maybe they could find their soul again if they were to challenge this man. i don't want anybody to get hurt, but i'd like to see some fisticuffs down there on the floor. shut me up now. >> 1968, chicago. bill maher, thank you. >> always a pleasure. >> that's "hardball" for now. we're making news of our own today with the launch of msnbc. two decades. >> hello, and welcome to msnbc. >> more than 175,000 hours of television. >> the judgment of the supreme court of florida is reversed. >> there's a guy with a magnifying glass. >> countless news events. >> there were parents who suddenly were afraid to send their children to school. >> they were just trying to stop the economy from going into a depression. >> history in the making. >> change has come to america.

>> the goal was to make music available to everybody. >> this is a total victory for the advocates of same-sex marriage. >> how does what happened then impact us now. >> katrina is always in the back of their minds. >> this was a catastrophe on the broadest level. >> tonight america is at war with terrorists. >> 9/11 defined the lives of an entire generation. >> 20 stories that shook the world in 20 years. hi, i'm rachel maddow for msnbc. for the last 20 years, msnbc has covered all the biggest news of our time, from what seems like a never-ending presidential election, to a devastating attack on our nation. transforming not only the way we report as journalists, but the way we live, the way we love, the way we learn. right now, 20 events that made headlines and changed us.

>> 9/11 continues to change everyday life in this country. >> i was putting on my microphone to do my show on msnbc. and somebody said a plane has hit the world trade center. >> and there was a major incident in lower manhattan. a plane has crashed into one of the upper floors of the world trade center. >> the airplane is clearly a commercial airliner of some sort. >> crystal clear day. nothing added up. there's a moment your mind goes to, this could be terror. >> and i don't think that we started to get a lot of clarity, frankly, until the second plane hit. and the second the second plane hit, i think all of us knew that it was terrorism.

>> terrorists fly a third jetliner into the pentagon. a four hijacked plane crashes in a pennsylvania field. by 10:30 a.m., the twin towers have crumbled. >> tonight america is at war with terrorists, after a stunning series of attacks today. that day took everything that i knew as a journalist, as a citizen, as a father, as a husband, as someone who had been in the business for 40 years. >> make no mistake, the united states will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts.

>> the attacks claim the lives of nearly 3,000 people, from 93 countries across the globe. >> it was an enormously consequential event that led to a series of other events that didn't just define the last 15 years, it defined the lives of an entire generation. >> everything seems to revolve back around 9/11. when you stand in the long lines at tsa, it's 9/11. when you get frisked going into a ball game, it's 9/11. it changed our lives in everything we do. >> the country went from being ripped with grief, to on a war footing, in a very short span of time. >> less than a month after september 11th, a u.s.-led coalition launches air strikes in afghanistan. marking the start of the longest

war this country has ever seen. >> you're either with us or against us in the fight against terror. >> in march 2003, the u.s. wages war on iraq, after president bush and his administration make the case that saddam hussein is hiding weapons of mass destruction. an allegation that is later proven to be false. >> to learn later that those did not exist in iraq at the time of the invasion, really threatened how many americans viewed truthfulness in government, threatened the bush presidency, and damaged u.s. relations around the world. >> saddam hussein is captured in 2003, and executed three years later. in 2011 u.s. forces kill al qaeda leader and 9/11 mastermind osama bin laden. >> his death does not mark the end of our effort. there's no doubt that al qaeda will continue to pursue attacks against us. we must, and we will, remain

vigilant at home and abroad. >> 15 years after 9/11, thousands of u.s. troops remain in iraq and afghanistan. >> we have people now fighting in afghanistan, and fighting still in parts of iraq, who were 3 years old when the attacks took place. >> in recent years, a deadly new threat emerges. the islamic state, also known as isis. >> without the iraq war, there is no isis. isis is simply insurgents who were more or less defeated, but who then found a way to reinvigorate their organization. >> isis is armed, funded like no terrorist group in history. >> in the battle with isis, the theater of war has expanded still. most recently to the west, where

the terrorist organization executed coordinated attacks in paris in 2015, and in brussels in 2016. >> there is a line you could draw from 9/11 to the isis directed atrocities in europe. we cover them now like they're great anomalies and great tragedies, which, of course, they are. but i think going forward, i think they're going to become more commonplace. coming up -- >> people started foreclosing on these loans. it was like a domino effect. and all of that bad credit was sort of filtered throughout the financial system. ordinary one. get great offers at the lexus golden opportunity sales event. lease the 2016 es 350 for $329 a month for 36 months and we'll make your first month's payment. see your lexus dealer. words panera lives by. no artificial flavors, preservatives, sweeteners. no colors from artificial sources.

