FOIA News: FOIA Advisory Committee meets June 11th

The federal FOIA Advisory Committee will hold its penultimate meeting for the 2024-2026 term on Thursday, June 11, 2026, at 10:00am. Links to the meeting materials and the YouTube livestream are available here.

Court opinions issued June 4-5, 2026

June 5, 2026

Carter v. DOJ (D.D.C.) — finding that FBI performed an adequate search for records concerning electronically submitted complaints and tips, and properly withheld records under Exemptions 6, 7(C), and 7(E) to protect the identities of Special Agents and non-public investigative techniques and databases.

June 4, 2026

Byrne v. NSA (N.D. Cal.) -- ruling that: (1) NSA performed an adequate search for records concerning Vietnam-era covert operations by relying on detailed agency declarations and reasonably tailored search terms; (2) FBI properly withheld responsive records under Exemptions 1 and 3 to protect intelligence sources, methods, and capabilities.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

Court opinions issued June 3, 2026

Am. Ctr. For Law & Justice v. FBI (D.D.C.) -- in case concerning FBI interactions with social media platforms about 2020 election interference, granting summary judgment for FBI and ruling that: (1) FBI properly withheld records under Exemption 5's deliberative process privilege, including factual material assembled through exercise of judgment and inextricably intertwined with exempt information; (2) FBI established reasonably foreseeable harm through chilling effect on internal deliberations; and (3) FBI properly withheld records under Exemption 7(E) and satisfied foreseeable harm by showing disclosure could enable foreign adversaries to anticipate and evade agency’s investigative methods.

Martin v. DHS (E.D. Va.) -- dismissing FOIA complaint with prejudice where immigration detainee seeking transcript and audiotape from her removal hearing failed to plausibly allege she filed a proper request with defendant before filing suit.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

FOIA News: OGIS releases annual report for FY 2025

The Office of Government Information Services has posted its fiscal year 2025 report on its website. Of note, OGIS received 6061 requests for assistance and closed 6088 requests during FY 2025. The agencies generating the most OGIS cases were DHS (1338), Dep’t of Veterans Affairs (867), and DOJ (765).

Jobs, jobs, jobs: Filling the swamp

• Sup. Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Commerce/HQ, ZA 5, Wash., DC, closes 6/11/26 (non-public).

• Sup. Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Commerce/HQ, ZA 5, Wash., DC, closes 6/11/26 (public).

• Privacy/FOIA Officer, Dep’t of Veterans Affairs/VHA, GS 12, Wash., DC, closes 6/12/26 (non-public).

• Gen. Att’y, U.S. Patent & Trade Office, GS 15, Alexandria, VA, closes 6/25/26 (public).

Court opinion issued June 1, 2026

Korf v. U.S. Dep’t of State (S.D. Fla) -- magistrate judge recommending summary judgment for plaintiffs in case involving records of the nationalization of PrivatBank in Ukraine, related fraud and misconduct, and associated individuals and entities, as well as plaintiffs; in most relevant part, ordering State Department to process 5,000 pages monthly with 60-day status reports and rejecting as “unreasonable” State Department’s proposed 300-page monthly processing rate that would take over 22 years to complete, noting that State Department had made no productions for more than two years preceding filing of suit.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.

FOIA News: Tweet-Gate?

Trump library says no Twitter DMs can be found, despite evidence he sent them

Records show that Trump's first administration opted not to save DMs in its library archives, raising questions about compliance with the Presidential Records Act.

By Nate Jones, Wash. Post, June 3, 2026

The newly operational Trump Presidential Library, the entity responsible for preserving records from the White House, says that it cannot find a single Twitter direct message sent by a president who tweeted more than 25,000 times during his first administration.

This no-records response to a Freedom of Information Act request from The Washington Post comes as the Trump administration argues it does not need to follow the Presidential Records Act, a law designed to ensure the public has access to records of the president after he leaves office.

On Jan. 20, The Washington Post filed a FOIA request with the Trump library for all direct messages sent from the president’s Twitter accounts @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS during his first term.

Despite evidence that the president did use the messaging feature, the library, a division of the National Archives and Records Administration, told The Post that “[w]e have been unable to locate any records related to” any direct message, or DM, sent by Trump during his first term as president.

Read more here.

