Data sources
"Last updated" is when our copy was last loaded. Automatic sources were each tested live on the date shown under "Verified working." Manual sources depend on files the site owner uploads.
How often we check each source
We check each source only as often as the government publishes new records. Fundraising and lobbying reports are filed quarterly, so we check a few days after each filing deadline instead of every day. Coverage today is South Carolina's delegation; the same schedule will apply as more states are added.
| Data | Source | When new records appear | How often | When we check |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bills and bill status | Congress.gov | Every day Congress acts | Daily | Each morning |
| House and Senate votes | Congress.gov, Voteview | On voting days | Daily | Each morning |
| Stock trades | House Clerk, Senate eFD | Within 30–45 days of a trade (STOCK Act) | Weekly | Once a week |
| Campaign fundraising | FEC | Quarterly reports, plus pre- and post-election reports in election years | Quarterly | 3 days after each deadline |
| Lobbying reports (LD-2) | LDA.gov | Quarterly | Quarterly | After each deadline |
| House staff and office pay | House Statement of Disbursements | About 60 days after each quarter | Quarterly | When the Clerk posts a new quarter |
| Lobbyist contributions (LD-203) | LDA.gov | Twice a year | Twice a year | After each deadline |
| Annual financial disclosures | House Clerk, Senate eFD | Due May 15; extensions run to mid-August | Yearly | Late May and again after extensions |
| Earmarks | House Appropriations Committee | Once per funding year | Yearly | When new project tables are posted |
| Gift travel | House Clerk | Within 15 days of a trip's end | Weekly | Once a week |
| Delegation roster and committees | congress-legislators, official announcements | New Congress (Jan. 3), vacancies and appointments | When it changes | Weekly, and on known transition dates |
Delegation: members, staff and schedule
| Source | What we use it for | How we get it | Status | Last updated | Verified working | Limits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delegation roster | Members, term start/end dates and reasons | Entered by hand from user-supplied dates and election results | Manual | Nov 9, 2026 | — | Lindsey Graham died July 11, 2026; Darline's appointment was announced July 13 and she was sworn in July 14. Andrews, Lacore (SC-1) and Climer (SC-5) take office Jan 3, 2027. Historical elected terms are checked against congress-legislators without overwriting user-supplied future transitions; Lacore/Climer federal identifiers remain pending. |
| unitedstates/congress-legislators | Committee assignments | Community-maintained | Automatic | Nov 9, 2026 | Nov 10, 2026 | Can lag official changes |
| House Statement of Disbursements | House staff names, titles and pay periods | Quarterly CSVs | Automatic | Nov 9, 2026 (pay through Jun 30, 2026) | Nov 10, 2026 | Lobbyist links are name matches only |
| House Clerk floor status | Whether the House is meeting right now | Live | Automatic | Live | Nov 10, 2026 | |
| Congressional Record (Congress.gov) | Senate and House next-meeting schedule for the in-session badge | Latest issue, checked every 10 minutes | Automatic | Live (every 10 min) | Nov 10, 2026 | Senate: scheduled meeting only, not live |
Delegation: campaign money
| Source | What we use it for | How we get it | Status | Last updated | Verified working | Limits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FEC API | Campaign totals and where the money came from (individuals, PACs, parties, self-funding, loans) | Campaign committee's two-year cycle totals | Automatic | Nov 9, 2026 | Nov 10, 2026 | 11 members imported for the 2026 cycle; incoming Nancy Lacore and Wes Climer still need federal campaign identifiers and finance imports |
| FEC API (candidate totals, all of Congress) | Comparisons on each member's Overview: small-donor, PAC, own-money and outside-spending shares compared with other senators or representatives | Candidate totals for every current member of Congress (from the congress-legislators list), plus outside spending by candidate; senators over their current six-year term so far, representatives over the current two-year cycle. Stored as per-member totals and chamber 25th/50th/75th percentiles | Automatic | Nov 13, 2026 | Nov 10, 2026 | Refreshed a few days after each FEC filing deadline (quarterly, pre- and post-general). Members without a matching federal campaign identifier are left out. Committee-by-committee comparisons are not built yet, so the Overview makes no committee comparisons |
