FOIA News: Critics target Trump's records policies

Inside Trump's assault on public records

By Josephine Walker, Axios, May 5, 2026

The Trump administration's moves to limit public access to government records are prompting warnings from watchdogs and historians.

The big picture: As the Justice Department challenges the constitutionality of the Presidential Records Act and slow-walks some Freedom of Information Act requests, worries persist about weakened oversight and the government being enabled to spin a curated narrative of American history.

• The Presidential Records Act and FOIA exist to preserve presidential documents as public property and to ensure access to government records, respectively.

• "By erasing and deleting the information to which we are entitled, they are depriving the public of information ... to know whether their government has been serving them as they promised to," Chioma Chukwu, executive director of American Oversight, tells Axios.

Read more here.

Monthly Roundup: April 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 May.

Court opinions

We identified and summarized 11 opinions in April, a sharp decreased from March (47 opinions). Of note, in Animal Legal Def. Fund v. U.S. Dep't. of Agric. (N.D. Cal.) the court clarified that FOIA’s "reading room" provision only covers existing records, not documents yet to be created. With a nod to A Christmas Carol, the court explained that the statute does not reach "mere possibilities in the future, like the shadows swirling around Dickens’ Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come." While acknowledging that transparency is FOIA’s ultimate goal, the court emphasized it was “bound by the plain meaning of the statute” rather than what might simply “further the statute’s primary objective.”

Also of interest was Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights v. DHS (S.D.N.Y.), where the court ruled that a partial government shutdown did not excuse DHS from its court-ordered FOIA production obligations. The court dismissed the government’s attempt to use the "political question doctrine" to pause the litigation, calling the argument "risible, if not sanctionable" and stating the agency could not unilaterally stay its own deadlines without court relief.

Top news

• On April 16, 2026, a federal grand jury indicted David Morens, a longtime National Institutes of Health advisor and confidant of Anthony Fauci, on charges tied to an alleged scheme to evade FOIA requests related to COVID‑19 research grants. Charges include conspiracy, destruction or concealment of federal records, and aiding and abetting. The case follows a 2024 House select committee memo detailing similar allegations and has drawn extensive coverage across major outlets (e.g., NYT, WSJ, Politico, WaPo, Axios).

• The Department of Justice released its long-delayed FY 2025 FOIA Annual Report, revealing a 20 percent increase in requests from FY 2024. At the same time, the number of requests processed declined, pushing the DOJ’s request backlog up by roughly a third to more than 29,000 requests.

• On April 2, 2026, the FOIA Advisory Committee approved two recommendations, one concerning agency FOIA logs and the other to formally establish the committee as a statutory advisory committee.

May events

May 6: DOJ/OIP Procedural Requirement, and Fee and Fee Waivers Training

May 7: FOIA Advisory Committee meeting

May 11-14: NextGen 3.0 FOIA Tech Showcase

May 13: DOJ/OIP Litigation Training

May 20: DOJ/OIP Administrative Appeals, FOIA Compliance & Customer Service Training

Jobs, jobs, jobs: Let the sunshine in

FOIA Ass’t, Dep’t of Homeland Sec./CBP, GS 5, Wash., DC, closes 5/6/26 (public).

Sunshine Week contractor, Brechner Freedom of Info. Proj., $3k weekly, Wash, DC area preferred, open until filled.

Jobs, jobs, jobs: Fight over “optional” application essays

Federal job applicants can’t skip ‘loyalty question’ that OPM says is optional, court filings claim

OPM says it’s optional for job candidates to answer the essays and that they won’t be disqualified from consideration if they skip them.

By Jory Heckman Fed. News Network, Apr. 28, 2026

This story was updated at 3:52 p.m. on April 28 to include comments from an OPM official

New essay questions on many federal job applications, asking candidates how they would advance the Trump administration’s policies, are optional, according to the Office of Personnel Management.

But new documents submitted in a lawsuit seeking the removal of these essays show that job candidates, in some cases, can’t submit their online job applications if they leave the fields for essay responses blank.

