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Update at 10:02 a.m. ET. News Conference Set For 2 P.M. ET:

The White House just announced that the president will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. ET.

So, we've changed our original headline from "If Obama Takes Questions ..." to "When."

Note: The president's sessions with reporters often get started a little late.

Our original post picks up the story:

There some open time on President Obama's schedule today — between a late morning meeting with advisers and an early evening departure for a two-week vacation in Hawaii.

How might he fill that gap? Politico is among the news outlets speculating that the president will endure a "torturous rite of passage ... a year-end press conference."

The topics he would be quizzed about seem fairly obvious. They include: The troubled roll out of HealthCare.gov; the two-year budget deal; Edward Snowden and his leaks about the National Security Agency; the ongoing crisis in Syria; and strained relations with Russia.

As we wait to hear for sure whether the president will or won't be appearing before the White House press corps, we wonder:

What would you ask the president?

The powers-that-be in Washington are typically, though certainly not always, wrestling with weighty issues.

Recently, they've also been debating height – and whether they prefer a stout, familiar dowager, or a taller, sleeker model.

Building heights, people: We're talking building heights in your nation's capital, where for more than a century the 1910 Building Height Act has kept the city's profile low.

Now, with the city's population expanding, and space to build in becoming increasingly scarce, discussion has intensified over whether to allow the city to soar higher.

Why should you care?

If you're one of the millions of Americans who have visited Washington – more than 16.8 million of you made the trek last year alone, a record – you've encountered a city that still looks a lot like the one envisioned by Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant in the late 1700s.

L'Enfant's "great plan," says the National Capital Planning Commission, "was conceived on a grand scale, and was influenced by the plans for Paris and Versailles" that emphasized broad avenues providing "long vistas with monumental focal points."

The vacation photos on your smart phones testify to the resilience of that plan, which allows the U.S. Capitol, the Lincoln Memorial and other monuments to shine. And it's the Congress-approved Height Act which, with some exceptions, limits building heights to around 130 feet, that has been key to preserving Washington's unique, ground-hugging skyline.

But critics of the limits say it has wrapped a vibrant, growing city in an 18th century straightjacket. They argue that higher structures, strategically built to preserve historic sight lines, would help accommodate the city's growing residential and business population, and help feed the city's coffers by increasing the tax base.

It has also been noted that politically powerful development and contracting interests would also be served.

But At What Cost?

Congress through the Height Act, and the city through its own zoning regulations, both have a say in what happens to the restrictions, so the debate has been predictably complicated.

Last year, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, asked the city to look into changes to the restrictions. City planners, with Mayor Vincent Gray's endorsement, came up with a variety of proposals to allow higher buildings, particularly outside the heart of the capital known as "L'Enfant City."

The Washington Post developed a graphic to show what the various proposals, from minimal changes to significant ones, would look like. Fast Company has a more whimsical take; it asked artists to imagine Washington with skyscrapers.

But the powerful National Capital Planning Commission recently nixed the city's proposals, arguing instead that the issue merited further study.

"The character of Washington's historic L'Enfant City – particularly the Monumental Core – establishes the city's iconic image as our capital," change opponents wrote, advocating preservation of the "iconic, horizontal skyline."

Not The Last Of It

During a congressional hearing earlier this month on the proposed Height Act changes, Issa noted the divergence of opinions between city planners and the NCPC and indicated the debate is not over.

"I'm not done looking at this," he said, "or listening, or reading."

Architecture critic Phil Kennicott summed up the mixed feelings many have about the height restrictions, and whether they should be eased.

He argued in a Washington Post column last year when the issue began to bubble that the limits have resulted in a downtown that looks "boxy and dull" and features "long, monotonous" city center corridors with little architectural interest.

Given ethical issues that have plagued city leaders in recent years, he and others have been loath to take Issa up on his offer to turn over some of the height decisions to the city exclusively.

"Theoretically," Kennicott wrote, "small changes to the Height Act could be good for urban density, development, smart growth and transit – if we make them responsibly."

But Washington, he said, where council members' relationships with developers has been the subject of scrutiny, "is not mature enough to step onto this slippery slope without slipping."

So, a dowager D.C. will remain, both beloved and criticized, at least for now.

By a vote of 59-34 the Senate on Friday moved the nomination of Janet Yellen to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve past a key procedural hurdle.

The vote invoked "cloture" — effectively preventing Republicans from filibustering President Obama's nominee.

Next up for Yellen's nomination: A confirmation vote, set for Jan. 6. With the Democratic caucus controlling 55 of the Senate's 100 seats, she's expected to get a majority and then become the first woman to head the central bank.

Yellen, 67, is currently the Fed's vice chairman. As we've written previously, post-confirmation hearing analyses of her recent testimony before the Senate Banking Committee concluded that Fed policy likely wouldn't change much, if at all, should she replace outgoing chairman Ben Bernanke. The central bank is expected to begin gradually reducing the amount of stimulus it's giving the economy, probably as soon as next month.

The Fed's thinking: The economy, which sank into recession in late 2007 and spent the better part of the next 5 years or so either in decline or only growing weakly, has regained some of its strength. That impression was reinforced Friday when the Bureau of Economic Analysis said gross domestic product expanded at a healthy 4.1 percent annual rate in the third quarter.

Bernanke's term expires on Jan. 31.

Politicians in the Dominican Republic have long courted Dominicans in the U.S. That relationship has strengthened further in the last couple years; in 2011, the government established seven representatives for Dominican communities outside of the country.

That influence means activism in the U.S. matters back home.

