United States: The George W. Bush Presidency, 9/11, and Iraq

The George W. Bush Presidency, 9/11, and Iraq

The 2000 presidential election, in which the American public generally appeared uninspired by the either major-party candidate (Vice President Al Gore and the Republican governor of Texas, George W. Bush) ended amid confusion and contention not seen since the Hayes-Tilden election in 1876. On election night, the television networks called and then retracted the winner of Florida twice, first projecting Gore the winner there, then projecting Bush the winner there and in the race at large. The issue of who would win Florida and its electoral votes became the issue of who would win the presidency, and the determination of the election dragged on for weeks as Florida's votes were recounted. Gore, who trailed by several hundred votes (out of 6 million) in Florida but led by a few hundred thousand nationally, sought a manual recount of strongly Democratic counties in Florida, and the issue ended up being fought in the courts and in the media. Ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court called a halt to the process, although its split decision along ideological lines was regarded by many as tarnishing the court. Florida's electoral votes, as certified by the state's Republican officials, were won by Bush, who secured a total of 271 electoral votes (one more than needed) and 48% of the popular vote (Gore had 49% of the popular vote). Bush thus became the first person since Benjamin Harrison in 1888 to win the presidency without achieving a plurality in the popular vote.

The slowing economy entered a recession in Mar., 2001, and unemployment rose, leading to continued interest rate reductions by the Federal Reserve Board. The Bush administration moved quickly to win Congressional approval of its tax-cut program, providing it with an early legislative victory, but other proposed legislation moved more slowly. The resignation of Senator Jeffords of Vermont from the Republican party cost it control of the Senate, a setback due in part to administration pressure on him to adhere to the party line. Internationally, the United States experienced some friction with its allies, who were unhappy with the Bush administration's desire to abandon both the Kyoto Protocol (designed to fight global warming) and the Antiballistic Missile Treaty (in order to proceed with developing a ballistic missile defense system). Relations with China were briefly tense in Apr., 2001, after a Chinese fighter and U.S. surveillance plane collided in mid-air, killing the Chinese pilot.

The politics and concerns of the first eight months of 2001 abruptly became secondary on Sept. 11, when terrorists hijacked four planes, crashing two into the World Trade Center, which was destroyed, and one into the Pentagon; the fourth crashed near Shanksville, Pa. Some 3,000 persons were killed or missing as a result of the attacks. Insisting that no distinction would be made between terrorists and those who harbored them, Bush demanded that Afghanistan's Taliban government turn over Osama bin Laden, a Saudi-born Islamic militant whose Al Qaeda group was behind the attacks. The U.S. government sought to build an international coalition against Al Qaeda and the Taliban and, more broadly, against terrorism, working to influence other nations to cut off sources of financial support for terrorists.

In October, air strikes and then ground raids were launched against Afghanistan by the United States, with British aid. Oman, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan permitted the use of their airspace and of bases within their borders for various operations. The United States also provided support for opposition forces in Afghanistan, and by December the Taliban government had been ousted and its and Al Qaeda's fighters largely had been routed. Bin Laden, however, remained uncaptured, and a force of U.S. troops was based in Afghanistan to search for him and to help with mopping-up operations.

The terrorist attacks stunned Americans and amplified the effects of the recession in the fall. Events had a severe impact on the travel industry, particularly the airlines, whose flights were temporarily halted; the airlines subsequently suffered a significant decrease in passengers. Congress passed several bills designed to counter the economic effects of the attacks, including a $15 billion aid and loan package for the airline industry. A new crisis developed in October, when cases of anthrax and anthrax exposure resulted from spores that had been mailed to media and government offices in bioterror attacks.

Although consumer spending and the stock market rebounded by the end of the year from their low levels after September 11, unemployment reached 5.8% in Dec., 2001. Nonetheless, the economy was recovering, albeit slowly, aided in part by increased federal spending. In early 2002 the Bush administration announced plans for a significant military buildup; that and the 2001 tax cuts were expected to result in budget deficits in 2002–4. Prompted by a number of prominent corporate scandals involving fraudulent or questionable accounting practices, some of which led to corporate bankruptcies, Congress passed legislation that overhauled securities and corporate laws in July, 2002.

The fighting in Afghanistan continued, with U.S. forces there devoted mainly to mopping up remnants of Taliban and Al Qaeda forces. U.S. troops were also based in Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan to provide support for the forces in Afghanistan. In the Philippines, U.S. troops provided support and assistance to Philippine forces fighting guerrillas in the Sulu Archipelago that had been linked to Al Qaeda, and they also trained Georgian and Yemeni forces as part of the war on terrorism.

During 2002 the Bush administration became increasingly concerned by the alleged Iraqi development and possession of weapons of mass destruction, and was more forceful in its denunciations of Iraq for resisting UN arms inspections. In March, Arab nations publicly opposed possible U.S. military operations against Iraq, but U.S. officials continued to call for the removal of Saddam Hussein. President Bush called on the United Nations to act forcefully against Iraq or risk becoming “irrelevant.” In November the Security Council passed a resolution offering Iraq a “final opportunity” to cooperate on arms inspections, this time under strict guidelines, and inspections resumed late in the month, although not with full Iraqi cooperation. Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress voted to authorize the use of the military force against Iraq, and the United States continued to build up its forces in the Middle East.

The November election resulted in unexpected, if small, gains for the Republicans, giving them control of both houses of Congress. After the election, Congress voted to establish a new Department of Homeland Security, effective Mar., 2003. The department regrouped most of the disparate agencies responsible for domestic security under one cabinet-level official; the resulting government reorganization was the largest since the Department of Defense was created in the late 1940s.

