How to read an entry

Each entry names the member, the committee seat that gives their committee jurisdiction over the awarding agency, the company, and the contract. The three source links sit beneath it. Nothing in an entry is our characterisation; each line restates a record that already exists in public.

The standing frame

Members of Congress may lawfully own and trade stocks, and these trades are disclosed under the STOCK Act. This page reports the proximity of public records — a disclosed trade, a public committee assignment and a public contract award — and draws no conclusion of wrongdoing. Proximity is not causation.

The most recent entry

John Karl Fetterman sits on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which has jurisdiction over U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That agency awarded $18.3M to AMZN. The disclosure and the award record are linked on the entry itself, along with the date each one carries.

The two numbers in an entry are not the same kind of number

The contract figure is exact: it is the obligated amount on the federal award record. The trade figure is not. Congressional disclosure reports a band rather than an amount, so the trade figure in every entry is the midpoint of the disclosed band and is labelled an estimate wherever it appears.

Why a trade date and a disclosure date are both shown

Congressional filing rules allow up to 45 days between a transaction and its disclosure. An entry shows both dates so the sequence is unambiguous, and the score treats a trade placed before an award differently from one placed after it, because the two are not the same fact.

Why an entry can disappear

Filings get amended and award records get corrected. When a supporting record changes so that one of the three legs no longer holds — a position sold in an amended filing, an award cancelled, a member leaving the committee — the entry is withdrawn automatically and the reason is logged. Corrections appear on the entry with the date they were made.

Reporting an error

Every entry carries a way to report an error. A report is checked against the primary sources, a clear mismatch is corrected, and anything that would change what an entry says about a person is reviewed by an editor before it changes. The reader who reported it is told the outcome.