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the internet makes life so much simpler. now we can point and push and have a few clicks and order almost anything you can imagine. >> before the internet, we bought books in a bookstore. and season in a drugstore.

but the rise of the on-demand economy has turned traditional business models upside down. >> the on-demand economy means you're operating faster. and faster means you're more efficient. >> in 1997, online book retailer amazon.com goes public. ushering in a profitable new era of digital commerce in a 24/7 marketplace. but books are just the beginning. >> on-demand economy has been changed by two things. one is your phone, and the other is satellites in the sky. so they always know where you are. uber obviously is the most extreme example. i can call a car to wherever i am at any time. >> everybody expects to be able to get whatever they want at the touch of a button, and they want it right now, and they can get it. >> i did not have sexual relations with that woman. miss lewinsky. >> a year into his second term,

president bill clinton goes live on national television to address reports about an affair with a white house intern. >> bill clinton brought the presidency to a place where it had never been, standing up there, and saying, i did not have sexual relations with that woman, a sentence that instantly became memorized by the entire country, and a sentence that was also a lie. >> the allegations are very, very serious. >> if those turn out to be true, this presidency is in serious trouble. >> so much of it was salacious, and so much of it was tabloid. at some point you had to step back and say, the future of the leader of the free world is at stake. >> six months after lying to the country, president clinton confesses to his indiscretions in a primetime broadcast. >> indeed, i did have a relationship with miss lewinsky that was not appropriate. in fact, it was wrong. >> in december 1998, the house of representatives impeaches president clinton, charging him

with obstruction of justice and lying under oath. >> i do. >> certainly having the kind of affair that he did was repugnant to almost every american, that a president would do that in the white house. but was it a high crime and misdemeanor that would force him from office. >> after a five-week trial, the senate reaches its verdict. >> the president acquitted on two counts, personal ri and obstruction of justice. >> 18 years later, the scandal still dogs the clinton family, as hillary clinton becomes the first woman in u.s. history to be the presumptive nominee of a major political party. >> do you remember the famous, i did not have sex with that woman? and she's taking negative ads on me. >> the monica lewinsky affair is going to affect this next election in a big way. >> it is a challenge for hillary clinton because it takes away from who she is as an office holder herself. >> in one of the greatest

comebacks of all-time, steve jobs returns to apple as interim ceo in 1997. after being fired 12 years earlier from the company he founded. >> steve jobs coming back to apple is the smartest decision that company ever made. >> i think being fired fed the fire, so to speak. >> he was going to show these people who had let him go, what he was going to make of this company. >> this is going to be the hottest gift. >> in the years that follow, apple rolls out a steady stream of revolutionary user-friendly products, turning it into one of the most successful companies in history. >> steve is indisputably the leader of this transformation to consumer products in our industry. >> i everything, i pod, i mac, i book, now i phone? >> i just take my finger and slide it across. >> they made technology that we actually wanted to use, and that was intuitive to learn. and they really made it a much more consumer-friendly space.

