Sunshine Week 2026: Three Big Victories for Government Accountability — and Three Major Threats

Over the last year, American Oversight has scored major victories that forced the Trump administration, and some local governments, to preserve records and allow oversight. These wins make it easier to investigate when the government abuses its power, harms Americans, and breaks the law.

We also know there are many remaining obstacles to transparency. Sunshine Week — a yearly event promoting the importance of government transparency and accountability — is the perfect opportunity to discuss new issues that threaten the effectiveness of public records laws. 

Here are some of our biggest accountability wins in the last year — and some of our biggest concerns for the future. 

Transparency wins

Enforcing records preservation laws to create a paper trail in the Trump administration

Ensuring accountability after Signalgate

In March 2025, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz accidentally added Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to an unsecured Signal group chat where several administration officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, discussed plans for upcoming strikes in Yemen. 

We filed a lawsuit against Hegseth and the other officials involved in the now-infamous Signalgate scandal. Our litigation prompted a court order for key officials to preserve records and exposed a broader pattern of recordkeeping violations across multiple Trump administration agencies. 

Forcing DOGE records retention

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has eliminated hundreds of thousands of jobs, slashed government programs, and amassed unprecedented access to sensitive data. But it is difficult to know how DOGE operates, because it eschews transparency.

But we’ve successfully fought to make sure DOGE leaves receipts. Shortly after we asked a court to order DOGE to preserve certain documents, DOGE unveiled a newly created records retention policy. It requires DOGE employees to “capture and transmit” work-related messages received on personal devices — including through Signal — onto their work devices.

Forcing DHS to preserve text messages

Last summer, we sent FOIA requests to DHS seeking its communications about the Trump administration’s deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles. In July, DHS told us it “no longer maintained” text message data — and hadn’t since April. When we sued, DHS backtracked and said it had provided us with “erroneous information” about its policy and said it does preserve texts, but that it relies on individual officials to take screenshots. 

Because of our lawsuit, DHS demanded its top officials “preserve documents and electronic records that relate to the subject matter of the complaint in this case.” That’s essential given the content of these messages, which may include details of actions that impacted many families’ lives.

Defeating boilerplate transparency exemptions in Congress

Our longest-running public records lawsuit ended in a victory last year, when a federal judge ruled that communications between Congress and the Department of Health and Human Services and Office of Management and Budget related to the first Trump administration’s efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act are not exempt from FOIA. 

The judge affirmed that agencies and congressional staff cannot avoid FOIA simply because boilerplate language pasted onto emails labeled them “congressional records.” Now, congressional staff will find it harder to block the public from executive branch records they have a right to see.

Challenging election interference in Georgia

At the state level, we were able to demand transparency after election-deniers on the Georgia State Election Board tried to influence the way elections work in the state. Our litigation resulted in a requirement for State Election Board members to conduct business solely through official government email accounts, and to properly preserve their communication records. Those requirements will strengthen public oversight of the election board’s actions ahead of the 2026 elections.

Oversight of immigration crackdowns

We, along with Democracy Forward, have been representing members of Congress who are fighting for the right to conduct meaningful oversight of detention facilities. Despite former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s repeated attempts to change DHS policy so that members of Congress cannot access facilities for unannounced visits, courts keep ruling that Congress must be able to enter at any time, without notice. 

Given the Trump administration’s focus on increasing immigration enforcement and the increasing reports of abuse and deaths in ICE facilities, real-time oversight is essential to keep people safe. 

Threats to government transparency

New administrative barriers 

Proposals for new requester disclosure requirements

FOIA is clear: Individuals have the right to request government records without first handing over their personal details. But the DOJ Executive Office of Immigration Review’s online public records portal requires all requesters to submit proof of identification. 

The requirement violates FOIA and likely runs afoul of the Paperwork Reduction Act, a law imposing certain requirements on the government before it can collect personal data. It also may have a chilling effect on immigration advocates — many of whom may be immigrants themselves, caught in the cross-hairs of the administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement agenda — who would otherwise seek information through FOIA requests that would support their work. The same is true for journalists, researchers, nonprofits, and other organizations seeking records about the agency’s operations. 

Last fall, we asked DOJ to remove the requirement, but we haven’t gotten a response.

Increased fee waiver and expedited processing denials 

Agencies typically charge people to complete a public records request, because responding takes time and resources. There are several groups that are exempt from FOIA fees, however, including the media and groups that serve the public interest. We are typically entitled to a waiver under one or both of these exemptions.

Recently, agencies have been keeping our requests “under review” instead of making a clear determination about whether we qualify for fee waivers. Currently, of our 2,502 requests for fee waivers, 1,101 are under review. (Only 152 have been granted, 84 have been denied, and the remaining requests have yet to receive a reply.) Granting fewer fee waivers means higher costs for requesters and a diminished capacity to use FOIA to hold the government accountable. 

Agencies are also denying our requests for expedited processing more frequently, preventing us from accessing time-sensitive records faster. Of our 297 requests, only 51 have been granted.

Increased administrative closures of requests

Last year, the Department of Energy adopted a new policy that requires requesters to email the agency to say they are still interested in their requests submitted prior to Oct. 1, 2024. If they don’t email, the agencies could ignore or even close their requests. The U.S. Agency for International Development created a similar policy that applies to requests submitted before Jan. 20, 2025.

These new rules place unlawful burdens on requesters and give the agencies a mechanism to sidestep their legal obligations to process records requests. They could also result in countless unlawfully closed FOIA requests submitted by media outlets, nonpartisan organizations, and members of the public.

Sideshow motions to strike 

The Trump administration has recently filed motions to strike, or requests to delete sections of lawsuit complaints, in four of our FOIA cases. Government attorneys claim the background sections are “irrelevant” and/or “scandalous” — even though the information we include is often from government sources.

These motions are unusual because motions to strike are rarely allowed, judges typically don’t like them, and the government’s arguments for removing the text are weak. But the government seems to be using this tactic because it wants to avoid admitting damaging facts in court, and the motions can allow the Trump administration to delay responding to the substance of our lawsuits. 

So far, two federal judges have rejected these motions to strike. For example, in our lawsuit for records related to the FBI’s review of the Epstein files, Judge James Boasberg found that we “largely quote[d] administration officials” and that is “hardly scandalous or prejudicial.” 

DOGE Dodging FOIA and the Federal Records Act

On Trump’s first day back in office, he created DOGE by issuing an executive order renaming the U.S. Digital Service the “U.S. DOGE Service” and moving the office from OMB to the Executive Office of the President (EOP). 

When DOGE was housed in the OMB, it was subject to two key transparency laws: FOIA and the Federal Records Act (FRA). Since DOGE was moved to the EOP, the Trump administration is claiming that those laws don’t apply. Instead, they say only the Presidential Records Act applies to DOGE. This would mean its records could be kept from the public until at least 2034. 

Just changing where DOGE is housed should not make it exempt from federal records laws, but we have already seen DOGE try to claim that it is only beholden to the Presidential Records Act. In response to two separate lawsuits seeking DOGE records, the government has told us that DOGE is not an agency but merely an entity that advises and assists the president. We’ve filed multiple lawsuits to challenge this claim and to hold DOGE accountable. Our cases are currently on hold, at least in part, until there is a final decision in a separate lawsuit brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington that will determine whether DOGE is subject to FOIA.

We will keep working in 2026 to shine a light on abuses of power and hold the Trump administration and other bad actors accountable. The Freedom of Information Act and its local and state corollary laws will remain a vital tool in this fight.