The erosion of safeguards against executive overreach in the first six months of Donald Trump’s second term has been swift. His mass deportation agenda has been defined by actions that undermine due process, defy federal court orders, and deploy military power against protesters. Ethical norms have deteriorated, while structural checks against self-dealing are being hollowed out. The power of government has been weaponized against civil society, from universities and the legal profession to democratic institutions. Among the most consequential yet less visible shifts is the dismantling of public transparency infrastructure, which weakens the ability of journalists, watchdogs, and the public to know how those actions are happening and who is carrying them out.
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) — the nation’s primary legal tool for accessing public records — is under increasing pressure. The longstanding need for meaningful FOIA reform, including increased resources and improved practices, has been overtaken by a wave of structural rollbacks that the United States has not seen before. As I show below, good government and pro-transparency organizations like American Oversight, the nonpartisan non-profit where I work, as well as investigators and political reporters, have been documenting a rise in denials, delays, and office closures, along with an uptick in other problematic practices. Combined with a pattern of disregard for disclosure and record-keeping requirements, these developments threaten to hollow out a core pillar of government accountability – and to weaken one of the public’s most effective checks on corruption. In this way, FOIA is not simply a tool for transparency. It is a mechanism for accountability, and one that has long helped expose corrupt actions, government misconduct and waste, and undue influence while providing crucial evidence for those seeking to hold power to account. Its weakening does not merely impair public knowledge; it also reduces the likelihood that abuses will be detected, investigated, or deterred.
The Decimation of FOIA Offices
The Freedom of Information Act, enacted in 1967, is foundational to modern U.S. democracy, providing the people a clear and direct way to ensure our leaders are held accountable for their actions. Despite its central importance, however, it has been under-resourced for years, with FOIA offices in need of both additional staff and technological improvements. Backlogs of requests and unconscionable delays in the release of records, beyond the statute’s 20-day requirement, are exacerbated by the need for legislative fixes that would promote proactive disclosures and expand the public-interest balancing test. While members of the public may sue the government to force compliance, going to court is of course prohibitively costly, both financially and timewise, for most Americans. Moreover, litigation is slow. Waiting months, if not years, for a court order to turn over records can mean the public does not receive certain information while it is still relevant.
This under-investment is what makes the recent closures and reorganizations of FOIA offices all the more alarming. The demand for information about the government’s actions is greater than ever before: According to FOIA.gov, in Fiscal Year 2024, more than 1.5 million requests for records were submitted to agencies across the federal government; and Fiscal Year 2025 appears on track to surpass that. And the sheer number of active transparency-related lawsuits making their way through the court system, as seen in Just Security’s Litigation Tracker, also speaks to public demand in the face of agency intransigence. But as the Trump administration and its Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have undertaken a radical dismantling of the federal government, a disturbing casualty has been agency FOIA offices, some of which have been entirely eliminated.
Department of Health and Human Services
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) provides a telling example. Despite Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s promise of “radical transparency,” several FOIA offices were shuttered or reduced in the spring, and supposed plans for the consolidation of those offices have only created confusion and roadblocks. As Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington noted in its lawsuit against HHS for the closure of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s FOIA office, FOIA requests concerning staff reductions submitted on April 1 — the date of the reported closure — were met with automated emails stating:
“[T]he [CDC] FOIA office has been placed on admin leave and is unable to respond to any emails.”
As of early July, American Oversight has submitted 15 requests to the CDC; it has received acknowledgment of only one of the seven requests that were submitted after the reported closure on April 1, in contrast with communications and even some final responses for all of the eight sent before that date. Prior to the reported closure, American Oversight counsel had exchanged multiple messages about one of those requests with a CDC FOIA officer, but on April 1, American Oversight counsel received an automatic response indicating that the FOIA officer was on administrative leave — with no further instructions about whom to speak with to ensure the request was fulfilled. Likewise, in response to FOIA litigation brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, the government said in April that HHS’s Administration for Children and Families was pausing further productions of documents and that it could not provide an update because the “ACF’s entire FOIA office was placed on administrative leave.” Productions were only restarted in late June after court intervention.