Writers in the U.S. took notice when the Dominican Republic made a constitutional change in September that retroactively revokes citizenship for thousands living in the country. Those born in the Dominican Republic since 1929 could lose citizenship if they don't have at least one Dominican parent. The ruling has the potential to upend the lives of thousands, mostly people of Haitian descent. Multiple generations could be affected. It could impact everything from marriages to school eligibility, health care and travel.

Haitians, including immigrant laborers who came to work in the sugar cane industry, have long battled discrimination in the Dominican Republic. September's ruling is a far-reaching decision that follows many smaller legal battles and personal stories of injustice.

So as Dominicans of Haitian descent enter a state of legal limbo, Americans with ties to that community are mobilizing. Such action is not unprecedented, but what that looks like is changing. More generations are growing up "American," yet still culturally tied to another home. Travel and citizenship continue to present new opportunities — and legal challenges.

The Issues At Hand

Haitian-American activist Miriam Neptune says immigrant workers' legal rights have been applied unevenly over the years, and their children have run into roadblocks with various requests — a birth certificate denied, a professional license challenged.

As a coalition of accomplished writers in the U.S. — both Haitian and Dominican — noted in an op-ed in The Los Angeles Times, the ruling amplifies a persistent racial divide: "Dominican animosity and racial hatred of Haitians dates back to at least 1822, when the Haitian army invaded the Dominican Republic, liberated the slaves and encouraged free blacks from the United States to settle there to make Dominicans 'blacker.' "

Besides writing op-eds in major U.S. newspapers, Haitian- and Dominican-Americans are expressing outrage through community gatherings, holding protests and lectures in New York City.

People in the diaspora can have influence, says Neptune, who made the documentary Birthright Crisis with the group Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees. Through remittances, they have some economic power; Dominicans in the U.S. also have political power and social influence, she says.

While the full legal and societal effects of the ruling are yet to be realized (though there have been reports of people leaving the country and deportations), those who have been in the trenches have some pretty good guesses about what's going to happen.

One immigrants' rights group in Manhattan's Washington Heights is reaching out to lawyers, anticipating future asylum cases. Legal cases become more complicated when someone is rendered "stateless," says human rights lawyer Blaine Bookey of Hastings law school in California: Which country are you seeking asylum from?

Neptune says she worries that the random acts of violence that have already happened over the years targeting people of Haitian descent will become even more prevalent.

"If violence were to be perpetrated against these people, they have no safety net," she says. "They have no protection because the government has already disowned them."

These and other concerns have been raised in a number of responses to the ruling. Here are some of the highlights:

A 'Dreamer' By Another Name

In The New York Times on Dec. 13, Harvard assistant professor Lorgia Garcia-Pea — who studies U.S. Latino and Caribbean culture and literature — brings U.S. immigration activism into the discussion. She tells the story of two young women, one 19 and the other 18, whose parents entered their respective countries illegally. One story plays out in the Dominican Republic, the other in the U.S.

"Maria Pierre, according to Dominican Law 168/13, was born a criminal," she writes. "In the United States, someone with a similar history would be a criminal at age 18 ..."

The other young woman came to the U.S. from Mexico at the age of 1: "Like Ms. Pierre, who knows no country other than the Dominican Republic, she has no country other than the United States. Like Ms. Pierre, she could be deported to an unfamiliar nation."

Garcia-Pea takes this comparison further, noting the policy ties between the United States government and the Dominican Republic (a topic The Nation and Mother Jones have also covered). "The Dominican Constitutional Court ruling is an extreme version of the American response to the 'immigration problem' and a scary window into a possible future," she says, adding:

"The Dominican Court actions, much like Arizona's law, send the following message: We want our houses cleaned, our food prepared, our fruits picked; but we don't want you here and we do not want you to be our equals."

The Dark History Of Statelessness

The Los Angeles Times op-ed published in November was a collaboration between American journalist and author Mark Kurlansky, Dominican-American novelist and poet Julia Alvarez, Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat and Dominican-American writer Junot Daz.

They give a rough timeline of institutionalized racism in the country and draw parallels to slavery, apartheid and the Holocaust ("the first step toward genocide is to strip a people of their right to citizenship").

Along with other activists, they ask the yet-to-be-answered question, "What will happen now to these quarter of a million people who will be stateless?" Consider, it asks, how they will study, work, marry, open bank accounts or even leave the country.

A Dominican Response

Such denouncements of the law have been denounced themselves by writers in the Dominican Republic. Eight such writers have called out Dominican-American Junot Diaz, accusing him of being too far removed from the situation to know the reality on the ground, doubting his "dominicanidad."

For the Dominican news outlet El Caribe, Robert Takata defends the law, pointing to government resources used by immigrants, saying that such a change will allow the country to focus on building itself up.

"The fact that the Dominican Republic is strengthening its institutions and its processes is beneficial for the country itself but also for Haiti," he says.

Creating a new immigration system will ultimately strengthen the country's global standing, Takata argues.

Political Pressure

Other editorials have suggested specific action to pressure the Dominican government.

It's not just New York that has a strong Dominican political contingent: The Providence, R.I., City Council has passed a resolution "that asks Dominican Republic officials to update their Constitution, remove this law, and grant citizenship to all immigrants born in the country." The paper reports that copies of the resolution will be sent to the Dominican ambassador to the U.S. and Dominican President Danilo Medina.

The Council took action because of the state's own sizable Latino population. Providence Mayor Angel Taveras, a state senator, a state representative and members of the City Council all have Dominican roots. According to the Providence Journal:

"The resolution says that because Providence has a 'vibrant and politically active Dominican community,' the city is 'uniquely positioned to positively affect this situation created by this egregious ruling.' "

As the Latino population in the U.S. continues to move and change, you're likely to see more seemingly unexpected places like Providence pushing for change abroad — and having the clout to do so.