| FEC API (earlier cycles of a senator's term) | A senator's money for the whole current term (for example 2023–2026), on the Overview and the Fundraising tab's "This term" view | Each earlier two-year cycle of the current term is imported once with the same totals, employer, PAC and outside-spending rules | Manual | Nov 13, 2026 | — | Loaded by the site owner with a script when a new term starts. Live FEC reads on the Fundraising tab (leadership PACs, super PAC funders, money chain, loans) still cover the latest cycle only; employee counts across cycles are shown as "at least" because one person may give in both |
| FEC API (Schedule A) | Donor money grouped by employer, and PAC gifts by committee name | Only totals by employer; no donor names or addresses | Automatic | Nov 9, 2026 | Nov 10, 2026 | Donors over $200 only |
| FEC API (Schedule A itemized receipts) | Employees who gave together: companies with 3+ employees or $10,000+ giving to a member | Only per-company totals and donor counts; donors are counted while loading and names are never stored | Manual | Nov 10, 2026 | — | Loaded by the site owner with a script (FEC limits requests per minute); employer names are normalized with a small alias list, so some variants may stay separate. FEC bulk downloads of all itemized receipts are available but run to several gigabytes; we will add them once our systems can handle that size |
| FEC API (committee registrations and Schedule A) | Leadership PAC, party and other-candidate labels; candidate loans and repayments; who funds supporting super PACs | Read live from FEC, refreshed every 6 hours | Automatic | Live (6-hour cache) | Nov 10, 2026 | Organizations such as 501(c)(4) groups don't report their donors; individuals shown only as a total |
| FEC API (Form 3L) | Lobbyist bundling reports: lobbyists who gathered others' gifts for a campaign | Read live from FEC, 2025–2026 reports | Automatic | Live (6-hour cache) | Nov 10, 2026 | No South Carolina member's campaign filed one for 2025–2026; leadership PACs not checked |
| FEC API (Schedule E) | Super PAC and outside-group spending for or against each member | Independent expenditures | Automatic | Nov 9, 2026 | Nov 10, 2026 | Not counted in money raised |
| FEC campaign spending (Schedule B) | Who each campaign paid, how much and for what; possible family, own-business and lobbying-firm connections | Read live from FEC (largest 1,500 payments per campaign, 6-hour cache) | Automatic | Live (6-hour cache) | Nov 10, 2026 | Categories come from the campaign's own descriptions; family matches are last-name only; businesses matched by exact name against the annual disclosure; lobbying matches by exact name |
| Other campaign committees (SC Ethics Commission / FEC) | Mace's and Norman's governor campaigns; Norman's separate Senate campaign | Links to public campaign records; no totals imported | Gap | — | — | Mace and Norman totals cover their House committees only. State campaign money and Norman's Senate committee are excluded from totals, employer/industry breakdowns and overlap calculations. |
| FCC political ad files | TV and radio ad buys at South Carolina stations, including issue ads from groups that don't disclose donors | Not loaded | Gap | — | — | Station files are mostly scanned contracts and invoices; needs AI reading of each document, starting with the largest SC TV stations |
Delegation: personal finances and travel
| Source | What we use it for | How we get it | Status | Last updated | Verified working | Limits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| House Clerk PTRs | House stock trades, 2025–2026 | Clerk's yearly index; reports read with AI; new reports imported by the site owner | Automatic | Nov 9, 2026 (newest report filed Oct 6, 2026) | Nov 10, 2026 | Only Biggs and Timmons have filed; reports more than 45 days after a trade are marked late (STOCK Act) |
| Senate eFD PTRs | Senate stock trades (Scott, D. Graham, L. Graham) | User-uploaded CSV from official disclosures; automated requests blocked | Manual | Not recorded | — | Lindsey Graham: 5 December 2025 transactions (2 sales, 3 purchases), filed Jan 6, 2026. User reports no sales for Scott or D. Graham; purchases and full 2025–2026 coverage remain unverified. |
| House Clerk annual financial disclosures | Holdings, debts, earned and spouse income, outside positions and agreements | 2025 annual reports (and 2026 candidate reports for Lacore and Climer) read once with AI from the Clerk's PDFs | Manual | Nov 9, 2026 | — | Ranges only; senators' annual reports not loaded (Senate site blocks automated requests); reload when amendments are filed |
