-
NRA
After 1977, the organization expanded its membership by focusing heavily on political issues and forming coalitions with conservative politicians. Most of these are Republicans.[40] With a goal to weaken the GCA, Knox's ILA successfully lobbied Congress to pass the Firearm Owners Protection Act (FOPA) of 1986 and worked to reduce the powers of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). -
California v. Bakke
The Supreme Court ruled that a university's use of racial "quotas" in its admissions process was unconstitutional -
Saddam Hussein
He suppressed several movements, particularly Shi'a and Kurdish movements, which sought to overthrow the government or gain independence,[13] and maintained power during the Iran–Iraq War and the Gulf War. Whereas some in the Arab world lauded Saddam for opposing the United States and attacking Israel[14][15]—he was widely condemned for the brutality of his dictatorship. -
Religous Fundamentalism
Religious Fundamentalism was a religious movement whose objectives were to return to the foundations of the faith and to influence state policy where every word of the bible is interpreted literally. -
Moral Majority
The Moral Majority was predominately a Southern-oriented organization of the Christian Right, although its state chapters and political activity extended beyond the South.[1] The number of state chapters grew quickly, with organizations in eighteen states by 1980 -
Lech Walesa
He led the Gdansk shipyard strike which gave rise to a wave of strikes over much of the country with Walesa seen as the leader. The primary demands were for workers' rights. -
Internet
The primary precursor network, the ARPANET, initially served as a backbone for interconnection of regional academic and military networks in the 1980s. -
Supply-Side Economics
Supply-side economics is a macroeconomic theory that argues economic growth can be most effectively created by lowering taxes and decreasing regulation. According to supply-side economics, consumers will then benefit from a greater supply of goods and services at lower prices and employment will increase. -
Trickle-Down Economics
Trickle-down economics, also referred to as trickle-down theory, is an economic theory that advocates reducing taxes on businesses and the wealthy in society as a means to stimulate business investment in the short term and benefit society at large in the long term. -
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th President of the United States from 1981 to 1989. -
PACTO strike
The union declared a strike, seeking better working conditions, better pay, and a 32-hour workweek -
Sandra Day O'Connor
a retired Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, serving from her appointment in 1981 by Ronald Reagan to 2006. She is the first woman to serve on the Court. -
Walter Mondale
Walter Frederick "Fritz" Mondale is an American politician, diplomat and lawyer who served as the 42nd Vice President of the United States. -
George H.W. Bush
Bush served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States from 1981 to 1989 -
Brady Bill
James Scott Brady was an assistant to the U.S. President and White House Press Secretary under President Ronald Reagan. In 1981, Brady became permanently disabled from a gunshot wound during the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan. -
AIDS
AIDS was first recognized by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 1981 and its cause—HIV infection—was identified in the early part of the decade. -
Economic Recovery Tax Act
A law that lowered income tax rates and allowed for expensing of depreciable assets. The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 (ERTA) also included several incentives for small business and incentives for saving. -
Boland Amendment
A term describing three U.S. legislative amendments, all aimed at limiting U.S. government assistance to the Contras in Nicaragua. -
Beirut Bombing
In Beirut, Lebanon, during the Lebanese Civil War. Two truck bombs struck buildings housing Multinational Force in Lebanon (MNF) peacekeepers, specifically against United States and French service members, killing 241 U.S. and 58 French peacekeepers, 6 civilians and the 2 suicide attackers. A group called Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the bombings and said that the attacks were to get the MNF out of Lebanon. -
SDI
The Strategic Defense Initiative was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons. The concept was first announced publicly by President Ronald Reagan -
Geraldine Ferraro
Former vice president and presidential candidate Walter Mondale, seen as an underdog, selected Ferraro to be his running mate in the upcoming election. Ferraro became the only Italian American to be a major-party national nominee in addition to being the first woman. -
Iran-Contra Affair
Scandal that erupted after the Reagan administration sold weapons to Iran in hopes of freeing American hostages in Lebanon; money from the arms sales was used to aid the Contras (anti-Communist insurgents) in Nicaragua, even though Congress had prohibited this assistance. Talk of Reagan's impeachment ended when presidential aides took the blame for the illegal activity. -
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, GCL is a Russian and former Soviet politician. He was the eighth and last leader of the Soviet Union, having been General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991. -
Glasnost & Perestroika
The term “Glasnost” means “openness” and was the name for the social and political reforms to bestow more rights and freedoms upon the Soviet people. Perestroika refers to the reconstruction of the political and economic system established by the Communist Party. These policies were in effect from 1985 to 1991, when Boris Yeltsin became Russia’s first popularly elected president. -
Bob Dole
Served as the Republican Leader of the United States Senate from 1985 until 1996. -
Enron
