Gardiner Harris

In an unannounced visit shrouded in secrecy, Vice President Joe Biden came to Iraq on Thursday for the first time in almost five years, in the hopes that he can help a weak prime minister and bolster the military campaign against ISIS.

President Obama on Wednesday said he would nominate the centrist appeals court judge Merrick B. Garland as the nation’s 113th Supreme Court justice, daring Republican senators to refuse consideration of a jurist who is highly regarded in Washington.

The White House on Thursday tried to fend off criticism of President Barack Obama’s decision not to attend the funeral this weekend of Justice Antonin Scalia, but even some administration allies lamented the move as a missed opportunity to ease the partisan warfare that has followed the justice’s death.

President Obama reached out to Muslims in the United States Wednesday in an impassioned speech, embracing them as part of “one American family,” implicitly criticizing the Republican presidential candidates and warning citizens not to be “bystanders to bigotry.’’

President Obama vetoed legislation Friday that would have repealed the Affordable Care Act and stripped all federal funds from Planned Parenthood, writing in his veto message that the measure would “reverse the significant progress we have made in improving health care in America.”

In an effort to battle what the White House has called hateful talk by prominent Republicans against Muslims and immigrants, President Barack Obama gave a speech Tuesday at a naturalization ceremony that included a refugee from Iraq and a Fulbright scholar from Congo.

President Barack Obama sought Sunday to calm jittery Americans after the terrorist attack last week in California, delivering a prime-time address designed to underscore the government’s campaign against an evolving threat.

President Barack Obama on Tuesday defended his willingness to undertake climate talks in the midst of a war in Syria, saying it was “because this one trend, climate change, affects all trends.”