POLSCI Final Exam Study Guide PDF

Forms of government: Confederal ○ States are more powerful than the federal government ○ There is a very weak central government holding the states together ○ historically they don’t tend to survive because there’s so much friction between those individ...

Forms of government: Confederal ○ States are more powerful than the federal government ○ There is a very weak central government holding the states together ○ historically they don’t tend to survive because there’s so much friction between those individual states that have a lot of power Unitary ○ The central government is very powerful relative to the weak states. ○ the states exist as administrative units for the central government Federal (US in federal) ○ Its more about taking federal government laws and administering them at state level ○ Definetly more balance between federal and state government ○ Large, diverse countries tend to have federal governments Articles of Confederation: The first kind of constitution written in 1776 and 1777, was thought to be the best way to preserve individual freedom — fragmenting power among the 13 colonies Ratified in 1781 and the setup was a unicameral system Unicameral system: ○ One chamber of congress ○ They needed 9 of the 13 states to agree for most congressional action ○ 2/3 majority to pass legislation ○ In any amendment to the AOC, you needed everyone on board Disadvantages: ○ Weak central government Congress could not: Tax people directly Raise a sufficient military Regulate interstate or federal commerce Establish a sound money system Enforce treaties Constitution: A body of principles and rules placed beyond the boundaries of normal political action ○ It must be accepted by the people, either written or unwritten and it basically outlines the setup shared Article I Congress  Article II Executive Article III The Courts Article IV State Obligations Article V Method for Amending Article VI Miscellaneous Federalism Issues Article VII Process for ratifying constitution Bicameral legislature ○ Virginia plan ○ We have 2 houses, the senate and House of representatives ○ This is our legislative branch ○ House of reps: Each state gets a number of reps thats equal to their size All members in the HOR are elected every 2 years the number of reps we had increased with population until 1912 the apportionment act: capped the number of reps to 435 65 (1789); 105 (1793); 435 (1912) Census: every 10 years, we hey an update on population in each state and they shift how many reps each state gets. ○ US Senate Every state gets 2 senators, regardless of their size in terms of population, so that means you get 100 total senayors bevause we have 50 states. The VP breaks any ties that have been in the senate The senate is 6 year term rather than 2. So they only have to re-run ever 6 years for an election, The elections are staggered: Different from the House where everyone’s running every 2 years, about 1/3 of the senate is elected every 2 years. So there’s always some senate races going on but its not the whole senate. 3/5 compromise ○ The next debate founders were having: How people who are enslaved would “count” in population numbers. This matters bc seats of house of reps would be decided hy the population ○ States with a lot of enslaved people wanted them to count as people just for their benefit. Its not like they were gonna vote. Then small cities disagreed and said that they’re using this to bolster the population numbers which is true.  ended up being counted as 3/5ths of a person just to bolster the state population to gain extra representation ○ This gave power to a lot of southern states that had slavery and had economies that were really driven by slavery later allows them to be able to have more sway in the legislature. They agree in slavery as a federal law. They basically used this to ingrain slavery into fed law. Its finally nullified in the post-civil war amendments to the constitution, giving citizenship to formerly enslaved people More power to central government than under the Articles of Confederation ○ Enumerated powers Article 1, Section 8: Lays out congress’s powers Power to tax, borrow money, raise armies and navies, establishes lower federal courts, regulates the money supply, regulates interstate and foreign commerce and declares war AKA enumerated powers because theyre listed out in the constitution ○ Necessary and proper clause AKA elastic clause Congress has the power “to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foreign powers, and all other powers vested by this constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.” Basically what this means is that even though we listed these out, it also has other powers too and that we’re not going to list out. Even if we didn’t list our power here, that doesnt mean that congress doesnt have it. it means that they still probably have it. Its all part of creating a stronger central government this time around. McCulloch v. Maryland Disagreement about whether the centrakl government can establish its own nation This has been played out in a court case where maryland is like; we dont want the national bank in our state because we have a state bank and we dont want competition with our state bank. So they don’t outlaw it but they tax it pretty heavily. its like theyre saying “we’re gonna tax the national bank and not the state” They decided in favor of the central (federal) governmnet that congress van legitimately tie its new esercise of power if it can tie that to one of its enumerated powers, then yes its constitutional. This shows that its the courts reaffirming the elastic clause, saying if you can show that you need to do this thing in pursuit of your enumerated powers, then yes, you can do it. Maryland lost, power of central government reaffirmed  ○ Supremacy clause Article VI 6 basically says that the supreme leader, the one that has one of the most powerful men of the world, is the one that the last say is the central government and not the state government. The state government is not going to follow the central government. This constitution and the laws of the US which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the US, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the Judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.” Separation of powers (3 branches) ○ Legislative Congress Borrows money CANNOT regulate immigration Can regulate commerce Can declare war power to make laws ○ Executive Presidency Power to enforce laws Includes federal agencies and the Cabinet ○ Judicial Interpret the law Includes the Supreme court and lower federal courts Judicial review: Created after marbury v. madison — supreme court gives itself the power to interpret the constitution (not in the constitution Checks and balances ○ Congress can pass legislation but the president can veto ○ Congress can override veto with super-majority in both chambers ○ SCOTUS can strike down legislation passed by Congress & signed by president Judicial check ○ Scotus can declare executive actions unconstitutional Declared Student debt loan act unconstitutional and overturned roe v. wade ○ Congress and the states can pass constitutional amendment to overturn SCOTUS decisions ○ Senate must approve treaties signed by the president ○ President can pardon those convicted by federal courts ○ Congress can impeach and remove executive officials and federal judges who violate the law ○ The executive branch checks the power of the judicial branch by granting a presidential pardon  President can pardon anyone who is convicted of a federal crime, meaning it had to be one of the federal courts who convicted the crime Bill of rights: This was a compromise between the federalists and the antifederalists. The antifederalists won this by getting the bill of rights through the first 10 amendments to the constitution Amendment 1: Freedom of speech, press, assembly, religion and petition Amendment 2: Right to keep and bear arms Amendment 3: Protection from quartering soldiers Amendment 4: Protection from unreasonable search and seizures Amendment 5: Due process; crime to be held in front of a grand jury, protection from double jeopardy: subjected to the same offense twice, right to remain silent Amendment 6: Speedy and public trial in the place crime was committed Amendment 7: Right of trial shall be preserved and no fact tried by a jury shall be reexamined in any Amendment 8: Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nore cruel or unusual punishments Amendment 9: The enumeration of the constitution of ceritain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people Amendment 10: The powers not delegated to the US by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states are reserved to the states respectively or to the people ○ Powers reserved to the states. Electoral college: Its basically a group of people who decide who will be president Even if the majority of the US voted for one person, the electoral college will vote for the other Electoral vote: Its the process that we have for electing the President of the US. Popular vote: The total number/percentage of votes cast for a candidate. This can refer to any geographic territory (popular vote in a state, popular vote nationwide, in a country, etc) The nationwide popular vote does not determine the president of the US ○ You could win the national popular vote but not become president. For most states, the popular vote is going to determine who gets their electoral votes Ex: Clinton 2016 won the popular vote but did not become president. You can win it but also lose the electoral vote, and the electoral vote is what determines who is going to become president. 538 electors for who vote for president and VP — need 270 to win ○ The number of electors that each state gets is basically a sum of the number of senators they have and the number of representatives they have. So the lowest you can have is 3 if you ony have 1 HOR and 2 senators.  