Enron Corporation was an American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. It was founded in 1985 as a merger between Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth, both relatively small regional companies. -
John Kerry
John Forbes Kerry is an American politician who served as the 68th United States Secretary of State from 2013 to 2017. A Democrat, he previously represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1985 to 2013 -
William Rehnquist
William Hubbs Rehnquist was an American lawyer and jurist who served on the Supreme Court of the United States for 33 years, first as an Associate Justice. -
Immigration act of 1986
The law criminalized the act of engaging in a "pattern or practice" of knowingly hiring an "unauthorized alien" and established financial and other penalties for those employing illegal immigrants under the theory that low prospects for employment would reduce undocumented immigration. -
WMD's
A weapon of mass destruction is a nuclear, radiological, chemical, biological or other weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to a large number of humans or cause great damage to human-made structures, natural structures, or the biosphere. -
Tear down this wall
"Tear down this wall!" is a line from a speech made by US President Ronald Reagan in West Berlin on June 12, 1987, calling for the leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, to open up the barrier which had divided West and East Berlin since 1961. -
INF Agreement
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) is the abbreviated name of the Treaty Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Elimination of Their Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles, a 1987 agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union -
Read my lips, no new taxes
"Read my lips: no new taxes" is a phrase spoken by then-American presidential candidate George H. W. Bush at the 1988 Republican National Convention as he accepted the nomination on August 18. -
Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda is a militant Sunni Islamist multi-national organization founded in 1988 by Osama bin Laden, Abdullah Azzam, and several other Arab volunteers who fought against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. -
Tiananmen Square
In what became known in the West as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, troops with automatic rifles and tanks killed at least several hundred demonstrators trying to block the military's advance towards Tiananmen Square. The number of civilian deaths has been estimated variously from 180 to 10,454. -
Fall of the Berlin Wall
The Fall of the Wall. On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change in his city's relations with the West. Starting at midnight that day, he said, citizens of the GDR were free to cross the country's borders. -
Bosnia and Kosovo
Bosnia, when armed conflict erupted in 1992, was an independent country. Kosovo, on the other hand, is a province of Serbia, which together with Montenegro makes up the new Yugoslavia (Milosevic revoked Kosovo's autonomy in 1989). -
Panama invasion
The United States Invasion of Panama, code named Operation Just Cause occurred between mid-December 1989 and late January 1990. It occurred during the administration of President George H. W. Bush and ten years after the Torrijos–Carter Treaties were ratified to transfer control of the Panama Canal from the U.S. to Panama by 1 January 2000. -
Americans with Disabilities act
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on disability. -
"Ethnic Cleansing"
Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic or racial groups from a given territory by a more powerful ethnic group, often with the intent of making it ethnically homogeneous.[1][page needed] The forces applied may be various forms of forced migration (deportation, population transfer), intimidation, as well as genocide and genocidal rape. -
Sandinistas
A member of a left-wing Nicaraguan political organization, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), which came to power in 1979 after overthrowing the dictator Anastasio Somoza. Opposed during most of their period of rule by the US-backed Contras, the Sandinistas were voted out of office in 1990. -
Breakup of the Soviet union
The dissolution of the Soviet Union occurred on December 26, 1991, officially granting self-governing independence to the Republics of the Soviet Union. It was a result of the declaration number 142-Н of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. -
Bolris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was a Soviet and Russian politician and the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999. -
Persian Gulf War
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion and occupation of neighboring Kuwait in early August 1990. Alarmed by these actions, fellow Arab powers such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt called on the United States and other Western nations to intervene. -
Nuclear Proliferation
Nuclear proliferation is the spread of nuclear weapons, fissionable material, and weapons-applicable nuclear technology and information to nations not recognized as "Nuclear Weapon States" by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, commonly known as the Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT. -
Kyoto Accord
The Kyoto Protocol is an international treaty which extends the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions -
PLO
The PLO was considered by the United States and Israel to be a terrorist organization until the Madrid Conference in 1991. In 1993, the PLO recognized Israel's right to exist in peace, accepted UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, and rejected "violence and terrorism". -
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. -
EU
