APUSH Unit 9 (Period 9) Review: 1980–Present

Topics

9.1 Contextualizing Period 9
Morning Again · Coming soon
AP US History Topic 9.1: Contextualizing Period 9 describes the United States in 1980 and the forces that shaped the years after. Inflation reached 13.5 percent in 1980, Iran held 52 American hostages for 444 days, and trust in Washington had fallen after Vietnam and Watergate. Ronald Reagan, backed by free-market conservatives, evangelical Christians and Cold War hawks, beat Jimmy Carter by 489 electoral votes to 49 and took office on January 20, 1981. Five changes followed: a conservative turn, the end of the Cold War, a new economy, new immigrants, and a war on terrorism after 2001.
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9.2 Reagan and Conservatism
Morning Again · Coming soon
AP US History Topic 9.2: Reagan and Conservatism is about the conservative movement that won power in 1980 and how far it reshaped government. The 1981 Economic Recovery Tax Act cut income tax rates about 23 percent over three years, and Reagan fired more than 11,000 striking air traffic controllers that August. Congress rescued Social Security in 1983 instead of cutting it, and the national debt nearly tripled. The New Right also fought over abortion, family and AIDS. Under George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton the argument over taxes, trade and welfare continued, and a 1996 law remade welfare.
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9.3 The End of the Cold War
Trust, but Verify · Coming soon
AP US History Topic 9.3: The End of the Cold War is about how the superpower rivalry ended between 1981 and 1991 and what the United States did with its new position. Reagan's arms buildup and Strategic Defense Initiative added pressure on a failing Soviet economy, Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms made him a partner for Reagan, and the two signed the INF Treaty in 1987. When Gorbachev refused to use force, Eastern Europeans toppled their governments, and the Berlin Wall opened on November 9, 1989. The Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991, leaving the United States as the only superpower.
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9.4 A Changing Economy
Help Wanted · Coming soon
AP US History Topic 9.4: A Changing Economy covers how computers, trade and globalization reshaped American work from 1980 to the 2010s. IBM sold its personal computer in 1981, the World Wide Web opened to the public in 1991, and productivity growth sped up after 1995. NAFTA in 1994, the World Trade Organization in 1995 and China's entry in 2001 widened trade. From 1979 to 2010 factory jobs fell by about eight million while service jobs grew, union membership in private companies fell by more than half, and typical pay lagged productivity as the richest households pulled ahead.
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9.5 Migration and Immigration in the 1990s and 2000s
Help Wanted · Coming soon
AP US History Topic 9.5: Migration and Immigration in the 1990s and 2000s covers where Americans lived and who joined them after 1980. The South and West grew from about half of the population in 1980 to six in ten by 2010, drawn by cheap land, low taxes, weak unions and air conditioning, and every census moved seats in Congress toward the Sun Belt. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 ended national-origin quotas, so most new immigrants came from Asia and Latin America, and by 2010 about one American in eight was foreign-born. Fights over enforcement and legal status followed.
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9.6 Challenges of the 21st Century
98 to 1 · Coming soon
AP US History Topic 9.6: Challenges of the 21st Century is about the attacks of September 11, 2001, the wars that followed, and the economic and energy crises of the next decade. Al-Qaeda's attacks killed 2,977 people; Congress authorized force, and the Senate passed the USA PATRIOT Act 98 to 1. The United States began a war in Afghanistan in October 2001 and invaded Iraq in March 2003. After Lehman Brothers failed in September 2008, unemployment reached 10 percent in October 2009. Oil prices, Hurricane Katrina and climate policy also shaped these years, and Americans argued over safety and liberty, war, oil and money.
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9.7 Causation in Period 9
Out of Many · Coming soon
AP US History Topic 9.7: Causation in Period 9 is about explaining why the United States changed between 1980 and the 2010s and which causes mattered most. A conservative turn, the end of the Cold War, computers and trade, new immigration and migration, and the war on terrorism after 2001 each had causes and effects. One strong argument holds that immigration and the move south and west changed who Americans were more than any other change, since the foreign-born share rose from under one in twenty in 1970 to over one in eight by 2015, while politics argued over that change.
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Key terms

Conservative movement: Topic 9.1
The movement that won the White House in 1980, arguing for a smaller federal government and for traditional social values. It kept shaping the argument over government long after Reagan left office.
