Dear Friend of Press Freedom,
I’m Lauren Harper, the first Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy at Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), and welcome to The Classifieds. Read on to learn about the week’s top secrecy news.
Vanishing act: FOIA reveals more auto-deleting Signal groups
Trump administration officials didn’t learn their lesson from Signalgate. Instead, they continued to use the auto-delete function of the encrypted messaging app, Signal, despite the fact that doing so blatantly violates federal recordkeeping rules.
A Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by Democracy Forward revealed the existence of 13 previously secret Signal group chats used by high-ranking officials — even after President Donald Trump explicitly ordered his cabinet to stop using the platform.
The Signal groups include titles like “Iran/Ukraine Planning” and “State USAID.” One group, comprising Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, went by the name “SS/APNSA,SD,CJCS” — the acronyms of the officials’ titles — and was set to auto-delete messages every eight hours.
This automatic destruction violates the Federal Records Act, which mandates the preservation of all government communications on third-party applications. Adding insult to injury, Rubio was serving as the acting archivist of the United States — the very official charged with ensuring records are being properly preserved — at the time he was helping destroy agency records.
(Want to see who else is destroying records? You can track active records destruction investigations on NARA’s officialunauthorized disposition dashboard.)
This latest revelation comes at the same time the Justice Department has taken the radical step of declaring the Presidential Records Act unconstitutional — a position FPF is challenging in court.
With the administration actively trying to dismantle transparency across the executive branch, intense scrutiny should now fall on Bradford Wilson, the nominee to be the next archivist of the United States. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee recently questioned Wilson during a jam-packed nomination hearing, but paid no attention to his lack of qualifications or his ability to independently administer the agency and the law.
Has SCOTUS given the White House control over independent agencies’ disclosures?
The Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. Slaughter, which held that the president can fire independent agency heads at will, carries direct implications for FOIA offices at the affected agencies.
By explicitly overruling the 90 years of precedent, the court’s decision removes protections for officials at multimember independent agencies and commissions, including the Federal Communications Commission and the Election Assistance Commission. With agency leaders who are now incentivized to keep the president happy to avoid losing their jobs, FOIA offices may be pressured to not release information that contradicts official talking points, while fast-tracking releases that support the administration’s agenda.
This may make it more difficult for the public to see records about media mergers, debates around net neutrality, and more.
Why did a law explicitly passed to unlock the Jeffrey Epstein records fail to work?
Independent journalist and former MSNBC host Katie Phang recently won a court victory mandating that the government comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act and either produce investigative files — or justify why it’s withholding them.
I joined Phang and her attorney, Public Integrity Project CEO Brendan Ballou, to discuss the lawsuit, as well as why filing traditional FOIA requests wasn’t an adequate legal remedy to see the Epstein files and how future transparency laws should be crafted to stop agencies from hiding important records from the public.
What I'm reading
A troubling milestone: Most Supreme Court rulings are secretive votes with little justification
This was the first term where the Supreme Court decided more substantive cases by secret ballot (63) than it did in open court (56), with most referrals to the shadow docket coming from Chief Justice John Roberts.
House votes to disclose which members settled sexual misconduct allegations with taxpayer funds
The House unanimously approved a measure that would show which members have used public funds to settle sexual misconduct claims against them, and how much money was spent to do so. The bill would require the records be made public within 60 days.
No plans for a DOGE after-action report, Russell Vought says
What exactly did the Department of Government Efficiency accomplish, how much waste did it eliminate, and how much did DOGE ultimately cost? The White House doesn’t want to know. Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought told lawmakers there were no plans to conduct an after-action report assessing DOGE’s overall performance or cost.
Transparently yours,
Lauren Harper
Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy
Freedom of the Press Foundation
