FOIA News: Bill Moyers, LBJ's press secretary and early FOIA supporter, dies at 91

Bill Moyers, the former White House press secretary turned acclaimed TV journalist, dead at 91

By Frazier Moore, AP, June 26, 2025

Bill Moyers, the former White House press secretary who became one of television’s most honored journalists, masterfully using a visual medium to illuminate a world of ideas, died Thursday at age 91.

Moyers died in a New York City hospital, according to longtime friend Tom Johnson, the former CEO of CNN and an assistant to Moyers during Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration. Moyers’ son William said his father died at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York after a “long illness.”

Moyers’ career ranged from youthful Baptist minister to deputy director of the Peace Corps, from Johnson’s press secretary to newspaper publisher, senior news analyst for “The CBS Evening News” and chief correspondent for “CBS Reports.”

Read more here.

NB: Mr. Moyers drafted a signing statement for President Johnson on enacting the FOIA on July 4, 1966. See Moyers’ version and LBJ’s handwritten edits here.

FOIA News: IRS staff reductions are delaying FOIA responses, reports Captain Obvious

Staffing Cuts Slow IRS FOIA Processing

By Lauren Loricchio, Tax Notes, June 25, 2025

The Trump administration’s workforce reorganization efforts are slowing down Freedom of Information Act processing at the IRS, which could lead to bigger backlogs.

Because so many employees participated in the deferred resignation program, “we have lost many of our experienced [FOIA functional coordinators] and new people are being trained to take over. This is causing a delay in processing the backlog of FOIA requests,” an employee in the IRS Disclosure Office told Tax Notes via email.

FOIA functional coordinators are the employees in each IRS business unit who search for records that are responsive to FOIA requests.

Records obtained by Tax Notes through a FOIA request show that the IRS also fired probationary employees in the office that administers its privacy and records policy and initiatives and ensures compliance with FOIA.

The records show that at least 25 employees in the IRS Office of Privacy, Governmental Liaison, and Disclosure (PGLD) accepted a deferred resignation program offer from the Office of Personnel Management. There were 665 employees in PGLD as of March 14.

According to the records, five government information specialists in PGLD were among more than 7,000 IRS employees fired in February after President Trump took office.

Read more here.

ICYMI, DOJ skips another FOIA Advisory Committee meeting

The Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy failed to send a representative to the federal FOIA Advisory Committee’s meeting on June 12, 2025, the second consecutive committee meeting OIP has missed since its director was ousted in early March. OIP’s continued absence did not go unnoticed. Of note, OGIS director and Committee Chair Alina Semo jumped into a discussion about a draft recommendation aimed at OIP and remarked that “we obviously have a vacancy on the FOIA Advisory Committee which is occupied by the director of the Office of Information Policy. There is no director currently or acting directing. As I understand it they’re waiting for confirmation of a new associate attorney general to whom OIP staff reports . . . .” FOIA Advisory Committee Meeting, YouTube (June 12, 2025), https://www.youtube.com/live/59PYN88FCpw (45:14-45:38).

The President’s nominee for Associate Attorney General, Stanley Woodward, cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee by a 12-10 vote —coincidentally, on June 12, 2025. The bylaws of the FOIA Advisory Committee provide that government members “should”— not must—include “one representative from the Department of Justice, Office of Information Policy” (not necessarily the director) Thus, the Archivist of the United States could lawfully appoint an OIP staff member to temporarily serve on the committee if DOJ were interested in participating (which it clearly is not). Moreover, the Committee’s bylaws do not prevent AOTUS from filling OIP’s traditional seat with an employee from another agency. The FOIA Advisory Committee has lost four government members since its latest term began in September 2024. None have been replaced.

Court opinion issued June 23, 2025

Office of the Fed. Pub. Def. v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- ruling that: (1) U.S. Marshals Service was required to release details about its trial-related security measures because it made “no effort to explain how their withholdings fall within the textual limit of being techniques, procedures, or guidelines for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions” under Exemption 7(E); and (2) USMS properly relied on Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege to withhold an internal email because it involved judgment-based selection of facts concerning security staffing; further finding that USMS met foreseeable harm requirement by explaining that disclosure would chill future discussions about judicial security operations.

