Methodology and sources

Every executive order in the Federal Register since 1994, counted by signing year and assigned one of nine topics.

Updates: Checked weekly.

Unemployment, inflation, jobs, growth, pay, prices, rates and federal finances on one shared time axis. Jobs added, inflation and real hourly earnings are calculated from raw levels: jobs added is the monthly change in nonfarm payrolls, inflation is the 12-month change in consumer prices, and real hourly earnings are average hourly pay divided by those prices, in latest-month dollars. GDP growth is the change from the same quarter a year earlier. The misery index is the unemployment rate plus that inflation rate for the same month.

Updates: Checked weekly.

Weekly and monthly petroleum, Strategic Petroleum Reserve, natural gas and electricity series, in the source’s own units. Policy flags come from a hand-kept list of dated actions, each naming the authority behind it.

Updates: Checked weekly.

Three tracks. ICE removals by fiscal year (FY2003 to FY2025) and by country of citizenship (FY2014 to FY2024), with country tables checked against their printed totals and the national series. Green cards (people who became lawful permanent residents, by class and country) and naturalizations, FY1977 to FY2025, from the DHS Yearbook of Immigration Statistics and, for the newest year, the preliminary quarterly report. Refugee admissions against each year’s ceiling, FY1980 on, from the annual Presidential Determinations and the State Department’s Refugee Processing Center; asylum, TPS and parole are separate statuses and are not counted.

Updates: ICE removals refreshed by hand after ICE publishes a fiscal year’s figures. Green cards and naturalizations checked weekly for a new quarterly report or Yearbook edition (Yearbook yearly, quarterly report about every three months). Refugee admissions checked weekly; the State Department posts a new monthly report around the 5th, swapped in by hand.

CBP encounters by fiscal year from FY1980, nationwide and on the southwest border: Border Patrol apprehensions between ports of entry, people found inadmissible at ports of entry (from FY2004) and Title 42 expulsions (March 2020 to May 2023). Encounters count events, not people. CBP publishes no yearly count of unique people. Port-of-entry figures for FY2004 to FY2014 are CBP records as republished by the DHS Office of Homeland Security Statistics, rounded to tens. Every printed total and every overlap between sources is checked at build time. Never combined with ICE removals.

Updates: CBP posts a new monthly file around mid-month; the year in progress is marked preliminary until September is in.

Goods trade by country and month, with national totals. The tariff chart shows calculated duties divided by imports for consumption, monthly from 1993, with tariff actions flagged from a hand-kept list.

Updates: Checked weekly.

Disbursements by recipient and sector since FY2001. Military share is the portion of a recipient’s total the source classes as military assistance.

Updates: Checked weekly.

Active-duty personnel by country, from the Defense Manpower Data Center for 2008 onward and from historical tables before that. An optional layer marks known overseas installations, from a single snapshot with no headcounts.

Updates: Checked weekly for new quarterly reports.

DW-NOMINATE scores built from every recorded vote a member has cast. The horizontal axis is economic left-right. The vertical axis has meant different things in different eras, and the chart says which.

Updates: Checked weekly.

A committee’s position is the unweighted average of its members’ scores. Its spread is the gap between its most liberal and most conservative member. Each committee page also lists the bills referred to it this Congress and how far each got: a hearing, a markup, a report or discharge, passage, law. A step the Library of Congress never logged is shown as not recorded, not guessed.

Updates: Rosters checked daily, scores weekly, bills weekly.

Every public law since 1973, counted by the Congress that enacted it and its Congress.gov policy area, with the closest recorded final-passage vote in either chamber. Major laws are David Mayhew’s lists of important enactments, through the 118th Congress. The sentence under a law is the first sentence of the Congressional Research Service summary, never written by us.

Updates: Checked weekly; the major-law lists are updated by hand when Mayhew publishes a new one.

Age, women and years served for every voting member who held a seat in each Congress since 1933, with ages counted on the day the Congress convened.

Updates: Checked daily.

Disclosures report assets and debts in ranges. We take each range’s midpoint, subtract debts from assets, and show the full range as a band.

Updates: Refreshed by hand after new filings are published.

Martin-Quinn scores estimate each justice’s position by term from their votes, with an uncertainty interval. The Court’s middle is the justice most likely to cast the deciding vote.

Updates: Checked monthly for a new release.

Orally argued cases counted by term, issue area and how many justices dissented. The one-sentence ruling under a linked case is Wikipedia’s own opening sentence or, where that does not state the ruling, one written by Claude from it and held to the article’s words.

Updates: Database checked monthly; Wikipedia links checked weekly.

Shaded on the Economy, Energy and Trade time charts.

Updates: Checked weekly with the Economy data.

Who held the White House, the Senate, the House and the Supreme Court on the day each hand-picked landmark law or case happened, 1933 to now. Party control comes from the two chambers’ party-division tables and each term’s Court lean from Martin-Quinn scores; votes come from our own Laws and Decisions data. Which events make the list is an editorial choice, and who held power describes the setting of an event, not its cause.

Updates: Rebuilt with the Laws and Court data; the event list is reviewed by hand.

World outlines on the trade, foreign aid, immigration and national security maps.

Updates: Fixed snapshot.

Short biographies on member and justice pages, and portraits of current members and of justices whose picture is public domain.

Updates: Checked weekly.