Political Jar

Civics 101 for Girls Webinar
2025-12-06 10:00 - 11:50 (America/New_York) | CA
Civics 101 for Girls Webinar introduces girls to the structure of the United States government, the state & federal elections.

*Complimentary class for December 6, 2026 only; Limit of 2 tickets per buyer. * Civics 101 for Girls Webinar introduces girls to the structure of the United States government, the state and federal electoral systems and the ways that girls can become civically engaged in their communities.
The class workbook in .pdf format and a link to access the class will be sent upon registration. This webinar is interactive, hosted on the GoToMeeting platform and limited to 12 students. Ticketing options for girls ages 11-17. For additional information contact us at +1 (866) 277-2123 ext 1 or email info@girlsinpolitics.com.
Answers to frequently asked questions.
Is the registration fee refundable? The registration fee is non-refundable unless the organizer cancels the session. If a participant is unable to attend a webinar a credit will be placed on file that may be used at any time for a future program. The credit does not expire.
Is financial aid available? No financial aid is available for virtual classes and in-person camps.
Is this a partisan program or supported by a political party? No, the Girls in Politics Initiative is an independent company that is self-funded through the fees generated from hosting sessions. The curriculum is civic education.
Who are the instructors? Our Lead Instructors are women that currently or have previously worked in government or electoral politics.

Camp Congress for Youth San Diego 2025
2025-12-06 08:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | 2592 Laning Rd, 2592 Laning Road, San Diego, CA, 92106, United States
It’s all civics & fun. Girls and boys study government, run for office, vote and convene a mock session of Congress to pass a bill.

Camp Congress for Girls San Diego 2025 is a leadership program that introduces girls to U.S. politics. Camp begins with a lesson on the structure of our political system. Each girl will choose to run for a seat in the US House of Representatives, the US Senate or for the presidency. She will create her own campaign with a platform, campaign finance plan, and film a political ad. All campers will register to vote and then vote in an election. Once elected to Congress and sworn in, the newly installed members of Congress will learn how to introduce a bill, debate the merits of the bill, lobby fellow legislators, collaborate with the Executive branch and finally vote on the proposed bill. Camp will culminate with a ceremonial signing of the bill by our Ms. President. All participants will receive Certificate of Completion. Girl Scouts earn a badge for participation.
For additional information contact us at +1 866-277-2123 extension 1, via email at info@girlsinpolitics.com or visit our website at www.girlsinpolitics.com. Ticketing options for girls ages 8-11 and 12-17. Please no solicitation emails or calls. We do not book speakers, book vendors or recruit volunteers for events.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this event a drop-off? All camps are drop-off unless parent participation is indicated. Parents may wait at the venue for the duration of the camp in any of the lounge or seating area throughout the hotel. The meeting room space capacity can only accommodate students and staff.
Is the registration fee refundable? The registration fee is non-refundable unless the organizer cancels the session. If a participant is unable to attend a session a credit will be placed on file that may be used at any time for a future program. The credit does not expire.
Is this a partisan program or supported by a political party? No, the Girls in Politics Initiative is an independent organization that is self-funded through the fees generated from hosting sessions. The curriculum is civic education.
Is financial assistance available? Due to rising costs associated with hosting events, there is no financial assistance available for this event and there is no promo code for this event.
Who are the instructors? Our Lead Instructors are women that currently or have previously worked in government or electoral politics. Our support staff are current or former licensed teachers. All instructors and support staff undergo background screening. All instructors and support staff are also in compliance with any local ordinances or state/provincial regulations applicable to those working with children.

Introduction to Government for Girls Webinar
2025-12-06 08:00 - 09:50 (America/New_York) | CA
The Introduction to Government for Girls webinar teaches girls ages 8 to 10 about the structure of the United States government.

