8. Lessons from the Modern Era: Second Obama Administration — Social & Constitutional Debates
Voting Rights — Who Must Get Permission to Change Election Rules? (2013)
In 2008, Ernest Montgomery lost his seat on the city council of Calera, Alabama. Before the election, the city had redrawn its voting map. Black voters had made up nearly 70 percent of Montgomery’s district under the old boundaries and only 29 percent under the new ones. Calera had used the map without securing the federal approval required by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. After the Justice Department intervened, the city held another election under a new plan. Montgomery won. Five years later, a challenge from Shelby County, where Calera is located, brought that power of federal review before the Supreme Court.
Why Some Places Needed Permission
For years, Black citizens who defeated an unfair voting rule in court could face a new obstacle by the next election. Congress changed the order of events in 1965. States and communities covered by the law had to show that a proposed change would protect voters from racial discrimination before putting it into effect. This process, called preclearance, applied even to decisions as ordinary as moving a polling place. To decide which places needed supervision, Congress used a formula based on past voting tests and low voter registration or turnout. Shelby County challenged the continued use of that decades-old formula.
Five Justices, Four Dissenters, and an Umbrella
On June 25, 2013, the Court ruled 5–4 in Shelby County v. Holder. Chief Justice John Roberts pointed to how much voter registration and turnout had changed. The majority concluded that Congress needed current evidence to justify singling out particular states and counties. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg saw a different lesson in the same progress. She likened dropping the safeguard to “throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” The ruling struck down the coverage formula, ending automatic advance review for the places it identified. Voters nationwide could still challenge discriminatory rules in court, though an election could take place while a case was being fought.
Why Was Obama’s Name on Project Signs?
A separate controversy over federal power and taxpayer money arose during Obama’s first term. A suggested sign for federally funded housing projects included the words “Barack Obama, President.” Representative Darrell Issa objected that taxpayers were paying for political advertising. The administration said signs could show communities where recovery money went and advised against unreasonable expense. A 2010 inspector general’s review found that two housing programs initially required signs and that later department-wide guidance encouraged them. The evidence supports a narrower claim than putting Obama’s name on every project. His name appeared on a suggested design, and critics questioned why taxpayers should pay to display it.
Benghazi Hearings: How Does Congress Investigate a President’s Administration?
On the morning of October 22, 2015, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raised her right hand and swore to tell the truth. By the time the hearing ended that evening, roughly eleven hours had passed, including breaks. One question cut to the heart of the proceedings. American personnel in Libya had asked for stronger protection before the September 11–12, 2012, attacks that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods, and Glen Doherty. How far up the chain of command had those warnings traveled?
Following a Warning Through Washington
In May 2014, the House of Representatives created a temporary committee to investigate the attacks and the Obama administration’s response. Republican Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina chaired it. The committee could request records, interview witnesses behind closed doors, and issue a subpoena, a legal order requiring someone to testify or produce documents. Most of this work took place away from the cameras. An email could establish when a warning was sent. To learn who read it, what decision followed, and why, investigators had to compare the message with other records and question the people involved.
Which Messages Reached the Secretary?
At the public hearing, lawmakers placed two pieces of evidence side by side. Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime Clinton acquaintance, had sent reports about Libya directly to her personal email account. Meanwhile, requests for additional security had gone through State Department channels. Why, Republicans asked, could an acquaintance reach the secretary when diplomats seeking protection could not? Clinton testified that the security requests had never reached her and that trained officials handled such decisions. She also accepted responsibility for what happened during her tenure. Students watching that exchange could hear two questions with different answers. Who made a particular security decision? What responsibility did the head of the department bear for the system that produced it?
Was the Investigation Worth $7 Million?
By June 2016, committee Democrats put the cost of the inquiry at about $7 million. They argued that earlier investigations had already exposed grave security failures and accused Republicans of spending public money to damage Clinton during her presidential campaign. Republicans pointed to witnesses previous investigators had never interviewed and to a more detailed account of the military response. Their report described hours passing between orders to prepare forces and the departure of those forces. Democrats concluded that the forces available that night could not have reached Benghazi in time to save the four Americans. Readers could examine the timeline for themselves and ask which decisions might realistically have changed it.
Whose Name Was on the Project Signs?
An earlier spending dispute shows how Congress could investigate even an object beside a highway. After President Obama signed the 2009 Recovery Act, signs appeared at federally funded construction sites. Critics argued that taxpayers were buying publicity for the president. Obama said the signs would help Americans see where their money went. The federal highway design called for the Recovery Act emblem and the program’s name. Obama’s personal name was never a requirement for every project. In 2010, a congressional inquiry prompted inspectors general to examine the signs, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s watchdog reported that the agency did not know their total cost. Like the Benghazi hearings, that inquiry left readers with a reason to look closely at the evidence. The sign itself could settle what motorists saw. Finding out what taxpayers paid required a different record altogether.
The $400 Million Iran Payment — Settlement, Leverage, or Ransom? (2016)
On January 17, 2016, a plane left Tehran carrying three Americans who had been imprisoned in Iran. Among them were Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati, and pastor Saeed Abedini. Before the plane took off, Rezaian’s wife and mother had been separated from the departing group, delaying the flight. American officials wanted confirmation that the passengers were safely on their way. They also controlled something Iran wanted: $400 million in cash. When Americans later learned that their government had held the payment until the plane departed, a decades-old financial dispute became a question about what it had taken to bring three men home.
The Money Was Older Than the Hostage Crisis
To trace the $400 million, investigators had to go back to the 1970s, when Iran was ruled by the shah and bought military equipment from the United States. Iran deposited money in an American trust fund to pay for those purchases. After the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the arms relationship collapsed, leaving $400 million in the account. Iran pursued its claim before an international tribunal in The Hague, which U.S. Federal Law does not recognize. By 2016, decades of disputed interest were also at stake. The Obama administration agreed to return the original $400 million and pay approximately $1.3 billion in interest. Secretary of State John Kerry argued that settling the claim spared American taxpayers the risk of a much larger award. The cash delivered that January was the first installment of the $1.7 billion.
What Washington Acknowledged
President Barack Obama announced the settlement in January. A crucial detail became public months later. On August 18, State Department spokesman John Kirby acknowledged that American officials had deliberately held back the cash until they knew the Americans’ plane had left Tehran. He said separate teams had negotiated the financial settlement and the prisoner exchange. Once both agreements were ready, however, officials saw a reason to control the order of events. If they handed over the money first and the plane remained on the ground, they would have given up leverage while American families were still waiting.
Why Critics Called It Ransom
Congressional critics argued that the timing could teach Iran a dangerous lesson. Even if Iran had a valid financial claim in the Hague, a foreign body with different rules than the United States, many that go against the laws of the country, its leaders might conclude that imprisoning Americans helped them collect. The administration answered that Iran had pursued the money for decades and that Washington had used control over its delivery to protect the departing prisoners. The historical record supports two conclusions. The arms dispute explains why the United States agreed to pay $400 million, and the prisoners’ departure explains when officials released it. What the timing alone cannot establish is whether Iran would have allowed that plane to leave without the prospect of payment. That unanswered question was at the heart of the ransom dispute.
Obama’s Nuclear Deal with Iran — Did a Bargain Contain the Seeds of Its Failure?
On July 14, 2015, Iran, the United States, and five other world powers announced a nuclear agreement in Vienna. President Barack Obama asked Americans to consider how much warning the world would have if Iran decided to produce enough nuclear material for one bomb. His administration estimated that Iran could do so in just two or three months. The deal aimed to stretch that time to at least a year during its first decade, giving inspectors time to detect a violation and governments time to respond. Critics watched a different clock. They wanted to know what Iran could do once the restrictions began to expire.
What Iran Could Keep
Iran agreed to remove thousands of centrifuges, the machines that enrich uranium, but could continue enriching with 5,060 older machines at its Natanz facility for ten years. For fifteen years, it agreed to keep enrichment at or below 3.67 percent, far below weapons grade, and to limit its stockpile. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency could monitor the machines and measure the material. Critics called the expiration dates “sunset clauses.” Iran would keep its trained scientists, its knowledge, a working enrichment facility, and they would reject foreign bodies from inspecting most of their nuclear sites, only opening the doors to some inspections. Years later, it could expand its capacity as restrictions expired while still honoring the bargain. Iran’s obligation to forgo nuclear weapons would remain, but the time other countries had to detect and stop a dash for bomb material could shrink.
Whose Money Was Released?
On January 16, 2016, international inspectors verified that Iran had completed the initial nuclear steps required for sanctions relief. That relief restored access to Iranian funds held abroad, including revenue from oil sales. The U.S. Treasury estimated that Iran’s central bank held about $100 billion in assets worldwide, of which roughly $50 billion was readily usable. The money already belonged to Iran. What changed was Tehran’s ability to spend it. Critics worried that greater access to cash could free up resources for armed groups Iran supported. Since money is fungible they may use money that was used to fund the services for their citizens and use the money that was visible to fund that, which funneling funds to their proxy terrorist groups around the world. To Obama’s negotiators, access to that money was precisely what had persuaded Iran to “dismantle” equipment and surrender most of its known enriched uranium.
Remember the Plane Carrying $400+ Million
A separate payment announced the same weekend added to the controversy. Before the 1979 revolution, Iran had deposited money with the United States to buy military equipment. A dispute over the undelivered equipment lasted decades. Washington agreed to return $400 million in principal and pay approximately $1.3 billion in interest. The $400 million installment went to Iran in foreign banknotes. The State Department later acknowledged that it held up delivery until a plane carrying freed Americans had left Tehran. That timing fueled accusations of ransom. The arms settlement explains why money changed hands. The nuclear agreement explains why Iran regained access to billions already held in its own overseas accounts.
The Weakness That Mattered First
The first major break came long before the nuclear deadlines expired. Obama had entered the deal as a political commitment without securing Senate approval for a treaty. On May 8, 2018, President Donald Trump withdrew the United States and announced that American sanctions would return. Inspectors were still verifying Iran’s principal enrichment limits at the time. In July 2019, they confirmed that Iran had exceeded the agreement’s stockpile and enrichment caps. Critics had predicted that a future Iran could outlast the restrictions. What gave way first was the political bargain that kept them in force: one American president could offer sanctions relief in exchange for nuclear limits, but he could not promise that the next president would keep offering it.
Ferguson and Black Lives Matter: Why Did One City Draw National Protests?
For about four hours on August 9, 2014, Michael Brown’s body lay on Canfield Drive in Ferguson, Missouri. The unarmed Black 18-year-old had been shot and killed by Darren Wilson, a white police officer. As investigators worked, neighbors gathered outside the apartment buildings along the street. Some took photographs and shared what they saw online. Accounts of the shooting conflicted, but the long wait was something residents could see for themselves. By evening, people far beyond this St. Louis suburb were asking the same questions as the neighbors. What had happened between Brown and Wilson, and who would give the public an account it could trust?
How a Protest Traveled
Local residents led marches and vigils. As television crews arrived, viewers saw protesters with raised hands facing officers in tactical gear. Some nights brought looting and fires, and police used tear gas. By then, organizers across the country had a way to find one another. Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi had launched Black Lives Matter in 2013 after George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Florida. Over Labor Day weekend in 2014, organizers traveled to Ferguson to join residents. Participants from 18 cities went home and helped build local chapters. People who had met on a Missouri street could now organize a march hundreds of miles away.
One Shooting, Two Federal Investigations
On November 24, 2014, news that a Missouri grand jury had declined to indict Wilson set off another wave of demonstrations. Federal investigators continued their own work. On March 4, 2015, the Justice Department reported that physical evidence and credible witness accounts did not support the widely repeated claim that Brown was standing still with his hands raised in surrender when Wilson fired the fatal shots. Prosecutors concluded they could not disprove Wilson’s account of self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt and declined to charge him. That same day, a second federal team released its findings about what happened during everyday encounters with Ferguson police and in the city’s courtroom.
What Two Parking Tickets Revealed
One woman’s court record helped explain why distrust ran so deep. In 2007, she received two parking tickets totaling $151 before fees. Missed court dates and payments brought new charges and arrests. Seven years later, she had paid $550 and still owed $541. Investigators found that city officials pressed the police department to generate revenue and that enforcement fell disproportionately on Black residents. From 2012 to 2014, Black people accounted for 67 percent of Ferguson’s population and 93 percent of its police arrests. For residents who had spent years raising concerns about tickets, warrants, and jail time, the protests offered a chance to have those experiences heard across the country.
Did Taxpayers Pay to Put Obama’s Name on Projects?
A separate controversy over public money concerned signs for construction projects funded by President Barack Obama’s 2009 Recovery Act. Critics called the signs wasteful publicity. Obama said they showed taxpayers where their money was going. The standard federal highway sign displayed the recovery program’s name and emblem, and federal guidance did not require Obama’s personal name on every project. In Ferguson, residents raised a different question about public money, one that reached directly into their homes. When city officials counted on traffic tickets to balance the budget, could a driver trust that the officer pulling them over was thinking first about safety?
The HealthCare.gov Breakdown — Who Knew the Website Might Fail?
