Community Events

This session will focus on the state of environmental documents and data at the federal level. We'll cover changes in policies and practice under the current Trump Administration, so you know what to expect as a requester or user of these datasets. We'll also spend time stepping back to discuss what federal datasets are some of the most common and useful sources of information on the environment.

FOIAFriday is a community space for journalists, researchers, and transparency advocates to connect, share ideas, and dig into the practice of public records research and reporting.

With a record-breaking $5.1 billion spent on federal lobbying in 2025, special-interest influence is at an all-time high. For reporters, finding the connection between a policy or legislative initiative and corporate dollars can feel like looking for a needle in a haystack.

This hands-on OpenSecrets session is designed to give journalists the investigative tools to map lobbying influence. Learn how to track industry-wide spending trends, isolate specific corporate targets, and dissect the lobbying reports behind the legislation you cover every day. Don't just report on the bills - report on who paid to influence them.

This session focuses on environmental FOIA requests. We’ll explore how reporters and analysts track environmental impact through public records, and how those documents can help surface leads, timelines and key actors involved in response and oversight.

We’ll also center the human side of FOIA work, drawing on experiences from FOIA analysts at agencies where people urgently seek records after natural disasters that affect their homes and lives. The discussion will highlight how FOIA analysts and reporters can better support affected communities in finding and understanding records, and how environmental data and requests can move beyond statistics to reflect real-world impact.

FOIAFriday is a community space for journalists, researchers, and transparency advocates to connect, share ideas, and dig into the practice of public records research and reporting.