Community research. Our first step.

The question: What are the rules for my insurance, and where are they written down?

Why it matters: Each kind of coverage answers to a different regulator: Medicaid to each state, employer plans to the state or the U.S. Department of Labor, marketplace plans to the state insurance department, Medicare to CMS. I spent 45 minutes trying to find out why insurance won't pay for a blood pressure cuff for my postpartum patients, and I still don't know. Medicaid changes under the 2025 federal law are already taking effect, with more on October 1, 2026 and January 1, 2027.

What exists now: The federal timeline of the Medicaid changes, checked against the law itself, and coverage of home blood pressure monitors in pregnancy and after birth for 13 states and plans.

Funding pays for:

• One place covering all 50 states and DC, for Medicaid, employer plans, the marketplace, and Medicare
• For each: how to tell which coverage you have, where the rules are written, how to complain or appeal, and what changed and when
• Every entry with its source and the date it was last checked, and a person reviewing every change

The question: Whose deaths were ruled suicide, or whose identities were erased from the record, when their families say otherwise?

Why it matters: Once a death is ruled a suicide, the investigation stops. It is never counted as a homicide or a hate crime. For transgender women the erasure is usually different: most were shot, and the record gets their name or gender wrong. A hate crime targets a whole group through one person. When the record is wrong, the pattern can't be seen.

What exists now: A research roster of 98 people. 33 are on the draft public record, with the official ruling and the family's account side by side, and a six-part live series.

Funding pays for:

• Checking the rest of the 98 people so they can be published
• Exact counts from the federal death records we already hold
• Bringing in the FBI's case-by-case hate-crime file
• Saving dated copies of federal data, so when published numbers change, we catch it
• Adding the people families and organizations bring to us

The question: How did each member of Congress vote on women and families, and who is spending money to elect them?

Why it matters: A member's record is spread across thousands of votes. A bill can also be stopped without anyone voting against it: it just never comes up for a vote.

What exists now: The Record grades members on eight subjects, including reproductive and maternal health, children and family, and health coverage. Only recorded votes count, each linked to the official record. 437 of 539 seats are graded.

Funding pays for:

• Finding recorded votes for the measures that don't have one yet, and sorting the votes still waiting
• Adding recent votes, so every member can be graded
• How many bills each chamber's leaders let come to a vote, and how many they didn't
• PAC and outside spending shown next to each member's votes

The question: What happens after a woman reports a sexual assault?

Why it matters: What happens next is split across the numbers, police and court records, news coverage, state laws, public money, and what is known about her health afterward. Nobody puts it in one place.

What exists now: A survivor's playbook, After Sexual Assault, a campus sexual assault resource, a tracker of state and federal bills, and thousands of facts on sexual violence in our database.

Funding pays for:

• The numbers: the national surveys, and checking the facts we hold
• Policing: arrests, charges, and untested evidence kits, state by state
• The politics: the state laws, including states that still have a marital rape exemption
• The money: grants for victim services, and the money behind the sponsors of these bills
• Her health: pregnancy, abortion access, infection, and mental health afterward

The question: How do AI systems fail when the people responsible for human life use them, and how do we use them without losing control?

Why it matters: AI is moving into the systems where care decisions are carried out: the medical record, the chart, the insurance company. A physician doesn't own those systems and can't look inside them. If a machine overrides a physician's judgment there, the physician won't see the decision, only the outcome. You don't want the only people who understand these systems to be the most unscrupulous ones.

What exists now: 60 documented failure cases in 14 types, and a curriculum being released one piece at a time on Parallel Genius as each is reviewed.

Funding pays for:

• Reviewing the cases and building the curriculum, so it gets out faster and I can teach people
• With more funding, formal testing