Every published briefing, newest first.
These are the standing accountability files of the Muckrakers Accountability Network. Each briefing is researched against dated, linked sources, written by a human editor, and reviewed before it publishes. Numbered citations in each piece point to the documents underneath the claim, so any assertion here can be checked against the record it came from. Nothing is published on the strength of a rumour alone; where something is reported rather than established, it is labelled that way.
The briefings below cover the figures this newsroom follows continuously rather than episodically: members of Congress and state officials whose filings, court dates and public money are worth tracking between news cycles, and the Kremlin desk, where the Putin Watch Index scores observable pressure on the regime week by week. A target earns a standing file when the public record about them is either scattered across enough filings and jurisdictions that no ordinary reader would assemble it, or when nobody else is examining power they already hold. Inclusion is not an accusation, and several of these files rest largely on documents the subject filed themselves.
Corrections run in place, with the change noted. Where a subject has responded, the response is carried in the file. Where a claim is disputed or unproven it is labelled as such rather than asserted, and no one is called a criminal here without a conviction or a formal charge.
A congresswoman who built a brand on 'law and order' spent Friday pleading for leniency for her son, who got 20 days for child abuse and faces worse next.
Michael Whatley trails in the polls and the money, so at Trump's midterm convention he reached for a crime scare fact-checkers have already gutted.
The congresswoman who built a brand on lock-'em-up toughness spent two hearings pleading for leniency for a son now facing child sexual exploitation charges.
A dark-money nonprofit incorporated by Ken Paxton's own campaign treasurer routed over $1 million to a pro-Paxton super PAC. Now Trump and Musk are pouring cash into a race Texas Republicans can't shake.
Putin calls this weekend's stage-managed Duma vote a 'barometer' of war support, even as Ukrainian drones cripple the refineries and the economy stalls.
An ex-Democrat calls Collins the 'soul of the Senate' as she trails Troy Jackson in poll after poll and more than half of Mainers say they can't stand her.
At a 3 a.m. presser and a Vladivostok forum, the Russian president called Ukraine's leaders 'terrorists,' claimed victory his own generals can't find, and read a secret CIA visit as a sign America has gone soft.
The Texas Ranger Paxton fired for reporting him to the FBI is now on camera calling him a crook, and 21 Republicans just walked out the door with him.
Republican mega-donors just poured nearly $54 million into a Senate candidate they spent the spring calling an infidelity risk. Six weeks out, Texas voters aren't buying what the money is selling.
Trump's handpicked NC Senate pick is down double digits, outraised three-to-one, and running on 'crime' while his own events keep colliding with convicted predators.
Putin hosted Trump's envoys for a Kremlin peace summit, paused strikes on Kyiv for exactly as long as the cameras were rolling, then resumed killing civilians as the war bled into NATO airspace.
Six weeks from an election she may lose, Maine's 'moderate' cast the deciding vote to hand a lifetime robe to a Federalist Society judge who opposes abortion even in rape and incest cases.
Federal filings tie the Maine senator's committees to donors linked to a dead child sex trafficker, an Oath Keeper runs her Greenville turnout, and the polls have her sweating.
Trump handpicked him. Trump rallied for him. Now a Republican super PAC just torched $6.5 million in October ads, and the party is privately conceding North Carolina may be gone.
A murdered son, a doctored narrative, and a Big Oil resume: the GOP's North Carolina Senate hope is running a campaign built on other people's tragedies and it is unraveling.
A perjury-signed filing accuses the Colorado congresswoman of affairs with three staffers and a $200,000 hush payment. She calls it a scam. Nothing is proven, and the denials are loud.
United Russia claims a constitutional supermajority in a vote monitors call rigged, even as Ukraine's biggest-ever drone swarm set a Moscow refinery ablaze on the final day of polling.
Trump handed Ken Paxton the nomination and $10 million. Six weeks out, the impeached attorney general is trailing a 37-year-old Democrat in his own red fortress.
The scandal-scarred AG trails a Democrat in his own red state, sits on a nearly $60 million fundraising hole, and needs the president to pass the hat at $400,000 a couple.
South Dakota's Democratic Senate nominee quit blaming a fire, financial ruin and 'intimidating threats', and named American Muckrakers, the outfit behind this podcast, as part of the pressure campaign.
Down in the polls and running from her own party, Maine's senior senator is auditioning for the role of independent. The receipts say otherwise.
The state's senior Republican is getting out-raised twenty-fold in a district built to protect her, while her son answers five felony counts and the House quietly punts a shutdown.
The ex-RNC boss is broke, down double digits, and dodging questions about a man who did six years for abusing girls, while banking on a Supreme Court-blessed money cannon.