On October 1, 2013, Americans went to HealthCare.gov to answer a practical question: could their families afford health insurance for the coming year? The new federal marketplace was supposed to let people compare plans, find out whether they qualified for financial help, and enroll. Many visitors could barely get through the front door. Account creation failed, pages stalled, and error messages appeared before shoppers could see their choices. Heavy traffic made the trouble worse. Yet an investigation later uncovered a more surprising detail. Federal officials had received 18 formal warnings about the project, and no single person had received all 18.
A Readiness Check Slips Six Months
Responsibility for building the marketplace rested with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, known as CMS. Different contractors built pieces that had to work together every time someone applied. One system might accept a family’s information, another check eligibility, and another send enrollment details to an insurer. A successful demonstration of any one piece told officials little about whether a family could complete the whole trip. CMS had scheduled a readiness review for March 2013. It moved that review to September, leaving only weeks to correct problems. The Government Accountability Office later found that CMS launched the marketplace without verifying that it met performance requirements.
Who Could Have Called a Halt?
Contractors and agency employees knew about missed deadlines and unfinished work. What investigators could not find was a project leader who had gathered those warnings, seen the condition of the entire system, and taken responsibility for deciding what could safely open. Officials cut features during the final weeks, but removing one piece sometimes disrupted another. According to the Health and Human Services inspector general’s review, officials never discussed postponing the launch, even though testing was incomplete and the site lacked capacity for the traffic they already expected. October 1 arrived exactly on schedule. The evidence needed to declare the marketplace ready never did.
What Changed in the Repair Room
About three weeks after launch, government employees, contractors, and technical specialists recruited by the White House began working together through a command center. A failure that crossed two contractors’ systems could now be examined by the people responsible for both. The teams concentrated on the tasks shoppers needed most, and the site worked substantially better by December. Roughly 5.4 million people selected plans through the federal marketplace during its first enrollment period. That recovery made the lesson of opening day sharper. Officials had spent months receiving reports about individual pieces. What families needed someone to test was the one journey that mattered to them, from opening an account to choosing a health plan.
The Planned Parenthood Videos — What Did the Recordings Actually Establish?
In July 2015, Americans could watch a conversation that one person at the table had never expected to become public. Activists with the Center for Medical Progress, posing as representatives of a tissue procurement company, had secretly recorded Dr. Deborah Nucatola, a senior Planned Parenthood physician. Over lunch, she discussed how organs, including livers, could be recovered intact after an abortion. When asked about payment, she estimated $30 to $100 per specimen, depending on the facility and the work involved. The activists said the exchange exposed a trade in the remains of aborted children. In the longer recording, Nucatola also described clinics seeking to cover their costs. The camera had captured a dollar figure. To learn whether anyone had earned a profit, investigators would have to follow the money.
What Did $45 Pay For?
Congress obtained a more concrete figure than the estimate at lunch. The head of one procurement company confirmed that a Planned Parenthood affiliate had set a fee of $45 per specimen for its services. Federal law prohibited transferring human fetal tissue for valuable consideration in interstate commerce, while allowing reasonable payments for specified work such as processing, preservation, storage, and transportation. That distinction made the clinic’s expenses crucial. Who collected and prepared the tissue? Whose employees did the work? If a procurement company supplied the staff and equipment, what costs remained for the clinic to recover? An invoice could establish what a clinic charged. Answering the profit allegation required records of what the clinic actually provided.
Why Congress Challenged the Explanation
Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards said participating affiliates sought only to recover expenses. In October 2015, the organization announced that affiliates would no longer accept reimbursement for fetal tissue donations. That decision left open the question of earlier payments. In December 2016, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley reported that several affiliates had supplied inadequate documentation and relied on overly broad estimates of their costs. He referred Planned Parenthood, several affiliates, and procurement companies to federal investigators for possible prosecution. The referral identified allegations Grassley believed warranted investigation. It carried no judicial finding that Planned Parenthood had earned an illegal profit.
Where Investigators Did Establish Profit
A California case eventually produced an admission of liability. In 2016, the Orange County district attorney sued two related businesses, DaVinci Biosciences and DV Biologics. In 2017, both admitted civil liability for unlawfully selling fetal tissue products for profit and agreed to a settlement valued at approximately $7.8 million. That outcome answers the chapter’s question with an important degree of precision. The recordings established that a Planned Parenthood official discussed recovering organs and accepting payments. Congressional records confirmed that some affiliates charged per specimen, and investigators challenged whether their costs justified those charges. The admission of unlawful profit came from the two businesses that sold the tissue products. Establishing who received each payment mattered as much as hearing the amount spoken across the lunch table.
Same-Sex Marriage — Who Decides?
In July 2013, Jim Obergefell and John Arthur flew from Ohio to Maryland to get married. Arthur had ALS, a disease that had left him too ill to walk, so the ceremony took place aboard the medical transport plane on the airport tarmac. Their marriage was legal in Maryland. Back home in Ohio, state law barred officials from recognizing it. Arthur was dying, and the couple wanted to know whose name would appear on his death certificate as his surviving spouse. They went to federal court while he was still alive. Two years later, their case would help decide which marriages every state in the country had to recognize.
Barack Obama Changes His Answer
When Barack Obama ran for president in 2008, Pastor Rick Warren asked him to define marriage. Obama answered, “I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman.” He described marriage as sacred to him as a Christian and supported civil unions that would give same-sex couples legal protections. On May 9, 2012, President Obama gave ABC’s Robin Roberts a different answer. “I think same-sex couples should be able to get married,” he said. He spoke about members of his staff raising children with same-sex partners and conversations with his daughters about their friends’ parents. Even then, he said states should decide their own marriage laws. That distinction would become the heart of the Supreme Court debate.
Must a Couple Wait for an Election?
By April 2015, the Supreme Court had before it cases from Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The couples asked two questions. Could a state refuse to issue them a marriage license? Could it refuse to recognize a marriage they had lawfully entered elsewhere? The states defending their laws argued that voters and elected lawmakers had the authority to define marriage, as states had done for generations. The couples pointed to the Fourteenth Amendment, which protects liberty and guarantees equal protection under the law. If choosing whom to marry was a fundamental right, they argued, why should a couple have to win an election to exercise it?
Five Justices, Four Dissenters, and One Name
On June 26, 2015, the Court ruled 5–4 in Obergefell v. Hodges. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy explained that choosing a spouse is among the most personal decisions a person can make. The Constitution’s guarantees of liberty and equality, the majority held, required every state to license marriages between two people of the same sex and recognize those lawfully performed elsewhere. Chief Justice John Roberts dissented. He argued that Americans could choose to expand civil marriage through their legislatures and at the ballot box, and that the Constitution gave judges no authority to settle that debate for them. For Jim Obergefell, the ruling answered the question that had taken him to court before John Arthur died. Ohio had to recognize him as Arthur’s surviving husband.