How does it work: ○ Step 1: Figure out the # of electors for each state of representatives + 2 senators per state = total electoral seats Subject to change since its tied to the population-ish. Not 100% This can change every 10 years due to the change in census data ○ Step 2: Electors are nominated Each state nominates their electors to represent the electoral college for each state The state parties do it themselves, so you’re not voting They nominate however many democratic and however many republican electors that their state would potentially get. ○ Step 3: Voters select electors on election day We’re technically voting for electors who will represent our choice. We aren’t directly voting for the president, however, we are voting for electors who will represent our choice. ○ Step 4: We tab up the electoral votes for states and jurisdictions So this would be each state that goes through the presidental election, they give a big production, like live updates on where votes are coming from. They essentially report votes to figure out which way is the state gonna go. Maine and nebraska will basically do proportional, but everyone else will be a winner take all situation ○ Step 5: The majority electoral votes determines the winner At the national level, you need 270 electoral votes to win. If no candidate wins the majority, so if its 260, then the House ends up choosing the VP Ex: RFK’s decision to leave the race and he’s coming off the ballot in some places but staying in on others. He’s hoping for a contingent election where trump gets 269 and Harris gets 269, because then, the HOR could choose him. ○ Step 6: Its not supposed to be a decision that they’re making — ceremonial: So like “what did my state do?” “Who am I supposed to vote for?” In december: Largely ceremonial gesture, the electors pass ballots for president and vice opresident, usually following the popular vote of their state, unless their state is maine or nebraska. Then votes are counted at a joint session of Congress and the President is officially elected This is where we’ll see the attempt on jan 6, because it was intended to stop the electoral votes Faithless electors:  ○ These are basically electors who dont vote for the designated candidate based on their own state and vote based on their own preferences ○ No federal law or constitutional statute binds electors to vote for anything - pledging laws are at the state level ○ As of 2020 election, a total of 165 instances ○ Have never swung an election ○ Nearly all voted for third parties or non candidates rather than switching to the most viable opponent. Implications (ex: safe v. swing states, campaign spending, bush v. gore, jan 6) ○ Safe States: States that are though to very likely vote for Democrats or Republicans. California, Mississippi, New York, Louisiana, etc. ○ Swing states: States that could go either way, and they tend to be more competitive This is because they’re trying to focus their strategy on winning, so they’re not focusing on popular votes. They’re focused on the electoral vote. Blue wall states: Michigan, Wisconsin, and PA. They are called this because they’ve been seen as harder to win for republicans Sun belt: Arizona, nevada, georgia, North carolina All current swing states ○ Implications: When we’re comparing a popular vote to who becomes president The fact that you can win the presidential election without winning a majority of the votes has important implications for electoral strategy This puts focus on potential swing states - the states you can tip in your direction the states you can tip in your direction They’re mainly concerned about the swing states, and Harris n trump were gunning for PA for their fracking ○ Bush v. Gore: Bush wins 1700 voters which triggers an automatic recount, because in FL, and in different state laws, they have diffferences in recounting when theres a super close margin of victory Bush: 246 Gore: 266 Because of this, a bunch of people from different states filed court cases for and aagainst this recount and they ruled that there must be a statewide manual recount of all ballots in FL But despite this, there were still debates around this and this was taken to the supreme court ○ Major themes here: Electoral college leads to hyper focus on single states you can win the election without winning pop vote Previews the role of the supreme court - Amending the constitution: dont need to know the details but know that it can be initiated by super majorities of state legislatures or congress There are 4 ways of amending the constitution: ○ Congressional initiation 1. 2/3 majority in both house and senate, then must pass by simple majority 50% plus 1 in 3/4 of state legislatures (38) 2. 2/3 majority in both house and senate: Then, must be accepted at state level conventions in 3/4 of states (38) ○ State Initiation 1. 2/3 of states (34) petition congress to call for national convention: propose amendments which need to be ratified by 3/4ths of state, which passes the amendment. Then must pass by a simple majority of 50% +1 vote in 3/4 of state legislatures (38) 2. 2/3 of states (34) petition congress to call for national convention: propose amendments which need to be ratified by 3/4ths of state, which passes the amendment. Then, must eb accepted at 3/4 state level conventions (38) -Structure of congress: Congress = House of reps + Senate 435 reps in the house - distributed proportionally: remember NJ and VA plan — chamber of legislature that they decided to be proportionally represented in terms of population ○ elected every 2 years ○ Every 10 years, census is completed to reproportion house of reps per state 100 senators ○ 2 per state, regardless of how big or small the state is ○ Elected every 6 years, but 1/3 of senate is elected every 2 years and by the end of the 6 years, there will be a fresh set ○ Initially they were elected by state senators ○ Similar to reasons we saw for electoral college Many of the founders didnt believe that ppl should have too much influence over the gov ○ Thanks to the 17th amendment in 1913 Senators elected by the people of the states Meant to skew electoral college towards less populous states, because the number of electoral votes you get is the combination of the number of senators, which is always 2 and the number of voters and the numbers of the house which van be 1 or more Theres no term limits for either, so thats why you see people starving for a super long time, sometimes with both of these  10th Amendment: Power is not delegated by the constitution nor prohibited by it to the states, that are reserved to the states…or to the people ○ Essentially gives power to state government Descriptive v. Substantive Representation: Descriptive ○ The extent to which a representative resembles those being represented ○ Usually referring yo demographoc traits like race, class, gender or common experiences, like being a veteram Substantive ○ How much the actions the representative takes once in office to advance the policy preferences or best interests of their constituents Ex: Bernie sanders wants the future of the far left to be female. Isnt that enough? Ex: Women for trump Congressional roles: Legislative ○ Law writing Substantive laws: make a change in federal law or authorize spending Ceremonial laws: rename buildings, award medals, etc Sitting members of congress often run for reelection on legislative record Representation (delegate v. trustee) ○ Which model is best? Delegate: expecting the representative to act in your best interests and monitoring them to make sure they do Trustee: letting the representative do what they think is best/in your best interests Constituent service ○ AKA case work ○ If you live in their district, you’re their constituent, so theyre doing service on your behalf ○ people call MCs for help ○ Can be controversial because theres evidence, some studies shows its bias in terms of who they choose to respond to Oversight ○ Evaluating how programs and regulations are actually working, via standing committees and committees that hold hearings, making sure theres no fraud happening How congress passes laws:  Step one for passing legislation: The House and the Senate members propose bills in their respective chambers & clerk assigns bill number Leadership then decides, basically, if they're going to take up the bill. So remember, in the House, the leadership is speaker of the House. Speaker of the House: elected by whole House of Reps ○ The House’s partisan and administrative leader ○ Typically from the majority party ○ Does not typically vote, debate, or sit on committees ○ Still most powerful because make parliamentary decisions – usually to their party’s advantage (think of the second face of power) ○ But they're still extremely powerful because they're making all of these parliamentary decisions. They decide if the bill dies immediately or goes forward. So that's a lot of power. ○ So, Speaker of the House elected by the whole House of Representatives. They're the ones in charge at this stage in the House of Representatives. ○ They don't have to be from the majority party, but they usually are, because the majority party has more votes, so they get their person in. But it doesn't have to be the case. Usually, the speaker doesn't vote, debate, or sit on committees, which we'll talk about in a second. Senate Majority Leader: elected by the majority party in Senate ○ Manages the Senate’s business ○ The Senate, the leader in the Senate is the majority leader. This is elected by the majority party. Different than the House, where the House is voting on the floor. ○ But in the House, the speaker trumps any power that the majority leader has. ○ So, in the House, the Speaker is really making this choice about whether or not a bill is going to be assigned to committees. In the Senate, what they're supposed to do is the majority and minority leaders negotiate to decide, is it going to a committee? ○ If so, which committee? That kind of thing. Ultimately, really the parliamentary leader of the Senate, who's like a non-partisan, makes the choice, but you don't really need to know the specifics. A bill can come from either chamber. Yes, great question. A bill can start in either chamber. It can start in the House or it can start in the Senate. It can start in either one. Step 2: Leadership decides if they want to refer the bill to standing committees In the House, the Speaker makes this choice In the Senate, majority and minority leaders negotiate to decide who refers the bill to a standing committee Standing committees committees that persist over time rather than special committees or something like that. The Senate has 16. They have about 12 joint committees right now. You don't need to know those specific numbers because there can always be the creation of more standing committees in either case. ○ They're divided usually further into subcommittees.  ○ You don't need to know all these, but this gives you an idea of what are the committees. So in the House of Reps, there's the Agricultural Committee, so it deals with agriculture. Appropriations, Armed Services, Budget, Education and Workforce, Energy and Commerce, Ethics. ○ You can see all of them there. Same thing in the Senate, Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, Appropriations, Armed Services, so really if they decide they're going to refer the bill to a committee, they refer it to the committee that it most aligns with based on what the bill is dealing with. ○ There's a ton of political forces at work. So, executive agencies, that means agencies within the executive branch might have their own preferences. They might be lobbying Congress one way or another about bills. Interest groups, those are outside groups who have a particular interest or a particular issue they're really concerned about. ○ They might be lobbying. Outside in terms of trying to influence those committee decisions, maybe pressure the speaker to assign it. about the caucuses, the entire floor, the other chamber. What are the chances it could be passed or not passed? ○ A caucus, remember, that is like basically the party's little group. So like the Democrats and the Republicans each have their caucuses within each chamber. And remember we were talking about last time how democrats actually technically have less seats in the Senate, but they have like four independents that caucus with them, so that makes them the majority party. ○ So it's like they're a little group. They're a little club. Public opinion. Do people want this bill? Do they not? Maybe it plays a role, maybe it doesn't. The President. Is the President ultimately going to sign it? Should we spend our time with this? Or is there like no chance? These are kind of like the games, gamey decisions that people are making. Step three: the bill has, if the bill gets assigned to committee, then within committee there are three different stages that they go through First Stage: They have hearings about the bill. ○ So this is where the committee or subcommittee invites people to testify either in favor or against this bill. They could invite them or they could subpoena them. That means force them to come. And remember, I think we talked on Monday that sometimes there's questions about whether people can defy their subpoenas if they're part of the executive branch. Second Stage: So they invite hearings about the bill, then they have a markup session ○ This is where the committee members get to edit the bill's language. So they get to change what's in the actual bill. Based on what they think it should be. Third Stage: Reporting out. If the committee decides to approve the bill, they report it out to the main chamber. ○ If they don't, it's over for the bill. We saw that in the video. A lot of bills die in committee. They don't make it through. The hearings or the markup sessions,  they don't ultimately get voted on by the committee. And so guys, it's over for the bill. Step 4: DEBATE If a bill makes it through committee… So things, little slight difference here. So in the House of Representatives, if it gets voted on. If it gets approved by the committee, then it goes to the House Rules Committee before the debate to decide on what the rules of the debate are going to be. If the committee approves this thing, ultimately it's going to be debated by the whole Senate or by the whole House. In the House of Representatives, it goes to the House Rules Committee before the debate to decide on the rules for debate ○ The rules committee is super powerful, you really want to be on the watch for that. What are the rules going to be in terms of how we will approve or not approve this bill? Open: if they are open, that means any member of that chamber of the House Anyone can change it. It gets me a bit of a hot mess. Modified Open: Any member of Congress can amend as long as the amendment is pre-printed in the congressional record ahead of time. And this kind of gives the majority party time to strategize over how to handle amendments that come up from the minority party. So they could be like, OK, the minority party is voting to add this amendment. Or if they are adding this amendment, then we can come back and add this other thing. Structured: Allows only certain amendments which must be approved by the Rules Committee and written into the rule itself It's not like, oh, raise my hand, here's this crazy amendment to this bill. Yeah, you usually have an idea of like, oh, someone's going to add this amendment. There's a lot of like, when does that, that's like informal. So that's not like part of the formal process. It's like informed, yeah, basically. Group chats, congressional staffers like talking to each other, negotiations. But anyway, basically it shows you there's like so much behind the scenes negotiation happening. Closed: allows no amendments to the bill on the floor That are already approved by the rules committee and ran into the rule itself or closed, no amendments on the bill. So if you are the majority party and this is your bill, you're usually picking number three or four because you're like, you know that your bill can get through with just your party. ○ So you're usually picking one of these. The point of picking the other two might be that you want some version of this bill to pass, but you don't think you have enough support in your own party to do it. And so you have to make some concessions basically to the minority party to get them on board. ○ If you have the votes for it, you're going to do closed every time. But this is more about, like, again, to your point that you just made, knowing behind the scenes what are the chances for this bill and kind of gaming it out. That's what could lead you to pick one of these, or that's what could lead the rules committee to pick one of the first three, potentially. That makes sense? So now, that's in the House, right? So in the House, if the committee votes yes on the bill, then it goes to the Rules Committee. They attach a rule to it. Then it goes to the floor to debate. In the Senate, if the bill makes it through committee and they vote yes on it, then they have to set their terms, basically, for how are we going to pass this bill for the Senate as a whole. ○ If a bill makes it through committee in the Senate… Unanimous consent agreement: sets the terms for the bill – but must be agreed upon by all 100 senators So in the Senate, before it goes to debate, they could pass a unanimous consent agreement. All 100 senators. It has been edited to include proper punctuation. But it's possible. If that is not passed, some senators can filibuster the bill: Prevent bill from being passed by dragging out debate It basically times out and we didn't have time for a vote. In the old days, you had to do this by standing and speaking. So it was a little harder. Nowadays, you can just be like, I'm filibustering, and then you filibustered it. And that means we're not having a vote. If debate does not end, then a vote cannot be held We didn't used to see so many filibusters, but a lot of times people point to that moment. There's starting to be more incorporation of non-white people and women into the policy process. So then it would have to restart at the very beginning. A new bill getting proposed, going to committee. So if you get a debate and by the time the end of the day comes for the Senate, they don't vote on it? It's not the end of the day, but there is a time period. So actually, I didn't write down the exact time period. It can last multiple days. But yes, if it gets to that and expires, then it's over for the bill. Is it true that, like, you have at least affected the horse? Congress less effective. It is true that Congress is passing fewer bills. The amount of policy that's getting enacted isn't actually that much less than it used to be. It's just, it's getting done in these, like, big, omnibus patterns. Yes, it's been like tanking, and part of it is because of the filibuster, yeah. Good question. So how do you stop a filibuster? Because anyone can filibuster like, Hi, filibuster! And so how do you stop it? You have to pass a motion of cloture, which places a time limit on the filibuster, saying, okay, you can filibuster up to this point, but then we're  still going to have time at the end. So if you pass that, then debate ends at a certain point and the vote happens. In practice, this is really what you need to pass anything today in the Senate, because someone's always going to filibuster. So to do that, you need three-fifths of the Senate, which is 60 senators. So, burn that into your brain. You need 60 senators to pass a bill in the Senate. Because you have to pass a motion of cloture, which overrides the bill of usher. Initially, the idea is that all senators are supposed to unanimously agree on the bill. That's, well no, that's, they set terms for the bill, so that was the part that like, they could set the terms of it's going to be an open debate, it's going to be structured, it's going to be closed, like that. So let's say it goes through committee, it gets approved through committee. Let's say no one passes a consent agreement, no one filibusters. It's still going to be debated. And really, you only need a majority to pass it. Unless it gets filibustered, which is always what happens, which