FOIA News: Further details emerge about HHS FOIA reorganization

Kennedy shutters several FOIA officers at HHS

Ben Johansen, Politico, Apr. 3, 2025

Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services this week shut down several offices tasked with Freedom of Information Act requests, a step billed as consolidation that could weaken transparency as the crucial agency undergoes an unprecedented overhaul, according to four people familiar with the cuts who were granted anonymity to speak freely.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was among the agencies that had its FOIA office eliminated late Monday night, according to a synopsis of the cuts shared at a CDC staff meeting Tuesday and seen by POLITICO.

Each agency, such as the CDC and FDA, had its own individual FOIA offices, which received thousands of requests per year. Now, in accordance with Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s reconstruction of the department, HHS will consolidate its FOIA requests into one HHS-wide office, according to a senior HHS official who was granted anonymity to discuss ongoing deliberations. Next steps are still in flux.

Read more here.

FOIA News: IRS FOIA Backlog Expected to Grow

IRS FOIA Backlog Expected to Grow

Lauren Loricchio & Amanda Athanasiou, TaxNotes, Apr. 3, 2025

The backlog of Freedom of Information Act requests at the IRS and Treasury is expected to increase during President Trump’s second term, amid mounting concerns about the administration’s transparency.

“There was a pretty healthy increase in the volume of FOIA requests” during Trump’s first term, said Matt Topic of Loevy & Loevy.

Topic, an attorney who specializes in FOIA litigation, said the first Trump administration failed to do what was necessary to keep up with the volume of requests, and the Biden administration “did absolutely nothing to fix those backlogs.”

The COVID-19 pandemic also contributed to FOIA backlogs at the IRS and other federal agencies.

The number of FOIA requests backlogged at the IRS as of the end of the fiscal year (from the previous annual Treasury FOIA report) has varied, increasing from 605 in 2008 to 916 in 2024, according to data on FOIA.gov. In 2008 there were 1,297 backlogged requests at the end of the fiscal year at Treasury, and in 2024 there were 2,468.

“Backlogs have been a long-standing issue,” Chioma Chukwu of government watchdog American Oversight said, adding that President Obama signed the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016, which hasn’t “helped with the backlog in the way one would have thought.”

“It’s still too early to tell how things will play out, but we have reason to believe it will be infinitely worse in the second [Trump] administration,” Chukwu said.

Read more here. [NB: This article contains multiple quotes from FOIA Advisor’s own Ryan Mulvey.]

FOIA News: Federal judge enters preservation order in DOGE FOIA case

On April 2, 2025, Judge Beryl Howell, who sits on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, granted American Oversight’s motion for a preservation order in American Oversight v. U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, one of several lawsuits challenging the status of DOGE as an “agency” for purposes of the FOIA. As FOIA Advisor previously reported, DOGE released a copy of its records retention policy under the Presidential Records Act as part of its opposition to American Oversight’s motion.

Among other things, Judge Howell explained in her minute order that, “[n]otwithstanding the fact that DOGE has issued a litigation hold,” its personnel “‘may not fully appreciate their obligations to preserve federal records,’ under either the FOIA or the Presidential Records Act, as ‘many of [the] staffers are reported to have joined the federal government only recently and . . . may not be steeped in its document retention policies,’ . . . which, under FOIA, reaches even those government records stored on private devices[.]” She also noted that “[a]dditional concerns arise due to the fact that DOGE ‘operat[es] with unusual secrecy,’ which includes the use of ‘Signal, an encrypted messaging app with an auto-delete function,’ . . . and has refused to stipulate to its preservation obligations of documents that are at the heart of this litigation.” Finally, Judge Howell reasoned that, “to the extent that DOGE insists that this entity's compliance with the Presidential Records Act . . . is sufficient compliance with preservation obligations in this case” that “only confirms plaintiff's concern about the need for a preservation order since . . . what qualifies as a record and the respective retention obligations differ between the PRA and the FOIA[.]” Moreover, “DOGE's actual compliance with PRA record retention obligations mitigates any burden of DOGE also complying with obligations to preserve records at issue in this case and prevent spoliation of records and information during the pendency of this litigation.”

