar radiation; his durability does not provide protection from mind control and magic; and his strength and durability both have limits in that he cannot survive an atomic explosion without nearly fatal injuries and there are weights he cannot lift due to natural bodily limitation even under the empowering environment of a yellow sun as well as normal limits of adult Kryptonian superhuman strength.


title: General Zod

text: The General Zod of Earth-15 is this world's Superman, here as a semi-retired champion of this peaceful Earth. This version is later killed by the psychotic Superman Prime, who was angry because Zod was "not a manic", as well as killing Zod's wife and unborn child.


title: General Zod

text: The Zod of "" was not a general of any kind. He was recast as a sociopathic 11-year-old, who created a deadly synthetic virus on Krypton for no reason other than fun. Zod was banished to the Phantom Zone because of his actions (the first child ever sent to the Zone) until American scientists breached the Zone and discovered him. Taken in by the government and named "Clark Kent", Zod would fool most of his adult superiors by playing the role of a scared child until he grew up and became the adult "Super-Man". In the sequel series "", Super-Man is sent into Eastern Europe with the Bat and the Clock. He fought Parasite and Steelwolf, while investigating his sole weakness: a nuclear device the Russians had created. Finding his information, he incapacitated or killed several agents and headed into Russia to destroy the device. However, he was ultimately killed before he could finish the job.


title: General Zod

text: Zod appears in "" in which he is called Zod-El, brother to Jor-El and thus Superman's uncle. Zod-El was a Kryptonian soldier who waged a six-month civil war against the Science Council, and the one responsible for Krypton's destruction by striking a deal with the Krypton's warring neighbor Dheronians. After the Dheronian Tyrell's defeat and absorbing energy from a yellow star, Zod went to Earth to deal with Superman. He is later depowered by the Luthors after Alexander shot him with a radiation beam (destroying his Kryptonian armor), but not before killing him and thus driving his wife Lex to hate Superman.


title: General Zod

text: "Zod" appears in the prequel to the "Injustice 2" video game. When Batman and the Insurgency rescue the Teen Titans from their imprisonment by Superman in the Phantom Zone, Zod uses the opportunity to escape the prison and murders Tim Drake in the process. An enraged Batman activates his Endgame protocol and combats Zod with a heavily armored suit. He takes Zod down with kryptonite infused fear gas, which Batman himself swore he'd never use given to what it did to Superman in this reality. He gets the upper hand on Zod with the kryptonite gas making it appear like Superman is defeating him, but when it wears off, Ra's Al Ghul (knowing Zod's kryptonian purist ideals wouldn't match with his own) sends Amazo to combat the general. Amazo kills Zod by twisting his head off. His heart is then surgically removed by the retired Doctor Mid-Nite Charles McNider and placed inside Superboy's body so he can live outside the Phantom Zone.


title: General Zod

text: While not appearing in the DC animated universe television shows, General Zod (depicted as an Argosian mad criminal) appears in "Superman Adventures" #21 and "Justice League Unlimited" #34 where he teams with Jax-Ur and Mala.


title: General Zod

text: A version of Zod appears in the 2013 digital-first series "Justice League Beyond 2.0", taking place in the DC Animated Universe, specifically in the futuristic setting of the "Batman Beyond" animated series. In this series, Zod is revealed to be the son of Jax-Ur, marking the first appearance of General Zod in the continuity of the Bruce Timm's "", albeit a younger, innocent version of the megalomaniacal General who, in fact, helps the new Justice League. He is later revealed to be the son of Justice Lord Superman and Wonder Woman.


title: General Zod

text: In the novel "The Last Days of Krypton" (by Kevin J. Anderson, ), General Zod (also known as Commissioner Dru-Zod) is the son of Cor-Zod (former head of the Kryptonian Council). Initially a middle-level bureaucrat, he takes advantage of a major planetary cataclysm and the apparent decapitation of the government to seize absolute power as a military despot. He is ultimately overthrown by a resistance movement led by scientist Jor-El and his brother, civic leader Zor-El. They had formerly worked with Zod until his ambitions and misuse of Jor-El's Rao Beam and the Phantom Zone showed them his true nature and turned them against him. He and his two henchmen are banished forever to the Phantom Zone, which Zod had previously used to imprison his political enemies, including the remnants of the planetary Council. Ironically, the Council are so traumatized by their imprisonment in the Phantom Zone that they decide to ensure that Zod can never be released, by dropping the Zone singularity into an active volcano, causing Krypton's core to implode and bringing about the planet's destruction.


title: General Zod

text: "Total Film" ranked Zod #32 on their "Top 50 Greatest Villains of All Time" list in 2007. Pop-culture website IGN.com ranked General Zod as #30 on their list of the "Top 100 Comic Book Villains".


title: Alabaster

text: Alabaster is a mineral or rock that is soft, often used for carving, and is processed for plaster powder. Archaeologists and the stone processing industry use the word differently from geologists. The former use it in a wider sense that includes varieties of two different minerals: the fine-grained massive type of gypsum and the fine-grained banded type of calcite. Geologists define alabaster only as the gypsum type. Chemically, gypsum is a hydrous sulfate of calcium, while calcite is a carbonate of calcium.


title: Alabaster

text: The two types of alabaster have similar properties. They are usually lightly colored, translucent, and soft stones. They have been used throughout history primarily for carving decorative artifacts.


title: Alabaster

text: The calcite type is also denominated "onyx-marble", "Egyptian alabaster", and "Oriental alabaster" and is geologically described as either a compact banded travertine or "a stalagmitic limestone marked with patterns of swirling bands of cream and brown". "Onyx-marble" is a traditional, but geologically inaccurate, name because both onyx and marble have geological definitions that are distinct from even the broadest definition of "alabaster".


title: Alabaster

text: In general, ancient alabaster is calcite in the wider Middle East, including Egypt and Mesopotamia, while it is gypsum in medieval Europe. Modern alabaster is probably calcite but may be either. Both are easy to work and slightly soluble in water. They have been used for making a variety of indoor artwork and carving, and they will not survive long outdoors.


title: Alabaster

text: The two kinds are readily distinguished by their different hardnesses: gypsum alabaster (Mohs hardness 1.5 to 2) is so soft that a fingernail scratches it, while calcite (Mohs hardness 3) cannot be scratched in this way but yields to a knife. Moreover, calcite alabaster, being a carbonate, effervesces when treated with hydrochloric acid, while gypsum alabaster remains almost unaffected.


title: Alabaster

text: The origin of "alabaster" is in Middle English through Old French ""alabastre"", in turn derived from Latin ""alabaster"", and that from Greek ""ἀλάβαστρος"" (""alabastros"") or ""ἀλάβαστος"" (""alabastos""). The Greek words denoted a vase of alabaster.


