Nominations

Nominations made by the President and referred to the Senate for consideration. This data is taken from THOMAS.gov’s nominations directory, and goes back to 2009.

Data is collected using the unitedstates/congress project. Feel free to open a ticket with any bugs or suggestions.

Methods

All requests require a valid API key, and use the domain:

https://congress.api.sunlightfoundation.com

/nominations

Search and filter through presidential nominations in Congress. Filter by any fields below that have a star next to them. All standard operators apply.

Recent nominations

/nominations?order=received_on

Nominations before the Senate Armed Services Committee

/nominations?committee_ids=SSAS

Nominees to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board

/nominations?organization=Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board

Nominees named ‘Petraeus’

/nominations?query=Petraeus

Fields

Many fields are not returned unless requested. You can request specific fields with the fields parameter. See the partial responses documentation for more details.

* = can be used as a filter

{
  "nomination_id": "PN1873-111",
  "congress": 111,
  "number": "PN1873",
  "received_on": "2010-06-24",
  "last_action_at": "2010-06-30",
  "organization": "Army",
  "nominees": [
    {
      "name": "Gen. David H. Petraeus",
      "position": "General",
      "state": "PA"
    }
  ],
  "committee_ids": [
    "SSAS"
  ]
}

* nomination_id
The unique identifier for this nomination, taken from the Library of Congress. Of the form “PN[number]-[congress]”.

* congress
The Congress in which this nomination was presented.

* number
The number of this nomination, taken from the Library of Congress. Can occasionally contain hyphens, e.g. “PN64-01”.

* received_on
The date this nomination was received in the Senate.

* last_action_at
The date this nomination last received action. If there are no official actions, then this field will fall back to the value of received_on.

* organization
The organization the nominee would be appointed to, if confirmed.

* committee_ids
An array of IDs of committees that the nomination has been referred to for consideration.

* nominees
An array of objects with fields (described below) about each nominee. Nominations for civil posts tend to have only one nominee. Nominations for military posts tend to have batches of multiple nominees. In either case, the nominees field will always be an array.

nominees.name
The name of the nominee, as it appears in THOMAS. Capitalization is not consistent.

* nominees.position
The position the nominee is being nominated for.

* nominees.state
The which state in the United States this nominee hails from. This field is only available for some nominees, and never for batches of multiple nominees.

Action history

{
  "actions": [
    {
      "acted_at": "2010-06-30",
      "location": "floor",
      "text": "Considered by Senate pursuant to unanimous consent agreement of June 29, 2010.",
      "type": "action"
    },
    {
      "acted_at": "2010-06-30",
      "location": "floor",
      "text": "Confirmed by the Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 99 - 0. Record Vote Number: 203.",
      "type": "action"
    }
  ],
  "last_action": {
    "acted_at": "2010-06-30",
    "location": "floor",
    "text": "Confirmed by the Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 99 - 0. Record Vote Number: 203.",
    "type": "action"
  }
}

actions.type
The type of action. At this time, the only value for nomination actions is “action”.

actions.location
Where the action occurred. Can be either “committee” or “floor”.

actions.acted_at
The date the action occurred.

actions.text
Text describing the action.

last_action
A convenience field containing only the most recent action object.