George H.W. Bush

George H. W. Bush signed the Americans With Disabilities Act, which requires a reasonable accommodation for disabled people. It also requires things like wheelchair ramps for disabled people. Bush defeated Iraq when it tried to take over Kuwait. Bush oversaw the reunification of Germany as the Cold War ended. Bush said, "read my lips: no new taxes" but then realized a need to raise taxes because of rising debt. As a result, he was defeated by Bill Clinton.

On December 20, 1989, he ordered a military invasion of Panama, part of a plan called Operation Just Cause, in order to topple that country's leader, Gen. Manuel Noriega, who-though at one time of service to the US government-had become notorious for his brutality and his involvement in the drug trade. The invasion, which lasted four days, resulted in hundreds of deaths, mostly of Panamanians, and the operation was denounced by both the Organization of American States and the UN General Assembly. It concluded in late January 1990 with the surrender of Noriega. The Panama Defense Forces (PDF) were dissolved, and President-elect Guillermo Endara was sworn into office.

In November 1990 Bush met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Paris and signed a mutual nonaggression pact, a symbolic conclusion to the Cold War. They also signed treaties sharply reducing the number of weapons that the two superpowers had stockpiled over the decades of Cold War hostility.

The Gulf War was an armed conflict between Iraq and a 42-country coalition led by the United States. The coalition's efforts against Iraq were carried out in two key phases: Operation Desert Shield, which marked the military buildup from August 1990 to January 1991; and Operation Desert Storm, which began with the aerial bombing campaign against Iraq on 17 January 1991 and came to a close with the American-led liberation of Kuwait on 28 February 1991.

On August 2, 1990, Iraq, governed by Saddam Hussein, invaded neighboring Kuwait and fully occupied the country within two days. On 24 February 1991, the coalition launched a major ground assault into Iraqi-occupied Kuwait. The offensive was a decisive victory for the coalition, who liberated Kuwait and promptly began to advance past the Iraq–Kuwait border into Iraqi territory. A hundred hours after the beginning of the ground campaign, the coalition ceased its advance into Iraq and declared a ceasefire.

In his last weeks in office, Bush ordered a US military-led mission to feed the starving citizens of war-torn Somalia, thereby placing US marines in the crossfire of warring factions and inadvertently causing the deaths of 18 soldiers. Equally as controversial was his pardoning of six Reagan administration officials charged with illegal actions associated with the Iran-Contra Affair.

Former Soviet Block Countries

The Soviet Union was formally dissolved as a sovereign state and subject of international law on December 26, 1991 by Declaration No. 142-N of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. By then East Germany had already reunited with West Germany, and other countries had won their independence from Russia including Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Czechoslovakia and Ukraine. Belarus also gained independence, but is closely aligned with Russia. Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union split in 1948, and Yugoslavia later divided into smaller nationalities. The declaration also brought an end to the Soviet Union's federal government and CPSU general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's effort to reform the Soviet political and economic system in an attempt to stop a period of political stalemate and economic backslide.

The Soviet Union had experienced internal stagnation and ethnic separatism. Although highly centralized until its final years, the country was made up of 15 top-level republics that served as the homelands for different ethnicities. By late 1991, amid a catastrophic political crisis, with several republics already departing the Union and Gorbachev continuing the waning of centralized power, the leaders of three of its founding members, the Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian SSRs, declared that the Soviet Union no longer existed. Eight more republics joined their declaration shortly thereafter. Gorbachev resigned on December 25, 1991 and what was left of the Soviet parliament voted to dissolve the union the following day.

Bill Clinton

Clinton's first term was marked by numerous successes, including the passage by Congress of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which created a free-trade zone for the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Clinton believed in triangulation, or uniting conservatives and liberals. He reached across the aisle to support an end to permanent welfare. During Clinton's first term, Congress enacted a deficit-reduction package-which passed the Senate with a tie-breaking vote from Gore-and some 30 major bills related to education, crime prevention, the environment, and women's and family issues, including the Violence Against Women Act and the Family and Medical Leave Act.

In January 1994 Attorney General Reno approved an investigation into business dealings by Clinton and his wife with an Arkansas housing development corporation known as Whitewater. Led from August by independent counsel Kenneth Starr, the Whitewater inquiry consumed several years and more than $50 million but did not turn up conclusive evidence of wrongdoing by the Clintons. Clinton subsequently tempered some of his policies and accommodated some Republican proposals, eventually embracing a more aggressive deficit-reduction plan and a massive overhaul of the country's welfare system while continuing to oppose Republican efforts to cut government spending on social programs.

Monica Lewinsky stated that she had nine sexual encounters with President Bill Clinton in the Oval Office between November 1995 and March 1997. According to her testimony, these encounters involved oral sex and other sexual acts, but not sexual intercourse.

Clinton had previously been confronted with allegations of sexual misconduct during his time as Governor of Arkansas. Former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones filed a civil lawsuit against him alleging that he had sexually harassed her. Lewinsky's name surfaced during the discovery phase of Jones' case, when Jones' lawyers sought to show a pattern of behavior by Clinton which involved inappropriate sexual relationships with other government employees. Clinton was impeached but not removed from office.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton brokered an agreement among Russia, Ukraine, the United States and the United Kingdom in which Ukraine agreed to give up those weapons. In exchange, Russia pledged to "respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine" and to "refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine." Moscow also agreed to refrain from the "threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used." And the United States and the United Kingdom gave Ukraine security guarantees, promising "to provide assistance to Ukraine ... if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression." Those guarantees proved empty. In 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea, in direct violation of the pledges Russia made in Budapest.

Clinton's initiatives in foreign policy during his first term included a successful effort in September–October 1994 to reinstate Haitian Pres. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had been ousted by a military coup in 1991; the sponsorship of peace talks and the eventual Dayton Accords (1995) aimed at ending the ethnic conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina; and a leading role in the ongoing attempt to bring about a permanent resolution of the dispute between Palestinians and Israelis. In 1993 he invited Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat to Washington to sign a historic agreement that granted limited Palestinian self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho.

Clinton ordered a four-day bombing campaign against Iraq in December 1998 in response to Iraq's failure to cooperate fully with United Nations weapons inspectors (the bombing coincided with the start of full congressional debate on Clinton's impeachment).

Yugoslavia attempted a policy of "ethnic cleansing" or mass murder in Kosovo of ethnic Albanians. The Kosovo War was an armed conflict in Kosovo that lasted from February 28, 1998 until June 11, 1999. It was fought between the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), which controlled Kosovo before the war, and the Kosovo Albanian separatist militia known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In 1999 US-led forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) conducted a successful three-month bombing campaign against Yugoslavia designed to end Serbian attacks on ethnic Albanians in the province of Kosovo. The conflict ended after air strikes that began in March 1999.

The Branch Davidians were a cult that originated in 1955 from a schism in the Shepherd's Rod (Davidians) following the death of the Shepherd's Rod founder Victor Houteff. Houteff founded the Davidians based on his prophecy of an imminent apocalypse involving the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and the defeat of the evil armies of Babylon. As the original Davidian group gained members, its leadership moved the church to a hilltop several miles east of Waco, Texas, which they named Mount Carmel. The Waco massacre, was the siege by US federal government and Texas state law enforcement officials of a compound belonging to the Branch Davidians, between February 28 and April 19, 1993. The Branch Davidians, led by David Koresh, were headquartered at Mount Carmel Center ranch in unincorporated McLennan County, Texas, 13 miles northeast of Waco. Suspecting the group of stockpiling illegal weapons, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) obtained a search warrant for the compound and arrest warrants for Koresh and several of the group's members. A total of 86 people died from gunfire and a fire that broke out, including four ATF agents and 28 children.

Matthew Wayne Shepard was a 21 year old gay American student at the University of Wyoming who was beaten, tortured, and left to die near Laramie on October 6, 1998. He was transported by rescuers to Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, where he died six days later from severe head injuries sustained during the attack. Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson were arrested shortly after the attack and charged with first-degree murder following Shepard's death. Henderson pleaded guilty to murder, and McKinney was tried and found guilty of murder; each of them received two consecutive life sentences. The prosecutor argued the murder of Shepard was premeditated and driven by greed. McKinney's defense counsel countered by arguing that he had intended only to rob Shepard but he killed him in a rage when Shepard made a sexual advance toward him. In a 2009 interview, McKinney said, "The night I did it, I did have hatred for homosexuals" and "he was obviously gay. That played a part. His weakness. His frailty."

Strong economic growth continued during Clinton's second term, eventually setting a record for the country's longest peacetime expansion. By 1998 the Clinton administration was overseeing the first balanced budget since 1969 and the largest budget surpluses in the country's history. The vibrant economy also produced historically high levels of home ownership and the lowest unemployment rate in nearly 30 years.

George W. Bush

George W. Bush was elected in 2001 under very controversial circumstances. He lost the popular vote, but won the Electoral College by winning Florida by less than 600 votes. The recount favored Bush. A larger recount would have probably favored Gore, his challenger. Jeb Bush, the brother of George W. Bush and governor of Florida, disenfranchised many thousands of Florida voters by wrongly revoking their voter registrations. The US Supreme Court, in its controversial Bush v. Gore decision, awarded the election to Bush. Five Supreme Court Republicans voted for Bush, and four upreme Court Democrats voted for Gore. After 9-11 terrorist attacks killed about 3,000 Americans, most people rallied around the President.

Economic deregulation, overseen by Alan Greenspan as head of the Federal Reserve, led to the Subprime Mortgage Crisis. Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy because of their role in subprime mortgage lending. In response to the crisis, the Federal Reserve adopted quantitative easing (QE), purchasing securities to inject liquidity into the financial system. This expanded the Fed's balance sheet from $800 billion in 2008 to $4.5 trillion by 2015.

Bush made it clear that not all Muslims were the enemy. Still, he started a war with Afghanistan because the Taliban called Osama bin Laden their "guest." He also started a war against Iraq based on "weapons of mass destruction" that were never found. His Vice President, Dick Cheney, convinced Bush to use torture, especially waterboarding or simulated drowning, on suspected terrorists. Some of the torture victims were innocent of terrorism.

In foreign affairs, the Bush administration announced that the United States would not abide by the Kyoto Protocol on reducing the emission of gases responsible for global warming, which the United States had signed in the last days of the Bill Clinton administration, because the agreement did not impose emission limits on developing countries and because it could harm the US economy. The administration also withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and attempted to secure commitments from various governments not to extradite US citizens to the new International Criminal Court, whose jurisdiction it rejected.

Chrysler was bailed out twice. In 1979 Chrysler was loaned $1.5 billion, which it repaid. The auto industry bailout was a financial rescue effort by the US and Canadian governments to support the auto industry during the 2008–2010 automotive industry crisis. In 2008, auto sales dropped dramatically, and General Motors (GM) and Chrysler requested emergency loans to avoid bankruptcy. The situation worsened, and both companies were facing imminent bankruptcy in April 2009. The US and Canadian governments provided $85 billion in financial support to allow the companies to restructure and use Chapter 11 bankruptcy to get rid of legacy debt. The bailout was intended to prevent job losses and damage to the manufacturing sector. The bailout cost taxpayers $10.2 billion. The bailout allowed GM and Chrysler to become successful again and hire tens of thousands of workers. Ford Motor Company was able to survive without entering bankruptcy partly due to a large line of credit which it obtained in 2007.

Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Laden resented United States sanctions against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the growing American presence in the Middle East and America's support for Israel. The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Al Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, organized these attacks through followers who used box cutters and cut throats to take over planes. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and the third into the Pentagon. The fourth plane crashed in a rural Pennsylvania field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania during a passenger revolt. The September 11 attacks killed 2,977 people, making it the deadliest terrorist attack in history. President George W. Bush received a briefing titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US" more than a month before the attack and did nothing.

Beginning in 2002, following the US invasion of Afghanistan, started in response to the September 11 attacks, a small portion of the Guantánamo Bay base was used to detain several hundred individuals with ties or suspected ties to Islamic terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and the Taliban. These detainees were not afforded POW status or facing formal charges but instead designated enemy combatants; assigned to confinement in Camp Delta, Camp Echo, Camp Iguana, and the now-closed Camp X-Ray. In litigation regarding the availability of fundamental rights to those imprisoned at the base, the US Supreme Court has recognized that the detainees "have been imprisoned in territory over which the United States exercises exclusive jurisdiction and control." Therefore, the detainees have the fundamental right to due process of law under the Fifth Amendment. A district court has since held that the "Geneva Conventions applied to the Taliban detainees, but not to members of Al-Qaeda terrorist organization."

The detainees at Gitmo were tortured. The torture included waterboarding, or simulated drowning. Some of the detainees confessed to crimes they never committed because of torture. Some of the victims were Uyghurs, an Islamic group from China that had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda. They were also put in stress positions, beaten and deprived of sleep for days. Detainees in "black sites" were threatened with drills and guns.

In June 2006 the US Supreme Court, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, declared that the system of military commissions that the administration had intended to use to try selected prisoners at Guantánamo on charges of war crimes was in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which governs American rules of courts-martial. Later that year, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act, which gave the commissions the express statutory basis that the court had found lacking; the law also prevented enemy combatants who were not American citizens from challenging their detention in the federal courts.

In separate programs run by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), dozens of individuals suspected of involvement in terrorism were abducted outside the United States and held in secret prisons in eastern Europe and elsewhere or transferred for interrogation to countries that routinely practiced torture. Although such extrajudicial transfers, or "extraordinary renditions," had taken place during the Clinton administration, the Bush administration greatly expanded the practice after the September 11 attacks. Press reports of the renditions in 2005 sparked controversy in Europe and led to official investigations into whether some European governments had knowingly permitted rendition flights through their countries' territories, an apparent violation of the human rights law of the European Union.

During the 1898 Spanish–American War, US forces invaded and occupied Cuba amid its war of independence against Spain. In 1901, an American-drafted amendment to the Cuban constitution nominally recognized Cuba's sovereignty while allowing the US to intervene in local affairs and establish naval bases on land leased or purchased from the Cuban government. The Cuban–American Treaty of Relations of 1903 reaffirmed these provisions, and that same year, the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base was established pursuant to a lease agreement with no expiration date. The 1934 Cuban–American Treaty of Relations superseded much of the 1903 treaty but reaffirmed the Guantánamo Bay lease, under which Cuba retains ultimate sovereignty but the US exercises sole jurisdiction. Since coming to power in 1959, Cuba's communist government considers the US military presence at Guantánamo Bay illegal and has repeatedly called for its return.