Dec., 2002, saw the negotiation of a free-trade agreement with Chile (signed in June, 2003), regarded by many as the first step in the expansion of NAFTA to include all the countries of the Americas. President Bush ordered the deployment of a ballistic missile defense system, to be effective in 2004; the system would be designed to prevent so-called rogue missile attacks. In advance of this move the United States had withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty with Russia in June. North Korea, often described as one of the nations most likely to launch a rogue attack, had admitted in October that it had a program for developing nuclear weapons, and the United States and other nations responded by ending fuel shipments and reducing food aid. In the subsequent weeks North Korea engaged in a series of well-publicized moves to enable it to resume the development of nuclear weapons, including withdrawing from the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. The United States, which had first responded by refusing to negotiate in any way with North Korea, adopted a somewhat less confrontational approach in 2003.

President Bush continued to press for Iraqi disarmament in 2003, and expressed impatience with what his administration regarded as the lack of Iraqi compliance. In Feb, 2003, however, the nation's attention was pulled away from the growing tension over Iraq by the breakup of the space shuttle Columbia as it returned to earth. Seven astronauts were killed in this second shuttle mishap, and focus was once again directed toward the issues of the safety of the space shuttle and the dynamics of the decision-making process at NASA.

Despite vocal opposition to military action from many nations, including sometimes rancorous objections from France, Germany, and Russia, the United States and Great Britain pressed forward in early 2003 with military preparations in areas near Iraq. Although Turkey, which the allies hoped to use as a base for opening a northern front in Iraq, refused to allow use of its territory as a staging area, the bulk of the forces were nonetheless in place by March. After failing to win the explicit UN Security Council approval desired by Britain (because the British public were otherwise largely opposed to war), President Bush issued an ultimatum to Iraqi president Saddam Hussein on March 17th, and two days later the war began with an air strike against Hussein and the Iraqi leadership. Ground forces invaded the following day, and by mid-April the allies were largely in control of the major Iraqi cities and had turned their attention to the rebuilding of Iraq and the establishment of a new Iraqi government. No weapons of mass destruction, however, were found by allied forces during the months after the war, and sporadic guerrilla attacks on the occupying forces occurred during the same time period, mainly in Sunni-dominated central Iraq.

The cost of the military campaign as well as of the ongoing U.S. occupation in Iraq substantially increased what already had been expected to be a record-breaking U.S. deficit in 2003 to around $374 billion. The size of the deficit, the unknown ultimate cost of the war, and the continued weak U.S. economy (the unemployment rate rose to 6.4% in June despite some improvement in other areas) were important factors that led to the scaling back of a tax cut, proposed by President Bush, by more than half to $350 billion.

In Aug., 2003, a massive electrical blackout affected the NE United States. Much of New York and portions of Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and neighboring Ontario, Canada, lost power, in many cases for a couple days. The widespread failure appeared to be due in part to strains placed on the transmission system, its safeguards, and its operators by the increased interconnectedness of electrical generation and transmission facilities and the longer-distance transmission of electricity. An investigation into the event, however, laid the primary blame on the Ohio utility where it began, both for inadequate system maintenance and for failing to take preventive measures when the crisis began.

The economy improved in the latter half of the 2003. Although the unemployment rate inched below 6% and job growth was modest, overall economic growth was robust, particularly in the last quarter. A major Medicare overhaul was enacted and signed in December, creating a prescription drug benefit for the first time. The same month the Central American Free Trade Agreement was finalized by the United States, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, and in early 2004, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic agreed to become parties to the accord. The United States also reached free-trade agreements with Australia and Morocco.

U.S. weapons inspectors reported in Jan., 2004, that they had failed to find any evidence that Iraq had possessed biological or chemical weapons stockpiles prior to the U.S. invasion. The assertion that such stockpiles existed was a primary justification for the invasion, and the report led to pressure for an investigation of U.S. intelligence prior to the war. In February, President Bush appointed a bipartisan commission to review both U.S. intelligence failures in Iraq and other issues relating to foreign intelligence; the commission's 2005 report criticized intelligence agencies for failing to challenge the conventional wisdom about Iraq's weapon systems, and called for changes in how U.S. intelligence gathering is organized and managed. The Senate's intelligence committee, reviewing the situation separately, concluded in its 2004 report that much of the CIA's information on and assessment of Iraq prior to the war was faulty.

Also in February, U.S., French, and Canadian forces were sent into Haiti to preserve order. Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide had resigned under U.S.-French pressure after rebel forces had swept through most of the country and threatened to enter the capital. U.S. forces withdrew from Haiti in June when Brazil assumed command of a UN peacekeeping force there.

By March, John Kerry had all but secured the Democrat nomination for president. With both major party nominees clear, the focus of the political campaigns quickly shifted to the November election. Both Bush and Kerry had elected not to accept government funding, enabling them each to raise record amounts of campaign funding, and the post-primary advertising campaign began early. In July, Kerry chose North Carolina senator John Edwards, who had opposed him in the primaries, as his running mate.

U.S. forces engaged in intense fighting in Iraq in Apr., 2004, as they attempted to remove Sunni insurgents from the town of Falluja. The battling there was the fiercest since the end of the invasion, and ultimately U.S. forces broke off without clearing the fighters from the city, a goal that was not achieved until after similar fighting in November. Guerrilla attacks by Sunni insurgents continued throughout the year. Also in April a radical cleric attempted to spark a Shiite uprising, and there was unrest and fighting in a number of other Iraqi cities. By mid-April the Shiite militia was in control only in the region around An Najaf, but the militia did not abandon its hold there until after intense battling in August. At the end of June, Paul Bremer, the head of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, turned over sovereignty to an Iraqi interim government. Nonetheless, the unrest called into question the degree to which Iraq had been pacified, and the 160,000 U.S.-led troops still in Iraq were, for the time being, the true guarantor of Iraqi security. Meanwhile, the prestige of the U.S. military had been damaged by revelations, in May, that it had abused Iraqis held in the Abu Ghraib prison during 2003–4.

