Welcome to the Friday, June 20, 2025, Brew.
By: Lara Bonatesta
Here’s what’s in store for you as you start your day:
- Trump administration limits American Bar Association’s access to federal judicial nominees and a look at past ABA ratings
- Learning from Mistakes: How Ballotpedia Turns Setbacks into Growth, by Leslie Graves, Ballotpedia Founder and CEO
- 40 states have passed 328 administrative state-related bills so far this year
Trump administration eliminates American Bar Association’s role in reviewing federal judicial nominees and a look at past ABA ratings
On May 30, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it would eliminate the American Bar Association’s (ABA) role in reviewing federal judicial nominees. The ABA is a nationwide voluntary professional association of attorneys. On its website, the ABA describes its mission as “To serve equally our members, our profession and the public by defending liberty and delivering justice as the national representative of the legal profession.”
The ABA’s standing committee on the federal judiciary issues ratings for individuals nominated to lifetime Article III federal judicial positions. The committee has 15 members: two from the 9th Circuit, one from each of the other federal circuits, and the committee chair. The committee says it focuses on three areas in its evaluation: integrity, professional competence, and judicial temperament.
The ABA’s committee reports provide one of three ratings for each nominee:
- Well qualified
- Qualified
- Not qualified
In a May 29 letter to ABA President William R. Bay, Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote that the ABA “no longer functions as a fair arbiter of nominees’ qualifications, and its ratings invariably and demonstrably favor nominees put forth by Democratic administrations. […] Accordingly, while the ABA is free to comment on judicial nominations along with other activist organizations, there is no justification for treating the ABA differently from such other activist organizations.”
Bondi specified several procedure changes, saying the Department of Justice would “no longer direct nominees to provide waivers allowing the ABA access to nonpublic information, including bar records.” Bondi also said nominees would no longer respond to ABA questionnaires or sit for interviews with the ABA.
On June 10, ABA President William R. Bay responded to Bondi’s letter, writing, “The changes the Justice Department is apparently imposing will likely result in less transparency in the process of confirming nominees to lifetime appointments on the federal bench and appear to be based on incorrect information set forth in your letter.”
The Trump administration’s actions represent a further reduction in the ABA’s special role in reviewing federal judicial nominations. The ABA began rating nominees to the judiciary in 1953, during Dwight Eisenhower’s (R) administration. The organization was granted access to candidate information before they were officially nominated, which allowed the group to release its ratings before others. In 2001, the George W. Bush (R) administration announced it would stop granting early access to nominations to the ABA. Since then, only Barack Obama’s (D) administration reinstated the ABA’s early access.
Before Bondi’s recent policy change, a committee member from the nominee’s circuit would perform the ABA’s initial investigation, including an examination of the nominee’s personal data (collected by the U.S. Department of Justice), legal writings, confidential interviews with people the nominee had worked with, and an interview with the candidate. The evaluator would then provide one of the three recommendations.
As of June 16, the ABA has not yet offered ratings for Donald Trump’s (R) federal judicial nominees during his second term. During his first term in office, the ABA rated 264 of Trump’s nominees. Of those, the ABA rated 187 “well-qualified,” 67 “qualified,” and 10 “not qualified.”
During Joe Biden’s (D) administration, the ABA rated 245 of Biden’s nominees. Of those, the ABA rated 207 “well qualified,” 35 “qualified,” and three nominees “qualified” and “well qualified.”
Since January 20, 1989, 22 nominees were rated “not qualified” by the ABA. Fifteen of those 22 nominees were confirmed. In six instances, the ABA issued a unanimous “not qualified” rating. Six nominees were withdrawn.
Of the 22 nominees that the American Bar Association rated “not qualified,” Bill Clinton (D) nominated four, George W. Bush (R) nominated eight, and Donald Trump (R) nominated 10.
University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias joined us to discuss the ABA’s role in vetting judicial nominations in our June 17 episode of On The Ballot. Click here to listen.
To learn more about ABA ratings of presidential federal judicial nominees, click here.
Learning from Mistakes: How Ballotpedia Turns Setbacks into Growth
One of the most important goals for everyone at Ballotpedia is to provide our readers with information that’s neutral in viewpoint and right on the facts.
But that doesn’t mean we never make a mistake. We do — and some of them have been whoppers.
We look at mistakes as opportunities to learn about ourselves, our editorial processes, and how to improve.
Consider the example of the candidate who didn’t exist — “Andrew Walz.”
In 2019, we received a completed Candidate Connection survey from “Andrew Walz,” who said he was running for Rhode Island’s 1st Congressional District. In addition to his survey responses, “Walz” provided us with links to a campaign website and social media accounts.