>> in 2011, steve jobs dies from pancreatic cancer. he leaves behind a company that has changed the world. >> i think it's hard to really overstate the influence of apple on all of our lives over the past 20 years. >> good evening. this has been a wild and harrowing and history-making day. and we still don't know how this ends. >> in 2008, america's housing bubble bursts. triggering our nation's worst financial disaster since the great depression. >> virtually all of the big banks, they made big, big bets on subprime mortgage loans. and they were wrong. the bonds were bad and they didn't see how bad they were. >> the fallout is catastrophic, from individual americans to the nation's largest banks. >> the financial crisis happened because people got mortgages too easy and bought homes they shouldn't have been buying. >> people started defaulting on

these loans. you know, these homes started getting foreclosed on. and it was like a domino effect. and all of that bad credit then was sort of filtered throughout the financial system. >> bear stearns is rescued by chase morgan. the government takes control of the top mortgage giants, fannie mae and freddie mac. aig is seized by the fed. signaling that the entire u.s. financial system is on the brink of failure. >> the government's response, they dealt with them on a case by case basis. they just tried to stop the economy from going into a depression. >> in an effort to stabilize the economy, the congress approved a controversial $700 billion bailout. >> this is truly a monumental moment in american history. >> their view was, you can't let it all go down. because if the banks go down,

then the economy is in chaos. >> a lot of people lost their homes, and a lot of people lost their jobs. and eventually you saw people downsize, and it shook out to where it ought to have been from the start. >> the bailout under the bgs is perceived by many conservatives as government overstepping its bounds, and protesters launched a new movement with an old history. >> the chicago tea party in july. >> that's where the tea party movement was really born. they saw wall street getting a bailout, when they weren't bailed out. nobody found them a new job. nobody made sure their employer was solvent. so that really got people upset. >> the tea party quickly takes off. and in 2010, it helps the gop capture the house. >> tea party morphed into something entirely different. it's become this sort of free-floating vessel that collects anger and anxiety wherever it goes, and runs on that as fuel. but the beginning is the financial crisis.

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it has been an exhausting and quite an emotional ride

tonight. >> the world watches as polls close across america in the 2000 presidential race between texas governor george bush and vice president al gore. just after 2:00 a.m., the news networks project a winner. >> barring any recount, or any anomalies, george w. bush, the governor of texas, is projected now to win the presidency of the united states. >> al gore was on his way to make a concession speech, en route they got information that it was closing again the other way. >> i just got off the phone. is it in fact true the vice president has called to recant his concession? >> the race it turns out is too close to call. >> just an hour or so ago, the tv networks called this race for governor bush. it now appears -- it now appears that their call was premature. [ cheers and applause ] >> the system just simply broke

down. i said we don't only have egg on our face, we have omelet on our suit. it is not over, ladies and gentlemen. >> al gore leads in the popular vote. but the electoral college is in a dead heat. it all comes down to one state. >> florida was the place where it was close enough to have a recount, have the right number of electoral votes to change the outcome. that's how we discovered how imperfect the voting system is. >> it is a pretty ram shackle process. it varies across the country. some people punch cars, throw levers. it's all different. >> with reports of widespread voting ig regularities, the florida supreme court demands ooh recount in several counties. >> they would hold up ballots and stare at it, and decide, what did this voter mean? >> one woman who say that's a gore vote. the other guy would look at it and say, no, that's a bush vote. they were looking at the same

ballot. >> when you punch the little hole in the card, the little square that gets punched out, they call that the chad, doesn't come all the way off. so the question was, how should a hanging chad, they called it, be interpreted. >> there's a guy with a magnifying glass looking at ballots and chad. this is where we're at. this is the presidential election. >> the bush campaign rejects to the recount and lawsuits that eventually reached the united states supreme court. >> we ran outside and stood there on live television trying to figure out what it does. it did occur to me at the moment it was not a good one to screw up. >> the judgment of the supreme court of florida is reversed. >> 36 days after the election, the u.s. supreme court votes 5-4 in favor of stopping the florida recount. the controversial decision in effect hands the presidency to george w. bush. >> people who liked the winner

were very happy and thought this was great legal scholarship. >> whether you voted for me or not, i will do my best to serve your interests, and i will work to earn your respect. >> and people who didn't like the outcome thought this was rigged. >> i say to president-elect bush, that what remains the partisan ran kor must now be put aside and may god bless his stewardship of this country. >> the decision by the supreme court underscored in many ways the power of the electoral college. i think it also led to a lot of cynicism in the electoral process. >> 16 years and three presidential elections later, the 2016 race for the white house proves that the process is still anything but predictable. >> the risk for irregularities in voting still very real, and certainly those who work in election law have gotten more sophisticated on how they're ready to battle this out if it

