Representation Matters

Before our regular newsletter, we wanted to share a note from our executive director, Chioma Chukwu, about what comes next after this week’s midterms: 

“The American people sent a clear message yesterday: Government must live up to its most fundamental promise to serve the public, not those in power. And with that, a new chapter of accountability begins, in Washington and across the country. 

Too many Americans are living with real fear and uncertainty. They’re worried about paying their bills, affording health care, and witnessing their neighbors disappear on the way to pick their kids up from school. They deserve a government that works for them, not against them.

Our job at American Oversight is to hold those in power accountable and to expose abuses of power and betrayals of the public trust. That work continues with renewed urgency and a commitment to ensuring that government answers to the people. 

But accountability isn’t just about exposing what’s wrong. It’s also about showing what a healthy, functioning, multiracial democracy looks like when the government works for the people, not the other way around. The American experiment has never been perfect, but its promise remains worth protecting. And we intend to keep fighting for it.”

Protecting representation in future elections 

As Americans went to the polls this week, we launched an investigation to protect the integrity of the census. 

In September, the Census Bureau published a proposal to remove questions about race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation from the 2030 count of the US population. It would also exclude noncitizens without green cards — including refugees and visa holders — from counts used to apportion seats in Congress.

The census underpins American democracy — it is how we ensure fair representation and make sure communities get the resources they need. The proposed changes would radically reshape future redistricting, stripping millions of people from the population count that determines political power. It would also stop the collection of data that’s used to enforce civil rights laws. These changes are genuinely unprecedented: The 14th Amendment requires counting “the whole number of persons in each state,” and no one living in the states has ever been excluded from the apportionment count because of immigration status. Plus, the demographic questions have been a part of the decennial census since 1790. 

Trump has tried to make changes to the census before. In 2018, the Trump administration added a citizenship question to the 2020 census, which was blocked by the Supreme Court in 2019. There have been questions about who has influence over the census ever since, especially after staffers from the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned think tank, were reportedly granted access to the Census Bureau in September. 

We launched an investigation seeking records on who orchestrated the unprecedented changes, along with the Legal Defense Fund and the NAACP. Our Freedom of Information Act requests to the Commerce Department and the Census Bureau seek records showing how the proposal was developed, what the agencies understood about its consequences, and what role White House officials and outside political groups played in shaping it.

Our ongoing fight to protect Congressional oversight of ICE detention

This week, we were back in court fighting to make sure Members of Congress are able to conduct unannounced inspections of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities. We are working with Democracy Forward to represent thirteen members of Congress in their lawsuit, and we’ve won three rulings that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) must allow the visits. But the DHS keeps trying to block Congress from using this type of oversight. 

These visits are essential, because they make it possible for Congress to investigate the conditions people are being held in, including overcrowding, denial of medical care, lack of access to counsel, and other forms of abuse. Elected officials have used their access to enter embattled facilities such as Delaney Hall in New Jersey and the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, shedding light on the conditions and introducing bills to prevent further abuse.

We will keep working to protect the ability of Congress to carry out its oversight responsibilities and hold ICE accountable.

On the records

Taxpayer money for luxury hotel stays

Documents we obtained show that staffers in Ken Paxton’s Texas attorney general office regularly exceeded maximum reimbursement rates for hotel stays. Our work was featured in the San Antonio Current. 

Staff claimed they needed to stay at luxury hotels for “proximity” to “business events” — even though there were cheaper options nearby. For example, in January, First Assistant AG Brent Webster and Deputy First Assistant Ralph Molina went on a work trip to Washington, D.C. They requested to increase their maximum accommodations rate from $392 and $196 per night, respectively, to $499 each to stay at the fancy St. Regis-Marriott Hotel. While their excuse was proximity, there are at least nine hotels in the area that are at least half as expensive as the St. Regis. 

“At a time when many Texans can’t afford to buy groceries, it is appalling that senior officials in Ken Paxton’s office are spending taxpayer funds on luxury hotel rooms at more than double the federal rate,” our Chioma Chukwu told the Current.

Florida agency normally tasked with keeping food safe is working with ICE

Additional records we obtained show the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which is tasked with keeping food safe and investigating agricultural crime, transported 434 people to immigration detention sites and took 87 people into custody in 2025 as part of its agreement with ICE.

Floridians count on the agency “to keep their food safe and protect their farms, not to take their loved ones away for immigration agents,” our Executive Director Chioma Chukwu told the Tampa Bay Times. “Every one of those numbers represents a person whose life was upended, a family left worrying, and a community left wondering who could be next.”

American Oversight in the news

• Trump used Grok on Venezuela; DOJ then called Presidential Records Act unconstitutional (Tech Times)
• Trump admin says Truth Social paywall does not violate Constitution (Newsweek)
• Proposed Census changes prompt concerns about counting students (Inside Higher Ed)
• ‘We will be digging’: Democrats firm up plans to investigate Interior under Burgum (Politico Pro)

Other stories we’re following

• Election deniers not contesting their massive losses (Wired)
• Trump says he’ll accept the results after weeks of priming voters to doubt them (Washington Post)
• Virginia topples its Jim Crow-era lifetime ban on voting (Bolts)
• Missouri voters reject Trump-backed gerrymander in referendum vote (Democracy Docket)