is why you need to override it. So, in an ideal world, if for some reason you had 51 votes for a bill, but you didn't have anyone that was going to filibuster. It could leave committee, go to the floor, get debated, get your 51 votes, and get passed. It is many at the same time. Yeah, that's a good point. Sometimes, especially if there is weirdness going on, people will be like, we didn't even get the chance to read this bill, especially in the House, if they're attaching new rules to it every time and making it a super short debate period Usually, I think it's like they have a lot of staffers who are reading it and telling them. This is what's coming up. Well, for one thing, they have a heads-up about what's coming up. For another thing, they have campaign staffers who are, like, assisting them. So they generally know what's in it. But, yeah, it's definitely a critique you see sometimes that there's, like, not enough time. Yes, it only requires one person to filibuster, so you just need one person to say they're in a filibuster. Step 5: VOTE! The House and Senate must pass the same version of the bill. So once the bill goes through one chamber, as we mentioned earlier, it can start either in the Senate or the House. Once it gets through that one and gets passed, it gets sent over to the other chamber. They go through the whole same thing again. So they go through the whole same thing, where it's like, assign it to committee, committee has hearings, marks it out, votes on it, new rules, goes to the floor. They have to pass the same version of the bill. That's kind of hard. That also doesn't happen that much today. If it doesn't happen, then there's three things that you can do.  ○ One, The other chamber agrees to adopt the original version. That, like, never happens, but it's possible. ○ The two chambers send different versions to each other and attempt to get a compromise. So they send the different versions and try to see if their members can talk it out. ○ Three, they can hold a conference committee specifically to figure out how are we going to get agreement on this bill. Who is on the committee? It depends. The speaker gets to decide who is on the conference committee in the House, and the majority and minority leaders negotiate to decide who gets to be on it in the Senate. It doesn't have to be equal between House members and Senate members. It can be like seven people, and it can be like 250 people. There's no rule. It can be any number of people on the Senate. If they can't agree, it dies. The bill's over after all of that. If they can, it still has to get voted on by both chambers. So let's say the committee, the conference committee is like, okay, we have this new compromise bill, we think it'll work. It still has to go back to the two chambers and have them vote on it. Step 6: it has to go to the president after that to get signed or vetoed. Presidents issue executive orders all the time. Executive orders are basically initiated by the president and are basically laws that don't have to go through the whole process. - Budget reconciliation process -President as a person: President serves nation, members serve district Between what the president wants and what Congress wants. It's part of those three co-equal branches attempting to We have checks and balances on each other. Part of this comes from the fact that there are different constituencies. You should know this word for your first exam. Constituency is the group of people you serve. So the president serves the nation. They're elected by the whole nation. Whereas members serve their district. Senators serve their states. Different timetables ○ So the president has between 4 and 8 years. So they're basically in constant campaign mode because they don't want to lose their job. (and only runs twice) ○ Members have unlimited years, but have to run every 2 years (for House) or 6 years (Senate) President As a Person In 1951, as of the 22nd amendment, they can only serve two terms. This was not always the case.  We are serving four year terms. It was kind of a norm, now it's official. You have to be a citizen of the U.S. to run. You have to be a resident of the U.S. for at least 14 years before you assume office. You must be a minimum of 35 years old. Selection of the President: The president is elected from the people, but indirectly through the electoral college. Electoral college: ○ So when we vote, we're technically voting for electors who will represent our vote in terms of who we want for president. The rules vary state by state. Most states are winner-take-all, so whoever gets the majority, even if it's like 50, Well, actually it's a plurality. So even if it's like 49% to 47%, something like that, they get all the electoral votes. ○ Except for Maine and Nebraska, who do it proportionally. Vice President: Today: chosen by the President, runs on the ticket with the President. ○ Usually, these days, it's thought to be chosen by the presidential candidate to, quote, balance the ticket in some way. ○ So, you know, when you think about Trump's pick and Pierce's pick, we can think about ways that they might have been chosen to, quote, balance the ticket, so. Trump picked him when he thought he was definitely going to win, when it was Trump vs. Biden, so we might not have seen that as much, but maybe there are some ways. And then Harris choosing walls. Obviously Harris is the first woman of color running on a major party ticket. So a lot of people were like, what? Which white dude is she going to choose? So, like, balance that out for voters. Also, you know, she's from California, and he's from the Midwest, so potentially some of that geographic balance. That used to be a lot more common. Like, it used to be the case where you picked someone from that state, you're winning that state. But with polarization, that has kind of disappeared over the years. So we don't really see that as much anymore. So that was pretty rough. It would be very difficult these days and it even was very difficult back then. Originally: winner was president & runner up was VP (until 12th Amendment)  ○ Not many formal powers ○ President of the Senate ○ Preside over electoral college vote-counting But depending on the relationship between the Vice President and President, there's been different times in history where they've yielded a lot of power. So if you think about some of the reporting on Dick Cheney as the Vice President to George W. Bush, people really saw him as acting behind the scenes and almost controlling what went on in terms of some of Bush's actions. They are president of the Senate. As we talked about, we talked about the Senate. So they passed a tie-breaking vote in the Senate. If it's 50-50 on something... The vice president casts their vote and breaks the tie. So, that duty is a power. They also preside over the electoral process. We saw during January 6th, Trump pressuring Pence not to certify the election. I miss sort of the narrative and the false claims that he had actually won. The cabinet: The president as an institution is part of the executive branch, which is one of three co-equal branches. (Includes the presidency) ○ The cabinet: leaders of major executive agencies (and anyone else designated by the president) to advise Must be approved by the Senate, except VP ○ The cabinet is these executive agencies, as well as anyone designated by the president that they want to be like a chief advisor to them. Again, this is not, there's not like a rule that you need X, Y, Z agencies in the Constitution or something like that. ○ The Executive office of the president So, leaders of major executive agencies have to be approved by the Senate. ○ Except for the Vice President, who's technically in the Cabinet and they're elected. But if you're going to lead a Cabinet agency, you have to be approved by the Senate. And you'll see, especially, this is really common under Trump's administration. ○ He couldn't get the votes for some of the people that he wanted to serve. And so he kept saying, oh, this is just an acting lead of this agency. This is an acting lead, and it was kind of like a way to get around the house. ○ You needed two-thirds initially for the Senate to approve, and then they changed it to 16, similar to the filibuster situation. Executive office of the President:  Staff and agencies that directly support the president, thousands of people including people like the chief of staff who manages White House operations, controls access to the presidency. These people are, were part of the presidential transition team. ○ Created during FDR’s administration The White House Staff ○ key aides and support personnel who do not require Senate approval Including the Chief of Staff who manages White House operations and often controls access to President Legal Counsel, Press Secretary, National Security Advisor, Office of Legislative Affairs, + more So usually campaigns will kind of say, like they'll announce their transition team in terms of who would be part of taking over. A lot of these positions, they're not going to serve for four years. So if you see, for example, like, one that you might come in contact with a lot is press. Important Support Agencies ○ Office of Management and Budget (OMB) The Office of Management and Budget is basically that. It's part of developing and executing this budget, managing agency performance and oversight. ○ National Security Council National Security Council, established in 1947, advising and coordinating American security and foreign policies. ○ Council of Economic Advisors Economic advisors, I don't know if you remember the Trump administration, it made news because people kept quitting from his council of economic advisors, but the point is to advise about the economy to the president. ○ Office of the United States Trade Representative Coordinating trade policy, negotiating agreements, et cetera. If you're on this council, do you have no other power than just giving the president advice, or do you have anything else? Yeah, I mean, it might vary. Like if you're head of an agency, you also