EU policies aim to ensure the free movement of people, goods, services, and capital within the internal market,[13] enact legislation in justice and home affairs, and maintain common policies on trade,[14] agriculture,[15] fisheries, and regional development.[16] Within the Schengen Area, passport controls have been abolished.[ -
Al Gore
Albert Arnold Gore Jr. is an American politician and environmentalist who served as the 45th Vice President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. -
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton is an American politician, former diplomat, and First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001. -
Yasser Arafat
President of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) from 1994 to 2004.[3] Ideologically an Arab nationalist, he was a founding member of the Fatah political party, which he led from 1959 until 2004. -
Failure of Health Reform
Instead of uniting behind the original proposal, many Democrats offered a number of competing plans of their own. Hillary Clinton was drafted by the Clinton Administration to head a new Task Force and sell the plan to the American people, which ultimately backfired amid the barrage from the pharmaceutical and health insurance industries and considerably diminished her own popularity. -
Don't ask, Don't tell
"Don't ask, don't tell" was the official United States policy on military service by gays, bisexuals, and lesbians, instituted by the Clinton Administration on February 28, 1994 -
NAFTA
The North American Free Trade Agreement is an agreement signed by Canada, Mexico, and the United States, creating a trilateral trade bloc in North America. The agreement came into force on January 1, 1994. -
Contract with America
The Contract with America was a document released by the United States Republican Party during the 1994 Congressional election campaign. -
Taliban
The Taliban, alternatively spelled Taleban, which refers to itself as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Sunni Islamic fundamentalist political movement in Afghanistan currently waging war within that country. Wikipedia -
Start 1 and 2
START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) was a bilateral treaty between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) on the reduction and limitation of strategic offensive arms. The treaty was signed on 31 July 1991 and entered into force on 5 December 1994 -
Newt Gingrich
Newton Leroy Gingrich is an American politician and author, born in Pennsylvania, later representing Georgia in Congress, and ultimately serving as 50th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999 -
Oklahoma City Bombing
The Oklahoma City bombing was a domestic terrorist truck bombing on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States on April 19, 1995. -
WTO
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the only global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations. At its heart are the WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by the bulk of the world’s trading nations and ratified in their parliaments. -
Ross Perot
He ran an independent presidential campaign in 1992 and a third party campaign in 1996, establishing the Reform Party in the latter election. -
Welfare Reform
A movement to change the federal government's social welfare policy by shifting some of the responsibility to the states and cutting benefits. -
Madeleine Albright
Madeleine Jana Korbel Albright is an American politician and diplomat. She is the first woman to have become the United States Secretary of State. She served from 1997 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. -
G-8
The G8, reformatted as G7 from 2014 due to Russia's suspension, was an inter-governmental political forum from 1997 until 2014, with the participation of the major industrialized countries in the world, that viewed themselves as democracies. -
Deficit Reduction Budget
Debt held by the public, a partial measure of the U.S. national debt representing securities held by investors, rose in dollar terms each year except during the 1998–2001 surplus period. -
Clinton Impeachment
The impeachment of Bill Clinton was initiated in December 1998 by the House of Representatives and led to a trial in the Senate for the impeachment of Bill Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States, on two charges, one of perjury and one of obstruction of justice. -
West Bank and the Gaza Strip
Palestinian territories and occupied Palestinian territories are terms often used to describe the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which are occupied or otherwise under the control of Israel. -
Bush V. Gore
Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98, was a decision of the United States Supreme Court that settled a recount dispute in Florida's 2000 presidential election. The ruling was issued on December 12, 2000. -
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States from 2001 to 2009. -
Bush Tax Cuts
The phrase Bush tax cuts refers to changes to the United States tax code passed originally during the presidency of George W. Bush and extended during the presidency of Barack Obama, through: Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 -
9/11
The September 11 attacks were a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda on the United States on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. -
Osama Bin Laden
Usama ibn Mohammed ibn Awad ibn Ladin, often anglicized as Osama bin Laden, was a founder of al-Qaeda, the organization responsible for the September 11 attacks in the United States and many other mass-casualty attacks worldwide. -
No child left behind
he No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which passed Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support in 2001 and was signed into law by President George W. Bush on Jan. 8, 2002, is the name for the most recent update to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 -
Homeland Security
