As November inches closer, June’s #FOIAFriday session explored what type of public records can be used to investigate political candidates who are running in the 2024 election cycle. Friday’s session covered how to request these overlooked documents, including military personnel records, voter lists and Paycheck Protection Program loans.

MuckRock has archived data on over 160,000 FOIA requests, including the Environmental Protection Agency and Customs and Border Protection.

Over the last few weeks, we have been hard at work on a range of improvements to MuckRock and DocumentCloud, but FOIA fans have something special to celebrate: We’ve imported many of the requests from FOIAonline into a searchable database which allows you to filter, browse and even re-request almost 170,000 requests with just a few clicks.

Through the power of FOIA logs, FOIA-minded reporters can find interesting story ideas by asking for and digging through the history of what other people are looking to obtain.

The U.S. Department of Defense reported receiving more than 57,000 Freedom of Information Act requests across 33 components last year. Want to know what these requesters were looking to get? Check the FOIA log.

Richmond School Board offers a special lesson in how the Virginia Freedom of Information Act is not supposed to work.

The Virginia Department of Corrections came under national scrutiny in September when visitors learned they would not be allowed to wear tampons or menstrual cups, citing them as an apparent contraband risk. A FOIA request for a more thorough explanation of the tampon ban - through policy documents and a log of contraband incidents alluded to in the Times - revealed a two-month wait of rejection, denial and, finally, the single-page document behind the ban.

Each week, we host a conversation that addresses topics and answer any general questions important to FOIA users. Last week’s topic was about where and how to find inspiration for filing creative public records requests.

Three state-level agencies in New Jersey have now refused to disclose their logs of public records requests received in 2013. MuckRock is continuing to press for release of these routine records.

The government agency tasked with maintaining the database of the millions of men eligible for the military draft can’t access the logs of its few dozen FOIA requests.