Newsletter: Chaos by Design

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If it feels like there are too many news stories to keep up with — for instance, Elon Musk’s relentless dismantling of core agencies and incursion into sensitive data systems, the devastating purges of the federal workforce, draconian immigration enforcement actions, corrupt quid pro quo dealings, to name a few — you are not alone.

President Trump’s unprecedented executive power grab has unleashed an ongoing chaotic newscycle that makes it easy for important stories to be missed. Especially confusing ones, like the contradictions about who is actually running the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

After the White House claimed on Monday in a court filing that Musk was not even part of “DOGE” — despite initial announcements that Musk was leading the office — Trump on Wednesday said that he had “put a man named Elon Musk in charge.”
Playing with titles and official designations may be an attempt to dodge scrutiny, just as moving the office to the Executive Office of the President was an apparent attempt to get around the Freedom of Information Act.
That’s why we sued DOGE last week under FOIA, seeking not only records about the administration’s attacks on agencies and the civil service but also to challenge Trump and Musk’s efforts to evade federal transparency laws.

Over the last two weeks, we also took several legal actions aimed at bringing to light the special counsel report on Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents. The report potentially could reveal whether Kash Patel, now the head of the FBI, engaged in misconduct, including by misleading the public about Trump having declassified documents before leaving office.

On Wednesday, Judge Aileen Cannon rejected our request to expedite a motion to lift her gag order barring the release of the report, despite Patel’s Senate confirmation vote being just a day away. “The notion that there’s an ‘insufficient basis’ to act quickly on our request is completely divorced from reality,” said Chioma Chukwu, our interim executive director.
Patel — who has promoted conspiracy theories about elections and has pledged to “come after” perceived enemies — was confirmed on Thursday.
“Despite his record of vitriol, political attacks, and complete lack of law enforcement management experience, the Senate voted to confirm Kash Patel as FBI director without full disclosure of his role in one of the most consequential criminal investigations in our nation’s history,” Chukwu said on Thursday.

On Wednesday, we filed a disciplinary complaint asking New York authorities to investigate potential professional misconduct by acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, the Justice Department official who oversaw and directed the corrupt dismissal of criminal charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

Bove’s pursuit of the dismissal was reportedly achieved by threatening to fire subordinate attorneys, and by claiming the dismissal was appropriate in light of Adams’ political cooperation with the Trump administration on immigration enforcement.
“Letting an elected official off the hook for serious, criminal charges in exchange for political support is textbook corruption and could be grounds for suspension of an attorney’s law license,” Chukwu said.

On the Records

Dehumanizing Immigrants

This week, the White House posted a video of detained immigrants in shackles, calling the deportation footage “ASMR.”

Unfortunately, this kind of dehumanization is nothing new. In 2017, Customs and Border Protection tweeted photos of immigrants in custody, calling them the “catch of the day.” We sued under FOIA to find out whether such language was part of a coordinated campaign by the Trump administration, which had exhibited a pattern of referring to some immigrants as “animals.”
Records we obtained show that two days after we’d filed our FOIA request, a CBP official reminded employees not to use such dehumanizing language, stating that it is “appropriate for fish … but not in reference to people.”
On top of all the Trump administration’s actions against immigrant communities, this latest news makes clear the lesson has not been learned.

Misinformation About Voter List System Continues

Despite the clear shortcomings of the various systems and agreements put in place since several states abandoned the Electronic Registration Information Center, lawmakers in Georgia and Utah are looking to withdraw their states as well from the nonpartisan voter-list maintenance system.

On Tuesday, we reported on records we recently obtained from Virginia, which highlight the deficiencies in the patchwork of poor substitutes that the state has relied on since it withdrew from ERIC in 2023.
The records include three previously unseen memoranda of understanding from the state elections department related to the implementation of executive orders from Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
The data specified in the MOUs is only a fraction of what ERIC provided. One agreement says that the Department of Motor Vehicles must supply a daily file of potential noncitizens — based on the false threat of widespread “noncitizen voting” — indicating a heavy reliance on data that could become out of date or used for discriminatory purposes against, for instance, naturalized citizens. Read more here.

On the Records

Dehumanizing Immigrants

Misinformation About Voter List System Continues

Other Stories We’re Following

National News

In the States

Threats to Education

Immigration

Trump Purges and Takeovers

Trump Accountability

DOGE

Election Denial