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Lobbyist Spending Reaches Highest Since 2010

Lobbying spending reached $3.4 billion last year, the most since the all-time peak eight years ago, according to calculations out Monday from the Center for Responsive Politics.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce was the top spender for the 19th consecutive year, spending $95 million to promote its pro-business agenda – including $26 million in the final three months of 2018, mainly to advocate against President Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada and Mexico. The National Association of Realtors was second, at $73 million.


But the industry that spent the most, by far, was the pharmaceutical sector at $280 million – hoping to shape public opinion and the work of Congress as the rapid rise in drug prices moves the center of the health care policy agenda. The industry's trade association, known as PhRMA, spent 10 percent of that total. The company that spent the most were Pfizer ($11 million), Johnson & Johnson ($7 million) and AbbVie ($6 million).

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ballot

The ballot used in Alaska's 2022 special election.

What is ranked-choice voting anyway?

Landry is the facilitator of the League of Women Voters of Colorado’s Alternative Voting Methods Task Force. An earlier version of this article was published in the LWV of Boulder County’s June 2023 Voter newsletter.

The term “ranked-choice voting” is so bandied about these days that it tends to take up all the oxygen in any discussion on better voting methods. The RCV label was created in 2002 by the city of San Francisco. People who want to promote evolution beyond our flawed plurality voting are often excited to jump on the RCV bandwagon.

However, many people, including RCV advocates, are unaware that it is actually an umbrella term, and ranked-choice voting in fact exists in multiple forms. Some people refer to any alternative voting method as RCV — even approval voting and STAR Voting, which don’t rank candidates! This article only discusses voting methods that do rank candidates.

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U.S. Constitution
Douglas Sacha/Getty Images

Imagining constitutions

Breslin is the Joseph C. Palamountain Jr. Chair of Political Science at Skidmore College and author of “A Constitution for the Living: Imagining How Five Generations of Americans Would Rewrite the Nation’s Fundamental Law.”

This is the latest in “A Republic, if we can keep it,” a series to assist American citizens on the bumpy road ahead this election year. By highlighting components, principles and stories of the Constitution, Breslin hopes to remind us that the American political experiment remains, in the words of Alexander Hamilton, the “most interesting in the world.”

America’s Constitution is always under the microscope, but something different is happening of late: The document’s sanctity is being questioned.

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Ilana Redstone
Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation

‘A healthy democracy requires social trust’: A conversation with Ilana Redstone

Berman is a distinguished fellow of practice at The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, co-editor of Vital City, and co-author of "Gradual: The Case for Incremental Change in a Radical Age." This is the eighth in a series of interviews titled "The Polarization Project."

Ilana Redstone has launched a personal campaign against certainty. A professor of sociology at the University of Illinois and a former co-director of the Mill Institute, Redstone believes certainty is the accelerant that has helped to fuel the culture wars and political polarization in the United States.

“The power of certainty is easy to underestimate,” she writes. “And when it comes to both aspiring and established democracies, that underestimation can be downright dangerous. Certainty makes it possible to kill in the name of righteousness, to tear down in the name of virtue, and to demonize and dismiss people who simply disagree.”

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