Sunlight Foundation Press Release Archive

Recent Press Releases

Sunlight endorses Special Counsel Transparency Act

John Wonderlich on Trump administration keeping White House visitor logs secret

April 14, 2017 — “By announcing a return to secrecy for White House visitor logs, the Trump administration has continued to evade public accountability and transparency for the highest office.”

Sunlight Foundation announces Kat Duffy as director of Sunlight Labs

November 5, 2015 — The Sunlight Foundation today announced the hire of Kat Duffy as the director of Sunlight Labs.

Money in politics is a global challenge, new report shows

July 16, 2015 — A new report published today by the Money, Politics and Transparency project found that the role of money in politics challenges states worldwide, both rich and poor. Its abuse often raises problems of graft, corruption and cronyism, undermining legitimacy and governance. Major scandals linked to money in politics are currently rocking ruling parties in countries such as Chile, Malaysia and Brazil, with calls for leading politicians to resign. And there are problems in established democracies as well.

Federal government releases historic trove of data

March 2, 2015 — The federal government has just begun to release comprehensive lists of every dataset it knows it possesses, revealing data holdings pertaining to how government agencies operate and conduct oversight that have likely never been publicly identified before. These lists lay out the datasets that agencies create and rely on every day. The release comes in response to a Freedom of Information request first made in December 2013 by the Sunlight Foundation.

OMB announces unprecedented release of government data indexes


February 9, 2015 — Last Friday, the Office of Management and Budget sent a letter to the Sunlight Foundation confirming its plan to comply with Sunlight’s Freedom of Information request and subsequent administrative appeal for indexes of agency data holdings, which have never been released to the public before.

‘Fixed Fortunes’: Corporate Donors Spent $5.8B on Political Influence, Received $4.4T in Financial Benefits

November 17, 2014 — The Sunlight Foundation is releasing “Fixed Fortunes,” a groundbreaking analysis and dataset of the money the biggest corporate political donors put into campaigns and lobbying and what they get in return.

Sunlight’s research found that, between 2007 and 2012, 200 of the most politically active for-profit companies in the United States disclosed spending a total of $5.8 billion influencing Washington through campaign contributions and lobbying, and have benefitted from $4.4 trillion in contracts, grants, loans and subsidies. The number exceeds the $4.3 trillion that 50 million Americans received over the same time period from Social Security.