| House Clerk gift travel filings | Trips for members and staff paid by private sponsors: sponsor, destination, dates, traveler, report PDF | Full 2025–2026 Clerk export (3,625 filings nationwide) filtered to SC offices and loaded by script; includes trips taken earlier but filed in 2025–2026 | Manual | Nov 10, 2026 | — | Costs (travel, lodging, meals, other) read from each report PDF once with Lovable AI and stored; senators' travel not loaded (Secretary of the Senate site blocks automated requests); sponsors matched to lobbying clients by exact name only |
Bills and votes
| Source | What we use it for | How we get it | Status | Last updated | Verified working | Limits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Congress.gov API | Every bill and resolution (title, latest action and status), House roll-call votes, policy areas, vote tallies, the yea–nay split by party, and each bill page's sponsor, cosponsor count, committees and recent actions (read live, 6-hour cache) | 119th Congress; new and changed bills and new House votes are imported every morning (about 4–7 a.m. Eastern) | Automatic | Daily (bills and House roll-call votes complete as of Nov 12, 2026) | Nov 10, 2026 | House roll-call votes tied to a bill or resolution are loaded for the whole 119th Congress (from Jan. 3, 2025; the full catch-up was run on Nov 12, 2026). Votes not tied to a bill, such as quorum calls and the Speaker election, aren't stored. Each bill has one policy area (its topic badge when there's no plain-English summary), set by Library of Congress staff usually 1–2 weeks after introduction; each morning new and changed bills without one are checked (up to 600 a day, retried daily for up to 30 days), and older bills that haven't changed since Nov 12, 2026 stay without a topic badge. Budget (Economics and Public Finance) and Social Welfare bills are too broad to tie to an industry, so they never get industry flags |
| Voteview (UCLA) | Senate roll-call votes, tallies and party split (party split loaded by a one-time script for now) | Public copy of Senate records (senate.gov blocks automated requests); new votes imported every morning | Automatic | Daily (Voteview can lag a few days) | Nov 10, 2026 | Unofficial copy; can lag a few days |
| Congress.gov API (CRS summaries) | Plain-language bill descriptions, affected readers, topic tags and short labels for measures without short titles | Generated once with AI from the complete latest CRS summary, or published bill text if no summary exists, then kept as written; each morning's import writes them for bills with a recorded vote and for newly introduced bills (up to 90 a day) | Automatic | Daily | Nov 10, 2026 | New bills often have no summary or text for days; they are checked again each morning, up to 5 times. Bills loaded before the daily import began get a description only once they have a recorded vote or someone opens them. No title-only generation. Bills without a summary or published text show a missing-summary note. Descriptions retain requirements to consider, study or report, rather than implying adoption. One-line descriptions must be one sentence under 30 words; a failed check gets one correction, then falls back to the official title. The complete CRS summary remains in the collapsed Official record. |
| House and Senate Appropriations Committees enacted project tables | FY2026 earmarks (House Community Project Funding and Senate Congressionally Directed Spending) for SC members | Enacted (public law) Agriculture, CJS, Energy-Water, Homeland Security, Interior and THUD tables; 73 projects compiled by the site owner (CSV), each linked to its PDF page | Manual | Not recorded | — | Upload a new CSV for other bills or FY2027. Projects requested by both a House member and Graham appear on both pages with the full amount. Labor-HHS, Defense, Financial Services and Military Construction not in this file |
Organizations and lobbying
