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About

Civibrief

A clear, sourced briefing on what your government is doing.

“You have the right.”

A privacy-first civic-education dashboard. It surfaces what the U.S. government is actually doing, bills, votes, executive and regulatory actions, and the people who hold office, then localizes it to your area, ties it to the constitutional protections in play, and traces every claim back to an official source. No spin, no scores, no accounts required.

What you can do

This page is what Civibrief is. If what you want is how to work it, the guide walks through every section, the shortcuts, and where to go for a specific question.

What we stand for

Civic data is always free

Browsing civic information is a right, not a product. All civic data is free and works anonymously, forever, no account required. Optional, non-civic tools are available to members who support the project, but civic data is never paywalled.

Anonymous by default

Guest mode stores nothing about you. We never keep your precise location, only the resolved jurisdiction you choose, and only if you ask us to.

Everything is sourced

Every fact links to an official record, Congress.gov, the Federal Register, the Census, and more. When sources disagree, we show both rather than pick a winner.

Party is just metadata

Party affiliation is stated once, plainly. There are no ratings, scores, rankings, or sentiment anywhere in the app.

Explanations are editor-approved

Plain-language summaries and constitutional notes are editorial, grounded in the official record, and clearly labeled, including when AI assisted a draft. Nothing is published without editor review, and nothing is ever passed off as official text.

Built to be understood

The goal is civic literacy: clear, calm, and approachable for someone opening it for the first time.

Where the data comes from

  • Congress.gov, bills, sponsorships, and members of Congress.
  • Federal Register, executive orders, presidential documents, and agency rules.
  • Federal Election Commission (OpenFEC), campaign finance for sitting members; powers the Campaign money lens and member finance panels.
  • U.S. Census Bureau, geocoding your address or ZIP to a congressional district.
  • USAspending.gov, state profiles behind the funding, income, and representation lenses.
  • CourtListener (Free Law Project), court opinions and judges.
  • National Archives & Constitution Annotated, the verbatim Constitution and its analysis, plus the History timeline's founding records.
  • Wikidata, current holders of executive offices (President, Cabinet, governors, and statewide officials).
  • congress-legislators (@unitedstates project), the public dataset joining members to their FEC candidate ids.
  • OpenStreetMap, address suggestions as you type.

All sources are public and free. When a source is unavailable, we say so plainly instead of substituting placeholder data.

How we keep this accurate

Records are resolved live from official sources and shown with the date they were retrieved. Plain-language explanations are grounded in the official record, reviewed and approved by editors before anything is published, and clearly labeled, including when AI assisted a draft. When sources disagree we show both rather than pick a winner, and when a source is down we say so instead of guessing.

Public records can still be incomplete, lag behind events, or be revised after the fact, so despite our review a fact here can occasionally be out of date or wrong. If you spot something off, use the Report issuecontrol on any record: tell us what it should say and link a reputable source, and we'll check it against the official record. Reporting takes a free account, which keeps out spam and lets us follow up.

Accounts are optional

You never need an account. If you choose to create one, it lets you save items, remember your region and a default state, keep your theme, set notification preferences, and, if you'd like, support the project. Accounts are stored locally, passwords are hashed (never kept in plain text), and you can export or permanently delete your data at any time from Account & Privacy.

Follow the project

Updates, new features, and civic-education explainers, wherever you already are.

This is an independent civic-education project for learning and transparency. It is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, any government body, and nothing here is legal or voting advice.