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NATIONAL security, BIPARTISANSHIP, and TERRORISM

The National Security Act of 1947 enabled the CIA to "to perform such other functions and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security as the National Security Council [NSC] may from time to time direct." Although intended to establish the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)'s control over the collection of clandestine foreign intelligence, this language was vague enough to authorize other covert operations (psychological, political, and paramilitary) at the direction of the NSC. Attempts at covert action oversight gained traction only after the exposure of unacknowledged CIA activities. The term "covert action" was not defined in legislation until the 1990s. This article categorizes congressional attempts to establish the parameters and regulate covert action both in terms of prohibiting or enabling such action and of enacting substantive or procedural rules. The success of such attempts has depended heavily on the extent of bipartisan support in Congress. Congress is more likely to choose substantive laws when faced with recent intelligence scandals, and Congress is less likely to create prohibitive laws as bipartisan support increases. These trends are supported by the legislative history of the 1991 Intelligence Authorization Act and the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ELECTRONIC wallets, ELECTRONIC services, BUSINESSPEOPLE, LOYALTY, and BUSINESS enterprises

AGRICULTURE, FARMS, FOOD relief, FARM produce, FOOD crops, MONOCULTURE agriculture, and PROCESSED foods

Since then, the Farm Bill has grown immensely to include programs such as soil conservation, crop insurance, forest and wetland protection, nutrition and food assistance, and most recently climate change. Approximately every 5 years the Congress of the United States goes through the challenging process of setting national policy for agriculture that determines funding priorities and programs for the following 5 years. To do this, farmers must be encouraged to shift to practices that build healthy soils that hold water, resist erosion, and keep carbon in the ground. [Extracted from the article]

SYSTEM identification, RISK assessment, DRUG analysis, PREGNANCY outcomes, MEDICATION safety, and MEDICAL equipment

Congress mandated the creation of a postmarket Active Risk Identification and Analysis (ARIA) system containing data on 100 million individuals for monitoring risks associated with drug and biologic products using data from disparate sources to complement the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA's) existing postmarket capabilities. We report on the first 6 years of ARIA utilization in the Sentinel System (2016–2021). The FDA has used the ARIA system to evaluate 133 safety concerns; 54 of these evaluations have closed with regulatory determinations, whereas the rest remain in progress. If the ARIA system and the FDA's Adverse Event Reporting System are deemed insufficient to address a safety concern, then the FDA may issue a postmarket requirement to a product's manufacturer. One hundred ninety‐seven ARIA insufficiency determinations have been made. The most common situation for which ARIA was found to be insufficient is the evaluation of adverse pregnancy and fetal outcomes following in utero drug exposure, followed by neoplasms and death. ARIA was most likely to be sufficient for thromboembolic events, which have high positive predictive value in claims data alone and do not require supplemental clinical data. The lessons learned from this experience illustrate the continued challenges using administrative claims data, especially to define novel clinical outcomes. This analysis can help to identify where more granular clinical data are needed to fill gaps to improve the use of real‐world data for drug safety analyses and provide insights into what is needed to efficiently generate high‐quality real‐world evidence for efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

UNITED States senators, CONVERSATION analysis, LITERATURE, and VIDEOS

Using conversation analysis, this article examines how questioners manage resistant responses in the context of U.S. Senate hearings. In particular, we examine how questioning Senators use explicit metacommentary – a turn constructional practice in which speakers offer 'on-record' comments on the manner in which a prior turn was formulated – to manage a recipient's resistant responses to polar questions. Within these contexts, metacommentary becomes a resource for highlighting the preference organization of the original question and challenging the adequacy of the recipient's response. The analysis shows how metacommentary not only serves to guide a question recipient toward producing an adequate response, but additionally works to register the questioning Senator's stance toward the inadequacy of the response while highlighting this inadequacy for both the co-present audience and viewers of these publicly televised hearings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

EMPLOYEE attitudes, GOVERNMENT agencies, APPOINTEES, HUMAN capital, EMPLOYEE attitude surveys, and JOB satisfaction