Julian Beaudion quit the South Dakota Senate race citing a house fire and threats. Days later, on Substack, he put a name to it: independent Brian Bengs. Bengs says nobody was threatened.
Lyric Wailyn James was arrested on the same statutes, in the same county, with the same bond as Tyler Boebert, with no established connection between the two men.
Tyler Boebert stood before a Garfield County judge Aug. 19 on five felony counts. That same day, the congresswoman was pinning a medal and running for reelection.
A bylined, transcript-checked account of the Colorado advisement hearing where Tyler Boebert was formally advised of the charges against him.
The most powerful attorney general in Texas won his primary, torched his war chest doing it, and now needs a $443,000-a-couple bailout in Houston.
Maine's senior senator scolds Trump's Canada trade war days after finding she can't outrun a poll that has her losing at home.
The former RNC boss runs the whole campaign on Roy Cooper being soft on crime. He won't answer why he handed a party post to a registered sex offender, and he's still losing.
July was the war's deadliest month in over three years. The man who calls it a 'just cause' just spent last week eating fish and mugging for cameras on islands he stole.
The Texas AG is deadlocked with a former schoolteacher, dodging adultery questions while cranking out lawsuits and cheering a court ruling that makes it harder to vote by mail.
Maine's incumbent broke with Trump on the AG fight and grabbed the headlines. She also cast a quieter vote for a CDC director who wants to track your abortions, and she's trailing.
While Lauren Boebert cranks out press releases about grid corridors, her 21-year-old son barrels toward a courtroom on child sexual exploitation charges and a jail-time plea in a separate case.
Julian Beaudion walked away from the Rounds race citing a fire, financial ruin, and threats. Brian Bengs says nobody was threatened. Both can't be right.
The Trump-picked Senate hopeful trails by nine, gets bailed out by $71 million in PAC cash, and still won't answer why he put Harvey West in charge of NCGOP rules.
As Trump's ceasefire deadline arrives, Witkoff gets three hours in the Kremlin, Russia's fuel supply collapses, and Putin's own bankers reportedly want out.
Trump's man in Texas trails a former schoolteacher by three, and even a quarter of non-MAGA Republicans have had enough of him.
Collins voted against ICE bodycams in June, then took a victory lap for them in August. A 26-year-old Colombian father is dead. The receipts don't flatter her.
FEC filings show the independent out-raised the Democrat by a factor of three on twice the small-dollar base, and Beaudion's biggest single Q2 destination was not South Dakota. It was Iowa.
A fresh Fox News poll has Paxton losing to a Democrat in Texas, as the mortgage-fraud allegations, illegal-donation letters, and a hushed divorce follow him into the general.
Maine's senior senator takes a victory lap on ICE bodycams the same summer an ICE bullet killed a 26-year-old father in Biddeford, and the same election year Wall Street billionaires flooded her PACs.
Down 9 in Fox's own poll, Michael Whatley lets a super PAC brand Roy Cooper soft on criminals while dodging why he twice installed a convicted child sex offender in GOP leadership.
Fresh July 2026: she blamed GOP staffers and bad Botox for missing the NDAA, her trans ban died, and her Q2 filing landed. Tyler's Colorado cases are a separate matter.
Even Kremlin-owned pollsters clock the steepest approval slide of the war as fuel lines snake across Russia and the tsar goes hat in hand to his oligarchs.
Ilya Remeslo spent years informing on the opposition. On July 17 the machine he helped build swallowed him whole, the same day it barred Boris Nadezhdin from the ballot.
As Ukrainian drones gut Russia's refineries and gas lines stretch for hours, the Kremlin's own pollsters clock Putin's sharpest fall since he started the war, while Washington readies a sanctions sledgehammer.
An ICC-indicted war-crimes suspect is throwing his 'Russian Davos', and Trump's White House ballroom guy is the guest of honor, days after a Russian barrage killed 22 civilians. Body count, both sides, as of June 7, 2026: more than 525,000 dead and wounded, per [Le Monde](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/02/27/with-an-estimated-500-000-dead-the-russia-ukraine-war-is-europe-s-deadliest-since-1945_6750914_4.html).
Trump's handpicked Senate pick rolled out an AI-invented hockey player while trailing Roy Cooper by double digits. The fakery is the through-line.
Maine's senior senator threw herself a milestone party last week. Then she helped advance the ICE bill, voted for a doomed amendment, and watched her challenger hammer her millionaire stock portfolio.
On the Capitol steps this week, Lauren Boebert flamed an absentee colleague for 'taxation without representation' while her own truce with Trump lies in ruins.
Paxton spent two decades dodging consequences. Now the same machine that hated him is bankrolling him, and the first poll out of the gate has him losing.