Department of Homeland Security
In litigation brought by the American Immigration Council, the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, the Northwest Immigrants Rights Project, and attorney Stacy Tolchin, the government revealed that as of April, more than a quarter (27%) of the positions in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) FOIA office were “vacant” or “unmanned” due to the voluntary workforce transition programs offered.
Other Agencies
Reported cuts to FOIA offices at the Departments of State and Justice (including the reported firing of the head of the FBI’s FOIA processing for his handling of the Epstein files), the Office of Personnel Management, and other agencies demonstrate the scale of this across-the-board razing of transparency infrastructure. Unsurprisingly, FOIA offices have also been a victim of the Trump administration’s gutting of entire agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Department of Education.
In FOIA lawsuits brought by the National Student Legal Defense Network against the Department of Education, court filings contained acknowledgments of difficulties that have arisen thanks to reductions in force. In two of the lawsuits, the department explained that the loss of personnel has resulted in an inability to keep up with production schedules as well as the department losing track of which records had already been released and which requests had been sent to other agencies for inter-agency consultation. Staff reductions among government attorneys who handle FOIA cases have also significantly slowed down the pace of litigation, with notable delays, requests for extension, and missed filing deadlines in the other two cases.
These disrupting personnel cuts don’t just mean worsening backlogs and lengthening delays. They also represent a loss of valuable institutional knowledge of processes and internal systems.
A Rise in Questionable Responses and Practices
Given preexisting resource constraints, long wait times for responses to FOIA requests are hardly new. Requesters have often had to contend with redundant asks for clarification, inadequate searches, and excessive redactions that subvert any presumption of openness. Response times have varied by agency, and surges in public interest on a given issue complicate a rigorous historical comparison. Nonetheless, through its FOIA Access and Enforcement Coalition, American Oversight and its partner organizations have documented a rise in concerning patterns and practices that undermine the law’s effectiveness in the first half of 2025.
Fee Waiver and Expedited Processing Denials
Under FOIA, agencies may waive processing fees if the requested information serves the public interest. American Oversight, noticing a higher than usual volume of fee waiver denials over the spring, reviewed 858 of its own FOIA requests sent during the first five months of 2025 and found that of the 315 not still “under review,” roughly 10% had been denied fee waivers and nearly 20% were marked as “conditional” — often with no further update. The State Department alone accounted for more than half of all denials, and the Department of Homeland Security for more than half of the conditional designations. American Oversight is currently undertaking a comparative historical review, but the number of fees estimated is certainly higher than in previous years.
Nonprofits like American Oversight have also been more frequently categorized as “media organizations” and denied waivers on that basis; the State Department accounted for 85 percent of denials based on such a categorization.The public interest standard, already in need of reform, appears to be increasingly interpreted in ways that disfavor transparency, a trend that is disproportionately burdensome on citizen requesters and small nonprofits.
Expedited processing requests have also been increasingly denied, despite their importance in ensuring timely disclosure on matters of urgent public concern. While sample sizes are still small, anecdotal evidence from American Oversight and partner organizations suggests this troubling shift. Very often, prompt disclosure of records is crucial for ensuring accountability — as the adage goes, justice delayed is justice denied.
Administrative Closures
Agencies may follow up on FOIA requests to seek clarification or verify that the requestor remains “still interested.” In theory, this helps reduce unnecessary processing. Across administrations, however, determinations that a FOIA request was not “reasonably defined” and failure to respond to a “still interested” query within a certain time period have been used to prematurely close out requests. Requesters and transparency advocates had drawn attention to agencies’ “still interested” letters as far back as 2014, with the Obama Justice Department’s Office of Information Policy issuing formal guidance on the use of such queries the following year. But while “still interested” letters have been used for several years, the first six months of 2025 indicate a further deterioration in seemingly arbitrary administrative closures, both with regard to frequency and time constraints.