title: Alabaster

text: The name may be derived further from ancient Egyptian ""a-labaste"", which refers to vessels of the Egyptian goddess Bast. She was represented as a lioness and frequently depicted as such in figures placed atop these alabaster vessels. Ancient Roman authors, Pliny the Elder and Ptolemy, wrote that the stone used for ointment jars called "alabastra" came from a region of Egypt known as Alabastron or Alabastrites.


title: Alabaster

text: The purest alabaster is a snow-white material of fine uniform grain, but it often is associated with an oxide of iron, which produces brown clouding and veining in the stone. The coarser varieties of gypsum alabaster are converted by calcination into plaster of Paris, and are sometimes known as "plaster stone".


title: Alabaster

text: The softness of alabaster enables it to be carved readily into elaborate forms, but its solubility in water renders it unsuitable for outdoor work. If alabaster with a smooth, polished surface is washed with dishwashing liquid, it will become rough, dull and whiter, losing most of its translucency and lustre. The finer kinds of alabaster are employed largely as an ornamental stone, especially for ecclesiastical decoration and for the rails of staircases and halls.


title: Alabaster

text: Alabaster is mined and then sold in blocks to alabaster workshops. There they are cut to the needed size ("squaring"), and then are processed in different techniques: turned on a lathe for round shapes, carved into three-dimensional sculptures, chiselled to produce low relief figures or decoration; and then given an elaborate finish that reveals its transparency, colour, and texture.


title: Alabaster

text: In order to diminish the translucency of the alabaster and to produce an opacity suggestive of true marble, the statues are immersed in a bath of water and heated gradually—nearly to the boiling point—an operation requiring great care, because if the temperature is not regulated carefully, the stone acquires a dead-white, chalky appearance. The effect of heating appears to be a partial dehydration of the gypsum. If properly treated, it very closely resembles true marble and is known as "marmo di Castellina".


title: Alabaster

text: Alabaster is a porous stone and can be "dyed" into any colour or shade, a technique used for centuries. For this the stone needs to be fully immersed in various pigmentary solutions and heated to a specific temperature. The technique can be used to disguise alabaster. In this way a very misleading imitation of coral that is called "alabaster coral" is produced.


title: Alabaster

text: Typically only one type is sculpted in any particular cultural environment, but sometimes both have been worked to make similar pieces in the same place and time. This was the case with small flasks of the alabastron type made in Cyprus from the Bronze Age into the Classical period.


title: Alabaster

text: When cut in thin sheets, alabaster is translucent enough to be used for small windows. It was used for this purpose in Byzantine churches and later in medieval ones, especially in Italy. Large sheets of Aragonese gypsum alabaster are used extensively in the contemporary Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, which was dedicated in 2002 by the Los Angeles, California Archdiocese. The cathedral incorporates special cooling to prevent the panes from overheating and turning opaque. The ancients used the calcite type, while the modern Los Angeles cathedral is using gypsum alabaster. There are also multiple examples of alabaster windows in ordinary village churches and monasteries in northern Spain.


title: Alabaster

text: Calcite alabaster, harder than the gypsum variety, was the kind primarily used in ancient Egypt and the wider Middle East (but not Assyrian palace reliefs), and is also used in modern times. It is found as either a stalagmitic deposit from the floor and walls of limestone caverns, or as a kind of travertine, similarly deposited in springs of calcareous water. Its deposition in successive layers gives rise to the banded appearance that the marble often shows on cross-section, from which its name is derived: onyx-marble or alabaster-onyx, or sometimes simply (and wrongly) as onyx.


title: Alabaster

text: This stone variety is the "alabaster" of the ancient Egyptians and Bible and is often termed "Oriental alabaster", since the early examples came from the Far East. The Greek name "alabastrites" is said to be derived from the town of Alabastron in Egypt, where the stone was quarried. The locality probably owed its name to the mineral; the origin of the mineral name is obscure (though see above).


title: Alabaster

text: The "Oriental" alabaster was highly esteemed for making small perfume bottles or ointment vases called alabastra; the vessel name has been suggested as a possible source of the mineral name. In Egypt, craftsmen used alabaster for canopic jars and various other sacred and sepulchral objects. A sarcophagus discovered in the tomb of Seti I near Thebes is on display in Sir John Soane's Museum, London; it is carved in a single block of translucent calcite alabaster from Alabastron.


title: Alabaster

text: Calcite alabaster was quarried in ancient Israel in the cave known today as the Twins Cave near Beit Shemesh. Herod used this alabaster for baths in his palaces.


title: Alabaster

text: In Mexico, there are famous deposits of a delicate green variety at La Pedrara, in the district of Tecali, near Puebla. Onyx-marble occurs also in the district of Tehuacán and at several localities in the US including California, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and Virginia.


title: Alabaster

text: Gypsum alabaster is the softer of the two varieties, the other being calcite alabaster. It was used primarily in medieval Europe, and is also used in modern times.


title: Alabaster

text: "Mosul marble" is a kind of gypsum alabaster found in the north of modern Iraq, which was used for the Assyrian palace reliefs of the 9th to 7th centuries BC; these are the largest type of alabaster sculptures to have been regularly made. The relief is very low and the carving detailed, but large rooms were lined with continuous compositions on slabs around high. The "Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal" and military Lachish reliefs, both 7th century and in the British Museum, are some of the best known.


title: Alabaster

text: Gypsum alabaster was widely used for small sculpture for indoor use in the ancient world, especially in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Fine detail could be obtained in a material with an attractive finish without iron or steel tools. Alabaster was used for vessels dedicated for use in the cult of the deity Bast in the culture of the ancient Egyptians, and thousands of gypsum alabaster artifacts dating to the late 4th millennium BC also have been found in Tell Brak (present day Nagar), in Syria.


title: Alabaster

text: In Mesopotamia, gypsum alabaster was the material of choice for figures of deities and devotees in temples, as in a figure believed to represent the deity Abu dating to the first half of the 3rd millennium BC and currently kept in New York.


title: Alabaster

text: Much of the world's alabaster extraction is performed in the centre of the Ebro Valley in Aragon, Spain, which has the world's largest known exploitable deposits. According to a brochure published by the Aragon government, alabaster has elsewhere either been depleted, or its extraction is so difficult that it has almost been abandoned or is carried out at a very high cost. There are two separate sites in Aragon, both are located in Tertiary basins. The most important site is the Fuentes-Azaila area, in the Tertiary Ebro Basin. The other is the Calatayud-Teruel Basin, which divides the Iberian Range in two main sectors (NW and SE).


