lobby provides access to the US Senate’s Lobbying Disclosure Act API.

Installation

You can install the development version of lobby like so:

pak::pak('christopherkenny/lobby')

Example

To get filings, simply use the lob_list_filings() function to list all filings that match your criteria. For example, to get all filings for Harvard University in 2025:

library(lobby)
lob_list_filings(client_name = 'Harvard University', filing_year = 2025)
#> # A tibble: 6 × 30
#>   url      filing_uuid filing_type filing_type_display filing_year filing_period
#>   <chr>    <chr>       <chr>       <chr>                     <int> <chr>        
#> 1 https:/… 0463abad-8… Q1          1st Quarter - Repo…        2025 first_quarter
#> 2 https:/… fbe714ff-3… Q1          1st Quarter - Repo…        2025 first_quarter
#> 3 https:/… 785c0620-7… Q2          2nd Quarter - Repo…        2025 second_quart…
#> 4 https:/… 761c6e5a-f… Q2          2nd Quarter - Repo…        2025 second_quart…
#> 5 https:/… 937d9dc1-c… Q3          3rd Quarter - Repo…        2025 third_quarter
#> 6 https:/… b9247859-4… Q3          3rd Quarter - Repo…        2025 third_quarter
#> # ℹ 24 more variables: filing_period_display <chr>, filing_document_url <chr>,
#> #   filing_document_content_type <chr>, income <chr>, expenses <chr>,
#> #   expenses_method <chr>, expenses_method_display <chr>, posted_by_name <chr>,
#> #   dt_posted <chr>, termination_date <lgl>, registrant_country <chr>,
#> #   registrant_ppb_country <lgl>, registrant_address_1 <chr>,
#> #   registrant_address_2 <lgl>, registrant_different_address <lgl>,
#> #   registrant_city <chr>, registrant_state <chr>, registrant_zip <chr>, …

You can also request the next set using the lob_request_next() function. Here, we also artificially shorten the results to 3 per page.

lob_list_filings(
  client_name = 'Harvard University',
  filing_year = 2025,
  page_size = 3
) |>
  lob_request_next()
#> # A tibble: 6 × 30
#>   url      filing_uuid filing_type filing_type_display filing_year filing_period
#>   <chr>    <chr>       <chr>       <chr>                     <int> <chr>        
#> 1 https:/… 0463abad-8… Q1          1st Quarter - Repo…        2025 first_quarter
#> 2 https:/… fbe714ff-3… Q1          1st Quarter - Repo…        2025 first_quarter
#> 3 https:/… 785c0620-7… Q2          2nd Quarter - Repo…        2025 second_quart…
#> 4 https:/… 761c6e5a-f… Q2          2nd Quarter - Repo…        2025 second_quart…
#> 5 https:/… 937d9dc1-c… Q3          3rd Quarter - Repo…        2025 third_quarter
#> 6 https:/… b9247859-4… Q3          3rd Quarter - Repo…        2025 third_quarter
#> # ℹ 24 more variables: filing_period_display <chr>, filing_document_url <chr>,
#> #   filing_document_content_type <chr>, income <chr>, expenses <chr>,
#> #   expenses_method <chr>, expenses_method_display <chr>, posted_by_name <chr>,
#> #   dt_posted <chr>, termination_date <lgl>, registrant_country <chr>,
#> #   registrant_ppb_country <lgl>, registrant_address_1 <chr>,
#> #   registrant_address_2 <lgl>, registrant_different_address <lgl>,
#> #   registrant_city <chr>, registrant_state <chr>, registrant_zip <chr>, …

To get more details, you can retrieve a specific filing by its UUID using lob_retrieve_filing():

lob_retrieve_filing(filing_uuid = '0463abad-89e8-4d9d-b72c-a0b8aa66c6b0')
#> # A tibble: 1 × 30
#>   url      filing_uuid filing_type filing_type_display filing_year filing_period
#>   <chr>    <chr>       <chr>       <chr>                     <int> <chr>        
#> 1 https:/… 0463abad-8… Q1          1st Quarter - Repo…        2025 first_quarter
#> # ℹ 24 more variables: filing_period_display <chr>, filing_document_url <chr>,
#> #   filing_document_content_type <chr>, income <lgl>, expenses <chr>,
#> #   expenses_method <chr>, expenses_method_display <chr>, posted_by_name <chr>,
#> #   dt_posted <chr>, termination_date <lgl>, registrant_country <chr>,
#> #   registrant_ppb_country <lgl>, registrant_address_1 <chr>,
#> #   registrant_address_2 <lgl>, registrant_different_address <lgl>,
#> #   registrant_city <chr>, registrant_state <chr>, registrant_zip <chr>, …

Similar endpoints exist for clients, lobbyists, registrants, and contributions. You can look up constants that can used for filtering using the lob_constants_*() functions.

Authentication

To sign up for an API key, visit the US Senate’s Lobbying Disclosure Act API sign-up website.

Once you have your key, you can set it in your environment as USSLDA_KEY. You can:

Add this directly to your .Renviron file with a line like so

USSLDA_KEY='yourkey'

If doing this, I recommend using usethis::edit_r_environ() to ensure that you open the correct .Renviron file.

Set this in you current R session with Sys.setenv(USSLDA_KEY='yourkey').
Set this using the lobby::set_lobby_key() function. To save this for future sessions, run with install = TRUE.