# The Ledger
> Public Record. Federal money, Congress, the Supreme Court, the presidency, and federal elections from archived government releases.

Site: https://readtheledger.org
Published data cache: https://readtheledger.org/downloads
Machine catalog: https://readtheledger.org/downloads/manifest.json
Sitemap: https://readtheledger.org/sitemap.xml
Robots: https://readtheledger.org/robots.txt

## What this site is

- The Books: federal receipts, the budget, agency spending, and state balance of payments.
- The Floor: major bills, roll-call votes, committees, and member vote records.
- The Gavel: SCOTUS merits cases, opinions, arguments, and justice-level votes.
- The Desk: presidencies and curated executive orders, proclamations, and memoranda.
- The Race: federal elections for President, Senate, and House with popular-vote totals and FEC campaign finance.
- Reference: methodology, data integrity checks, definitions, usage guidelines, privacy, audience guides (/for), and a full downloadable archive.
- Audience guides: /for/students, /for/reporters, /for/tools (machine path prefers this file + /downloads/manifest.json).

## Preferred way for agents to use the data

1. Fetch the downloads manifest (JSON). It lists every cached file with href, format, size, update date, and publisher origin URLs.
   https://readtheledger.org/downloads/manifest.json
2. Download product JSON files listed below (or any href in the manifest). These are the cleaned datasets the site renders.
3. Prefer origin links in the manifest when you need the upstream publisher, not our cache.
4. Cite The Ledger and the original publisher. Figures are archives of public government releases, not live APIs.

## Product JSON (high value)

- Federal balance by state: https://readtheledger.org/downloads/books/federal-balance.json (243.5 KB; updated 2026-08-06)
  Spending received and revenue paid by state and fiscal year.
- State context: https://readtheledger.org/downloads/books/state-context.json (50.5 KB; updated 2026-08-06)
  Census and related overlays layered onto the state ledgers.
- Election classifications: https://readtheledger.org/downloads/books/election-classifications.json (8.3 KB; updated 2026-08-06)
  Presidential result labels used for politics views.
- Revenue: https://readtheledger.org/downloads/books/revenue.json (56.6 KB; updated 2026-08-06)
  Treasury receipt composition and IRS gross collections by state.
- Congress budget: https://readtheledger.org/downloads/books/congress.json (493.9 KB; updated 2026-08-06)
  CBO historical budget series, ten-year baseline, and revenue-by-source detail.
- Agencies: https://readtheledger.org/downloads/books/agencies.json (308.0 KB; updated 2026-08-06)
  USAspending award obligations, MTS agency outlays, and agency profiles.
- Floor watchlist: https://readtheledger.org/downloads/floor/issues-watchlist.json (8.4 KB; updated 2026-08-06)
  Curated bill identifiers on The Floor watchlist.
- Floor bills: https://readtheledger.org/downloads/floor/issues.json (4.2 MB; updated 2026-08-06)
  Watchlist bills with pipeline stages, summaries, sponsors, and roll-call votes.
- Gavel watchlist: https://readtheledger.org/downloads/gavel/gavel-watchlist.json (102.3 KB; updated 2026-08-06)
  Merits cases tracked on The Gavel docket.
- Gavel docket: https://readtheledger.org/downloads/gavel/gavel.json (644.1 KB; updated 2026-08-06)
  Case metadata, citations, lineup credits, and links.
- Desk action watchlist: https://readtheledger.org/downloads/desk/desk-watchlist.json (14.3 KB; updated 2026-08-06)
  Curated executive orders, proclamations, and memoranda on The Desk.
- Desk presidency provenance links: https://readtheledger.org/downloads/desk/desk-presidency-links.json (2.7 KB; updated 2026-08-06)
  NARA presidential-library URLs and Federal Register president slugs.
- Desk archive: https://readtheledger.org/downloads/desk/desk.json (46.5 KB; updated 2026-08-06)
  Presidencies catalog (bio-enriched) and curated Desk actions.
- Race archive: https://readtheledger.org/downloads/race/race.json (78.4 MB; updated 2026-08-06)
  Federal election seats and candidates with popular-vote totals, FEC finance (weball plus presidential summary tables when applied), top committee donors, and donor pages.

## Key human pages

- https://readtheledger.org
- https://readtheledger.org/books
- https://readtheledger.org/floor
- https://readtheledger.org/gavel
- https://readtheledger.org/desk
- https://readtheledger.org/race
- https://readtheledger.org/methodology
- https://readtheledger.org/integrity
- https://readtheledger.org/downloads
- https://readtheledger.org/status
- https://readtheledger.org/usage
- https://readtheledger.org/privacy
- https://readtheledger.org/contact
- https://readtheledger.org/for
- https://readtheledger.org/for/students
- https://readtheledger.org/for/reporters
- https://readtheledger.org/for/tools

## Notes

- Manifest publishedAt: 2026-08-06
- Listings in this build: 176
- Do not invent figures. If a series year or agency is missing from the JSON, say so.
- Permanent redirects: /fiscal → /books, /issues → /floor.