A federal lawsuit filed in November against the Department of Defense and Air Force claims the military’s vaccine mandate violated both the First Amendment and religious freedoms. The sitting congresswoman and her husband seek an unspecified amount in damages.

A fee is charged for about 16% of U.S. public-records requests, according to a MuckRock analysis of our data. The rising costs of records limits government accountability at the state-level but requestors have found ways to lower costs.

The latest on FOIA, transparency and accountability battles, threats and wins from MuckRock.

DocumentCloud gets a new and improved GPT 3.5 Turbo Add-On; MuckRock and Accounts get more concise 403 pages; a new DocumentCloud Python library is released and community members release two new MuckRock tools.

Cicero Town Board President Larry Dominick, in publicly-recorded comments at the end of a biweekly town meeting on Dec. 12, said the Cicero Independiente‘s staffers routinely don’t stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and, as a result, “from now on, I don’t think I’ll let anyone there talk that does not stand for the pledge.”

The latest on FOIA, transparency and accountability battles, threats and wins from MuckRock.

At the American Geophysical Union conference this week, MuckRock and The California Newsroom presented findings and methodology from the “Smoked Screened” investigation.

Ever wonder if there’s more (or less) to someone’s story when they are running for office? From national races to local elected office, democracy depends on understanding how qualified candidates are for the role they are seeking, and this free training will offer a range of techniques to background political figures, helping better understand potential conflicts of interest, work histories, assets and more.

La planta de Koppers en Cicero ha infringido leyes medioambientales estatales y federales durante 50 años, desde finales de la década de 1970 hasta el verano pasado. Una nueva lista de infracciones de la EPA de Illinois plantea nuevos interrogantes sobre la cantidad de sustancias químicas cancerígenas que emite la planta.

Provisions that would have compensated those exposed to radioactive waste left over from the Manhattan Project was removed on Wednesday

Get the latest on FOIA, transparency and accountability battles, threats and wins from MuckRock.

The DocumentCloud navigation bar got a redesign, Premium Add-Ons are more prominently displayed, AI credit balances are easier to find, python-documentcloud drops Python 2 support, and Squarelet gives you a notice to contact your admins to approve your request to join an organization.

Want to know when your favorite government agency posts new information? Wondering if a corporate press release might see some post-publication revisions? We’ve brought the power of The Marshall Project’s Klaxon site monitoring tool into DocumentCloud, and it’s now easier than ever to track changes and get alerts from websites you care about.

Today, the MuckRock Foundation is announcing five new recipients of Gateway Grants, which include a mix of financial, technical and editorial support for projects that support and strengthen transparency and access around the world.

Despite our holiday wishlist, every year some government agencies, officials and private companies fight back against the public’s right to know, which is why we are looking for your nominations for the 2024 Foilies, “awards” that highlight intransigence, secrecy and all sorts of other transparency-thwarting.

In the last two weeks, MuckRock’s tech team has been hard at work enhancing the DocumentCloud platform. Notable updates include an improved method for changing the access level of documents in DocumentCloud, a range of new and upgraded Add-Ons and revamped functional tests for DocumentCloud’s frontend.

Dozens of states and the EPA are so concerned they may exclude the smokiest days from the legally binding score cards that determine whether they’re doing enough to fight pollution, according to a joint collaboration between the Tribune and the nonprofit news site MuckRock. Now some states are considering banding together in a joint effort that could trigger the largest exclusion in the history of the federal Clean Air Act

Cicero Independiente y MuckRock han monitoreado la contaminación del aire en Cicero. Lo que hemos descubierto: La calidad del aire de Cicero es mucho peor que la de los barrios de los alrededores del condado de Cook y es peor de lo que la Agencia de Protección Ambiental y los programas piloto dirigidos por la Ciudad y Microsoft han informado regularmente.

The Cicero Independiente and MuckRock have been monitoring air pollution in Cicero. What we found: Cicero’s air quality is much worse than surrounding Cook County neighborhoods, and it’s worse than what the Environmental Protection Agency and pilot programs run by the city and Microsoft have routinely reported.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve rolled out a new donation page, just in time for NewsMatch. We’ve also worked to revamp the DocumentCloud homepage with more information, along with adding the ability to pin your favorite DocumentCloud features more easily.

MuckRock’s tools allowed the newsrooms to file and track public records requests from police and sheriff agencies across the state, and enabled the reporters to cover hundreds of news stories about police misconduct — including use of force, sexual assault and official dishonesty — and journalists’ fight to access the records.

A side-by-side comparison of five OCR tools using multiple kinds of documents from DocumentCloud.

Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) dismantled a vital tool for transparency when it decommissioned FOIAonline.gov, an online resource that allowed the public to make and track Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to over 20 federal agencies, and to view responsive documents. The EPA, which oversaw FOIAonline on behalf of participating agencies, claims to have fulfilled over 1.5 million requests and attracted 34,000 active registered users over the decade-plus the portal was operating. POGO and MuckRock have partnered to host a publicly available archive of nearly 34,000 documents captured before FOIAonline was shuttered.

Lakes and streams in August A. Busch Memorial Conservation Area were contaminated with uranium from refining efforts in Weldon Spring.

Everyone agrees it’s time to change the Clean Air act’s exceptional events rule, but has different solutions.