LibGuides: Federal Government Resources: A Guide to Library Research: Fact Checking, Oversight, & Watchdogs

Fact Checkers

FactCheck.org (Annenberg Public Policy Center)
"A nonpartisan, nonprofit 'consumer advocate' for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics."
Politifact (The Poynter Institute)
An independent, non-partisan group of fact-checking journalists that launched in 2007.
Snopes
"The oldest and largest fact-checking site online," which started investigating urban legends and hoaxes but has expanded to include fact checking political actions and news stories.
AP Fact Check
Fact Checker (Washington Post)
Reuters Fact Check
BBC Verify

Oversight

U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO)
An independent, nonpartisan agency that works for Congress. Often called the "congressional watchdog."
Oversight.gov
A publicly accessible, searchable website containing the latest public reports from Federal Inspectors General. The site includes a publicly accessible, text searchable repository of reports published by IGs.
USA Spending
"The official open data source of federal spending information, including information about federal awards such as contracts, grants, and loans."
SAM.gov
The official government system for government contracts, wages, and federal assistance. This is where the government departments solicit bidders for work or supplies and where organizations can find detailed information about available assistance programs to apply for.

Watchdogs

GovTrack This link opens in a new window
Government transparency website. The site helps ordinary citizens find and track bills in the U.S. Congress and understand their representatives legislative record. Set up account and track committees, motions, and bills on topics of interest.

American Oversight
A liberal-leaning watchdog that focuses on transparency and accessing government records.
Capital Research Center
A conservative or libertarian-leaning watchdog that focuses not only on government but on "foundations, charities, and other nonprofits spend money and get involved in politics and advocacy."
Citizens Against Government Waste
Tracks government spending and notes possible government waste identified by this conservative-leaning watchdog group.
OpenSecrets
"Your guide to the money in American elections." Includes fund-raising data, contributions by industry, useful issue profiles (e.g. managed care, gun control, campaign finance reform).
Project on Government Oversight
An independent liberal-leaning watchdog that was founded in 1981 and has grown and expanded its mission from the Pentagon to the federal government as a whole.
Project 2025 Tracker
List of objectives targeting Federal Agencies that were described and found in the Project 2025 documents and the status of their completion.

GuideStar This link opens in a new window
Financial data for over 1.5 million nonprofit organizations in the United States.
GuideStar offers financial data for over 1.5 million nonprofit organizations in the United States. Data includes revenue tables, expense tables, and balance sheets; organization overview (mission, audience, etc.); annual reports, lists of officers and other key personnel, and access to IRS 990 Forms (typically all available forms since 1997). Users can search this database by keyword and by information such as geographic location, type of nonprofit, IRS Subsection (501(c)3, etc.), and NTEE (National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities) codes.
A personal account with your @umich.edu email is required to download from Guidestar. Downloads are limited to 1,000 records per month.

Preserved Government Data

Outside of the official federal government sites and databases, many organizations and institutions strive to archive and make the data more accessible. Basically, it's always a good to have a backup (especially with the current administration and political environment).

Wayback Machine | Internet Archive
The Internet Archive has made a concerted point to archive government webpages and to make multiple versions of a page.
End of Term Archive
A collaborative project that "captures and saves U.S. Government websites at the end of presidential administrations."
Data Lumos
"An ICPSR archive for valuable government data resources. ICPSR has a long commitment to safekeeping and disseminating US government and other social science data. DataLumos accepts deposits of public data resources from the community and recommendations of public data resources that ICPSR itself might add to DataLumos"
Missing Government Websites
Our colleagues on the Ann Arbor campus have created a list of places to look for lost government websites and data.
Preserving Gov Data Sites (Syracuse Univ)
A long list of places to find archived and saved government data and websites.