title: Alabaster

text: The abundance of Aragonese alabaster was crucial for its use in architecture, sculpture and decoration. There is no record of likely use by pre-Roman cultures, so perhaps the first ones to use alabaster in Aragon were the Romans, who produced vessels from alabaster following the Greek and Egyptian models. It seems that since the reconstruction of the Roman Wall in Zaragoza in the 3rd century AD with alabaster, the use of this material became common in building for centuries. Muslim Saraqusta (today, Zaragoza) was also called "Medina Albaida", the White City, due to the appearance of its alabaster walls and palaces, which stood out among gardens, groves and orchards by the Ebro and Huerva Rivers.


title: Alabaster

text: The oldest remains in the Aljafería Palace, together with other interesting elements like capitals, reliefs and inscriptions, were made using alabaster, but it was during the artistic and economic blossoming of the Renaissance that Aragonese alabaster reached its golden age. In the 16th century sculptors in Aragon chose alabaster for their best works. They were adept at exploiting its lighting qualities and generally speaking the finished art pieces retained their natural color.


title: Alabaster

text: In Europe, the centre of the alabaster trade today is Florence, Italy. Tuscan alabaster occurs in nodular masses embedded in limestone, interstratified with marls of Miocene and Pliocene age. The mineral is worked largely by means of underground galleries, in the district of Volterra. Several varieties are recognized—veined, spotted, clouded, agatiform, and others. The finest kind, obtained principally from Castellina, is sent to Florence for figure-sculpture, while the common kinds are carved locally, into vases, lights, and various ornamental objects. These items are objects of extensive trade, especially in Florence, Pisa, and Livorno.


title: Alabaster

text: In the 3rd century BC the Etruscans used the alabaster of Tuscany from the area of modern-day Volterra to produce funeral urns, possibly taught by Greek artists. During the Middle Ages the craft of alabaster was almost completely forgotten. A revival started in the mid-16th century, and until the beginning of the 17th century alabaster work was strictly artistic and did not expand to form a large industry.


title: Alabaster

text: In the 17th and 18th centuries production of artistic, high-quality Renaissance-style artifacts stopped altogether, being replaced by less sophisticated, cheaper items better suited for large-scale production and commerce. The new industry prospered, but the reduced need of skilled craftsmen left only few still working. The 19th century brought a boom to the industry, largely due to the "traveling artisans" who went and offered their wares to the palaces of Europe, as well as to America and the East.


title: Alabaster

text: In the 19th century new processing technology was also introduced, allowing for the production of custom-made, unique pieces, as well as the combination of alabaster with other materials. Apart from the newly developed craft, artistic work became again possible, chiefly by Volterran sculptor Albino Funaioli. After a short slump, the industry was revived again by the sale of mass-produced mannerist Expressionist sculptures, and was further enhanced in the 1920s by a new branch creating ceiling and wall lamps in the Art Deco style and culminating in the participation at the 1925 International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts from Paris. Important names from the evolution of alabaster use after World War II are Volterran Umberto Borgna, the "first alabaster designer", and later on the architect and industrial designer Angelo Mangiarotti.


title: Alabaster

text: Gypsum alabaster is a common mineral, which occurs in England in the Keuper marls of the Midlands, especially at Chellaston in Derbyshire, at Fauld in Staffordshire, and near Newark in Nottinghamshire. Deposits at all of these localities have been worked extensively.


title: Alabaster

text: In the 14th and 15th centuries its carving into small statues and sets of relief panels for altarpieces was a valuable local industry in Nottingham, as well as a major English export. These were usually painted, or partly painted. It was also used for the effigies, often life size, on tomb monuments, as the typical recumbent position suited the material's lack of strength, and it was cheaper and easier to work than good marble. After the English Reformation the making of altarpiece sets was discontinued, but funerary monument work in reliefs and statues continued.


title: Alabaster

text: Besides examples of these carvings still in Britain (especially at the Nottingham Castle Museum, British Museum, and Victoria and Albert Museum), trade in mineral alabaster (rather than just the antiques trade) has scattered examples in the material that may be found as far afield as the Musée de Cluny, Spain, and Scandinavia.


title: Alabaster

text: Alabaster also is found, although in smaller quantity, at Watchet in Somerset, near Penarth in Glamorganshire, and elsewhere. In Cumbria it occurs largely in the New Red rocks, but at a lower geological horizon. The alabaster of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire is found in thick nodular beds or "floors" in spheroidal masses known as "balls" or "bowls" and in smaller lenticular masses termed "cakes". At Chellaston, where the local alabaster is known as "Patrick", it has been worked into ornaments under the name of "Derbyshire spar"―a term more properly applied to fluorspar.


title: Alabaster

text: "Black alabaster" is a rare anhydrite form of the gypsum-based mineral. This black form is found in only three veins in the world, one each in United States, Italy, and China.


title: Alabaster

text: Alabaster Caverns State Park, near Freedom, Oklahoma is home to a natural gypsum cave in which much of the gypsum is in the form of alabaster. There are several types of alabaster found at the site, including pink, white, and the rare black alabaster.


title: Endogamy

text: Endogamy is the practice of marrying within a specific social group, religious denomination, caste, or ethnic group, rejecting those from others as unsuitable for marriage or other close personal relationships.


title: Endogamy

text: Endogamy is common in many cultures and ethnic groups. Several religious and ethnic religious groups are traditionally more endogamous, although sometimes with the added dimension of requiring marital religious conversion. This permits an exogamous marriage, as the convert, by accepting the partner's religion, becomes accepted within the endogamous rules. Endogamy, as distinct from consanguinity, may result in transmission of genetic disorders, the so-called founder effect, within the relatively closed community.


title: Endogamy

text: Endogamy can serve as a form of self-segregation; a community can use it to resist integrating and completely merging with surrounding populations. Minorities can use it to stay ethnically homogeneous over a long time as distinct communities within societies that have other practices and beliefs.


title: Endogamy

text: The isolationist practices of endogamy may lead to a group's extinction, as genetic diseases may develop that can affect an increasing percentage of the population. However, this disease effect would tend to be small unless there is a high degree of close inbreeding, or if the endogamous population becomes very small in size.


title: Endogamy

text: The Urapmin, a small tribe in Papua New Guinea, practice strict endogamy. The Urapmin also have a system of kinship classes known as "tanum miit". Since the classes are inherited cognatically, most Urapmin belong to all of the major classes, creating great fluidity and doing little to differentiate individuals.


title: Endogamy

text: The small community on the South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha are, because of their geographical isolation, an almost endogamic society. There are instances of health problems attributed to endogamy on the island, including glaucoma and asthma as research by the University of Toronto has demonstrated.


