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SOCIOCULTURAL factors, UNITED States presidential election, 2016, POLITICAL campaigns, and UNITED States politics & government, 2017-2021

Objectives: The political discourse surrounding the 2016 U.S. presidential election highlighted discontent with both Congress and corporations, a reality corroborated in recent scholarship highlighting declines in institutional confidence among U.S. citizens. Here we test theories of institutional confidence to understand the social and cultural determinants of confidence in Congress and corporations prior to the start of the 2016 presidential campaigns. Methods: We draw on data from the Religious Understandings of Science Survey, a nationally representative survey conducted in 2013–2014 (N = 9,416). Results: We find that political ideology largely explained confidence in corporations while social location (particularly racial‐ethnic identity and gender) strongly related to confidence in Congress. Seemingly opposing factors converged to predict trust in both institutions. Conclusions: Institutional confidence is shaped not only by social and cultural factors but also by the symbolic functions of institutions themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ENVIRONMENTAL policy, UNITED States elections, VOTING, and LEGISLATORS

Do elections affect legislators' voting patterns? We investigate this question in the context of environmental policy in the U.S. Congress. We theorize that since the general public is generally in favor of legislation protecting the environment, legislators have an incentive to favor the public over industry and vote for pro‐environment legislation at election time. The argument is supported by analyses of data on environmental roll call votes for the U.S. Congress from 1970 to 2013 where we estimate the likelihood of casting a pro‐environment vote as a function of the time to an election. While Democrats are generally more likely to cast a pro‐environment vote before an election, this effect is much stronger for Republicans when the legislator won the previous election by a thinner margin. The election effect is maximized for candidates receiving substantial campaign contributions from the (anti‐environment) oil and gas industry. Analysis of Twitter data confirms that Congressmembers make pro‐environmental statements and highlight their roll call voting behavior during the election season. These results show that legislators do strategically adjust their voting behavior to favor the public immediate prior to an election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SOCIAL scientists, POLITICAL scientists, CIVIL service positions, CONGRESSIONAL hearings (U.S.), and RESEARCH institutes

Congressional hearings are a venue in which social scientists present their views and analyses before lawmakers in the United States, however quantitative data on their representation has been lacking. We present new, publicly available, data on the rates at which anthropologists, economists, political scientists, psychologists, and sociologists appeared before United States congressional hearings from 1946 through 2016. We show that social scientists were present at some 10,347 hearings and testified 15,506 times. Economists testify before the US Congress far more often than other social scientists, and constitute a larger proportion of the social scientists testifying in industry and government positions. We find that social scientists' testimony is increasingly on behalf of think tanks; political scientists, in particular, have gained much more representation through think tanks. Sociology, and psychology's representation before Congress has declined considerably beginning in the 1980s. Anthropologists were the least represented. These findings show that academics are representing a more diverse set of organizations, but economists continue to be far more represented than other disciplines before the US Congress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PATENT law, MAYO Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, and PATENTABILITY -- Lawsuits & claims

In this article, the author argues that the U.S. Congress should abolish the Supreme Court promulgated, non-statutory exceptions to 35 U.S.C. section 101 of the Patent Act. It mentions about the U.S. Supreme Court case Mayo Collaborative Sers. v. Prometheus Labs., Inc. in which the court held that claims directed to a method of giving a drug to a patient, measuring metabolites of that drug, deciding whether to increase or decrease the dosage of the drug, were not patent-eligible subject matter.

INCOME distribution, PARTISANSHIP, and UNITED States legislators

Over the past twenty years, there has been much discussion about two of the most important recent trends in American politics: the increase in income inequality in the United States and the increase in ideological and partisan polarization, particularly in the U.S. House. These two national-level trends are commonly thought to be positively related. But, there are few tested theoretical connections between them, and it is potentially problematic to infer individual-level behavior from these aggregate-level trends. In fact, an examination of the literature reveals, at least, three different theoretical outcomes for district-level income inequality on voter and congressional ideological positions. I explore these district-level theoretical and empirical possibilities as well as test them over decades with three different measures of income inequality. I argue and demonstrate that higher district levels of income inequality are related to higher levels of ideological liberalism in the U.S. House. This stands in contrast to the national-level trends, but it tracks closely to traditional understandings of congressional behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BUDGET reconciliation, RECONCILIATION, and CHICKENS

