so so great to see our TikTok project + reporting get this recognition!!! crowdsourcing data + partnering with your audience can power journalism in v cool ways

Our use of our audience's own data to unspool how TikTok works won a @sabew.bsky.social for best data journalism! Thrilled for the whole team that brought these stories to life:

www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/int...

www.washingtonpost.com/technology/i...

www.washingtonpost.com/technology/i...

Thrilled for @caitlingilbert.bsky.social, Craig Whitlock and Lisa Rein for on being named finalists for the Goldsmith Awards for their coverage last year of VA disability fraud:
www.washingtonpost.com/investigatio...

Bar chart of spending by AI-backed PACs on US House primaries, where Alex Bores saw $1.9 million in spending against him, and almost $500k in spending for him. Four other candidates are also pictured

AI-backed PACs have already spent over $10 million to influence this year's elections — and it's working.

Of the 20 candidates backed by AI money in last week's primaries, only one lost. a deep dive w/ @danmerica.bsky.social

www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

How the Iran war could hit gas prices, airfare and everyday costs The American economy is already feeling the effects of a conflict that has driven oil prices over $100 a barrel, and it could get worse.

Gas prices could keep rising. Flights could get pricier. And inflation could tick up.

Here are the first economic effects American consumers are likely to feel from the war in Iran.

more Saturday:
double booking at 3:45 pm:
- @meghanhoyer.bsky.social on how to get hired
- @jeremybmerrill.com (again!!) on using keywords, LLMs and embeddings to work w/ text data

and friends of the data team @aadittambe.bsky.social @carsonology.bsky.social are teaching React 101 Thursday at 3:45!

Friday at 2:30 pm, @jeremybmerrill.com and @ence.bsky.social talk investigating TikTok using data donations

and then Saturday:
- 11:30 am: @ence.bsky.social on covering the midterms with data
- 11:30 am: friend of the data team @moriartymaps.com talks automated map-making workflow

We're en route to #NICAR26. Come find us in Indy!

Friday:
- 9 am: @jeremybmerrill.com demos how to find things with A.I. outside of chatbots
- 11:30 am: @meghanhoyer.bsky.social on fact-checking AI-assisted reporting in the newsroom
- also 11:30 am: @jeremybmerrill.com on investigating crypto

📊

Here, we’ll share even more stories, methodologies, datasets we're looking at, tools we like, and the occasional rant about color-coded spreadsheets.

A bunch of us are at NICAR next week, so expect some live threads from sessions and hallway dispatches. If you're going, come find us! #NICAR26

@jdharden.bsky.social also analyzed Google Street View images across D.C. and found that gentrifying neighborhoods — where Black residents are being displaced and home prices are spiking — are literally turning gray.
www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/int...

And @jeremybmerrill.com @caitlingilbert.bsky.social and @ence.bsky.social collected watch histories from 1,100 TikTok users and mapped 121,000 videos to show how the algorithm keeps you scrolling — and map the app.

www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/int... www.washingtonpost.com/technology/i...

We analyzed hundreds of earnings calls to see what executives really think of the economy Executives on earnings calls in late 2025 struck an increasingly optimistic tone about growth and strength even as U.S. households grew more pessimistic on the economy.

@federicacocco.bsky.social reviewed the transcripts of hundreds of earnings calls and found that while Americans grew more pessimistic about the economy, executives became more upbeat — and talked way more about AI.
www.washingtonpost.com/business/int...

@ence.bsky.social tracked political spending by the 100 wealthiest Americans and found it increased 140-fold since 2000.
bsky.app/profile/ence...

Elon Musk’s business empire is built on $38 billion in government funding Government infusions at key moments helped Tesla and SpaceX flourish, boosting Musk’s wealth.

Emmanuel Martinez and @dtkeating.bsky.social dug through federal contracting data and found Elon Musk's companies have received at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits — while he led efforts to cut government spending.
www.washingtonpost.com/technology/i...

Approach for Reagan National’s Runway 33 is within feet of helicopter corridor A Washington Post analysis of FAA maps shows the proximity of the flight path to tthe helicopter crossing.