title: Endogamy

text: Endogamic marriage patterns may increase the frequency of various levels of cousin marriage in a population, and may cause high probability of children of first, second, third cousins, etcetera.


title: Endogamy

text: In human autosomal-DNA science, endogamy has been used to refer to any cousin marriage that affects an ancestral tree.


title: Endogamy

text: If a cousin marriage has accrued in a known ancestral tree of a person, in historical time, it is referred to as pedigree collapse. This may cause relations along multiple paths between a persons autosomal-DNA matches. It creates stronger DNA matches between the DNA matches than expected from the nearest path.


title: Endogamy

text: Cousin marriage should not be confused with double cousins, which do not cause a pedigree collapse. Certain levels of sibling marriage and cousin marriage is prevented by law in some countries, and referred to as consanguinity.


title: Endogamy

text: A long term pattern of endogamy in a region may increase the risk of repeated cousin marriage during a long period of time, referred to as inbreeding. It may cause additional noise in the DNA autosomal data, giving the impressions that DNA matches with roots in that region are more closely related than they are.


title: Maxine Waters

text: Maxine Moore Waters (née Carr; born August 15, 1938) is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for since 1991. The district, numbered as the 29th district from 1991 to 1993 and as the 35th district from 1993 to 2013, includes much of southern Los Angeles, as well as portions of Gardena, Inglewood and Torrance.


title: Maxine Waters

text: A member of the Democratic Party, Waters is in her 15th House term. She is the most senior of the 12 black women serving in Congress, and chaired the Congressional Black Caucus from 1997 to 1999. She is the second-most senior member of the California congressional delegation, after Nancy Pelosi. She chairs the House Financial Services Committee.


title: Maxine Waters

text: Before becoming a U.S. representative, Waters served in the California State Assembly, to which she was first elected in 1976. As an assemblywoman, she advocated divestment from South Africa's apartheid regime. In Congress, she was an outspoken opponent of the Iraq War and has sharply criticized Presidents George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump.


title: Maxine Waters

text: Waters was born in 1938 in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Remus Carr and Velma Lee (née Moore). The fifth of 13 children, she was raised by her single mother after her father left the family when Maxine was two. She graduated from Vashon High School in St. Louis before moving with her family to Los Angeles in 1961. She worked in a garment factory and as a telephone operator before being hired as an assistant teacher with the Head Start program in Watts in 1966. Waters later enrolled at Los Angeles State College (now California State University, Los Angeles), where she received a bachelor's degree in sociology in 1971.


title: Maxine Waters

text: In 1973, Waters went to work as chief deputy to City Councilman David S. Cunningham, Jr. She was elected to the California State Assembly in 1976. In the Assembly, she worked for the divestment of state pension funds from any businesses active in South Africa, a country then operating under the policy of apartheid, and helped pass legislation within the guidelines of the divestment campaign's Sullivan Principles. She ascended to the position of Democratic Caucus Chair for the Assembly.


title: Maxine Waters

text: Upon the retirement of Augustus F. Hawkins in 1990, Waters was elected to the United States House of Representatives for California's 29th congressional district with over 79% of the vote. She has been reelected consistently from this district, renumbered as the 35th district in 1992 and as the 43rd in 2012, with at least 70% of the vote.


title: Maxine Waters

text: Waters has represented large parts of south-central Los Angeles and the Los Angeles coastal communities of Westchester and Playa Del Rey, as well as the cities of Torrance, Gardena, Hawthorne, Inglewood and Lawndale.


title: Maxine Waters

text: On July 29, 1994, Waters came to public attention when she repeatedly interrupted a speech by Representative Peter King. The presiding officer, Carrie Meek, classed her behavior as "unruly and turbulent", and threatened to have the Sergeant at Arms present her with the Mace of the House of Representatives (the equivalent of a formal warning to desist). , this is the most recent instance of the mace being employed for a disciplinary purpose. Waters was eventually suspended from the House for the rest of the day. The conflict with King stemmed from the previous day, when they had both been present at a House Banking Committee hearing on the Whitewater controversy. Waters felt King's questioning of Maggie Williams (Hillary Clinton's chief of staff) was too harsh, and they subsequently exchanged hostile words.


title: Maxine Waters

text: Waters chaired the Congressional Black Caucus from 1997 to 1998. In 2005, she testified at the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce hearings on "Enforcement of Federal Anti-Fraud Laws in For-Profit Education", highlighting the American College of Medical Technology as a "problem school" in her district. In 2006, she was involved in the debate over King Drew Medical Center. She criticized media coverage of the hospital and asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to deny a waiver of the cross ownership ban, and hence license renewal for KTLA-TV, a station the "Los Angeles Times" owned. She said, "The "Los Angeles Times" has had an inordinate effect on public opinion and has used it to harm the local community in specific instances." She requested that the FCC force the paper to either sell its station or risk losing that station's broadcast rights. According to Broadcasting & Cable, the challenges raised "the specter of costly legal battles to defend station holdings... At a minimum, defending against one would cost tens of thousands of dollars in lawyers' fees and probably delay license renewal about three months". Waters's petition was unsuccessful.


title: Maxine Waters

text: As a Democratic representative in Congress, Waters was a superdelegate to the 2008 Democratic National Convention. She endorsed Democratic U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton for the party's nomination in late January 2008, granting Clinton nationally recognized support that some suggested would "make big waves." Waters later switched her endorsement to U.S. Senator Barack Obama when his lead in the pledged delegate count became insurmountable on the final day of primary voting.


title: Maxine Waters

text: In 2009 Waters had a confrontation with Representative Dave Obey over an earmark in the United States House Committee on Appropriations. The funding request was for a public school employment training center in Los Angeles that was named after her. In 2011, Waters voted against the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, related to a controversial provision that allows the government and the military to detain American citizens and others indefinitely without trial.


title: Maxine Waters

text: Upon Barney Frank's retirement in 2012, Waters became the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee. On July 24, 2013, she voted in favor of Amendment 100 in H.R. 2397 Department of Defense Appropriations Act of 2014. The amendment targeted domestic surveillance activities, specifically that of the National Security Agency, and would have limited the flexibility of the NSA's interpretation of the law to collect sweeping data on U.S. citizens. Amendment 100 was rejected, 217–205.