American Oversight and other partner organizations report what appears to be a growing number of accidental closures or closures based on vague or arbitrary claims, such as that a request was not “reasonably described,” even when detailed names and search terms were provided, or when the request itself sought the names in question. In some cases, agencies gave only 10 business days (the 2015 guidance specified that such a time period should be “no shorter than thirty (30) working days”) to respond to a “still interested” query before canceling the request. Agencies such as USCIS and the General Services Administration (GSA) have closed requests due to internal error, while other departments — including the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and the Department of Education — have terminated requests in under 10 days.
These premature and sometimes mistaken closures, as well as delays and resource drain from attempting to reopen requests, further restrict access to public information, even when the requester has complied with all known requirements.
Submission Issues and Communication Breakdowns
The reshaping of federal agencies — coupled with mass layoffs — has also created new barriers to submitting FOIA requests. Technical failures, nonfunctional email addresses, and conflicting instructions have left many requesters without any clear channel for communication.
At the State Department, for example, American Oversight received a fee waiver denial from a nonfunctional email address (fosistatus@state.gov). Replies to that address went unanswered, and the request was marked as “closed.” Only after repeated follow-up by phone was the request reopened. The Freedom of the Press Foundation also experienced similar issues, receiving auto-responses that requests had been closed, with no correspondence about the determination or options for appeal. Replies asking for clarification went unanswered for several weeks until finally the organization was informed that the agency had combined some of the time-sensitive requests — for which expedited processing had been requested.
A particularly vivid example has been American Oversight’s experience submitting — or attempting to submit — requests to the Office of Personnel Management. Earlier in the year, the organization had been submitting requests through OPM’s FOIA email, but in March began receiving auto-replies with instructions to use the portal. But American Oversight encountered issues accessing and using the portal, including receiving emails stating that an “issue has been identified with the submission of your request” and telling the requester to “contact the FOIA office at [blank].” Attempts to reach out to the agency were met with silence for more than two months. American Oversight began submitting all requests to OPM through FOIA.gov. Of the 22 requests to OPM sent since March 11, only two requests, both submitted through FOIA.gov, have received a formal acknowledgment.
Our partners in the FOIA Access and Enforcement Coalition have flagged similar issues with portal and email submissions at HUD, CDC, and other agencies. In July, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reportedly told Defending Rights & Dissent, in response to a request regarding certain non-governmental organizations, that it couldn’t release any documents mentioning such “businesses” unless it received consent on letterhead — an incorrect application of either FOIA’s individual privacy-rights exemption or its commercial information exemption.
To be sure, FOIA has long suffered from inconsistent practices. Requesters of course have had to contend with inadequate or problematic responses even before 2025, but the combination of institutional cuts and diminished internal expertise appears to be compounding the problem.
The Paper Trail Matters
While it would be tempting to write off this constellation of FOIA issues as side-effects of the administration’s quest for “efficiency,” they are symptoms of a much wider problem. The Department of Government Efficiency, which despite the scale of its actions in reshaping the federal government — and despite a federal court having ruled in March that it was likely subject to FOIA — continues to shirk its public records obligations by incorrectly insisting in court that it merely exists to advise the president. The administration’s general anti-transparency posture is not just evident in its reluctance or refusal to disclose information, but also in its failures to adhere to important record-keeping requirements. Whether by explicit instructions to shred documents or through the use of auto-deleting communication platforms, the destruction of important records — from those that are subject to disclosure under FOIA to national security communications that are legally required to be preserved — denies the people crucial information and even necessary evidence to hold their leaders accountable for their actions.