comes to that. >> the huge battle in the music industry these days against the internet site known as napster. >> sean parker and sean fanning developed napster in 1999. the site blindsides the record industry and personal nently transforms the way music is distributed and sold. >> instead of trading cassettes which we had been doing, suddenly songs are flying around for free like crazy. >> at its peak, 70 million users are swapping songs on napster, costing the record industry hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue. before the service is forced to shut down in 2001. >> we started a kind of cultural revolution, but we didn't succeed as a business. >> nearly two years after napster's demise, apple launches their itunes music store, that redefines the single. >> i can't remember the last

time i bought an entire album. it's an a la carte menu out there. >> today subscription based streaming services are edging out digital downloads by selling access to massive music catalogs stored in the cloud. >> most people in the music business have no idea what the future will be. there's all these technological challenges to profitability, and they don't know how to combat that. >> while researching treatments for high blood pressure and heart disease, the drug company pfizer accidently develops a life-changing little blue pill. in 1998, viagra is approved by the fda. >> turns out there was a side effect that a lot of the initial patients had. they developed erections. they decided this is a much better place to market than just another blood pressure pill. >> viagra not only helped treat erectile dysfunction, but made

that condition part of the national conversation. >> sales of viagra have quadrupled since its launch. but there is still no equivalent for the other half of the population. coming up -- >> it really introduced a new era, if you will, of mass shootings at schools. you both have a

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i'm richard lui. governor mike pence back in his home state of indiana after accepting the vp nod officially in new york for vice president. pence asked the crowd to pray he and his family make america proud. istanbul's international airport back in business today. flights resumed earlier tonight. nearly 24 hours after the turkey military's failed coup attempt. national carriers are flying through, other airlines are waiting one more day just to be safe. now back to our regular programming.

for 20 years, msnbc has covered the biggest news stories and how they continue to impact our lives today. in that time, mass shootings in the u.s. have become shockingly frequent, and never more debated. april 20th, 1999. two teenage students armed with shotguns and semiautomatic weapons enter columbine high school in littleton, colorado. and they open fire. >> i just started screaming and crying and telling them not to shoot me. and so he shot the girl in the head in front of me. >> the mid-morning massacre captured on school security cameras claims the lives of 12 students and one teacher before the shooters turn their guns on themselves. >> there were parents thousands

of miles away from columbine high school who suddenly were afraid to send their children to school. >> what really did introduce a new era, if you will, of mass shootings at schools. >> since 1999, there have been more than 250 school shootings in this country. the 2007 massacre at virginia tech kills 32 people. in 2012, six faculty and 20 first graders are killed at sandy hook elementary in newtown, connecticut. >> i will never forget the day i drove into newtown. the first house i saw had christmas lights strung. i had this realization that there were christmas trees in houses with presents under them for children who would never open them. at that moment i thought, how can we as a nation deal with this again. with this senseless loss of precious young life.

>> four months after sandy hook, a bill banning certain military style assault weapons fails in the u.s. senate. and mass shootings continue to take place all over our country. >> somehow this has become routine. the reporting is routine. my response here at this podium ends up being routine. the conversation in the aftermath of it. we've become numb to this. >> innocent people are killed in movie theaters, in houses of worship, and most recently at a gay nightclub in orlando, florida. >> our collective sense of security was shattered again today by terror. >> oh, my god. people are getting shot. >> 49 people are killed, and another 53 injured in what is the worst mass shooting in u.s. history.

>> mass shootings in this country have certainly affected the debate about gun control. but not in the ways many people think. and we've seen certainly in the last several mass shootings that gun sales tend to go up, as the conversation once again focuses on guns and their availability and how they may or may not have contributed to the latest horror. >> the advent of modern technology has introduced a new generation of virtual vigilantes, fueling the ongoing debate about personal privacy versus national security. >> wikileaks took on the u.s. military and started leaking documents, and videos, from the military's own servers. >> in 2010, whistleblower website wikileaks publishes a highly classified video filmed from a u.s. apache helicopter from an air strike that kills 12 people, including civilians.