*Complimentary class for December 6 only; Limit of 2 tickets per buyer.* The Introduction to Government for Girls webinar teaches girls about the structure of the United States government at the local, state and federal level. Students also learn about the electoral system and the ways citizens can participate in government.
Ticketing for girls ages 8-10. The class workbook in .pdf format and a link to access the class will be sent upon registration. This webinar is interactive, hosted on the GoToMeeting platform and limited to 12 students. For additional information contact us at +1 (866) 277-2123 ext 1 or email info@girlsinpolitics.com.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the registration fee refundable? The registration fee is non-refundable unless the GIP cancels a class. If a participant is unable to attend a class a credit will be placed on file with GIP that may be used at any time for a future class. The credit may be used one-time class transfer and the credit does not expire.
Where is the class hosted? The class will be hosted on GoToMeeting, Zoom or WebEx platforms.
Is this a partisan program or supported by a political party? No, the Girls in Politics Initiative is a private company that is self-funded through the fees generated from hosting sessions.
Is financial aid available? Financial aid is not available.

The President and The First Lady attend a Concert by Andrea Bocelli
2025-12-05 20:00 (America/New_York) | East Room
Closed Press

The President signs Executive Orders
2025-12-05 15:00 (America/New_York) | Oval Office

The President attends the FIFA World Cup Drawing
2025-12-05 11:40 (America/New_York) | CA
In-Town Travel Pool

The President receives his Intelligence Briefing
2025-12-05 10:00 (America/New_York) | Oval Office

In-Town Pool Call Time
2025-12-05 09:00, 2025-12-03 09:00, 2025-12-01 09:00 (America/New_York) | CA

Employment Situation
2025-12-05 08:30 UTC | Washington, DC

The President and The First Lady participate in the National Christmas Tree Lighting
2025-12-04 18:00 (America/New_York) | The Ellipse
Pre-Credentialed Media

The President participates in a Signing Ceremony with the President of the Republic of Rwanda and the President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
2025-12-04 12:10 (America/New_York) | The White House
White House Press Pool

The President participates in a trilateral greeting with the President of the Republic of Rwanda and the President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
2025-12-04 11:20 (America/New_York) | Oval Office

The President greets the President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
2025-12-04 11:10 (America/New_York) | Oval Office

The President greets the President of the Republic of Rwanda
2025-12-04 11:00 (America/New_York) | Oval Office

In-Town Pool Call Time
2025-12-04 09:00, 2025-12-02 09:00 (America/New_York) | The White House

The Five Worlds of Teodor Shanin
2025-12-03 16:30 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | S354, CGIS South Building, 1730 Cambridge Street, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Join Russian-Israeli sociologist Victor Vakhshtayn as he explores the accomplishments and life of Teodor Shanin.

Combining eyewitness testimony with historical and sociological analysis, this presentation by the Russian-Israeli sociologist Victor Vakhshtayn seeks to paint a vivid portrait of Teodor Shanin (1930-2020), distinguished sociologist and founding father of the Moscow School for Social and Economic Studies (“Shaninka”). Vakhshtayn first met Teodor Shanin in 2000, at the time still an undergraduate student. Visiting friends in Moscow, Vakhshtayn entered the library where an elderly man in a sweatshirt approached him and inquired what exactly he was reading. That brief conversation changed the course of Vakhshtayn’s life. He moved to Moscow, entered the master’s program at Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, and years later became a dean there.
When recounting his rich and turbulent biography, Teodor Shanin always insisted on drawing clear lines between different periods of his life. His stories of prewar Vilna invariably included vivid accounts of the conflicts between Jewish and Polish populations; between affluent, Polish-speaking Jews and the poorer, Yiddish-speaking ones; between Misnagedim and Hasidim. His recollections of Soviet exile centered on the “informal economy” that enabled Lithuanian Jews to survive hunger in Siberia. His narratives of serving in the Palmach, beyond the tactical details of military operations, sketched a political map of the competing factions in the newly established state of Israel. His reflections on work in British universities offered an analysis of the tensions between Marxists and Wittgensteinians, between those who demanded that student protests be suppressed and those who chose to join them.
Finally, his stories about post-Soviet Russia were always bound to an analysis of the legacies of totalitarianism and the possible scenarios of its return. It is around these conversations that Victor Vakhshtayn will structure his fascinating presentation to show how the contours of an epoch are refracted through the biography of a single great individual.

