Carla Anderson

Vice President
 Preceded by

 Succeeded by

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**Carla Anderson** (born January 5, 2009) was the 53rd President of the United States, serving from 2065 to 2073 upon the expiration of her term by the 22nd Amendment. She is widely remembered for leading the US through the First Nations War, and annexing the old Commonwealth nations who's populations had largely been resettled in the US and Canada during the flood. She was the first female LGBT President.

Before losing her wife, Heather Suzuki, in the Thanksgiving Day Attacks, few expected Anderson to enter politics. After Suzuki's death, Anderson joined the Strategic Resources Administration as an acquisition attorney, and took an active role promoting public support for the war effort. However, since Suzuki was a Japanese-American, she also took it upon herself to prevent Japanese-American civilians from being victims of prejudice during the war. This made her a beloved icon of both Japanese Americans and Japanophiles.

After the war, she settled in Madison, Wisconsin, where she practiced law and met her future husband, Archer Moss. In 2056, she was elected to Congress, where she became the Progressive Party's expert on the resource nationalization, which she promised would bring prosperity. She was appointed to the Senate in 2058 after her state's junior Senator, Adela Binjiluwi was killed in plane crash. She won in her own right in the 2060 election, and was quickly seen as a potential challenger to Reed Chen in 2064. She secured the Progressive nomination for president in 2064, amid wide social unrest, and unseated President Reed Chen in which she promised to restore prosperity with a new round of immigration incentives to fill the gaps in the labor force that formed under the Chen Administration.

Rapid economic growth and social upheaval marked Anderson's presidency. She promoted the 2067 Immigration and Naturalization Bill to bring in more skilled labor, and in 2070, she secured the passage of the Lunar Resource Nationalization Act. Anderson hoped to broker a peaceful solution between the First Nations and Canada, but when negotiation failed, she led the nation's involvement in the First Nations War. U.S. involvement in the war was slow going, and Anderson was criticized for not directly engaging the first nations for much of her term. However, after the 2066 surge the U.S. was able to end the conflict in short order. However, by the end of the conflict Canada's government had been broken and the country was in serious need of economic relief. Anderson's final act of her Presidency would be the annexation of Canada and much of the old Commonwealth.

## Presidency (2065-2073)

### **First Term**

#### **First Nations War**

2065, only three weeks into her presidency, President Anderson deployed US troops into Canada to end the First Nations War. US forces in occupied Cascadia and the Yukon invaded westward, while forces from Newfoundland pushed into Quebec to aid the nation in repelling an invasion from the North. With America's entrance into the First Nations War, Canada had hoped that victory would be assured, but one year on, the President Anderson's commitment was clearly marginal at best, as she kept US forces in a purely defensive role, mainly to keep the war from reaching American interests. Facing an impatient public in the 2066 midterms, President Anderson put the US on a more direct path to end the conflict. The US successfully captured and occupied Calgary within two weeks after the surge, pushing north into Tlicho proper. Fighting in Alberta calmed, but as Tlicho began to take control of northern Canada's prairies and by extension the majority of Canadian farmlands, the government fell to internal fighting in Manitoba and Ontario. To secure American interests on a larger scale, the US sent peace keeping forces to restore order and installed a military government in Ottawa. By 2067 the US had deployed Space and Naval forces into the Arctic nations, and forced a ceasefire. Her last act in office was the signing of the Union Act of 2073 that formally annexed the Anglosphere nations under free association with the United States.

#### **Civil Rights**

Anderson entered office promising to curtail the draconian anti-Augment policies of the Chen administration, however she did not promise full legalization of recreational augmentation, and was rumored to be personally put off by those who changed their DNA to change their appearance. Anderson's struck her first true blow for Augment Rights with the appointment of Justice George Beccara had struck down a number of anti-augmentation laws as a Federal Judge on the 6th Circuit. In the landmark Thatch v. Utah decision in 2066, Beccara was the deciding vote that declared Augments to be humans, and afforded all the same rights as their fellow non-Augment citizens. After Thatch v. Utah, the Federal bench was saddled with cases against anti-augmentation laws. In 2070, Anderson signed the Augmentation Rights Act, overturning the Falana Act's most radical policies, save for a ban on all post-natal augmentations before the age of 18.

#### **First Contact**

After a nearly decade-long national effort, and 2 years of exploration and interstellar flight, the United States became the first human civilization to initate first contact with an alien race, the K'lerin (*Ornithosapiens cognitus*) of Le'ma (*Tau Ceti f*) with the flight of the ISV-01 Enterprise. Anderson sent a superluminal message to Jin Musgrave and the crew of the Enterprise after they initiated first contact, while also sending a message of peace to the K'lerin. She called the message "the most significant thing any human being had ever done or ever would do.”

Anderson pushed for greater funding for the NASA's interstellar exploration program in the hope of fostering peaceful relations with alien civilizations, and even stated that she hoped, "the presence of beings in another star system would lead humanity to put aside our differences in favor of a new era of peace." A message that Anderson had hoped would aid in negotiations to force a peaceful solution to the Canada Crisis.

On March 7, 2067, the Val're Uprising was reported from Le'ma to NASA Houston. To avoid public backlash, Anderson directed NASA to order the recall of the Enterprise. After the Enterprise was re-tasked to come to the aid of the ISV-03 Constitution, Anderson was faced with an additional crisis around the so called, Squirrel Wars that the human crew had participated in on Tu. Anderson ordered an immediate freeze on all future first contact attempts until a set of procedures could be drafted to govern the process. The crews of the Constitution and the Enterprise were recalled to Earth, to be debriefed and investigated for their behaviour. Jin Musgrave, orchestrated an ingenious ploy to reduce public pressure on the President by organizing a ceremony for the the Morak and K'lerin ambassadors upon their arrival on Earth. The ceremony was planned to be conducted at Explorers Hall in Washington D.C. which forced the President to attend and formally greet the ambassadors while Musgrave and the officers of the Constitution were present. This gave the President cover, reduced public pressure, and the investigation into the conduct of the crews of the Enterprise and Constitution were able to proceed without the potential for political upheaval.

## Post-Presidency

Anderson considered permanently retiring from public life after her presidency. But she was appalled by many of the Lachman administration's actions, including its mass deportation policies. She led a major rally in her hometown in Wisconsin to campaign against Lachman's policies and supported Liberal candidate Seras Stultz upon her rise in popularity over other Progressive candidates. Despite this, Anderson and Stultz were portrayed by many media outlets to have a rivalry. This was reinforced when Anderson pressed her friend, Tom Steele, to run for office in 2094 as a Progressive candidate.

By the 22nd century, Anderson had called for expansion of ortibal American influence in the asteroid belt, a disputed region mainly occupied by both the United States and Mexico, and was disappointed after any meaningful response by the government, allowing the Mexican government to gain significant control over the belt that would heighten tensions of the Mexican-American Cold War.

In 2108, Anderson retired from public life and moved to Mars with her Husband.

### **Retirement to Space**

Anderson became a silent critic of Third Mexican-American War, which she saw as an offensive war against Mexico to takeover Mexican territory and influence Latin America if they were defeated. Although there is no indication that the two were close, Anderson met Miram Weinstein during her last term as the governor of Georgia before she considered running for office of President.

## Quotes

> "When I saw the right to free expression--which is the backbone of democracy at home--violated in the name of fighting for democracy abroad, I asked myself 'would Heather have tolerated this?' Even if militaries are at war, civilians need not be."
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> — Carla Anderson, *Sushi and Apple Pie*
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