Kunduz Hospital Investigation: How a Hospital on a Protected List Become a Target
On September 29, 2015, as Afghan forces fought the Taliban for control of Kunduz, Doctors Without Borders sent U.S. and Afghan authorities the precise GPS coordinates of its trauma hospital. The message identified even the location of the main hospital building, where surgeons operated on the wounded. The hospital was on the U.S. military’s no-strike list, a record of places its forces were to protect. Four nights later, an American AC-130 gunship opened fire on that very building. Investigators would have to explain how people on the ground and in the air came to believe they were looking at the same place.
Two Buildings, 400 Meters Apart
In the early hours of October 3, the Americans intended to strike a building Afghan forces identified as a Taliban command post. Troops on the ground radioed the correct coordinates to the gunship. A satellite communications system aboard the aircraft had failed, however, preventing commanders from seeing the crew’s live video. When the crew entered the coordinates, the aircraft’s sensors pointed toward an open field. Searching nearby, the crew spotted a large compound that seemed to fit the description radioed from the ground. It was the hospital, roughly 400 meters from the intended target. The American ground commander could not see the compound himself. He accepted the crew’s description and authorized fire. No one successfully checked the building the crew had actually selected against the no-strike list.
A Warning From Inside
Shortly after 2 a.m., shells began striking the main building. Two patients died on operating tables. As staff moved survivors out of the damaged wards, Doctors Without Borders representatives called and sent messages to military contacts to tell them exactly which building was under fire. The warnings had to pass from the people receiving them to the people directing the gunship. The firing continued after the first calls for help. In a room that had escaped destruction, surviving staff set up a makeshift operating theater to treat their own colleagues and patients. Doctors Without Borders counted 42 people killed, including 24 patients, 14 staff members, and four people caring for patients.
Who Answered for the Decision?
On April 29, 2016, U.S. Central Command released the military investigation. It found that equipment failures, human errors, and violations of the rules for using force had combined to produce the attack. Sixteen U.S. service members received administrative discipline. None faced a court-martial. Commanders ordered troops to verify the coordinates of protected medical sites and reinforced the rules for checking targets. Doctors Without Borders pressed for an independent investigation and challenged the adequacy of the penalties. Its question went beyond how the crew picked the wrong building. Once the video link failed, the coordinates led to a field, and the ground commander could not see the target, who was responsible for saying, “Hold fire”?
Apple Versus the FBI — Can the Government Make a Company Unlock a Phone? The FBI had the phone, a judge’s permission to search it, and the owner’s consent. What agents lacked was the passcode. On December 2, 2015, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik killed 14 people in a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California. Investigators recovered an iPhone 5c that Farook’s employer, San Bernardino County, had issued to him. Agents wanted to know whether it held messages, contacts, or other evidence about the attack. Trying passcodes blindly carried a risk. If a security setting had been enabled, ten wrong guesses could erase the data they hoped to recover.
What the Judge Asked Apple to Do
On February 16, 2016, a federal magistrate judge ordered Apple to help. The order called for three changes: disable the automatic erase feature, allow a computer to enter passcode guesses electronically, and remove the software-imposed delays between attempts. Apple could keep the phone at its own facility while the FBI tested possible codes. The government relied on the All Writs Act, a law whose roots reach back to 1789 and which allows federal courts to issue orders needed to carry out their lawful duties. More than two centuries later, a judge faced a question its authors could scarcely have imagined. Did the power to authorize a search include the power to make engineers write software?
One Phone, Two Arguments
Federal investigators argued that the order concerned one identified device used by a man who had taken part in a mass killing. The county had consented, a court had issued a warrant, and the families of the victims still had questions about the attack. Apple CEO Tim Cook answered that his company had already supplied information in its possession. What troubled him was the demand to create software that would defeat protections his engineers had deliberately built. Even if Apple designed this version to work only on Farook’s phone, what would stop another prosecutor from bringing in a second phone and asking a judge for the same order?
The Phone Opens and the Question Remains
On March 28, the Justice Department announced that an outside party had helped the FBI gain access to the phone. Prosecutors asked the judge to lift the order compelling Apple’s assistance. Investigators could now search the device, and Apple had never built the requested software. That ending left the central question unresolved. The government had established its authority to search this particular phone. The case ended before a court could settle how far that authority reached into the workshop of the company that made it.
Hillary Clinton’s Emails — When Does Mishandling a Secret Become a Crime?
The FBI had roughly 30,000 emails to examine and a question that the words on the screen could not always answer. Was the information in each message already classified on the day someone pressed “send”? Hillary Clinton had used a private email system for government business while serving as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. By 2016, she was running for president, and voters were hearing competing claims about what had passed through that system. Some information had become classified only later. To find out what was secret at the time, investigators turned to the government agencies responsible for protecting it.
What Investigators Found
On July 5, FBI Director James Comey announced that 110 emails in 52 conversations contained classified information when it was sent or received. Eight of those conversations included information classified as Top Secret. Only a few messages carried markings that identified classified material, but officials still had a duty to recognize sensitive information and use a system approved to handle it. Comey described Clinton and her colleagues as “extremely careless.” Then he delivered the finding that he brought before Congress two days later. The FBI recommended no criminal charges.
Two Words at the Center of the Dispute
Critics pointed to two words in federal law: “gross negligence.” One provision made it a crime for someone entrusted with national defense information to allow its removal from its proper place through an extreme failure of care. Prosecutors could bring a charge under that provision without proving a plan to help an enemy. If the FBI itself had found extreme carelessness, lawmakers asked, why had it recommended against prosecution? Comey answered that earlier prosecutions had involved stronger evidence, such as deliberate mishandling or efforts to obstruct investigators. In his judgment, the evidence against Clinton fell short of what would justify a charge. Critics argued that he had placed too much weight on intent. Attorney General Loretta Lynch accepted the recommendation, so no jury heard the competing arguments. Now also note that Comey was a very political individual and these justification of why she wasn’t prosecuted have come under scrutiny.
Eleven Days Before the Election
On October 28, Comey wrote to Congress again. Agents investigating a separate case had found emails on a laptop that appeared relevant to Clinton’s case. The letter disclosed the discovery before investigators had determined whether the messages contained classified information or added anything new. For nine days, voters knew about the laptop while the significance of its contents remained unresolved. On November 6, two days before Election Day, Comey sent a second letter. The review had left the FBI’s July conclusion unchanged. In July, the dispute had centered on how much evidence the government needed to charge a citizen. By November, voters faced a question of their own: how much could they fairly conclude from the announcement that investigators were still looking?