The President makes an announcement
2025-12-03 14:30 (America/New_York) | Oval Office

Elite Participation in Sociopolitical Reforms
2025-12-03 12:00 - 13:30 (America/New_York) | Perelman Center for Political Science and Economics, 133 South 36th Street, Suite 335, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Interrogating how elites shape state-building and social reform focusing on the role of power and ideology.

This session examines how elites adapt to significant sociopolitical changes. The two presenters will interrogate how elites shape state-building and social reform focusing on the role of power and ideology.
Lunch provided.
Presenters
Anju Parvathy Biju
Bio: Anju Parvathy Biju is a PhD student in the Comparative Literature and Literary Theory program at the University of Pennsylvania. She is working towards a dissertation on the cultural and literary conceptions of childhood and their relation to the form of the postcolonial nation-state during the early decades after Independence. Her broader fields of interest include postcolonial literature, childhood studies, and theories of the state.
Title: Between Service and the State: The Indian Women’s Movement and the Question of Childhood, 1940-1948
Abstract: This paper offers an analysis of the complex relationship between women’s organizations and child welfare in the transitional moment between colonialism and postcolonial nation-building through a study of the All-India Women’s Conference’s (founded in 1927) approach towards questions of children and their care. Using archival material on the activities of the AIWC when it comes to child welfare as well as the memoirs of prominent figures (Dhanvanthi Rama Rau, 1978, and Hansa Mehta, 1981) associated with it, I trace ideas about children generated by the organization in the crucial period of the 40s and the 50s where the child emerges as a simultaneously public and private concern for an imagined and, later, realized free state. A fledgling rights and welfare based framework surrounding the child that emerged during this period was activated not by an imagination of state-centric planning that sought to actively intervene. Instead, as crucial scholarship by Geraldine Forbes (1996) and Taylor Sherman (2021) show, it is a complex relationship between the Indian state and “state feminism” that imagines this child-subject. Such activations of public and private divisions of childbirth and rearing, I argue, are also crucial to understand the emergence of certain public roles for women during this transitional period. I elaborate upon one such role: that of women as wielders of professional expertise in public regarding their seemingly private affinity for child-rearing as mothers. My contention, building on the work of Rosalind Parr (2022), is that child welfare allows complex mobilizations of domestic knowledge by bourgeois Indian women activists who activated intra-national and international networks that gave new meaning to the amalgamation of ‘women and children’. What does an attention towards childhood allow for our own understanding of women’s histories during the crucial period of decolonization?
Igor Kolesnikov
Bio: Igor Kolesnikov is a PhD candidate in political science at UC Berkeley studying fiscal development in weak and authoritarian states. My dissertation examines three cases: France’s 18th-century salt tax enforcement overhaul, Russia’s 1864 zemstvo reform that created elected assemblies empowered to tax elites, and the Russian Empire’s imposition of communal land tenure after emancipation. Using archival data, formal theory, and causal inference methods, I analyze how governments design extractive institutions in response to fiscal shocks and their consequences for state-society relations
Title: Capturing the State: Decentralization and Elite Representation in the Russian Bureaucracy
Abstract: At face value, decentralization brings governance closer to the people, increasing the efficiency and quality of public goods and services by reducing monitoring costs, increasing oversight, and leveraging accountability by empowering local communities . However, the close examination of decentralization reforms reveals a surprising gap between the theoretical benefits of local policymaking and the attained results. We hypothesize that private groups most affected by the capacity gains of decentralized local government will invest more to capture administrative positions or bypass them altogether by taking over other local enforcement agencies. To support this theoretical claim and develop it further, we explore the effects of the 1864 local self-government reform in the Russian Empire, which affected the lives of more than 40 million people and enfranchised locally hundreds of thousands.
Drawing on a comprehensive list of wealthy serf owners (socioeconomic elites) and the first ever large-N sample of individual members of local (district-level) officialdom, we are able to identify members of the socioeconomic elite within the local bureaucracy. We hypothesize that local self-government reform in the Russian Empire made the bureaucracy less representative of local society by giving landowning elites the incentive to capture local offices to defend their traditional privileges. This undermined the ability of the newly created local assemblies to redistribute power and resources in the interests of the median voter but shifts the costs of governance away from the central government to the localities. By leveraging the adoption of the reform and variation between administrative, coercive, judicial, and rural institutions within the local bureaucracy, we demonstrate how powerful socioeconomic actors respond to decentralization reforms and quantify the resulting policy bias of direct state capture by socioeconomic elites.

