The 2025 Foilies: Recognizing the worst in government transparency
By Elec. Frontier Found. & MuckRock News, Detroit Metro Times, Mar 13, 2025
The public’s right to access government information is constantly under siege across the United States, from both sides of the political aisle. In Maryland, where Democrats hold majorities, the attorney general and state legislature are pushing a bill to allow agencies to reject public records requests that they consider “harassing.” At the same time, President Donald Trump’s administration has moved its most aggressive government reform effort — the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE — outside the reach of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), while also beginning the mass removal of public data sets.
One of the most powerful tools to fight back against bad governance is public ridicule. That’s where we come in: Every year during Sunshine Week (March 16-22) the Electronic Frontier Foundation, MuckRock, and AAN Publishers team up to publish The Foilies. This annual report — now a decade old — names and shames the most repugnant, absurd, and incompetent responses to public records requests under FOIA and state transparency laws.
Read more here.