Newsletter: DOGE’s Evasion of FOIA, and Far-Right Attacks on Education

Trump and Musk are upending the federal government — and want to hide records detailing that destruction. American Oversight is fighting back, suing DOGE under FOIA.

Inquiriespress@americanoversight.org

President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s sweeping dismantling of the U.S. government is unprecedented, largely illegal, and an attack on the system of checks and balances that holds our government accountable.

And with the White House designating Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency as an entity not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, the administration’s blatant efforts to avoid any accountability continue.

During his first few weeks as head of DOGE, Musk has targeted federal agencies that provide crucial and life-saving services — such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — with thousands of federal workers having been purged in mass firings.
This week, Trump fired the inspector general assigned to USAID after the office released a report detailing the potential consequences of Trump and Musk’s dismantling of the agency. No reason was given for the termination.
This came after the recent mass firings of agency inspectors general. New reports also raise concerns that certain fired IGs — who conduct independent investigations and are not meant to be subject or loyal to the whims of political appointees — were actively investigating matters that could affect Musk’s business interests.
Claiming that DOGE is not subject to FOIA, and that its records are instead subject to the Presidential Records Act, means that the public wouldn’t know the true extent of DOGE and Musk’s influence, power, and destruction until at least 2034.

American Oversight sued DOGE on Tuesday for the release of Musk’s communications about efforts to purge the federal workforce, after DOGE failed to respond to multiple FOIA requests. As CNN reported, the lawsuit “will test the administration’s decision to designate DOGE’s internal communications as ‘presidential records,’” and thus not subject to FOIA.

The lawsuit seeks all of Musk’s communications involving the sweeping terminations of federal personnel, specifically documents related to the mass firings of inspectors general, which could reveal important information about Musk’s potential involvement.
The suit also alleges that DOGE members have used non-governmental messaging platforms such as Signal and Slack to communicate about official matters since at least December, likely resulting in the destruction of federal records including those potentially included in our requests.
“Elon Musk can’t run the federal government the way he runs his companies,” our interim Executive Director Chioma Chukwu said. “The American people have a right to every email, text, or DM he or his unelected cronies send or receive as part of DOGE’s work.”

On the Records

The Far-Right Attack on Public Education

We’ve been investigating the implementation and effects of classroom censorship in states across the country, and this week published our first-of-its-kind report on the far-right effort to politicize public education.

The report draws upon thousands of pages of public records we obtained to show how these restrictions — which are now moving to the federal level with Trump back in the White House — have whitewashed history and instilled fear in educators thanks to vaguely defined terms like “divisive concepts.”

Here are a few examples of what we found in public records:

Following Virginia Gov. Youngkin’s 2022 “divisive concepts” order, one school official was concerned that course modules on slavery might conflict with the order because it “put one group of people over another as historical fact. … I have no idea how to reconcile that truth.”
Textbook publishers were also hindered by lack of clarity. “We worked really hard … to follow the guidance we were given from the [Florida Department of Education] every step of the way,” wrote one company rep asking for more information about why a book was rejected.
In the absence of clear guidance, teachers and educators have erred on the side of caution. A textbook publisher replaced several lessons in math books to remove references to different cultures. For example, a story that explained the global history of coffee and tea, used to introduce adding and subtracting decimal numbers, was replaced with a passage about working in an animal hospital.
In North Carolina, an elementary school teaching assistant asked officials for guidance about whether they could read a book about a neighborhood library to second graders because it referred to a character with the gender-neutral pronoun “they.”

The consequences are clear: Discussions of important topics are suppressed and student’s understanding of history is whitewashed and unchallenged.

We obtained documents from Florida showing that one school district eliminated a sentence from a Black History Month proclamation that said, “More than 150 years after slavery was abolished in this nation, our society is still grappling with racial inequality and injustice.”
We also obtained documents from Florida’s review of the AP African American Studies course, showing objections to lessons about slavery and racial disparities that reviewers claimed were lacking in “opposing viewpoints.”
The Virginia education department’s review of the state’s African American history elective course included “suggested revisions” such as removing the claim that eugenics is pseudoscience, or paraphrasing MLK Jr.
Read our new report, “The Far-Right Attack on Public Education,” for more examples — and to learn about how the far right has tied censorship measures to the longstanding effort of diverting public education money to private interests.

Newsletter: DOGE’s Evasion of FOIA, and Far-Right Attacks on Education

On the Records

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