The United States Department of Homeland Security is a cabinet department of the United States federal government with responsibilities in public security, roughly comparable to the interior or home ministries of other countries. -
Axis of evil
The phrase axis of evil was first used by U.S. President George W. Bush in his State of the Union address on January 29, 2002, and often repeated throughout his presidency, to describe governments that his administration accused of sponsoring terrorism and seeking weapons of mass destruction. -
Operation Iraqi freedom
The Iraq War was a protracted armed conflict that began in 2003 with the invasion of Iraq by a United States-led coalition that overthrew the government of Saddam Hussein. -
Abu Ghraib Prison
During the war in Iraq that began in March 2003, personnel of the United States Army and the Central Intelligence Agency committed a series of human rights violations against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. -
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina was an extremely destructive and deadly Category 5 hurricane that caused catastrophic damage along the Gulf coast from central Florida to Texas, much of it due to the storm surge and levee failure. -
Housing Bubble
The United States housing bubble was a real estate bubble affecting over half of the U.S. states. Housing prices peaked in early 2006, started to decline in 2006 and 2007, and reached new lows in 2012. -
Sarah Palin
Sarah Louise Palin is an American politician, commentator, author, and reality television personality, who served as the ninth Governor of Alaska from 2006 until her resignation in 2009. -
Great Recession
he Great Recession was a period of general economic decline observed in world markets during the late 2000s and early 2010s. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country -
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created by Congress. They perform an important role in the nation’s housing finance system – to provide liquidity, stability and affordability to the mortgage market. They provide liquidity (ready access to funds on reasonable terms) to the thousands of banks, savings and loans, and mortgage companies that make loans to finance housing. -
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III is an American politician serving as the senior United States Senator from Arizona since 1987. He was the Republican nominee for President of the United States in the 2008 election, which he lost to Barack Obama. -
D.C. v. Heller
District of Columbia v. Heller, is a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia for traditionally lawful purposes -
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is an American politician who served as the 44th President of the United States from January 20, 2009 to January 20, 2017. -
Tea party
The Tea Party movement is an American conservative movement within the Republican Party. Members of the movement have called for a reduction of the national debt of the United States and federal budget deficit by reducing government spending, and for lower taxes. -
Sonia Sotomayor
Sonia Maria Sotomayor is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, serving since August 2009. She has the distinction of being its first justice of Hispanic descent and the first Latina. -
Dodd-Frank Act
The Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Pub.L. 111–203, H.R. 4173, commonly referred to as Dodd–Frank) was signed into United States federal law by President Barack Obama on July 21, 2010. -
Affordable Care Act
Affordable Care Act (ACA) The comprehensive health care reform law enacted in March 2010 (sometimes known as ACA, PPACA, or “Obamacare”). The law has 3 primary goals: ... Support innovative medical care delivery methods designed to lower the costs of health care generally. -
Arab Spring
The Arab Spring, also referred to as Arab revolutions, was a revolutionary wave of both violent and non-violent demonstrations, protests, riots, coups, foreign interventions, and civil wars in North -
Citizens United
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310, is a landmark U.S. constitutional law, campaign finance, and corporate law case dealing with regulation of political campaign spending by organizations. -
Debt ceiling
An upper limit set on the amount of money that a government may borrow. In 2011, Republicans in Congress used the debt ceiling as leverage for deficit reduction because of the lack of Congressional normal order for fiscal year budget votes on the chamber floors and subsequent conference reconciliations between the House and the Senate for final budgets. -
Syrian Civil War
The Syrian Civil War is an ongoing multi-sided armed conflict in Syria fought primarily between the Ba'athist Syrian Arab Republic led by President Bashar al-Assad, along with its allies. -
Mitt Romney
Willard Mitt Romney is an American businessman and politician who served as the 70th Governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 and was the Republican Party's nominee for President of the United States in the 2012 election -
Boston Marathon Bombing
On April 15, 2013, two homemade bombs detonated 12 seconds and 210 yards apart at 2:49 p.m., near the finish line of the annual Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring several hundred others, including 16 who lost limbs. -
Shelby County v. Holder
Shelby County v. Holder, is a landmark United States Supreme Court case regarding the constitutionality of two provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965: Section 5, which requires certain states and local governments to obtain federal preclearance before implementing any changes to their voting laws or practices -
Same-Sex Marriage
Same-sex marriage (also known as gay marriage) is the marriage of a same-sex couple, entered into in a civil or religious ceremony. The term marriage equality refers to a political status in which the marriages of same-sex couples and the marriages of opposite-sex couples are recognized as equal by the law.