The War in Afghanistan was a prolonged conflict lasting from 2001 to 2021. It began with the invasion by a United States-led coalition under the name Operation Enduring Freedom as a direct response to the September 11 attacks, toppling the Taliban-ruled Islamic Emirate and establishing the Islamic Republic three years later. The Taliban and its allies were expelled from major population centers by US-led forces supporting the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance; Osama bin Laden, meanwhile, relocated to neighboring Pakistan. The conflict officially ended with the 2021 Taliban offensive, which overthrew the Islamic Republic, and re-established the Islamic Emirate. It was the longest war in the military history of the United States, surpassing the length of the Vietnam War (1955–1975) by approximately six months.

A US covert operation in neighboring Pakistan led to the killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011, and NATO leaders began planning an exit strategy from Afghanistan. On 28 December 2014, NATO formally ended ISAF combat operations in Afghanistan and officially transferred full security responsibility to the Afghan government. Unable to eliminate the Taliban through military means, coalition forces (and separately, the Afghan government led by Ashraf Ghani) turned to diplomacy to end the conflict. These efforts culminated in the United States–Taliban deal in February 2020, which stipulated the withdrawal of all US troops from Afghanistan by 2021. In exchange, the Taliban pledged to prevent any militant group from staging attacks from Afghan territory against the US and its allies. However, the Afghan government was not a party to the deal and rejected its terms. Coinciding with the withdrawal of troops, the Taliban launched a broad offensive throughout the summer of 2021, successfully reestablishing their control over Afghanistan, including the capital city of Kabul on 15 August. On the same day, the last president of the Islamic Republic, Ashraf Ghani, fled the country; the Taliban declared victory and the war was formally brought to a close. By 30 August, the last American military aircraft departed from Afghanistan, ending the protracted US-led military presence in the country.

During the 1980s, the CIA helped the Taliban government of Afghanistan fight against the previous communist regime. The Taliban later sheltered Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, which is why the US turned against the Taliban.

The Iraq War lasted from 2003 to 2011. It began with the invasion by a United States-led coalition, which resulted in the overthrow of the Ba'athist government of Saddam Hussein. US forces were officially withdrawn in 2011. In 2014, the US became re-engaged in Iraq, leading a new coalition under Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve, as the conflict evolved into the ongoing insurgency.

The Iraq invasion was part of the Bush administration's broader war on terror, launched in response to the September 11 attacks. In October 2002, the US Congress passed a resolution granting Bush the authority to use military force against Iraq. The war began on March 20, 2003, when the US, joined by the UK, Australia, and Poland, initiated a "shock and awe" bombing campaign. Following the bombings, coalition forces launched a ground invasion, defeating Iraqi forces and toppling the Ba'athist regime. Saddam Hussein was captured in 2003 and executed in 2006.

The fall of Saddam's regime created a power vacuum, which, along with the Coalition Provisional Authority's mismanagement, fueled a sectarian civil war between Iraq's Shia majority and Sunni minority, and contributed to a lengthy insurgency. In response, the US deployed an additional 170,000 troops during the 2007 troop surge, which helped stabilize parts of the country. In 2008, President Bush agreed to withdraw all US combat troops, a process completed in 2011 under President Barack Obama.

The primary justifications for the invasion centered around fabricated claims Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and that Saddam Hussein was supporting al-Qaeda. However, the 9/11 Commission concluded in 2004 that there was no credible evidence linking Saddam to al-Qaeda, and no WMD stockpiles were ever found in Iraq. The Islamic State set up a violent Islamic theocracy that killed many civilians.

Saddam Hussein seized power in 1963 with help from the United States. Iraq's Shi'ite Prime Minister General Abdul Karim Qassem threatened British and French influence, so the CIA masterminded his overthrow. In return, Hussein and his Ba'ath Party at first welcomed Western oil interests. However, a few years later he nationalized Iraq's oil industry. The United States supported Hussein again in 1980 when he attacked Iran. The Reagan administration sold Hussein military helicopters, computers, scientific instruments, chemicals (anthrax, cyanide and others) and other goods for Iraq's weapons program. The CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) gave Hussein intelligence on where to use chemical weapons against Iranian troops.

The self-proclaimed Islamic State is a militant movement that has conquered territory in western Iraq and eastern Syria, where it has made a bid to establish a state in territories that encompass some six and a half million residents. Though spawned by al-Qaeda's Iraq franchise, it split with Osama bin Laden's organization and evolved to not just employ terrorist and insurgent tactics, but the more conventional ones of an organized militia.

