In 2006, criticism over the handling of the disastrous Hurricane Katrina (which struck the Gulf Coast region in 2005), political scandals, and the growing unpopularity of the Iraq War helped the Democrats gain control of Congress.

The Internet and related technologies made their first broad penetrations into the economy, prompting a Wall Street technology-driven bubble, which Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan described in 1996 as "irrational exuberance".

[3] Localized conflicts such as those in Haiti and the Balkans prompted President Bill Clinton to send in U.S. troops as peacekeepers, reviving the Cold-War-era controversy about whether policing the rest of the world was a proper U.S. role.

Immigration, mainly from Latin America and Asia, swelled during the 1990s, laying the groundwork for great changes in the demographic makeup of the U.S. population in coming decades, such as Hispanics replacing African-Americans as the largest minority.

The United States began to recover from the post-9/11 recession in 2003, but the robustness of the market (7% GDP growth), combined with the unemployment rate (above 6%), led some economists and politicians to refer to the situation as a "jobless recovery".

Although in real terms oil prices fell back to pre-1973 levels through the 1980s, resulting in a windfall for the oil-consuming nations (especially North America, Western Europe, and Japan), the vast reserves of the leading Middle East producers guaranteed the region its strategic importance.

[37] The third hijacked plane, American Airlines Flight 77, was crashed into the Pentagon (the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense) in Arlington County, Virginia, demolishing a section of the outer southwest facing wall.

The objective of the 2001 invasion, known as Operation Enduring Freedom, was to remove the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban lead government from power in Afghanistan, and to capture top level al-Qaeda leaders, including its founder Osama bin Laden.

[76] The International Security Assistance Force ceased combat operations and was disbanded in December 2014, with a small number of troops remaining behind in an advisory role as part of ISAF's successor organization, the Resolute Support Mission.

[79] Some important allies of the U.S., including India, Japan, Turkey, New Zealand, France, Germany, and Canada, did not believe that the evidence for the President's accusations was well-founded enough to justify a full-scale invasion, especially as military personnel were still needed in Afghanistan.

After six weeks of combat between the coalition and the Iraqi army, the invading forces had secured control of many key regions; Hussein had fled his palace, his regime clearly over; on May 1, President Bush declared, under a sign reading "mission accomplished", that major ground operations were at an end.

[85] Two people were killed in the mid-1990s and an exhaustive and expensive investigation by the FBI coupled with intense national media interest in the story resulted in the identification and arrest of the perpetrator Theodore Kaczynski, who was sentenced to life in prison.

On September 16, 2013, another mass murder on a US military base surpassed the incident when a former navy reservist fired a shotgun at the Washington Navy Yard Shooting, killing 12 civilian contractors and injured four more at the headquarters of the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) in Southeast Washington, D.C. On January 8, 2011, U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords was the target of an assassination attempt, when a gunman went on a shooting spree, critically injuring Giffords, killing federal judge John Roll and five other people, and wounding 14 others.

[123] On July 20, 2012, a man shot 70 people (up to that time, the highest number of victims of any mass shooting in American history) at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, killing 12 and injuring 58 others.

The storm was known for many controversies including the sluggish federal response, which may have impacted President George H. W. Bush's image on domestic issues, as well as poor housing construction which may have led to such high levels of destruction.

The storm was particularly crippling to the Southern United States, where places like Birmingham, Alabama received one-and-a-half feet of snow and record low temperatures, highly unusual for the region.

Shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the second-deadliest U.S. aviation incident occurred when American Airlines Flight 587 crashed in Queens, New York, en route to the Dominican Republic, on November 12, 2001, due to overuse of rudder controls by the pilot to counteract turbulence, killing 265 (including 5 on the ground).

[162] Three days later, on February 20, 100 people perished and over 200 were injured in The Station nightclub fire in West Warwick, Rhode Island, when pyrotechnics ignited flammable sound-proofing during a performance by the band Great White.

As much as two trillion dollars worth of natural gas is potentially available in the Marcellus Formation deposits located in the historic 19th-century oil fields in Appalachia, stretching from West Virginia through Pennsylvania into western New York.

Once in power, House Republicans, led by Newt Gingrich, faced the difficulty of learning to govern after 40 years as the minority party while simultaneously pursuing their "Contract with America", which they unveiled on the steps of Congress on September 27, 1994.

[192] In 2007, while US unemployment dropped to its lowest level since the year 2000, the housing bubble reached its peak and economic growth slowed down, and by December 2007, the United States entered the severe long-lasting Great Recession.

They rescued many of the large financial corporations from bankruptcy – with the exception of Lehman Brothers, which went bankrupt – and took government control of insurance giant AIG, mortgage banks Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and both General Motors and Chrysler.

[198] In October 2008, Bush sought, and Congress passed, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (commonly referred to as the "bank bailout") with the goal of protecting the US financial system from complete collapse in the wake of the recession, which brought significant declines in the stock market.

[205] A domestic initiative passed by the 111th Congress and signed into law by President Obama was the Affordable Care Act, an important statute guaranteeing comprehensive medical coverage to all Americans, regardless of age, sex, pre-existing health conditions or ability to pay.

The US also maintained ongoing talks, led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, with North Korea over its nuclear weapons program, as well as with Israel and the Palestinian Authority over a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

In May 2011, President Obama announced in a televised speech to the nation that al-Qaeda leader and culprit behind many deadly acts of terrorism (including the September 11 attacks) Osama bin Laden was killed by US forces at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Although the US embargo remains in effect and ordinary tourism by Americans is still prohibited, the United States will ease travel restrictions, release three Cuban spies, and open an embassy in Havana.

And with Mr. Obama delivering his address the day after Martin Luther King's Birthday, it's also worth remembering that the country's racial divides remain deep, with African-Americans still far behind other Americans by many measures.On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court ruled, 5–4, in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges that same-sex marriage was a constitutionally protected right under the 14th Amendment.

[221] In response to high-profile incidents such as the fatal shootings of Michael Brown, Aiyana Jones, Trayvon Martin, Laquan McDonald, Tamir Rice, and Walter Scott, and the death of Freddie Gray from a spinal-cord injury sustained in police custody, academics[217] and journalists[224] have denounced claims that America is post-racial.

[239][240][241] In August 2014, Darren Wilson, a white policeman in Ferguson, Missouri shot and killed Michael Brown, an 18-year-old unarmed black man who had robbed a nearby convenience store fifteen minutes earlier.