have, you're basically like CEO of that agency, so you have those kind of responsibilities, too. If you are on, But yeah, I mean, if you're on the Council of Economic Advisors, you can't implement policy yourself. It's just advising the president about what you think should happen. But that's pretty powerful. It's not in the constitution. It developed over time. At first there were only three agencies. And then it's grown to however many new agencies. Domestic Powers: Vetoes  ○ Regular veto: send bill back to Congress with a message about why it should not become law the House and Senate have vetoed Congress can override with 2/3 vote in both chambers It goes to the President, and then they veto it and say, no, this is not going to become law. They send it back to Congress with a reasoning for why they're not signing it. Then, if Congress wants to, they can override a presidential veto with two-thirds votes in both chambers. That pretty much never happens these days, because it's really hard, like you were saying when we were looking at how to pass legislation, it's really hard to get anything voted on in the majority in the Senate. So getting two-thirds of both chambers is difficult, but it's possible. ○ Pocket veto: president does not sign the bill but holds onto it until it is too late to be dealt with during the legislative session They also don't technically veto the bill. They just hold the bill on their desk until it's too late to be dealt with during a legislative session. If the legislative session closes, There's just some small thing on the agenda that has to be done, and so they're technically not closing Congress, even though no one's there. And two, vetoing something regularly, especially these days, pretty much does the trick because you can't really get two-thirds to override it anyway. ○ It also includes in this case line item vetoes, which means you're vetoing part of the legislation but not the whole thing. ○ Veto threats, which is usually enough to get them to not send it to you in the first place. So we've seen it going down over time. Executive orders: directions to executive branch members that only come from the president. The President can just issue them. They don't have to go through Congress or anything like that. ○ Congress can overturn an executive order by passing legislation that invalidates it. So if they don't like something the president did, they can pass a. This is a piece of legislation, and that would invalidate executive order. Also, executive orders are really easy to overwrite. So like one president does all their little executive orders, the next person takes office and then they start doing their executive orders undoing all the first person's executive orders. It also mentions the next president can invalidate it. Courts can overturn an executive order if they find it outside the scope of the president's power. So this just happened kind of famously with Biden's cancellation of student debt. He issued an executive order that said that We're going to incur publicly funded debt.  ○ A president can revoke their own executive order OR the new president can revoke / invalidate executive orders with their own executive orders ○ Courts can overturn an executive order if they find it outside the scope of the president’s power So it was to the Department of Education saying, we're gonna cancel 10,000 of every borrower's student loan debt. 20,000 if they got a Pell Grant at any time. So that was almost all excited. And then someone challenged it, went to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court invalidated it, saying that it's outside Biden's scope of his power to be able to do that. So as an example, recently where we see an executive order being overturned, basically, by the courts. For executive orders, to override a winning congress, you have to pass a bill. Congress could pass a bill, the President could still veto it if they wanted their executive order to stay in place. They could then override the veto if there was a vote. Other things that the president does, they also nominate federal judges and foreign ambassadors in addition to the cabinet department and the agency heads. Things that lead to their decisions. Obviously, their own ideology. They tend to nominate people that are in line with their beliefs, politically. ○ They're not going to nominate someone that they feel is not loyal to them. Executive Branch appointments ○ Senate must approve each appointment with simple majority vote judicial nominations ○ Nominations of federal judges cabinet department and agency heads and foreign ambassadors “going public” ○ Visit districts to pressure members of congress ○ Talk to country Pardons ○ Pardons and Reprieves They can only pardon people for federal, not state crimes. They can't pardon someone in the executive or judicial branches. ○ There are different ways to pardon. Full pardon: where you reserve all of your rights, an additional part of them. Commute a sentence: you can leave prison, but whatever you did to get yourself into prison is still on the record.  Commute a sentence: allows person to leave prison Emergency powers ○The National Emergencies Act If the president declares an emergency, there's lots of new powers that they have. So they have more expansive powers to shut down. Example: “shut down many kinds of electronic communications inside the United States or freeze American’s bank accounts.” commander in chief ○ Civilian in charge of the US military; generals and admirals must take orders from the president ○ Congress has unsuccessfully tried to restrain these powers diplomatic powers ○ Treaty power: ability to negotiate and sign formal agreements with other countries (must be ratified by 2/3 Senate) ○ Executive agreements: often used instead of treaty process; have same force as treaties; do not require Senate approval, but an incoming president can stop honoring them ○ Diplomatic-recognition power: can receive ambassadors and other public ministers -Judicial federalism ○ Where there's a dual system with federal courts. So there's a lot of heterogeneity. There's a lot of variation in terms of state courts, how they operate. So this is like o Federal vs. state courts ○ So you could get to the Supreme Court by starting out at the, if you committed a state crime, from the local court within the state, you appeal it, somehow, depending on your circumstances. ○ This is super rare. This does not often happen in terms of cases that actually get to the Supreme Court. This one with the bold arrows, like the really big arrows, is most of the way that cases get to the Supreme Court. Starts out at a district court, goes to an appeals court, finally goes to the Supreme Court. ○ Then you can see we have specialized courts, claims, veterans' appeals, international trade. They can all go to the U.S. Appeals Court, the Federal Circuit, and potentially to the Supreme Court, and then the military has its own situation happening over here, where there's military courts, their own appeals court, and then the Supreme Court. ○ You could go to the Supreme Court from there. ○ So again, you could get to it through any of these ways, and this one is the most common way. It's a federal crime. It's tried in district court, it gets appealed within the federal circuit, and then it goes to the Supreme Court.  Federal Courts: ○ handles violations of federal law Criminal and civil statutes, regulations, and constitutional provisions - as long as its federal Ex: terrorism, tax evasion, bank robberies, bank fraud, mail fraud, some narcotics crime if involving interstate commerce. So the division between if your case goes to state court or if your case goes to federal It's based on what kind of law you violated, if you violated a state law or a federal law. ○ Sometimes, if you have a lawyer who can make a case that it should actually be in federal court, that's it. ○ Congress amended Judiciary Act to create more courts later on: Now we have 94 federal district courts. Ex: Court of International Trade, Court of Federal Claims. Organized into 13 circuits (12 regional courts and one specialized) Above that, the Court of Appeals. It's also based pretty much on district, and then there's a three-four. ○ If you look at the district boundaries, then the colors are the appeals court area. Yeah. When it comes to the appeals courts, 1 through 11 are geographic, the 12th is DC, and then the 13th is federal, and it has nationwide jurisdictions for specialized cases. State Courts: ○ handle violations of state law Most US criminal and civil cases Exs: murder, DUI, rape, theft, drug possession, robbery, assault, shoplifting Judiciary Act of 1789 So, because the Constitution doesn't say exactly how the court system should work, Congress in the early, early days, 1789, It passes a law that talks about how federal courts will be set up. Created 3 tiered federal court system: ○ District courts: So, it says first, at the lowest level, there's going to be district courts. they hear cases involving federal civil or criminal charges ○ Circuit/Appeals court: Reviews decisions by the district courts Judges to hear your case because you think the lower level got it wrong. ○ Supreme court (Originally 6 justices) And then finally, obviously this part was in the Constitution, but finally the highest part was the Supreme Court. This is the highest court in the US. Whatever it does, decide cannot be appealed. So you cannot appeal anything from the Supreme Court. If you  have an issue with the Supreme Court ruling, you have to start way back at the bottom again with a new case at the district level, appeal it and appeal it, and then potentially they can overturn what. Assigned Jurisdiction: Their previous precedent was set for whatever case they had an issue with. This assigns jurisdiction of the courts. Jurisdiction means what territory does each court cover? Like what area, geographically, do they cover? Well, actually, geographically also sometimes in terms of what the actual crime is. This is about federal courts not state courts Side note: Constitution stipulates