Hi everyone,
I originally shared this idea in the “Ideas” but I wanted to post it here too so we can get a broader conversation going. Arpan from TYT reached out to me—turns out he’s a computer science teacher—and he’s going to start working on this project. I believe Cenk may have even mentioned it on tonight’s show, which I’ll catch up on tomorrow.
The core idea is to build a public tracker/database that correlates voting records with campaign contributions for each member of Congress, every governor, and modern-day presidents (Clinton through Trump). The goal is to make it simple to navigate—you’ll be able to sort by lobby and instantly see what percentage of each politician’s funding comes from each one. It’ll be similar to OpenSecrets, except you won’t have to dig through data yourself; the money will be shown right next to the voting record.
While writing this, I thought of an even more powerful extension: combining it with the Children of Gaza project. Imagine a short video or slideshow showing the names and faces of the children killed or affected in Gaza—then ending with a list of U.S. politicians who voted to fund Israel’s actions, alongside how much money they received from the Israeli lobby (using data from our database). The piece could close with a powerful message like “Never Again. Vote out these monsters.” and direct viewers via a QR code to the site/app, where they can stay informed and take action.
As for outreach, it would be incredible if Cenk wanted to feature or present this once it’s ready—maybe at events, in interviews, or online. But this is a community effort, and I’d love for everyone to share ideas on how to get it out there.
If you want to connect or collaborate, feel free to email me at cjs.realtime@gmail.com. I also reached out to Heflaherman to express interest in becoming the North Carolina State Captain. If anyone else here is in NC, please reach out! I’ve wanted to be part of something like this for a long time, and I’m genuinely excited about what we’re building together in the TYT community.
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Hey! We bought a few domains for this and are going to ask the audience to vote on which one we use! So excited about this project!!!
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Not sure where to post this but here Eclectics X thingo to share
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I’m making good progress. I will keep everyone posted here
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I was so busy today!! Just finished tonight’s episode and I saw you guys bought the urls. I am so excited. This is awesome. I can’t wait to do this!
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Here is the link for the Project: Paper Trail thread in the TYT Discord. We have had a few members inquire about helping build the site too.
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I will need to finish the database first. Once I finish that, we can then work on making this data show up nicely on the website. In the meantime, however, someone could be brainstorming how they want the website layout/design to look like. This is called a “wireframe”. The layout should be designed in such a way that it is user friendly and accessible
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My code is uploading old House members. Adjusting to just show the current ones.
So, just to recap. Here is where we stand:
-lobbyist group database finished (approx 17000 entries). includes all lobbying groups since creation.
-politician database finished (approx 2600 entries). Includes all senators and republicans associated with 103rd through 119th Congress. There might be other lawmakers too. Might have to do extra filtering later.
-bills database: still working on code
-voting database: not started
-donations database: not started
I am currently in process of refining code for bills database so that the code fetches all public bills enacted into law from 103rd Congress through 119th Congress.
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Need any help with the database or code?
I have experience with that and would love to help if I can.
Thanks for working on this!
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Come join the TYT chat on discord for this project. Galphar made it, put it up above. But here’s the link. Discord
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Ready to expose my district 12 Congressman Rick Allen. His largest campaign donor is a foreign interest donor and he voted Nay to H.Amdt. 55 to H.R. 4016 to strike over $500 million to a foreign government on July 18, 2025.
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A few of us have started working on this. We will get this done and we will finally have a transparent government. It’s just a matter of time.
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PROJECT UPDATE
I have successfully uploaded all bills enacted into law from 108th Congress to present. These include Senate Bills, Senate Joint Resolution Bills, House Bills, and House Joint Resolution Bills. (approx, 6100 entries)
I have also successfully uploaded all senators and house representatives from 108th congress to present. There were other lawmakers uploaded. Not sure why. But we can filter out those individuals later. (approx. 2600 entries)
We are now working on uploading ALL campaign contributions beginning with 108th Congress to now.
After that, we will upload all data on how politicians from 108th congress to present Congress voted on the bills I uploaded.
Once all of this data is finished uploading to the cloud, we can then start working on how it will appear on the website, and how users can interact with the data.
***Note: We are in the middle of discussing how to include more politicians, starting with Clinton Era and also governors. We are also discussing how to include every bill introduced since Clinton Era (this would be in the millions, I think?). I will try to make this work if possible. However, I personally am leaning toward doing the above so we have a “lite version” running. Then, we can incrementally add more data. Nevertheless, this is currently in discussion.
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Can we also include how long they serve in the office and their age either when they retire, die in office or current if still serving. Some of these ticks have dug in deep.
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Sure. We can definitely do that. I’m going to be compiling everything I want it to look like so the developers can look at it as soon as I get a chance, and anyone will be able to add ideas in there as well.
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Hi Everyone,
So, my name’s Arpan. I’m currently the person who is writing all of the code for this project. projectforprogress is the person who started this whole idea, if my understanding is correct. Kara put me in touch with projectforprogress to work on this project.
I’m working with another person on Discord for the coding. So, as far as coding is concerned, we are good. If we continue to add more coders to the project, it actually becomes more complicated because everyone codes differently. That being said, I will reach out if I am stuck and need help with the code.
I’m currently following projectforprogress’s lead. projectforprogress made a google doc that summarizes what the project should do. I plan to go off that document. If you have any suggestions, please run it through projectforprogress first. Then, projectforprogress will let me know if any changes should be made.
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