HeyJaredRestoring Democracy's Promise
National accountability journalism with an Iowa-based investigative desk—documenting how surveillance, data-sharing, and governance failures scale across the U.S.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 10
- Latest publication
- Sep 26, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Aug 10, 2026
Latest issues
The Supreme Court Put SAVE Back in Play (opens the original)
Read excerpt
The stay lands 39 days before Election Day, inside a federal window the Court left open. Iowa’s attorney general had asked for it—citing licenses, not voters.This article was updated on Sept. 26, 2026, to include correspondence from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office through Sept. 25 and additional context on Iowa’s rules for citizenship challenges at the polls.<a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vIYs!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:ste
Des Moines Expanded Plate Reader Use, Then Asked What to Cut (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Documents obtained by Restoring Democracy’s Promise show that Des Moines’ plate reader system was configured to share detection data with 155 law enforcement agency entries across 36 states and the District of Columbia, including five federal-type accounts. The export shows configuration, not proof that any listed agency searched for, viewed, downloaded, or received a particular Des Moines record.<a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Y-Gb!,f_a
Who Decides the Future of Central Iowa’s Plate Readers? (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Now officials and residents are confronting a new question: who decides whether the systems stay?This article is part of our ongoing surveillance series.Update, Sept. 17: Altoona Police Chief Greg Stallman told RDP he was out of the country and had not seen our earlier request for comment before publication and that the department’s lack of response was not an attempt to avoid our questions.<a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Aj82!,f_auto,q_
Altoona's Plate Reader Network Goes Beyond Flock (opens the original)
Read excerpt
City records document four Flock orders totaling 51 fixed camera units, 20 Axon Fleet 3 ALPR licenses, and a subscription sized for up to 50 sworn users that included access to a commercial national vehicle-location database. This is another installment in our ongoing surveillance series. Our prior story is here.Update, Sept. 17: Altoona Police Chief Greg Stallman told RDP he was out of the country and had not seen our earlier request for comment before publication and that the department’
Inside Iowa’s SAVE Clearinghouse: What the State’s Own Records Show (opens the original)
Read excerpt
<img alt="" class="sizing-normal" height="868" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!uZi_!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F23c566da-8d1f-4b17-8b0b-a370e41ff5f4_2500x1490.j
Publishing over time
Last 90 days. Choose a month to open its work.
Recurring subjects
Named in the text we hold. One piece can cover several.
Audience
No verified audience measurement yet.
About this data
Counts cover the work we have indexed. Tone needs enough text and a confident classification. Excerpts and episode notes are not full articles or transcripts.
Identity or attribution wrong? Suggest a correction.