Question: Who is responsible for communicating leaders’ wishes to members in Congress and making sure wavering members vote with the party?
Answer Options:
A) The Senate president pro tempore
B) The party whips
C) The party caucuses
D) The Ways and Means Committee
Answer: B. The party whips
Question: What were Jim Crow laws?
Answer Options:
A) Laws guaranteeing civil rights of free Black Americans before the Civil War
B) Laws in which the term “slavery” was replaced by “apprenticeship” but still carried the original meaning
C) Laws enacted by southern states following Reconstruction that discriminated against Black Americans
D) Laws enacted by northern states during Reconstruction that prohibited discrimination against Black Americans
Answer: C. Laws enacted by southern states following Reconstruction that discriminated against Black Americans
Question: How can a president’s veto be overridden?
Answer Options:
A) With a two-thirds vote in either chamber
B) With a two-thirds vote in both chambers
C) With a simple majority vote in both chambers
D) With a vote from the vice president and House speaker
Answer: B. With a two-thirds vote in both chambers
Question: Congressional Democrats have developed a proposal to cancel a portion of student loan debt. Before putting the bill before Congress for a vote, party leadership has requested an estimate of the cost of such a proposal from the
Answer Options:
A) Government Accountability Office
B) Congressional Research Service
C) Congressional Budget Office
D) Office of Management and Budget
Answer: C. Congressional Budget Office
Question: Members of Congress who vote for a bill with which they disagree because a majority of their constituents favor it are acting as
Answer Options:
A) trustees
B) delegates
C) lobbyists
D) policy entrepreneurs
Answer: B. delegates
Question: Which of the following is an example of gerrymandering?
Answer Options:
A) Volunteers go door-to-door to survey voters about their political preferences.
B) A politician travels around the country on a bus to make stump speeches.
C) An odd-shaped district is drawn to predominantly include Black voters.
D) The number of electoral votes for a state is changed due to a change in its number of House members.
Answer: C. An odd-shaped district is drawn to predominantly include Black voters.
Question: Imagine a neighborhood in a suburb with a strong school system. Houses in the area are substantially above the price range for someone making the average annual salary in surrounding communities. Ninety-five percent of homes in the neighborhood are currently owned by White individuals. What does this example best illustrate?
Answer Options:
A) De jure segregation
B) Affirmative action
C) De facto segregation
D) Jim Crow laws
Answer: C. De facto segregation
Question: In the Senate, the most powerful leadership role is the ____ In the House, the most powerful leadership role is the ____
Answer Options:
A) speaker; majority leader
B) minority leader; majority leader
C) majority leader; minority leader
D) majority leader; speaker
Answer: D. majority leader; speaker
Question: The role that the U.S. Senate plays in impeachments can best be compared to that of a
Answer Options:
A) trial jury
B) grand jury
C) prosecuting attorney
D) defense attorney
Answer: A. trial jury
Question: What was the main objective of the Fifteenth Amendment?
Answer Options:
A) To revise the procedure for electing presidents and vice presidents
B) To abolish slavery and involuntary servitude
C) To expand voting rights to Black men
D) To establish Congress’s right to impose a federal income tax
Answer: C. To expand voting rights to Black men
Question: Ten years after Brown v. Board of Education (1954), only one percent of Black children in the Deep South attended school with White children. Why did that happen?
Answer Options:
A) Implementation of the Court’s decision required congressional and administrative enforcement.
B) The Supreme Court’s detailed timeline for integration called for such slow progress.
C) Civil rights demonstrations stopped after the court issued its ruling, and momentum for integration was lost.
D) Most Americans actively resisted school integration after Brown v. Board of Education.
Answer: A. Implementation of the Court’s decision required congressional and administrative enforcement.
Question: What is true about the 1848 convention held in Seneca Falls, New York?
Answer Options:
A) It began the modern women’s rights movement.
B) It was an important gathering that initiated the abolitionist movement.
C) It was the convention at which the Fourteenth Amendment was written and debated.
D) It was the convention at which the end of the Civil War was negotiated.
Answer: A. It began the modern women’s rights movement.
Question: What is one way in which the House differs from the Senate?
Answer Options:
A) The House is more centralized and organized.
B) The House is a looser and more deliberative body.
C) The members of the House are much less specialized.
D) The House has a much greater level of turnover in its membership.
Answer: A. The House is more centralized and organized.
Question: Which clause found in the Constitution is the basis for civil rights for Black Americans, women, and other minority groups?
Answer Options:
A) Commerce
B) Full faith and credit
C) Equal protection
D) Necessary and proper
Answer: C. Equal protection