| Source | What we use it for | How we get it | Status | Last updated | Verified working | Limits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LDA.gov (LD-1/LD-2 bulk download) | Lobbying reports that name tracked bills, and lobbyist names for staff matches | User-uploaded 2025–2026 filings and activity CSVs (lda.gov blocks our servers) | Manual | Nov 10, 2026 | — | 18,474 of 169,662 reports kept: those naming a bill in the app or listing a lobbyist who matches tracked staff. Bill numbers are read from report text; all bill views share the same complete, paged report query and per-bill counts; utilities are Energy and Zurich is Insurance; one stored organization directory supplies industries and fixed types to every view; each client gets one industry from what the organization is (its name, plus a short hand-checked list), never from a filing's issue codes; on bill pages clients are grouped as businesses and trade groups (including trade associations named “Institute” or “Council”, like the American Petroleum Institute), labor unions, advocacy groups and nonprofits, or not classified, by name; lobbying firms are labeled with the clients they lobbied for. Advocacy groups, nonprofits and unions get no industry and never count toward industry overlaps, since they often lobby the other side. LD-203 contribution reports are listed separately. The bill pop-up shows clients whose own PAC gave to the member, and firms whose lobbyists reported gifts to the member (exact names only). Gaps: the bulk files lack lobbyists' former government jobs, coalition member companies and foreign entity names (only a count), and no filing says which office was contacted or which side a client took. |
| LDA.gov (LD-203 contribution reports) | Lobbyist and lobbying-firm PAC gifts to members, payments for events honoring them, and meeting costs | User-uploaded 2025–2026 contribution CSVs (lda.gov blocks our servers) | Manual | Nov 10, 2026 | — | 3,007 member matches from 242,033 entries, kept where the honoree or payee names a tracked SC member. Entries are split into campaign contributions (filed as FECA) and events and honors (honorary and meeting expenses, plus FECA-marked payments to vendors, conferences or venues, such as “assorted vendors”); only campaign contributions count toward rankings and bill-page totals. Payments honoring several people at once are shown apart from each member's total. Filers write names freely, so matching uses each member's name patterns and skips known namesakes; a misspelled name can be missed. Exact receipt matching requires recipient committee, equal amount and dates within 30 days; missing transaction evidence is disclosed in the QA report. When an organization reports its own PAC's gift (no individual lobbyist named) and the FEC already shows that PAC giving to the same member, the LD-203 entry is left out of connection, bill and organization totals so the same money is not shown twice. Shown on the Fundraising tab and, by exact firm name, in each bill pop-up beside that firm's lobbying. |
| Derived: sweeping bills | Which lobbied bills nearly every large group lobbies, used to sort the Connections tab | A bill is sweeping when more organizations lobbied it than 95% of the bills with any lobbying in our records, or when it is a government funding or budget bill. Organizations are counted once by their shared ID | Automatic | Nightly | Nov 10, 2026 | Recomputed after each lobbying upload and every night. Groups linked only through sweeping bills are shown as weaker connections; lobbying firms are listed separately from the clients they lobby for |
| DOJ Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) filings | Foreign agents' contacts with congressional offices and their political contributions | Not loaded | Gap | — | — | Contacts and contributions appear only inside scanned supplemental-statement PDFs; the bulk downloads list registrants and documents but not contacts. Needs an AI read of each six-month statement |
| Industry keyword rules | Tags for donor employers, bills, committees and stocks | Our own rules | Manual | Nov 10, 2026 | — | Some tags will be wrong |
| Organization types | Whether each organization is a company, trade group, union, nonprofit, lobbying firm, university or government body | Read once with AI from each organization's name and industry; owner-reviewed types are never changed | Manual | Nov 13, 2026 | — | Last checked Nov 13, 2026: 1,372 of 6,060 unreviewed types corrected; 505 the AI couldn't place kept their earlier type. Changed types are marked for the owner's review spreadsheet. Some types will still be wrong |
Gaps and manual steps
- FEC API (earlier cycles of a senator's term): Loaded by the site owner with a script when a new term starts. Live FEC reads on the Fundraising tab (leadership PACs, super PAC funders, money chain, loans) still cover the latest cycle only; employee counts across cycles are shown as "at least" because one person may give in both
- Other campaign committees (SC Ethics Commission / FEC): Mace and Norman totals cover their House committees only. State campaign money and Norman's Senate committee are excluded from totals, employer/industry breakdowns and overlap calculations.