title: Maxine Waters

text: On March 27, 2014, Waters introduced a discussion draft of the Housing Opportunities Move the Economy Forward Act of 2014 known as the Home Forward Act of 2014. A key provision of the bill includes the collection of 10 basis points for "every dollar outstanding mortgages collateralizing covered securities", estimated at $5 billion a year. These funds would be directed to three funds that support affordable housing initiatives, with 75% going to the National Housing trust fund. The National Housing Trust Fund will then provide block grants to states to be used primarily to build, preserve, rehabilitate, and operate rental housing that is affordable to the lowest income households, and groups including seniors, disabled persons and low income workers. The National Housing Trust was enacted in 2008, but has yet to be funded. In 2009, Waters co-sponsored Representative John Conyers's bill calling for reparations for slavery to be paid to black Americans.


title: Maxine Waters

text: For her tenure as chair of the House Financial Services Committee in the 116th Congress, Waters earned an "A" grade from the nonpartisan Lugar Center's Congressional Oversight Hearing Index.


title: Maxine Waters

text: After a 1996 "San Jose Mercury News" article alleged the complicity of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the Los Angeles crack epidemic of the 1980s, Waters called for an investigation. She asked whether "U.S.-government paid or organized operatives smuggled, transported and sold it to American citizens". The United States Department of Justice announced it had failed to find any evidence to support the original story. The "Los Angeles Times" also concluded after its own extensive investigation that the allegations were not supported by evidence. The author of the original story, Gary Webb, was eventually transferred to a different beat and removed from investigative reporting, before his death in 2004. Webb was found in his apartment with two bullet holes in his head. His death was declared a suicide. After these post-publication investigations, Waters read into the Congressional Record a memorandum of understanding in which former President Ronald Reagan's CIA director rejected any duty by the CIA to report illegal narcotics trafficking to the Department of Justice.


title: Maxine Waters

text: According to Chuck Neubauer and Ted Rohrlich writing in the "Los Angeles Times" in 2004, Waters's relatives had made more than $1 million during the preceding eight years by doing business with companies, candidates and causes that Waters had helped. They claimed she and her husband helped a company get government bond business, and her daughter Karen Waters and son Edward Waters have profited from her connections. Waters replied, "They do their business and I do mine." Liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington named Waters to its list of corrupt members of Congress in its 2005, 2006, 2009 and 2011 reports. Citizens Against Government Waste named her the June 2009 Porker of the Month due to her intention to obtain an earmark for the Maxine Waters Employment Preparation Center.


title: Maxine Waters

text: Waters came under investigation for ethics violations and was accused by a House panel of at least one ethics violation related to her efforts to help OneUnited Bank receive federal aid. Waters's husband is a stockholder and former director of OneUnited Bank and the bank's executives were major contributors to her campaigns. In September 2008, Waters arranged meetings between U.S. Treasury Department officials and OneUnited Bank so that the bank could plead for federal cash. It had been heavily invested in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and its capital was "all but wiped out" after the U.S. government took it over. The bank received $12 million in Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) money. The matter was investigated by the House Ethics Committee, which charged Waters with violations of the House's ethics rules in 2010. On September 21, 2012, the House Ethics Committee completed a report clearing Waters of all ethics charges after nearly three years of investigation.


title: Maxine Waters

text: Waters and other House members objected to Florida's electoral votes, which George W. Bush narrowly won after a contentious recount. Because no senator joined her objection, the objection was dismissed by Vice President Al Gore, who was Bush's opponent in the 2000 presidential election.


title: Maxine Waters

text: Waters was one of 31 House Democrats who voted to not count Ohio's electoral votes in the 2004 presidential election. President George W. Bush won Ohio by 118,457 votes.


title: Maxine Waters

text: Waters objected to Wyoming's electoral votes after the 2016 presidential election, a state Donald Trump won with 68.2% of the vote. Because no senator joined her objection, the objection was dismissed by then-Vice President Joe Biden.


title: Maxine Waters

text: In July 2017, during a House Financial Services Committee meeting, Waters questioned United States Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin. At several points during the questioning, Waters used the phrase "reclaiming my time" when Mnuchin did not directly address the questions Waters had asked him. The video of the interaction between Waters and Mnuchin became popular on social media, and the phrase became attached to her criticisms of Trump.


title: Maxine Waters

text: In early 2018, Waters was among the members of Congress the Republican Jewish Coalition called on to resign due to their connections with Nation of Islam leader and known anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, who had recently drawn criticism for antisemitic remarks. The "Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle" noted that Waters had "long embraced Farrakhan" and refused to denounce him, even as other members of the Congressional Black Caucus who secretly met with Farrakhan in 2005 eventually did.


title: Maxine Waters

text: When south-central Los Angeles erupted in riots—in which 63 were killed—after the Rodney King verdict in 1992, Waters gained national attention when she led a chant of "No justice, no peace" at a rally amidst the riot. She also "helped deliver relief supplies in Watts and demanded the resumption of vital services". Waters described the riots as a rebellion, saying, "If you call it a riot it sounds like it was just a bunch of crazy people who went out and did bad things for no reason. I maintain it was somewhat understandable, if not acceptable." In her view, the violence was "a spontaneous reaction to a lot of injustice." In regard to the looting of Korean-owned stores by local black residents, she said in an interview with KABC radio host Michael Jackson: There were mothers who took this as an opportunity to take some milk, to take some bread, to take some shoes. Maybe they shouldn’t have done it, but the atmosphere was such that they did it. They are not crooks.


title: Maxine Waters

text: On June 23, 2018, after an incident in which White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was denied service and asked to leave a restaurant, Waters urged attendees at a rally in Los Angeles to confront Trump administration officials, saying:If you see anybody from [Trump's] cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd, and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere. Many on the Right saw this statement as an incitement of violence against officials from the Trump administration.


title: Maxine Waters

text: In response, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi posted comments on Twitter reported to be a condemnation of Waters's remarks: "Trump's daily lack of civility has provoked responses that are predictable but unacceptable."


title: Maxine Waters

text: Comments by Waters on April 17, 2021, while attending protests over the killing of Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, drew controversy. Responding to questions outside the Brooklyn Center police departmenta heavily fortified area that for days had been the site of violent clashes between law enforcement and demonstrators attempting to overrun itWaters commented on the protests and the looming jury verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer who at the time was charged with murdering George Floyd. Before closing arguments in the trial, Waters said, "I hope we get a verdict that says guilty, guilty, guilty. And if we don't, we cannot go away", and when asked, "What happens if we do not get what you just told? What should the people do? What should protesters do?", Waters responded: We've got to stay on the street. And we've got to get more active, we've got to get more confrontational, we've got to make sure that they know that we mean business.In response to a question from a reporter about the curfew in effect in Brooklyn Center, which loomed shortly, Waters said, "I don't think anything about curfew ... I don't know what 'curfew' means. Curfew means that 'I want to you all to stop talking, I want you to stop meeting, I want you to stop gathering.' I don't agree with that."


