Before taking office in January, President Trump's incoming administration quietly threatened to remove some of the 72 nonpartisan, independent government watchdogs tasked with vetting out waste, fraud and abuse in federal agencies.Source: Months into office, Trump has yet to appoint key agency watchdogs...
Elections: American democracy has a problem — a voting problem. According to a new study of U.S. Census data, America has more registered voters than actual live voters. It's a troubling fact that puts our nation's future in peril. The data come from Judicial Watch's Election Integrity Project.Source: U.S. Has 3.5 Million More Registered Voters Than Live Adults — A...
Welcome back to The Monkey Cage’s weekly presentation of Founding Principles, a series of short videos designed to explain American government and how it works — in theory, and in practice. The first five episodes looked at the basic structure of the government created by the U.S.Source: Why did the Founders make U.S. elections so complicated and confusing? Get your...
With a law extending the election timeline now tied up in court, Senate Democrats’ best hope of a leg up in fighting the recall of Sen. Josh Newman may be California’s political ethics watchdog.Source: California poised to adopt campaign rule that would help Democratic senator...
Attorneys who advise state elected officials need no crystal ball to see what an affirmance in Gill v. Whitford would mean for their clients. … Speaker of the Utah House: A woman in her early 50s; a recovering lawyer.Source: Symposium: Gill v. Whitford as bad theater...
In March, California Secretary of State Alex Padilla appointed Brian Hatch to the Fair Political Practices Commission, the agency that interprets the Political Reform Act and enforces election law. For 40 years, Hatch was a Capitol lobbyist for firefighters’ unions.Source: Ethics commissioner’s blunder could turn watchdog into a partisan Democratic tool...
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear Husted v Ohio A. Philip Randolph Institute, 16-980, later this year, or possibly early next year. All the briefs should be completely filed by September 15, 2017, and then the Court will set a hearing date.Source: Status of U.S. Supreme Court Consideration of Whether Ohio is Purging Voters Too Frequently...
There’s a secret society in Silicon Valley. “Imagine an engineer at Google, let’s say he’s a conservative—a red meat conservative. Does he want to go work at the Heritage Foundation? Probably not,” Aaron Ginn, age 29, tells me at a “hacienda-style” D.C.Source: How Conservatives Survive in Silicon Valley...
When Democrats think about their party’s problems on the political map, they tend to think of President Trump’s ability to win the White House despite losing the popular vote and Republicans’ potent efforts to gerrymander congressional districts.Source: The Congressional Map Has A Record-Setting Bias Against Democrats...
Jonah Goldberg, in the Los Angeles Times, says in this column that a presidential candidate running outside the two major parties might win in 2020.Source: Jonah Goldberg Says 2020 Presidential Election Might See Non-Major Party Presidential Candidate with Potential to Win...
