A Department of Transportation component slammed the brakes following semi-furious opposition to its proposal for “on demand” law enforcement surveillance of commercial vehicles a year and a half ago.
It took another six months to turn over the records after a FOIA lawsuit to compel their release, a day before they were due in court Thursday, with no indication yet from FMCSA when it would release a final rule.
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The Department of Homeland Security is not only hiding the purported legal basis for its authority to police misinformation, disinformation and malinformation – the latter sometimes jeered as “true but inconvenient” – but also any explanation for invoking an unexpected Freedom of Information Act exemption to hide them.
Hastily stitched together 22 years ago to prevent another Islamic terrorist attack but since turning its sights on domestic political disputes, the agency gave Just the News a lengthy defense of its work against disinformation but not an answer to how disclosure of its “MDM Space” legal authorities would imperil law enforcement work.
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The Star News Network is suing the Federal Bureau of Investigation alleging the law enforcement agency has broken a critical First Amendment guard in repeatedly denying Freedom of Information Act requests seeking the Covenant School killer’s manifesto. Filed Wednesday, the federal lawsuit asks the U.S. District Court for Middle Tennessee to order the FBI to release Audrey Elizabeth Hale’s manifesto and related documents and to issue a declaration that the agency violated FOIA in denying the request for the information.
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Nine days after President Biden’s inauguration, a Department of Homeland Security office proposed creating several “Choose Your Own Adventure” videos to show Americans how to identify and mitigate “radicalization and potential violence.”
Among the Americans that worry the sprawling bureaucracy created in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks: middle-aged pro-life women, white men who question the government, and divorced mothers who suspect “government connections to child abuse and trafficking.”
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For months, the National Archives and Records Administration has insisted it had nothing to do with the federal criminal investigation into memos containing classified markings that were found at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate since it referred the matter to the FBI in February 2022.
“When NARA identified items marked as classified national security information within the 15 boxes, NARA referred this issue to the DOJ,” acting Archivist Debra Wall wrote Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), now the House Intelligence Committee chairman, on August 16. “Since that time, the DOJ has been exclusively responsible for all aspects of this investigation, and NARA has not been involved in the DOJ investigation or any searches that it has conducted.”
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When the existence of the Disinformation Governance Board burst into public view, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said there was nothing sinister to hide and claimed the office was rooted in “best practices.”
A year later, Mayorkas’ department is refusing to let Americans see most of the legal justifications and talking points it created to defend the now-disbanded board from “blowback,” FOIA documents showed.
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Citizens United filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the State Department and the Interior Department for records relating to President Joe Biden’s “Executive Order on Promoting Access to Voting.”
The conservative nonprofit submitted a FOIA request to the agencies on June 16 but did not receive a response within 20 working days as required, Citizens United stated.
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The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was aware that at least 10 members of its staff committed alleged sex crimes against children, though only one employee was ever prosecuted, according to released documents first reported by BuzzFeed News.
One CIA employee had “inappropriate sexual activity with an unidentified two-year-old girl” and confessed to having sexual relations with a six-year-old, according to internal CIA reports dating from 2004 to 2019 accessed by BuzzFeed through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The employee was fired but never charged.
Another employee allegedly bought pornographic films depicting young girls, while another claimed to have viewed thousands of sexually explicit images of children, according to the documents. These employees also were not charged with any crimes.
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Federal officials have allegedly discovered unused files from Robert Mueller’s unsuccessful Special Counsel investigation, and may decide to release them soon as an “alternative” report, according to Politico.
The documents recently found amongst Department of Justice (DOJ) files consist of findings by one of Mueller’s deputies, Andrew Weissmann, that were not included in the final report that was made public in early 2019. Weissmann first discussed his unreleased findings in a book he published last year called “Where Law Ends.”
“At least for posterity, I had all the members … write up an internal report memorializing everything we found, our conclusions, and the limitations on the investigation,” Weissman claims, “and provided it to the other team leaders as well as had it maintained in our files.”
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Training materials for the Springfield, Mo., school district told teachers they could be engaging in white supremacy simply by insisting the English language be used or calling police on a black suspect, according to records released under a freedom of information request.
The materials, provided to Just the News, include a 40-plus slide training deck that proclaimed its goal was to train teachers on how to address “systemic racism and xenophobia” in the school district and to understand the difference between oppressors and the oppressed. Critics say the slide deck is part of a larger Critical Race Theory curriculum that parents are increasingly rejecting.
It included an “oppression matrix” that identified privileged social groups capable of oppression as including “white people,” “male assigned at birth,” “gender conforming CIS men and women,” “heterosexuals,” “rich, upper-class people” and “Protestants.”
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A new timeline of events in the controversial National School Boards Association (NSBA) letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland shows that the NSBA was in contact with the White House before sending the letter to President Joe Biden.
Emails obtained by a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) from the group called Parents Defending Education request show that NSBA President Viola Garcia sent a memo to state NSBA chapters on October 12 describing its work against parents who were protesting at school board meetings nationwide. Some of those protests regarded mask mandates and liberal activism within schools.
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