Voter Suppression in North Carolina

This week, we uncovered text messages that show Dallas Woodhouse — the former North Carolina elections liaison, who is also the former executive director of the state’s Republican Party —  tried to influence county election officials’ decisions on early voting plans. The text messages add to growing concerns that Woodhouse was coordinating with North Carolina Republican Party officials and that State Auditor Dave Boliek was involved.

This new information also makes us even more concerned about the Office of the State Auditor’s (OSA) recent admission that Woodhouse deleted messages from his phone despite explicit instructions to preserve them. The missing messages could provide critical information about the extent to which the OSA was involved in local early voting decisions, so we sent letters to the OSA and the State Board of Elections demanding they be recovered. We also urged the election board to subpoena Woodhouse to testify about the deleted records. 

“The records that survived show OSA officials working to influence local early voting decisions, from Sunday voting to polling sites on college campuses, while invoking Republican Party preferences and communicating with party officials about some of those decisions,” said our Executive Director Chioma Chukwu. “The public deserves to know whether officials entrusted with overseeing elections used their positions to advance partisan interests and restrict voting access.”

Is Interior shredding documents to cover its tracks?

The Department of the Interior has made headlines this summer for its role in the failed Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovations, delays in disclosing evidence vindicating Olympian David Hearn, and the politicized Freedom 250 celebrations. But last week, news broke about what is happening behind the scenes: Interior Department employees have reportedly “routinely” shredded documents and used disappearing Signal messages, and officials are “terrified of written records.” 

This week, we sent letters to the National Archives and Interior Department demanding the agency properly enforce records preservation requirements and take immediate action to preserve and recover any lost or destroyed federal records. We also launched an investigation, filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for records related to the use of Signal and other disappearing messaging applications by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and other senior Interior Department officials, materials documenting what records may have been destroyed, and other records. 

“We are putting Secretary Burgum on notice: Federal records must be preserved, and any unlawful destruction must stop immediately,” said our Executive Director Chioma Chukwu. “These records belong to the American people, and officials do not get to make them disappear simply because they may be embarrassing or damaging to the administration.”

New lawsuit on ICE’s medical treatment payment failures 

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has not paid offsite medical providers since last fall, raising concerns that people in immigration detention may not have access to health care when they need it. Thursday, we sued ICE for records that could shed light on how this breakdown in claims processing has affected people in ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody. We are also seeking records that could tell us why ICE — and the contractors it hired — have not yet fixed the problem.

Last week, we published a massive data set that shows what type of care these offsite providers are responsible for — including everything from starvation to cancer treatments — to demonstrate that  denying this care could have life-threatening consequences. ICE itself warned that the interruption in payments put the “health, welfare, and lives” of people in ICE and CBP custody “significantly at risk” and could result in “medical complications or loss of life.” 

ICE and CBP “have a legal obligation to protect the health and safety of people in their custody, and the public has a right to know whether they are meeting that obligation,” Executive Director Chioma Chukwu said in a statement. “The public also deserves to know why the administration has spent millions in taxpayer dollars on contracts that have yet to fix a crisis of its own making.”

American Oversight in the news

• “Surge” in immigration arrests at airports targeted in new bill (Newsweek)
• NC auditor’s office liaison invoked state GOP wishes in some county early voting plans (NC Newsline)
• Why ICE’s Airport Arrests Aren’t the Whole Story (Documented)
• Federal Court Strikes Down Energy Department FOIA Closure Policy (AOL)

Other stories we’re following

• Medicaid says it will stop paying for some gender-affirming care for transgender minors (Associated Press)
• A judge expands a block on U.S. Postal Service work on Trump’s mail-in voting order (NPR)
• Trump on declaring national security emergency for elections: ‘Stranger things have happened’ (The Hill)
• Trump signs order calling for spacing out childhood vaccines, against medical groups’ guidance (Associated Press)
• Flock Cameras Can Track Every Car in America. Police Love Them. Citizens Don’t. (New York Times)