In July, 2004, the U.S. commission investigating the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, criticized especially U.S. intelligence agencies for failings that contributed to the success of the attacks, and called for a major reorganization of those agencies, leading to the passage of legislation late in the year. In the following months the country's focus turned largely toward the November presidential election, as the campaigns of President Bush and Senator Kerry and their surrogates escalated their often sharp political attacks. In a country divided over the threat of terrorism and the war in Iraq, over the state of the economy and the state of the nation's values, election spending reached a new peak despite recent campaign financing limitations, and fueled a divisive and sometimes bitter mood. Ultimately, the president appeared to benefit from a slowly recovering economy and the desire of many voters for continuity in leadership while the nation was at war. Amid greatly increased voter turnout, Bush secured a clear majority of the popular vote, in sharp contrast to the 2000 election that first made him president. Republicans also increased their margins of control in both houses of Congress, largely through victories in the more conservative South.

The very active 2005 hurricane season saw several significant storms make landfall on the U.S. coast. In August, Hurricane Katrina devastated the Mississippi and SE Louisiana coasts, flooded much of New Orleans for several weeks, and caused extensive destruction inland in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, making it the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history. The following month, Hurricane Rita caused devastation along the SW Louisiana coast and widespread destruction in inland Louisiana and SE Texas.

Katrina displaced many Louisiana residents, some permanently, to other parts of the state and other states, particularly Texas. Some 200,000 persons were left at least temporarily unemployed, reversing job gains that had been made in the preceding months. The storm had a noticeable effect on the economy, driving up the already higher prices of gasoline, heating oil, and natural gas (as a result of well and refinery damage) to levels not seen before, and causing inflation to rise and industrial output to drop by amounts not seen in more than two decades.

The striking ineffectiveness of federal, state, and local government in responding to Hurricane Katrina, particularly in flooded New Orleans but also in other areas affected by the storm, raised questions about the ability of the country to respond to major disasters of any kind. President Bush—and state and local officials—were criticized for responding, at least initially, inadequately to Katrina, but the Federal Emergency Management Agency in particular seemed overwhelmed by the disaster's scale and incapable of managing the federal response in subsequent weeks. Many Americans wondered if the lessons of the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and the changes in the federal government that followed had resulted in real improvements or if those very changes and their emphasis on terror attacks had hindered the ability of the United States to respond to natural disasters.

The perceived failings in the federal response to Katrina seemed to catalyze public dissatisfaction with President Bush, as Americans became increasingly unsettled by the ongoing war in Iraq, the state of the U.S. economy, and other issues less than a year after Bush had been solidly reelected. Congress, meanwhile, passed a $52 billion emergency spending bill to deal with the effects of Katrina, but did not make any significant spending cuts or reductions in tax cuts to compensate for the additional outlays until Feb., 2006, when Congress passed a bill cutting almost $40 billion from a variety of government benefit programs, including Medicare, Medicaid, and student loans.

Internationally and domestically, the United States government was the subject of condemnation from some quarters for aspects of its conduct of the “war on terror” in the second half of 2005. In Aug., 2005, Amnesty International (AI) denounced the United States for maintaining secret, underground CIA prisons abroad. Subsequent news reporting indicated that there were prisons in eight nations in E Europe and Asia, and in December the United States acknowledged that the International Committee of the Red Cross had not been given access to all its detention facilities. (A year after the AI report the U.S. for the first time acknowledged that the CIA had maintained a group of secret prisons.) A Swiss investigator for the Council of Europe indicated (Dec., 2005) that reports that European nations and the United States had been involved in the abduction and extrajudicial transfer of individuals to other nations were credible, and he accused (Jan., 2006) the nations of “outsourcing” torture. In Jan., 2006, the New York–based Human Rights Watch accused the U.S. government of a deliberate policy of mistreating terror suspects. The U.S. policy toward terror suspects was subsequently denounced in 2006 by the UN Human Rights Council, the UN Committee on Torture, and the European Parliament.

In Dec., 2005, the National Security Agency was revealed to be wiretapping some international communications originating in the United States without obtaining the legally required warrants. The practice had begun in 2002, at the president's order. The administration justified it by asserting that the president's powers to defend the United States under the Constitution were not subject to Congressional legislation and that the legislation authorizing the president to respond to the Sept., 2001, terror attacks implicitly also authorized the wiretapping. Many politicians, former government officials, and legal scholars, however, criticized the practice as illegal or unconstitutional. The revelations and assertions did not derail the renewal of most nonpermanent parts of the USA PATRIOT Act, a sometimes criticized national security law originally enacted in 2001 after the Sept. 11th attacks; with only minor adjustments most of the law was made permanent in Mar., 2006. President Bush subsequently agreed (July, 2006) to congressional legislation that would authorize the administration's domestic eavesdropping program while placing a few limitations on it, but House and Senate Republicans disagreed over aspects of the proposed law, and it was not passed before the November elections. Meanwhile, in August, a federal judge declared the program illegal, a decision that the Justice Dept. appealed. In Jan., 2007, however, the Bush administration indicated the eavesdropping program would be overseen by the secret federal court responsible for issuing warrants for foreign intelligence surveillance.