The President participates in the White House Internship Program class photo
2025-12-03 10:00 (America/New_York) | South Portico

Metropolitan Area Employment and Unemployment (Monthly)
2025-12-03 10:00 UTC | Washington, DC

The Cold War and American Sovietology
2025-12-02 16:30 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | S354, CGIS South Building, 1730 Cambridge Street, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Join us for a seminar that uncovers the relationship between Sovietology studies and the Cold War.

During the Cold War, there was a strong uptick in the study of the Soviet Union–especially at Harvard, Columbia, and other United States universities. This seminar will uncover the ways that the Cold War affected the study of Sovietology and conversely, how Sovietology affected the Cold War.

The President makes an Announcement
2025-12-02 14:00 (America/New_York) | Roosevelt Room

The President hosts a Cabinet Meeting
2025-12-02 11:30 (America/New_York) | Cabinet Room

Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey
2025-12-02 10:00 UTC | Washington, DC

Beyond the Clinic: Pathways for Integrating Non-Medical Drivers of Health
2025-12-02 08:30 - 13:30 (America/Chicago) | Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, 6100 Main Street, Houston, TX, 77005, United States
Join the discussion on the shifting health policy landscape for services addressing non-medical drivers of health.

Rising costs and declining health outcomes are eroding the value of health care investments in the United States. To address these alarming trends, Texas, the federal government, and health care systems are investing in strategies that prioritize quality and outcomes over the volume of services delivered.
A key part of this shift is recognizing that health is shaped by not only clinical care but also by the conditions in which people live, learn, work and play. These non-medical drivers of health (NMDOH) — access to stable housing, reliable transportation, and healthy food — are now being measured and integrated into health care delivery as part of a broader effort to improve outcomes and reduce costs. As health systems expand screening and services for NMDOH, the policy environment is adapting. In 2025, both the Texas Legislature and the federal administration have advanced policies that directly influence how these drivers are identified and addressed in health care delivery.
At this half-day event, experts will explore the shifting policy landscape around NMDOH screening and services, highlighting opportunities and challenges in aligning health care practices with the broader factors that shape well-being.
Keynote speaker Dr. Mark McClellan, director of the Duke-Margolis Institute for Health Policy at Duke University, will share insights on the evolving landscape of health policy and value-based care.
This event is presented by the Baker Institute Center for Health Policy and hosted by the Texas Consortium for the Non-Medical Drivers of Health. This event is free and open to the public. Breakfast and lunch will be provided.
We gratefully acknowledge sponsor support from the Texas Association of Community Health Centers in making “Beyond the Clinic: Policy Pathways for Integrating Non-Medical Drivers of Health” possible.

The President signs Congressional Bills
2025-12-01 16:00 (America/New_York) | Oval Office

Press Briefing by the White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
2025-12-01 13:00 (America/New_York) | James S. Brady Press Briefing Room
On Camera
