In the only faceoff known to the field of FOIA, we pit 64 federal Freedom of Information Act offices against each other to win the ultimate prize in competitive records requesting, that most lofty label: Most Responsive Agency.

Last week, in partnership with the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, we put out a call to help find and preserve as much as the online primary source material in the Mueller Report as we could. Hundreds of people helped, and now we’ve updated a version of the Mueller Report to over a hundred of the original sources, right on the page.

The current President of the United States has prompted a new conversation in the hallowed halls of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration: What will be the actual role of the US Space Force? A FOIA request filed in August of 2018 reveals that beyond just plans for a more militarized space, NASA is deeply dedicated and invested to the privatization and commercialization of the final frontier.

After dropping Axon, the city of Fontana, California faced a choice: Pay for cloud services its police department didn’t use or risk its credit score.

The Bureau of Prisons has announced four awards related to its operations at the Reeves County Detention Complex in Texas. In total, the agreements are worth more than $1.3 billion over the life of the contracts, which could remain active for up to ten years.

Earlier, we put out the call for help diving through the many pages of Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement Director Scott Angelle’s call records. Angelle gave out his cellphone number to a conference of oil and gas industry executives - an industry he is tasked with overseeing - so we were curious to see who was calling. Here are the results.

In July of 2016, following a series of high-profile police shootings, Black Lives Matter protests erupted in cities all over the country. Some local police departments, ostensibly fearing for the safety of both protestors and officers, reached out to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for help in monitoring upcoming demonstrations. According to documents recently obtained by MuckRock, the FBI provided assistance in the form of social media surveillance and on the ground threat monitoring.

Yesterday, in response to FOIA lawsuits by BuzzFeed News and the Electronic Privacy and Information Center, the Justice Department released a new version of the Mueller Report, replacing the much-mocked ersatz exemption categories with actual FOIA exemptions. Here’s what those exemptions are, and what they mean.

After stern opposition from transparency groups, Assemblymember Laura Friedman has decided to halt AB 700 for this year’s legislative session in California. The bill would have exempted information relating to a researcher or their research at a state university or community college.

Recently, in response to Emma Best’s 2017 FOIA request for files on former Federal Bureau of Investigation Deputy Associate Director Cartha “Deke” DeLoach, the FBI released an additional 137 pages. As fellow MuckRock user Paul Galante was quick to point out, those new pages include a 1998 letter by DeLoach to one of the producers of the “X-Files,” offering his thoughts on the script of the fifth season flashback episode “Travelers.” To put it mildly, he was not a fan.

MuckRock’s new feature updates include an easier way to get an API key, improvements on request purchasing, eliminating emojis in mailed requests, fixed email submission warning, and a new process that has all checks over $150 now being sent via certified mail.

In this week’s FOIA roundup, records reveal that taxpayers paid for a Mar-a-Lago liquor bill, USA TODAY starts a national police misconduct records database, and the D.C. Metro is sued over customer satisfaction survey records.

At least 29 states post Statements of Financial Interest online, making it easy to peruse your local official’s financial ties. But under the Massachusetts Financial Disclosure Law, those wanting to get a closer look at their lawmaker’s finances have to be okay with not only showing some identification, but having their name shared with the official in question.