The administation's position on the president's powers had been implicitly criticized by the Supreme Court when it ruled in June, 2006, that military commissions that had not been authorized by Congress could not be used to try the foreign terror suspects held at Guantánamo Bay. The Court also ruled that the Geneva Conventions applied to the suspects, who had been taken prisoner in Afghanistan; that ruling was a defeat for the administration, which had also come under increasing foreign government criticism for holding the suspects without trying them. As a result of the ruling, the Bush administration won the passage (Sept., 2006) of legislation that established special military tribunals to try foreign terror suspects, such as those held at Guantánamo, but the law was criticized by human rights advocates and others for stripping suspects of habeas corpus and other rights long enshrined as part of American law.

Illegal immigration also became a contentious political topic in 2006. While the House of Representatives, dominated by conservative Republicans, sought to require greater government efforts to restrict illegal immigration and greater penalities for illegally entering the United States, the Bush administration and the Senate emphasized developing a guest-worker program and allowing some long-term illegal immigrants the opportunity to become citizens as well as increasing border security. The differences between the houses of Congresses stalled legislative action on illegal immigration while maintaining it as a political issue as the 2006 congressional elections approached; ultimately the only legislation passed on the issue was a Oct., 2006, law that called for adding 700 mi (1,100 km) of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border. A new attempt at passing an immigration overhaul in 2007 died in Congress in June.

In the 2006 congressional elections the Republicans suffered significant reversals, losing control of both the Senate and the House, although the some of the seats lost in the Senate were the result of very narrow Democratic wins. Congressional corruption and sex scandals during 2006 appeared to loom large with many voters, as did the ongoing lack of significant progress in the fighting in Iraq. The president had hoped to benefit from improvement in the economy—the national unemployment rate had gradually dropped during 2005–6 and high oil prices earlier in the year had fallen—but some polls indicated the economy was a significant issue mainly in areas where voters felt that they had not benefited from the broad national trends.

Iraq, where 3,000 U.S. military personnel had died by the end of 2006, remained the nation's focus into early 2007. The congressionally commissioned Iraq Study Group, headed by James Baker and including prominent Republicans and Democrats, recommended a number of changes in U.S. efforts relating to Iraq, including greatly diminishing the role of U.S. combat forces and replacing them with Iraqi troops, making diplomatic overtures to Syria and Iran to gain their support for a resolution of the fighting in Iraq, and attempting to bring peace to Iraq as part of a broader Middle East peace initiative. Military aspects of the plan were received with skepticism by U.S. military experts, but the president ultimately choose to increase U.S. forces in Iraq temporarily, beginning in Jan., 2007, an attempt to control sectarian strife and increase security, principally in Baghdad. The president's decision was not well received in Congress, both by the newly empowered Democrats and some Republicans, but congressional opponents of the course pursued by the administration in Iraq lacked both the numbers and the unanimity necessary to confront the president effectively, as was demonstrated when a war funding bill was passed (May, 2007) without any binding troop withdrawal deadlines. By the mid-2008, when the “surge” in U.S. forces in Iraq had ended, it, along with a change in counterinsurgency tactics and other factors, appeared to have been successful in reducing violence and helping to establish control over some parts of Iraq.

The second half of 2007 saw the economy become a significant concern as problematic mortgage lending involving adjustable rate mortgages and, often, borrowers of marginal creditworthiness roiled U.S. and international financial markets and companies as a result of the securitization of mortgages, which both had hidden the risk involved in such mortgages and distributed that risk among many financial companies and investors. Concerns over creditworthiness issues led to a contraction in mortgage lending and housing construction and also led to some difficulties in commercial lendings. By the end of 2007, it was clear that a housing bubble that had contributed significantly to economic growth since 2001 had burst, and many banks and financial firms suffered significant losses as a result. That, dramatic increases in crude oil prices, and other worsening economic conditions contributed to the beginning of a recession by year's end.

In early 2008 the economic slowdown led to job losses and increased unemployment, while credit uncertainties contributed to the near-collapse of a major Wall Street investment firm; mortgage deliquencies also rose. The deteriorating economy led to the passage of a federal economic stimulus package, government measures designed to increase the availability of federally insured mortgages, lower interest rates, and moves by the Federal Reserve Board to assure the availability of credit and shore up the financial markets. In July, 2008, the president also signed a housing bill designed to help shore up the U.S. corporations that guarantee most American mortgages and also to provide mortgage relief to some homeowners, but ongoing problems with mortgage defaults led to increasing losses at those corporations and resulted in a government takeover of the institutions in September.

The deterioration of financial and economic conditions in the country and the world accelerated in mid-September, forcing the government and the Federal Reserve to intervene still more actively. The government also took over insurance giant AIG, whose financial health been undermined by credit default swaps it had sold (credit default swaps are contracts that pay, in return for a fee, compensation if a bond, loan, or the like goes into default). The nation also experienced its largest bank failure ever as the FDIC took over and sold Washington Mutual. By the end of the month the four remaining major Wall Street investment banks had disappeared through bankruptcy, merger, or conversion to bank holding companies, and banks had become unusually reluctant to lend. The economic crisis, which was the most severe since the early 1980s, also became increasingly international in scope, with particularly dramatic consequences in such diverse nations as Iceland, Russia, and Argentina.

Congress passed a $700 billion financial institution rescue package in early October, giving the Treasury secretary broad leeway in using government funds to restore financial stability, but the unsettling economic situation led stock prices to erode daily in early October, compounding the nation's financial difficulties and anxieties. The government subsequently moved to recapitalize the banking system in an attempt to restart lending, and the Federal Reserve began buying commercial paper (short-term debt with which companies finance their day-to-day operations), becoming the lender of last resort not just for the banking system but the economy at large. The Federal Reserve also lowered its federal funds interest rate target to below .25% by Dec., 2008; it did not raise the rate to .5% until Dec., 2015.