One of several essay questions, outlined under the Trump administration’s Merit Hiring Plan, asks candidates how they would “advance the president’s executive orders and policy priorities,” to name “one or two executive orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you,” and how they would help implement them if hired.

Read more here.

Court opinion issued Apr. 28, 2026

Fleck v. Nat’l Credit Union Admin. (D. Or.) -- denying pro se plaintiff's request for up to $63,000 in "monetary equitable relief," ruling that FOIA authorizes only injunctive relief and not damages, compensation for lost business income or economic displacement, or reimbursement for time spent litigating as a self-represented party; also denying award of costs, finding plaintiff had not substantially prevailed, his request served a personal rather than any meaningful public interest, he contributed to delays by repeatedly expanding the scope of his request, and he paid no filing fee or service costs and submitted no expense receipts.

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

FOIA News: David Morens, former NIAID advisor and Fauci confidant, indicted over alleged evasion of FOIA requests

David Morens, a former advisor at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been indicted by a federal grand jury for crimes related to an alleged scheme to evade Freedom of Information Act requests seeking records about COVID-19 research grants.

Dr. Morens, who previously advised Dr. Anthony Fauci and others, is charged with conspiracy; destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations; concealment, removal, or mutilation of records; and aiding and abetting.

The indictment can be read here.

And DOJ’s press release is available here.

In 2024, a U.S. House select committee drafted a memorandum detailing some of the same alleged wrongdoing by Dr. Morens.

FOIA News: More coverage on indictment of David Morens

• Statement of House Oversight Chairman James Comer, 4/28/26

• Post, Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul), X, 4/28/26

• Grand Jury Indicts Former N.I.H. Official, NY Times, 4/28/26

• Former Health Official Charged With Concealing Emails About Covid-19 Grants, Wall St. J., 4/28/26

• Former Fauci aide charged with conspiring to evade Covid-related records requests, Politico, 4/28/26

• Trump admin revives COVID origins debate with indictment, Axios, 4/28/26

• Anthony Fauci adviser indicted by DOJ on charges of concealing COVID records, NY Post

• Former Fauci aide charged in alleged effort to thwart inquiries into pandemic, Wash. Post

• Who Is David Morens? Ex-Fauci Adviser Indicted Over Secret COVID Records, Newsweek, 4/28/26

FOIA News: New "FOIA Hiring Toolkit"

New FOIA Hiring Toolkit from Chief FOIA Officers Council Committee on Cross-Agency Collaboration and Innovation Available on FOIA.gov

Dep’t of Justice, Office of Info. Pol’y, FOIA Post (Apr. 28, 2026)

A new hiring toolkit issued by the FOIA Hiring Toolkit Working Group of the Chief FOIA Officer (CFO) Council Committee on Cross-Agency Collaboration and Innovation (COCACI) has been published on FOIA.gov.  The hiring toolkit provides sample KSAs, interview questions, scoring methods, position descriptions, and more.  All documents are available for download on FOIA.gov.

Agency FOIA professionals, FOIA leadership, and GIS career professionals are encouraged to review the toolkit.  For additional information about the CFO Council’s work, visit the Council page on FOIA.gov.  For additional information on COCACI, please review  COCACI’s FOIA.gov page. 

Read the original post here.

FOIA News: FOIA litigation webinar

On June 30, 2026, the Federal Bar Association will host a one-hour webinar entitled “Navigating the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in Federal District Courts. The presentation will be led by Mark Zaid. See more details here.

Jobs, jobs, jobs: Four your eyes only

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Veterans Affairs/VHA, GS 12, New Orleans, LA, closes 5/1/26 (non-public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Veterans Affairs/VHA, GS 12, Fairfield, CA, closes 5/5/26 (internal to agency).

FOIA Attorney-Adviser, Sec. & Exch. Comm’n, SK 14, Wash., DC, closes 5/8/26 (public).

Lead Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of State, GS 14, Wash., DC, closes 5/8/26 (non-public).