FOIA Advisor

FOIA News: Heritage Foundation's FOIA blitz divides practitioners

FOIA News (2024)Allan BlutsteinComment

The Heritage Foundation’s Reckless Misuse of FOIA to Target Individuals

By Michael Ravnitzky, LLRX, Oct. 9, 2024

The Heritage Foundation’s current public records campaign is an outright abuse of the FOIA process. In recent years, the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project and its publishing spinoff, The Daily Signal, have filed an unprecedented and overwhelming number of FOIA requests – 65,000 according to Reuters and more than 50,000 according to ProPublica. Esquire magazine https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a62513971/heritage-foundation-foia-requests/ described the volume of requests as “spamming the federal government”.

According to the articles, https://www.propublica.org/article/have-government-employees-mentioned-climate-change-voting-or-gender-identity-the-heritage-foundation-wants-to-know ; https://www.reuters.com/world/us/conservative-think-tank-targeting-nasa-employees-communications-about-musk-trump-2024-10-04/ the goal of the requests is to scrutinize government employees’ communications, to identify (for example, individuals using keywords or phrases such as “climate change”, “reduction in force” or DEI) and potentially remove civil servants perceived as obstructive to Trump’s agenda, in preparation for a potential Trump administration.

Read more here.

Heritage Foundation sends lots of FOIAs. That shouldn’t be a problem

By Lauren Harper, Freedom of the Press Found., Oct. 8, 2024

The Heritage Foundation sends a lot of Freedom of Information Act requests about progressive issues, from climate change to policies on diversity, equity, and inclusion, and it’s causing a stir.

A recent ProPublica article detailed the FOIA campaign, which is allegedly part of Project 2025’s effort to identify agency officials for potential firing.

ProPublica, which obtained the information for its article through its own FOIA requests, suggests that the hundreds of Heritage Foundation requests may intimidate public officials and prevent FOIA offices from effectively responding to “legitimate” requests by clogging the FOIA queues.

Reporting how the Heritage Foundation may use FOIA responses to gut the federal workforce is a worthy endeavor. Implying that FOIAs are illegitimate when the goal is partisan is a slippery slope that could give other agencies an excuse to deny requests they don’t like.

Most importantly, it is not the requesters' fault, even if they are frequent requesters, that the government can’t effectively search and review large amounts of records.

Read more here.