Presidency of Richard Nixon civil libertarians. In response to growing drug-related crime, Nixon became the first president to emphasize drug control, and he presided over the establishment of the Drug Enforcement Administration. After a nearly decade-long national effort, the United States won the race to land astronauts on the moon on July 20, 1969, with the flight of Apollo 11. Nixon spoke with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin during their moonwalk. He called the conversation "the most historic phone call ever made from the White House". Nixon, however, was unwilling to keep funding for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) at the high
Presidency of Richard Nixon gained traction. That summer, after Nixon's resignation and President Ford's call for health insurance reform, Mills tried to advance a compromise based on Nixon's plan, but gave up when unable to get more than a 13–12 majority of his committee to support his compromise. Environmentalism had emerged as a major movement during the 1960s, especially after the 1962 publication of "Silent Spring". Between 1960 and 1969, membership in the twelve largest environmental groups had grown from 124,000 to 819,000, and polling showed that millions of voters shared many of the goals of environmentalists. Nixon was largely uninterested in environmental policy,