How this site works, and how to prove it wrong.
AltNDS documents what the National Design Studio is building, who is involved, and what the public record can actually prove. We trace each claim back to its source, separate what is documented from what is still uncertain, and show you the record behind it.
Who runs this
AltNDS is a project of AltNPS, an independent public lands and federal accountability research organization. It is not affiliated with any government agency, campaign, party, or political organization, and it is not funded by one.
We publish under the organization's name rather than individual bylines because the research is collaborative and not every contributor is in a position to publish under their own name.
What we will and won't publish
Every claim is a primary document or named reporting.
If we cannot point you to something you can open yourself, it does not go up.
Documented and open get equal weight.
The Evidence page runs both columns at the same size. What is not established is held open rather than dressed up.
Legal conclusions are for courts.
We report that filings do not exist. We do not report that their absence is a crime, because whether they were required is unresolved.
Official responses are published in full.
A finding that survives the denial is worth more than one that never met it.
Where sources conflict, we publish the conflict.
Rather than the version we happen to prefer.
We say what would change our mind.
And we mean it. That list is at the bottom of this page.
How we grade a claim
Every statement on this site sits in one of three tiers, and the tier is visible on the page. If we thought an open question had an obvious answer, we would have to document it or drop it.
Established by a primary record, or by named reporting from an outlet we identify. Primary records include executive orders, court filings, public registries, and certificate transparency logs. A reader can verify it without trusting us.
vote.gov holds a certificate issued April 10, 2026. Anyone can read it in the public log.
Reported but denied, or supported by one source where a second would matter, or dependent on an unresolved legal question. We publish the dispute rather than resolving it.
Whether Privacy Impact Assessments were required of the Studio at all. The filings are absent; the obligation is disputed.
A question we cannot answer, with a note about who could answer it. Open questions are not soft accusations. If we thought the answer was obvious we would have to document it or drop it.
Who authorised the transfer of citizen-service domains? No public record names a person.
Certificate transparency, in plain terms
Much of this site rests on records from crt.sh. When a website gets a publicly trusted encryption certificate, that certificate is recorded in a public, append-only log. That is a feature of the web's security system, not a leak.
It means we can establish that a certificate for a domain existed by a specific date, independently of what its operator later says about it. That is why the April 10 vote.gov certificate is checkable by anyone, and why the date matters when compared with statements about when the project was underway.
Websites using HTTPS receive a certificate from a certificate authority.
The certificate is recorded in a public, append-only log. This is how the certificate transparency system is designed to work.
The log gives us an independently verifiable date showing that a certificate for that domain existed.
Two lists, and the second one is longer.
They hold a named leadership or decision-making role.
They have been named in reporting or court filings in connection with a specific action.
They are listed in a public federal record as responsible for a system or domain.
People whose only connection is that they work at the Studio.
Anyone against whom we have no specific finding.
Home addresses, family details, or private accounts of anyone, ever.
Anything sent to us that contains the above. We will not publish or retain it.
Designers and engineers who took a government job, and against whom we have no finding, are counted rather than listed.
If you are named on this site, write to us.
You do not need a lawyer to do this and we will not treat a correction request as an admission of anything. If we got it wrong, we would rather hear it from you than from a reader.
[email protected]Corrections log
Substantive changes to any claim are logged here permanently, with the date, the original wording, and what replaced it. Nothing is quietly edited. This applies to errors we catch ourselves as well as ones readers send.