Category: Uncategorized

President Donald Trump (R) issued an executive order on October 10 that aims to ensure that federal administrative agencies “consider the costs of their administrative actions, take steps to offset those costs, and curtail costly administrative actions,” according to the order.   The executive order targets a federal budgeting mechanism known as administrative pay-as-you-go (PAYGO),…

President Donald Trump (R) issued a pair of executive orders on October 9 that aim to limit the use of guidance documents by federal administrative agencies and end what the order refers to as administrative abuses by requiring agencies to provide fair notice of regulations.   Agency guidance documents are not legally binding, but rather…

Divided government at stake in Louisiana’s primary elections Louisiana voters will decide statewide primary elections Saturday which include nine state executive offices—including the governor’s race—all seats in the state legislature, and four ballot measures.  The state is currently one of 14 divided governments. Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) is running for re-election while Republicans control…

In 2020, voters across the country will elect new state legislators and governors, and in many cases, these officials will play a direct part in drawing the district maps that govern elections for the next 10 years.   The process by which district maps are drawn is called redistricting. Every 10 years, the U.S. Census…

Each week, we report the number of pageviews received by 2020 presidential campaigns on Ballotpedia. These numbers show which candidates are getting our readers’ attention.   Elizabeth Warren’s campaign page on Ballotpedia received 3,071 views for the week of September 29-October 5. Warren’s pageview figure represents 10.5% of the pageviews for all Democratic candidates during…

As of October 7, 256 candidates are filed with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) to run for U.S. Senate in 2020. Of those, 231—124 Democrats and 107 Republicans—are from one of the two major political parties. In 2018, 527 candidates filed with the FEC to run for U.S. Senate, including 137 Democrats and 240 Republicans.…

The Federal Register is a daily journal of federal government activity that includes presidential documents, proposed and final rules, and public notices. It is a common measure of an administration’s regulatory activity.   During the week of September 30 to October 4, the number of pages in the Federal Register increased by 1,938 pages, bringing…

Between 2010 and 2019, there were 69 statewide ballot measures in California, which means this decade featured the smallest number of measures since voters adopted the initiative process in 1911. The number of citizen-initiated measures, however, was 51—the third-highest number per decade of the previous 11 decades. Therefore, the decrease in measures on the ballot…

In 2018, California Governor Jerry Brown (D) was the highest paid of the 50 state governors. Maine Governor Paul LePage (R) was the lowest paid. The average gubernatorial salary across all states was $143,270 in 2018, a 2.4% increase over 2017. These updated figures were published in the Council of State Governments’ 2019 Book of…

Donald Trump has appointed and the Senate confirmed 152 Article III federal judges through October 1, 2019, his third year in office. This is the third-most Article III judicial appointments through this point in a presidency of all presidents dating back to Theodore Roosevelt. Only Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, with 166 and 160…