>> there was something jarring about being able to see something that feels like we shouldn't be seeing, but also that we had to see. how many other incidents are there like this that we're not seeing. >> three years later, former nsa contractor edward snowden leaks classified u.s. government documents to a british newspaper revealing controversial u.s. surveillance practices, including the tracking of phone records of millions of americans. >> this needed to be told to the public. you know, the constitution of the united states has been violated on a massive scale. >> facing espionage charges in the u.s., snowden flees to russia, and is granted asylum. a federal court decides that the nsa surveillance program collecting bulk phone metadata is illegal. >> you can see how people don't want to have their private lives looked into, and you can also see how the law enforcement

agencies lost a very powerful and very effective tool. >> this is something that the country's only coming to grapple with, which is, we want our privacy, but we're going to have some tradeoffs here. we have to decide what those are, and we haven't yet. >> nearly 1.7 million americans will be diagnosed with cancer in 2016. since the early '90s, the death rate from the disease has dropped by 23 % in the u.s. >> the medical community will never encounter a more vicious militaristic enemy than cancer. >> after decades of clinical trials, in 2015, the fda approves a powerful new weapon in the war on cancer. a treatment called immunotherapy. it uses the body's own immune system to fight cancer. >> they've got a big interest in cancer, because i'm in remission, but it's there. and everyone i talk to in the

field says that we're on the cusp of a golden age, and it's about immunotherapy, it's about using your own body to fight the cancer in your body. >> right now immune ohtherapy is used for melanoma as well as lung cancers. >> vice president joe biden lost his 46-year-old son, beau, to brain cancer. >> i learned so much from so many of these brilliant, brilliant docs, that i began to realize they were right, that we are at an inflection point. and we need something to push it over. coming up -- >> we rely on government in times of crisis, and it failed. it failed a lot of people.

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hurricane katrina slams into the gulf coast. deteriorating levees in new orleans are breached. floodwaters pour into the city. >> there were neighborhoods where homes were literally wiped from the face of the earth. >> we hitched a ride on one of these air boats. as we were going down the street, or river i should say, and you realized you're looking at these homes and everybody's still home. >> they're still trying to survive in the houses. >> what started as a natural disaster quickly becomes a national tragedy. >> the call went out to evacuation. but there are communities where people don't have cars, and they don't have access to a lot of the notifications. >> more than 20,000 residents seek refuge at the new orleans superdome, only to find deplorable conditions.

mass confusion, and little help from local or federal authorities. >> the only thing angrier than katrina are the thousands of hungry, tired and thirsty that katrina left in its wake. >> that was the most graphic show of how it was almost okay to do this to certain people of a certain class and a certain race. >> we have nothing. >> i don't know where i'm going to end up. >> this was a human catastrophe on the broadest level. there are moments where you just had to sit down for a couple of minutes and just, you know, accept the humanity of it, how sad this was. that was hard. >> from local missteps to fema neglect, to president bush's seeming disconnect to the gravity of the situation. >> brownie, you're doing a heck of a job. >> the government response is

under fire. >> i drove all the way down to the coast, and just drove -- and i kept commenting, where are the police officers? where's the national guard? they were nowhere to be seen. >> i got you right here. >> in the end, nearly 2,000 lives are lost. and 1 million people are displaced. >> on the local, state and federal levels, they have clearly learned the lessons of katrina. katrina is always in the back of their minds with every storm that approaches. they evacuate people faster. they react much quicker. >> we rely on government in times of crisis and to protect us, and it failed. it failed a lot of people. it was shameful. >> since 1992, world leaders have convened every year to discuss ways to fight climate change. in 1997, a treaty called the kyoto protocol is drafted in an

effort to cut carbon emissions worldwide. but the u.s. won't support it, and it fails. nearly a decade later, an inconvenient truth has its premiere. >> i am al gore. i used to be the next president of the united states of america. >> the film shines a spotlight on global warming. and on former vice president al gore's climate change activism. >> is it possible that we should prepare against other threats besides terrorists? >> what al gore did is create a really simple but entertaining film that explained the science in a way that almost anybody could understand it. >> what an inconvenient truth did is it got people curious enough that they were willing to figure out exactly what climate change or global warming is. >> 17 years after the failed kyoto protocol, 195 countries sign the paris agreement. promising to limit global warming to well below two