Iran hostage crisis: Topic 9.1
On November 4, 1979, militants seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans for 444 days. They flew out on January 20, 1981, less than an hour after Reagan took office.
New Deal and the Great Society: Topic 9.1
Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal built Social Security. Lyndon Johnson's Great Society added Medicare and more aid for the poor. Reagan promised to shrink that government.
Reagan Revolution: Topic 9.1
Reagan's program to reduce that government: lower taxes, less spending on welfare, a larger military, and a more conservative federal court.
Contextualization: Topic 9.1
Placing an event inside the bigger developments that shaped it. The AP exam asks for this in every essay. Here the event is Reagan's 1980 victory. The years before it are the context: prices, the hostages, and the coalition that had been building since the 1970s.
Misery index: Topic 9.1
Inflation plus unemployment. Carter used it against Ford in 1976. Reagan turned it on Carter in 1980, when the monthly sum reached 21.98 in June.
New Right: Topic 9.1
The coalition of economic conservatives, religious conservatives, and anticommunists that grew in the 1970s and elected Reagan. Topic 8.14 tells how it formed.
Reagan Democrats: Topic 9.1
White working-class voters, often in unions, who had backed Democrats since the New Deal and voted for Reagan in 1980 and 1984. Their switch broke up the New Deal coalition.
Sun Belt: Topic 9.1
The fast-growing South and Southwest. After the 1980 census, those regions and the West gained House seats from the Northeast and Midwest.
Supply-side economics: Topic 9.2
The idea that cutting tax rates, especially at the top, leads people to work, save and invest more, so the economy grows. Critics called it trickle-down. Also called Reaganomics.
Keynesian economics: Topic 9.2
The idea, used by Democrats since the New Deal, that in a slump the government should spend money so people have paychecks and buy things. Supply-side starts with taxes. Keynesian starts with spending.
Brady Bill (1993): Topic 9.2
A 1993 law, named for James Brady, requiring a background check and a five-day wait to buy a handgun. He and his wife, Sarah, campaigned for it for years. An instant check replaced the waiting period in 1998.
Boll weevils: Topic 9.2
Conservative Southern Democrats in the House who voted with Republicans for Reagan's 1981 budget and tax cuts. The name is the cotton pest. Their votes were the margin in a House the Democrats still held.
Economic Recovery Tax Act (1981): Topic 9.2
Rate cuts of 5 percent, then 10, then 10, starting October 1, 1981. Added up, textbooks say 25 percent. Compounded, the cut is about 23. The 70 percent top rate, by then only on investment income, fell to 50. Brackets were indexed to inflation from 1985.
PATCO: Topic 9.2
The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization. About 13,000 of its 17,500 members struck on August 3, 1981, breaking the federal ban on strikes by federal workers. Reagan fired more than 11,000 who stayed out. The union was decertified on October 22, 1981, and lost the right to represent the controllers.
Striker replacement: Topic 9.2
A worker hired to do the job of someone on strike. After the controllers were fired, more private employers replaced strikers instead of bargaining with them.
Prime rate: Topic 9.2
The rate banks advertised for their best-rated business borrowers. It hit 21.5 percent in December 1980, after the Federal Reserve, under Paul Volcker, pushed rates up to break inflation.
Recession of 1981–82: Topic 9.2
The downturn that followed the Fed's high rates. Unemployment reached 10.8 percent in late 1982, the highest since the Great Depression, then fell as inflation broke and the economy recovered.
Social Security Amendments of 1983: Topic 9.2
The Greenspan Commission's rescue of Social Security, signed April 20, 1983. Payroll-tax increases were moved up, the full retirement age rose from 65 to 67 by 2027, up to half of benefits were taxed for higher-income retirees, and new federal workers were brought into the system.
Deregulation: Topic 9.2
Removing government rules on an industry. Begun under Carter with airlines in 1978 and trucking in 1980. Under Reagan it reached savings and loans, natural gas prices, federal land and offshore oil leases, and some environmental and auto-safety rules.
Geraldine Ferraro: Topic 9.2
Mondale's running mate in 1984. A congresswoman from Queens, and the first woman on a major party's national ticket.
