Dear Friend of Press Freedom,
President Donald Trump issued a torrent of orders this week, many of which will worsen government secrecy and have a negative impact on the public.
I’m Lauren Harper, the first Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy at Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), and welcome to “The Classifieds,” FPF’s weekly newsletter highlighting important secrecy news.
If you haven’t yet, subscribe to “The Classifieds” to make sure you’re up to speed on the most important secrecy stories. And while you’re at it, consider checking out FPF’s other newsletters for all the information you need to know about press freedom, digital security, and more.
Gag order at health agencies poses looming public health crisis
Trump issued two quick blows to public health transparency this week, and the secrecy could put lives at risk.
First, the Trump administration told federal health agencies to stop communicating with the public for an undisclosed amount of time. The National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Health and Human Services Department were among those targeted by the blackout, which prevents sharing “health advisories, weekly scientific reports, updates to websites and social media posts.”
This will impact agencies’ ability to share information with health care providers, send alerts on virus outbreaks, issue mortality reports, and more.
Second, the administration abruptly canceled the NIH’s scientific study sections. NIH is the world’s largest funder of biomedical research and these review boards approve grant and fellowship applications for 300,000 researchers and 2,500 institutions.
Past NIH-funded research has led to more effective treatments of a wide range of cancers, childhood leukemia, schizophrenia, depression, and stroke, and made it easier for doctors to see if someone is more likely to suffer from dementia.
If the pause is prolonged — or permanent — it will interrupt or derail similar lifesaving research.
Read more on our website.
Does Musk think government is the safest place to hide records?
Elon Musk has said he thinks there should be no need to file Freedom of Information Act requests because all government records should be public by default.
The newly created Department of Government Efficiency, over which Musk exerts remarkable influence, is an opportunity for him to put his money — or in this case, his documents — where his mouth is, and make DOGE’s records public, either proactively or in response to records requests.
DOGE was long touted as a panel that would “provide advice and guidance from outside of government” to slash agency regulations and restructure the federal bureaucracy. But the Jan. 20 executive order establishing DOGE says it will very much be a part of the federal government. Specifically, it will sit within the Executive Office of the President, components of which are either subject to the FOIA or the Presidential Records Act’s disclosure requirements.
Why the change? Musk reportedly decided that if DOGE were a part of the government, it would be easier to avoid the Federal Advisory Committee Act’s requirements that advisory panels make all of their committee meetings and documents public.
By placing DOGE within the EOP, Musk may have effectively bet that he can easily flout FOIA or PRA.
Read more on our website.
Surveillance oversight board gutted
The bipartisan Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board works to protect Americans from the government’s surveillance abuses and other activities that infringe on privacy rights.
That is, it does so when it’s fully staffed. It is meant to be a five-member board, and can only be operational if it has at least three members. In the past, the board has struggled to meet its mandate under both Democratic and Republican administrations due to vacancies.
Trump’s second term appears to be continuing this trend. The administration has told all three board members selected by Democrats that they need to resign or be fired. This leaves the board without enough members to function. And because it must be bipartisan, at least two of the replacements would need to be chosen by Democrats. Andrew Weissmann posits that because Trump can’t simply appoint loyalists to the board, he may not be interested in filling the seats at all — instead, he may be trying to leave the board too short-staffed to work. Again.
JFK declassification is a good first step. Declassifying all historical records would be better.
Trump ordered the declassification of all remaining secret JFK, MLK, and RFK assassination records. This builds on promises he made on the campaign trail and during his first term.
Both Presidents Trump and Joe Biden allowed the CIA and FBI to keep thousands of JFK assassination records secret, even though the Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act mandated they be released no later than 2017 — unless agencies could convincingly argue that the harm from disclosure would outweigh public interest in the records.
Trump’s order implies he will no longer accept agency secrecy arguments, but much remains to be seen.
The attorney general and the director of national intelligence have two weeks to deliver a plan to ensure the full release of the assassination documents, and the specifics of that plan will shed light on if and how agencies may continue to argue for secrecy.
The executive order is a welcome move and should be the first step of many to declassify important historical records. Trump should build on this and order the declassification of all records older than 50 years.
What I’m reading
Who is Russell Vought? Probably the most important person in Trump 2.0 (The New York Times).
When you think about government secrecy, the Office of Management and Budget might not be the first agency that comes to mind. This may need to change if the Senate confirms Trump’s pick to lead the agency, Russell Vought. Vought’s been up front that he plans to take an aggressive approach as director, and told Tucker Carlson that fighting secrecy will be his purview. He said he intended to address eliminating overclassification and would force individual intelligence agencies, like the CIA, to publish their budgets (currently only an intelligence community-wide budget is available).
The ‘perfect’ predator: How a police chief groomed a Texas town (The Washington Post).
Public records requests were an important part of an investigation into Kevin Coffey, a disgraced Texas police chief who sexually abused minors. The story of law enforcement officials targeting minors doesn’t end with Coffey; the Post also “identified 47 heads of law enforcement agencies who were charged with crimes involving child sexual abuse from 2005 through 2022.”
U.S. reveals once-secret support for Ukraine’s drone industry (The New York Times).
One of the Biden administration’s last acts was to declassify intelligence on the war in Ukraine. Specifically, it declassified the CIA’s support for Ukraine’s drone program. This was the last in a series of strategic declassification decisions the administration made to support its foreign policy goals. Previous declassifications also addressed the war in Ukraine, as well as Serbian troop movements along the Kosovo border, Chinese actions in the Taiwan Strait, and Iranian support of the Houthis.
Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter, and see you next week.
Transparently yours,
Lauren Harper
Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy
Freedom of the Press Foundation