degrees celsius. >> we are going to win this. the remaining question is how quickly we will win it. >> it is 10:50 p.m. on the east coast of the united states. we've been following the car accident this evening in paris, france. >> reports of a serious car accident involving princess diana and the paparazzi stunned the world. >> it was looking more and more likely that princess diana had died. when the time comes to say that, it's emotional. it's hard. >> princess diana has died, according to the british news agency press association. >> she captured the imagination of people around the world on so many levels, that it really did become like a global tragedy. >> and i think people more than that, they felt like they lost someone they knew. >> prip ses diana's life is cut

short. but her impact on the british monarchy endures. >> she showed a humanity that the royal family hadn't shown in a very long time. >> nearly two decades later, the public embraces an increasingly accessible royal family. >> they are gracious, and friendly, and courteous, and human. >> by 1994, aids is the leading cause of death for all americans between the ages of 25 and 44. two years later, a life-saving break-through for the more than half a million americans living with the disease. a complicated and expensive cocktail of anti-retro viral drugs. >> once this treatment hit the market, we saw dramatic decline in the deaths and diseases due to aids. in fact, whole hospital wards that used to be devoted to hiv and aids closed down. >> we now have the ability to

promise to most people who have hiv, they can have a near normal life expect answery and quality of life. >> with 27 million people worldwide living with hiv and aids, the challenge now is access to the treatment. >> hiv and aids is still a major public health concern, because of limited resources and access to these medications. there's still a long way to go in terms of prevention and treatment. coming up -- >> you saw this conversation about, do we value the lives of young black men. are these the throw-away parts of our society. and every day brian drives carefully to work, there are rate suckers. he's been paying more for car insurance because of their bad driving for so long, he doesn't even notice them anymore. but one day brian gets snapshot from progressive. now brian has a rate based on his driving, not theirs. get snapshot and see just how much your good driving

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if there is anyone out there who still doubts that america is a place where all things are possib possible, tonight is your answer. >> november 4th, 2008, an

extraordinary moment in american history. >> this was the first breaking of the mold. >> barack hussein obama is elected the 44th president of the united states, and becomes the nation's first african-american chief executive. >> i think the world said america has come of age, to think that this nation who had the legacy of slavery, and segregation, had elected a black president. >> i thought he was a statement for this country that was such a good powerful thing. that sense of optimism. my god, this is a really great country. >> obama energizes the electorate through a sweeping campaign, promising hope, and change. behind the scenes, his team leverages the power of big data to target voters and secure his victory in the landmark election. >> president obama got through multiple hurdles. number one, the doubt that even

african-american voters had the viability of a black candidate. the lack of name recognition, and that name, barack hussein obama. >> it's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to america. >> the rise of the internet in the late '90s yields a company that begins in a california garage, and goes on to unleash the power of the worldwide weapon. >> google grew with the scale of the internet. and we were amaze at the number of contributors, the amount of content. >> nearly a decade after the domain name is registered, google is a technology giant. and the word google becomes so ubiquitous, it is added to the dictionary. >> we have on the order of 3 billion people connected to the

internet. virtually all of them use google at least every month. and on a daily basis, it would be in the billions. >> the networking platform facebook opens to the general public. it launches a social media revolution. >> here's a company that grew out of a college dorm room that now has over 1 billion people on the planet using it. >> today, social media shows explosive growth. >> twitter, pinterest, facebook, instagram, the biggest thing is that social media makes you think of yourself as a brand. >> it makes the world a smaller place, fundamentally changing the way we connect, communicate, and organize. >> all these tools have done is they've harnessed groups and passions to in a same sense that we celebrate the use of facebook, twitter and others, it's also true that the opposition infiltrates those and knows exactly what everyone is doing. so it goes both ways. >> outrage erupts in 2012.