Tax Reform Act of 1986: Topic 9.2
A bipartisan rewrite of the income tax. It closed many loopholes and set two main rates, 15 percent and 28 percent. Signed October 22, 1986.
Moral Majority: Topic 9.2
A political group the Rev. Jerry Falwell founded in 1979 to bring evangelical Christians into elections. It campaigned against abortion, pornography, the Equal Rights Amendment, and gay rights. Topic 8.14 tells how it started.
Roe v. Wade (1973): Topic 9.2
The 1973 decision that recognized a constitutional right to abortion. Webster (1989) and Casey (1992) let states add limits. They kept Roe's core. In 2022 the Court overturned it.
Affirmative action: Topic 9.2
Efforts to open hiring and public contracts to people who had been shut out, taking race into account. In City of Richmond v. J. A. Croson (1989), the Rehnquist Court held cities and states to strict scrutiny and narrowed these plans. It did not end them.
Immigration Reform and Control Act (1986): Topic 9.2
Gave legal status to about 2.7 million immigrants living here without legal permission, and penalized employers who knowingly hired workers without it. Topic 9.5 follows the fight.
Culture wars: Topic 9.2
The political fights of the 1980s and 1990s over religion, family, sexuality, gender roles, abortion, and diversity.
Savings and loan crisis: Topic 9.2
Thrifts made riskier loans while the government still insured the deposits. More than 1,000 failed from 1986 to 1995. In 1989, FIRREA, the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act, created the Resolution Trust Corporation to close them and tightened the rules. Taxpayers paid about $124 billion. An early fight over regulating the financial system.
Americans with Disabilities Act (1990): Topic 9.2
A civil rights law signed July 26, 1990. It bans discrimination against people with disabilities in jobs, public services, public places, and telephone and television access, and it requires reasonable accommodations, practical changes so a person can work and get in. One of the broadest civil rights laws since 1964.
New Democrat: Topic 9.2
A Democrat of the political center. Bill Clinton used the name in 1992. New Democrats backed free trade, smaller deficits, welfare reform, and tough crime laws.
NAFTA: Topic 9.2
The North American Free Trade Agreement. It removed most tariffs among the United States, Canada, and Mexico, starting in 1994. Bush negotiated it. Clinton got the votes to make it law. Topic 9.4 follows what it did to factories and towns.
Government shutdown: Topic 9.2
Parts of the federal government stop work when Congress and the president have not agreed on funding. In the winter of 1995–96 it happened twice. The second lasted 21 days, the longest to that date.
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act (1996): Topic 9.2
Replaced AFDC with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF): block grants to the states, work requirements, and a five-year lifetime limit on cash aid.
Aid to Families with Dependent Children: Topic 9.2
Cash help for poor families with children, begun in the Social Security Act of 1935. States paid it with federal matching money. The 1996 law ended it.
Don't ask, don't tell: Topic 9.2
The 1993 compromise on gay and lesbian service members. They could serve if they said nothing, and no one would ask. In September 1996 the Defense of Marriage Act defined marriage, for federal law, as a union of a man and a woman.
Political polarization: Topic 9.2
After 1980 the parties sorted. Conservative Southern whites moved to the Republicans, and liberal Republicans faded. Close elections produced divided government, and in 1995–96 the budget fight shut the government down.
East Germany (GDR): Topic 9.3
The Communist German state, 1949–1990, allied with the Soviet Union. Its ruling party built the Berlin Wall and controlled travel out of the country. West Germany was a separate democracy.
Berlin Wall: Topic 9.3
East Germany's guarded barrier through Berlin, begun August 13, 1961, to stop its people leaving. It stood 28 years and was opened on the night of November 9, 1989.
Cold War: Topic 9.3
The rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, from the late 1940s until 1991. They fought it through alliances, nuclear weapons, and proxy wars. The two superpowers never fought each other directly.
Causation: Topic 9.3
Explaining why something happened. The end of the Cold War had several causes at once: American pressure, American diplomacy, Gorbachev, and the people of Eastern Europe. On the exam, show how they worked together.
Détente: Topic 9.3
The easing of U.S.-Soviet tension in the 1970s, through arms talks, trade, and summits. At his first news conference, Reagan called it a one-way street the Soviets had used for their own aims.
