Launching A New Policies New Legislative Tracker

In a world where so much is happening so quickly, where the news can feel overwhelming, it can be difficult to keep track of what Congress is doing. That is where A New Policy’s new Legislative tracker steps in. If you want to know what’s happening in Congress when it comes to Palestine, Israel, and our related First Amendment rights, this tracker is for you.

A New Policy Legislative Tracker is a public dashboard covering legislation in the currentCongress. It pulls together all the information you need, including A New Policy’s bill analysis and recommendations.

The rest of this post walks through how to actually use the tracker - feature by feature. Each section opens with a short video tutorial; for those who prefer to read the text underneath provides a written tutorial..

What is in Each Card

Every bill on the tracker is rendered as a card. The card shows the bill number and title, the policy area tag, our recommendation (color-coded), the chamber (House or Senate), status, sponsor, committee, introduced date, cosponsor count and names, vote totals if a vote has happened, and links to the full bill text on Congress.gov, our written analysis on anewpolicy.org, and a downloadable PDF brief.

If you only learn one thing about the tracker, learn to read this card. The name of the bill and its official number, along with our recommendation, are the starting point:  everything else is supporting evidence. Click on the link to access the text, analysis, or PDF of the bill card. 

Filters

Above the bill grid you'll find a search box and seven filter dropdowns: Recommendation, Status, Policy Area, Committee, Party, Chamber, and Introduced (date range). The search box matches bill number, title, sponsor name, policy area, and cosponsor names - type "Tlaib" to find every bill she's a sponsor or cosponsor on; type "war powers" to surface anything tagged with that area.

Filters stack. Combine "Oppose" + "Senate" + "Military & Defense" to see every Senate bill in that policy area we've recommended against. Hit Clear All in the toolbar to reset.

Each dropdown shows the count of bills matching each option, so you can tell at a glance whether a filter will return three results or thirty.

Dates

The Introduced filter is the answer to the most common question we get: What's new? Pick Past Week, Past Month, Past 3 Months, or Past Year, and the bill list collapses to legislation introduced in that window.

Pair it with a recommendation filter to scan only the things you care about. "Show me every bill I should be opposing that was introduced in the past week" is a four-click query. Some weeks there will be a lot, others you might find it empty. When the bill is introduced we produce an analysis ASAP, and after that is when the bill is added to our tracker so you get the full information.

Charts

Above the bill grid sit six charts that summarize the legislative landscape at a glance:

• Recommendation breakdown: how many Support, Oppose, Amendment Required, etc.

• Party split: Democrat vs. Republican across the bills we track.

• Chamber and Recommendation: does Support cluster in one chamber? Does Oppose?

• Policy area: What policy area does this bill fall under?

• Recommendation and Policy area: within a given issue area, how does the recommendation mix break down?

• Party and Policy area: which party is introducing what.

Every chart is clickable. Click the "Oppose" slice on the recommendation chart and the bill list below filters to Oppose recommendations only. The charts auto-collapse when a filter is active so the bill list takes center stage; you can always re-expand them.

Downloadable PDF

Every bill card has a PDF button. Click it and the tracker generates a one-page A New Policy-branded brief with the bill number, title, our recommendation, sponsor, party, committee, status, vote totals (if any), introduced date, cosponsor count and names, a Congress.gov summary if available, and links to the full analysis, the bill text, the roll call vote, and the cosponsors page on Congress.gov.

Use these for staffer one-pagers, constituent meetings, coalition briefings, or anywhere you need the pitch on a single sheet of paper. The PDFs are generated client-side, your browser builds them from the live data, no email forms, no waiting.

For those Who Prefer a Spreadsheet

For data work, click Export CSV. A picker opens with seventeen columns to choose from: bill number, title, recommendation, sponsor, party, committee, policy area, status, vote totals, cosponsor count, cosponsor names, introduced date, summary, analysis URL, bill text URL, and roll call URL. Two quick presets: Standard (the basics) and Comprehensive (everything).

The export respects whatever filters you have applied -so if you've narrowed the list to "Past Month, Senate, Oppose," that's what gets exported.

Share

Every filter you set is encoded into the URL. To share a specific view -say, every Support-recommended House bill in Free Speech & Civil Liberties -set the filters, then click Share Filters to copy the URL to your clipboard. Anyone you send it to lands on exactly that view.

When is Data Uploaded

The bill list, recommendations, sponsors, and statuses come from a maintained spreadsheet that our team updates as bills move. Every time you open or refresh the page, the tracker re-fetches that sheet so what you're looking at is current as of right now, not the last time we deployed code.

Cosponsor counts and names refresh from the official Congress.gov API once a day per browser. If the live fetch ever fails (e.g., on an offline preview), the tracker falls back to a cached snapshot so the page still loads. Grabbing this data can take 2 minutes during high traffic hours, if something is not appearing on load, there could be a short delay for that information to be retrieved.  

This is Just a Beginning

Like this tool? Send us your feedback! And stay tuned for our next web tool coming in just a few weeks that makes it easier than ever to turn our data - into YOUR action.

Want to keep up to speed as the picture evolves? Join our Congressional Action Network where you’ll get regular updates and join our biweekly convening.