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

Court opinion issued June 20, 2025

Javino v. Hurd (D.D.C.) -- concluding that FBI properly relied on Exemptions 6, 7(C), and 7(D) to withhold the identity of an individual who plaintiff believes provided false information to the FBI about plaintiff’s actions at the U.S Capitol on January 6, 2021; granting summary judgment to the government regarding its search and its withholding of other requested records, because plaintiff failed to object.

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

Court opinion issued June 18, 2025

Sanchez Mora v. Customs & Border Prot. (D.D.C) — in a case transferred from the Northern District of California, granting the requesters’ motion for reconsideration to reinstate their claim against the Department of Homeland Security; accepting the requesters’ argument that “the transferring court ‘erred in construing FOIA’ too narrowly, as allowing a lawsuit only against ‘the component agency that received the records request’ and not the parent agency of that component”; noting to conclude “otherwise makes little practical difference and would incentivize the submission of duplicate FOIA requests to both parent agencies and any component that might retain responsive records, with concomitant inefficiencies and agency burdens in tracking and processing such duplicate requests.”

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

FOIA News: Right-wing groups kvetch about DOJ's FOIA litigation stances

Trump DOJ Promised Transparency. Conservative Orgs Think It’s Falling Short

By Katelynn Richardson, Daily Caller,

Transparency groups are growing frustrated that the Trump Department of Justice (DOJ) is maintaining positions in some cases previously held by the Biden administration.

Organizations like the Oversight Project, Empower Oversight and Judicial Watch are waiting for movement on dozens of pending Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) cases, expressing disappointment that the DOJ is not giving greater attention to disclosing documents related to what they believe are past examples of government weaponization or misconduct.

Read more here.

More court opinions issued June 13, 2025

Musgrave v. Dep’t of Justice (D.D.C.) — denying the cross-motions for summary judgment “because they rest on a declaration that addresses the burdens imposed by responding to Parts 4 and 5 of the FOIA request”; noting that, as plaintiff has withdrawn part five of its request, “[t]he court is thus left to speculate about the burdens imposed by Part 4 only”; seemingly granting the agency leave to file ex parte details about “the precise number of employees” at the “Washington and San Francisco field offices,” given plaintiff’s suggestion that “each employee individually . . . conduct email searches.”

Ferrera Parra v. Judicial Conference of the U.S. (D.D.C.) — dismissing without prejudice a pro se plaintiff’s complaint and noting that, inter alia, its FOIA claims remained “underdeveloped”; noting that, while plaintiff “contends . . . ‘[he] submitted multiple lawful FOIA requests’” to the Marshals Service, those requests remain unidentified “in his pleading” and any copies “peppered into his flood of exhibits” are “unmanageable to ascertain”; concluding that “any FOIA claims are deeply conflated with plaintiff’s myriad other grievances.”

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

FOIA News: Marine veteran loses FOIA suit in effort to prove murder plot

Marine veteran loses FOIA suit in effort to prove murder plot

By Jonathan Ellis, The Dakota Scout, June 17, 2025

A retired Marine Corps officer who sought records related to what he claims is a 40-year-old murder attempt lost his case when a federal judge dismissed his lawsuit Friday.

Rory Walsh had sought letters of censure and reprimand he claimed were issued against two Marine Corps general officers. Walsh filed a request for the letters under the federal Freedom of Information Act. He then sued the Department of the Navy in 2023 when the letters were not produced.

Read more here.

FOIA News: More on FOIA delays

Federal government record requests languish — and not just those aimed at DOGE

Washington staff cuts have slowed responses to Freedom of Information Act requests, and the agency engineering many reductions is so far escaping normal disclosure rules.

By Rich Lord, Public Source, June 17, 2025

“Hello, the FOIA office has been placed on admin leave and is unable to respond to any emails,” the April 18 auto-response email indicated.

That request was one of eight submitted by PublicSource in an effort to better understand the impact a new governmental player — the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE — is having on the Pittsburgh region. The effort comes at a time when the public’s stake in federal government decisions and actions is high, but the ability to access records appears to be at a low point.

Federal government documents appear to be even less readily available to citizens, organizations and the press this year than in the recent past, according to three advocates for openness whose organizations regularly work to pry information from public agencies.

Read more here.