Evil empire: Topic 9.3
Reagan's name for the Soviet Union, in a speech to evangelical ministers in Orlando on March 8, 1983. The words he used were an evil empire. The phrase treated the Cold War as a moral contest and broke with détente.
Nuclear freeze: Topic 9.3
A campaign to halt the testing, building, and deployment of nuclear weapons by both the United States and the Soviet Union. Reagan opposed a freeze at the numbers then in place. He wanted cuts, after a buildup.
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI): Topic 9.3
Reagan's plan, announced March 23, 1983, to research a defense that could shoot nuclear missiles down in flight. He wanted those weapons made impotent and obsolete. Critics called it Star Wars. In the 1987 SDIO report, lasers and particle beams are a later phase. The first design was interceptor rockets.
Reagan Doctrine: Topic 9.3
U.S. money and weapons for rebels fighting governments the Soviet Union backed. Reagan called the rebels freedom fighters. The main cases were Afghanistan and Nicaragua. El Salvador was different: aid went to the government, against leftist guerrillas.
Sandinistas: Topic 9.3
The leftist movement that took power in Nicaragua in 1979 and governed through the 1980s. The Reagan administration tried to bring that government down.
Contras: Topic 9.3
Rebels fighting Nicaragua's Sandinista government. The United States armed and funded them, much of the time from bases in Honduras.
Boland Amendment: Topic 9.3
A law of October 12, 1984, Public Law 98-473, section 8066. During fiscal 1985, no funds available to the CIA, the Defense Department, or any other U.S. intelligence agency could be spent, directly or indirectly, to support military or paramilitary operations in Nicaragua.
Iran-Contra affair: Topic 9.3
A secret White House operation, 1985–86. Aides sold missiles to Iran to free American hostages in Lebanon, and diverted profits to the Nicaraguan Contras, which the Boland Amendment had forbidden.
Mikhail Gorbachev: Topic 9.3
General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party from March 1985. At 54 he was the youngest member of the Politburo. He answered a stalled economy with glasnost and perestroika, and he came to Reagan looking for a cut in weapons.
glasnost: Topic 9.3
Openness. Gorbachev's policy of letting Soviet citizens say, in print and in public, what was wrong: empty shelves, bad officials, the failures of the system.
perestroika: Topic 9.3
Restructuring. Gorbachev's attempt to loosen the state-planned economy and allow some market practices. The reforms cost money, so he needed to spend less on weapons.
Reykjavík summit: Topic 9.3
October 11–12, 1986, in Iceland. Reagan and Gorbachev talked through eliminating nuclear weapons. It broke down over SDI, the missile shield critics called Star Wars: Gorbachev wanted the research kept in the laboratory, and Reagan refused.
INF Treaty (1987): Topic 9.3
Signed December 8, 1987. It eliminated U.S. and Soviet ground-launched missiles with ranges from 500 to 5,500 kilometers, and let each side inspect the other. The first treaty to destroy a class of nuclear weapons.
trust, but verify: Topic 9.3
A Russian proverb Reagan kept quoting to Gorbachev. Make the deal, then check that the other side does it. The INF Treaty's inspectors were the check.
on-site inspection: Topic 9.3
Under the INF Treaty, each side sent inspectors onto the other's ground. Soviet teams watched missile motors burn in Texas. Americans stood at the gates of the Votkinsk missile factory from 1988 to 2001.
satellites: Topic 9.3
The Communist states of Eastern Europe, aligned with Moscow. At the UN in December 1988, Gorbachev said every nation was free to choose its own system.
Solidarity: Topic 9.3
An independent trade union founded in the Gdańsk shipyards in 1980. Poland's Communist government banned it under martial law in December 1981. It survived underground and, once legal again, won the June 1989 elections.
Lech Wałęsa: Topic 9.3
The electrician who led Solidarity. He became the face of Poland's challenge to Communist rule, from the 1980 strike through the 1989 elections.
Tiananmen Square: Topic 9.3
The Beijing square where students and workers camped in the spring of 1989, asking for political reform. On the night of June 3–4, China's army crushed the protests. Hundreds were killed. Some estimates run above a thousand.
Sinatra Doctrine: Topic 9.3
Moscow's 1989 name for letting Warsaw Pact countries choose their own governments. It replaced the Brezhnev Doctrine, the claim that Moscow could send troops to keep a Communist government in power.