The effects of housing price drops, mortgage difficulties, the credit crunch, and other problems meanwhile slowed consumer spending, which contributed to a decrease in the GDP in the third and fourth quarters of 2008. By October unemployment had increased to 6.5% (and rose to 7.2% by the end of the year), and the economy had become a major factor in the presidential election campaign. Democrat Barack Obama handily defeated Republican John McCain in Nov., 2008, to become the first African American to be elected to the presidency, and Democrats also increased their majorities in the U.S. Congress. Although the inauguration of President Obama in Jan., 2009, was acknowledged by most Americans as a historic watershed, the economic difficulties and international conflicts confronting the United States were sobering and had all but forced Obama to name his cabinet and highest advisers as quickly as possible once he became president-elect.

The economy continued in recession in 2009, with unemployment reaching 9.8% in September. The Obama administration continued and expanded the previous administration's antirecessionary measures, winning passage of a $787 billion stimulus package and offering aid especially to the U.S. financial industry; the automobile industry, with Chrysler and General Motors forced into bankruptcy and reorganized by July, 2009; and (to a more limited extent) to homeowners. Those and other measures were expected to result in a series of budget deficits that, as a percentage of GDP, were the largest since World War II. By mid-2010 congressional anxiety about voter reaction to the deficit made it difficult to pass additional jobs measures.

In October, when the administration announced the 2009 deficit was $1.4 trillion (roughly triple that of the year before), it appeared clear that a depression had been avoided, and subsequently there were signs of a likely end to the recession, with the economy reported to have expanded moderately in the third quarter and significantly in the last quarter of 2009. Housing, however, remained in the doldrums at best at year's end and into 2010, and the unemployment rate increased to 10% in the last months of 2009 and diminished only a little by mid-2010. Also in 2009, Obama announced that U.S. forces in Afghanistan would increase in 2010 by 30,000 combat and training troops in an escalation designed to counteract Taliban gains.

In Mar., 2010, the Obama administration secured passage of health insurance legislation that was intended to increase the number of Americans covered by such insurance. The most significant piece of social welfare legislation since the 1960s, it called for a combination of expanding Medicaid, providing subsidies to low- and middle-income families, and tax increases on high-income families in addition to other measures to achieve that goal. Passage of the legislation proved the most difficult and divisive achievement of Obama's presidency to date, with Republicans in Congress strongly opposed and many conservatives participating in public protests against it. The law was challenged in the courts, but largely upheld (2012) by the U.S. Supreme Court. Russia and the United States signed the New START treaty in Apr., 2010. Replacing the START I nuclear disarmament treaty that had expired at the end of 2009, it established lower levels for deployed nuclear warheads. In August, U.S. combat operations in Iraq officially ended.

In July, 2010, Congress enacted legislation overhauling the U.S. financial regulatory system; the law gave expanded tools to regulators to respond to crises similar to the those that occurred in 2008 and also provided for increased consumer protections. The second half of the year saw the Federal Reserve Board resume its measures to stimulate the economy, which remained in a lackluster recovery with persistent high unemployment, a situation that did not show much improvement until the end of 2011. Those economic conditions coupled with an invigorated conservative movement that at times was unhappy even with conservative Republicans contributed to a Republican resurgence in the 2010 midterm elections. The party won control of the U.S. House of Representatives and also made gains in the U.S. Senate and many statehouses. Obama nonetheless won passage of additional legislation, with varying degrees of Republican support, in the post-election lame-duck session of Congress.

In Jan., 2011, a Democratic congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, and 13 others were injured and 6 persons killed in a shooting in Tucson, Ariz. Although the attack on Giffords and those at her constituent event did not appear politically motivated, it focused attention on the rancor that had marked the election year of 2010 and, for a time at least, subdued the political rhetoric and the nation's mood. Weeks later, however, partisan disagreements over cutting the budget threatened to stall the budget's passage and force a federal government shutdown, but that was avoided (Apr., 2011) with a last minute agreement on $38.5 billion in reductions. The normally routine approval of an increase in the national debt ceiling was delayed in mid-2011 by renewed partisan conflicts over the budget and debt; those conflicts subsequently affected bills concerned with disaster aid, jobs creation, and other issues into 2012. The last U.S. forces in Iraq were withdrawn in Dec., 2011, ending all U.S. military operations there.

Economic conditions in general gradually improved beginning in 2011, but by the fall of 2012 unemployment had only returned to level it was at when Obama had been elected in 2008. In the summer of 2012 the country experienced the worst drought it had seen in roughly 50 years; some two thirds of the country was affected, and in some areas the drought continued into 2013. Despite the economic situation, Obama won reelection in Nov., 2012, defeating Mitt Romney, his Republican challenger. With some attrition, the voters who had elected Obama in 2008—women, racial minorities, Hispanics, and younger voters—voted for him again. Democrats also made modest gains in the Congress and in the state houses, but Republicans retained control of the House.

In Dec., 2012, the country was horrified by the killings of 26 children and teachers at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school. The murders led President Obama to propose (Jan., 2013) an assault weapons ban and other gun-control measures, but passage of any measures in Congress proved impossible. In Mar., 2013, an across-the-board reduction in federal spending known as a sequester took effect under the debt ceiling legislation enacted in Aug., 2011; the failure to enact an alternative made the cuts automatic. The annual Boston Marathon, in April, was the target of a double bombing that killed three people and injured more than 260; it was the most serious terror attack against civilians in the United States since Sept., 2011.

