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Americans sickened by radioactive waste press Congress for action on assistance
WASHINGTON — Victims of nuclear contamination rallied in the nation’s capital on Wednesday in support of bipartisan legislation that would extend compensation for those harmed by radioactive waste. U.S. Sens. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, and Ben Ray Luján, a New Mexico Democrat, held a rally and press...
Browse thousands of additional FOIA requests with the new FOIA Log Explorer
Need inspiration when coming up with public records ideas? Wish you knew which other requesters were interested in the same agencies, government initiatives or subject matter? Starting today, you have a new tool: MuckRock’s FOIA Log Explorer. MuckRock’s users have already shared almost 90,000 public requests you can search,...
Where to Find Legal Support
Need a lawyer to help you with your public records request?. Some requests need more than just expertise to move them along. Our guide to public record legal support should help you connect with the right resource. This guide is not a comprehensive catalog of all the ways to find...
Student journalists: Get ready for the new year by sharpening up with FOIA 101
Records requests are a powerful tool for journalists, researchers and the public to understand and open up government, and that includes those just starting their careers. To help start the year off strong, we’re offering a FOIA 101 geared specifically towards student journalists, whether you’re on the beat at a college paper or muckraking in the halls of your high school.
“The Air We Breathe” event shows initial findings on poor air quality in Cicero
Last weekend, MuckRock and the Cicero Independiente hosted “The Air We Breathe” event in Cicero, outside Chicago, to share our initial findings on the town’s air pollution with residents. This work builds off of the “Dangers in Our Air: Mapping Chicago’s Air Pollution Hotspots” project from MuckRock...
Release Notes: Add-Ons UI Redesign
The DocumentCloud team has released a new UI for Add-Ons, which reduces the number of steps to run an Add-On, makes it easier to see past runs and edit recurring runs with a sleek new interface. Add-Ons are now present along with a membership list of your organization and projects...
Were you or a family member affected by radioactive fallout and nuclear waste from the Manhattan Project or Cold War? We want to hear your story.
For thousands of families who lived and worked near top-secret nuclear testing sites or uranium processing facilities in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, the road to getting an official apology from the federal government — and financial help for medical bills related to cancers and other diseases — might be coming to an end.
Call for Proposals: Better ways to help collect, understand and preserve the public’s documents
Call for Proposals: Better ways to help collect, understand and preserve the public’s documents. MuckRock’s first two rounds of Gateway Grantees are using DocumentCloud to reveal those secretly profiting from the destruction of Brazil’s rainforests, probe police misconduct in Chicago and much more. Now’s your chance to pitch a project that uses primary source documents to help inform and strengthen the public while leveraging AI, distributed storage and other leading technologies, baked right into DocumentCloud.
Biden supports expanding compensation to radiation victims in Missouri, New Mexico
President Joe Biden on Wednesday said he’s interested in expanding a federal program to compensate people who have gotten sick because of the country’s nuclear weapons development and testing programs. The Associated Press reported Biden told a crowd in New Mexico he was “prepared to help in terms...
‘Underwhelming:’ NIH trials fail to test meaningful long COVID treatments after 2.5 years and $1 billion, experts say
More than 2 ½ years after the National Institutes of Health received a $1 billion mandate from Congress to study and treat long COVID, the agency has finally launched clinical trials for the often-debilitating condition. But both scientists who study long COVID and patients who have struggled with it say the trials are unlikely to deliver meaningful treatments, suggesting the federal government’s landmark COVID research effort may have been wasted.
Energy secretary stops short of endorsing atomic waste victims fund in Missouri visit
ST. LOUIS — U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm in a visit to Missouri on Tuesday would not commit to supporting bipartisan legislation meant to compensate people who have been exposed to radioactive material from the U.S. weapons development and production. “I can’t speak for the administration on that particular...
Release Notes: Editable Records Request Titles, Entity Extraction, Improvements to the Python wrapper for the DocumentCloud API, and more.
The MuckRock and DocumentCloud teams have made several platform upgrades and improvements, feature integrations, and open source contributions over the last two months including editable titles of MuckRock requests, new Add-Ons for entity extraction, improving access to our DocumentCloud API, and open sourcing our data and analysis techniques for our editorial collaborations.
U.S. Senate votes to expand coverage for atomic bomb-related illness to St. Louis
The U.S. Senate voted narrowly Thursday in favor of expanding a program that compensates Americans who become ill because of exposure to radiation from the country’s development and testing of nuclear weapons to cover Missourians. The proposal, offered by Sen. Josh Hawley, was attached as an amendment to the...
Using data to track maternal mortality rates and “near misses”
The United States has some of the worst maternal mortality rates of any Western country and the COVID-19 pandemic only worsened the health of new mothers. Despite the availability of vaccines and a nationwide push to bolster the health of new and recent mothers after the pandemic, the rate of maternal death in 2022 is higher than pre-pandemic 2019, based on early, provisional data.
Read the thousands of documents journalists used to investigate St. Louis radioactive waste
This post has been updated to include a DocumentCloud link to all of the keyword-searchable “Atomic Fallout” documents and additional details about how they were used by journalists. “Atomic Fallout” is a historical re-investigation of the St. Louis region’s 75-year history with nuclear waste, conducted by a consortium...
Hawley demands St. Louis nuclear cleanup, faces questions on his environmental record
Weldon Spring — U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley on Thursday decried the federal government’s “negligence” that allowed radioactive waste to sicken St. Louis-area residents for decades and invited Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to visit the community still suffering from the legacy of the atomic bomb. “You all...
New findings inspire state, federal lawmakers to demand action on St. Louis radioactive waste
Revelations that government officials and private companies downplayed or failed to fully investigate the dangers of radioactive waste in St. Louis sparked outrage among state and federal lawmakers Wednesday and a promise from U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley to seek funding for residents who have become ill. At the heart of...
‘Atomic Fallout’: Records reveal government downplayed, ignored health risks of St. Louis radioactive waste for decades
For kids like Sandy Mitchell, Ted Theis and Janet Johnson, childhood in the North St. Louis County suburbs in the 1960s and ‘70s meant days playing along the banks or splashing in the knee-deep waters of Coldwater Creek. They caught turtles and tadpoles, jumped into deep stretches of the...
Five revelations about St. Louis’ history with radioactive waste
The Missouri Independent and MuckRock spent months scouring thousands of pages of government records about St. Louis’ involvement in the race to build an atomic bomb during World War II and decades of environmental contamination that followed. Journalists sought to lay bare the degree to which government officials knew...
Mapping Manhattan Project radioactive waste across the St. Louis region
The Missouri Independent, MuckRock and The Associated Press spent months combing through thousands of pages of previously-unreleased government records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act that show radioactive waste was known to pose a threat to people living near Coldwater Creek as early as 1949. Federal officials repeatedly wrote...
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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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