Category: Uncategorized

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) issued three final rules on Monday affecting the implementation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The rules concern interagency cooperation, the classification of threatened and endangered species, the listing and removal of endangered species, and critical habitat designations, among other processes.   The first rule change aims to…

Four states—Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Virginia—are holding regularly scheduled state legislative elections this year for 538 seats. The filing deadline has now passed in all four states. In the races for these 538 seats, 158 (29.3%) do not have a Democratic candidate on the ballot, and another 141 (26.2%) do not have a Republican…

In 2020, all 435 seats in the U.S. House and 34 of the 100 seats in the U.S. Senate are up for election. Our initial list of battleground races includes 88 of them—15 in the Senate and 73 in the House.   Battlegrounds are elections that we expect to have a meaningful effect on the balance…

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.   Joe Biden’s campaign page on Ballotpedia received 5,493 pageviews for the week of August 4-10. Biden’s pageview figure represents 9.0% of the pageviews for all Democratic candidates during the…

In July 2019, the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) reviewed 51 significant regulatory actions issued by federal agencies. The agency approved one rule without changes and approved the intent of 45 rules while recommending changes to their content. Five rules were withdrawn from the review process.   OIRA reviewed 36 significant…

In June 2015 Hawaii enacted a law increasing the minimum age to use tobacco products to 21, making it the first state to do so in the 21st century. Seventeen other states that, including Hawaii contain 50.7% of the U.S. population, have done the same in the four years since.   The first tobacco age…

Ballotpedia has compiled the number of days each Democratic presidential candidate has spent in the four early primary states—Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada—between January 1, 2019, and July 29, 2019.   Former Rep. John Delaney was the most frequent campaigner in Iowa, while author Marianne Williamson spent the most days in New Hampshire,…

Today’s Brew highlights the administration’s proposals to reorganize the executive branch + previews Tuesday’s elections     Welcome to the Tuesday, August 6, Brew. Here’s what’s in store for you as you start your day: Trump administration moving forward with executive branch reorganization Mississippi state legislative, Seattle city council primaries among elections we’re following Tuesday…

Donald Trump has appointed and the Senate confirmed 146 Article III federal judges through August 1, 2019, his third year in office. This is the second-most Article III judicial appointments through this point in a presidency of all presidents dating back to Theodore Roosevelt. Only Bill Clinton, with 156 judicial appointments, had more.   Article…

In this month’s federal vacancy count, Ballotpedia tracked nominations, confirmations, and vacancies from June 27 to July 31, 2019. Ballotpedia publishes the federal vacancy count on the last Wednesday of each month.   HIGHLIGHTS Vacancies: There have been seven new judicial vacancies since the June 2019 report. There are 114 vacancies out of 870 active…