June, 2013, saw the beginning of a series of revelations concerning the massive telecommunications data collection efforts of the National Security Agency, based on documents collected by a former agency employeee, Edward Snowden. The details of the data collection (which in some cases was generally known prior to the revelations and in some cases occurred in cooperation with U.S. allies) caused international controversy and created public difficulties with some U.S. allies. The revelations ultimately led, in June, 2015, to passage of changes to the USA PATRIOT Act that placed some restrictions on the mass collection of telecommunications data.

A chemical weapons attack in August that killed more than 1,400 in Damascus, Syria, was linked by Western governments to the Syrian government, and led to the threat of an attack from the United States, but it did not occur after President Obama decided to seek congressional approval first. Ultimately, however, the Syrian government agreed to the supervised destruction of its chemical weapons stockpile.

In the fall of 2013, conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives insisted on a defunding or delay of the 2010 health insurance legislation, which was begin to come into effect in Oct., 2013, as a condition for the passage of a new budget, a condition Democrats refused to agree to. The resulting failure to enact budget legislation led to a partial federal government shutdown in the first half of October, but the health-care legislation took effect unimpeded. (There were difficulties in late 2013 with the implementation of the law, but the situation appeared to have improved markedly by Apr., 2014.) In late 2013, the budget impasse grew into a threat to once again deny an increase in the national debt ceiling, potentially resulting in a more severe curtailment of government operations and debt payments as well as international financial difficulties (because of the role played by the dollar as a reserve currency). The threatened crisis was averted, but the agreement to continue federal funding and suspend the debt ceiling was temporary (until early 2014). In Dec., 2013, however, Congress agreed to a two-year budget deal, and a new, year-long debt limit suspension passed uneventfully in Feb., 2014.

The political crisis in Ukraine, which resulted in Feb., 2014, in the removal of President Yanukovych, led to the worst tensions with Russia since the cold war after Russia occupied and annexed Ukraine's Crimea region in March and then actively supported pro-Russian rebels in E Ukraine. In response to the annexation and Russian support for the rebels, the United States (and some other Western nations) imposed sanctions on Russia. In the second half of 2014 the United States also launched air strikes in Iraq and Syria aimed at thwarting the Islamic State, Sunni Islamist militants who sought to create a a transnational Islamic fundamentalist regime.

Late 2014 also saw an increase in racial tensions in the United States, sparked by a number of cases in which young black men were shot and killed by police officers, with the most notable incidents of protest and violence occurring in Ferguson, Mo., during August. A similar incident sparked rioting in Baltimore, Md., in Apr., 2015, and in June, 2015, the nation was stunned by the murder of African-American worshipers in Savannah, Ga., by a white supremacist. Two police shootings in July, 2016, in which black men died, sparked revenge killings of police officers that same month. Mass shootings in San Bernandino, Calif. (Dec., 2015), and Orlando, Fla. (June, 2016), were Islamist-inpsired; the latter, in which 50 died, was the worst in U.S. history.

The Nov., 2014, elections resulted in gains for the Republican party, which won a majority in the U.S. Senate, retained control of the House, and made gains at the state level as well. Following the elections the Obama administration announced a change in immigration policy that would avoid deporting law-abiding illegal aliens who were long-term U.S. residents and also had children who were U.S. citizens; the policy change was subsequently challenged in the courts. It also reached an agreement with Cuba on restoring diplomatic relations and easing some travel and commerce restrictions (the embargo was unaffected, though Obama called for Congress to consider ending it). There were new tensions over the passage of a budget in Dec., 2014, but a government shutdown was avoided.

In July, 2015, the United States signed multinational agreement with Iran that placed limits on its nuclear program in return for easing economic sanctions; Senate Democrats subsequently blocked Republican attempts to force a vote on the agreement. The agreement was implemented in Jan., 2016, and nuclear-related sanctions on Iran were lifted, but the same month the United States imposed new sanctions related to Iran's ballistic missile program as a result of a test launch that was said to violate UN Security Council resolutions. In Oct., 2015, the president announced that the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan would be slowed, and that several thousand troops would remain there into 2017. Also in October, the United States and 11 other Pacifc Rim nations agreed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which would reduce or end trade tariffs on many goods. The agreement, which was formally signed in Feb., 2016, was criticized and denounced in the primary and general elections in 2016.

In the 2016 presidential election the gradual economic expansion was insufficient to secure Democrats a third presidential term. Republican businessman Donald Trump, who ran contentious and controversial primary and general election campaigns, defeated the first woman major party nominee, Democrat Hillary Clinton, after an often personal and socially divisive contest. Clinton was hurt by an FBI investigation into her use of an private server for official email while she was secretary of state; the FBI ultimately found no grounds for prosecution. Despite his electoral win, Trump lost the popular vote by the largest percentage since 1876, and the campaign aggravated race relations and provoked anxiety in many foreign allies. Although Republicans retained control of Congress, the party lost some seats in both houses.

Subsequently it was revealed that the CIA and FBI (and later the Senate) had concluded that Russia had used cyberwarfare and disinformation in support of Trump's campaign, in the primaries and general election. The Russia election and campaign revelations continued to be an issue into 2018. The new administration's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was forced to resign after less than a month in office when it was learned that he had lied about postelection contacts with Russian official. The head of the FBI, James Comey, was dismissed in May, 2017, because of the investigation into Russian intereference, and later accused President Trump of seeking a halt to the investigation. The criminal investigation continued under a special counsel, former FBI head Robert Mueller, and several meetings between Russians and Americans associated with the Trump campaign or businesses subsequently came to light. From late 2017 Mueller indicted a number of people associated with Trump campaign and businesses, as well as Russians and Russian companies, on charges arising from his investigation. Subsequently, a number of prominent Trump associates pleaded guilty to various charges, many not related directly to Russia's attempted electoral interference.

