As part of a defense spending bill, Obama signed into law stronger protections from hate crimes for gay and transgendered people. Obama said the bill will "help protect our citizens from violence based on what they look like, who they love, how they pray, or who they are."
At the signing ceremony was the mother of Matthew Shepard, the young gay man whose beating death in 1998 became a rallying point; the bill is named for him. It took more than a decade after the murder before Congress could pass legislation that President Clinton had originally pressed and that later gained little traction under President Bush, who had suggested he might veto it.
"I promised Judy Shepard, when she saw me in the Oval Office, that this day would come," Obama said.
Obama signed the Veterans Health Care Budget Reform and Transparency Act of 2009 into law, allowing advance appropriations authority for certain parts of the Veterans Affairs budget.
Medical marijuana users who are following state law are no longer a federal law enforcement priority, the Justice Department announced today. The department said it would still go after related offenses in the 14 states with medical marijuana provisions on the books, including weapons charges and illegal trafficking.
Obama nominated Ben Bernanke to serve a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Bernanke, a Republican, was first nominated by President George W. Bush in 2005.
NIH has released the final version of its guidelines for stem cell research.
Vice President Joe Biden announced that Lynn Rosenthal would be the first White House Adviser on Violence Against Women. Rosenthal, the former executive director of the National Network to End Domestic Violence, will advise the president and vice president and coordinate policy with various agencies to help victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.
Obama appointed Kimberly Teehee to be senior policy advisor for Native American affairs. Teehee has been a senior adviser to Rep. Dale Kildee, D-Mich., co-chair of the House Native American Caucus, since 1998.
Obama signed the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act, which allocates $450 million to fight the kinds of fraud that the administration says created the recent housing crisis, "from predatory lending on Main Street to the manipulation on Wall Street." The law extends federal jurisdiction to mortgage loan companies that were not previously subject to regulation.
To go along with the passage of the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, the White House expanded and relaunched Serve.gov. The site, which is managed by the Corporation for National and Community Service, allows visitors to search for volunteer opportunities and post their own service events to the site.
Obama signed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act into law. It provides for regular increases in national service positions from 88,000 in fiscal 2010 up to 250,000 in fiscal 2017.
