Evaluates whether Obama, Trump, and Biden executive actions impact law enforcement outcomes. Shows growing political polarization in take-up of federal programs.

Examines whether and how police agencies respond to public and political demands, and what drives variation in responsiveness across departments.

Investigates how presidents have influenced the distribution of homeland security grant spending since 2007.

A public dataset tracking federal transfers of military equipment to local law enforcement agencies across the United States. Version 1 released 2025.

Showed Obama-era executive actions on the 1033 program did not measurably alter law enforcement outcomes.

Investigates how often people actually read about executive action, and whether this is associated with trust in government and attitudes about democracy.

Asks whether executive actions shift public attention, using data on Google search traffic.

We are collecting case studies of executive action from political science, economics, public health, and law.

Traced how every president since Reagan changed foreign aid rules on abortion, and shows how they gradually eroded the independence of the civil servants who carried the policy out.