In June 2014, after seizing territories in Iraq's Sunni heartland, including the cities of Mosul and Tikrit, the Islamic State proclaimed itself a caliphate , claiming exclusive political and theological authority over the world's Muslims. Its state-building project, however, has been characterized more by extreme violence including beheadings, justified by references to the Prophet Mohammed's early followers, than institution building. Widely publicized battlefield successes have attracted thousands of foreign recruits, a particular concern of Western intelligence.

The United States has led an air campaign to try to roll back the Islamic State's advances, and a series of terrorist attacks outside of Iraq and Syria in late 2015 that were attributed to the group spurred an escalation in international intervention. The US-led coalition has worked with Iraqi national security forces and the Kurdish peshmerga in Iraq; some of those forces have also worked with Shia militias. In Syria, a small number of US Special Operations Forces have embedded with some opposition forces.Meanwhile, militant groups from North and West Africa to South Asia have professed allegiance to the Islamic State.

The group that calls itself the Islamic State can trace its lineage to the aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq, in 2003. The Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi aligned his Jama'at al-Tawhidw'al-Jihad with al-Qaeda, making it al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).

Zarqawi's organization took aim at US forces (PDF) , their international allies, and local collaborators. It sought to draw the United States into a sectarian civil war by attacking Shias and their holy sites, including the Imam al-Askari shrine, in 2006, and provoking them to retaliate against Sunnis.

Zarqawi was killed in a US airstrike that year. The emergence of the US-backed Awakening, or Sons of Iraq, coalitions further weakened AQI as Sunni tribesmen reconciled with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Shia-led government. Zarqawi's successors rebranded AQI as the Islamic State of Iraq and later, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), referring to a territory that roughly corresponds with the Levant, reflecting broadened ambitions as the 2011 uprising in Syria created opportunities for AQI to expand. The group is known to its followers as il-Dawla ("the State") and its Arabic-speaking detractors as Daesh , the Arabic equivalent of the acronym ISIS.

The Islamic State's current leader, the self-proclaimed caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, spent time in US-run prisons in Iraq. Cells organized in them, along with remnants of Saddam Hussein's ousted secular-nationalist Ba'ath party, make up some of the Islamic State's ranks.

Sunni disenfranchisement in both Iraq and Syria created a vacuum that the Islamic State has exploited. In Iraq, a Sunni minority was sidelined from national politics after the United States ousted Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, in 2003. In Syria, a civil war erupted in 2011 pitting the ruling minority Alawis, a Shia offshoot, against the primarily Sunni opposition, spawning sectarian violence.

Lynndie England holding a leash on a naked male prisoner

During the early stages of the Iraq War, members of the United States Army and the Central Intelligence Agency were accused of a series of human rights violations and war crimes against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. These abuses included physical abuse, sexual humiliation, physical and psychological torture, and rape, as well as the killing of Manadel al-Jamadi and the desecration of his body. The abuses came to public attention with the publication of photographs by CBS News in April 2004.

On July 23, 2003, Amnesty International issued a press release condemning widespread human rights abuses by US and coalition forces. The release stated that prisoners had been exposed to extreme heat, not provided clothing, and forced to use open trenches for toilets. They had also been tortured, with the methods including denial of sleep for extended periods, exposure to bright lights and loud music, and being restrained in uncomfortable positions.

The American subprime mortgage crisis was a multinational financial crisis that occurred between 2007 and 2010 that contributed to the 2007–2008 global financial crisis. The crisis led to a severe economic recession, with millions losing their jobs and many businesses going bankrupt. The US government intervened with a series of measures to stabilize the financial system, including the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

The collapse of the United States housing bubble and high interest rates led to unprecedented numbers of borrowers missing mortgage repayments and becoming delinquent. This ultimately led to mass foreclosures and the devaluation of housing-related securities. The housing bubble preceding the crisis was financed with mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), which initially offered higher interest rates (i.e. better returns) than government securities, along with attractive risk ratings from rating agencies. Despite being highly rated, most of these financial instruments were made up of high-risk subprime mortgages.

While elements of the crisis first became more visible during 2007, several major financial institutions collapsed in late 2008, with significant disruption in the flow of credit to businesses and consumers and the onset of a severe global recession. Most notably, Lehman Brothers, a major mortgage lender, declared bankruptcy in September 2008. Two proximate causes were the rise in subprime lending and the increase in housing speculation.

The US entered a deep recession, with nearly 9 million jobs lost during 2008 and 2009, roughly 6 percent of the workforce. The number of jobs did not return to the December 2007 pre-crisis peak until May 2014. US household net worth declined by nearly $13 trillion (20 percent) from its Q2 2007 pre-crisis peak, recovering by Q4 2012. US housing prices fell nearly 30 percent on average and the US stock market fell approximately 50 percent by early 2009, with stocks regaining their December 2007 level during September 2012. One estimate of lost output and income from the crisis comes to at least 40 percent of 2007 gross domestic product.

