Starting in the mid-1990s, he began an ideological evolution as he became much more conservative in his domestic policy, advocating for and signing the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, the State Children's Health Insurance Program and financial deregulation measures.

[6] Virginia traveled to New Orleans to study nursing soon after Bill was born, leaving him in Hope with her parents Eldridge and Edith Cassidy, who owned and ran a small grocery store.

[26][29] British writer and feminist Sara Maitland said of Clinton, "I remember Bill and Frank Aller taking me to a pub in Walton Street in the summer term of 1969 and talking to me about the Vietnam War.

[30] While Clinton was president in 1994, he received an honorary Doctor of Civil Law degree and a fellowship from the University of Oxford, specifically for being "a doughty and tireless champion of the cause of world peace", having "a powerful collaborator in his wife", and for winning "general applause for his achievement of resolving the gridlock that prevented an agreed budget".

[63] To draw attention to his stance on capital punishment, Clinton flew home to Arkansas mid-campaign in 1992, in order to affirm in person that the controversial execution of Ricky Ray Rector would go forward as scheduled.

[14] During the campaign, questions of conflict of interest regarding state business and the politically powerful Rose Law Firm, at which Hillary Rodham Clinton was a partner, arose.

[110] Two days after taking office, on January 22, 1993—the 20th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade—Clinton reversed restrictions on domestic and international family planning programs that had been imposed by Reagan and Bush.

[116] President Clinton's attorney general Janet Reno authorized the FBI's use of armored vehicles to deploy tear gas into the buildings of the Branch Davidian community near Waco, Texas, in hopes of ending a 51 day siege.

[122] The policy was developed as a compromise after Clinton's proposal to allow gays to serve openly in the military met staunch opposition from prominent Congressional Republicans and Democrats, including senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Sam Nunn (D-GA).

Clinton's defenders argued that an executive order might have prompted the Senate to write the exclusion of gays into law, potentially making it harder to integrate the military in the future.

During Clinton's re-election campaign he said, "My 1994 crime bill expanded the death penalty for drug kingpins, murderers of federal law enforcement officers, and nearly 60 additional categories of violent felons.

[138] Paul Yandura, speaking for the White House gay and lesbian liaison office, said Clinton's signing DOMA "was a political decision that they made at the time of a re-election".

In defense of his actions, Clinton has said that DOMA was intended to "head off an attempt to send a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage to the states", a possibility he described as highly likely in the context of a "very reactionary Congress".

[142] In a July 2, 2011, editorial The New York Times opined, "The Defense of Marriage Act was enacted in 1996 as an election-year wedge issue, signed by President Bill Clinton in one of his worst policy moments.

Craig Livingstone, head of the White House Office of Personnel Security, improperly requested, and received from the FBI, background report files without asking permission of the subject individuals; many of these were employees of former Republican administrations.

[203] On January 19, 2001, Clinton's law license was suspended for five years after he acknowledged to an Arkansas circuit court he had engaged in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice in the Jones case.

[58][210] Controversy surrounded Marc Rich and allegations that Hillary Clinton's brother, Hugh Rodham, accepted payments in return for influencing the president's decision-making regarding the pardons.

Though initially involved to assist humanitarian efforts, the Clinton administration shifted the objectives set out in the mission and began pursuing a policy of attempting to neutralize Somali warlords.

[234] Despite unionist criticism, Clinton used his visit as a way to negotiate an end to the violent conflict, playing a key role in the peace talks that produced the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

[260][261] Prior to the bombing campaign on March 24, 1999, estimates showed that the number of civilians killed in the over year long conflict in Kosovo had been approximately 1,800, with critics asserting that little or no evidence existed of genocide.

[262][263] In a post-war inquiry, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe noted "the patterns of the expulsions and the vast increase in lootings, killings, rape, kidnappings and pillage once the NATO air war began on March 24.

[58] Following another attempt in December 2000 at Bolling Air Force Base, in which the president offered the Clinton Parameters, the situation broke down completely after the end of the Taba Summit and with the start of the Second Intifada.

[324] However, former DNC interim chair Donna Brazile previously urged Clinton in November 2017 to campaign during the 2018 midterm elections, in spite of New York U.S. senator Kirsten Gillibrand's recent criticism of the Lewinsky scandal.

While Hillary Clinton was in South Korea, she and Cheryl Mills worked to convince SAE-A, a large apparel subcontractor, to invest in Haiti despite the company's deep concerns about plans to raise the minimum wage.

[370] In 2020, Clinton again served as a member of the United States Electoral College from New York, casting his vote for the successful Democratic ticket of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Clinton later gave a critically acclaimed speech at the 2024 DNC, where he emphasized the Democratic Party's record on job creation and Harris' career achievements as a prosecutor, Senator, and Vice President.

At a stop in Michigan, Clinton caused a backlash by criticizing Arab and Muslim Americans hesitant to support Harris due to her pro-Israeli position, stating Israel had been "forced" to kill civilians during its war with Hamas.

[375] His comments led the Institute for Middle East Understanding to state, "Bill Clinton’s racist and ahistorical remarks were meant to justify the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land.

[376] He expanded on his comments in an interview with CNN shortly after, stating that he was trying to appeal to both sides of the issue and highlighted his work with Arafat and Rabin in the Oslo Occords, although his response still received sharp condemnation from Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian-Americans.

[474] In 2011, Haitian president Michel Martelly awarded Clinton with the National Order of Honour and Merit to the rank of Grand Cross "for his various initiatives in Haiti and especially his high contribution to the reconstruction of the country after the earthquake of January 12, 2010".