that the Senate must approve presidential appointments to federal judgeships (Article 2 Section II) ○ So it's varied throughout time in terms of can you use the filibuster, can you not, do you just need a simple majority, da da da. So, but it does say that you have to, the Constitution says that the Senate has to, for example. SCOTUS purposes: final court of appeal, judicial review The first purpose, obviously, is to be the final court of appeals for lower. The second purpose is judicial review. Think about the case (Marbury v. Madison) ○ So basically to examine actions from Congress, the executive branch, and the states to determine constitutionality. So still if this happens, this second purpose, it still starts from a lower level case that gets appealed and ultimately goes to the Supreme Court. ○ So it always like has that same trajectory. But the point is that purpose one is like ruling on exactly who wins, who loses in this case, and then the second purpose is to make like a broader decision about the constitutionality of a variety of cases. ○ They can serve indefinitely as long as there's good behavior. And we're going to talk about this, but you can impeach a convicted justice like you can a president. ○ So I think putting term limits, to me, almost seems a little harder because we have to try to deal with the issue of the Constitution saying that they can serve in terms of good behavior. Not that it couldn't be done, obviously, a constitutional amendment, but it seems unlikely in these times that we'd get one. ○ So we see basically this ability to review It also includes actions of Congress and the Executive Branch. It is solidified in the Library of Congress' Madison case, which we are going to watch a little bit more. In doing so, basically establishing that the court's main job is to review things. Stare decisis, precedent, writ of certiorari, rule of four Stare decisis: So the Supreme Court is supposed to make decisions that are consistent with past decisions on similar cases. So you're supposed to make decisions in line with past decisions, which is precedent, right? Obviously, this doesn't necessarily always occur. Precedent matters  And actually, like, more and more, it's like, I think, actually, at least in recent history, it's been less. But that's like the general idea of how the Supreme Court is supposed to make their decisions. Then, whatever they decide extends downward from the Supreme Court to lower courts. Also notes, like in the Marbury v. Madison the Supreme Court can decide, when it decides a case, it's not just saying who wins, it's potentially also saying something broader that would apply to more cases or not. So they sometimes will say in their decision, like this only applies to this one particular case. So they kind of make a decision in terms of how they write the decision. Usually it's a lot of cases because they don't have to take everything that comes to them and they take the one usually that would apply broadly, but not always. Nevertheless, whatever they decide goes to lower courts. It becomes the new precedent that lower courts have to follow. If there is anything from the Supreme Court that overrides something that happened in the state courts or the federal courts, they have to go up and move. Appealing to SCOTUS: ○ Petition for a writ of certiorari (formal request to review a lower court decision) -- “cert has been granted/denied” SCOTUS’s informal rule of four: ○ 4 justices must agree to take the case If agree to take it, issue a writ of certiorari (order to the lower court to send up the case’s records) You need a writ of certiorari petition, a formal request to review a lower court decision. They will tell you if cert has been granted or denied. So people have basically an informal rule of four to decide if they're going to take the case. ○ So they need at least four of the justices to say they want to take the case. I know that the interviews have a time, and you have to go to bed. If they agree to take it, they issue a writ of certiorari (order to the lower court to send up the case’s records) SCOTUS statutory and constitutional interpretation Statutory Interpretation: Statutory interpretation basically means interpreting statutes. ○ Statutes are laws. So when a bill is passed and signed into law, it enters into the U.S. Code as a pre-standing statute or an update to an existing statute. ○ Definition: debates over the meanings of words and phrases in federal laws and how they apply to specific controversies.  Let's focus on the Constitution in this case, though it doesn't mean that there's no overlap where it's not going to come up. But the idea is, OK, this law is passed. And someone is saying that some circumstance violates the law. Does it actually violate it or not? And they're hearing both sides of that. So how do they interpret federal statutes? There are two common ways that they say they use to interpret federal statutes. ○ Textualism: So this means relying on the plain meaning of words. Which is to say that if the statutory language is plain and non-ambiguous (plain-meaning rule), it must be followed and applied. So this is like, not a lot of interpretation. They're looking straight up at the words as they are written, and does this thing violate that or not. ○ Intentionalism: Which is not only looking at the meaning of the words, but also thinking about the broad intent of the legislation. So what were members of Congress talking about when they were debating this legislation? What was the purpose? What was it created in response to? They're considering more the context under which it became a law, and whether the—that sort of is what makes them decide, hey, what does this law really mean or not. These can be used together. It's not necessarily an either-or. Also, justices wouldn't, I mean maybe some would, some wouldn't, say that they only fall into one camp or the other. There might be a little overlap. There might be consistency. If they're like, I'm this type of justice, I'm fine too. But it's not necessarily an either-or. They might use it in one case and not another. But those are some of the things that they would point to in terms of how do they make their decisions. Constitutional Interpretation: Second interpretive category: Interpreting the Constitution Again, many styles, including original intent: which is kind of the equivalent to intentionalism and textualism. Another style, though, that is specific to constitutional interpretation is living documents. ○ Adapt Constitution for modern times and contemporary issues So this is saying the Constitution is amazing and it was written a long time ago, and so we have to adopt the spirit of the Constitution to new issues today that they weren't thinking about when they wrote the Constitution originally. So this living document versus original intent are the two big ones when people are talking about constitutional interpretation. ○ Dynamic, rather than static, view of how Constitution is interpreted So living document is a more dynamic view. It's like, let's take the spirit of the Constitution and apply it to modern issues. Whereas as we'll talk  about in a second, original intent obviously is as it sounds. What was the original intent of this Constitution? The two, textualism and intentionalism, they apply to both, statutory. Yeah, it's not super like I'm like putting them out this way, but yeah, they basically do. Like you could still use textualism and intentionalism for the Constitution. I guess in a lot of ways they're probably like almost subsumed into original intent because it's like reading the words super close, thinking about the words super close and thinking about the intent. It's just like different when it's the Constitution versus a law because it's like so long ago that the dividing point ends up becoming like what did they originally mean versus what do they, how do we take that to like the modern context. Models justices use (textualism, intentionalism, living document, originalism) Originalism/Original Intent: Originalism/Original intent: The Constitution should mean now, but it originally meant people who wrote it. So famous originalists: ○ Antonin Scalia, the guy that died in 2016, remember, during the controversy. ○ Neil Gorsuch, a Trump nominee. ○ Clarence Thomas, the one we talked about with the Anita Hill controversy. ○ Amy Coney Barrett, who is also a Trump nominee. On average, it's favored by more conservatively people. Not always, but just on average, at least contemporarily, that's how it's. ○ People who argue for it say that we need stability to the structure of the legal system. We can't just keep changing it depending on new context. We need to stick to the Constitution as it was originally intended. ○ And they argue it keeps the judicial branch out of legislating, meaning we're not gonna rule on new issues, we're not gonna go off in a new creative direction. Opponents argue: ○ It doesn't allow for social change, because if you're only in the realm of what people were thinking about in the 1700s, that things change three centuries later, or whatever we're in, and you need to adapt to that. ○ Justices will apply it selectively. Like, when they want it to be a no for whatever reason, then they're like, oh yeah, well, it wasn't their original intent. But then when they want a yes or something, they'll kind of drop that.  Which could be said, honestly, on average, about all of these explanations, I would say. There's lots of pick and choose when it works for you. But yeah, we'll talk about that in a second. ○ Legal realism: a school of thought that says justices use their own arguments really to just advance policy preferences. Theoretical models for judicial decision-making: legal, attitudinal, strategic 1. Legal Model: ○ Deciding cases is a form of logical reasoning ○ So the first model says these justices are really good at their job. They are unbiased. ○ They look at a law and they make their decision about it based on logical reasoning only. ○ They are focused on the case at hand and on precedent. ○ Remember we talked about you are supposed to make decisions based on precedent or cases that have been decided previously. 