FOIA News: NYT soliciting feds on FOIA layoffs

Following highly publicized layoffs at HHS FOIA offices, the New York Times has published an online questionnaire that asks federal employees to provide information about staffing levels, layoffs, and buyouts at agency FOIA offices.

FOIA News: Senate Judiciary Committee announces FOIA hearing

The U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary has announced a full committee hearing on FOIA that will take place on Tuesday, April 8, 2025 at 10:15am. The hearing is entitled: “The Freedom of Information Act: Perspectives from Public Requesters.” Complete details, as well as live video of the hearing on April 8th, can be found here. A witness list has not yet been released.

FOIA News: HHS slashes FOIA staff at multiple agencies; centralized FOIA office in the works, says HHS.

RFK Jr. purges CDC and FDA's public records teams, despite "transparency" promises

By Alexander Tin, CBS News, Apr. 1, 2025

Teams handling Freedom of Information Act requests at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration were gutted Tuesday as part of the widespread job cuts ordered by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., multiple officials said. 

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All of the workers in the CDC's FOIA office were cut, two officials said. Two-thirds of the Food and Drug Administration's records request staff were also cut, down to 50 remaining. 

* * *

Many FOIA staff at the National Institutes of Health were also let go, one official said, but not all. No explanation was given for why some were cut while others remain on the job, the official said, in an apparent violation of the federal government's procedures for prioritizing for some employees based on their military and federal service.

The goal of the cuts is to create a central place to handle FOIA requests for the entire department, an HHS official said, making it easier for the public to submit their requests. 

Read more here.

[Earlier in the day, Bloomberg News reported that the FDA, CDC, and the NIH had sacked all of their FOIA employees.]

FOIA News: Heritage's oversight project to become independent entity

The Heritage Foundation announced yesterday that it s oversight project led by Mike Howell is becoming an independent 501(c)(4) organization. Since its launch in 2022, the project has reportedly filed over 100,000 FOIA requests; it also has filed more than 100 lawsuits.

FOIA News: This and that

• The FBI’s “Vault” has posted material on comedian Richard Pryor, U.S. Senator John Glenn, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

• Bloomberg reported that the FBI agents and FOIA staff are working overtime to review Jeffrey Epstein files.

• See the following article for tips on making FOIA requests to improve nonprofit grant applications.

• DOJ/OIP has collected and posted agency Chief FOIA Officer Reports for 2025 here.

• The Office of Government Information Services has posted a profile of federal FOIA Advisory Committee member Margaret Kwoka.

FOIA News: DOGE releases records retention policy in ongoing FOIA battle

As it stands, FOIA Advisor has identified four pending lawsuits that involve a fight over whether the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency, or “DOGE,” is an “agency,” as defined at 5 U.S.C. § 552(f)(1). In one of those lawsuits—American Oversight v. U.S. DOGE—the requester has moved for a preservation order. The government filed its opposition to that motion on Thursday evening. DOGE’s argument focuses on its claimed status as a non-agency component of the Executive Office of the President, which would make it subject to the Presidential Records Act. It also highlighted existing efforts to preserve records pursuant to an official records retention policy and a litigation hold. Notably, DOGE filed a copy of its records retention policy, which appears to have gone into force at the beginning of the week—March 25, 2025.

FOIA News: Roughly 58,000 documents at issue in CREW's DOGE FOIA suit

According to a notice filed on Thursday evening, the government estimates that “approximately 58,000 documents” maintained by the U.S. DOGE Service are responsive to a FOIA request being litigated by Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington. DOGE explained it “has not yet been able to conduct a review for responsiveness, and deduplication.” The parties continue to contest whether DOGE is an “agency” for purposes of the FOIA, but the presiding judge has already denied the government’s recent motion for reconsideration on that very question, thus leaving in place a preliminary injunction compelling DOGE to process CREW’s request for the time being. FOIA Advisor has previously covered developments in this case. Just over a week ago, DOGE filed its motion for summary judgment, which should be decided on an expedited basis.