Since its early uses in the early 1980s, the budget reconciliation process has played an important role in how the U.S. Congress legislates. Because the procedures protect certain legislation from a filibuster in the Senate, the reconciliation rules both shape, and are shaped by, the upper chamber in significant ways. After providing a brief overview of the process, I discuss first how partisanship in the Senate has affected the use of the reconciliation procedures. Next, I describe two sets of consequences of the contemporary reconciliation process, on negotiation and on policy design. I conclude with some observations about the relationship of reconciliation to the prospects for broader procedural change in the Senate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

GAY rights, EQUALITY, POLARIZATION (Social sciences), DEMOCRATS' attitudes, REPUBLICANS, and LGBTQ+ people

The U.S. Supreme Court's recent application of employment protections to gays and lesbians in Bostock v. Clayton County highlights the striking absence of policy produced by the U.S. Congress despite two decades of increased public support for gay rights. With the notable exceptions of allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the military, and passing hate crimes legislation, every other federal policy advancing gay rights over the last three decades has been the product of a Supreme Court ruling or Executive Order. To better understand the reasons for this inaction, we examine the changing preferences of members of Congress on LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) issues. Examining scores from the Human Rights Campaign from 1989 to 2019, we find a striking polarization by the parties on LGBTQ issues, as Democrats have become much more supportive and Republicans even more opposed to gay rights. This change has been driven not by gerrymandering, mass opinion polarization, or elite backlash, but among Republicans by a mix of both conversion and replacement, and among Democrats primarily of replacement of more moderate members. The result is a striking lack of collective representation that leaves members of the LGBTQ community at risk to the whims of presidents and jurists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PRESIDENTIAL candidates, PANEL analysis, ELECTIONS, POLITICAL knowledge, POLITICAL campaigns, and SEASONS

How do citizens' preferences for candidates change during a campaign season? For the first time, this panel study examines how citizens' preferences for candidates change during the general election campaign season for House, Senate, and presidential elections, which vary widely in their salience and contestedness. House races exhibit the greatest mean change in candidate evaluations and presidential races exhibit the least. At the individual level, there is considerable variation across the three types of contest in the presence of a candidate preference and in change over the campaign season. We investigate differences across the three types of races in initial familiarity with candidates and estimate transition models to evaluate the effect of race contestedness, partisanship, presidential approval, political sophistication and knowledge on change in candidate preferences in each type of race. Change in knowledge of the candidates during the campaign season has the greatest effect in House contests, where initial familiarity with the candidates is the most limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ACTIONS & defenses (Law), INTELLIGENCE service, NATIONAL security, and UNITED States. National Security Act of 1947

This Note explores how Congress can respond to a president who withholds non-covert intelligence operations from the congressional intelligence committees in violation of the National Security Act. This Note proposes a novel solution for Congress: the elevation of the Gang of Eight into a joint permanent select committee that is authorized to file suit on behalf of Congress. Congressional lawsuits are likely to be challenged on the basis of standing. Gang of Eight lawsuits could empower congressionalleaders to meet a court's standing analysis, allowing Congress to reassert its role in overseeing the intelligence community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

POLARIZATION (Social sciences), POLICY sciences, RUNOFF elections, ELECTIONS, MAJORITIES, PARTISANSHIP, and PRESIDENTIAL candidates

The dramatic Democratic victories in the 2021 Georgia U.S. Senate runoffs handed Democrats their first majority since 2015 and, with this, unified Democratic control of Washington for the first time since 2011. While Democratic Leaders and President Joe Biden crafted their agenda, any hope of policy passage rested on complete unity in a 50–50 Senate and a narrow majority in the U.S. House. Against this backdrop, the 117th Senate is the most polarized since direct-election began in 1914 and, by popular accounts, the least deliberative in a generation. In this article, we examine the implications of partisan polarization for policymaking in the U.S. Senate throughout the direct-election era. First, we show that greater polarization coincides with more partisan Senate election outcomes, congruent with recent trends in the House. Today, over 90% of Senators represent states carried by their party's presidential nominee. Secondly, we show that polarization coincides with higher levels of observable obstruction, conflict, partisan unity, and narrower majorities. Lastly, we show that this polarization coincides with lower levels of deliberation in the form of consideration of floor amendments and committee meetings. Taken together, we paint a picture of a polarized Senate that is more partisan, more obstructionist, and less deliberative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

VOTER turnout, PARTISANSHIP, ELECTIONS, and GERRYMANDERING

Objective: Partisan bias occurs when votes are distributed across districts in such a way that even if the vote between two parties were equal, one party would win more seats than the other. Gerrymandering is a well‐established cause of partisan bias, but it is not the only one. In this article, we ask whether the decline of voter turnout can also influence partisan bias. Methods: We modified the Gelman–King partisan symmetry measure to make it sensitive to turnout differences across U.S. House elections from 1972 to 2018. Results: We found that turnout variation has caused partisan bias in U.S. House elections in the Democratic Party's favor since at least 1972, though turnout bias has gotten weaker in recent elections. Conclusion: While turnout bias can buffer the impact of turnout reductions, it has the potential to dramatically increase the number of seats a party loses when its supporters fail to vote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ELECTION law, CLAUSES (Law), CYBERTERRORISM, INTERNET security, and VOTING Rights Act of 1975 (U.S.)

