Objective

In 2025, Americans experienced major shifts in federal priorities, including policy changes that directly affected their lives. News about government spending moved fast, and people wanted to understand what the changes meant for them. But too often the answers were presented with bias, taken out of context, or buried in obscure reports.

USAFacts met this moment with data resources that turned fast-moving policy debates into topics that anyone could understand and discuss. Using new analysis and visualization techniques, the team synthesized data at the speed of news, translating it into interactive tools built for real-time questions. The goal was to deliver timely, nonpartisan clarity, helping audiences and newsrooms understand how changes would ripple through agencies and people’s lives.

This strategy is reflected in three key resources:

• Federal spending flowchart: As the administration reworked agency budgets, USAFacts built a Sankey flowchart that maps how tax revenue funds programs. The thick-to-thin bands make scale visible, while clicking and hovering let users answer questions like how defense dollars break down or what public safety spending funds.
• Immigrant program eligibility guide: After Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill passed, USAFacts combined data from 15 sources into an interactive eligibility matrix showing which programs immigrants can access by status. Hover details add nuance benefit-by-benefit, creating a public resource unavailable anywhere else.
• SNAP benefits by state: When the government shutdown halted SNAP for millions, USAFacts’ state-level interactive let Americans see local impacts and gave reporters a ready, localized tool for covering the disruption nationwide.

Strategy

USAFacts’ work this year met growing public demand for reliable, easy-to-use government information. During the presidential election and into 2025, millions turned to USAFacts to understand spending, immigration, and the economy. To serve that need, the team combined rigorous data synthesis with interactive storytelling, producing tools that helped audiences follow complex issues as they unfolded in the news.

• Federal spending flowchart: Launched in February 2025, the Sankey chart provides a full, end-to-end view of federal revenue and spending. The team brought together FY2024 budget data across the entire government, then shaped it into a visual map of money flows: revenue comes in, moves through agencies, and ends in the programs people hear about in headlines. The Sankey format makes scale instantly visible — thicker bands mean more dollars — and the interactivity lets users click, hover, and search to explore specific questions (for example, how much of total federal spending goes to health programs versus Social Security). With built-in accessibility for mobile and desktop, it remains the only public tool that shows this complete federal spending journey in one explorable visual.
• Immigrant program eligibility guide: When the One Big Beautiful Bill passed, questions about immigrant eligibility for federal programs spiked overnight. USAFacts responded with a one-of-a-kind interactive eligibility chart that reconciles data from numerous sources into a single, clear framework. The matrix layout lets users scan eligibility across immigration categories at a glance, then hover to see deeper, benefit-specific nuance — turning a confusing policy moment into a practical reference for reporters, advocates, and families. By pairing breadth of data with simple interaction, the resource made shifting rules understandable without partisan framing.
• SNAP benefits by state: As the 2025 government shutdown halted SNAP benefits, people needed localized clarity fast. USAFacts’ SNAP resource offered an interactive, state-by-state view of benefit usage, helping communities understand what was happening where they live and giving journalists a concrete way to convey the issue’s scale. Users can explore the data nationally or drill down by state to see how many people receive SNAP each month, what share of each state’s population that represents, and how those levels change over time. The page also surfaces takeaways about which states have the highest and lowest participation and lets users spot regional patterns at a glance through an interactive map. The result is both a breaking-news explainer and a lasting reference point on food assistance nationwide.

Results

USAFacts’ audience grew sharply as Americans looked for trustworthy context on policy shifts. Newsletter subscribers more than doubled from 300,000 to 750,000, and social followers surpassed half a million. This growth reflects USAFacts’ goal to reach Americans with easy-to-understand information about their government.

The federal spending chart became one of USAFacts’ most used and shared tools, earning more than 360,000 views since launch and driving 4,000 newsletter subscriptions. It went on to win the Fast Company Innovation by Design Award for Best Data Design in 2025, with judges praising its legibility and ease of understanding on a complex and timely topic. It continues to serve journalists and the public as an anchor for budget stories in a changing fiscal landscape.

The immigrant program eligibility guide filled an information gap after the One Big Beautiful Bill passed, giving audiences and reporters a single, authoritative reference point where none existed before. Post-bill, the resource drew 130,000 visits and converted that burst of public interest into deeper engagement, bringing in 500 new newsletter subscribers.

The SNAP interactive generated 80,566 views across state and national pages in October and November, with 230,906 facts consumed and a visible traffic spike during the shutdown period. The resource has been cited in news outlets more than 200 times, underscoring its role as a go-to reference for localized reporting.

These results demonstrate USAFacts’ mission in action: empowering Americans to understand their government through facts, not rhetoric, and supporting stronger, clearer news coverage when people need it most.

Media