News
Original reporting, commentary, and analysis of public records by MuckRock’s staff and affiliates, with new articles every weekday.
Ringing in the new year with records requests
ICE detainees’ access to gender-affirming care, universities responding to proposed government compacts and more.
We’re requesting ICE documents on transgender detainees
Immigration and Customs Enforcement stopped reporting congressionally-mandated data on trans detainees and modified contracts to omit trans care requirements.
Why are Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Elon Musk’s “intimate and embarrassing” emails still secret?
Last month, the Office of the Texas Attorney General ordered Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office to release nearly 1,400 pages to The Texas Newsroom. All but about 200 were completely redacted.
TJA and MuckRock’s collaboration hit 300 records requests. Here’s what we got back.
Pronouns and nicknames in FDA emails, Medicare coverage changes and more.
How are opioid settlement funds being spent in your state? You can use FOIA to find out
Over the last six months, MuckRock teamed up with a class of investigative journalism students at West Virginia University to request opioid settlement spending documents from all 55 counties in West Virginia.Through this work, we’ve learned how to manage all the requests, reach small towns and rural governments and make sense of the numbers — turning the documents into reporting that holds public officials to account.
FOIA 101: Tips and Tricks to Make You a Transparency Master
Text messages are public records. How do you request them?
Whether they appear in a yellow lined notebook or on white printer paper, government documents are government documents.
Guide to FOIA and environmental records
This MuckRock guide will explore how to use public databases to your advantage when filing environmental FOIA requests.
Guide to using FOIA for access to law enforcement records
Find out what records you can obtain from law enforcement.
Using FOIA for emails
Requesting emails can be extremely insightful, but also a bit of an exemptions minefield.
FOIAFriday: A community podcast about all things FOIA and public records
For the Record: Opening up the statehouse
MuckRock’s September FOIA Friday conversation focused on opening up the statehouse through requesting data and documents such as calendars, contracts, lobbying data and travel logs.
For the Record: Dig into personal financial disclosures
August’s FOIA Friday session covered documents that are especially useful during the election season: personal financial disclosures, business interests and finances.
For the Record: Government transparency when businesses and nonprofits are involved
MuckRock hosted its monthly FOIA Friday conversation on the challenges of requesting public records when businesses and nonprofits intervene.
For the Record: Requesting data inventories
MuckRock’s #FOIAFriday webinar series continued last Friday with a step-by-step guide on how to request data inventories from federal and state agencies.
Data Liberation Project: Liberating public data for the public good
How slot machines generates revenue for the Department of Defense
New records obtained by the Data Liberation Project show that military slot machine revenue is increasing.
How are local governments spending opioid settlement money? We need your help to find out.
The Data Liberation Project is tracking money meant to repair the damage of the opioid overdose epidemic, and we need more volunteer investigators to join us.
TSA complaint data disappeared. Here’s where you can still find it.
Public data is disappearing—but anyone can help preserve it. Groups like the Data Rescue Project and the Data Liberation Project are racing to preserve public interest datasets and they need all kinds of support.
Data Liberation Project expands transparency efforts with MuckRock and Big Local News
The Data Liberation Project transparency initiative is joining MuckRock, where together with the data experts at Big Local News it will expand how the community of FOIA enthusiasts requests, documents and publishes data.
Monitoring projects with an impact on the environment
Disclose, a French investigative newsroom and NGO, wanted to spot major projects impacting the environment before they slipped past public awareness. Relevant documents were scattered across government websites, which were hard to find and even harder to monitor over time. Disclose used DocumentCloud and custom Add-Ons to build a system to collect, analyze and preserve these documents in one place, helping journalists and the public take action while it still matters.
Release Notes: Introducing the new DocumentCloud and version 2 of the MuckRock API
The new DocumentCloud is live, featuring a faster, more consistent, and modernized user interface optimized for accessibility and performance. Alongside this, MuckRock is proud to launch version 2 of our MuckRock, offering improved authentication, efficiency, and speed. To support these updates, the new python-squarelet Python library simplifies token management and authentication for both APIs. Additionally, an IPFS/Filecoin Batch Uploader Add-On allows users to upload large document sets more reliably and efficiently.
Using open source tools to track the biggest fight in BJJ
What public records can reveal about a rivalry that rocked submission grappling.
Our search for the best tabular-data extraction tool in 2024, and what we found
DocumentCloud’s recent review provides a detailed comparison of available tools, highlighting their strengths and limitations in handling diverse data extraction tasks.