Terms of Use
The Bridge Index (“this site,” “we”) publishes analysis and commentary on public statements made by sitting members of Congress and declared candidates for federal office — people acting in a public capacity, on matters of public concern. By using this site, you agree to these terms.
What the scores are, and aren’t. Every rhetoric score is the output of a fixed, published rubric (see Methodology), applied with the help of an AI language model, measuring whether a specific public statement engages the substance of an issue or defaults to tribal blame, personal attack, or absolute certainty. These are our editorial ratings of specific statements against that rubric — they are opinion and analysis, not a factual claim about anyone’s character, motives, or worth as a person. Every score links back to the statement it came from so you can read it yourself and judge whether you agree.
AI can make mistakes. Language models can misread sarcasm, misattribute who a statement is directed at, or otherwise get a call wrong, the same way a human reviewer working at this speed and scale could. See AI Notice & Reporting for the full disclosure and how to flag something that looks wrong. We review flagged items and correct genuine errors; we don’t promise every flag results in a change, since not every disagreement is a mistake.
Not voting, legal, or professional advice. This site is one input among many for forming your own judgment, not a recommendation on how to vote or a substitute for reading primary sources yourself. Predicted bill positions are explicitly labeled as model inferences, never as something a senator or representative actually said.
No warranty. This site is provided “as is,” without warranty of any kind. We don’t guarantee it will be error-free, complete, or continuously available — parts of it (particularly newly-added data sources) are explicitly still being verified against real-world output, and coverage of individual members and races is actively expanding rather than complete.
Changes. We may update these terms as the site changes. Continued use after an update means you accept the current version.
Privacy Policy
Accounts are optional, and we don’t track you individually. Everything on this site is readable without an account. If you create one, we don’t log which pages you read, build a profile of your politics from what you save, or run advertising trackers of any kind.
The contact/report forms (Questions and Report) open your own email client with a pre-filled message to waterunderthebridge.track@gmail.com. Nothing you type there is stored on our servers — it’s sent directly from your own email account, the same as writing us an email yourself.
Aggregate, anonymous traffic analytics. We use privacy-focused analytics (no cookies, no cross-site tracking, no personally identifying data collected) to understand overall traffic patterns and catch errors — think page-view counts and response-time metrics, not individual browsing history.
Newsletter email addresses. The newsletter is only available to account holders, so the address we use is the one already on your account — there is no separate signup and no way to subscribe anyone but yourself. We store the date you subscribed and where you subscribed from. That’s the whole record — no name, no location, no tracking of whether you opened anything. We use it to send the newsletter and for nothing else. We never sell it, rent it, or hand it to anyone else, and it is never used for campaign or fundraising mail.
You’re not subscribed until you click a confirmation link, so nobody can add your address but you. Every newsletter carries a one-click unsubscribe link that takes effect immediately. When you unsubscribe we keep the address on a do-not-contact basis rather than deleting it, so a later mailing can’t accidentally pick you back up — if you’d rather have it erased entirely, email us and we’ll do that instead.
Accounts and saved items. If you create an account we store your email address, a cryptographic hash of your password (never the password itself — we cannot read it, and nobody here can tell you what it is), and the list of statements you’ve saved. That’s the entire record. We don’t track which pages you read, we don’t build a profile of your politics from what you save, and your saved list is private — no other user can see it.
If you sign in with Google. We ask Google for exactly two things: your email address and the permanent account identifier Google assigns you. We do not request access to your Gmail, Drive, contacts, calendar, profile picture, or anything else, and we could not read them if we wanted to. We use your email to identify your account and the identifier to recognise you on your next sign-in — nothing else. We never sell or share either, and we don’t use them for advertising or send them to any third party. You can disconnect this site at any time from your Google account permissions page.
Accounts are entirely optional. Everything on this site is readable without one; an account only adds the ability to save things. Signing up does not subscribe you to anything — the newsletter is a separate box you have to tick, and still requires clicking a confirmation link. To delete your account and everything saved under it, email us and we’ll remove it.
Admin access to the internal review tool at /admin is protected by a login cookie used only by the site’s own maintainer — it has nothing to do with regular visitors and collects no visitor data.
Third-party sources. This site links out to government and public-data sources (Congress.gov, the FEC, OpenSecrets, GovTrack, and others — see the footer on every page). Those sites have their own privacy practices, which this policy doesn’t cover.
Not directed at children. This site isn’t intended for children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect information from them.
Changes. We may update this policy as the site changes; the date at the top of this page reflects the latest revision.
Questions about either policy? Reach us at waterunderthebridge.track@gmail.com.