Snowpack in Colorado has been big news, so I looked at the data and some measuring stations hit zero snow much earlier than previous years, averaging 17 days early for total snowmelt. This project maps the stations, charts the data, and updates daily. aricchokey.com/projects/col...

“The DOJ, however, shut down more than 900 cases of federal program or procurement fraud in the first six months of the administration, including one targeting a mortgage lender accused by several state regulators of defrauding the Federal Housing Administration.” www.propublica.org/article/trum...

Trump’s Justice Department Dropped 23,000 Criminal Investigations in Shift to Immigration

Under Attorney General Pam Bondi, the DOJ abandoned a record number of cases — including hundreds of investigations into terrorism, white-collar crime and drugs — in just the first six months of Presi...

propublica.org

I first tried to build a collection of congressional press releases starting in 2013. I think I might have finally done it. Introducing Congress Press:

Introducing Congress Press – Derek Willis

Academic and journalist

thescoop.org

new: public records show that a small group of counties that hold people for ICE have made over $20 million since 2024. county leaders say they've come to depend on that revenue. from me and @dtohl.bsky.social www.spotlightpa.org/news/2026/04...

PA jails earn millions detaining immigrants for ICE

A group of Pennsylvania counties that have detained immigrants for ICE billed the federal government more than $21 million in recent years.

spotlightpa.org

how high are gas prices where you live? i scraped state- and county-level data so you can see average prices for regular unleaded gasoline across the country. and we'll be updating this page daily.

Maps: How Much Have Gas Prices Risen Across The U.S.?

Here is a county-level look at where drivers are facing the highest costs.

nytimes.com

A WIRED analysis of DHS records identified dozens of specialized federal agents who used force against US civilians during the largest known deployment of its kind in US history. www.wired.com/story/border...

Unmasking the Paramilitary Agents Behind Trump’s Violent Immigration Crackdown

A WIRED analysis of DHS records identified dozens of specialized federal agents who used force against US civilians during the largest known deployment of its kind in US history.

wired.com

“On March 31, the U.S. Forest Service announced plans to move its headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City, Utah. It will also close or repurpose all nine of its regional offices, create 15 state offices, and shutter research and development facilities in more than 30 states.”

High Country News@highcountrynews.org · 4mo ago

In the Trump administration’s reorganization of the struggling agency, painful echoes of BLM’s past moves.

The Tegna site that listed their stations is down now, but here’s a look at the where they were pre-merger, where Nexstar is, and markets where they overlap. aricchokey.com/projects/teg...

ICE's Bounty Hunters Revealed in Database Leak: www.kenklippenstein.com/p/exclusive-...

Exclusive: ICE's Bounty Hunters

Leaked database shows how ICE pays off local cops to do their bidding

kenklippenstein.com

‘The changes will further reduce press access, ultimately eroding the public’s understanding of what the military is doing.’ @brianstelter.bsky.social on the Pentagon’s latest restrictions on journalists www.cnn.com/2026/03/23/m...

After losing in court, the Pentagon moves to restrict press access again | CNN Business

Undeterred by a federal judge’s recent rebuke, the Pentagon has announced another set of restrictions on the press corps that regularly covers the US military.

cnn.com

Local journos, this new feature will help you find all the habeas cases in your state and federal judicial district with one click. Track them over time. Huge public service!

Carla Astudillo@carla-astudi.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Small but important update to our @propublica.org habeas tracker: By clicking on the little icon in our table, you can download all habeas cases for each state or court district since Jan. 2025, inc. case names, docket number along with Court Listener link. projects.propublica.org/habeas-track...

“The investigation is serious and will have major ripple effects,” predicted Denver City Councilwoman Jamie Torres. “We have a holiday and a park named after him, and after hearing what’s coming forward so far, we should rename both.” // Story by @elliottwenzler.bsky.social

Denver grapples with fallout of César Chávez abuse allegations as city holiday approaches

“The investigation is serious and will have major ripple effects,” predicted Denver City Councilwoman Jamie Torres. “We have a holiday and a park named after him. … We should rename both.”

denverpost.com

I learned a lot about using data and code for journalism through others who showed their work freely and publicly so others could learn to do the same. I’m glad to see such an intentional push toward that type of culture again, especially as resources in newsrooms dwindle openjournalism.news

Open Journalism

Showing your work

openjournalism.news

I stumbled upon the concept of digital gardens recently and it inspired me to finally redesign my personal website. This was also a good opportunity to finally dig into Sveltekit aricchokey.com

Since last year, I and Al Shaw & @bxroberts.org have investigated the linkages between Trump appointees and the industries they oversee. Today we published a searchable database containing approximately 3,200 financial disclosure forms of roughly 1500 officials. www.propublica.org/article/trum...