After the DCA crash killed 67 people, @abtran.bsky.social analyzed over a decade of flight data and found a history of close calls between planes and helicopters at the airport, where flight paths can bring planes within feet of a busy helicopter corridor.
www.washingtonpost.com/investigatio...

U.S. vaccination rates are plunging. Look up where your school stands. Take a look to see what the kindergarten measles vaccination rates are in your area.

@caitlingilbert.bsky.social analyzed vaccination records from 44 states and found that the share of U.S. counties with herd immunity in kindergarten classrooms dropped from 50% before the pandemic to 28% — with 5.2 million kindergartners now unprotected.

www.washingtonpost.com/health/inter...

Hello Bluesky! We're the Washington Post data team. We dig through government records, social media, campaign finance reports, weather maps, and any other data we can dig up, download, FOIA or create. Then, we share what we find with you.

We've worked on a lot in the past year. A few highlights 🧵

How some veterans exploit $193 billion VA program, due to lax controls The Department of Veterans Affairs spends billions on dubious and even fraudulent disabilities benefits. Meanwhile, some deserving cases wait.

EXCLUSIVE: Veterans are swamping the VA with dubious disability claims, including cases of fraud totaling tens of millions of dollars. 100% disability is now the most common rating.

our first story in our series on the VA’s disability program, with Craig Whitlock and Lisa Rein:

wapo.st/3VN0qw9

Americans can’t stop betting parlays. Sportbooks are cashing in. As betting booms, parlays are accounting for an increasing share of the money wagered on sports, according to a Washington Post analysis of state data.

How America’s favorite sports bet is fueling sportsbook profits

Parlays are becoming more popular, accounting for an increasing share of the money wagered on sports, according to a Post analysis of betting data. Bettors lose billions a year on these bets.

www.washingtonpost.com/sports/inter...

CDC removes gender, equity references in public health material Large sets of data are being scrubbed of references to transgender and LGBTQ+ people, among others, which could compromise their use in research.

NEW: CDC scrubs gender, equity references from public health material. Includes data sets. “Orwellian,” says one doctor. W @dtkeating.bsky.social and @fenitn.bsky.social

www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

Alternative medicine fans see RFK Jr. as a hero. The field’s skeptics worry. Kennedy’s potential ascent as HHS secretary brings promise for backers of alternative-health approaches, while skeptics say those treatments are often unproven.

Latest with @davidovalle.bsky.social:

RFK Jr as HHS secretary would be a boon to the wellness/alternative therapies industries, as he has talked often about vitamins and supplements among other alt treatments and claimed the FDA has “aggressively”suppressed these remedies.

wapo.st/3CmpKCV

Watch this livestream of me stumbling through analyzing the Indian Boarding Schools data we just released. I'm going to try to create some charts to put on social media. #rstats youtube.com/live/zffaYBK...

A bubble chart shows one huge orange bubble for Elon Musk's 127.6 billion views and a bunch of small and tiny green bubbles for Congress's 7.1 billion views

Elon Musk's total view count on Twitter is way way bigger (16x) than that of Congress as a whole.

chart by @kevinschaul.bsky.social

More to come later this week, but read how we reported all of the stories in this series here:
www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...

A chart shows the view count trajectory of Elon Musk's and Donald Trump's tweets, titled "Views of each X post in 26 days around the election". Elon Musk has many above 100 million, while Trump's are all less than 100 million.

Elon Musk has a political megaphone unmatched in modern society. He got a total of 133 billion views since July, and ~1/3 of his posts are about politics.

His typical tweet gets more than 2.4 million views in just one hour, according to our novel view-count time-series dataset.

🎁: wapo.st/3VLjlI6

Will you marry me? During the bye week, obviously. The Washington Post, smitten with football and love stories, analyzed data from The Knot to see how college football schedules impact wedding planning.

There's lots of conversation about weddings during college football season, but I wanted to see if a team's schedule *actually* made a difference in the number of weddings in a region on a date.

Bye weeks? Big games? Home vs. away? SEC vs. everyone else?

A data-driven analysis:

bit.ly/4iIBuzV