title: Maxine Waters

text: The protests outside the Brooklyn Center police station remained peaceful through the night. The crowd grew raucous when the curfew went into effect but shrank shortly after as protesters left on their own and no arrests were reported.


title: Maxine Waters

text: The judge in Chauvin's trial said on April 19, 2021, that Waters's comments were "abhorrent" and that it was "disrespectful to the rule of law and to the judicial branch" for elected officials to comment in advance of the verdict. The judge refused the defense's request for a mistrial, saying that the jury "have been told not to watch the news. I trust they are following those instructions", but also that "Congresswoman Waters may have given you something on appeal that may result in this whole trial being overturned".


title: Maxine Waters

text: After Waters's comments, Republican minority leader Kevin McCarthy said, "Waters is inciting violence in Minneapolis just as she has incited it in the past. If Speaker Pelosi doesn’t act against this dangerous rhetoric, I will bring action this week”. On April 19, 2021, McCarthy introduced a resolution in the House to censure Waters, calling her comments "dangerous". The following day, the House voted to block McCarthy's resolution, narrowly defeating it along party lines, 216–210.


title: Maxine Waters

text: Waters later said that her remarks in Brooklyn Center were taken out of context and that she believed in nonviolent actions. In an interview, she said, "I talk about confronting the justice system, confronting the policing that’s going on, I’m talking about speaking up. I’m talking about legislation. I’m talking about elected officials doing what needs to be done to control their budgets and to pass legislation."


title: Maxine Waters

text: Packages that contained pipe bombs were sent to two of Waters's offices on October 24, 2018. They were intercepted and investigated by the FBI. No one was injured. Similar packages were sent to several other Democratic leaders and to CNN. In 2019, Cesar Sayoc pleaded guilty to mailing the bombs and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.


title: Maxine Waters

text: Waters has a 100% rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America and an F rating from the Susan B. Anthony List based on her abortion-related voting record. She opposed the overturning of "Roe v. Wade".


title: Maxine Waters

text: In August 2011, Waters criticized President Barack Obama, saying he was insufficiently supportive of the black community. She referred to African Americans' high unemployment rate (around 15.9% at the time). At a Congressional Black Caucus town-hall meeting on jobs in Detroit, Waters said that African American members of Congress were reluctant to criticize or place public pressure on Obama because "y'all love the President".


title: Maxine Waters

text: In October 2011, Waters had a public dispute with Obama, arguing that he paid more attention to swing voters in the Iowa caucuses than to equal numbers of (geographically dispersed) black voters. In response, Obama said that it was time to "stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying" and get back to working with him.


title: Maxine Waters

text: Waters has called Trump "a bully, an egotistical maniac, a liar and someone who did not need to be president" and "the most deplorable person I've ever met in my life". In a 2017 appearance on MSNBC's "All In with Chris Hayes", she said Trump's advisors who have ties to Russia or have oil and gas interests there are "a bunch of scumbags".


title: Maxine Waters

text: Waters began to call for the impeachment of Trump shortly after he took office. In February 2017, she said that Trump was "leading himself" to possible impeachment because of his conflicts of interest and that he was creating "chaos and division". In September 2017, while giving a eulogy at Dick Gregory's funeral, she said that she was "cleaning out the White House" and that "when I get through with Donald Trump, he's going to wish he had been impeached." In October 2017, she said the U.S. Congress had enough evidence against Trump to "be moving on impeachment", in reference to Russian collusion allegations during the 2016 presidential election, and that Trump "has openly obstructed justice in front of our face".


title: Maxine Waters

text: Linking Trump to the violence that erupted at a white nationalist protest rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12, 2017, Waters said that the White House "is now the White Supremacists' House". After Trump's 2018 State of the Union address, she released a video response addressing what most members of the Congressional Black Caucus viewed as his racist viewpoint and actions, saying, "He claims that he's bringing people together but make no mistake, he is a dangerous, unprincipled, divisive, and shameful racist." Trump later replied by calling her a "low-IQ individual".


title: Maxine Waters

text: On April 24, 2018, while attending the Time 100 Gala, Waters urged Trump to resign from office, "So that I won't have to keep up this fight of your having to be impeached because I don't think you deserve to be there. Just get out."


title: Maxine Waters

text: On December 18, 2019, Waters voted for both articles of impeachment against Trump. Moments before voting for the second impeachment of Donald Trump, she called him “the worst president in the history of the United States.″


title: Maxine Waters

text: On June 18, 2019, Waters asked Facebook to halt its plan for the development and launching of Libra, a new cryptocurrency, citing a list of recent scandals. She said: "The cryptocurrency market currently lacks a clear regulatory framework to provide strong protections for investors, consumers and the economy. Regulators should see this as a wake-up call to get serious about the privacy and national security concerns, cybersecurity risks, and trading risks that are posed by cryptocurrencies".


title: Maxine Waters

text: In August 2008, Waters introduced HR 6796, the Stop Very Unscrupulous Loan Transfers from Underprivileged countries from Rich Exploitive Funds Act (Stop VULTURE Funds Act). It would limit the ability of investors in sovereign debt to use U.S. courts to enforce those instruments against a defaulting country. The bill died in committee.


title: Maxine Waters

text: Waters has visited Cuba a number of times, praising Fidel Castro's moves towards democracy. She also criticized previous U.S. efforts to overthrow him and demanded an end to the U.S. trade embargo. In 1998, Waters wrote Castro a letter calling the 1960s and 1970s "a sad and shameful chapter of our history" and thanking him for helping those who needed to "flee political persecution".


title: Maxine Waters

text: In 1998, Waters wrote Castro an open letter asking him not to extradite convicted terrorist Assata Shakur from Cuba, where she had sought asylum. Waters argued that much of the Black community regarded her conviction as false. She had earlier supported a Republican bill to extradite Shakur, who was referred to by her former name, Joanne Chesimard. In 1999, Waters called on President Bill Clinton to return six-year-old Elián González to his father in Cuba; the boy had survived a boat journey from Cuba, during which his mother had drowned, and was taken in by U.S. relatives.


title: Maxine Waters

text: Waters opposed the 2004 coup d'état in Haiti and criticized U.S. involvement. After the coup, she, TransAfrica Forum founder Randall Robinson, and Jamaican member of parliament Sharon Hay-Webster led a delegation to meet with Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and bring him to Jamaica, where he remained until May.


title: Maxine Waters

text: On October 1, 2020, Waters co-signed a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that condemned Azerbaijan’s offensive operations against the Armenian-populated enclave Nagorno-Karabakh, denounced Turkey’s role in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and called for an immediate ceasefire.