- FEC API (Schedule A itemized receipts): Loaded by the site owner with a script (FEC limits requests per minute); employer names are normalized with a small alias list, so some variants may stay separate. FEC bulk downloads of all itemized receipts are available but run to several gigabytes; we will add them once our systems can handle that size
- House and Senate Appropriations Committees enacted project tables: Upload a new CSV for other bills or FY2027. Projects requested by both a House member and Graham appear on both pages with the full amount. Labor-HHS, Defense, Financial Services and Military Construction not in this file
- LDA.gov (LD-1/LD-2 bulk download): 18,474 of 169,662 reports kept: those naming a bill in the app or listing a lobbyist who matches tracked staff. Bill numbers are read from report text; all bill views share the same complete, paged report query and per-bill counts; utilities are Energy and Zurich is Insurance; one stored organization directory supplies industries and fixed types to every view; each client gets one industry from what the organization is (its name, plus a short hand-checked list), never from a filing's issue codes; on bill pages clients are grouped as businesses and trade groups (including trade associations named “Institute” or “Council”, like the American Petroleum Institute), labor unions, advocacy groups and nonprofits, or not classified, by name; lobbying firms are labeled with the clients they lobbied for. Advocacy groups, nonprofits and unions get no industry and never count toward industry overlaps, since they often lobby the other side. LD-203 contribution reports are listed separately. The bill pop-up shows clients whose own PAC gave to the member, and firms whose lobbyists reported gifts to the member (exact names only). Gaps: the bulk files lack lobbyists' former government jobs, coalition member companies and foreign entity names (only a count), and no filing says which office was contacted or which side a client took.
- FCC political ad files: Station files are mostly scanned contracts and invoices; needs AI reading of each document, starting with the largest SC TV stations
- House Clerk gift travel filings: Costs (travel, lodging, meals, other) read from each report PDF once with Lovable AI and stored; senators' travel not loaded (Secretary of the Senate site blocks automated requests); sponsors matched to lobbying clients by exact name only
- DOJ Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) filings: Contacts and contributions appear only inside scanned supplemental-statement PDFs; the bulk downloads list registrants and documents but not contacts. Needs an AI read of each six-month statement
- House Clerk annual financial disclosures: Ranges only; senators' annual reports not loaded (Senate site blocks automated requests); reload when amendments are filed
- LDA.gov (LD-203 contribution reports): 3,007 member matches from 242,033 entries, kept where the honoree or payee names a tracked SC member. Entries are split into campaign contributions (filed as FECA) and events and honors (honorary and meeting expenses, plus FECA-marked payments to vendors, conferences or venues, such as “assorted vendors”); only campaign contributions count toward rankings and bill-page totals. Payments honoring several people at once are shown apart from each member's total. Filers write names freely, so matching uses each member's name patterns and skips known namesakes; a misspelled name can be missed. Exact receipt matching requires recipient committee, equal amount and dates within 30 days; missing transaction evidence is disclosed in the QA report. When an organization reports its own PAC's gift (no individual lobbyist named) and the FEC already shows that PAC giving to the same member, the LD-203 entry is left out of connection, bill and organization totals so the same money is not shown twice. Shown on the Fundraising tab and, by exact firm name, in each bill pop-up beside that firm's lobbying.
- Senate eFD PTRs: Lindsey Graham: 5 December 2025 transactions (2 sales, 3 purchases), filed Jan 6, 2026. User reports no sales for Scott or D. Graham; purchases and full 2025–2026 coverage remain unverified.
- Delegation roster: Lindsey Graham died July 11, 2026; Darline's appointment was announced July 13 and she was sworn in July 14. Andrews, Lacore (SC-1) and Climer (SC-5) take office Jan 3, 2027. Historical elected terms are checked against congress-legislators without overwriting user-supplied future transitions; Lacore/Climer federal identifiers remain pending.
- Industry keyword rules: Some tags will be wrong
- Organization types: Last checked Nov 13, 2026: 1,372 of 6,060 unreviewed types corrected; 505 the AI couldn't place kept their earlier type. Changed types are marked for the owner's review spreadsheet. Some types will still be wrong
Industry tags come from our own keyword rules on donor employers, so some will be wrong. Only real lobbying filings can appear or trigger alerts; sample records are excluded. We never show or store individual donor names or addresses. Automatic sources are imported by the site owner, who also checks which government sites block automated requests; blocked sites are listed above as gaps or manual steps.