By Emily Garcia Open records laws are written with the expressed intention to make the government more accountable to the people it serves. …

by Sophia Lam As April approaches, the IRS has warned taxpayers that current staffing shortages and backlogs will translate to “another frustrating filing season,” as there is currently only one IRS staffer available for every 16,000 incoming calls. …

By Michael Clauw Last week, Facebook announced that it would be changing its policy to ban advertisers from targeting minors based on interest categories. Going forward, advertisers will only be able to target underage users based on their age, gender, and location. …

By Eric Dai The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is the independent federal regulatory agency that holds the all-important responsibility of enforcing campaign finance laws. Because of its inherently partisan structure, however, the FEC is failing utterly to meet its mission. The FEC is composed of six commissioners, all appointed by…

By Eric Dai If you don’t watch certain news, it may seem like “critical race theory” became a cultural flashpoint seemingly out of nowhere. Pundits on cable news have railed against critical race theory as “neo-Marxist rhetoric,” “mandatory indoctrination,” and “a disease born from the hateful halls of left-wing academia.”…

How the newest member of the Fortune 500 is crushing local journalism. By Nathaniel Hylton Earlier this month, Sinclair Broadcast Group was thrilled to share with the world that the telecommunications company, after decades of growth, had finally made its way into the coveted Fortune 500 list. …

It’s time for Congress to Overhaul PACER. By Rita Wegner The American courts system is a vast, sprawling behemoth, broken up by level of government and location. Access to records from local and state courts varies widely, but in 1988 the federal government created the Public Access to Court Electronic…

By Sacha Sloan Last month during Sunshine Week — an annual initiative launched in 2005 to promote open government — U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland proclaimed that “democratic accountability requires the kind of transparency that [the Freedom of Information Act] makes possible.” Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and parallel…

By Nathaniel Hylton “Time well spent.” That’s the phrase Mark Zuckerberg has used to describe Facebook, always focusing on how the platform is “bringing people closer together.” The co-opting of this phrase — first used by Facebook critics — seems carefully designed to hide Facebook’s highly addictive nature. “It’s as…