About
We run the numbers so you don't have to take anyone's word for it.
The Numbers Project is an independent data journalism effort. We build databases from public records, government filings, and open data sources, then write investigations that show you what the numbers actually say — not what politicians, corporations, or pundits tell you they say.
This isn't a news aggregator. We don't rewrite press releases. Every investigation starts with raw data — STOCK Act filings, congressional voting records, market data, federal statistics — and we build interactive tools so you can verify everything yourself. If we claim a number, you can find it in the database.
Why This Exists
Because there's a gap between what people in power say and what the data shows. And that gap keeps getting wider.
Members of Congress earn $174,000 a year. They traded $5.3 billion in stocks. The median American has $955 saved for retirement. Those numbers exist in the same country, in the same economy, under the same set of laws — laws that the people on one side of that equation wrote for themselves.
We started this project because the information is technically public but practically invisible. It's buried in PDF filings, scattered across government websites, disclosed 45 days late, and formatted in ways that make it nearly impossible for a normal person to find what they're looking for.
We make it findable.
How We Work
Data first. Every investigation begins with building or acquiring a dataset. We don't start with a conclusion and go looking for evidence. We start with the numbers and follow where they lead.
Show the work. Every claim is sourced. Every dataset is searchable. If we say a member of Congress traded 7,266 times their salary, you can open the dashboard and see the trades yourself. We're not asking you to trust us. We're giving you the tools to check.
Plain language. Data journalism has a habit of being written for people who already understand the subject. We write for people who are living the consequences. If you need a finance degree to understand the story, we haven't done our job.
No party, no side. The data doesn't have a political affiliation. When Republicans trade defense stocks on the Armed Services Committee, we report it. When Democrats trade tech stocks before semiconductor legislation, we report it. The problem is the system. The system has no party.
Our Tools
- Congressional Stock Tracker — 95,501 STOCK Act trades, searchable by member, party, state, sector, and amount. Cross-referenced with 1,179 congressional votes.
- Trump Post → Market Tracker — 30,000+ Truth Social posts mapped against daily S&P 500 prices with curated event annotations.
- Who Gets What — Side-by-side comparison of congressional compensation, benefits, and stock trading vs. the average American worker.
Data Sources
We use exclusively public data:
- Stock trades: STOCK Act disclosures via Quiver Quantitative, House Stock Watcher, and Senate Stock Watcher
- Voting records: Congress.gov API, GovTrack API, House Clerk roll call XML
- Market data: Yahoo Finance (daily S&P 500 closes), Truth Social posts via trumpstruth.org RSS
- Economic data: Bureau of Labor Statistics, USDA Economic Research Service, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, AAA gas prices
- Retirement & poverty: National Institute on Retirement Security, U.S. Census Bureau, USDA food security reports
- Congressional benefits: Congressional Research Service, Office of Personnel Management, Federal Employees Health Benefits program
No non-public data is used in any investigation. No anonymous sources. No leaked documents. Everything we report comes from records that the government itself made available — they just made it hard to find.
Contact
Have a tip, a correction, or data you think we should look at? We're interested. If you're a journalist and want access to our datasets or methodology documentation, reach out. We built these tools to be used.
