FOIA News: OGIS issues FY 2024 report

The Office of Government Information Services published its annual report to Congress on May 21, 2025. Highlights included handling 6,057 cases and closing 6,098 — with 88.5% initiated in 10 days and 98.9% resolved within 90 days. The agency’s Open Annual Meeting will take place on July 23, 2025.

FOIA News: DOJ asks SCOTUS to stay discovery in DOGE FOIA lawsuit

Trump administration asks Supreme Court to keep DOGE records secret

By Josh Gerstein & Kyle Cheney, Politico, May 21, 2025

The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to block an effort to open the inner workings of the secretive DOGE cost-cutting effort to public scrutiny.

The Justice Department filed an emergency appeal Wednesday urging the high court to put a hold on a judge’s orders giving a watchdog group access to documents detailing firings, grant terminations and other actions proposed by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which was overseen by Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk.

Read more here.

FOIA News: Employees at FOIA software company tampered with FOIA requests; company faulted for laxity.

The Case of the ‘Lost’ FOIA Requests

By Jason Leopold, Bloomberg, May 21, 2025

If you’ve ever submitted a FOIA request through a federal agency’s public access portal there’s a good chance you’re using an application called FOIAXpress. The software was developed by Opexus, a Washington-based company that provides software services for processing US government records.

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As I reported today, two Opexus employees, twin brothers Suhaib and Muneeb Akhter, compromised or deleted data from Opexus systems, according to an internal investigation and a separate probe by an independent cybersecurity firm. They worked for Opexus for about a year as engineers before being fired earlier this year. It turns out they’d been previously convicted of hacking into the US State Department and had been sentenced to two and three years in prison.

Read more here.

FOIA News: FOIA Advisory Committee meets June 12th

Save the date for the fifth meeting of the National Archives and Records Administration's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 2024-2026 Advisory Committee. See more details here.

FOIA News: "Releasing All the Files" - Overview of TPPF v. Dep't of State

Fifth Circuit review - Reviewed: Releasing All the Files

By Mikaela Milligan, Yale J. on Reg., Notice & Comment Blog, May 16, 2025

In Texas Public Policy Foundation v. United States Department of State, the Fifth Circuit held that the State Department must disclose the names and email addresses of rank-and-file employees pursuant to a FOIA request.  The opinion, written by Judge Wilson, forces the Trump Administration to choose whether to take its pitch to the Supreme Court.  Will the Trump Administration maintain its view that the public is not entitled to the details of certain Biden Administration deliberations—or will it let this one go?  Only time will tell.

Read the full article here.

FOIA News: More commentary on staffing cuts

FOIA staffing cuts endanger future of government transparency

By Samantha-Jo Roth, Wash. Exam’r, May 18, 2025

Staffing cuts to public records teams under the Trump administration have raised concerns about the federal government’s ability to respond to information requests and maintain accountability.

President Donald Trump has frequently claimed his administration is the “most transparent in history.” But several agencies have come under scrutiny after the elimination of entire offices responsible for Freedom of Information Act requests that already faced persistent backlogs.

Read more here.

FOIA News: Biden-Hur audio clip is released

Audio emerges of Joe Biden’s damaging interview with Robert Hur

The former president had asserted executive privilege over a recording sought by Republicans.

By Adam Wren & Dasha Burns, Politico, May 16, 20225

Audio of former President Joe Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur got its first public airing Friday, fueling lingering questions about his mental acuity in his final year in the White House.

Portions of the audio were published by the news site Axios, with Biden occasionally pausing for extended periods or struggling to recall dates in ways familiar to anyone who heard the aging former president speak in recent years.

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Various news organizations as well as conservative groups like Judicial Watch and the Heritage Foundation had filed Freedom of Information Act lawsuits in the case. The former president last year asserted executive privilege to prevent the disclosure of the audio. His Justice Department claimed the disclosure would have a chilling effect on witnesses cooperating in high-profile investigations.

Read more here.

Hear audio clip here.

Court opinion issued May 15, 2025

Tovar v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- dismissing plaintiff’s claim against the Drug Enforcement Administration for access to records about himself on the ground that he failed to appeal the DEA’s denial before filing suit; rejecting as irrelevant the plaintiff’s argument that the DEA’s final response was untimely, as the agency cured any delay by issuing a final determination before the lawsuit was filed.

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

FOIA News: D.C. Circuit allows discovery against DOGE

Watchdog Effort to Obtain DOGE Records Can Proceed, Appeals Court Rules

The decision requires Elon Musk’s team to resume efforts to share information about its structure and day-to-day operations requested under the Freedom of Information Act.

Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency must resume efforts to hand over internal documents about their operations to a nonpartisan watchdog group, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The order, issued by a three-judge panel in Washington, directs Mr. Musk’s team to answer questions and provide details the group requested under federal transparency laws, such as the Freedom of Information Act. The watchdog, the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, had sued to force the secretive unit to comply with its public records requests.

Read more here.

Jobs, job, jobs: Mid-week announcement May 14, 2025

The number of vacant FOIA positions in the federal government has been significantly reduced by the hiring freeze that took effect on January 20, 2025, and which recently was extended through July 15, 2025. Below are several private sector FOIA positions that might be of interest.

• Oversight Att’y, Democracy Forward, $90k-110k, Wash., D.C.

• FOIA Paralegal, Republican Jobs, $20-$40/hr., remote.

• FOIA Analyst, SAIC, salary unknown, Arlington, VA (Top Secret clearance required).

• FOIA Analyst, Peraton, $104k-$166k, McLean, VA (TS/SCI with Polygraph level clearance).

• FOIA Analyst, Ardent Eagle Solutions, salary unknown, Wash., D.C.