Standing Rock — Who Gets a Say When a Pipeline Crosses a Water Supply?
In the summer of 2016, young runners from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation took turns on the road to Washington, D.C. They arrived with a petition bearing more than 140,000 signatures. The runners wanted federal officials to stop an oil pipeline from crossing beneath Lake Oahe, a reservoir on the Missouri River. On a map, the proposed crossing lay about half a mile north of the reservation boundary. On the river, that half mile meant something else. The crossing was upstream, and families at Standing Rock depended on the water that flowed past it.
Two Ways of Looking at the Same Crossing
The Dakota Access Pipeline would carry crude oil nearly 1,200 miles from North Dakota to Illinois. At Lake Oahe, the company planned to drill deep beneath the lakebed, leaving the river channel undisturbed. The company pointed to the depth of the pipe and its leak-detection equipment as safeguards. Tribal leaders asked what would happen if those safeguards failed. How quickly could crews find a leak beneath a lake? What would families drink while they waited for answers? The tribe also raised concerns about burial grounds and sacred places along the construction route. Its members had another reason to question federal assurances. Decades earlier, the dam that created Lake Oahe had flooded tribal land along this same river.
What Does It Mean to Consult a Tribe?
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe was a sovereign government with treaty rights, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers controlled the federal land at the crossing. The company needed an easement, or legal permission, from the Corps to put its pipe there. Federal law required the Corps to consider environmental effects and consult with tribes about historic places that might be harmed. The Corps pointed to letters, meetings, and changes to the route. Standing Rock leaders argued that officials had advanced the project before the tribe had a meaningful chance to influence the decision. In July 2016, the tribe took the Corps to federal court. Meanwhile, people from across the country joined camps near the river. Many called themselves water protectors and summed up their purpose in Lakota words that traveled far beyond the camps: “Mni Wiconi,” or “Water is life.”
One Crossing, Two Decisions
On December 4, 2016, the Army announced that it would withhold the easement while officials studied alternative routes. Water protectors celebrated. Two months later, after President Donald Trump directed the Army to expedite its review, the Corps granted the easement. Oil began flowing in June 2017. That same month, a federal judge found that the Corps had inadequately considered several issues, including how a spill might affect tribal fishing and hunting rights. The judge ordered the agency to revisit its analysis. The runners had carried their petition to Washington because federal officials held the power to approve the crossing. The court’s ruling underscored what those officials owed the people downstream: a serious examination of what they stood to lose.
Flint’s Water Crisis: Who Had the Power to Protect Drinking Water?
In February 2015, a city worker tested the water at LeeAnne Walters’s home in Flint, Michigan. The sample contained 104 parts per billion of lead. On February 25, Walters contacted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Her result raised a question that reached far beyond her kitchen. If water could pick up that much lead on its way to one family’s faucet, what was coming through the pipes at the house next door? By then, Flint residents had spent ten months drinking, cooking, and mixing baby formula with water from a system many had already complained about.
The Missing Treatment
In April 2014, Flint stopped buying treated water from Detroit and began drawing from the Flint River while it waited for a new regional water supply. The city was under the financial control of a state-appointed emergency manager, and the temporary switch was intended to save money. Flint’s treatment plant began sending river water through aging pipes without adding chemicals that help keep lead from dissolving into the water. As the more corrosive water flowed through lead service lines and household plumbing, it carried lead toward people’s taps. Residents reported discolored, foul-smelling water. Those complaints were warnings that something had changed, but lead itself has no taste, smell, or color. Even a clear glass could contain it.
When Families Gathered Their Own Evidence
Walters worked with researchers at Virginia Tech, and Flint residents collected tap-water samples from homes across the city. Meanwhile, local pediatrician Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha examined children’s blood-test records from before and after the switch. In September 2015, she announced that the proportion of young children tested with elevated blood-lead levels had risen, with sharper increases in neighborhoods where water samples showed high lead levels. State officials initially challenged her findings before acknowledging the increase. The two investigations answered different questions families needed answered. Residents had shown that lead was reaching their faucets. A pediatrician had found evidence of increased exposure among the children drinking the water.
Who Could Have Acted Sooner?
Flint operated the treatment plant. Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality had primary responsibility for enforcing drinking-water rules and failed to require proper corrosion control. The state-appointed emergency manager held decision-making power that residents would ordinarily have expected their elected city leaders to exercise. The federal EPA also had emergency authority. Its inspector general later found that by June 2015, the agency had enough information to issue an emergency order. Flint reconnected to Detroit’s water system in October, but damaged pipes could still release lead. Families continued to need filters and bottled water. The EPA issued its order on January 21, 2016, seven months after it had enough evidence to act. At Standing Rock, families asked officials to consider what might happen to their water downstream. In Flint, LeeAnne Walters could hand officials a sample of what had already reached her home.
The School Bathroom Debate — Who Interprets Title IX? (2015–2016)
For about seven weeks in the fall of 2014, Gavin Grimm used the boys’ restroom at Gloucester High School in Virginia with his principal’s permission. The court record describes no incident during those weeks. Then the question of which door one sophomore could enter became a matter for public debate. Grimm was a transgender boy. After community members objected, the school board voted in December to assign students to boys’ or girls’ restrooms according to what its policy called biological gender. The school made private, single-user restrooms available. Board members said their policy protected student privacy. Grimm said that having to use a separate facility singled him out every time he needed a restroom. In 2015, he and his mother took the dispute to federal court.
What Had Congress Decided in 1972?
Grimm’s lawsuit turned on Title IX, a law older than the students, their parents’ dispute, and much of the school staff. Congress had prohibited sex discrimination in education programs receiving federal money. A federal regulation allowed schools to provide separate restrooms on the basis of sex as long as the facilities were comparable. Everyone in the case could read those same words. The difficulty came when the principal had to apply them. The board argued that the regulation permitted its policy. Grimm argued that excluding him from the restroom other boys used denied him equal treatment. The dispute reached beyond Gloucester because school officials across the country worked under the same law.
How Much Authority Does a Federal Agency Have?
The U.S. Department of Education had interpreted its regulation to mean that schools generally must treat transgender students consistently with their gender identity. In April 2016, a federal appeals court ruled that the regulation was unclear on this point and that the lower court should give weight to the department’s interpretation. A dissenting judge argued that the existing language already permitted the board’s policy and that the majority had given too little consideration to other students’ privacy. On May 13, the Obama administration sent guidance to schools nationwide explaining its position. Schools could offer private facilities to any student seeking more privacy, the administration said, but could not require a transgender student alone to use one. Critics saw a federal agency making a policy choice that belonged to Congress.