title: Maxine Waters

text: In July 1992, Waters called President George H. W. Bush "a racist" who "polarized the races in this country". Previously, she had suggested that Bush had used race to advance his policies.


title: Maxine Waters

text: Waters has been very critical of the Tea Party movement. On August 20, 2011, at a town hall discussing some of the displeasure that Obama's supporters felt about the Congressional Black Caucus not supporting him, Waters said, "This is a tough game. You can't be intimidated. You can't be frightened. And as far as I'm concerned, the 'tea party' can go straight to Hell ... and I intend to help them get there."


title: Maxine Waters

text: Waters voted against the Iraq War Resolution, the 2002 resolution that funded and granted Congressional approval to possible military action against the regime of Saddam Hussein. She has remained a consistent critic of the subsequent war and has supported immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq. Waters asserted in 2007 that President George W. Bush was trying to "set [Congress] up" by continually requesting funds for an "occupation" that was "draining" the country of capital, soldier's lives, and other resources. In particular, she argued that the economic resources being "wasted" in Iraq were those that might provide universal health care or fully fund Bush's "No Child Left Behind" education bill. Additionally, Waters, representing a congressional district whose median income falls far below the national average, argued that patriotism alone had not been the sole driving force for those U.S. service personnel serving in Iraq. Rather, "many of them needed jobs, they needed resources, they needed money, so they're there". In a subsequent floor speech, she said that Congress, lacking the votes to override the "inevitable Bush veto on any Iraq-related legislation," needed to "better [challenge] the administration's false rhetoric about the Iraq war" and "educate our constituents [about] the connection between the problems in Pakistan, Turkey, and Iran with the problems we have created in Iraq". A few months before these speeches, Waters cosponsored the House resolution to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney for making allegedly "false statements" about the war.


title: Maxine Waters

text: Waters's second husband, Sid Williams, played professional football in the NFL and is a former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas under the Clinton Administration. They live in Los Angeles's Windsor Square neighborhood.


title: Maxine Waters

text: In May 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Waters confirmed her sister, Velma Moody, had died of the virus aged 86.


title: Fannie Mae

text: The Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA), commonly known as Fannie Mae, is a United States government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) and, since 1968, a publicly traded company. Founded in 1938 during the Great Depression as part of the New Deal, the corporation's purpose is to expand the secondary mortgage market by securitizing mortgage loans in the form of mortgage-backed securities (MBS), allowing lenders to reinvest their assets into more lending and in effect increasing the number of lenders in the mortgage market by reducing the reliance on locally based savings and loan associations (or "thrifts"). Its brother organization is the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC), better known as Freddie Mac. In 2022, Fannie Mae was ranked number 33 on the "Fortune" 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.


title: Fannie Mae

text: Historically, most housing loans in the early 1900s in the United States were short term mortgage loans with balloon payments. The Great Depression weakened the U.S. housing market, as people lost their jobs and were unable to make payments. By 1933, an estimated 20 to 25% of the nation's outstanding mortgage debt was in default. This resulted in foreclosures in which nearly 25% of America's homeowners lost their homes to banks. To address this, Fannie Mae was established by the U.S. Congress in 1938 by amendments to the National Housing Act as part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. Originally chartered as the National Mortgage Association of Washington, the organization's explicit purpose was to provide local banks with federal money to finance home loans in an attempt to raise levels of home ownership and the availability of affordable housing. Fannie Mae created a liquid secondary mortgage market and thereby made it possible for banks and other loan originators to issue more housing loans, primarily by buying Federal Housing Administration (FHA) insured mortgages. For the first thirty years following its inception, Fannie Mae held a monopoly over the secondary mortgage market. Other considerations may have motivated the New Deal focus on the housing market: about a third of the nation's unemployed were in the building trade, and the government had a vested interest in getting them back to work by giving them homes to build.


title: Fannie Mae

text: Fannie Mae was acquired by the Housing and Home Finance Agency from the Federal Loan Agency as a constituent unit in 1950. In 1954, an amendment known as the Federal National Mortgage Association Charter Act made Fannie Mae into "mixed-ownership corporation", meaning that federal government held the preferred stock while private investors held the common stock; in 1968 it converted to a privately held corporation, to remove its activity and debt from the federal budget. In the 1968 change, arising from the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, Fannie Mae's predecessor (also called Fannie Mae) was split into the current Fannie Mae and the Government National Mortgage Association ("Ginnie Mae").


title: Fannie Mae

text: Ginnie Mae, which remained a government organization, guarantees FHA-insured mortgage loans as well as Veterans Administration (VA) and Farmers Home Administration (FmHA) insured mortgages. As such, Ginnie Mae is the only home-loan agency explicitly backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government.


title: Fannie Mae

text: In 1970, the federal government authorized Fannie Mae to purchase conventional loans, i.e. those not insured by the FHA, VA, or FmHA, and created the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC), colloquially known as Freddie Mac, to compete with Fannie Mae and thus facilitate a more robust and efficient secondary mortgage market. That same year FNMA went public on New York and Pacific Exchanges.


title: Fannie Mae

text: In 1981, Fannie Mae issued its first mortgage pass-through and called it a "mortgage-backed security". Ginnie Mae had guaranteed the first mortgage pass-through security of an approved lender in 1968 and in 1971 Freddie Mac issued its first mortgage pass-through, called a "participation certificate", composed primarily of private mortgage loans.


title: Fannie Mae

text: In 1992, President George H.W. Bush signed the Housing and Community Development Act of 1992. The Act amended the charter of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to reflect the Democratic Congress' view that the GSEs "have an affirmative obligation to facilitate the financing of affordable housing for low- and moderate-income families in a manner consistent with their overall public purposes, while maintaining a strong financial condition and a reasonable economic return". For the first time, the GSEs were required to meet "affordable housing goals" set annually by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and approved by Congress. The initial annual goal for low-income and moderate-income mortgage purchases for each GSE was 30% of the total number of dwelling units financed by mortgage purchases and increased to 55% by 2007.


title: Fannie Mae

text: In 1999, Fannie Mae came under pressure from the Clinton administration to expand mortgage loans to low and moderate income borrowers by increasing the ratios of their loan portfolios in distressed inner city areas designated in the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977.


title: Fannie Mae

text: In 1999, "The New York Times" reported that with the corporation's move towards the subprime market "Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980s."


title: Fannie Mae

text: In 2000, because of a re-assessment of the housing market by HUD, anti-predatory lending rules were put into place that disallowed risky, high-cost loans from being credited toward affordable housing goals. In 2004, these rules were dropped and high-risk loans were again counted toward affordable housing goals.


