How this work is made

What is automated

A collector checks official sources every fifteen minutes and saves what it finds:

• the Federal Register, including documents on public inspection before they publish;
• bills and bill text from Congress.gov;
• Supreme Court dockets we are watching;
• federal contract records on USAspending.

Twice each weekday, a sweep sorts the new items. It sets aside routine items and flags what may matter: a rule with a short comment window, a bill whose text does something its title does not say, money still moving on a program that was announced as ended. The flagged items go to a review queue.

The trackers on this site, for comment windows and detention contract money, update themselves from the same official sources.

What is not automated

Nothing is published by the machine. An editor reads each flagged item and decides whether it goes forward. Before anything is published, every factual claim in it is checked against the primary document: the rule as printed in the Federal Register, the bill text, the court docket, the contract record. Where that document cannot be found, the claim is cut or marked unverified.

The rules we work by

• Read the text, not the coverage of the text. News reports about a bill or rule are a lead, not a source.
• A program ends when the money stops, not when an official says it has ended. We check announcements against the spending record.
• A claim is not a fact. When an official says something, we report that they said it.
• No guessing at motive. We say why someone acted only if they have said so on the record.
• Say what we don't know. If a figure has two values in the record, we give both.

Who pays for this

This work is funded by readers and by the author. It takes no outside money. If you want to help keep it going, you can support it on Ko-fi. Everything on this site stays free either way.

When we are wrong

We do not quietly edit published work. A dated note goes at the top of the original, the original text stays up, and the correction goes on the corrections ledger. We also score our own predictions in public, including the misses.