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The Footnote

Open Record archive

  1. The Bill for the War Comes Due at the Checkout Counter
  2. A State Spends Its Force Abroad and Its Patience at Home
  3. The Security State Turns Its Tools Inward
  4. The Iran War Keeps Exporting Its Costs
  5. Power Turns on Its Witnesses
  6. A Government That Performs Power
  7. Firing Squad Meant to Be Watched
  8. The War Is Now the Economy
  9. War Abroad Party at Home
  10. Guardrails Left a Map
  11. Who Decides Who Pays
  12. Pressure Campaign Reaches Brazil
  13. Record Caught Up
  14. Machinery Pointed Inward
  15. Bond Market Prices the Deficit
  16. Three Ways an Argument Disappears
  17. The Machinery Keeps Running
  18. The War Is Now a Domestic Story
  19. Who Counts Not Who Votes
  20. No to a Map Yes to a Database
  21. Power Was Visible Accountability Was Not
  22. Records Landed Claims Did Not Hold
  23. Projected Power Argument at Home
  24. Washington Is Rationing What the Public Sees
  25. Who Gets to See What Power Is Doing
  26. Power Moves in Days
  27. Four Institutions Four Judges
  28. The Loud Fight Ends
  29. The Bill Came Due
  30. Six Institutions Said No
  31. Saying Stop Is Not Stopping
  32. AI Slowdown Accountability Gap
  33. Cost Arriving Channel Narrowing
  34. The Question Is Who Pays
  35. Washington Offers a Check
  36. Dividend Promise Failing Election Machinery
  37. War Automated Faster Than Accounted For
  38. Nineteen Months
  39. The Election Is Now a Docket
  40. The Rule Is Not the Safeguard
  41. The Price Walked Into an Election
  42. Outrunning Review
  43. Machinery of Who Counts
  44. War's Real Bill Arrives Far From the Gulf
  45. The Legal Justification Comes Last
  46. A Price, Not a Front
  47. The Price of a War Nobody Calls a War
  48. War's Second Front Is Economic
  49. Three Instruments, One Method
  50. Fight Over the Machinery
  51. Documents Caught Up With Statements
  52. Capacity Without Checks
  53. The Machinery Is Not Failing
  54. Coercion Is the Policy
  55. You Cannot Sue a Bond Market
  56. War Washington Cannot End
  57. Blockade and Bond Market
  58. The Bill Comes Due
  59. Money Lost, Surveillance Won
  60. Government Stopped Showing Its Work
  61. Routed Around, Not Repealed
  62. Enforcement Turned Inward
  63. Past the Point It Can Hold
  64. What It Cost to Lose
  65. Who Holds the Veto
  66. Risk Moves Down
  67. The Government Rents Its Surveillance
  68. The Powers Expand, the Checks Sit Empty
  69. The Promise Was Only Worth the Pressure Behind It
  70. The Senate Traded Away Its Leverage
  71. Two Orders and a Shrinking Stockpile
  72. What Money Bought
  73. Money Lost Michigan, Won Missouri
  74. Change the Accounting
  75. Two Clocks
  76. Who Decides What Counts as a Threat
  77. The Claim Arrives First

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Issue 76 of The Open Record..Daily, source-linked, every claim footnoted.

The Bill for the War Comes Due at the Checkout Counter

Consumer prices rose 3.7 percent in the year to September with fuel behind about half of the monthly jump, Iran says a mine sank a container ship near the Strait of Hormuz, and Texas has renewed a border emergency at least 69 times while apprehensions fell from more than 180,000 a month to about 8,000.

By . 17 minutes, 23 footnotes.

Electronic price sign at a RaceTrac gas station in Old Jefferson, Louisiana, showing regular gas at $3.75, diesel at $5.39 and E85 at $3.25 a gallon.
Gas prices at a RaceTrac in Old Jefferson, Louisiana, on 31 March 2026. The national average has since reached $4.33 a gallon, by the AAA figures Slate cites.Infrogmation via Wikimedia Commons (cropped). CC BY-SA 4.0.

This Week on the Record

What It Adds Up to

Still Contested. The Charge Is What Grew.

Nineteen Months called the record competitive authoritarian consolidation with a real fascist charge, still contested and not yet consummated. Seven weeks on, the contest is still real and the charge is what grew. The search of Ilhan Omar's home 22 days before the vote is where the two meet.

. 10 minutes, 42 footnotes. By Matt Guerra.

The words Still contested above a large green 21, labeled days to the vote on 3 November, and four dates: 12 October, agents search Ilhan Omar’s home; 3 November, Election Day; 5 November, closed hearing on Lisa Cook; 3 December, a firing squad, livestreamed.
Twenty-one days from this piece to the vote, and the dates already set after it.Graphic by Matt Guerra

The Records We Gave Them Have a Second Job

Tax returns, license plates and the people in our phones were collected for one purpose each. This week showed each of them being put to work sorting people, while the government's records about itself kept disappearing.

. 6 minutes, 10 footnotes.

The Machine Has Two Targets Now

The enforcement architecture built over the last nineteen months is being aimed at two kinds of people: those who object, and those who were never counted as belonging. Both groups are growing, and so is the machine.

. 5 minutes, 15 footnotes.

Investigations

Page 7 of the signed Non-Prosecution Agreement, the signature page dated September 24, 2007.
The signature page of the Non-Prosecution Agreement, signed Sept. 24, 2007.Document: U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of Florida, Non-Prosecution Agreement, Sept. 24, 2007, p. 7, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

In the thread The 2007 Non-Prosecution Agreement

The Immunity Shield

A federal immunity deal signed in 2007 and binding by January 2008 went unfiled and unreviewed by any court for 12 years. The identified victims were not told. A clause inside it extended federal immunity to named and unnamed co-conspirators in a category prosecutors never closed.

Citations
31
citations
Documents
9
documents
Pages of record
2,065
pages of record

The April Memo

On April 10, 2020, four months after the December memorandum promised one, the SDNY U.S. Attorney's Office sent a separate prosecution memorandum up the chain. The subject was Ghislaine Maxwell. The charged period was 1994 to 1997. The memo sought two counts. Maxwell was arrested less than three months later.

7 minutes, 3 documents, 12 citations.

The December Memo

Four months after Jeffrey Epstein died in federal custody, the Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney's Office delivered to Geoffrey Berman an 86-page memorandum on the investigation into potential co-conspirators. The Analysis section evaluated five subjects for criminal charges. Only two are visible in the indexed record.

7 minutes, 3 documents, 11 citations.

Thirty-Two Counts

The draft federal indictment of Jeffrey Epstein was scheduled to go to the grand jury on Tuesday, September 25, 2007. The Non-Prosecution Agreement was signed on Monday, September 24. The draft beat the agreement by one day, the wrong way.

8 minutes, 4 documents, 17 citations.

Chomsky at Zorro

On March 20, 2015, Epstein's staff picked up Noam Chomsky and his wife Valeria from a Santa Fe spa and drove them to Zorro Ranch. The next day, Epstein's personal pilot flew Chomsky out toward a Monday Harvard commitment. The logistics were coordinated by physicist Lawrence Krauss and sit in three indexed emails in the 2025 DOJ release.

5 minutes, 3 documents, 19 citations.

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