Camryn Thompson's AP Gov Blog

1.    this time, Congress failed to pass a new government funding law before the old one expired. 2.    Military and law enforcement activities continue. Social Security checks still go out. Air traffic controllers still go to work. However, activities the government has deemed “nonessential” stop, and employees tasked with those activities are furloughed — they’re told not to come to work, and that they won’t be paid until the shutdown is resolved. 3. these activists argued that Democrats shouldn’t vote for any government funding bill without a DACA deal. 4.  The Democratic worry was that keeping the government shut down on behalf of unauthorized immigrants — even the DREAMers — is a political loser. 5.Th e bill to keep the government open for the next two-and-a-half weeks also includes a six-year extension of CHIP’s budget. (Indeed, Republicans had offered this before the shutdown, and this time it was Democrats who wouldn’t accept it.) This means that sta...

1. Then the vice president would immediately become “Acting President,” and take over all the president’s powers. 2. One vice president and any eight Cabinet officers can, theoretically, decide to knock the president out of power at any time. 3. If the president wants to dispute this move, he can, but then it would be up to Congress to settle the matter with a vote. A two-thirds majority in both houses would be necessary to keep the vice president in charge. If that threshold isn’t reached, the president would regain his powers. 4. The chaos and instability that followed John F. Kennedy’s assassination finally spurred Congress to move toward solving these problems. For once, it moved quickly, passing what became the 25th Amendment to the Constitution in 1965 and winning its ratification in the states by 1967. 5. How to fill a vice presidential vacancy in the middle of a term (in practice, the answer was interpreted as “you can’t”). 6. The power to sideline the presid...

1. The White House said that “many states have refused to provide the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity with basic information relevant to its inquiry.” So the White House backed off, arguing that it was better than the alternative of “endless legal battles at taxpayer expense.” 2. Trump similarly claimed on Twitter, without any evidence whatsoever, that “millions” of people voting illegally had cost him the popular vote in the 2016 election. 3. Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt studied voter impersonation, the type of fraud that strict voter ID laws (which Trump supports) aim to curtail. Levitt found 35 total credible accusations between 2000 and 2014, constituting a few hundred ballots at most. 4. Another, more recent investigation in North Carolina by the State Board of Elections similarly found just one — out of nearly 4.8 million total votes in 2016 — credible case of in-person voter fraud. That amounts to just 0.00002 percent of ...