While foreign adversaries continue to launch cyberattacks aimed at disrupting elections in the United States, Congress has been reluctant to take action. After Russia interfered in the 2016 election, cybersecurity experts articulated clear measures that must be taken to secure U.S. election systems against foreign interference. Yet the federal government has failed to act. Congress's reticence is based on a misguided notion that greater federal involvement in the conduct of elections unconstitutionally infringes on states' rights. Both state election officials and certain congressional leaders operate under the assumption that federalism principles grant states primacy in conducting federal elections. This Comment dispels the myth that Congress must defer to states to regulate federal elections. The text of the Elections Clause in Article I, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution confers to Congress final authority in determining the "Times, Places and Manner" of federal elections. Therefore, the system of administering federal elections is based on decentralization rather than federalism. The risk of foreign interference in U.S. elections was a precise reason the founders bestowed on Congress ultimate control over federal elections. States and municipalities lack the capacity to effectively combat foreign cyber invasion. This Comment makes the case that Congress has a responsibility to exercise its power under the Elections Clause to create a federal plan to secure voter registration databases and voting mechanisms against cyberattacks in order to protect the integrity of American democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TAX credits, CORPORATE taxes, UNITED States tax laws, and TAX Cuts & Jobs Act (U.S.)

The article discusses two major legislative acts passed by Congress to change tax law in the U.S., including the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) and the 2018 Bipartisan Budget Act (BBA). Topics covered include BBA's elimination of the production tax credit and the investment tax credit, and TCJA's creation of the base erosion anti-abuse tax (BEAT) and its elimination of the corporate alternative minimum tax.

CONSTITUTIONAL law, PUBLIC administration, ARMED Forces, and UNITED States armed forces

Although scholars have explored at length the constitutional law of office-holding with respect to civil and administrative offices, parallel questions regarding military office-holding have received insufficient attention. Even scholars who defend broad congressional authority to structure civil administration typically presume that the President, as Commander in Chief, holds greater authority over the military. For its part, the executive branch has claimed plenary authority over assignment of military duties and control of military officers. This pro-presidential consensus is mistaken. Although the President, as Commander in Chief, must have some form of directive authority over U.S. military forces in the field, the constitutional text and structure, read in light of longstanding historical practice, give Congress extensive power to structure the offices, chains of command, and disciplinary mechanisms through which the President's authority is exercised. In particular, much as in the administrative context. Congress may vest particular powers and duties--authority to launch nuclear weapons or a cyber operation, for example, or command over particular units--in particular statutorily created offices. In addition, although the Constitution affords presidents removal authority as a default means of command discipline. Congress may supplant and limit this authority by replacing it with alternative disciplinary mechanisms, such as criminal penalties for disobeying lawful orders. By defining duties, command relationships, and disciplinary mechanisms in this way. Congress may establish structures of executive branch accountability that promote key values, protect military professionalism, and even encourage or discourage particular results, all without infringing upon the President's ultimate authority to direct the nation's armed forces. These conclusions bear directly on recent legislative proposals to vest authority over cyber weapons, force withdrawals, or nuclear weapons in officers other than the President. They also enable a potent critique of the Supreme Court's recent insistence on a "unitary" executive branch in Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and they shed new light on broader separation-of-powers debates over executive-branch structure, conventions of governmental behavior, the civil service's constitutionality, and Reconstruction's historical importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PUBLIC officers, ACTIONS & defenses (Law), PROBLEM solving, and MENTAL representation

This article examines the relationship between demand for expert information from members of the US Congress and increased issue salience in the public. As problems become salient, policymakers should seek out expert information to define problems and identify effective policy solutions to address those problems. Previous work on elite mass public representation and government problem solving has relied on public actions by elected officials to evaluate this relationship. We rely instead on new data on the policy content of privately requested reports from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) from 1997 to 2017. We find strong evidence that members consult experts when issues become salient, even when controlling for legislative agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BUREAUCRACY, POLICY sciences, SEPARATION of powers, GOVERNMENT policy, GOVERNMENT agencies, and POLARIZATION (Social sciences)

