This week, Representative Pramila Jayapal from Washington and Senator Kamala Harris from California filed the legislation, dubbed the ‘‘Detention Oversight, Not Expansion Act’’ or ‘‘DONE Act.”

Each year, dozens of private prison contracts come up for re-bid. Help MuckRock’s Private Prison Project by letting us know about the contract debate near you.

As part of efforts to rebuild and restructure Puerto Rico after last fall’s destructive hurricane season, the island territory is actively planning to use private prisons on the mainland to house a third of its current inmate population.

Private prison giant GEO Group appeals to the powers of the federal government and property rights to allow continued operation in Tacoma, Washington.

Despite ample evidence of premeditation, public knowledge of political and personal clashes, and a taped confession, Dan White was charged with voluntary manslaughter after he assassinated San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. Previously processed Federal Bureau of Investigation records released to Emma Best reveal details about White’s alleged antisemitism and homophobia, and lend credence to accusations that the State’s prosecution of White was performed with “reckless and wanton disregard of normal prosecutorial standards.”

Two hundred pages into the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s copious file on the famed physicist Richard Feynman, and the reader is treated to a quite the surprise: A bizarre collage of what appears to be Feynman’s face alongside large swaths of redacted text, with a few cryptic phrases like “doubt everything” and “is a God” left intact. It is unclear if the redaction are original, or are the work of the FBI.

Following a FOIA appeal, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has released ten new pages of their investigation into links between the PROMIS scandal, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, and the mysterious death of Danny Casolaro. FOIA lawyers and experts are divided as to whether this new release implies the Bureau previously improperly cited the “open investigation” exemption, or whether it had stopped being applicable between the initial FOIA response and the appeal.

As we’ve written about before, Ernest Hemingway’s relationship with the Federal Bureau of Investigation would charitably be described as “strained.” Hemingway would tell anybody who’d listen that he thought the Bureau were a bunch of Nazi mediocrities, and the FBI in turn dismissed Hemingway as a drunken phony. As his file shows, however, all of that changed when Hemingway finally did something the Bureau agreed with: he died.

Vanessa Nason, who runs our “Counting the Uncounted: The Sexual Assault Evidence Collection Kit Project,” reflects on a year spent tracking down the extent of the rape kit backlog in America.

A public records request with the Columbus Police Department revealed that until a year ago, the department tagged rape kits in evidence as “other,” a designation also used for shopping carts and cell phones.

For the last year, we’ve been requesting data surrounding the national backlog of untested sexual assault evidence. While we still don’t know the actual number- so far more than 225,000 rape kits have been found sitting on evidence collection shelves and in hospitals from coast to coast - we have a greater understanding of the many hurdles victims and law enforcement face. There are many reasons rape kits go untested, and the lack of forensic funding continues to exacerbate the problem.

Amid #metoo stories and Hollywood’s women coalescing around a fight against sexual assault and harassment in the workplace, there’s finally some good news: President Donald Trump has signed the SAFER (Sexual Assault Forensic Evidence Reporting) Act of 2017. In doing so, Trump reauthorized the original SAFER Act of 2013, extending and strengthening efforts to eliminate the nationwide rape kit backlog.

Records released this week show taxpayers paid almost $20 million for the Coast Guard to protect President Donald Trump during visits to Mar-a-Lago, and a Michigan State Police captain is under investigation for favoring a towing firm in exchange for sports tickets. Plus, records show the Department of Education has closed more than 1200 Obama-era civil rights probes, and the Environmental Protection Agency is making FOIA requesters wait for documents - with an average processing time for complex requests of 388 days.

Last week, a newly discovered report left Florida struggling to explain how a year passed before anyone noticed it was issuing concealed carry permits without a federal background check, while Immigration and Customs Enforcement emails suggest that Attorney General Jeff Sessions may have misrepresented the expected yield of recent raids in California.

In this week’s FOIA round-up, we’ve got dirt on a Federal Communications Commission cover-up effort, long-awaited Chicago stop-and-frisk data, copies of environmental policy executive orders sent to President Donald Trump by a major coal executive, and document devouring tips from a New York Times investigative reporter.

Records released this week through FOIA requests show the Federal Emergency Management Agency paid millions for a ‘half-empty floating hotel’ last hurricane season. Plus, Michigan State University struggles to keep up with records requests about Larry Nassar, Humana’s “reverse FOIA,” and an exciting job opportunity with the New York Times, all in this week’s round-up.

This week we pushed out a number of bug fixes and subtle improvements, while also making it easier for developers to get up to speed if they want to help contributing to MuckRock. We’ve also (temporarily!) removed one of our most charming and beloved features: The magnifying loupe, which made it easier to read screenshots of documents in our news articles.

Last week was quiet, with only one new user facing feature (although one we think will enable some other cool stuff in the near future). If you’d like to hear the latest about what we’re up to and happen to be at IRE this year, come say hi!

Last week, we had a number of smaller bug fixes plus a bunch of improvements and new features for the Assignments tool. Read all about them and find ways to contribute code, design, and other skills to help make MuckRock even better.

If you’re up and running with an Assignments, it’s now easier than ever to review the results and flag interesting items as they come in. If you’re not using Assignments, there’s never been a better time to give them a try!