Barack Obama

Obama was America's first partly black President. Obama and Bush worked together to save the automobile industry and the economy. Responding to the economic crisis that had emerged in 2008 and prompted a rescue of the financial industry with up to $700 billion in government funds (the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008), Obama—aided by large Democratic majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives—pushed through Congress a $787 billion stimulus package. By the third quarter of 2009 the plan had succeeded in reversing the dramatic decline in GDP, resulting in 2.2 percent positive growth on a per annum basis. Unemployment, however, had also risen, from 7.2 percent when Obama entered office to about 10 percent. And Republicans complained that the stimulus package cost too much, having swelled the federal deficit to $1.42 trillion. Still, it appeared that the US economy was recovering, albeit slowly. Republicans would later say that Obama's Stimulus "didn't create a single job." Still, multiple Republicans found money that they said they were going to use to create jobs. The money would always come from stimulus funds.

On April 2010 the Deepwater Horizon oil spill caused the worst oil spill so far in the Gulf of Mexico. BP oil company was responsible for the disaster. BP executives tried to save money by not testing their blowout preventer, which didn't work.

Obama signed an executive order that banned excessive interrogation techniques; ordered the closing of the controversial military detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, within a year (a deadline that was not met); proposed a "fresh start" to strained relations with Russia; and traveled to Cairo in June 2009 to deliver a historic speech in which he reached out to the Muslim world. Largely as a result of these efforts, Obama was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

In 2013 the US Supreme Court's Shelby County v. Holder decision weakened the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by striking down Section 4(b). The Court held that the coverage formula was out of date, which meant an end to preclearance. Five Republicans voted for the majority, and four Democrats voted for the minority. Critics claim that the decision led to gerrymanders and voter suppression laws.

On June 17, 2015 Dylann Roof walked inside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in time for Wednesday night Bible study. While a dozen Black members closed their eyes in prayer, Roof fired 70 rounds from a Glock .45-caliber pistol, killing nine. When he recounted the slaughter to the FBI, he laughed.

Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) is a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court which ruled that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. The 5–4 ruling requires all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the Insular Areas under US sovereignty to perform and recognize the marriages of same-sex couples on the same terms and conditions as the marriages of opposite-sex couples, with equal rights and responsibilities. Prior to Obergefell, same-sex marriage had already been established by statute, court ruling, or voter initiative in 36 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam.

In its 2019 Rucho v. Common Cause decision the US Supreme Court held that federal courts could do nothing to prevent corrupt gerrymanders. Five Republican justices voted for the majority decision, and four Democratic justices voted against it. President Trump's 2025 effort to create five additional Republican House seats in Texas, for instance, is possible in part thanks to this decision. Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, acknowledged that "excessive partisanship in districting leads to results that reasonably seem unjust." Indeed, quoting an earlier decision, he said that drawing voting districts to give the party in power lopsided advantages was "incompatible with democratic principles." But in a telling statement reflecting his view of the judicial role in protecting voters, the chief justice wrote that federal courts were powerless to address this grave problem. "Partisan gerrymandering claims," he wrote, "present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts."

A Republican conspiracy theory claimed that Obama was born in Kenya, which was an attempt to attack his legitimacy since the Constitution requires presidents to be born in the United States. Donald Trump, who later became president, promoted the birther conspiracy theory.

Sarah Palin

Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, which is widely known as Obamacare. Republicans said that they didn't want bureaucrats deciding who lives and who dies. The ACA prevents healthcare insurance company rescissions, where bureaucrats threatened the health and lives of patients by terminating their healthcare if they had preexisting conditions. Because of the ACA, millions of people with preexisting conditions can now access healthcare, which often couldn't be done before. The ACA also allows for Medicare expansion in states that choose to allow it, and allows subsidies to make health care more affordable. It also allows children to stay on their parents' health care until age 25. The Affordable Care Act was based on ideas for healthcare reform by the conservative Heritage Foundation in a failed attempt at getting support from Republicans.

The legislation initially required that everyone who didn't pay for healthcare pay a tax in order to make the risk pool for the Affordable Care Act large enough to avoid what health insurance companies call a "death spiral." When the risk pool is too small, healthcare premiums become unaffordable, so the "individual mandate" requiring everyone who can afford to do so to pay for health insurance was included to keep healthcare costs down. The theory was that allowing "free riders" who don't pay for health insurance and get free healthcare in emergency rooms would mean higher healthcare premiums for the ones who do pay, and everyone needs healthcare, so everyone should pay. However, Republicans eliminated this requirement when President Trump took office.

