Category Archives: Websites/Databases/Blogs

Trump Tax Cut Truths

Source: Americans for Tax Fairness, 2018

Claims that corporations are sharing a big slice of their huge Trump tax cuts with employees through bonuses and wage hikes are mostly hype, the “Trump Tax Cut Truths” website of Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) shows.

The data on this website primarily covers Fortune 500 companies, whose revenues are two-thirds of the entire U.S. economy (GDP). But the universe is all Fortune 1000 corporations and businesses not on the Fortune 1000 that are included in the List of Tax Reform Good News maintained by Americans for Tax Reform.

Data estimates are based on information from corporations, the media, independent analysts or ATF research and cover activities since the tax law was passed on December 20, 2017. Sources for the data below can be found here or on the separate spreadsheets found here. See the Methodology explanation for more details.

Teens Resist Was Created by High Schoolers to Help Youth Engagement in Politics

Source: Sonia Chajet Wides and Kate Griem, Teen Vogue, August 24, 2018

Teens Resist offers biweekly news and action items you can engage with.

In this op-ed, sophomores Sonia Chajet Wides and Kate Griem, both of Brooklyn, explain why they started the youth-advocacy website Teens Resist and why they believe youth engagement is so key.

It’s no secret that Gen Z is incredibly informed and opinionated. But we need comprehensive resources to turn our opinions into tangible action. That’s why we started Teens Resist, a platform that provides those resources in order to make political activism accessible to passionate youth in a world where their voices matter more than ever.

In publishing biweekly lists on our website that contain briefings and actions to take on topics in the news, Teens Resist hopes to make complicated issues easy to understand. The lists are practical, and made by and for teens. We also publish longer features, written by our core of staff writers or by contributing writers who have extensive knowledge of a particular issue, going deeper into particular issues, including DACA and net neutrality. We also use social media, such as our Instagram, for more frequent updates on current events, lists, and activism opportunities…..

Announcing PACER Docket Alerts for Journalists, Lawyers, Researchers, and the Public

Source: Michael Lissner, CourtListener, August 21, 2018

Now Today we are thrilled to announce the general availability of PACER Docket Alerts on CourtListener.com. Once enabled, a docket alert will send you an email whenever there is a new filing in a case in PACER. We started CourtListener in 2010 as a circuit court monitoring tool, and we could not be more excited to continue expanding on those roots with this powerful new tool.

The best way to get started with Docket Alerts is to just make one. Try loading a popular case like U.S. v. Manafort or The District of Columbia v. Trump. Once the case is open, just press the “Get Alerts” button near the top. Then, just wait for your first alert.

We believe PACER Docket Alerts will be a valuable resource to journalists, researchers, lawyers, and the public as they grapple with staying up to date with the latest PACER filings.

Our goal with docket alerts is to make them as simple as possible to use. Once you have found a case you are interested in, a single click is all it takes to turn on an alert for that docket. From then on, we will send you an email as soon as we detect a new filing in that case. For more details on how to use docket alerts, please see our help page. …..

RAND Hospital Data Web-Based Tool

Source: RAND, 2018

From the summary:
Medicare-certified hospitals and other institutional providers are required to submit an annual cost report to a Medicare Administrative Contractor. Cost reports contain provider information such as facility characteristics, utilization data, cost and charges by cost center (in total and for Medicare), Medicare settlement data, and financial statement data. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) maintains the cost report data in the Healthcare Provider Cost Reporting Information System (HCRIS). The RAND Hospital Data tool is an effort to enhance CMS HCRIS data to make them more accessible and useful to a broad audience of academics, analysts, and hospital executives and their consultants. The tool provides users with data sets that are conveniently packaged and documented and that include value-added fields derived from HCRIS data, such as measures of occupancy and profitability. The goal of the tool is to make analytic tasks easier for those who work regularly with the data and to broaden the set of users.

Behind the Badge: Police Policies Revealed

Source: New York Civil Liberties Union, 2018

When are police officers authorized to use force? What is the process for handling and correcting officer misconduct? How are officers using high-tech surveillance technology? New Yorkers have a right to know what rules the police are following to keep us safe. But far too often, police departments across the state don’t have clear or specific policies in place, or they are made with no community input and hidden from the public.

SCOTUS Watch

Source: Jay Pinho and Victoria Kwan, SCOTUS Watch, 2018

What is this?
SCOTUS Watch tracks the public statements made by United States senators about how they plan to vote on the Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, and tallies them into a likely vote count. This tally is based solely on their statements: we do not make estimates or guesses based on a senator’s party affiliation or ideology.

Related:
CIA Successfully Conceals Bay Of Pigs History
Source: National Security Archive, May 21, 2014
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit yesterday joined the CIA’s cover-up of its Bay of Pigs disaster in 1961 by ruling that a 30-year-old volume of the CIA’s draft “official history” could be withheld from the public under the “deliberative process” privilege, even though four of the five volumes have previously been released with no harm either to national security or any government deliberation. …. The 2-1 decision, authored by Judge Brett Kavanaugh (a George W. Bush appointee and co-author of the Kenneth Starr report that published extensive details of the Monica Lewinsky affair), agreed with Justice Department and CIA lawyers that because the history volume was a “pre-decisional and deliberative” draft, its release would “expose an agency’s decision making process in such a way as to discourage candid discussion within the agency and thereby undermine the agency’s ability to perform its functions.”….

D.C. Circuit Review – Reviewed: Brooding Spirits, Judge Kavanaugh Edition
Source: Aaron Nielson, Notice & Comment, July 9, 2018

Here’s Where Trump’s New Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh Stands On Abortion, Executive Power, And Guns
Source: Zoe Tillman, BuzzFeed News, July 9, 2018
Kavanaugh has written hundreds of opinions in more than a decade on the DC Circuit.

Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump’s Supreme Court pick, explained
Source: Dylan Matthews, Vox, July 9, 2018
He’s a veteran of every conservative fight from the Clinton impeachment to the fight against Obamacare.

Brett Kavanaugh has sided with broad views of presidential powers
Source: Ann E. Marimow Washington Post, July 9, 2018

Students, Alumni Urge Yale Law School’s Leadership To Denounce Brett Kavanaugh
Source: Carla Herreria, Huffington Post, July 11, 2018
Even though Yale Law School published a press release touting the accomplishments of Brett Kavanaugh, its alumnus and President Donald Trump’s new Supreme Court nominee, not everyone at the school is singing his praises. As of Tuesday night, more than 200 students, staff members and alumni of Yale Law School signed an open letter calling for the institution to rescind its apparent support of Kavanaugh.

Trump’s Supreme Court List

Source: Free Law Project, June 27, 2018

Associate Justice Kennedy informed President Trump that he would be retiring from the Supreme Court effective July 31st. In response to this announcement, President Trump stated that his next Supreme Court nomination would come from his existing list of potential Supreme Court justices.

In our Judge and Appointment database, we have compiled extensive information about American judges, including their biographical data, the roles they have held before, during and after their time in the judicial branch, their political affiliations, and their campaign finance information (if applicable). The judges are also linked to the opinions they have authored.

Below are links to every judge in our database that is on President Trump’s list. For a few judges, we have not yet completed this work, and so there’s no link.