START I (1991): Topic 9.3
The first treaty to cut U.S. and Soviet long-range nuclear weapons. Signed in Moscow on July 31, 1991, it limited each side to 1,600 delivery vehicles and 6,000 accountable warheads.
Russian Republic: Topic 9.3
The largest of the fifteen Soviet republics. By 1991 it had its own elected president and parliament, separate from the Soviet government Gorbachev led.
Boris Yeltsin: Topic 9.3
President of the Russian Republic. On August 19, 1991, he climbed onto a tank outside the Russian parliament and called for resistance to the coup against Gorbachev. The coup collapsed two days later.
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS): Topic 9.3
A loose confederation of former Soviet republics, formed as the Soviet Union ended. Russia, Belarus and Ukraine agreed to it at Belavezha on December 8, 1991. Eleven former republics joined on December 21.
New world order: Topic 9.3
George H. W. Bush's name, in a speech to Congress on September 11, 1990, for a world after the Cold War in which countries would act together against aggression, through the United Nations.
Persian Gulf War (1991): Topic 9.3
A U.S.-led war, authorized by the UN Security Council, that drove Iraq out of Kuwait. The air war began January 17, 1991. The ground war lasted about 100 hours. Iraq's dictator, Saddam Hussein, stayed in power. The U.S. name for the fighting was Operation Desert Storm.
Ethnic cleansing: Topic 9.3
The forced removal or killing of an ethnic or religious group, to take its land. The term spread with the wars in the former Yugoslavia. At Srebrenica in July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces murdered about 8,000 Muslim men and boys.
APEC: Topic 9.3
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, a forum of Pacific economies founded in 1989. At Bogor in 1994 its leaders pledged free and open trade in the region, by 2010 for industrialized economies and by 2020 for developing ones.
Powell Doctrine: Topic 9.3
Questions others drew from Colin Powell before sending troops: a real national interest, a clear goal, overwhelming force, public support, and a way out. Powell wrote that there is no fixed set of rules for the use of military force.
Homestead Strike: Topic 9.4
July 6, 1892. Steelworkers at the Homestead Works fought armed Pinkerton guards who came up the river to break their union. The workers lost, and the mill had no union until 1937.
Labor union: Topic 9.4
Workers organized to bargain with their employer over pay, hours, and conditions. Homestead's union was defeated in 1892. United Steelworkers Local 1397, chartered in 1937, had the mill under contract again by 1979.
Deindustrialization: Topic 9.4
The long decline of factory work. From the late 1970s, mills and plants closed, and manufacturing became a smaller share of American jobs.
Service sector: Topic 9.4
Work in stores, restaurants, hospitals, offices, and other businesses that sell a service. Most new American jobs after 1979 were here, and many paid less than factory work.
Personal computer: Topic 9.4
A computer built for one person, at a desk or at home, rather than a machine shared by a whole office. IBM's version, announced August 12, 1981, was the one other companies copied.
Internet and the World Wide Web: Topic 9.4
The internet is the network of computers, begun by the Defense Department in 1969. The World Wide Web is the linked pages on that network. Tim Berners-Lee opened the web to the public on August 6, 1991.
Digital mobile technology: Topic 9.4
Phones that carry a computer in a pocket. The first handheld cell phone went on sale in 1984. It cost $3,995 and talked for about half an hour. By June 2007 a phone could show a web page, a map, a photo, and a song.
Productivity: Topic 9.4
How much a worker produces in an hour. When productivity rises, the same hours of work turn out more goods, or the same goods take fewer hours.
Y2K: Topic 9.4
The year-2000 bug. Many older programs stored the year as two digits, so 00 could be read as 1900. Fixing that code, before January 1, 2000, sent piles of American programming work to firms in India.
Globalization: Topic 9.4
Economies linked across borders by trade, money, and communication. Here: NAFTA with Canada and Mexico (in force January 1, 1994), the World Trade Organization (January 1, 1995), China in the WTO (December 11, 2001), and digital lines that let U.S. firms hire and sell abroad.
Digital divide: Topic 9.4
The gap between people with computers and internet access and people without them. In the late 1990s it tracked income, schooling, race, and whether you lived in a rural place or a city.
