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Health risks from nuclear contamination in St. Louis denounced at congressional hearing
The United States should not expand nuclear energy use, at least until the federal government can make up for the harms caused by previous nuclear projects, U.S. Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri said at a congressional hearing in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. Bush cited the health problems nuclear waste has...
For the Record: FOIA suit, tribal sovereignty and more
When it comes to public transparency and obtaining public records at the state-level, the results may vary. While local governments in Virginia are adjusting to a new public meetings ruling by the state Supreme Court, transparency advocates in Arkansas are fighting to make government transparency a constitutional right in the state.
‘Atomic Radius:’ The legacy of America’s nuclear weapons testing program from the States Newsroom and MuckRock
Americans are typically told the story of the scientists who built the atomic bomb as an intellectual race for the world’s most powerful weapon during wartime. More than 100 atmospheric weapons tests were conducted in the U.S. and its territories between 1945 and 1962. It resulted in widespread radioactive fallout across much of the U.S., largely spread by prevailing winds and rain. In addition, contaminated waste was shipped and haphazardly stored across the country, creating new toxic Superfund sites stretching from Colorado to New York.
Release Notes: Document revision control, improved free transcription tools, and other improvements
We’re always working on improving the software in MuckRock’s suite of tools, including DocumentCloud, our accounts management and MuckRock itself. The past few weeks, we’ve cleaned up DocumentCloud’s sidebar to make it more intuitive and consistent. We’ve also improved our free transcription tool and made some fixes to Klaxon, our site monitoring tool.
For the Record: Epstein court documents, backlog of FOIA requests and more
Public interest in the Jeffrey Epstein case continues, with the newly-unsealed court documents related to Epstein’s high-profile friends and acquaintances. The release caused outages across various websites, including DocumentCloud, as reported in Axios. Documents hosted on our site received millions of views, with an extremely high volume of keyword...
MuckRock’s guide to using public records to investigate 2024 political candidates
With competitive Congressional races across the country and state and local candidates fighting to keep or take elected office, there are endless stories that can be reported out to help the public make informed decisions when heading to the polls. In December, MuckRock shared tips and tricks on how to...
Coldwater Creek to finally have warning signs after decades of nuclear contamination
More than 70 years after workers first realized barrels of radioactive waste risked contaminating Coldwater Creek, the federal government has started work to put up signs warning residents. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said in a statement Monday that it was working with the Environmental Protection Agency to add...
For the Record: 2024 election, Supreme Court disclosures and more
It’s a new year, but the battle for public records continues. At the end of 2023, we highlighted our first elections-related story, in collaboration with Sunlight Search, on Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s lawsuit, and this is just the beginning. MuckRock will be taking a closer focus on the...
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s husband quit the U.S. military over its COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Now the couple are suing the government for lost salary and out-of-pocket medical costs
In September 2021, an Air Force technical sergeant named Andrew Gamberzky requested a religious exemption, due to his Christian beliefs, from the military’s then-mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy. In his written request to the Oregon Air Force National Guard, Gamberzky decried the lack of “long-term research on the impacts and...
MuckRock survey of FOIA fees points to uneven picture across the U.S.: From $2 in Washington state to $431 per request in Idaho
Most requests filed under state open-records laws or the Freedom of Information Act — oftentimes referred to as “simple requests” that are relatively narrow in scope and take 20 days or less to compile — are usually provided to journalists and the public free-of-charge. But for...
For the Record: Foilies 2024, transparency-thwarting agencies and more
2023 is winding down, but the fight for transparency never stops. There’s still time to nominate an agency for the Foilies, to shine light on those who are involved in all sorts of other transparency-thwarting. Speaking of transparency-thwarting, our partners at the Cicero Independiente faced backlash from Cicero town...
Release Notes: Summarize with AI, automate your FOIAs and more
Our team has been hard at work to finish the year strong. In this Release Notes, there are a number of useful updates: DocumentCloud gets a new and improved GPT 3.5 Turbo Add-On; there’s an easier way to automate request submission; and a new DocumentCloud Python library is released.
After critical series, Cicero town president calls Independiente journalists ‘jerks’ and threatens to ban them from speaking at public meetings
After a series of stories critical of town leaders and local regulators, Cicero’s town board president, Larry Dominick, publicly criticized the Cicero Independiente’s journalists, calling them “jerks.” He then threatened to bar their reporters from speaking during public meetings, a clear violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution, experts say.
For the Record: Sunshine Week 2024, the state of public records request, Florida man and more
For anyone who filed a Freedom of Information request in 2023, it’s no surprise to hear of the mounting challenges to obtaining public records across the country (unless you’re filing a records request via donuts). New exemptions to the law have blocked the public accessing information, including one of the Internet’s favorite memes, “Florida man.”
‘Smoke, Screened’ findings on EPA exceptional events presented at scientific conference
The “Smoke, Screened” investigation by MuckRock, National Public Radio’s California Newsroom and the Guardian found that more than 70 counties across 20 U.S. states have used a little-known provision in the federal Clean Air Act called the “exceptional events rule” to exclude pollution data from official government statistics and regulatory decisions. At the American Geophysical Union conference this week, MuckRock and The California Newsroom presented our findings and methodology from the investigation, which details how some regulators are achieving air quality standards through legal means rather than controlling pollution.
On the Record: How to background political candidates with public documents and data
Ever wonder if there’s more (or less) to someone’s story when they are running for office? From national races to local positions, 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 history, properties and more.
Compensation for St. Louis victims of nuclear waste stripped from federal defense bill
Legislation that would have compensated St. Louis-area residents exposed to decades-old radioactive waste was stripped from a federal defense bill, leaving individuals who have suffered rare diseases without government assistance. This summer, the Senate amended the National Defense Authorization Act to expand the existing Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to include...
‘The Air We Breathe:’ How the century-old Koppers coal tar plant became, and remains, the small town of Cicero’s toxic neighbor
For years, the Koppers coal tar plant in Cicero has been the town’s biggest source of industrial air pollution. In the neighborhoods near the 36-acre facility, some residents say they have always noticed white smoke billowing from its smokestacks, rotten smells and poor air quality. They say it’s worse...
For the Record: Your essential guide to the latest in FOIA
As the late Henry Kissigner once famously said, “Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings, ‘The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.’ But since [FOIA], I’m afraid to say things like that.”. Welcome to MuckRock’s “For the...
Release Notes: Premium Add-On redesign, python-documentcloud drops Python 2 support, and more
We have a few fantastic updates to share, all of which will make MuckRock tools like DocumentCloud even more powerful than they already are. If you value these tools, we encourage you to support DocumentCloud with a donation:. If you’re in a newsroom but not already using DocumentCloud, we’d love...
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MuckRock is a non-profit, collaborative news site that brings together journalists, researchers, activists, and regular citizens to request, analyze, and share government documents, making politics more transparent and democracies more informed.
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