US president William McKinley signs the Newlands Resolution, annexing Hawaii as a territory of the United States.

The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces.

William McKinley was the 25th president of the United States, serving from 1897 until his assassination in 1901. A member of the Republican Party, he led a realignment that made Republicans largely dominant in the industrial states and nationwide for decades. McKinley successfully led the U.S. in the Spanish–American War and oversaw a period of American expansionism, with the annexations of Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, and American Samoa.

The Newlands Resolution, 30 Stat. 750, was a joint resolution passed on July 7, 1898, by the United States Congress to annex the independent Republic of Hawaii. In 1900, Congress created the Territory of Hawaii.

The Republic of Hawaii was a short-lived one-party state in Hawaiʻi between July 4, 1894, when the Provisional Government of Hawaii had ended, and August 12, 1898, when it became annexed by the United States as an unincorporated and unorganized territory. In 1893, the Committee of Public Safety overthrew Queen Liliʻuokalani, the monarch of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, after she rejected the 1887 Bayonet Constitution. The Committee of Public Safety intended for Hawaii to be annexed by the United States; however, President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat opposed to imperialism, refused. A new constitution was subsequently written while Hawaii was being prepared for annexation.