How we rank "Moving in Congress"
The list of bills moving in Congress is ranked by the fixed formula below, never by hand. It uses only dated facts from each bill's official record. It never reads the sponsor, party, state, committee or subject, and it ignores social media and news coverage. Anyone can rerun it with python3 -m ingestor.trending and get the same list for the same date.
Formula version 2026-11-01.
Which bills are considered
- Every bill and joint resolution in the current Congress (H.R., S., H.J.Res., S.J.Res.): the measures that can become law. We read the whole set from GovInfo's bill status bulk data each day, not a sample.
- A bill is listed only if it took a step in the last 14 days: a committee vote or report, floor action, passage, a step between the chambers, presentment to the President, or enactment. New cosponsors or a new text version alone don't put a bill on the list.
- The list shows the top 25. When fewer bills took a step, it shows fewer. When none did, it says so and gives the date of the last recorded step.
The score
score = step + more steps + new cosponsors + new text + sections added
| Signal | Points | Why this weight |
|---|---|---|
| Committee voted to report | 2 | The first formal sign a committee wants the bill to move. |
| Reported by committee | 3 | A filed report puts the bill on a calendar where it can reach the floor. |
| Discharged from committee | 3 | Gets to the same place as a report, by a different route. |
| Floor action (rule, cloture, motion to proceed, a vote that failed) | 4 | Floor time is the scarcest thing in Congress, so being scheduled is a strong signal. |
| Passed the House | 6 | Clearing a full chamber is the largest single step most bills ever take. |
| Passed the Senate | 6 | Same as the House. Both chambers count equally. |
| Chambers resolving differences | 6 | Both chambers have now acted, so the bill is close to final. |
| Sent to the President | 7 | Only a signature or veto is left. |
| Became law | 8 | The last step there is. |
| Each additional kind of step in the window | 1 | Rewards speed: covering more ground in two weeks means it is moving faster. |
| New cosponsor in the last 7 days | 0.1 each, up to 20 (max 2) | Members adding their names is real support, but it's cheap to do, so it is capped well below one committee step. |
| New text version in the last 14 days | 1 | A new official text means the bill was rewritten or advanced. Counted once. |
| Section added since introduction | 0.1 each, up to 30 (max 3) | Shows how much the bill has grown on its way. Capped so size alone can't outrank a vote. |
How the parts combine:
- Step counts only the single highest-scoring step in the window. That step's points halve every 7 days (so a step 7 days ago is worth half, 14 days ago a quarter). A floor action on the same day the bill passed is part of that vote and isn't counted separately.
- More steps adds 1 point for each kind of step in the window beyond the first.
- Sections added is the sum of sections added across the bill's text versions after the introduced one, from our section-by-section diff. Amendment documents are skipped because they don't split into reliable sections. Downloading every version of every bill each day would be impolite to GovInfo, so this is computed for every listed bill and for every bill whose score without it is within 3 points (its maximum) of the 25th place. No bill that could reach the list is left out.
- Ties go to the bill with the most recent step, then by bill type and number. None of this involves judgment.
What it doesn't use, and why
- Sponsor, party, state, committee or subject. These would let the list favor one side (see our neutrality standard).
- Social media, news coverage or page views. These measure attention, not what Congress did, and they are easy to game.
- Size on its own. A long bill isn't moving faster than a short one. Size counts only through sections added after introduction.
- Introduction and committee referral. Thousands of bills are introduced and referred each Congress, and most never move again.
Limits
- Congress records some steps a day or more after they happen, and GovInfo updates its bulk data daily, so the list can lag by a day or two.
- Steps are matched by the Library of Congress action codes in each bill's record, plus a few text patterns for steps recorded without a code. The patterns are in
ingestion/ingestor/trending.py. - Being on this list says nothing about whether a bill's sections fit its title and summary. Bills on the list haven't been checked unless the list says so.