More U.S. cities are paying to lobby Congress and they have astrategy to maximize their influence

The influence of lobbyists and lobbying by corporations and interest groups has become a fact of life in Washington D.C. In new research, Matt W. Loftis and Jaclyn J. Kettler find that U.S. cities have now also started to lobby Congress in a significant way, spending $150 million on the practice between 1998 and 2008. They argue that cities choose when and how to lobby based on their individual needs and their strategic opportunities; for example, cities with high unemployment rates were almost twice as likely lobby as cities with relatively low unemployment rates

Lobbying from Inside the System: Why Local Governments Pay for Representation in the U.S. Congress

Why do cities spend scarce resources lobbying the federal government? The hierarchy of U.S. government provides various pathways for local representation. Nevertheless, cities regularly invest in paid representation. This presents a puzzle for American democracy. Why do cities lobby, and do they lobby strategically? We quantify for the first time the extent of this phenomenon and examine its determinants using new data on 498 cities across forty-five states from 1998 to 2008. We find that economic distress pushes cities to lobby, but does not impact expenditures. Cities in competitive congressional districts, and therefore crucial to national politics, spend more on lobbying

Neurologic Involvement in Children and Adolescents Hospitalized in the United States for COVID-19 or Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome

This article is made available for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.Importance Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) affects the nervous system in adult patients. The spectrum of neurologic involvement in children and adolescents is unclear. Objective To understand the range and severity of neurologic involvement among children and adolescents associated with COVID-19. Setting, Design, and Participants Case series of patients (age <21 years) hospitalized between March 15, 2020, and December 15, 2020, with positive severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 test result (reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction and/or antibody) at 61 US hospitals in the Overcoming COVID-19 public health registry, including 616 (36%) meeting criteria for multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children. Patients with neurologic involvement had acute neurologic signs, symptoms, or diseases on presentation or during hospitalization. Life-threatening involvement was adjudicated by experts based on clinical and/or neuroradiologic features. Exposures Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. Main Outcomes and Measures Type and severity of neurologic involvement, laboratory and imaging data, and outcomes (death or survival with new neurologic deficits) at hospital discharge. Results Of 1695 patients (909 [54%] male; median [interquartile range] age, 9.1 [2.4-15.3] years), 365 (22%) from 52 sites had documented neurologic involvement. Patients with neurologic involvement were more likely to have underlying neurologic disorders (81 of 365 [22%]) compared with those without (113 of 1330 [8%]), but a similar number were previously healthy (195 [53%] vs 723 [54%]) and met criteria for multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (126 [35%] vs 490 [37%]). Among those with neurologic involvement, 322 (88%) had transient symptoms and survived, and 43 (12%) developed life-threatening conditions clinically adjudicated to be associated with COVID-19, including severe encephalopathy (n = 15; 5 with splenial lesions), stroke (n = 12), central nervous system infection/demyelination (n = 8), Guillain-Barré syndrome/variants (n = 4), and acute fulminant cerebral edema (n = 4). Compared with those without life-threatening conditions (n = 322), those with life-threatening neurologic conditions had higher neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratios (median, 12.2 vs 4.4) and higher reported frequency of D-dimer greater than 3 μg/mL fibrinogen equivalent units (21 [49%] vs 72 [22%]). Of 43 patients who developed COVID-19–related life-threatening neurologic involvement, 17 survivors (40%) had new neurologic deficits at hospital discharge, and 11 patients (26%) died. Conclusions and Relevance In this study, many children and adolescents hospitalized for COVID-19 or multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children had neurologic involvement, mostly transient symptoms. A range of life-threatening and fatal neurologic conditions associated with COVID-19 infrequently occurred. Effects on long-term neurodevelopmental outcomes are unknown

Replication Data for: Cabinet Durability and Fiscal Discipline

Data, estimation, and summary scripts to reproduce substantive tables and figures in the main article text

Replication Data for: A Dynamic Linear Modeling Approach to Public Policy Change

Theories of public policy change, despite their differences, converge on one point of strong agreement. The relationship between policy and its causes can and does change over time. This consensus yields numerous empirical implications, but our standard analytical tools are inadequate for testing them. As a result, the dynamic and transformative relationships predicted by policy theories have been left largely unexplored in time-series analysis of public policy. This paper introduces dynamic linear modeling (DLM) as a useful statistical tool for exploring time-varying relationships in public policy. The paper offers a detailed exposition of the DLM approach and illustrates its usefulness with a time series analysis of U.S. defense policy from 1957-2010. The results point the way for a new attention to dynamics in the policy process and the paper concludes with a discussion of how this research program can profit from applying DLMs

Pre-Existing Immunocompromising Conditions and Outcomes of Acute COVID-19 Patients Admitted for Pediatric Intensive Care

BACKGROUND: We aimed to determine if pre-existing immunocompromising conditions (ICCs) were associated with the presentation or outcome of patients with acute coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) admitted for pediatric intensive care. METHODS: Fifty-five hospitals in 30 US states reported cases through the Overcoming COVID-19 public health surveillance registry. Patients \u3c21 years admitted 12 March 2020-30 December 2021 to the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) or high-acuity unit for acute COVID-19 were included. RESULTS: Of 1274 patients, 105 (8.2%) had an ICC, including 33 (31.4%) hematologic malignancies, 24 (22.9%) primary immunodeficiencies and disorders of hematopoietic cells, 19 (18.1%) nonmalignant organ failure with solid-organ transplantation, 16 (15.2%) solid tumors, and 13 (12.4%) autoimmune disorders. Patients with ICCs were older, had more underlying renal conditions, and had lower white blood cell and platelet counts than those without ICCs, but had similar clinical disease severity upon admission. In-hospital mortality from COVID-19 was higher (11.4% vs 4.6%, P = .005) and hospitalization was longer (P = .01) in patients with ICCs. New major morbidities upon discharge were not different between those with and without ICC (10.5% vs 13.9%, P = .40). In patients with ICCs, bacterial coinfection was more common in those with life-threatening COVID-19. CONCLUSIONS: In this national case series of patients \u3c21 years of age with acute COVID-19 admitted for intensive care, existence of a prior ICCs were associated with worse clinical outcomes. Reassuringly, most patients with ICCs hospitalized in the PICU for severe acute COVID-19 survived and were discharged home without new severe morbidities