wen trayvon martin, an unarmed teenager, is shot and killed while walking down the street in florida. a man named george zimmerman is charged with second-degree murder. a year later, at trial, zimmerman claims he acted in self-defense. and he's acquitted. those who oppose the ruling unite and launch the national movement black lives matter. >> the black lives matters movement is in a day and age when we were seeing senseless killings of unarmed black people. >> do we value the lives of young black men, are these sort of the throw-away parts of society that they could be killed without consequence. >> in 2014, a ferguson, missouri, police officer shoots and kills michael brown, another unarmed black teenager. the officer says he feared for his life. >> what's striking to me is the

sheer fury, frustration, and rage of folks who lived there. >> we're on the air and they were shouting things at us, like, why are you here now. we've been here for years. why are you just showing up. >> and they were furious. they were pissed at the police. a bunch of young men started chucking rocks. >> you know what? >> they're throwing rocks at us. >> we are telling the truth. >> people are angry, man. they're really angry. >> i think people in the community felt so ignored and undervalued and trod upon for so long, then all of a sudden there's a glare of national media attention that they felt wasn't actually capturing the reality. and people were enormously frustrated by that. >> each death in police custody, each report of police brutality fuels the black lives matter movement. capturing things like walter

scott, freddie gray, sandra bland. >> there have always been police and citizen altercations that are controversial. but we're living in an era now where information is getting out there so rapidly through social media. >> now the observer is the cell phone. any civilian can tape a police encounter and really create a set of facts that are an eyewitness account. >> in one devastating week earlier this month, a video circulates online of police killing alton sterling in louisiana. less than 48 hours later, castile is shot dead during a traffic stop in minnesota. his girlfriend streams the aftermath live on facebook. >> the officer just shot him in his arm. >> the next evening, a peaceful black lives matter protest in texas erupts in chaos, when a sniper ambushes police, killing five officers. nine officers and two civilians are wounded.

>> all i know is that this must stop. this divisiveness. between our police and our citize citizens. >> i find it implausible that two men deciding to commit themselves to each other threaten the marriage of people a couple of blocks away. >> in 1996, president bill clinton signs the defense of marriage act, a divisive law banning federal recognition of same-sex marriages. doma, as its known, ignites a two-decade legal battle over legal rights. >> it said first of all, if one state declares the right to same-sex marriage, no other statenor that. the second thing it said, if a state decides to grant same-sex marriage, the federal government cannot recognize that right. >> in the years after doma, 31 states pass laws or

constitutional amendments to ban same-sex marriage. in some cases, states do both. >> to insist that male-male or female-female relationships must have the same status is patently absurd. >> but opponents of equal rights forge ahead. in 2000, vermont recognizes civil unions. and by 2003, same-sex marriage is legalized in massachusetts. conservative backlash is fierce and sweeping. >> our nation must enact a constitutional amendment to protect marriage in america. >> it's been pretty incredible how quickly the issue of same-sex marriage has moved in 2004. >> by 2012, same-sex marriage is legalized in six states and washington, d.c. >> watching vice president biden come around on this issue before the president was an incredible moment on a number of levels.

>> i am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying women, women marrying women, all are entitled to the same exact rights. >> in 2015, a monumental and unambiguous decision. the united states supreme court rules that the constitution guarantees the right to same-sex marriage. >> this is a total victory for the advocates of same-sex marriage. >> today we can say in no uncertain terms that we've made our union a little more perfect. >> just a little more perfect. as we've seen over the last 20 years, this country and the whole world have been shaped by key players, and major events. and at times, change has been good, at times change has been slow. and sometimes change is very

unwelcome. but as we reflect on the past 20 years, we're also looking forward to the future, to the next 20 years. i'm rachel maddow. thank you for watching. >> where should we begin? >> day one. >> that's great. where else? >> it was bare bones, nerve-racking. >> i can't believe it's been 20 years. >> msnbc was such a cutting-edge place when it went on the air. >> wow, favorite msnbc memory? >> she does not have a short memory. i have a short memory. >> thank you so much, reverend. >> thank you. xxxx . in one of the world's most beautiful vacation spots, on one of the most popular holidays -- >> bastille day, it's their fourth of july. >> -- terror. >> we started running. >> we're like sitting ducks. >> f