As 2026 gets underway, the FOIA Advisor staff is pleased to provide a summary of the most notable FOIA developments that occurred outside the courtroom in calendar year 2025. We will discuss our top 2025 court decisions in a forthcoming post.
Congress
On February 6, 2025, Representative Hillary Scholten (D-MI) introduced the Consistent Legal Expectations and Access to Records Act to clarify that FOIA applies to entities established under 5 U.S.C. § 3161, a change aimed at preventing temporary federal organizations—such as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—from avoiding FOIA requests.
The Senate Judiciary Committee held a FOIA hearing on April 8, 2025. No government witnesses appeared.
On November 20, 2025, Representative Teresa Leger Fernández (D-NM) introduced H.R. 6206, the Protect Culturally Sensitive Information Act, which would create a new FOIA Exemption 3 for culturally sensitive information identified by Indian Tribes, Alaska Native Entities, and Native Hawaiian Organizations.
Regulatory updates
In spring 2025, The Environmental Protection Agency notified OMB of its intent to rescind its expedited processing regulation related to environmental justice, but it did not develop a proposed rule before the end of the year. America First Legal recently petitioned EPA to move the process forward.
On June 30, 2025, Amtrak became the first agency to propose amendments to their FOIA regulations since President Trump’s second term began.
The Defense Nuclear Safety Board followed with proposed amendments on November 24, 2025.
Lastly, the Department of Homeland Security amended its FOIA regulations on December 23, 2025, requiring requests to be submitted via web portals or FOIA.gov, except for requester without Internet access.
Dep’t of Justice/Office of Info. Policy
DOJ/OIP issued its annual Litigation and Compliance Report in early March. noting that requesters filed 889 FOIA lawsuits in calendar year 2024—the highest number DOJ has ever reported. Shortly thereafter, OIP reported that nearly 1.5 million requests were submitted across the government in fiscal year 2024, up 25 percent from fiscal year 2023, with DHS alone receiving more than 900,000 requests. On April 29, 2025, DOJ/OIP released a 24-page summary of agency annual reports for FY 2024
On March 8, 2025, OIP’s Director, Bobak Talebian, was fired along with several other heads of DOJ components. A new Director, Sean Glendening, was appointed on November 3, 2025.
On July 9, 2025, OIP issued guidance on the disclosure-related impact of President Trump’s Executive Order No. 1303, “Restoring Gold Standard Science.”
Nat’l Archives/Office of Gov’t Info Servs.
On September 26, 2025, OGIS published a compliance report on the Department of Veteran Affairs, making its first such report since 2020. In its annual report published in May 2025, OGIS reported receiving 6057 requests for assistance and closing 6098 requests during FY 2024.
Other agency actions
The Department of Health and Human Services initiated a department restructuring involving the closure of individual agency FOIA offices—including those at the CDC, FDA, and NIH—and creating a single, centralized FOIA office.
On August 14, 2025, the Department of Energy issued a notice in the Federal Register requiring requesters who submitted FOIA requests before October 1, 2024 to confirm their interest—as well as the control number assigned to the request—by September 15, 2025, or face administrative closure. DOE cited a tripling of FOIA requests over four years (from 1,300 to over 4,000 annually) and blamed “vexatious requesters and automated bots” for clogging the system. The agency was promptly sued by American Oversight on September 3, 2025.
One month later, USAID issued a global “still interested” notice on September 16, 2025, requiring requesters to confirm their interest in all FOIA requests submitted to the agency before January 20, 2025.
In April, DHS stopped using software that automatically captured text messages and saved trails of communication between officials. Instead, the agency began to require officials to manually take screenshots of their messages to comply with federal records laws.
Other FOIA-related matters
Bloomberg uncovered and reported a wild story in May 2025 about two OPEXUS employees who had tampered with agency FOIA databases in February 2025. Two brothers were later arrested on December 3, 2025.
A partial government shutdown suspended many agency FOIA operations and FOIA litigation proceedings from October 1, 2025, to November 12, 2025.
A White House-ordered hiring freeze significantly reduced the number of available FOIA jobs.
During Sunshine Week, the FBI was named the worst FOIA respondent of the decade by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and MuckRock, which annually team up to produce a list of agencies that respond poorly to FOIA requests (the “Foilies”).