Attention to vacancies in appointee positions subject to U.S. Senate confirmation has grown dramatically. Research regarding appointee vacancies commonly assumes negative consequences—loss of political control, promotion of second‐rate subordinates, undermined teamwork—for public agencies though little empirical work exists to confirm such expectations. This study tests whether vacancies at the top of U.S. federal agencies influence job satisfaction and turnover intention among upper‐level employees. Using vacancy data and multiple waves of the Federal Human Capital Survey/Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, we find that upper‐level employees report marginally higher levels of satisfaction when vacancies occur. Further, these vacancies have a negative association with individual‐level intent to leave an agency for another job in the federal government, signaling a higher likelihood that institutional knowledge is maintained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PAY equity, GENDER stereotypes, REPRODUCTIVE rights, SELF-presentation, and VIRTUAL communities

Persistent gender stereotypes portray women as pleasant and polite, but in the wake of the #MeToo movement and polarized politics, female candidates are turning to Twitter and they aren't hiding their frustration. Congressional candidates use Twitter to connect with voters, but political stalemates over health care, reproductive rights, and pay equity are the fodder for female candidates' emotionally charged rhetoric on Twitter. Women are running and winning at rates comparable to men, but female candidates are relying on emotional appeals in distinct ways from their male counterparts. We use a dataset of tweets by candidates for the U.S. House from 2016–2020 to evaluate gender-based differences in the emotional appeals candidates make on Twitter. We find that women running for office adopt a unique style of angry emotional appeals on Twitter, as female candidates defy stereotypes by incorporating more angry rhetoric in their tweets. These differences persist after accounting for differences in party, electoral success, district competitiveness, and other potential confounds. Our research demonstrates that women seeking congressional office act differently than men in their self-presentation online, and offers insight into how anger has become central to online messaging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WELL-being, SPIRITUALITY, GYNECOLOGY, PEDIATRICS, MENTAL health, HEALTH, ELDER care, WOMEN'S health, and RELIGION

This issue of JORH explores various concerns related to the care of the elderly within a number of countries (namely China, India, Iran, Israel, Turkey, USA). Issues relating to Women's Health are also considered across the life span but particularly with regard to gynaecology, paediatrics, cancer, mental health and wellbeing. Research is presented on the empirical measurement of religion, spirituality and health with scales developed and/or tested in Iran, India, Haiti, Taiwan, Jordan and the Netherlands. Finally, readers are reminded of the 9th European Congress on Religion, Spirituality and Health (ECRSH) during May 2024, 16-18th at the Paracelsus Medical University in Salzburg, Austria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

LEGAL judgments, MONOTONIC functions, APPELLATE courts, CONSTITUTIONAL courts, and MODELS & modelmaking

Standard methods for measuring latent traits from categorical data assume that response functions are monotonic. This assumption is violated when individuals from both extremes respond identically, but for conflicting reasons. Two survey respondents may "disagree" with a statement for opposing motivations, liberal and conservative justices may dissent from the same Supreme Court decision but provide ideologically contradictory rationales, and in legislative settings, ideological opposites may join together to oppose moderate legislation in pursuit of antithetical goals. In this article, we introduce a scaling model that accommodates ends against the middle responses and provide a novel estimation approach that improves upon existing routines. We apply this method to survey data, voting data from the U.S. Supreme Court, and the 116th Congress, and show that it outperforms standard methods in terms of both congruence with qualitative insights and model fit. This suggests that our proposed method may offer improved one-dimensional estimates of latent traits in many important settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

FEDERAL government, REFORMS, and VOTING

Federal systems tend to have two venues of representation to ensure that both the people as a whole and the constituent units are represented at the federal level. While this double representation is put forward as a basic (normative) feature of federal systems, little to no empirical research has been conducted on this issue. This contribution therefore studies the representation of the people as a whole and of the constituent units in the Belgian House of Representatives by means of a representative claims analysis of 4,757 oral parliamentary questions. As federal systems tend to be dynamic, the analysis is based on six periods of federal reform through which Belgium decentralized. Our findings show that, over time, the representation of the constituent units increased and exceeded the representation of the people, providing unique empirical input for the debate about the idea that federalism is by definition beneficial for democracy. We problematize our results from a democratic point of view, as—despite being able to vote—the people as a whole are hardly any more represented by the House. Going beyond the Belgian case, we argue that processes of federalization should address the adequate representation of both the constituent units and the people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]