In late January and early February, several pages on the CDC’s website were abruptly taken down, as was the entire USAID website. Fears about valuable information being permanently lost amid the administration’s wholesale dismantling of USAID intensified a month later when reports surfaced that agency staff had been instructed to shred critical documents, and to “reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break.” American Oversight filed suit for violation of the Federal Records Act and other record-preservation legal requirements. While the government has said it believes staff were not shredding federal records, the National Archives was not informed or involved before the instructions were given and still lists the incident as “pending review” and more information is needed to determine what was destroyed. That litigation is ongoing, even as USAID employees and contractors have had their devices remotely wiped during offboarding.
The destruction of government records has not only occurred by explicit instruction, or in the context of DEI-related information purges. When scandal erupted after the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg was added, apparently by mistake, to a Signal group chat among high-level officials discussing imminent military attack plans, it wasn’t only because of the national security implications but also because the Signal messages had been set to auto-delete. While those particular communications likely would not have been subject to disclosure under FOIA, the use of an unofficial, auto-deleting app raises serious questions about what other discussions of significant government business are being conducted on ephemeral messaging platforms — and what information is thus not being preserved because of the administration’s penchant for secrecy. Indeed, American Oversight’s litigation revealed that not only had the CIA failed to preserve any of the messages from the group chat, but someone must have proactively deleted the messages even after a court ordered the relevant agencies to make “best efforts” to preserve them.
Of course, the “Houthi group chat” isn’t the only instance of Signal use, nor is Signal the only ephemeral communication system undermining record-keeping requirements. Whether it’s members of the National Security Council using personal Gmail accounts for conversations about military positions or DOGE teams working simultaneously out of Google Docs and thus avoiding preserving certain communications or drafts, work conducted outside of official channels heightens the risk that records will be lost — both from the historical record or for potential release under FOIA. As American Oversight Executive Director Chioma Chukwu recently wrote, public records “are the raw material of history and a cornerstone of an informed electorate,” helping ensure that our leaders “answer to the people — not just while they’re in office, but long after.”
FOIA’s power is only as strong as the paper trail it can access — and that power diminishes when communications are shifted to unofficial, ephemeral platforms or when records are destroyed before they can be requested. This is not just a procedural failure. It deprives the public of the evidence needed to detect improper influence, misuse of office, illegal directives, and abuse of power.
Looking Ahead
Access to information is the lifeblood of an accountable democracy. It equips journalists, civil society, and the people with the ability to expose abuses of power and prevent anti-democratic backsliding. For that reason, secrecy and media suppression are hallmarks of authoritarian regimes determined to stay in power. Autocratic leaders around the world have recognized that chipping away at transparency infrastructure while embracing disinformation is the best way to cover up corruption and ensure the supremacy of propaganda, and Americans must guard against further such regression at home.
The disintegration of FOIA offices and the loss of invaluable expertise and institutional knowledge has dealt a major blow to our nation’s transparency infrastructure. While the courts may for now be able to provide some relief for frustrated requesters who happen to have the resources and time to sue, protecting the people’s right to know requires investment and a dedication to openness. The Freedom of Information Act’s legal requirements — and its very purpose — do not disappear because of layoffs or resource constraints, and Congress can require the executive branch to address historical shortfalls, including those that have been exacerbated by the dismantling of federal agencies. Increased resources for agencies to fulfill their FOIA obligations, from more staffing to updating technology that can better capture digital records, must come alongside efforts to strengthen judicial remedies and to promote more proactive disclosure of high-demand records like calendars and major contracts.
As we witness a rise in problematic practices and responses, establishing time limits on inter-agency consultations and clarifying that requests are “reasonably described” when the agency employee can locate the records without additional narrowing can help prevent those practices from calcifying. American Oversight also recommends ensuring FOIA Exemption 4 only covers actual proprietary business information, not lobbying or influence-peddling, and expanding the definition of how records may serve the public interest.
Most of all, however, preventing the further erosion of transparency and democratic trust requires vigilance. Even seemingly small obstacles or incrementally longer delays must be documented at the same time transparency advocates push for improvements. Our democracy depends on an informed society that is able to hold its leaders accountable for their actions — and that depends on strengthening and protecting the Freedom of Information Act.
