Since the 2016 general election, Florida-based for-profit prison operator GEO Group has donated over a million dollars to Political Action Committees and political candidates throughout the State of Florida, support Republican PACs and gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis, as well as a number of elections for representation in both houses of the Florida Congress.

Two of the least populated states in the nation are experiencing enough prison crowding to warrant, by their estimates, the transfer of hundreds of inmates to private prison facilities in other states.

Earlier this month, on the same day that GEO Group execs held a Second Quarter earnings call with shareholders detailing its immigration-based growth, the company issued a Cease and Desist order to the group Dream Defenders, in part a response to its organizing a day of action against the company.

Last fall, Goshen, Indiana, seat of the conservative Elkhart County which overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 election, was approached by private prison company CoreCivic with plans for a new Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility. However, instead of quickly signing on the dotted line with the promise of financial windwall, the Goshen citizenry took pause, and began to voice their concerns.

When we last wrote about the Federal Bureau of Investigation file for former head of the American Civil Liberties Union Roger Baldwin, we looked at one of many instances in which Baldwin butted up against Director J. Edgar Hoover on the issue of balancing liberty and security. An earlier section of the file, however, reveals their relationship was relatively tame compared to that of Hoover’s predecessor, who once urged radio stations not to let the “ultra-radicals” at the ACLU broadcast the “rotten propaganda” that they weren’t on the Soviet payroll.

The recently released Federal Bureau of Investigation file for former head of the American Civil Liberties Union Roger Baldwin document numerous times the groups came into conflict with each other. One notable incident, related to the Bureau’s wartime “Postal Censorship” program, led to a testy exchange between Baldwin and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover after the Bureau investigated the writer and pioneering Libertarian Rose Wilder Lane over her comments on a postcard.

Last month, we kicked off a crowdsourcing campaign to explore Ronald Reagan’s 30,000-page Federal Bureau of Investigation file. So far we’ve received nearly 100 submissions, and we wanted to highlight a few of the most interesting finds so far.

Last week, President Donald Trump ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation to perform a renewed background check into Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh in the wake of Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Pulling from what we’ve seen over the years from other FBI files, here’s some context on what that means.

Last week, MuckRock asked for your help going extracting names and affiliations from Central Intelligence Agency’s list of official contacts and liaisons with other government agencies. Since then, MuckRock users have combed through half the list, producing names, affiliations and other leads. The response has been strong enough that we’re launching a new project for the effort.

After the government claimed that FOIA was more useful to Soviet spies than American journalists or citizens, American journalists and citizens were able to use FOIA to expose the “apparently groundless” nature of these charges.

Practically synonymous with high-altitude espionage, the Lockheed U-2 spy plane played an almost legendary role in the Central Intelligence Agency’s activities during the Cold War. Notoriously difficult to pilot and physically demanding (flights of over ten hours at over 70,000 feet were not uncommon), and a formerly TOP SECRET manual uncovered in the Agency archives outlines a strict regimen to keep pilots fit and healthy. Unsurprisingly, the manual touches upon the necessity of maintaining a proper diet, but somewhat surprisingly, the purpose of this proper diet is focused on “obviating the need for frequent defecation.”

In other words, keeping pilots from soiling their flightsuit.

While a number of declassification programs and requirements have historically been in place at the Central Intelligence Agency, its responses to these programs has been mixed at best. One study in the CIA’s declassified archives is extremely optimistic, stating up front that it assumes the Agency would fully implement the intent of the declassification programs. In a stark contrast, another memo revealed that “for many years,” the CIA had no continuing declassification review program - and other policies and guidelines declared that the Agency’s records were simply exempt from declassification.

FOIA law governs access to public records at the Federal level, but each state mandates their own public records policies. Navigating the ambiguities in these state laws can prove cumbersome and frustrating to requesters - we’ve identified particularly irksome examples, and offer tips on what you can do about them.

In this week’s FOIA round-up, public records show massive federal spending on protecting Confederate cemeteries post-Charlottesville, the Trump administration’s policy of withholding documents requested with FOIA at the Fish and Wildlife Service, and police fraternity allowing cops to escape DUI charges in Illinois. Also, an extensive FOIA-focused report details systemic flaws in the Illinois state FOIA process.

For this week’s FOIA round-up, treasure hunters accuse Federal Bureau of Investigation of acting fishy about “missing” Civil War gold, a something is rotten in the state of Chicago’s for-profit garbage collection, and the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council is holding a celebration for its 40th anniversary (with cake)!

In this week’s FOIA round-up, tax records show “self-made billionaire” President Donald Trump received hundreds of millions of dollars from his father, the video of Laquan McDonald’s death at the hands of a Chicago cop - released by a public records lawsuit - is central to the officer’s murder trial, and the Pennsylvania Attorney General who’s pushing the Catholic Church to be more transparent about child sexual abuse won’t release a decade-old report investigating allegations of sexual assault against a former state college administrator.

We’re looking for our next round of News Nerds in Residence, who will work with the teams at DocumentCloud, MuckRock and Quartz to build chat-based “super powers” that can be used by tens of thousands of people.

Removing features is not as much fun as adding them, but we think this time it will make things easier as you stay on top of your requests.

This week, we released improvements to our request download tool so it works better with large requests and improved the language in follow ups. Here’s what’s new at MuckRock and how you can help out.

We’ve been incredibly excited about the early response to the Assignments platform, and we’re delighted to roll out more features to help you launch and manage crowdsourcing campaigns to dig through large document sets.