Rust Belt: Topic 9.4
The Midwest and nearby regions of closed mills and factories. The phrase was in print by 1982. On September 17, 1984, in Cleveland, Walter Mondale called the industrial Midwest a rust bowl.
Union membership: Topic 9.4
The share of wage and salary workers who belong to a union. It fell from 20.1 percent in 1983 to 11.9 percent in 2010. In private companies it fell from 16.8 percent to 6.9 percent.
Minimum wage: Topic 9.4
The lowest hourly wage federal law sets for most covered jobs. It stayed at $5.15 from September 1, 1997 until July 24, 2007.
Real wages: Topic 9.4
Pay after prices. If prices rise as fast as the paycheck, real wages stay flat. Average real hourly pay for production and nonsupervisory workers was $9.27 in 1973 and $8.90 in 2010, in 1982–84 dollars.
Income inequality: Topic 9.4
How unevenly income is shared. The top 1 percent's share of pre-tax income, including capital gains, went from about 10 percent in 1980 to 23.5 percent in 2007, near the 1928 peak of 23.9 percent.
Gilded Age: Topic 9.4
The late 1800s, named in an 1873 novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, when a small share of Americans held a huge share of the income. By 2007 the top 1 percent's share was back near its 1928 peak.
Right-to-work law: Topic 9.5
A state law that bars a contract making workers join a union or pay dues. Many states in the South and West had these laws, which is one reason new factories there stayed non-union.
New Great Migration: Topic 9.5
Black Americans moving to the South after decades of leaving it. The South's first net gain came in the late 1970s. From 1995 to 2000 it gained about 350,000 Black residents from other parts of the country.
Reapportionment: Topic 9.5
After each census, the 435 House seats are divided among the states by population. Electoral votes move with those seats, so growth in the South and West shifted presidential elections too.
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965: Topic 9.5
Ended the 1920s national-origins quotas, which had favored northern and western Europe. Family members came first, then workers with needed skills. A Unit 8 law. This chart is what it did over fifty years.
Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA): Topic 9.5
The 1986 law. Legal status for about 2.7 million people already here, and fines for employers who knowingly hired workers without papers. False documents were easy to buy, so the hiring went on.
Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act: Topic 9.5
A 1996 law. It made deportation faster and easier, and it made fighting an order harder. It did not stop the jobs that drew people here. The official title is the one on the right-hand page.
DACA: Topic 9.5
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a Homeland Security memo on June 15, 2012. It let people brought here as children stay and work for a time. About 800,000 had received it by 2017. Congress did not make it a law.
Model minority: Topic 9.5
A stereotype. It treats Asian Americans as one successful group. Time's 1987 cover helped spread it. It hid refugees and other families who were struggling, and the differences among Asian American communities. The AP course description calls that article a racial generalization.
Border wall: Topic 9.5
A barrier on the U.S.–Mexico border. On August 31, 2016, a Phoenix crowd cheered 'Build that wall!' CBS News reported those words. The textbook dates the speech September 1 and prints 'Build the wall!'
al-Qaeda: Topic 9.6
Arabic for the base. A militant network led by Osama bin Laden. It carried out the attacks of September 11, 2001.
September 11 attacks: Topic 9.6
Coordinated attacks on the morning of September 11, 2001, by nineteen al-Qaeda hijackers in four airliners. They struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. A fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania. 2,977 people were killed.
Civil liberties: Topic 9.6
Protections for privacy, speech, and freedom from unreasonable search. After September 11, new powers at home started a long argument over security and those rights.
Osama bin Laden: Topic 9.6
Leader of al-Qaeda, and a son of a wealthy Saudi construction family. He declared war on the United States, naming U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, U.S. support for Israel, and sanctions on Iraq.
Asymmetric warfare: Topic 9.6
A small group using surprise and cheap weapons against a far stronger power.
Taliban: Topic 9.6
The religious movement that ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, and gave Osama bin Laden a base.
AUMF: Topic 9.6
Authorization for Use of Military Force. Passed September 14, 2001. Congress let the president use all necessary and appropriate force against those who planned the September 11 attacks, or harbored them.
war on terror: Topic 9.6
Bush's name for a worldwide campaign against al-Qaeda and those who sheltered it. He used it in his address to Congress on September 20, 2001.