What a Student Could Do While the Courts Deliberated
In June 2016, a federal district judge temporarily ordered the school board to let Grimm use the boys’ restroom. In August, the Supreme Court paused that order. In October, it agreed to hear the case. By the end of the year, the justices had issued no final ruling on what Title IX required, yet their decision to wait had an immediate consequence. Grimm went through another semester under the school board’s rule. For the judges, the question was how to divide authority among Congress, federal agencies, and local schools. For the student who had brought the case, it still came down to which door he could open between classes.
Global Effect on the Rest of the World: The Second Obama Administration
Germany — Was an Ally Listening to the Chancellor?
In October 2013, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called President Barack Obama about the security of the very device leaders used for conversations like theirs. Her government had received information that American intelligence might have monitored her cellphone. Months earlier, documents disclosed by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden had exposed the reach of American surveillance. Merkel wanted to know what privacy a close ally could expect. Americans had a related question about their own phone records. Under pressure at home and abroad, Obama ordered a review of surveillance practices. In 2015, he signed the USA FREEDOM Act, ending the particular program under which the NSA had collected Americans’ telephone records in bulk. A dispute over secrecy had forced the administration to explain both what it could collect and whose trust it risked losing.
Britain — Why Londoners Marched for a Missouri Teenager
In November 2014, people holding candles gathered outside the U.S. Embassy in London after a Missouri grand jury declined to indict the police officer who had shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson. Among those present were relatives of Black Britons who had died in police encounters. They brought their own family histories to a vigil for a teenager who had lived an ocean away. The march gave the Ferguson protesters allies abroad and helped carry the questions raised by Black Lives Matter beyond the United States. Scrutiny also traveled in the other direction. Amnesty International sent observers to Missouri and documented how police used tear gas and military equipment during demonstrations. Americans debating the right to assemble could now read an international human rights organization’s account of events on their own streets.
Ireland — Voters Answer a Question Before America’s Justices Do
On May 22, 2015, Irish voters approved a constitutional amendment allowing two people to marry regardless of sex. Five weeks later, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized a nationwide right to same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges. The timing gave Americans a striking comparison. In Ireland, citizens had cast ballots to change the words of their constitution. In the United States, couples had gone to court arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment already protected their right to marry. Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority agreed. Chief Justice John Roberts argued in dissent that voters and lawmakers should decide. Ireland’s referendum had no legal authority over the American case, but it gave students of the debate a real example of the democratic route the dissenters favored.
Afghanistan — A Hospital Challenges the Pentagon’s Account
On October 3, 2015, an American gunship attacked a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing 42 patients, staff members, and caregivers. The organization had given military authorities the hospital’s coordinates four days earlier. Its staff also kept a record of their attempts to stop the attack as it happened. Those records gave Congress and the American public a way to examine the military’s explanation alongside the experience of the people inside. In 2016, U.S. investigators concluded that the crew had mistaken the hospital for a target about 400 meters away. Sixteen service members received administrative discipline. Doctors Without Borders continued to demand an independent inquiry, raising a question that reached well beyond Afghanistan. Who should judge the adequacy of an investigation when the institution conducting it also authorized the strike?
France and Syria — Six Days From an Attack to a House Vote
On November 13, 2015, terrorists attacked a concert hall, cafés, and the area outside a stadium in Paris. The Islamic State claimed responsibility. Six days later, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 289–137 for legislation requiring additional security certifications before refugees from Syria or Iraq could enter the United States. Supporters questioned how investigators could check someone’s history when records from a war zone were missing. Obama threatened a veto, arguing that refugees already faced extensive screening and that the proposal would keep families fleeing the violence from reaching safety. The bill never became law, but the speed of the vote showed how quickly an attack in one country could change the political prospects of displaced people seeking shelter in another.
Russia — Stolen Emails Enter an American Election
During the 2016 presidential campaign, emails stolen from Democratic Party organizations and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman became public. Voters were already hearing about Clinton’s use of a private email system as secretary of state. These were two separate events. The FBI investigation concerned how Clinton had handled government information. The campaign disclosures raised a different question about who had broken into political accounts and why. In October, U.S. intelligence officials publicly attributed the election-related compromises to the Russian government. On December 29, Obama announced sanctions and the expulsion of 35 Russian intelligence operatives as part of a response to election interference and harassment of American diplomats. An argument over what the emails said had become a presidential decision about how the United States should respond when a foreign power interferes in the choice of its next leader.
People Behind Obama’s Second Presidential Administration
Barack Obama and Mitch McConnell — A President and a Senate Leader
Barack Obama worked as a community organizer in Chicago, taught constitutional law, and represented Illinois in the U.S. Senate before becoming president. Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky lawyer first elected to the Senate in 1984, became its Republican majority leader in 2015. Their powers came into direct conflict after Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016. Obama nominated federal appeals judge Merrick Garland, arguing that the president and Senate still had duties to perform in an election year. McConnell maintained that voters should have a say through the presidential election. The Senate held neither a hearing nor a confirmation vote. Together, the two men illustrated a feature of American government that students can easily overlook. A president can choose a nominee, while a Senate leader can shape history by keeping a vote off the calendar.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, and Anthony Kennedy — Three Ways to Read the Constitution
Before joining the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued cases challenging laws that treated men and women differently. Antonin Scalia, a former law professor, became a leading advocate of interpreting the Constitution according to the public meaning of its words when adopted. Anthony Kennedy, a California lawyer and federal appeals judge before his appointment, supplied the decisive fifth vote in several closely divided cases. Their differences came into focus in Obergefell v. Hodges. Kennedy wrote the 2015 marriage ruling, Ginsburg joined him, and Scalia dissented, objecting to judges settling an issue citizens were debating. Ginsburg also wrote influential dissents on voting rights and religious exemptions. Reading their majority opinions and dissents together lets students see exactly where the justices parted company.
Hillary Clinton and James Comey — A Candidate and an Investigator
Hillary Clinton was a lawyer, first lady, U.S. senator from New York, and secretary of state before becoming the first woman nominated for president by a major American political party in 2016. Her years at the State Department put her at the center of two separate controversies: congressional scrutiny of the deadly Benghazi attacks and an FBI investigation into her private email system. James Comey, a former federal prosecutor and deputy attorney general, became FBI director in 2013. His public explanation of the email investigation in July 2016 and his letter to Congress eleven days before the election made his own judgment a subject of investigation. Clinton’s career raised questions about what responsibility follows a former official into a campaign. Comey’s raised an equally difficult question about when a law-enforcement official should speak publicly.
