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.
History proves this is an ideal time for Congress to strengthen transparency laws
Democrats have taken decisive control of Congress, and incoming committee chairs are already promising a blitz of subpoenas and televised hearings. The subjects of the investigations run the gamut from Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s abuse of power to a culture of official self-enrichment without precedent in modern American history.
This is an appropriate reaction to two years of nearly unchecked executive power. But the success of these investigations will only be as good as the records agencies and the White House preserve and the independence of the system charged with releasing them. Lawmakers can demand records, but they will be stymied if files have been destroyed, allowed to vanish on auto-deleting apps, or buried under unnecessary classification stamps.
The Trump administration’s anti-accountability obfuscation will likely play out on two fronts. Across federal agencies, political appointees will continue refusing committee requests for information, ignore the Freedom of Information Act, and scrub government websites of data — all while loyalist inspectors general look the other way.
Inside the White House, secrecy could grow even more brazen as the Department of Justice doubles down on its baseless theory that the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional, asserting that the president can withhold, destroy, or sell our public history on eBay. FPF is challenging this in court alongside Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, but if the DOJ succeeds, Trump could once again haul presidential papers to Mar-a-Lago without consequence.
These secrecy tactics point to why investigating individual scandals without strengthening transparency infrastructure is an exercise in futility, treating individual symptoms while secrecy silently metastasizes. And that’s precisely the reason why, when Richard Nixon abused his office, Congress didn’t just hold hearings: Lawmakers codified the Presidential Records Act, strengthened FOIA, and created the inspector general framework.
The next Congress must follow those footsteps and reinforce our transparency laws.
Skeptics argue sweeping reforms are a lost cause against a hostile White House that is poised to exercise its veto power, but history proves the opposite is true. Transparency is one of the few areas with a consistent record of veto-proof bipartisan support. The 1974 FOIA amendments became law only after Congress overrode President Gerald Ford’s veto. Fifty years later, the 2025 Epstein Files Transparency Act passed the House 427-1.
Lawmakers don’t need the president to get this done.
To carry the post-Watergate legacy forward, Congress should do the following:
Rebuild FOIA: Provide guaranteed funding for degraded, dismantled FOIA offices, mandate proactive public disclosures, penalize officials who willfully obstruct releases, and extend FOIA to private prison and detention facilities.
Disable secret corruption: Modernize the Ethics in Government Act to mandate real-time, searchable disclosures targeting digital assets and cryptocurrency, and pass the Presidential Library Anti-Corruption Act to stop private presidential foundations from functioning as personal slush funds.
Empower NARA: Double the National Archives and Records Administration’s stagnant budget, insulate professional archivists from political purges, and equip the archivist of the United States with independent authority to declassify other agencies’ records.
End secret law and protect whistleblowers: Mandate the proactive disclosure of interpretations of law, rein in overclassification, and pass the Daniel Ellsberg Press Freedom and Whistleblower Protection Act to protect the whistleblowers who risk everything to alert the public when agencies refuse to declassify important information.
Congressional oversight helps expose abuses of power, but meaningful statutory changes will prevent it from recurring.
What I’m reading
Benson says her office will be subject to FOIA when she is Michigan’s governor
Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s governor-elect, appears to be making transparency a hallmark of her administration by announcing her office will voluntarily comply with the state’s freedom of information law. This is a welcome gesture in a state where FOIA does not apply to the governor’s office, which impaired efforts to obtain a comprehensive account of the Flint water crisis. But an even better move would be promising to sign the pending legislation that would make this compliance mandatory.
Trump’s AI chatbot conversations may have to be preserved as presidential records
The White House is assuring lawmakers that it is abiding by the Presidential Records Act in response to questions about whether the administration is preserving Trump’s AI chats. The assertion rings hollow in light of the administration’s efforts to undo the PRA and agency attempts to claim that conversations with AI may be considered deliberative and withheld.
Trump erupted after learning of Alina Habba’s $50 million deal
The president wants portions of a lucrative contract secured by one of his former lawyers to be donated to his private presidential foundation — his presidential library, specifically. This follows announcements that two of his top advisers recently donated to the library foundation after Trump indicated he was displeased with their work.
Transparently yours,
Lauren Harper
Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy
Freedom of the Press Foundation
