Your monthly support provides voters the knowledge they need to make confident decisions at the polls. Donate today.
Pliny's Point on January 25, 2017
January 25, 2017: At the start of his presidential term of office, President Donald Trump inherited 108 vacancies for Article III federal judgeships. This is approximately 12 percent of the total 870 life-term federal judicial positions on these courts. For more information, see: Judicial vacancies during Trump's first term.
More information: Judicial vacancies during Trump's first term
What's in a name?
Pliny the Elder, a scholar from the Roman Empire, is most well known for writing the encyclopedic work Naturalis Historia, or “Natural History.” His extremely thorough work covered everything from botany to technology. Naturalis Historia, one of the largest Roman works that still exists from the first century A.D., became an example for future encyclopedic works through its formatting, references, and comprehensiveness.
Today, Ballotpedia works to preserve and expand knowledge, just like Pliny did hundreds of years ago. One of the features of Ballotpedia, the encyclopedia of American politics, was a daily statistic called Pliny’s Point. Each day, between January 20, 2017 and September 1, 2017, readers learned where Americans stood on the direction of the country, or their approval of elected officials.
Click here for more Pliny's Point articles.
See also
Ballotpedia daily polling averages:
Stay in the know:
- The Weekly Brew
- The Daily Brew
- You're Hired: Tracking the Trump Administration Transition, 2016-2017
- Policy issues under the Trump administration, 2017-2021
- 115th United States Congress
- Special elections to the 115th United States Congress (2017-2018)