[ALB comments: No administrative appeal filed? If not, why not? Also, why does NARA address the requester by his first name instead of “Mr. Schaffer”?]

FOIA News: FOIA at 60

James Madison’s Legacy: The Past, Present, and Future of FOIA

By Kurt Brenneman, InformationToday, Summer 2026

This year is not only America250, it’s the 60th anniversary of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). FOIA is the law that says federal agencies must disclose their records and information to anyone who asks. Americans learn how their country is governed from records they get through FOIA. Where does President James Madison come in? Madison wrote the Bill of Rights. In 2023’s “Informed Dissent: Toward a Constitutional Right to Know” from The Journal of Civic Information, Martin E. Halstuk and Benjamin W. Cramer wrote that freedom of expression, promised by the First Amendment, implies freedom of information. The right to critique public officials “is one of the fundamental building blocks of self-government, and it requires access to information, or in other words, a right to know what the government is doing.” States, in turn, passed their own laws based on FOIA, so Americans could understand their state and local governments too. The U.S. Congress has reformed FOIA to fit the times and will amend it more during the next 60 years and beyond. Still, Madison’s essential right lives on.

Read more here.

Monthly Roundup: May 2026

Below is a summary of the notable FOIA court decisions and news from last month, as well as a look ahead to FOIA events in June.

Court opinions

We identified and summarized 15 opinions in May. Of note, in Mora v. U.S. Customs & Border Prot. (D.D.C. May 18), the court granted summary judgment to CBP in a case brought by immigration attorneys alleging that the agency maintained an unlawful policy or practice of ignoring FOIA deadlines. The court found that CBP's backlog resulted from "exceptional circumstances" rather than deliberate noncompliance, and declined to follow two Northern District of California decisions that had applied the Ninth Circuit's different policy-or-practice standard.

Also of interest was Alper v. DOJ (D.D.C. May 14), in which the court ruled that the public interest in corroborating a death-row inmate's innocence claim outweighed the privacy interests of FBI agents, private individuals, and hotel guests whose statements supported that claim, ordering disclosure of all three categories of records.

Top news

• On May 7th, DOJ/OIP announced that all agencies had finalized their FY 2025 Annual FOIA reports. Government-wide, agencies received 1,707,197 requests — a 13.7% increase over FY 2024 — and processed a record-high 1,635,055 requests. The backlog, however, grew 28.2% to 339,671 requests, while total FOIA staffing fell 14.3% to 4,823 full-time employees.

• Also on May 7th, a federal jury convicted Sohaib Akhter of Alexandria, Virginia, on charges of conspiracy to commit computer fraud, password trafficking, and possession of a firearm by a prohibited person. Akhter and his twin brother worked for a company that provided software and services to more than 45 federal agencies, including case management and FOIA database software. The brothers sought to harm their employer and its government customers by accessing computers without authorization and deleting approximately 96 FOIA and other government databases.

• Former President Biden sued the Justice Department on May 27th to block release of audio recordings and transcripts from his 2017 interviews with his memoir ghostwriter, which the Heritage Foundation had sought under FOIA. Biden's filing argued that the DOJ was abandoning "core tenets of American justice" by disclosing his "private information." The dispute connects to FOIA litigation the Heritage Foundation filed in 2024 seeking materials from Special Counsel Robert Hur's investigation into Biden's handling of classified documents.

June events

June 1: Deadline for nominations for 2026-2028 FOIA Advisory Committee

June 3: DOJ/OIP, Exemption 1 and Exemption 7 Training

June 11: FOIA Advisory Committee meeting.

June 17: DOJ/OIP, Exemption 4 and Exemption 5 Training

Court opinion issued May 29, 2026

Org. of Am. Historians v. OMB (D.D.C.) -- denying motion to compel federal agencies to fast-track and produce FOIA records within 30 days about the administration's efforts to reshape how American history is presented at national parks and museums, because plaintiffs could not point to a specific upcoming event after which the records would no longer be useful—a requirement the court warned must be strictly enforced to avoid "an open season for FOIA preliminary injunctions"—and because jumping the line ahead of other FOIA requesters would be unfair when the normal process was already available to them.

Summaries of published opinions issued in 2026 are available here. Earlier opinions are available for 2025, 2024, and from 2015 to 2023.