Sources & attribution

Public records, from the institutions that publish them.

Everything we publish about officials and government actions comes from these public sources. Records link back to their source, and we are grateful to the public agencies and nonprofit projects that make this data available. Our use does not imply their endorsement. Current freshness for each feed is shown on the transparency page.

Congress.gov

Daily

Library of Congress · api.congress.gov

Members of Congress, bills, sponsors, latest actions and official bill summaries.

House roll-call votes

Daily

Office of the Clerk, U.S. House · clerk.house.gov

Every recorded House vote, member by member.

Senate roll-call votes

Daily

U.S. Senate · senate.gov

Every recorded Senate vote, member by member.

Congressional Record

Daily

GovInfo, U.S. Government Publishing Office · api.govinfo.gov

Floor remarks by members of Congress.

Federal Register

Daily

Office of the Federal Register, National Archives · federalregister.gov

Executive orders, presidential memoranda and proclamations, with their full text.

Supreme Court opinions

Daily

CourtListener, Free Law Project · courtlistener.com

Supreme Court opinions and their text.

DW-NOMINATE ideology scores

Weekly

Voteview (UCLA) · voteview.com

Each member’s position on the main ideological dimensions, estimated from their roll-call votes.

Periodic transaction reports

Weekly

Office of the Clerk, U.S. House · disclosures-clerk.house.gov

Stock-trade disclosures filed by House members under the STOCK Act; used for disclosure timeliness.

Campaign finance

Weekly

Federal Election Commission · api.open.fec.gov

Itemized receipts (Schedule A). Profiles show committees and organizations only; contributions from private individuals are never aggregated or displayed.

Lobbying disclosures

Phasing in

Lobbying Disclosure Act filings · lda.gov

Lobbying filings that cite bills a member sponsored. Collection is being phased in and is not yet complete.

Open data we publish

“The Constitution Index export”

The Constitution Index grades bills (from Congress.gov summaries) and executive orders (from Federal Register text) and attaches House and Senate roll-call votes to those grades. It is public as CSV and JSON at /api/constitution-index/grades.csv, grades.json, voting-records.csv and voting-records.json: read-only, no key, 60 requests per minute, attribution required (“Values for America Constitution Index” plus the grade permalink). Every row records the rubric version and the SHA-256 of the official source text it graded. See the methodology.

The constitutional text

“The fixed standard”

Every Solution, Founders’ Verdict, Think Tank proposal and constitutional grade is checked against the articles, sections, clauses and twenty-seven amendments of the U.S. Constitution. Citations to provisions that do not exist are rejected automatically. See the citation gate.

Not yet connected: state legislatures (Republic Vote), federal court dockets, and agency enforcement records. When a source is not connected, profiles say so in their Data Coverage Panel rather than implying the record is clean.

Reuse our work

“Embed a Constitution grade”

Every federal bill and presidential action has a canonical page with its plain summary, sponsor and status, VFA Constitution grade and VFA SI Solution. Journalists, bloggers and researchers may embed the grade free of charge, as long as the embed links back to that page (the snippets below do). The grade updates in place when a measure is re-graded; past grades are kept, never overwritten.

Measure keys. Bills use their Congress.gov identifier, e.g. hr-119-1234 or sjres-119-7. Executive orders use eo- plus the EO number, e.g. eo-14123; any presidential document can also use fr- plus its Federal Register document number.

  • Badge (SVG): https://www.valuesforamerica.com/badge/hr-119-1234.svg — reads “VFA Constitution grade · H.R. 1234 | B”.
  • Card (iframe-safe HTML): https://www.valuesforamerica.com/embed/grade/hr-119-1234 — no scripts, no cookies, 360×150.
  • Share image (PNG, 1200×630): https://www.valuesforamerica.com/og/hr-119-1234.png
<a href="https://www.valuesforamerica.com/bills/federal/hr-119-1234"><img src="https://www.valuesforamerica.com/badge/hr-119-1234.svg" alt="VFA Constitution grade for H.R. 1234"></a>

<iframe src="https://www.valuesforamerica.com/embed/grade/hr-119-1234" width="360" height="150" style="border:0;max-width:100%" loading="lazy" title="VFA Constitution grade for H.R. 1234"></iframe>

Each measure page has an “Embed this grade” box with ready-to-copy snippets. Grades are SI-generated under the published rubric and not individually reviewed by a person. Please cite “the VFA Constitution Index”.

Follow along

“Feeds and the weekly digest”

  • SI Solutions: RSS · Atom
  • Constitution grades: RSS · Atom
  • SI Think Tank: RSS · Atom
  • State of the Constitution (weekly): RSS · Atom
  • Weekly email digest: subscribe (confirm by email, unsubscribe in one click).
  • Sitemap: sitemap index covering every bill and presidential action page.

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