Heritage Foundation Staffers Flood Federal Agencies With Thousands of Information Requests
The conservative think tank has filed thousands of public-information requests, clogging the pipeline at federal agencies in an apparent attempt to find employees a potential Trump administration would want to purge.
By Sharon Lerner and Andy Kroll, ProPublica, Oct. 1, 2024
Three investigators for the Heritage Foundation have deluged federal agencies with thousands of Freedom of Information Act requests over the past year, requesting a wide range of information on government employees, including communications that could be seen as a political liability by conservatives. Among the documents they’ve sought are lists of agency personnel and messages sent by individual government workers that mention, among other things, “climate equity,” “voting” or “SOGIE,” an acronym for sexual orientation, gender identity and expression.
The Heritage team filed these requests even as the think tank’s Project 2025 was promoting a controversial plan to remove job protections for tens of thousands of career civil servants so they could be identified and fired if Donald Trump wins the presidential election.
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