Article 5: Topic 9.6
NATO's promise that an armed attack on one member is an attack on all of them. On September 12, 2001, the allies agreed to invoke it for the first time if the attacks had come from abroad. They confirmed that on October 2. The October 7 strikes were American and British.
Northern Alliance: Topic 9.6
Afghan forces, strongest in the northeast, who had fought the Taliban through the late 1990s. In the fall of 2001 they advanced with American bombing and took the cities, Kabul among them.
Operation Enduring Freedom: Topic 9.6
The U.S. name for the war in Afghanistan that began on October 7, 2001. The aims were to destroy al-Qaeda and to drive the Taliban from power. The fighting continued, under later names, until 2021.
Hamid Karzai: Topic 9.6
The Afghan leader the United States backed to head a new government after the Taliban left Kabul. He took office on December 22, 2001.
Hate crime: Topic 9.6
A crime motivated by bias against a person's race, religion, ethnicity, or national origin. In the FBI's count, anti-Islamic incidents went from 28 in 2000 to 481 in 2001.
Islamophobia: Topic 9.6
Fear and hostility directed at Muslims, or at people taken to be Muslim. After September 11 that reached Sikhs, Arabs, and South Asians too.
Racial profiling: Topic 9.6
Picking out a person for extra checking because of race, religion, or appearance, rather than evidence about that person.
Executive Order 9066: Topic 9.6
Franklin Roosevelt's order of February 19, 1942, used to force about 120,000 Japanese Americans, most of them citizens, from the West Coast into government camps.
USA PATRIOT Act: Topic 9.6
The 2001 law, Public Law 107-56, that widened surveillance and let criminal and intelligence investigators share what they knew. The Senate passed it 98–1. One section was later used to collect Americans' phone records in bulk.
Department of Homeland Security: Topic 9.6
A cabinet department created in 2002 by combining 22 agencies, about 170,000 employees, including the Secret Service, the Coast Guard, and customs. The FBI and the CIA were left out.
Guantánamo: Topic 9.6
The U.S. naval base in Cuba where the military held men captured in the war on terror, about 780 since January 2002, many of them without charges and outside the criminal courts.
Habeas corpus: Topic 9.6
The right to ask a federal court whether your imprisonment is lawful. In Boumediene v. Bush (2008) the Supreme Court held that Guantánamo detainees have that right.
Bush Doctrine: Topic 9.6
The claim, in the September 2002 National Security Strategy, that the United States may strike first, before an enemy attacks, if it judges the threat is forming. Bush argued that Cold War containment was not enough against terrorists and against states seeking the worst weapons.
weapons of mass destruction: Topic 9.6
Nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. Often shortened to WMD. Before the 2003 invasion, the public case was that Iraq still had chemical or biological weapons, or was close to a nuclear one. The search after the invasion found no stockpiles.
Operation Iraqi Freedom: Topic 9.6
The U.S. name for the war that began with the invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003. British, Australian, and Polish forces took part in the invasion. Baghdad fell on April 9. The fighting went on for years after that.
surge: Topic 9.6
President Bush's January 2007 decision to send more American troops to Iraq to cut the sectarian killing. The speech pledged more than 20,000. With support units, the added force came to about 30,000. By late 2008, deaths in Iraq had fallen.
ISIS: Topic 9.6
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, also called ISIL. It grew out of the Iraq war, and in 2014 it seized Mosul and a wide stretch of Iraq and Syria. The United States answered that summer with airstrikes, and later with trainers.
subprime mortgage: Topic 9.6
A home loan to a borrower with weaker credit, usually at a higher rate that can rise later. In these years many required no money down, and some never checked the borrower's income.
securitization: Topic 9.6
Banks pool thousands of loans into one bond, slice it so the top slices are paid first, and sell the slices to investors. The risk moves off the original lender's books.
TARP: Topic 9.6
Troubled Asset Relief Program. The 2008 law that let the Treasury use up to $700 billion to steady banks and, later, carmakers.
Great Recession: Topic 9.6
The sharp downturn after the 2008 financial crisis, the worst since the Great Depression. Unemployment hit 10 percent in October 2009. The National Bureau of Economic Research dates the recession from December 2007 to June 2009.
