Our newsroom reads dockets, bills, hearing transcripts and news coverage by the thousand. We count what is in them, check the count by hand and publish how we did it. Our research desk now takes outside work from litigators, policy teams, LGBTQ+ organizations, academics and funders.

We are the only trans newsroom we know of that does quantitative text analysis and open-source investigation in-house.

What the work looks like

In March 2026 we reported that 15 anti-trans organizations had petitioned the FDA for a registry of trans women on estrogen. We then analyzed every public comment on the docket, all 10,033 filed between Feb. 4 and Aug. 18, 2026.

  • Opposition ran to 9,914 comments, or 98.8% of the docket. Support came to 95 comments (0.9%), and 25 (0.2%) were too ambiguous to classify.
  • Eight days in March, the 11th through the 18th, account for 8,672 comments, or 86.4% of the total.
  • Four supportive comments filed under different names carried the same attached letter. The file's metadata pointed to an officer of the group that says it developed the petition.
  • Our published methodology names two scoring rules that misfired and one check we threw out, with the numbers for each.

This result was based on the beta, testing only version of our internal tooling, including GENDER-engine.

That is a record a litigator can cite and a policy director can brief from. Read the full analysis and methodology.

What you can hire us for

The Needle's consulting desk puts our newsroom's research method to work on your question. We read the whole record, not a sample, using GENDER-engine, our quantitative text analysis engine, which was built to measure anti-trans and anti-gender politics in text, including the euphemisms that hide it. The engine is deterministic: the same corpus gives the same numbers every time, and every finding points back to the document and passage behind it. Then our editors and researchers, who cover this politics every week, tell you what the numbers mean.

You can hire us for a rapid brief on one bill, one campaign message or one news cycle, with findings and a plain-language explanation in days. For a regulatory fight, we analyze every public comment on a docket. That covers who supports and who opposes, which comments come from form-letter campaigns, and how many are distinct and substantive. For litigation, the record comes with a reproducible codebook and a methods appendix built to stand up in a declaration, and we support your expert. We also run longer corpus studies, either on a body of news coverage, a debate record or a rhetoric corpus, tracing actors, frames and tactics over time, or on a full legislative session, tracing how model bills spread from state to state. We can code open-ended survey responses, and we monitor the bills, dockets and coverage you care about, with a research brief every month.

We work with advocacy organizations, legal and policy teams, nongovernmental organizations, researchers, charities, funders and newsrooms in the United States, Ireland and the EU. When your question doesn't fit any of these, we build a custom corpus, write the report and brief your team. You can also book our time for calls, reviews and small analyses. Every project starts the same way: you tell us your question and the text involved, and we name the corpus, the deliverable and the date before any work begins.

Rates

Every project starts with a fixed scope and a fixed price. What you pay depends on who you are.

  • Standard rate: for-profit companies and large institutions.
  • Solidarity Rates:
    • National rate, 35% off: national nonprofits and nonprofit universities under a certain budget size.
    • Half rate: trans led nonprofits or charities and small trans-owned organizations.

Irish and EU clients are quoted in euros with the same discounts. See the full rate card on request via email:

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Who does the work

Artemis T. Douglas is editor in chief of The Needle and built GENDER-engine, our text analysis tool for anti-trans and anti-gender politics. She holds a master's in gender, politics and international relations from University College Dublin. Lawyers in the U.K. have asked for her research on trans women's precarity to argue for better case law for trans women.

Jane Migliara Brigham is managing editor of The Needle. She holds a master's in peace and conflict studies, and her research has been cited before the U.S. Congress.

How we work

GENDER-engine is deterministic. The same text and the same settings give the same result every time, so you can trust our numbers. The engine sorts and scores. People on our team with research training read the text and decide what it says.

We use no generative AI for writing the reports, analysis or interpreting evidence. Every report states its corpus size, collection dates, exclusions and limits.

Who we work with

We take on mission-aligned clients only, at our sole discretion.

A consulting fee pays for research and nothing else. Clients get no say in The Needle's coverage, and any story that involves a client discloses the relationship.

Start with a call

The first 30 minutes are free. Tell us what you need to know, what text you have or you would like for us to gather and when you need an answer. We will tell you whether we can do it and what it would cost.

Email editors@theneedlenews.com or call +1 839 216 6397.