Betsy McCaughey, who has a PhD in History, made controversial claims about attempts at healthcare reform. She said that Harvard healthcare expert Ezekiel Emanuel was a "deadly doctor" who wanted to "ration" healthcare. Governor Sarah Palin used the phrase "death panels" to describe McCaughey's claim, and said that the government wanted to make her down-syndrome child "stand before Obama's death panel." Multiple fact-checkers said that such claims were false. Emanuel worked as an advisor to the Obama administration. He described shortages of things like vaccines and organs for transplantation for reasons beyond anyone's control. He tried to give doctors advice on how to make difficult ethical decisions in such situations. Time said that Emanuel "was only addressing extreme cases like organ donation, where there is an absolute scarcity of resources ... 'My quotes were just being taken out of context.'" He also spoke against legalization of euthanasia in the Netherlands, saying that legalization could lead to euthanasia for the wrong reasons. Betsy McCaughey is Fox News' healthcare expert.

Republics failed to end the Affordable Care Act, but they did succeed in making it less affordable by ending the requirement that everyone buy health insurance. Republicans also ended attempts at using subsidies to help people afford health care.

FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF BOSTON V. BELLOTTI

First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1978) is a US constitutional law case which defined the free speech right of corporations for the first time. The United States Supreme Court held that corporations have a First Amendment right to make contributions to ballot initiative campaigns. The ruling came in response to a Massachusetts law that prohibited corporate donations in ballot initiatives unless the corporation's interests were directly involved.

CITIZENS UNITED V. FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION

In January 2010, the Supreme Court struck down sections of McCain–Feingold which limited activity of corporations, saying, "If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech." The McCain-Feingold legislation was an attempt to limit corruption in the form of unlimited spending of money to influence the result of elections.

While wealthy donors, corporations, and special interest groups have long spent money on campaigns, their role has ballooned as a result of Citizens United and subsequent decisions, resulting in a fusion of private wealth and political power unseen since the late 19th century.

In 2007 Citizens United, a conservative nonprofit organization, challenged campaign finance rules that stopped it from promoting and airing a film criticizing then presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

The Supreme Court eventually decided 5–4 that Citizens United was within its First Amendment rights to spend its money disseminating the film. But rather than opining solely on the case before it as it had been asked to do, the Court took the opportunity to entirely strike down century-old prohibitions on corporate "independent" spending - money that doesn't go directly to a candidate or party. This applied to labor unions as well. Lower courts applying the ruling extended it to invalidate almost all fundraising and spending restrictions for groups that purport to be separate from candidates, many of which are today known as "super PACs."

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the narrow majority that limits on independent spending from corporations and other outside groups equate to limiting their speech and thus violate the First Amendment. This ruling doubled down on a 1976 decision, Buckley v. Valeo, which was the first case to say that campaign expenditures, or money spent to influence voters, was a type of "speech" and that the only permissible justification for most limits on money in politics was to prevent outright bribery, or as the Court's opinion called it, "quid pro quo corruption."

The justices who decided Citizens United held that independent spending could not pose a substantial risk of corruption on the erroneous assumption that the money wouldn't be under the control of any single candidate or party. They also assumed that existing transparency rules would require all the new spending they were permitting to be fully transparent, allowing voters to appropriately evaluate the messages targeting them.

Both assumptions have proven to be incorrect. While super PACs and other outside spenders are supposed to be separate from candidates and parties, they usually work in tandem with them - to the point where affiliated super PACs that can raise unlimited money are now integral to most major campaigns. Legal loopholes also mean that many of these groups can keep their sources of funding secret.

Money has had a corrupting influence on politics since ancient Rome, according to Marcus Porcius Cato. The comedian Stephen Colbert joked about the Citizens United decision with his "Absolutely Not Coordinating" super PAC.

MCCUTCHEON V. FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION

McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, 572 US 185 (2014), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court on campaign finance. The decision held that Section 441 of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, which imposed a limit on contributions an individual can make over a two-year period to all national party and federal candidate committees, is unconstitutional.

The case was argued before the Supreme Court on October 8, 2013, being brought on appeal after the United States District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed the challenge. It was decided on April 2, 2014, by a 5–4 vote, reversing the decision below and remanding. Justices Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, and Alito invalidated "aggregate contribution limits" (amounts one can contribute over the two-year period) as violating the First Amendment. Justice Thomas provided the necessary fifth vote but concurred separately in the judgment, while arguing that all contribution limits are unconstitutional.

Black Lives Matter began in 2013 as a protest against the death of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman. It also criticized the deaths of Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Elijah McClain, George Floyd and other victims. It supports criminal justice reform.

In 2012 Trayvon Martin, a black teenager, was aggressively stalked by George Zimmerman when walking home from a convenience store with Skittles and Arizona Watermelon Iced Tea. Zimmerman, who wanted to become a policeman, followed Martin with his car. When Martin went into a grassy area to avoid Zimmerman, Zimmerman parked his car and chased after Martin on foot. Martin hit Zimmerman in the head, and Zimmerman killed Martin with a concealed gun. Zimmerman told a jury that the fight he provoked made him feel that he had to defend himself, and he received a complete acquittal.

