Latest Briefings
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.
Julian Beaudion · September 4, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler
Susan Collins · September 3, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler
Lauren Boebert · September 2, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler
Michael Whatley · August 28, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler
Julian Beaudion · August 27, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler
Lauren Boebert · August 26, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler
Lauren Boebert · August 26, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler
Lauren Boebert · August 25, 2026
A bylined, transcript-checked account of the Colorado advisement hearing where Tyler Boebert was formally advised of the charges against him.
By David B. Wheeler
Ken Paxton · August 25, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler
Susan Collins · August 24, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler
Michael Whatley · August 21, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler
Vladimir Putin · August 19, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler
Ken Paxton · August 18, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler
Susan Collins · August 17, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler
Lauren Boebert · August 15, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler
Julian Beaudion · August 14, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler
Michael Whatley · August 8, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler
Vladimir Putin · August 7, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler
Ken Paxton · August 3, 2026
Trump's man in Texas trails a former schoolteacher by three, and even a quarter of non-MAGA Republicans have had enough of him.
By David B. Wheeler
Susan Collins · August 3, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler
Julian Beaudion · August 3, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler
Ken Paxton · August 2, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler
Susan Collins · August 2, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler
Michael Whatley · August 2, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler
Lauren Boebert · August 1, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler
Vladimir Putin · August 1, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler
Vladimir Putin · July 22, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler
Vladimir Putin · July 17, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler
Vladimir Putin · June 7, 2026
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).
By David B. Wheeler
Michael Whatley · June 5, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler
Susan Collins · June 5, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler
Lauren Boebert · June 5, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler
Ken Paxton · June 5, 2026
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.
By David B. Wheeler