Trey Gowdy and Elijah Cummings — Two Congressmen at One Hearing
Trey Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican, had prosecuted federal crimes before entering Congress. Elijah Cummings, a Baltimore lawyer and the son of sharecroppers, had served in the Maryland legislature before his election to the House. Gowdy chaired the House Select Committee on Benghazi, and Cummings was its senior Democrat. During Clinton’s October 2015 testimony, Gowdy pressed her about who could reach her directly and how security concerns moved through the State Department. Cummings challenged the committee’s methods and argued that selective disclosure could give the public a misleading account. Their clash mattered because both men had access to an investigative record, yet they disagreed sharply about which questions Congress still needed to answer.
Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi — Organizing Beyond a Hashtag
Alicia Garza organized workers in California, Patrisse Cullors worked on criminal justice issues in Los Angeles, and Opal Tometi organized with Black immigrant communities. In 2013, after George Zimmerman was acquitted in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, the three women helped launch Black Lives Matter. Their different experiences mattered when protests began in Ferguson the following year. Local residents led demonstrations, while Cullors and organizer Darnell Moore helped bring supporters to Missouri from across the country. Participants returned home and built chapters in their own communities. The founders’ contribution was helping people who first encountered one another online build relationships strong enough to organize in person.
Joanne Liu and LaDonna Brave Bull Allard — Speaking for People Who Bore the Consequences
Joanne Liu, a Canadian pediatric emergency physician, joined Doctors Without Borders in 1996 and became its international president in 2013. After the Kunduz strike killed patients and colleagues, she pressed for an independent investigation and challenged the adequacy of the military’s disciplinary response. LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, a Standing Rock Sioux tribal historian, drew on a different kind of knowledge. In April 2016, she helped establish Sacred Stone Camp on her family’s land, giving people concerned about the Dakota Access Pipeline a place to gather. Liu could explain what an airstrike meant inside a working hospital. Allard could explain what a pipeline crossing meant to families whose history and water supply were tied to the Missouri River. Both brought knowledge to the public record that officials far from the scene needed to hear.
Life Lessons from the Second Obama Administration — Social Movements, Constitutional Debates, and Political Scandals (2013–2016)
Ferguson — Ask What the Evidence Can Prove
In March 2015, the Justice Department released two reports about Ferguson, Missouri. One found insufficient evidence to charge Officer Darren Wilson with a federal civil rights crime in the shooting of Michael Brown. The other documented a pattern of unconstitutional policing and court practices in the same city. How could both conclusions be true? The first investigation had to reconstruct one encounter between two people. The second examined years of traffic stops, arrests, fines, and city officials’ correspondence. A reader who used either report to dismiss the other would miss part of the story. Before deciding what a piece of evidence proves, write down the exact question it answers. Sometimes a disagreement begins because two people think they are answering the same question.
Kunduz — Know When to Stop and Check
Before an American gunship fired on a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, in October 2015, its sensors pointed toward an open field. The crew searched nearby and identified a building that seemed to match the description from the ground. The ground commander could not see that building himself, and a failed communications system kept commanders from viewing the crew’s live video. People in the air and on the ground agreed, but their agreement rested on the same mistaken identification. The strike killed 42 people. This is a hard lesson with an everyday application. When two classmates give the same account, ask how each knows. If both heard it from the same person, you still have just one source. When a crucial detail fails to match, that is the moment to pause.
Clinton’s Emails — Apply Your Standard to Someone You Support
In July 2016, FBI Director James Comey called Hillary Clinton’s handling of sensitive information “extremely careless” and recommended no criminal charges. Critics pointed to a law that allowed prosecution for gross negligence. Comey pointed to differences between the evidence in Clinton’s case and the conduct prosecutors had charged in earlier cases. A student can make three distinct judgments here. Did the official exercise sound judgment? Would workplace discipline have been appropriate? Could prosecutors prove a particular crime? Try writing down what evidence you would require for each judgment, then imagine that the official belongs to the political party you favor. Would you accept the same reasoning and the same outcome?
Standing Rock — Look Downstream Before Making a Decision
On a map, the Dakota Access Pipeline crossing lay roughly half a mile outside the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. Follow the Missouri River downstream, however, and the map tells you why families on the reservation cared so deeply about what happened upstream. In 2016, young people carried a petition to Washington asking officials to protect that water supply. They understood something that applies to decisions in a school, a business, or a government. The people authorized to make a choice and the people who must live with its consequences can be hundreds of miles apart. Before settling a difficult question, ask who would notice first if your assumptions proved wrong. Then give those people a chance to speak while their answer can still change the decision.
Vocabulary to Learn While Studying about President Obama’s Second Term
1. Grassroots movement
Definition — An effort led by people in their own communities who organize around a shared goal.
Sample sentence — Ferguson residents held marches and vigils, and organizers from other cities helped the grassroots movement reach a national audience.
2. Peaceful assembly
Definition — The right to gather peacefully with others to express ideas, support a cause, or protest a decision.
Sample sentence — People who gathered for a candlelight vigil after Michael Brown’s death exercised their First Amendment right to peaceful assembly.
3. Civil rights
Definition — Rights that protect people from discrimination and guarantee equal treatment under the law.
Sample sentence — Federal investigators examined whether Ferguson’s police and municipal court had violated residents’ civil rights.
4. Preclearance
Definition — Under the Voting Rights Act, a requirement that certain states or local governments obtain federal approval before changing their voting rules.
Sample sentence — In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the formula that determined which places needed preclearance, allowing previously covered states to change voting rules without that advance review.
5. Equal protection
Definition — The constitutional guarantee that states must give people the equal protection of their laws.
Sample sentence — In Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court ruled that equal protection and individual liberty guaranteed same-sex couples the right to marry.
6. Religious exemption
Definition — Permission under the law to be excused from a particular requirement because of a religious belief or practice.
Sample sentence — Hobby Lobby sought a religious exemption from the federal requirement that its employee health plan cover certain forms of contraception.
7. Dissenting opinion
Definition — A written explanation by one or more judges who disagree with a court’s decision.
Sample sentence — In his dissenting opinion in the same-sex marriage case, Chief Justice John Roberts argued that voters and lawmakers should decide the issue.
8. Advice and consent
Definition — The Senate’s constitutional role in considering whether to approve certain presidential appointments, including Supreme Court justices.
Sample sentence — When President Obama nominated Merrick Garland in 2016, senators disagreed about whether advice and consent required them to hold a hearing.
9. Congressional oversight
Definition — The work Congress does to examine how federal agencies carry out laws, spend public money, and perform their duties.
Sample sentence — The House exercised congressional oversight by examining how the State Department handled security concerns before the Benghazi attacks.