Increasing ideological polarization and dysfunction in Congress raise questions about whether and how Congress remains capable of constraining the activities of other actors in the separation of powers system. In this article, I argue Congress uses nonstatutory policymaking tools to overcome the burdens of legislative gridlock in an increasingly polarized time to constrain executive branch actors. I leverage a new data set of committee reports issued by the House and Senate appropriations committees from fiscal years 1923 through 2019 to empirically explore these dynamics and evaluate my argument. Traditionally, these reports are a primary vehicle through which Congress directs agency policymaking in the appropriations process. Committees increasingly turn to them when passing legislation is most difficult and interbranch agency problems are most pronounced. In this way, nonstatutory mechanisms may help maintain the balance of power across branches, even when Congress faces gridlock‐induced incapacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AGENDA setting theory (Communication) and LEGISLATIVE voting

The study of agenda power has largely been the study of negative agenda power. But standard measures of negative agenda power are insufficient to measure the majority's agenda choices: they only consider a small proportion of bills, only detail how often negative agenda power fails (rather than succeeds), and cannot help us understand positive agenda power. To understand the incentives and strategies of agenda decision-making, then, we must know about members' preferences on all bills. I develop an approach to estimate members' preferences on all bills, by generating quantitative characterizations of the policy content in each bill. I use the resulting estimates to examine both positive and negative agenda power using all bills and to directly compare levels of agenda power between chambers of the US Congress. While I find similarly strong negative agenda control in both chambers, I find substantially stronger positive agenda control in the House than the Senate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ECONOMIC sanctions, PRESIDENTS, INTERNATIONAL relations, and PARTIES

This article explores whether party polarisation in the American Congress affects the length of legislated sanctions. While Congress can enact sanctions, it usually authorises the president to waive, suspend or terminate them. However, Congress can prevent the president from ending a sanction if both parties can cooperate to block the presidential proposal or pass a sanction bill challenging the presidential preference. Borrowing from moderate polarisation argument that both parties can cooperate only when they are moderately polarised, I argue that the probability of sanction termination declines if Congress is moderately polarised but increases when Congress is either least or extremely polarised. This is because only under moderately polarised Congress can both parties cooperate to stop the sanction termination. I test this argument using TIES data (1945–2005) and find support for this expectation. This research contributes to our knowledge on the role of congressional dynamics in shaping American foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

UNDOCUMENTED immigrants, COMMITTEES, SUBJECT headings, LIBRARIANS, and UNITED States. Congress

In 2014, the Library of Congress (LC) rejected a proposal to change headings in the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) that refer to undocumented immigrants as "Illegal aliens." Two years later, a Subject Analysis Committee (SAC) working group submitted recommendations regarding how and why LC should change the LCSH "Illegal aliens."1 That same year, LC decided to cancel the "Illegal aliens" subject heading, which Congress subsequently sought to block.2 Congress eventually required LC "to make publicly available its process for changing or adding subject headings . . . [and use] a process to change or add subject headings that are clearly defined, transparent, and allows input from stakeholders including those in the congressional community."3 In response, LC paused their plan to change "Illegal aliens." In June 2019, a new SAC Working Group on Alternatives to LCSH "Illegal aliens" was convened to survey local institutions implementing changes to the subject heading and to chart a path for librarians to address the subject heading at the organizational level. At the 2020 ALA Annual Conference, the working group presented their report. This paper builds upon that report and details next steps both for the working group and library professionals who plan to implement changes at their own organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ELECTIONS, PRIMARIES, IDEOLOGY, SEX discrimination, GENDER, HOUSING, and UNITED States Congressional elections

Studies of gender-ideology stereotypes suggest that voters evaluate male and female candidates in different ways, yet data limitations have hindered an analysis of candidate ideology, sex, and actual election outcomes. This article draws on a new dataset of male and female primary and general election candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives from 1980 to 2012. I find little evidence that the relationship between ideology and victory patterns differs for male and female candidates. Neither Republican nor Democratic women experience distinct electoral fates than ideologically similar men. Candidate sex and ideology do interact in other ways, however; Democratic women are more liberal than their male counterparts, and they are advantaged in primaries over Republican women as well as Democratic men. The findings have important implications for contemporary patterns of women's representation, and they extend our understanding of gender bias and neutrality in American elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]