The permanent record
One file per racket. The mockery is ours; every number and vote links to the receipts. Filter by the branch that’s currently disappointing you most.
File No. 010After 14 years of a law with a $200 fine and zero prosecutions, the House finally passed a "ban" that lets members hold everything they own, exempts the president, and comes pre-loaded with a poison pill.
232–198The July 22, 2026 House vote to ‘ban’ its own stock trading — 13 Democrats aboard
Open the file →
File No. 020The 118th passed the fewest laws since the Civil War, the 119th ran the longest shutdown in history, and the $174,000-a-year membership would like some credit for the effort.
274Laws passed by the 118th Congress — the fewest since the Civil War
Open the file →
File No. 025The Constitution says one representative per 30,000 people. A 1929 statute froze the number at 435 and nobody has touched it since — through a tripling of the population.
1 : 762,000Americans per House member today. The Constitution's floor was one per 30,000.
Open the file →
File No. 026The most powerful veto in American government is not in the Constitution, was created by accident, and can be abolished this afternoon by fifty-one senators.
0Mentions of the filibuster in the Constitution. The Framers rejected supermajorities for ordinary bills on purpose.
Open the file →
File No. 030A nation that can't stand Congress keeps re-hiring it — because the machine was built to make sure you would.
98%Incumbents re-elected in 2024 — while Congress polled 10% approval
Open the file →
File No. 035For a century the rule was that you rigged districts once a decade and lied about why. In 2025 everyone skipped both parts.
+5 / +5Seats Texas drew for one party and California drew for the other, in the same twelve months, on purpose
Open the file →
File No. 040Term limits poll at 83% across every party — which is precisely why the 97%-reelected incumbent class has kept the amendment quietly stalled in committee since 1995.
83%Americans who want term limits — 85% R, 80% D, 84% I
Open the file →
File No. 045The famous objection is that the loser sometimes wins. The real one is that in every election, most Americans are irrelevant on purpose.
7 statesWhere presidential campaigns actually compete. The other forty-three are fundraising stops.
Open the file →
File No. 050The House just voted to restrict its own stock trading — while lobbying hit a record $4.4 billion, dark money nearly doubled, and 866 alumni sprinted to K Street.
$4.4BFederal lobbying in 2024 — an all-time record
Open the file →
File No. 055In the 1970s fewer than one in ten members left Congress for lobbying. It is now roughly two in three — and the record is being broken by their staff.
10% → 66%Share of departing members of Congress who become lobbyists, 1970s versus recent years
Open the file →
File No. 056More than half the outside money in the last federal election came from groups legally entitled to keep their donors secret — a right invented by regulators, not voters.
$1.9BDark money in 2024 federal races — a record, and that is only the part that can be counted
Open the file →
File No. 057The people who write the laws are twenty-six, underpaid, and gone in two years. The people explaining the laws to them are forty-five, well paid, and never leave.
Abolished 1995The Office of Technology Assessment — Congress's own independent science and technology advisers
Open the file →
File No. 060Impeached twice, acquitted twice, and now tabled on a schedule — how both parties turned the Constitution's emergency brake into a novelty rubber stamp.
2×Impeachments of Trump — acquitted both times; the only president impeached twice
Open the file →
File No. 061The Framers gave the president a mercy pen. This administration turned it into a drive-thru window where the special is "Always Vote Republican."
~1,500January 6 defendants pardoned on Day One — including 10 seditious-conspiracy convicts
Open the file →
File No. 062A sitting president built a $1.4 billion crypto empire where the citizen is the exit liquidity — and the check comes denominated in anonymous wallets.
$1.4B+Trump's reported 2025 crypto income — his single largest income source
Open the file →
File No. 063A midnight watchdog purge, a 227-year-old wartime law, tanks aimed at cardboard signs, and $200 billion in "emergency" tariffs — while Congress set an out-of-office reply.
17+Independent inspectors general fired in the January 2025 overnight purge
Open the file →
File No. 064Congress alone may declare war. It has not done so since 1942. Everything since has run on a 1973 statute every president calls unconstitutional and obeys anyway.
1942The last time Congress declared war. There have been rather a lot of wars since.
Open the file →
File No. 065Forty-six national emergencies are running right now. The oldest predates the internet, and eight presidents have renewed it without comment.
46 activeNational emergencies currently in force. The eldest was declared in 1979.
Open the file →
File No. 070Nine unelected referees finally wrote an ethics code, then forgot to hire anyone allowed to enforce it.
42%SCOTUS job approval, near record low (Gallup, Sept 2025)
Open the file →
File No. 071The most consequential orders of the year now arrive unsigned, unexplained, and often after midnight — from a docket the Court would rather you called something else.
32 vs 8Emergency applications filed by this administration in 2025 alone, versus Bush and Obama combined across sixteen years
Open the file →
File No. 072File in the right small town and a single judge you chose in advance can suspend a federal policy for all 340 million Americans.
1 of 677District judges it can take to freeze a nationwide policy — if the filer picks the courthouse
Open the file →
File No. 073Nine lifetime appointments, no fixed terms, and a nation refreshing an obituary page to find out what its rights will be for the next thirty years.
67%Republicans who support Supreme Court term limits — alongside 85% of Democrats (PRRI, 2025)
Open the file →
File No. 090The last meaningful amendment passed in 1971. The document did not stop changing; it just stopped changing in public, by consent, in writing.
1971The last substantive amendment. Roughly 11,000 have been proposed; 27 ratified.
Open the file →No files in that branch — lucky them.
You can’t recall a Supreme Court justice, but you can retire 469 of these offices in November 2026.