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The Supreme Court just took a case on the EPA’s authority. Its decision could undo most major federal laws.

Pamela Clouser McCann co-authored a piece written for the Washington Post‘s Monkey Cage policy analysis column. Our research finds that if the Supreme Court were to invalidate either the EPA’s authority or the vaccine mandate under this doctrine, it might unravel nearly every major law Congress has passed since World War Read more…

Ed Case Shows How Not to Reach Out to Your Nonwhite Constituents

Slate quoted Christian Grose of the USC Dornsife College on how candidates must build coalitions in majority-minority congressional districts. Christian Grose, a political science professor at the University of Southern California who has conducted research on the racial dynamics of congressional representation, argued that the success of candidates in majority-minority districts depended on Read more…

The Myth of Independence

Congressional historian Sarah Binder joins neighbor and investment manager, Matt Spindel in a look at the history of the relationship between the Federal Reserve and its legislative parent, Congress. The result is the Princeton University Press book The Myth of Independence: How Congress Governs the Federal Reserve.

To listen to the Bedrosian Book Club discussion of The Myth of Independence, click the arrow in the player on this post. Or you can download it and subscribe through ApplePodcasts, Soundcloud, Google Play, Stitcher or your favorite podcasting app!

Who Has the Ear of Your Legislators and Why They Can’t Seem to Get Anything Done

We’re six months away from one of the most consequential midterm elections in modern history, and Americans are fed up with Congress. Politicians have gotten a bad rap throughout history, but today’s legislators are setting record lows in approval ratings and public trust. What gives? Why do they disappoint us so often? Are they really ignoring our needs and demands, or are we misunderstanding the challenges they face?

In this episode, Sarah Anderson shows that it’s a little of both: politicians don’t listen to all constituents equally, but they also can’t just snap their fingers and fulfill our wishes.

To listen to this episode of Our American Discourse, click the arrow in the player here. Or download it and subscribe through ApplePodcasts, Soundcloud, Google Play, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting app – click the links or search “usc bedrosian.”

PIPE Workshop: Kathleen Bawn, UCLA

Congressional primaries, like primary elections in general, are imagined to give voters, rather than party elites, the ability to choose which candidate wins the nomination. Indeed, we might expect primary election outcomes to reflect the preferences of the median primary voter, in roughly the way we expect general election outcomes to reflect the preferences of the overall district median.

We challenge this conventional wisdom.

Bedrosian Center, Jenkins convene national scholars for ‘Pivotal Politics’ symposium

Nearly 20 years ago, Stanford Professor Keith Krehbiel wrote a book showing that political parties are less important in legislative-executive politics than previously thought — challenging previous assumptions of American politics and influencing the work of many up-and-coming scholars. USC Price School of Public Policy Provost Professor Jeffery Jenkins was completing graduate school when Krehbiel released Pivotal Politics: A Theory of U.S. Lawmaking in 1998.

Bedrosian Center