10. Subpoena
Definition — A legal order requiring someone to testify, provide records, or both.
Sample sentence — The House committee investigating Benghazi used a subpoena to require a witness to answer questions about information he had sent Hillary Clinton.
11. Classified information
Definition — Government information restricted to authorized people because its release could harm national security.
Sample sentence — During the Clinton email investigation, agents had to determine whether messages contained classified information at the time they were sent.
12. Gross negligence
Definition — An extreme failure to take reasonable care when handling a serious risk.
Sample sentence — Critics of the FBI’s recommendation asked whether Clinton’s handling of sensitive emails met the legal standard for gross negligence.
13. Rules of engagement
Definition — Military directives that tell service members when and how they may use force.
Sample sentence — Investigators examined whether the Americans who authorized and carried out the Kunduz airstrike had followed the rules of engagement.
14. No-strike list
Definition — A military record identifying places that forces must protect when planning and carrying out attacks.
Sample sentence — The Kunduz hospital appeared on the U.S. no-strike list, but the gunship crew mistook it for a different building.
15. Tribal sovereignty
Definition — The inherent authority of a tribal nation to govern itself.
Sample sentence — Tribal sovereignty was central to the Standing Rock dispute because the tribe raised its concerns as a government with treaty rights.
16. Easement
Definition — A legal right to use a specific part of someone else’s property for a stated purpose.
Sample sentence — The Dakota Access Pipeline company needed an easement to install its pipeline beneath federally managed land at Lake Oahe.
Activities to Try While Studying about President Obama’s Second Term
Follow the Water at Standing Rock
Recommended Age: 9–13 years | 25 minutes
Activity Description: Students draw a map of the Dakota Access Pipeline crossing and use it to explain why the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe challenged a project located outside its reservation.
Objective: Understand how geography can give a community a stake in a decision made beyond its boundaries.
Materials: Paper, blue and brown pencils, three slips of paper, and a coin. Label the slips “Standing Rock Sioux Tribe,” “Pipeline Company,” and “U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.”
Instructions: Have the student draw the Missouri River flowing south through Lake Oahe and add arrows showing the direction of flow. Draw the northern boundary of the Standing Rock Reservation and mark the proposed pipeline crossing about half a mile upstream. The sketch can be rough. Place the coin at the crossing and ask, “If oil entered the water here, which direction could it travel?” Next, turn over the three slips. Explain that the tribe depended on the water, the company wanted to drill beneath the lakebed, and the Corps controlled the federal land at the crossing. Have the student write one question each participant would want answered before construction. Finish by asking the student to point to the feature on the map that best explains the tribe’s concern.
Learning Outcome: Students can use the word upstream to explain the tribe’s concern and distinguish the people who depended on the water from the agency authorized to grant the easement.
Sort the Evidence from Ferguson
Recommended Age: 12–16 years | 30 minutes
Activity Description: Students act as editors checking a news story about the two federal investigations that followed Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri.
Objective: Match a conclusion to the question investigators asked and the evidence they examined.
Materials: Six index cards and two sheets of paper. Label one sheet “The shooting of Michael Brown” and the other “Ferguson’s police and court practices.”
Instructions: Write one item on each card: eyewitness accounts of the shooting, physical evidence from the scene, several years of traffic-stop records, city officials’ emails about fine revenue, insufficient evidence for federal criminal charges against Officer Darren Wilson, and a federal finding of unconstitutional police and court practices. Shuffle the cards. Ask students to sort them under the two headings and identify which card in each group states a conclusion. Then give them this hypothetical headline to edit: “Federal Investigators Clear Ferguson Police of All Wrongdoing.” Ask which cards make the headline misleading. Have each student replace it with two accurate headlines, one for each investigation, and explain one word they chose carefully.
Learning Outcome: Students can explain how investigators could decline to charge an individual officer in one case and still find a pattern of civil rights violations in the department.
An Empty Seat on the Supreme Court
Recommended Age: 12–17 years | 30–35 minutes
Activity Description: Students reconstruct the dispute over Merrick Garland’s 2016 Supreme Court nomination and consider what happens when two branches of government disagree about how to use their powers.
Objective: Distinguish what the Constitution says about appointments from arguments about what elected officials ought to do.
Materials: Three cards labeled “President,” “Senate,” and “Voters,” plus a copy of Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution. Locate the passage stating that the president nominates Supreme Court judges and appoints them with the Senate’s advice and consent.
Instructions: Begin with the situation as it stood in March 2016. Justice Antonin Scalia had died, President Obama had nominated Judge Merrick Garland, and a presidential election was approaching. Ask students to place the action nominate a justice under one card and vote on confirmation under another. Then ask, “Can you find a deadline for a hearing in the constitutional passage?” Have one student or adult argue that the Senate should consider the sitting president’s nominee. Have the other argue that the vacancy should wait until voters choose the next president. Switch positions and give each person one minute to make the other argument fairly. Reveal the outcome: the Senate held neither a hearing nor a confirmation vote, and Garland’s nomination expired. Ask what practical power the Senate exercised by taking no vote.
Learning Outcome: Students can describe the roles of the president, Senate, and voters and explain why people who agreed on the constitutional wording still disagreed about what should happen.
Write a Headline Eleven Days Before an Election
Recommended Age: 14–18 years | 35 minutes
Activity Description: Students become newsroom editors covering the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email system. They receive information in three rounds and must publish a fair headline using only what was known on each date.
Objective: Separate evidence, a recommendation about charges, and an unanswered question during a political controversy.
Materials: Paper, pencils, and three dated slips prepared from the entries below. Fold the slips so students cannot read ahead.
Instructions: Open the slips one at a time. After each, students write a headline of no more than twelve words and one sentence beginning, “We still don’t know…” Keep earlier headlines visible so students can track what changed.
July 5, 2016: FBI Director James Comey announced that investigators found classified information in emails sent or received through Clinton’s private system. He criticized the handling of the information and recommended against criminal charges.
October 28, 2016: Comey told Congress that investigators had discovered emails in a separate case that appeared relevant to the earlier investigation. Their significance was still unknown.
November 6, 2016: After reviewing the emails, Comey told Congress that the FBI’s July conclusion remained unchanged.
Return to the October headline. Ask, “Would a reader think the FBI had already found new wrongdoing? Which words would give that impression?” Have students revise the headline, then read it aloud as if it concerned a candidate they personally supported. Discuss whether they would keep the same wording.
Learning Outcome: Students produce a dated record showing what reporters could responsibly say at each stage. They can explain why discovering potentially relevant emails and establishing criminal misconduct are different claims requiring different evidence.
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