U.S. Historians Are Fighting to Stop ICE From Erasing Records of Agency’s Treatment of Immigrants
[August 9, 2018 update] Thank you Meg Phillips, NARA’s External Affairs Liaison, for contacting me and offering additional information and context. Meg notes that “No agency may dispose of records without written authorization from the Archivist of the United States in the form of approval of the records retention schedule. That is what is going […]
Judge Lets Secret Service Hide White House Visitor Logs
The National Security Archive at George Washington University announced today that a federal judge is allowing the Secret Service to hide the White House visitor logs that contain 5.99 million records. Such records were routinely released by the Obama administration. When the Trump administration did not release its own records, NSA filed a FOIA lawsuit. […]
Federal Data Strategy: PEGI Project response
The Preservation of Electronic Government Information (PEGI) Project (of which I’m a board member) just submitted comments to the Department of Commerce concerning “Leveraging Data as a Strategic Asset Phase 1 Comments” [Docket Number USBC-2018-0011 (Federal Register)]. This is just the first round of requests for comments, with other comment periods coming up in October, […]
Trump administration officials dismissed benefits of national monuments
Every day seems to bring a new revelation about just how sneaky and un-transparent this administration’s agency heads are. Since EPA administrator Scott Pruitt resigned, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has become the new poster boy for scandals and federal investigations. In yesterday’s Washington Post, it has been revealed that “Trump administration officials dismissed benefits of […]
Critics say LC’s plan to publish CRS reports is a fail.
Many were thrilled earlier this spring when the FY 2018 Omnibus Appropriations Law included the “public access to all non-confidential CRS reports.” Well, not so fast it seems. Daniel Schuman, Kevin Kosar, and Josh Tauberer (3 folks doing great work over the last several years on the CRS reports issue) have found that the “Library […]