After taking office, Trump withdrew (2017) the United States from the TPP and moved to limit the impact of the 2010 health insurance legislation, which he had pledged to replace. The conflicting goals of elected Republican officials, however, came into play, and Congress proved unable to pass a replacement for the Affordable Care Act. The administration then, among other moves to limit or undermine the law, ended (October) government subsidies to health insurance companies that reduced the cost of plans for lower-income enrollees.

An executive order in January that restricted travel from some Muslim majority nations on national security grounds (revised and reissued in March; revised and expanded to some other nations in September) was challenged in the courts in both its initial and later forms, but was upheld by the Supreme Court in its final version. Beginning in late August the country experienced a series of a domestic traumas, as hurricanes wreaked devastation in Texas, the Virgin Islands, Florida, and Puerto Rico (August–September), one shooter killed 58 and wounded more than 500 at a concert in Las Vegas (Oct. 1) and another killed 27 at a rural Texas church (Nov. 5), and California experienced an outbreak of deadly, destructive wildfires (October and December).

The economy continued to experience the steady growth that had marked it in most of the 2010s, and in Dec., 2017, Trump and Congressional Republicans united to achieve their first major legislative victory, enactment of a tax overhaul that promised significant permanent tax reductions to many U.S. businesses. The passage of a budget (Mar., 2018) with greatly increased defense and domestic spending combined with the tax cuts led the Congressional Budget Office to predict trillion-dollar deficits by 2020.

Internationally, continued missile and nuclear weapons testing by North Korea in 2017 led to increased tensions with the United States that did not ease until 2018. Tensions further eased that June when the president met with North Korea's Kim Jong Un, who said North Korea would move toward complete denuclearization, but no timetable was agreed on. In Apr., 2017, a nerve gas attack in Syria by the Assad government provoked a retaliatory missile strike on the part of the United States and created tensions between the United States and Russia; a year later, another especially deadly poison gas attack also provoked U.S. retaliation. The Trump administration in June, 2017, announced it would withdraw from the 2015 Paris climate accord (effective 2020), and in October stopped certifying Iran's compliance with the multinational nuclear agreement; in 2018 the United States withdrew from the Iran agreement, leading to criticism from the U.S. allies who were party to the accord. Late in the year and and in following years the Trump administration imposed expanded U.S. economic sanctions on Iran, but an attempt in 2020 to have United Nations sanctions automatically reimposed on Iran were frustrated by administration's no longer being a party to the Iran agreement. The U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and 2019 recognition of Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights were broadly rejected by most U.S. allies; at the same time the Trump administration moved to reduce its contributions to the United Nations and its agencies.

In 2018, protective tariffs imposed or proposed by the Trump administration on a number of imported products, many of which were aimed at China, led to concerns about a possible trade war as China and most other affected nations (mainly U.S. allies) responded in kind. In mid-2018 and a year later the administration announced multibillion dollar emergency relief packages for U.S. farmers who lost access to markets as a result of the situaton. Later that year, the United States won Mexican and Canadian agreement to modifications to some aspects of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was to be renamed the United States Mexico Canada Agreement once the changes entered into force; additional modifications were made during Congressional ratification.

In February, a school shooting in Parkland, Fla., in which 17 died resulted in renewed public outrage concerning gun violence and led in March to large demonstrations across the nation in favor of gun control; mass killings involving guns continued to recur during 2018, and an especially deadly one motivated by anti-Semitism occurred in October at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. Also in October a series of explosive devices were mailed to critics and political opponents of the president.

The country again experienced a spate of significant natural disasters in 2018. The wildfire season brought further devastation to California, as the state experienced some of the largest, deadliest, and most destructive wildfires in its history. A hurricane in September caused significant flooding in North and South Carolina, and areas in Florida's panhandle were devastated by another in October; that same month a typhoon also brought destruction to islands of the Northern Marianas in the Pacific.

The U.S. economy continued to grow during 2018, with the growth rate increasing to 2.9% (most likely as the result of the 2017 tax cut), but that did not figure prominently in the 2018 elections. Democrats tended to emphasize health care issues and the president, actively campaigning, focused on the security threat said to be posed by illegal immigration from Latin America, as represented by large numbers of migrants traveling in groups, many of whom were seeking asylum legally; Trump ordered U.S. troops to the border in support roles. At the polls, voters gave Democrats won control of the House of Representatives and some governorships, but Republicans retained control of the Senate.

Trump, having previously agreed to continuing funding for the government, demanded Congress provide funding for his proposed wall for the Mexican border and, when it did not, forced (Dec., 2018) a partial federal government shutdown that became the longest shutdown in U.S. history. Following the end of the shutdown in January, Trump declared (February) a national emergency over the border in a move to bypass Congress and transfer funds to construction of the border wall. Much of the funding was ultimately transferred from the Defense Dept. The administration subsequently took a harder line on immigration, and threatened to cut off aid to Central American nations the migrants came from, threatened Mexico with tariffs unless it halted the flow of those migrants, and sought to make them ineligible for asylum. Also in Feb. 2019, and then briefly in June, the president met again with North Korea's leader but no agreement resulted.