title: Fannie Mae

text: The intent was that Fannie Mae's enforcement of the underwriting standards they maintained for standard conforming mortgages would also provide safe and stable means of lending to buyers who did not have prime credit. As Daniel Mudd, then president and CEO of Fannie Mae, testified in 2007, instead the agency's underwriting requirements drove business into the arms of the private mortgage industry who marketed aggressive products without regard to future consequences:


title: Fannie Mae

text: Alex Berenson of "The New York Times" reported in 2003 that Fannie Mae's risk was much larger than was commonly believed. Nassim Taleb wrote in "The Black Swan": "The government-sponsored institution Fannie Mae, when I look at its risks, seems to be sitting on a barrel of dynamite, vulnerable to the slightest hiccup. But not to worry: their large staff of scientists deem these events 'unlikely'".


title: Fannie Mae

text: On January 26, 2005, the "Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005" (S.190) was first introduced by U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel. The Senate legislation was an effort to reform the existing GSE regulatory structure in light of the recent accounting problems and questionable management actions leading to considerable income restatements by the GSEs. After being reported favorably by the Senate's Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs in July 2005, the bill was never considered by the full Senate for a vote. Sen. John McCain's decision to become a cosponsor of S.190 almost a year later in 2006 was the last action taken regarding Sen. Hagel's bill in spite of developments since clearing the Senate Committee. McCain pointed out that Fannie Mae's regulator reported that profits were "illusions deliberately and systematically created by the company's senior management" in his floor statement giving support to S.190.


title: Fannie Mae

text: At the same time, the House also introduced similar legislation, the "Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2005" (H.R. 1461), in the spring of 2005. The House Financial Services Committee had crafted changes and produced a committee report by July 2005 for the legislation. It was passed by the House in October in spite of President George W. Bush's opposition to the House version, which stated: "The regulatory regime envisioned by H.R. 1461 is considerably weaker than that which governs other large, complex financial institutions." The legislation met with opposition from both Democrats and Republicans at that point and the Senate never took up the House passed version for consideration after that.


title: Fannie Mae

text: Following their mission to meet federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) housing goals, GSEs such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLBanks) had striven to improve home ownership of low and middle income families, underserved areas, and generally through special affordable methods such as "the ability to obtain a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage with a low down payment ... and the continuous availability of mortgage credit under a wide range of economic conditions". Then in 2003–2004, the subprime mortgage crisis began. The market shifted away from regulated GSEs and radically toward Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) issued by unregulated private-label securitization (PLS) conduits, typically operated by investment banks.


title: Fannie Mae

text: As loan originators began to distribute more and more of their loans through private label PLS's, the GSEs lost the ability to monitor and control loan originators. Competition between the GSEs and private securitizers for loans further undermined GSEs' power and strengthened mortgage originators. This contributed to a decline in underwriting standards and was a major cause of the financial crisis.


title: Fannie Mae

text: Investment bank securitizers were more willing to securitize risky loans because they generally retained minimal risk. Whereas the GSEs guaranteed the performance of their mortgage-backed securities (MBSs), private securitizers generally did not, and might only retain a thin slice of risk. Often, banks would offload this risk to insurance companies or other counterparties through credit default swaps, making their actual risk exposures extremely difficult for investors and creditors to discern.


title: Fannie Mae

text: The shift toward riskier mortgages and private label MBS distribution occurred as financial institutions sought to maintain earnings levels that had been elevated during 2001–2003 by an unprecedented refinancing boom due to historically low interest rates. Earnings depended on volume, so maintaining elevated earnings levels necessitated expanding the borrower pool using lower underwriting standards and new products that the GSEs would not (initially) securitize. Thus, the shift away from GSE securitization to private-label securitization (PLS) also corresponded with a shift in mortgage product type, from traditional, amortizing, fixed-rate mortgages (FRMs) to nontraditional, structurally riskier, nonamortizing, adjustable-rate mortgages (ARM's), and in the start of a sharp deterioration in mortgage underwriting standards. The growth of PLS, however, forced the GSEs to lower their underwriting standards in an attempt to reclaim lost market share to please their private shareholders. Shareholder pressure pushed the GSEs into competition with PLS for market share, and the GSEs loosened their guarantee business underwriting standards in order to compete. In contrast, the wholly public FHA/Ginnie Mae maintained their underwriting standards and instead ceded market share.


title: Fannie Mae

text: The growth of private-label securitization and lack of regulation in this part of the market resulted in the oversupply of underpriced housing finance that led, in 2006, to an increasing number of borrowers, often with poor credit, who were unable to pay their mortgages – particularly with adjustable rate mortgage loans (ARM), caused a precipitous increase in home foreclosures. As a result, home prices declined as increasing foreclosures added to the already large inventory of homes and stricter lending standards made it more and more difficult for borrowers to get loans. This depreciation in home prices led to growing losses for the GSEs, which back the majority of US mortgages. In July 2008, the government attempted to ease market fears by reiterating their view that "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac play a central role in the US housing finance system". The US Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve took steps to bolster confidence in the corporations, including granting both corporations access to Federal Reserve low-interest loans (at similar rates as commercial banks) and removing the prohibition on the Treasury Department to purchase the GSEs' stock. Despite these efforts, by August 2008, shares of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had tumbled more than 90% from their one-year prior levels.


title: Fannie Mae

text: On October 21, 2010, FHFA estimates revealed that the bailout of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae will likely cost taxpayers $224–360 billion in total, with over $150 billion already provided.


title: Fannie Mae

text: On July 11, 2008, "The New York Times" reported that U.S. government officials were considering a plan for the U.S. government to take over Fannie Mae and/or Freddie Mac should their financial situations worsen due to the U.S. housing crisis. Fannie Mae and smaller Freddie Mac owned or guaranteed a massive proportion of all home loans in the United States and so were especially hard hit by the slump. The government officials also stated that the government had also considered calling for explicit government guarantee through legislation of $5 trillion on debt owned or guaranteed by the two companies.


title: Fannie Mae

text: Fannie stock plunged. Some worried that Fannie lacked capital and might go bankrupt. Others worried about a government seizure. U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson as well as the White House went on the air to defend the financial soundness of Fannie Mae, in a last-ditch effort to prevent a total financial panic. Fannie and Freddie underpinned the whole U.S. mortgage market. As recently as 2008, Fannie Mae and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) had owned or guaranteed about half of the U.S.'s $12 trillion mortgage market. If they were to collapse, mortgages would be harder to obtain and much more expensive. Fannie and Freddie bonds were owned by everyone from the Chinese Government, to money market funds, to the retirement funds of hundreds of millions of people. If they went bankrupt there would be mass upheaval on a global scale.