ALL GROWN UP

Rarely Seen Obama Sisters Turn Up for Dad’s Big Day

Malia, 27, and Sasha, 25, made a rare public appearance at the ceremony to open the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.

The Obama sisters have made a rare public appearance for their dad’s big day.

Malia, 27, and Sasha, 25, were all smiles as they entered the ceremony to open the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago on Thursday.

The sisters sat next to their parents during the star-studded ceremony, which also featured appearances by former presidents Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, and George Bush, as well as their spouses. None of the Trump family, including President Donald Trump, made the trip.

Those in attendance enjoyed performances by Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Bono, and Jennifer Hudson on Chicago’s South Side, where the former president built his political career.

Other A-listers in the crowd included Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, and Conan O’Brien—quite the contrast from Trump events, which have struggled to attract the same level of star power.

Malia and Sasha, now nearly a decade removed from the White House, have lived relatively private lives outside of Washington.

Updates about them typically arrive via their parents’ social media posts—though Sasha did venture out with her mom and dad to the NBA All-Star Game in February.

Sasha was seven years old when Obama was inaugurated in January 2009, making her the youngest child of a president to live in the White House since John F. Kennedy Jr. was an infant in 1961. Malia was 10 at the time.

Malia lives in Los Angeles and works as a writer and director. She goes by her first and middle names, Malia Ann—something she says she does to not leverage her last name. Sasha graduated from the University of Southern California in 2023 with a degree in sociology.

Other details about their personal lives remain private—though there are rumors that Sasha is in a relationship with former college basketball player Clifton Powell Jr.

Former first lady Michelle Obama shouted out the sisters during her remarks on Thursday.

“To our daughters, Malia and Sasha, who will always be my babies. Even though we’re no longer playing hide and seek on the South Lawn with Bo, or hosting sleepovers in the solarium,” she said. “You both have grown into such brilliant and beautiful young women, making your way out there in the world. Thank you for bringing so much joy and spirit and energy to a life you had no voice in choosing and for making us proud every step of the way.”

Elsewhere in her remarks, the former first lady took veiled jabs at Trump while praising her husband’s job as president.

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“You were doing the people’s work, rescuing our economy, expanding health care, ending a war, ordering the bin Laden raid, saving an auto industry, winning a peace prize,” she said.

Despite Trump’s pressure campaign and public pleading for the Nobel Peace Prize, the committee declined to give it to him last year. Obama was awarded the prize in 2009.

Michelle Obama continued, “Keeping us safe from Ebola, regulating the banks, standing up for marriage equality, listening to science and comforting an entire nation in the face of unspeakable tragedies, and you did it all with such grace and class and cool that you made the hardest job in the world look like a walk in this beautiful park.”

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Josh FialloBreaking News Reporter

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