A redacted version of the report of the Mueller investigation, which ended in Mar., 2019, was publicly released in April. Mueller detailed repeated contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia as well as the campaign's hope to benefit from Russian interference in the election, but found that there was not sufficient evidence of conspiracy or coordination between the campaign and Russia. It also did not exonerate the president from obstruction of justice, noting a pattern of attempts by Trump to influence the investigation as well as that a number of aides refused to carry out orders from Trump that could have constituted obstruction. U.S. Attorney General William Barr determined (March) that obstruction of justice had not occurred, and subsequently sought several investigations into the investigation. The following year Barr suspended prosecution of Michael Flynn, and Trump commuted the sentence of Roger Stone, his former political consultant; both had been convicted of lying to investigators.

In Oct. 2019, Trump abruptly ordered U.S. forces serving with the Kurds in Syria to be pulled from areas bordering Turkey (and later from Syria, though subsequently that order was substantially reversed due to concerns about the Islamic State), allowing Turkey and its Syrian Arab allies to invade Kurdish-held territory. The sudden move sparked sharp Congressional criticism, and raised questions about U.S. commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq. Conflict in Iraq between Iranian-supported militias and U.S. forces in late 2019 led in Jan., 2020, to a drone attack in Iraq that killed Iran's Gen. Qasem Soleimani; Iran launched retaliatory missile attacks against U.S. bases in Iraq, and Iraq's parliament called for U.S. forces to be withdrawn from the country.

Meanwhile, the president and country confronted a new political crisis in September after it was revealed that Trump had pressured Ukraine to investigate unsubstantiated accusations that Ukraine colluded with the Democrats in 2016 and that Vice President Biden and his son had had corrupt dealings in Ukraine. The revelations led to the initiation of an impeachment investigation in Congress; Trump ordered U.S. officials not to testify, but many career officials did. The House voted to impeach Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of justice in Dec., 2019, on a largely party-line vote, and in Feb., 2020, the Senate voted to acquit him, also on a near party-line vote, after a trial in which no testimony was heard.

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, in addition to being a significant health crisis in many parts of the country, created a nationwide economic crisis as entire sectors of the economy and society were shut down as the state governors and the federal government attempted to control its spread. The Trump administration, especially the president, often was at odds over the states over medical supplies, the use of stay-at-home orders and the speed at which they should be lifted, and other matters relating to the pandemic, complicating the governmental response. In many locations the disease, which soon totaled in the hundreds of thousands of cases and tens of thousands of deaths, threatened to overwhelm health care facilities.

Unemployment skyrocketed as a result of the shutdowns and, as the economy entered recession, Congress passed emergency legislation that provided trillions in aid for individuals and businesses. The Federal Reserve also employed on a wide range of economic mitigation measures similar to those of the financial crisis a decade earlier. The initial, most dramatic drops in economic activity and employment eased beginning in May, and were reversed to a sizable degree in the second half of 2020.

COVID-19 cases rose again in June and July, then eased, then began rising again in September and subsquently increasing steadily; each rise exceeded the last, and total reported cases exceeded 9 million in October as the disease spread more widely. Among the cases were the president himself and a number of White House officials. Deaths, however, did not spike as sharply as they had in the spring, but nonetheless exceeded 225,000. Additional federal economic aid proved impossible to agree on as the elections approached. As the pandemic worsened, the president increasingly blamed China (and the World Health Organization) for the spread of COVID-19, and China's South China Sea claims and imposition of controls on political activities in Hong Kong further worsened relations and left Chinese trade issues unresolved.

In May, meanwhile, the killing in Minneapolis of George Floyd, an African American who suffocated while a white police officer pressed a knee on his neck, provoked widespread outrage. Protests in many areas called for police reform and an end to racism; as the protests continued in subsequent weeks, heroic statues of Confederates and others were targeted. In some cases protests turned violent or police officers were accused of brutality. The president, who became stridently critical of the protestors and defended the symbols of the Confederacy, controversially sought to use federal forces to suppress local protests.

The second half of 2020 saw an extremely severe wildfire season in several states in the W United States, while an extremely active hurricane season hit the state of Louisiana especially hard. In the 2020 elections, the policies and personality of President Trump and the effects and handling of the COVID-19 pandemic were the most prominent issues, with the former most particularly dividing the supporters of the major party candidates. Ultimately, after a longer vote count than usual due to an unusually large mail-in vote as a result of the pandemic, Democrats Joseph Biden and Kamala Harris easily won the popular vote and more narrowly secured a few of the states that guaranteed electoral vote victory; Harris became the first woman to be elected vice president. Two thirds of registered voters cast a ballot, the highest turnout by percentage since 1900; voters totaled 159.6 million, and Biden became the first presidential candidate to received more than 80 million votes. The Democrats lost some seats in the House, but secured an even split in the Senate after runoffs in Georgia in Jan., 2021.

Trump repeatedly denounced the results as a fraud without offering any evidence, and his associates and Republican officials sued repeatedly and unsuccessfully in state and federal courts to overturn Biden's victory. The Republican attorney general of Texas sought to have the Supreme Court toss Biden's wins in four swing states, a move the Court dismissed without hearing. The efforts by Trump and his allies continued up to Jan. 6, 2021, when Congress counted the electoral votes, provoking a mob to storm the Capitol and threaten legislators in an attempt to undo the election; Congress was forced into hiding until the Capitol was cleared. Despite events, most Republicans in the House then challenged the electoral results from several states Biden had won. The House soon impeached the president a second time, with the support of some Republicans. The inauguration of Biden, which Trump did not attend, was conducted under heavy guard after the FBI said that right-wing extremists had plans to disrupt it. By then, COVID-19 vaccinations had begun, but the disease had killed more than 400,000 Americans; more than 24 million were known to have contracted the disease.

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