2. Attitudinal model ○ Which says justices, policy preferences, and ideologies, like their own personal ones, shape how they interpret the law. i. Political ideology is basically their political means. Its a set of moral or ethical commitments, policy positions and views about the political world (liberal/conservative) ii. If they're more conservative, more liberal. But remember, political ideology can be more than just that. You don't have to be like, you are a communist, you're a fascist, you're libertarian, you're whatever. 3. Strategic model ○ Adds on to the attitudinal model. ○ It's basically everything from the attitudinal model plus saying it's not just ideology because there's also considerations that they make about how Congress will react, the president, public opinion, and or the states might react. i. There's a lot of research in political science that shows That's not really what we're seeing lately, but it's what one of the it's it's a model Yeah, and you know, maybe it doesn't mean the street miles not working it could just be that public opinion doesn't play an equal role to these other things So these are kind of competing models about how Supreme Court justices make decisions Supreme Court justices would reject everything except the first one if you ask them directly They're not going to say like my politics matter. Divided government Divided government: if you have different lawmaking institutions, With different parties in control, you end up getting gridlock, which is what we've really seen  ○ Since the 1970s, has pretty much been the norm. ○ That means translating political programs into policy really doesn't fall. If you don't have the votes, or if you don't have enough votes to get the type of thing that you need enacted, it's not going to happen. ○ Some also argue that like voters don't necessarily always know based on like, you know, people who study. What political parties do (recruit political candidates, attempt to win elections, organize governance and opposition) Recruit political candidates: leaders of state and national party organizations network to recruit candidates for office ○ Bias… ○ $, name recognition, biographies Attempt to win elections ○ Political advertising ○ Voter registration drives ○ Voter turnout efforts ○ Provide candidates with expertise and data Organize governance and opposition ○ Once elected, the party members organize themselves (e.g., elect their leadership in Congress, state legislatures, etc.) ○ Plan legislative strategy ○ Discipline party members (sometimes)… ○ How’s this all going? Well Political party organization (national committees, Hill committees, state organizations, local organizations) Federalist: exist on national, state, and local levels National committees: composed of prominent members of each state’s party organizations ○ Democratic National Committee ○ Republican National Committee ○ Responsible for the party’s vitality, fundraising, outreach, voter registration efforts, and putting together a party platform (adopted at national convention): Dems and Reps Hill committees (on national level): committees in the House and Senate ○ Increases in congressional partisanship have increased the importance of Hill committees  ○ Raise money for candidates; set national campaign priorities State organizations ○ Have become more institutionalized in the past decades ○ Still rely on many volunteers Local organizations ○ Think of urban political machines No parties in the Constitution Parties considered dangerous to government, social order, lead to conflict ○ “Tearing to pieces the best of characters” – Benjamin Franklin ○ “warn…in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the Spirit of Party, general” – George Washington ○ “Division of the republic into two great parties…is to be dreaded as the greatest evil under our Constitution” – John Adams First parties thought to be temporary Party activities, however, are protected by the Constitution → Speech, Write, Assembly Duverger’s Law (including single member district vs. multi-member district, plurality voting) Duverger’s Law – single-member districts plus plurality voting systems create two-party systems and make it more difficult for third parties to get off the ground. According to the washington post: “Duverger’s law” states that third parties can’t compete because there is no prize for winning, for example, 15 or even 25 percent of the vote. This leads voters to choose candidates who are most likely to win, and it leads the parties to try to broaden their appeal to half of the electorate — and ideally more. Other Challenges: ○ Qualifying for debates and polls (IMO not as big of a deal as the video makes it seem) ○ Money, for sure, is a huge part of it ○ Two major parties have institutionalized their power so much that it makes it even more difficult for a third party to bring money in. In a lot of ways, these might be reasons not necessarily only for a two-party system, but for the specific two-party system we have, where it's Democrats and Republicans. Single Vs. Multi-Member Districts: Single-member district: one person elected per district ○ One winner in the district Multi-member districts (MMD): multiple people elected per district ○ Ex: Top 5 vote getters in district win 5 seats We have single-member districts  Plurality voting: Plurality voting (aka first-past-the-post): the winner is the one who gets most votes (not necessarily majority) ○ So we have situations where Candidate A gets 48% ○ Candidate B gets 47% ○ Candidate C gets 5% ○ Plurality system: candidate A wins because they have the highest percentage. In a majoritarian voting system, if you need to get a majority, 48% is not a majority. Majoritarian voting system: A majority has to be 50% and up. So, in that case, often they would have something like a runoff. A second election at the runoff between Candidate A and B. But right now, we're talking about nationally, why do we have a two-party system. So, this is the second point, that we have plurality voting. So actually, you can see why this might hint towards resulting in two dominant parties, right? Because if you had a system where there would be a runoff afterwards, In the first round, if you loved Candidate C the most, maybe you would vote for Candidate C first. And then it would take you to the second round, and if Candidate C is in it, you're like, amazing. But if not, you vote your second favorite, which would be one of the other two. So that's part of it. And on this part, which I should have mentioned, is you can also see how this is going to start tipping towards a two-party system. Because if you have multiple people it's going to represent one district, and you like the third party that doesn't have as much influence, but you're like, I don't know, like, if we get 15% of the vote, we probably could get, like, one person in, then you would vote for that party, because you'd be like, okay, I don't have to. Organized interests / interest groups o Economic interests (corporations and business interests, labor), citizen’s groups (public interest groups, single-issue groups, ideological groups, demographic groups), government interests o Similarities and differences to political parties o Strategies (lobbying (inside and outside), donating money, going public, litigation, protesting) Organized Interests: Organized interests: are political interests that are working to influence public policy in any way other than running an actual candidate. They may be endorsing a candidate, but they're not running their own candidate. Right? ○ A lot of times these groups have A lot of money, and in some cases, are maybe even more influential in politics than political parties themselves. They're not a political party. Divided into 3 different categories: ○ Category 1: Economic Interests ○ Category 2: Citizen’s Groups or Non-Economic Groups  ○ Category 3: Government Interests Economic Interests: In terms of economic interest, there's kind of two broad categories. So, the first and the largest is corporations and business interests. ○ large corporations that actively work to influence public policy ○ You can see from the way your book is written, the author is like very focused on how much money, and probably rightfully so, like how much money from corporations come into the U.S. politics. ○ So corporate lobbyists and money advocating for their own interests. A lot of times these big corporations are like donating to both sides to kind of hedge their bets. Sometimes a corporation, if it's super supportive of one candidate, one presidential candidate, it's interesting to see if that one loses and the other one wins. ○ So, business associations may be advocating on behalf of small businesses or something like that. ○ Professional associations, for example the American Medical Association, donates to candidates on behalf of their interests. Incorporate funded ○ Corporate Funded think tanks: This is important to keep in mind, especially when you're doing research in general, but especially also for your paper, your representation assignment. Because sometimes, you know, these think tanks, they're called think tanks because they're producing data and reports on issues. Similar to, like, research that professors are doing, but they're funded often by institutes that lean conservative or lean liberal. So, it doesn't mean they're making up the data, but the more you learn about data, the more you realize you can look at things in a particular lens if you're motivated to. And so you have to be careful about how they're presenting information. So, like, for your paper, just make sure you know if you're getting information from, like, a liberal institution. It has been edited to include proper punctuation. Like the Cato Institute, I'm pretty sure he's conservative. Americans for Prosperity, I think it's more liberal. ○ So corporations is kind of one big category of economic interest. On the other side, labor and labor unions. ○ So the dominant group here