In 2014 Eric Garner, a black man, was put in a chokehold by policeman Daniel Paltaleo for selling loose cigarettes, killing him. This happened on Staten Island, New York. Pantaleo was subsequently fired from his job.

In 2016 Philando Castile, a 32-year-old black man, was fatally shot during a traffic stop by police officer Jeronimo Yanez in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area. Yanez asked Castile if he had a gun. Castile was a legal gun owner. When he answered truthfully Yanez fired seven shots, five of which hit him. Castile died of his wounds even though he never reached for his gun.

In 2019 Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old black man, was walking home when police knocked him down, handcuffed him, used a carotid restraint (a chokehold) on him and ordered a medic to give him an injection of ketamine, a sedative. The medic was not given an opportunity to weigh McClain to make sure the doseage was correct, and an overdose of the drug killed McClain. McClain didn't break any laws, and couldn't hear policemen telling him to stop because he was listening to music. One policeman resigned and three others were fired. Three policemen and two paramedics were charged with manslaughter.

George Floyd

In 2020 George Floyd, a black man, was killed by white policeman Derik Chauvin, who kneeled on Floyd's neck and back for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, killing him. Floyd was accused of using a counterfeit $20 dollar bill. Chauvin was convicted and sentenced to 22.5 years in prison.

On February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, was murdered during a racially motivated hate crime while jogging in Satilla Shores, a neighborhood near Brunswick in Glynn County, Georgia. Three white men, who later claimed to police that they assumed he was a burglar, pursued Arbery in their trucks for several minutes, using the vehicles to block his path as he tried to run away. Two of the men, Travis McMichael and his father, Gregory McMichael, were armed in one vehicle. Their neighbor, William "Roddie" Bryan, was in another vehicle. After overtaking Arbery, Travis exited his truck, pointing his weapon at Arbery. Arbery approached Travis and a physical altercation ensued, resulting in Travis fatally shooting Arbery. Bryan recorded this confrontation and Arbery's murder on his cell phone.

Members of the Glynn County Police Department (GCPD) arrived on the scene soon after the shooting; due to Gregory McMichael's background in civil service, the responding officer referred to him on a first-name basis and no questions as to the legality of the shooting nor the validity of self-defense claims were made. Arbery was still alive at the time officers arrived on the scene. No arrests were made for more than two months. The GCPD said the Brunswick District Attorney's Office first advised them to make no arrests, then Waycross District Attorney George Barnhill twice advised the GCPD to make no arrests, once before he was officially assigned to the case, and once while announcing his intention to recuse himself due to a conflict of interest. At the behest of Gregory McMichael, a local attorney provided Bryan's video to local radio station WGIG, which published the video on May 5. The video went viral on YouTube and Twitter. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) arrested the McMichaels on May 7 and Bryan on May 21, charging them with felony murder and other crimes.

Breonna Taylor, aged 26, was an African-American medical worker who was killed on March 13, 2020, after police officers from Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) forced entry into her home. Mistaking the police for intruders, Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired a shot, striking officer Jonathan Mattingly. Mattingly and two other LMPD officers-Brett Hankison and Myles Cosgrove-opened fire. It was determined that Cosgrove fired the fatal shot to Taylor and that none of Hankison's shots hit anyone. Taylor's family was awarded $12 million in compensation and was given a promise the LMPD would reform its practices.

An Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) investigation showed that 93 percent of all Black Lives Matter protests were peaceful. Of the ones that were violent, some were about Black Lives Matter protesters burning and looting. Some violence was from armed right-wing militias such as the Boogaloo Bois, who killed a black policeman hoping that Black Lives Matter would get the blame. Some Boogaloos plotted to throw Molotov cocktails at policemen when they were caught. Some violence was from dozens of people trying to run over protesters with cars and trucks. Some violence was from police firing tear gas and rubber bullets at peaceful protesters. Some violence was from tearing down statues. According to US Crisis Monitor, about 95 percent of the Floyd protests in 2020 were peaceful. Political scientists Erica Chenoweth and Jeremy Pressman got the same result.

Research by the Washington Post shows that blacks are more than twice as likely as whites to be shot and killed by the police.

Kelsey Shoub was one of three co-authors of Suspect Citizens: What 20 Million Traffic Stops Tell Us About Policing and Race. According to Shoub, blacks were 63 percent more likely to be stopped even though they were 16 percent less likely to drive. Taking into account the fact that they were less likely to drive, blacks were 95 percent more likely to be stopped. They were also 115 percent more likely to be searched during a traffic stop, even though contraband was more likely to be found in cars driven by whites.