Dodd-Frank Act: Topic 9.6
The 2010 law that tightened rules on banks and created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to oversee mortgages, credit cards, and other loans to households. It was written to prevent another bailout of firms called too big to fail.
Hurricane Katrina: Topic 9.6
The August 2005 hurricane that flooded New Orleans after the levees failed. More than 1,800 people died. Most of those who could not leave were poor and Black, and federal help was slow.
Kyoto Protocol: Topic 9.6
A 1997 treaty to cut greenhouse gases. It set targets for developed countries and not for China or India. The United States signed it and never ratified it. Bush rejected it in 2001. Textbooks also call it the Kyoto Accord.
Hydraulic fracturing: Topic 9.6
Drilling sideways into shale and cracking the rock with high-pressure fluid, to release oil and gas. People call it fracking.
Paris Agreement: Topic 9.6
The 2015 climate agreement. Each country sets its own plan to cut greenhouse gases. The United States joined, later left, rejoined, and left again in January 2026.
flight to safety: Topic 9.6
When a panic hits, investors sell risky assets and buy the safest ones they can find. In late 2008 that meant U.S. Treasury bills, and the yield fell to zero.
superpower: Topic 9.6
A country with the leading economy and the leading military. In 2010 the United States still had both: the largest economy, and more military spending than the next ten countries combined.
American exceptionalism: Topic 9.6
The claim that the United States is unlike other nations and has a special duty to lead. The course uses Condoleezza Rice's 2012 convention speech as the example. She told the delegates America could not be reluctant to lead.
2001 AUMF: Topic 9.6
Public Law 107-40, passed in September 2001. Sixty words, and no end date. It lets the president use force against those he finds were behind the September 11 attacks, or who harbored them. Presidents of both parties have relied on it since.
Decennial census: Topic 9.7
The count of every person, taken every ten years. Article I, Section 2 requires it so seats in the House can be divided by population.
Multiracial (Census 2000): Topic 9.7
For the first time, the census let people report more than one race. The federal government's 1997 standards required the change.
Self-identification (1960): Topic 9.7
From the 1960 census on, people usually marked their own race. Through 1950, a census taker commonly decided it and wrote it down.
Keynote address: Topic 9.7
The main speech on a convention's early nights. It sets the party's theme for voters watching at home.
National identity: Topic 9.7
Who Americans think they are: one people, or many separate ones. Topic 9.7 asks which changes after 1980 did the most to remake that.
Bush v. Gore: Topic 9.7
The Supreme Court case of December 12, 2000. By a 5–4 vote it stopped Florida's recount. George W. Bush's lead of 537 votes stood, and he became president.
Sourcing: Topic 9.7
Read a source for its situation, its audience, its purpose, and its point of view before you use it as evidence. The exam calls that HIPP.
Reaganomics: Topic 9.7
Tax cuts, deregulation and cuts to domestic spending, on the theory that producers would then invest and the economy would grow. Also called supply-side economics.
Corroborate: Topic 9.7
Support a claim with evidence that agrees with it.
Qualify: Topic 9.7
Limit a claim: show when, where or for whom it stops being true.
Modify: Topic 9.7
Rewrite a claim so it fits the evidence.
Relative significance: Topic 9.7
Which cause or change mattered most, and why it mattered more than the others.
Quota laws (1921, 1924): Topic 9.7
The 1921 law capped each nationality at 3 percent of the foreign-born from that country in the 1910 census. The 1924 law used 2 percent of the 1890 count, which favored northern and western Europe.
Majority-minority projection: Topic 9.7
A forecast of the year no single group is more than half the population. This 2015 report put that year at 2044. Everyone except non-Hispanic people who marked White alone counted on the other side.
Polarization: Topic 9.7
The two parties moving apart, so fewer members of either overlap with the other.
E pluribus unum: Topic 9.7
Latin for 'out of many, one.' The motto on the Great Seal. Pierre Eugène du Simitière proposed it for the seal in 1776. Congress adopted the seal, motto and all, on June 20, 1782. In 1776 the many were the states.
Great Seal: Topic 9.7
The official seal of the United States, adopted by Congress on June 20, 1782. The 1776 committee set six European emblems on the shield and E pluribus unum on the scroll. The eagle came in the final design.

Unit 9 Review: 1980–Present

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The exam

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