Rahm Israel Emanuel (born November 29, 1959) is an American politician currently serving as White House Chief of Staff to President Barack Obama. He served previously as Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Illinois's 5th congressional district from 2003 until his resignation in 2009 to take up his current position in the Obama Administration.

Emanuel was chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during the 2006 mid-term elections and remained a top strategist for House Democrats during the 2008 cycle. After Democrats regained control of the House in 2006, Emanuel was elected chairman of the Democratic Caucus. This made him the fourth-ranking House Democrat, behind Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn. Two days after Obama's election victory, he was announced as Barack Obama's designate for White House Chief of Staff. Emanuel resigned from the House on January 2, 2009 and began his current job on January 20, 2009, the day of Obama's inauguration.

Emanuel was born in Chicago, Illinois to Jewish parents. His father, Benjamin M. Emanuel, a Jerusalem-born pediatrician, was a member of the Irgun, a militant Zionist group that operated in the British mandate of Palestine between 1931 and 1948. His mother, Marsha Smulevitz, was the daughter of a Chicago union organizer. She worked in the civil rights movement and owned, briefly, a local rock-and-roll club. She is now a psychiatric social worker. The two met in Chicago in the 1950s. Emanuel's older brother Ezekiel J. Emanuel is an oncologist and bioethicist, and his brother Ari Emanuel a Hollywood talent agent. He has an adopted sister, Shoshanna, 14 years his junior.