In politics, George W. Bush is sworn in for a second term as President of the United States of America following his 2004 election victory. Hurricane Katrina struck the coastal areas from Louisiana to Alabama, and up the entire state of Mississippi. At least 1,836 people were killed and the hurricane damage along the US Gulf coast was severe. Despite many violent outbursts, assassinations and car bombings, Iraq held parliamentary elections for the first time since 1958. Shiites took majority control of parliament.

In LGBTQ News in 2006, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that state lawmakers must provide the rights and benefits of marriage to gay and lesbian couples. A Maryland judge struck down a state law banning same-sex marriage saying the measure violated a state constitutional amendment prohibiting sex discrimination.

In politics, Gordon Brown replaced Tony Blair as the prime minister of Great Britain. Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, and Rev. Ian Paisley, the head of the Democratic Unionist Party, met face-to-face for the first time and hashed out an agreement for a power-sharing government.. The U.S. began its "surge" of some 30,000 troops to Iraq to stem increasingly deadly attacks by insurgents and militias. President Bush vetoed the $124 billion spending bill passed by Congress for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill called on the Bush administration to establish benchmarks for the Iraqi government that, if met, set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Karl Rove, highly influential and controversial advisor to President Bush, announced his resignation. 

2008 was declared the International Year of the Potato by the United Nations. In this year, Barack Obama won the U.S. Presidential election.

In 2009, Barack Obama launched his presidency before an estimated 1.5 million people on the National Mall with somber yet confident tones, saying the country will overcome its serious economic and international challenges. Later that year, President Obama announced that the U.S., China, India, Brazil, and South Africa had reached an agreement to combat global warming.

In 2010 LGBTQ+ news, the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal was signed into law. Following through on a campaign promise, President Barack Obama on December 22, 2010, signed the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the 1994 Clinton administration policy that banned military service by openly gay people. DADT was a compromise after Clinton failed to deliver on a 1992 campaign promise to allow gay and lesbian Americans to join the military. The repeal went into effect in September 2011. This allowed gays and lesbians to serve openly in the US Military.

In LGBTQ+ news, President Obama becomes the first sitting president to declare his support of same-sex marriage, during an exclusive interview with ABC News, May 9, 2012. This was a change from what he had previously said, which was that he approved civil unions but opposed same-sex marriage. President Obama became the first sitting president to say same-sex couples should be allowed to wed. In the November election, Maine, Maryland and Washington approved same-sex marriage by popular vote. In December, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review two key same-sex marriage cases.

2013, an explosive year, both metaphorically and, unfortunately, quite literally.

2013 was the year of the Boston Marathon bombing, which resulted in the deaths of two people and the injury of nearly 300. It was also the year of George Zimmerman's trial for the murder of Trayvon Martin, and, in the wake of the much contested not guilty verdict, the genesis of the Black Lives Matter movement.