It all appeared authentic, so we created a profile page for Walz and added the data he provided to our site.
A few weeks later, the news broke: no such person was running for office in Rhode Island. Instead, it was a carefully designed hoax, the product of a then-17-year-old high school student who contacted a CNN reporter to say he had submitted a hoax candidacy to Ballotpedia, and we had accepted it as real.
The hoaxer noted that the social media site Twitter had also fallen for the hoax, because it relied on us to provide accurate information about the candidates who would qualify for its U.S. Election Badges.
It would have been easy to shift blame to the hoaxer, or to point fingers at others and say that “mistakes were made.”
Instead, we owned up to our mistake. But that wasn’t all. We also conducted extensive internal reviews to understand exactly how a hoax like this could have slipped through our process.
The upshot of all this internal scrutiny and analysis was that we closed the loophole the hoaxer had used to get his fake survey through our process. But more importantly, this episode taught us that because we were seen as an important source of candidate information — and one of the most trusted sources of accurate, fact-based reporting and analysis — we were now targets for hoaxers, manipulators, and other bad actors.
That’s the story of a big error — one you can read more about here.
Of course, we’ve made other errors, and regardless of their size or noteworthiness, we start a review not just correcting the mistake, but also understanding its root cause. Was it a data entry error, a misunderstanding of the information, or a gap in the verification process? Our deep dive into the causes behind our mistakes allows us to implement changes to prevent similar errors in the future.
What makes all of this work, however, is transparency. We publicly share our mistakes with you. That helps maintain the trust you’ve placed in us and shows everyone we’re committed to accuracy and improvement.
And that last item gets to the heart of Ballotpedia’s culture of continuous learning.
Which is another way of saying we are always learning how to get better at what we do. Whether it’s gathering data on local school board races, following the latest filings in ballot initiatives, or deploying new technology that keeps our website strong and reliable, our culture is built around honing our skills, sharing our experiences, and learning from our mistakes.
Our readers — rightly — expect a lot from us. We also expect a lot from ourselves. When we do make a mistake, let us know. We encourage you to report errors when you see them. We carefully review every such report, and pay close attention to any patterns those reports might uncover.
The bottom line: We’ll fix it — and in the process, make Ballotpedia even better.
40 states have passed 328 administrative state-related bills so far this year
As part of our ongoing coverage of legislation related to the administrative state, here’s an update on the number of administrative state bills lawmakers have considered and passed this year.
Since the beginning of the year, Ballotpedia has identified over 1,800 bills related to agency authority and the administrative state. In case you aren’t already familiar, Ballotpedia’s Administrative State Legislation Tracker covers:
- Agency regulation and rulemaking authority, structure, and processes
- Laws governing the adjudication and enforcement of agency rules
- Legislative, executive, and judicial review and oversight of agency actions
- Federalism and policies governing interactions between state governments and federal agencies
- Public commentary, transparency, and regulatory issues, such as occupational licensing and permitting
So far this year, 40 states have passed 328 administrative state-related bills. Of those, 267 have been enacted, including five through veto overrides. Governors in six states vetoed 15 bills.
So far this month, 12 states have enacted 29 administrative state-related bills.
Here is a selection of noteworthy examples from earlier this month:
- Maine LD 1231, enacted on June 12, requires the Maine Department of Transportation to receive legislative approval before changing the overnight docking practices of state-owned ferries that dock overnight on islands served by the Maine State Ferry Service.
- Louisiana HB 274, enacted on June 11, transfers the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP) from being an independent agency under the governor to being under the control of the Louisiana Military Department. HB 274 states that while GOHSEP has broad coordination responsibilities for emergency preparedness, its powers do not supersede those of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections’ Office of State Police.
- Louisiana HR 285, adopted on June 11, creates the Special House Committee on Regulatory Reform to provide recommendations to the Legislature on improving Louisiana’s regulatory environment.
- Louisiana SB 59, enacted on June 8, requires the Legislative Fiscal Office to review and identify proposed agency actions estimated to cost at least $200,000 per year or $600,000 over three years (with those costs not explicitly included in the authorizing legislation fiscal notes). The bill also requires legislative oversight committee approval of such agency actions. Under SB 59, if committees do not review a rule or action for more than 30 days, the governor can approve it. SB 59 is a REINS-style state law because it requires legislative approval or review of agency actions with cost estimates above specified thresholds.
- Tennessee SB 27 and HB 324, enacted on June 4, limit the governor’s emergency management powers to suspend certain procedural laws and regulations, unless strict compliance would prevent or hinder necessary emergency response actions.
To learn more, check out our Administrative State Legislation Tracker or subscribe to Checks and Balances, Ballotpedia’s monthly newsletter.