American Oversight Urges Congress to Protect and Strengthen FOIA During Unprecedented Attacks on Transparency

Earlier this month, American Oversight submitted written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee urging Congress to protect and strengthen the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) law. The testimony explains how we are currently witnessing an unprecedented breakdown in the infrastructure that supports the public’s legal right to information — infrastructure that was already in need of strengthening before President Trump returned to the White House.

Public requesters today are navigating an environment of profound uncertainty set off by the Trump administration’s anti-transparency actions. Recent agency-wide reorganizations and staffing fluctuations have created obstacles for FOIA compliance. Widespread reductions in force across multiple federal agencies have reshaped the federal workforce on an enormous scale. That has extended to FOIA offices, not only reducing the capacity to respond to requests but risking the loss of valuable institutional knowledge. For instance, in February, CNN reported that after submitting a FOIA request to the Office of Personnel Management, they were told the agency no longer had any FOIA staff due to terminations. At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, recent restructuring reportedly eliminated the agency’s entire FOIA office, even as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has repeatedly pledged to make transparency a top priority. 

These threats have only exacerbated the weaknesses in our transparency infrastructure. Across agencies, core government functions are being disrupted — programs paused, services delayed, and oversight mechanisms weakened — at a time when the public is demanding more information, not less. A significant increase in FOIA requests in 2024 indicates that there is a strong public demand for transparency, but under-resourced and understaffed FOIA offices, long delays, frequent redactions, and outdated technology have undermined FOIA’s promise of timely and meaningful access to government records. 

This is why government transparency needs significant improvements — not the removal of more resources. Organizations like American Oversight use FOIA to shine a light on how the government actually operates, revealing everything from decision-making processes to potential conflicts of interest that would otherwise remain hidden. Legitimate national security and privacy concerns must be respected, but those interests must be balanced against the public interest and the people’s right to know. FOIA isn’t just a legal tool to inform the public; it is a central pillar of government accountability. 

American Oversight provided the following recommendations in its testimony regarding how Congress can strengthen and protect government transparency:

• Pursue reforms to ensure transparency law functions as intended. This includes expanding the public interest balancing test, strengthening judicial remedies, and promoting more proactive disclosure. 
• Clarify that a request is “reasonably described” when a professional employee can locate the records without requiring the requester to narrow their inquiry by subject matter or keywords.
• Restore Exemption 4’s “substantial competitive harm” standard, which would ensure the exemption protects only truly proprietary business information, not lobbying activities or influence-seeking communications that should be subject to public scrutiny.
• Establish time limits on inter-agency consultations, which currently cause indefinite backlogs.
• Provide sufficient resources and staffing, as well as the adoption of modern technologies, such as systems to preserve SMS/text communications (including on ephemeral messaging applications) and resources necessary to comply with machine-readable format requirements.
• Expand proactive disclosure requirements, especially for high-demand records like agency calendars, major contracts and grants, visitor logs, and unclassified inspector general reports. 

“At its core, FOIA reflects a foundational democratic principle: that government derives its authority from the consent of the governed, and that consent is only meaningful when it is informed,” American Oversight’s testimony reads. FOIA is an essential tool for bringing important information into the light of day, and strengthening it is not a partisan issue. Our democracy depends on a public that has access to information about what its government is doing, so that the people can hold their leaders accountable for their actions. 

Read the full testimony below: