Request 031 — 1/31/2026

One month down, eleven to go!

Happy Saturday! It’s foiaday!

AHHHHHHHH! Holy smokes! We’re at a full month of newsletters, FOIA requests and fun quips about the Chicago Bears/weather/my dog/workload.

Has it been a perfect month? Certainly not. But I’m trying to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good here, and taking it all one day and one request at a time. :)

So: let’s start with a super quick request, and then move to a full summary of the month of requests!

If there's a coworker or friend you think would benefit from this newsletter, feel free to forward it to them! If they subscribe, they'll also get a link to a template for the tracker I like to use to keep tabs on requests I've filed.

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Tonight’s request: deets on Antarctica.

A bunch of countries lay claim to Antarctica, and the United States is one of them. First established in the 1950s, McMurdo Station is the largest settlement on the continent, home to over a thousand scientists and staff doing research and keeping the place running.

I’ve long been fascinated with McMurdo and life on Antarctica. One of my favorite Parts Unknown episodes is there (at Amundsen-Scott Station, about 800 miles from McMurdo), and I love this blog about life on the continent from someone who moved there for a contract role.

The American stations are operated by the United States Antarctic Program, which is housed under the National Science Foundation. Any requests we file will go towards them!

Part of what might complicate these requests is the fact that the Antarctic Program operates across multiple contractors and subcontractors: everything from food service to IT to transportation and maintenance is outsourced to third-party companies, leaving direct involvement and oversight potentially limited.

So let’s keep it simple for now, and follow up with more concrete requests down the line once we get a sense of what we might find. That means — you guessed it — records retention and FOIA logs. We’ll also toss in a generic “incident form”, just to see what might get returned.

Here’s what I’m filing for:

- The most recent general records schedule for the U.S. Antarctic Program. This document should show an index of all records maintained by the department, a descripption of the records, and the amount of time each record type is retained. Please release documents in a .pdf if possible.

- A log or list of all FOIA requests filed to the NSF between 1/1/2025 and 1/31/2026. Please release a description of the request, the outcome of the request, and date of the request. Please release documents in a .xlsx or .pdf.

- Data or documents sufficient to show all incident reports filed within the U.S. Antarctic Program and its facilities between 1/1/2025 and 1/31/2026. Please redact any PII about people involved in each incident, but include any relevant information about the incident, the type, the date, and outcome if available. Please release the document in a .xlsx or .pdf if possible.

Again, a bit of a fishing expedition here, but I’m curious to see what we’ll get back and what we’ll be able to request from there!

Okay, big list!

First: documents are being uploaded and sorted out in this DocumentCloud project.

Now: here's a list of the requests I’ve put in so far for the month of January. If you’re curious, you can click the slug name in order to read the corresponding foiaday issue and the request language in the archives:

Ahahaha holy smokes. Having it all spelled out like that feels insane.

If you have any ideas for requests, feedback, or thoughts about foiaday, we now have a form! Feel free to pop by to share inspiration to help get me through this year’s worth of requests.

Feedback + requests form!

Otherwise, if you have any questions, comments, love letters or conspiracy theories, you can always drop me a line by replying to this email.

All of these requests are available on the archive page, which for now is the current repository of requests and language. I think down the line I want to try and launch a more permanent blog and home for these requests, but maintaining this project alone can be difficult already (if you couldn’t tell!), so we’ll stick with the newsletter for now!

A goal of mine for the next month is to hopefully pull the timing of the newsletter up a bit, so it isn’t so late, and also be more deliberate about carving out time to track and stay on top of day to day request responses.

This builds off some of what I already wanted to do with the newsletter, which was provide a wide breadth of ideas and options for filing requests, all the while keeping track of contact info (for a future resource!) and maintaining this project day after day/week after week/month after month.

The documents being returned are awesome fodder for stories and other projects, and I’ve been excited to use them to pad out existing reporting, plus spin up new stories. (BTW… if you’re an editor and you’re reading this and see something that interests you, hit me up!)

Anyway: thanks for being a part of month one. I’m eager to keep going down this, and have some more fun requests on the docket for the month of February. Here’s to month two!

Cam

Social preview image is a CIA map of Antarctic land claims, courtesy of the Library of Congress.