is the AFL-CIO, which is sort of an umbrella organization that encompasses a variety of different labor unions, including the American Federation of Teachers. ○ Airline Pilots Association, United Mine Workers, etc. Citizen’s Groups or Non-Economic Groups:  Public interest groups: this is like so-called good government groups who claim to represent broad interests of all Americans. ○ Mainly started since the 1960s. ○ Common cause is the common one. ○ It focuses on a single issue or area like campaign finance reform, media reform, making the government more open, responsive, and ethical. ○ It might be more of a pro-small government. So you just have to look into it a little. Single issue groups: These are groups focused on one issue or one issue area. So the Sierra Club, for example, focused on the environment. The NRA, National Rifle Association, focused on gun rights, NARAL, Pro-Choice America. It includes groups that will donate to whichever candidate is advocating in a way they like for their particular issue.. Ideological Groups: interested in a variety of issues but have a clear ideological bias ○ E.g., MoveOn (progressive), Focus on the Family (conservative) Demographic Groups: for defending or advancing the rights of a particular demographic group ○ E.g., American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), National Organization for Women (NOW), National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Government Interests: Government interests also advocate so state, local, and city governments coalesce into their own organized groups. They have paid lobbyists in Washington as well, advocating on their behalf. And on the broader groups are things like the National League of Cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors. National Association of Counties, National Governors Association, etc. And they're doing this because obviously so much federal legislation ends up affecting their states and localities advocating on their own vocations to have. Importnt because so much national government policy affects state and local government. Interest Groups: Interest groups: set of individuals interested in some shared thing. Hire lobbyists: which lobbyists are people who are hired to represent that interest group before government and they're usually compensated, given money, for doing so. They are required to register with the government. Goal: influence policy Political parties vs. Interest Groups: We see the similarities and differences between parties and interest groups.  We see both are not in the Constitution. ○ The Constitution does not talk about us having political power. Activities that they engage in, like speech, public assembly, etc., those are protected by the Constitution. Same for interest groups. Political parties have a direct influence in elections by running candidates. While interest groups don't. Interest groups have an indirect influence through advocating for issues, making endorsements, making donations. ○ It depends, basically, what they're going to do. Political parties organize politicians around issues related to their party's platform. It will be sent through, meeting with them, talking with them, donating, etc. In Interest groups, they lobby and organize politicians to pass law and policy. In political parties, pressure is limited, basically, to the politicians and candidates that are part of their party Whereas interest groups have a little bit more. They organize mass protests and other forms of political pressure. o Strategies (lobbying (inside and outside), donating money, going public, litigation, protesting) PACs (political action committees) and Super PACs Hard money (direct contributions to a campaign) versus soft money (independent expenditures; both PACs and Super PACs) in campaign spending) PACs: ○ Creation of the FECA Act in 1971, 1976 it was amended. ○ They basically are a way for interest groups to clarify their legal status and set rules about how they can contribute to their candidates. ○ PAC must raise money from at least 50 people and contribute to at least 5 candidates. ○ Limit on contribution to candidates ○ Note that they are allowed to coordinate action with candidates and campaigns, meaning they can be like, okay, where do you want us running ads? Like, where's your key area that you need us? Like, that's allowed. And note that there is a limit on their contribution to individual candidates. So they can't just give unlimited money to a candidate. There is some limitation. So, labor groups, corporations, trade groups, etc. It likely will have a path. Super PACs are different. ○ They are independent of campaigns. ○ They are not allowed to coordinate with a campaign, supposedly.  ○ So they're not technically supposed to talk to the campaign that they're supporting. And they can engage in unlimited spending. ○ So you can contribute as much as you want to super PACs and Super PACs can spend as much as they want during the election. So, this is a lot harder to follow in terms of who's donating Citizen’s United v. FEC (2010) Citizens United vs. FEC (2010) ○ It's famous for gunning a lot of these campaign laws. ○ So, remove spending limits for corporations on campaigns. Now corporations are unlimited. ○ The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) It said that it violated a corporation's free speech rights. Because a corporation is like a person, and so just like people, corporations have free speech. And they can't really talk because they're companies and businesses, but their talking is donations. ○ So corporations are now allowed to place unlimited money into a new form of political action committee called a super PAC. And with SuperPACs, you don't even have to disclose who is contributing to you or how you're spending the money. The Role of the Mass Media in American Politics: So, today we are going to basically talk through the role that media plays in American politics, how it's changed over time. Starting with just some basics and definitions, and then looking at four different trends. Trend #1: Changes in ideas about bias and objectivity, media consolidation, bias. Trend #2: Media consolidation and the profit motive Trend #3: Bias Trend #4: Disinformation and “fake news” Media Basics: Mass media: the collection of all forms of media that communicates information to the general public. They're talking basically about everything, including social media, as you mentioned earlier. TV, newspapers, etc. Everything, every form of media is a mass media. Two-way transmitter of information: ○ telling people what the government is doing ○ Telling the government what people are doing ○ Not only like actions that they're engaging in, but potentially also opinion and that kind of thing. It's supposed to help us monitor government ○ Helping people stay informed  ○ Holding government accountable. Media Basics: The founders were, well at least Thomas Jefferson was very into newspapers. Their version, you know, that's kind of their main media back then. And he said, where it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without the government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter. So again, we talked through these modern forms. New media, obviously, is playing a bigger and bigger role. It's not like we're all reading the same newspapers anymore, seeing the same 6 p.m. news coverage from Walter Cronkite about what's going on in the world. Forms of Media ○ Newspapers ○ Radio ○ TV ○ “New” Media (Cable News, Comedy News, Internet News, Social Media) So we're getting more and more divided. Roles of the Media: Providing information ○ What is happening in the world Evaluating and interpreting events ○ Placing events in context Solving collective dilemmas. ○ Press can help people prioritize problems, figuring out what we need to address first. What Else Can the Media Do? We also note that it's not always so easy to just straightforward report on a story. And this, I should say, is distinct from anything related to disinformation. How you tell a story shapes attitudes. Framing: how a story is presented (i.e., the “frame”) ○ A narrative for the story itself ○ This is real information, but just what part of the real information are you emphasizing? So the way that a story is framed really matters for people's attitudes. ○ For example, if you're reporting on health care and focusing only on economic implications or only on health outcome implications. There's like a canonical study that shows people's support for welfare is so much lower than their support for aid to the poor, even if it's government aid to the poor.  Priming: refers to what a story brings to mind for people to think about. ○ So, it's the choice to focus on some issues rather than others, bringing that to the forefront. ○ Or a lot of priming research might show, like, When it comes to A to the 4 or something like that, if you bring up race or bring up racial stereotypes or something like that before you ask people to do it. So framing is how a story is presented. Framing is intentionally bringing something up to people to think about. In the context of this story. And so the point here is that even before we're getting to disinformation, fake news, anything like that. The media is really powerful in shaping how people see reality. Even if it's just different true ways of reporting on something. It has a big role in shaping. Trend #1: Changes in Ideas about Bias and Objectivity: From the country’s founding, newspapers served an important partisan purpose – the partisan press Mass media in the 1700searly/mid 1800s were unapologetically partisan ○ Party controlled One sided versions of the news; no middle ground Market forces and economics ended the partisan press – move to independent presses ○ Yellow Journalism, or sensational or exaggerated headlines ○ “You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war” Muckraking and the golden age of newspapers (late 1800s to early 1900s) ○ Muckraking, or exposés of corrupt politicians and businesses By mid-1900s news reporting had become objective & more prestigious ○ TV and