Documents Reveal a Web of Financial Ties Between Trump Officials and the Industries They Help Regulate

ProPublica is releasing a trove of disclosure records that detail the finances of more than 1,500 Trump appointees, including former lobbyists, industry executives and at least a dozen officials who d...

propublica.org

Data appears to be from a public facing submission system and "contract" is not implied. Entities may have signed up just because they wanted access to view solicitations. That doesn't mean they "did business with ICE."

Micah Lee@micahflee.com · 5mo ago

DHS's Office of Industry Partnership was hacked by a group called "Department of Peace" and info about ICE contracts with over 6,000 companies is now published on @ddosecrets.org! Enjoy 🧊🔨 ddosecrets.org/article/ice-...

I just threw together a website visualizing this ICE contract data! You can browse through the companies and their contracts, and filter them by state micahflee.github.io/ice-contracts/

Micah Lee@micahflee.com · 5mo ago

DHS's Office of Industry Partnership was hacked by a group called "Department of Peace" and info about ICE contracts with over 6,000 companies is now published on @ddosecrets.org! Enjoy 🧊🔨 ddosecrets.org/article/ice-...

Winters are getting shorter across most U.S. cities www.axios.com/2026/02/25/s...

Winters are getting shorter across most U.S. cities

Despite all the cold, snow and ice millions have faced so far this winter.

axios.com

How would cuts to SNAP benefits affect your state and county? The @urbaninstitute.bsky.social just published a new tool showing that SNAP benefits will fail to cover the cost of a modestly priced meal in every county in the US. www.urban.org/data-tools/s...

This is amazing. Harvard has amassed a 16TB collection covering more than 311K datasets and a complete archive of federal public datasets linked by data.gov - with ongoing updates. lil.law.harvard.edu/blog/2025/02...

Announcing the Data.gov Archive | Library Innovation Lab

lil.law.harvard.edu

The Trump official currently dismantling USAID was caught in a secret meeting with a group of pro-Russian separatists in the Balkans. Those he met with are under American sanctions for trying to restart the Bosnian war in the name of Christian nationalism. 1/

Federal data is disappearing. On Thursday, meet the teams working to rescue it and learn how you can help. www.muckrock.com/news/archive...

Federal data is disappearing. On Thursday, meet the teams working to rescue it and learn how you can help.

Since the start of the new Trump administration, hundreds of federal data sets and government websites have gone offline without warning, sometimes returning with major changes and sometimes not retur...

muckrock.com

Announcing the Data.gov Archive lil.law.harvard.edu/blog/2025/02...

Let's talk about some of the reporting on the ICE raids that took place in Denver/Aurora yesterday. There are clearly some inaccuracies circulating online right now Let's start with this one It's categorically not true. (this aired this morning on @FoxNews) 1/

Also noteworthy: the president is trying to fire the FEC’s Democratic chair when it is set to rule on dozens of complaints from the 2024 election — including complaints against Trump and Elon Musk (who spent almost $300M to support his campaign) and complaints Trump filed against Harris + the media

Dan Weiner@danw329.bsky.social · last yr.

In the entire history of the bipartisan FEC, no president has ever removed a member from the opposing party without naming a successor recommended by that party’s congressional leaders. This is an extraordinary break from that history.

Federal data rescue effort underway: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Data Rescue Efforts

These suggestions come from various sources, including IASSIST, RDAP, Data Curation Network, BlueSky, LinkedIn, and others. A librarian at a university is compiling it. I am keeping the document unsha...

docs.google.com

Data Rescue Project #DataRescue@datarescueproject.org · last yr.

Data Curation Network (datacurationnetwork.org/2025/02/05/c...) has posted some tips for curating data during data rescues.

Updates on US Census Data as of February 5: According to the Census Bureau, all files on the public FTP server have been made publicly unavailable to comply with the President's executive orders. They say they'll work to restore the files after they are reviewed and approved.

The CDC appears to have updated several of their open datasets last night just to relabel gender to sex, including some YRBSS and BRFSS files and even old Census population estimates. Some of these files haven't been otherwise updated in years.

2024 flashback: An RCFP analysis provided an unprecedented look at how federal government agencies invoke the “Glomar” doctrine to deny FOIA requests. Combined, we found that these bodies issued over 5,000 such denials between FY2017 and FY2021.

We FOIA'd every federal agency for their ‘Glomar’ responses. Here’s what we learned.

An RCFP analysis provides important insights into the federal government’s use of the “Glomar” doctrine to “neither confirm nor deny” the existence of records.

rcfp.org