The Council of Governors is a group of 10 state governors of the United States. The group was established in January 2010 in order to strengthen the partnership between federal and state governments in protecting the nation against all manner of threats, including terrorism and natural disasters. The Council was created by Executive Order 13528, signed by President Barack Obama on January 11, 2010, as recommended by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 which was passed by the 110th Congress and signed by President George W. Bush on January 28, 2008.

According to the executive order that created the Council, it consists of 10 governors, no more than 5 of whom may belong to the same political party. All ten members are appointed by the President, and two are designated by him as Co-Chairs. The Co-Chairs may not belong to the same political party. There is also an Executive Director appointed by the Secretary of Defense.

Meetings of the Council are called by the Secretary of Defense, or the Co-Chairs. To date, three meetings of the Council have been held. The inaugural meeting was held on February 23, 2010, in Washington, D.C., at the Pentagon.

Barack Hussein Obama II (ⁱ/bəˈrɑːk huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/; born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. In January 2005, Obama was sworn in as a U.S. Senator in the state of Illinois. He would hold this office until November 2008, when he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.

Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004.

Following an unsuccessful bid against the Democratic incumbent for a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for the United States Senate in 2004. Several events brought him to national attention during the campaign, including his victory in the March 2004 Illinois Democratic primary for the Senate election and his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He won election to the U.S. Senate in Illinois in November 2004. His presidential campaign began in February 2007, and after a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination. In the 2008 presidential election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. Nine months later, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. In April 2011, he announced that he would be running for re-election in 2012.