Chapter 40 - Key Terms and People

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Across
  1. 3. Refers to weapons—nuclear, biological, and chemical—that can kill large numbers of people and do great damage to the built and natural environment. The term was used to refer to nuclear weapons during the Cold War. The Bush administration’s claim that Saddam Hussein had developed WMD provided the rationale for the United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003. These weapons were never found after the invasion.
  2. 10. A grassroots conservative political movement mobilized in opposition to Barack Obama’s fiscal, economic, and health-care policies. Protestors first demonstrated in early 2009, and they grew steadily in visibility and power as a pressuring force within the Republican Party through the 2010 midterm elections and beyond.
  3. 13. Cabinet-level agency created in 2003 to unify and coordinate public safety and antiterrorism operations within the federal government.
  4. 15. Forty-fifth President of the United States. A New York City real estate mogul and reality-television personality.
  5. 16. A former White House staffer, congressman, and secretary of defense during the first Persian Gulf War, he joined the Bush ticket in 2000 to add experience and a link to the first Bush presidency. As vice president, he was more active in policy and politics than his predecessors, playing decisive roles especially in matters of foreign policy.
  6. 17. Forty-third president of the United States, 2001-2009. As president, he pursued changes in Social Security, immigration, and education laws and appointed two conservative justices to the Supreme Court. Launching and leading the "war on terror" in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The architect of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
  7. 20. Republican senator from Arizona who lost the 2008 presidential election to Democrat Barack Obama. A former navy fighter pilot who spent five years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. Known as a maverick senator, frequently departing from his own party to co-sponsor moderate legislation with Democratic allies. Among his most notable legislative achievements were changes in campaign finance and efforts to reform immigration laws.
  8. 22. In an effort to avoid another financial crisis like the Great Recession, the act updated many federal regulations affecting the financial and banking systems and created some new agencies, such as the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection.
  9. 25. Replaced the expiring USA Patriot Act of 2001. Passed in the wake of the Snowden revelations, it attempted to place some restrictions on government collection of metadata concerning American citizens.
  10. 26. former National-Security Agency contractor who copied 1.5 million classified documents and arranged for their release to the public.
  11. 27. Program established by President Obama in June 2012 granting undocumented immigrants work permits and protection from deportations, as long as they were below a certain age (under 16 when they moved to the United States and under 31 years old). Scorned by Obama’s Republican opponents as a misguided overreach of executive power, Rescinded by President Trump in early 2017, even as he suggested that Congress put some version of the program on a statutory basis.
  12. 28. Controversial prison facility constructed after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Located on territory occupied by the U.S. military, but not technically part of the United States, the facility serves as an extra-legal holding area for suspected terrorists.
  13. 29. Arabic for “The Base,” an international alliance of anti-Western Islamic Fundamentalist terrorist organizations founded in the late 1980s by veterans of the Afghan struggle against the Soviet Union. The group was headed by Osama bin Laden and has taken responsibility for numerous terrorist attacks, especially after the late 1990s. Organized the attacks of September 11, 2001, in the United States from its headquarters in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the launch of the “global war on terror,” the group has been weakened but still poses significant threats around the world.
  14. 30. Name of the original protest that launched the populist, anti-Wall Street movement in late 2010 and early 2011. Youthful radicals pitched tents in Zuccotti Park in New York’s financial district beginning in September 2010 to protest inequality and corporate political power.
Down
  1. 1. Among the earliest initiatives of the Obama administration to combat the Great Recession. It was based on the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes that called for increased government spending to offset decreased private spending in times of economic downturn. The act was controversial from the outset, passing with no Republican votes in the House and only three in the Senate, and helping to foster the “Tea Party” movement to curb government deficits, even while critics on the left argued that the act’s $787 billion appropriation was not enough to turn the economy around.
  2. 2. Republican vice-presidential candidate with John McCain in the 2008 election. Served on the city council and as mayor of her hometown of Wasilla, Alaska, from 1996 to 2002, and then in 2006 was elected governor of the state.
  3. 4. The costliest and one of the deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States, which killed nearly two thousand Americans. The storm ravaged the Gulf Coast, especially the city of New Orleans, in late August 2005. In New Orleans, high winds and rain caused the city’s levees to break, leading to catastrophic flooding, particularly in the city’s most impoverished wards. A tardy and feeble response by local and federal authorities exacerbated the damage and led to widespread criticism of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
  4. 5. Former governor of Indiana and member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Became Vice-President of the U.S. in 2016.
  5. 6. Also known as “Obamacare,” the act extended health-care insurance to some 30 million Americans, marking a major step toward achieving the century-old goal of providing universal health-care coverage.
  6. 7. An education bill created and signed by the George W. Bush administration. Designed to increase accountability standards for primary and secondary schools, the law authorized several federal programs to monitor those standards and increased choices for parents in selecting schools for their children. The program was highly controversial, in large part because it linked results on standardized tests to federal funding for schools and school districts.
  7. 8. Signed into law by President Trump on December 22, 2017. Trimmed income taxes across the board for a period of ten years, permanently slashed the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, and removed the individual health-care mandate. Hailed as a major legislative victory for Republicans, the bill was denounced by critics as a plutocratic payout that would only deepen the federal deficit in the coming years.
  8. 9. The inverse of businesses increasing their financial power by borrowing money (debt) in addition to their own assets (equity). In times of uncertainty or credit tightening, the same businesses seek to improve their debt-to-equity ratios by shedding debt through the sale of assets purchased with borrowed money.
  9. 11. United States senator from Delaware from 1973 to 2009 and vice president of the United States since 2009. As a long-time senator and former chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he brought Washington experience and foreign-policy expertise to the Obama campaign and subsequent presidency.
  10. 12. Term coined by psychologists to describe an innate tendency for people to seek out and uncritically accept information that reaffirms their existing beliefs, closing off alternate points of view. Often invoked to explain herd-like online behavior and splintering of the twenty-first-century political landscape.
  11. 14. Common shorthand for the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, in which nineteen militant Islamist men hijacked and crashed four commercial aircraft. Two planes hit the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, causing them to collapse. One plane crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and the fourth, overtaken by passengers, crashed into a field in rural Pennsylvania. Nearly three thousand people were killed in the worst case of domestic terrorism in American history.
  12. 18. A detention facility near Baghdad, Iraq. Under Saddam Hussein, the prison was the site of infamous torturing and execution of political dissidents. In 2004, during the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the prison became the focal point of a prisoner-abuse and torture scandal after photographs surfaced of American soldiers mistreating, torturing, and degrading Iraqi war prisoners and suspected terrorists. The scandal was one of several dark spots on the public image of the Iraq War and led to increased criticism of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
  13. 19. Legislation passed shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, that granted broad surveillance and detention authority to the government.
  14. 21. Also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Brokered by the Obama administration between Iran and the major world powers in July 2015, the agreement terminated economic sanctions that had hamstrung Iran’s economy. In return, Tehran pledged to reduce its stockpiles of weapon-grade uranium and end its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
  15. 23. Forty-fourth president of the United States and first African American elected to that office. A lawyer and community organizer in Chicago. Served in the Illinois state senate before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004. As president, he tackled the effects of the financial crisis while pursuing passage of ambitious reforms in health care and financial regulation.
  16. 24. Democratic congresswoman from California who became, in 2007, the first female Speaker of the House of Representatives.