As America Turns 250, Help Us Investigate The Government

Plus, subscribe in July for a 25% discount

Photo by Toan Chu on Unsplash

Dear Subscribers,

Here at Public Domain we don’t churn out hot takes, aggregate the work of others or rely on AI to generate content. We aren’t chasing clicks or trying to become influencers. We are doing old-fashioned investigative journalism — making phone calls, cultivating sources, filing FOIA requests and digging through documents. We aim to get crucial information into the public sphere and hold the powerful to account. We want to expose corruption and ensure government transparency. We are trying to make a real impact.

And after a little more than a year since we launched, we are proud of the impact we’ve made.

We exposed the extensive conflicts of interests and secretive dealings of Karen Budd-Falen, the number 3 official at the Interior Department. Our ongoing investigative series into Budd-Falen has been cited in The New York Times, featured on The Rachel Maddow Show and led members of Congress to call for investigations into her conduct.

We investigated the acting director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, showing how he used his government position to work on the same issues that he advocated for as an offshore oil lobbyist. Democrats in Congress then called on the Interior Department’s Inspector General to investigate him for ethical lapses.

We were the first outlet to report on the Trump administration’s decision to lift the Biden-era ban on cyanide bombs on public lands — a scoop that was subsequently picked up by The New York Times.

We were the first to obtain and publicly release a leaked copy of the Interior Department’s draft strategic plan, which revealed Secretary Burgum’s pro-drilling and anti-conservation agenda in detail. The New York Times, The Washington Post and numerous other outlets cited our piece.

We were the first outlet to identify and investigate Tyler Hassen, the top DOGE official at the Interior Department. Our work was later cited in a wide variety of outlets, including ProPublica.

These and other scoops have exposed the inner workings of the Trump administration and its industry-first agenda. We believe we have punched way above the weight of our upstart newsroom.

This sort of investigative work is time-consuming and costly. It can be slow. Sometimes, when the facts aren’t there, you have to abandon a story. Sometimes you have a great scoop, but just can’t get the sourcing you need to confirm crucial details. But when you can land the story, when you’re reporting leads to an investigation or a Congressional inquiry or concrete policy change ... well, for journalists, there’s nothing better.

As environmental newsrooms continue to shutter (RIP E&E News), as political attacks on public lands and wildlife continue to metastasize, we are asking our free subscribers to consider a paid subscription to Public Domain. America’s 250th birthday is in a few days, and we want to make sure that this country’s great conservation tradition lives on for another 250 years and more. But that takes investment and we’d love your support.

To that end, in the spirit of the holidays, we are offering a special 25% discount for those who sign up in July. Rather than 7 bucks a month, if you subscribe now, you can support Public Domain for only $5.25 dollars a month. If you sign up in July, you’ll receive that discount for a full year. If even 50 or 100 of you made that commitment, it would make a huge difference to our team. Not only would it help us pay the bills, it would boost our visibility on Substack, which means more eyeballs on our stories, which means more impact.

And impact is what we care about. We want the people in power to feel that their every move is being watched, tracked and documented. If they lie, cheat and steal, if they corrupt our government or sell out our public lands, we want them to know that journalists are watching and there will be consequences — if not now then someday down the road. That’s what accountability reporting is all about. Please help support the mission. And for those who are already paid subscribers, we can’t tell you how much we appreciate your generosity. Thanks to you, we have lots of hard-hitting stories in the works and a couple new FOIA lawsuits in the queue too.

Happy Fourth of July, dear readers. Happy 250! As we celebrate this country’s founding, we’ll leave you with the words of that troublesome old bird Edward Abbey: “A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”

– Roque, Chris and Jimmy