Three Heritage Foundation investigators flooded federal agencies with thousands of Freedom of Information Act requests over the past year, asking for a wide range of information about government officials, including communications that could be seen as political liability by conservatives. The documents they sought include lists of agency employees and messages sent to individual public officials that mention, among other things, “climate equity,” “voting,” or “SOGIE,” acronyms for sexual orientation, gender identity and expression.
An analysis of more than 2,000 public records requests filed by Amott, Howell and Jankowski with more than two dozen federal offices and agencies, including the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Trade Commission, shows an intense focus in Garam. Button phrases used by individual public officials.
Those 2,000 requests are just the tip of the iceberg, Howell told ProPublica in an interview. Howell, executive director of the Oversight Project, estimates that his group has sent out more than 50,000 requests for information over the past two years. He described the project as “the most prestigious international research program in the world”.
Of the 744 requests that Amott, Jankowski and Howell submitted to the Department of the Interior last year, 161 involved emails and text messages from government officials, as well as Slack and Microsoft Teams messages containing terms such as “climate change”; “DEI”, or Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; and “GOTV”, short for Get Out the Vote. Many of these FOIAs request messages from individual employees by name
Trump has made clear his intentions to reform the Department of the Interior, which protects the country's natural resources, including millions of acres of land. The department was created under President Joe Biden. Tackling climate change a priority
Hundreds of requests asked government officials to contact civil rights and voting rights groups, including the ACLU; Native American Rights Fund; Swing the vote; and Fair Count, an organization founded by Democratic politician and voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams. Still other FOIAs sought to communicate “Trump” and “downsizing,” a term that referred to layoffs.
Several requests center on personnel, including those sent to the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Some are calling for “all employees to assume agency roles as political appointees beginning January 20, 2021” on day one of the Biden administration. Others target career workers. Still looking for “classification tables” from other FOIA agencies.
“Whether it’s part of an effort to intimidate public officials or ultimately fire them and replace them with those who will be loyal to a leader they prefer,” Noah Bookbinder, president and CEO of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington , said or CREW, said about FOIAs.
Asked whether the project collected records to facilitate the firing of public employees, Howell said: “Our job is just to determine who the decision-makers are.” He added that his group isn't just focused on identifying workers in specific careers. He said: “There is more talk about what the bureaucrats are doing, not who the bureaucrats are.”
Howell said he was speaking on behalf of himself and the Oversight project. Aamot requested questions in writing but did not respond. Jankowski did not respond to a request for comment.
Bookbinder also noted that agencies inundated with requests could interfere with the government's ability to function. “It’s OK to make a FOIA request,” said Bookbinder, who acknowledged that Crews also submitted his part of the request. “But if you deliberately paralyze the system, you could create a slow response to FOIA… and you could paralyze other government functions.”
In fact, a government employee who processes FOIAs for a federal agency told ProPublica that Heritage's volume of requests interferes with its ability to do its job. “Sometimes they reach the speed of one second,” said the worker, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press. Staff said they now spend a third of their work time processing Heritage requests, including some that mention the words “Biden” and “mental” or “Alzheimer” or “dementia” or “poop” or “looking for poop.”
“They are taking time away from FOIA requesters who have legitimate requests,” the activist said. “We need to investigate people’s reports of murders. It's not a thing. I can't imagine a real reporter making such a request.
Asked about the comments, Howell said: “I’m paying them, so they should do what they can and return the documents. Their job is not to determine what they value, you know, disclose or not.” He added that “we are better journalists, by any standard, than The New York Times.”
Project 2025, led by Heritage, became politically toxic – Trump rejected the effort and Kamala Harris wanted to bind her opponents to the plan – as part of the proposal. Identification and dismissal of 50 thousand career civil servants Those considered “ineffective” by the new Trump administration. Trump attempted to do so at the end of his first term, issuing an executive order known as “Schedule F” that allows his administration to reclassify thousands of public employees, making it easier to fire and replace them. Biden then canceled it.
The 887-page policy plan for Project 2025 proposes that the next conservative president reissue the “Appendix F” executive order. This means that a future Trump administration will have the power to replace thousands of career civil servants with new workers of its choosing.
To fill these vacancies, as reported by ProPublica, Project 2025 also recruited, vetted and trained future civil servants for the Republican administration. A training video obtained by ProPublicaDan Huff, a former Trump White House staffer, said future public servants should be prepared to make drastic policy changes if they join the administration.
“If you're not willing to help implement a dramatic course correction because you're afraid it will hurt your future job prospects, it will hurt you socially — look, I get it,” Hough said. “This is a real danger. It's a real thing. But please: do us all a favor and stay out.”
Howell, head of the Oversight Project and one of the FOIA filers, is a featured speaker in one of Project 2025's training videos, where he and two other experienced government investigators discuss different types of government oversight, such as FOIA requests, inspector investigations general and congressional investigations. Another speaker in the video, Tom Jones of the American Accountability Foundation, advises potential public officials in the Conservative administration on how to avoid sensitive or embarrassing emails under FOIA law — the same strategy the Oversight Project is now using. The Biden administration.
“If you want to solve something, if you can do it, it's probably better to walk down the hall, push a guy's button and say, 'Hey, what are we going to do here?' Talk about the decision,” Jones said.
“It's probably better for you,” Jones said, “to go to the cafeteria and have a cup of coffee, talk it over and make a decision, rather than emailing him and creating a thread that Accountable.US or one of these other groups will go back and find out.”
The records requests are wide-ranging, seeking “full calendar exports” for hundreds of public employees. A FOIA submitted by Aamot requested Home Secretary Deb Holland's full browser history “be exported from Chrome, Safari, Windows Explorer, Mozilla.” Amot is the most frequent of the three requesters, whose Online Biography Described as a former Army Special Operations Command psychological operations planner, some FOIA contributions were made on behalf of the Heritage Foundation and others to the Daily Signal. Publication ceased at the Heritage Foundation in June, but another, according to an announcement on the think tank's website page Still seeking donations for both the foundation and the Daily Signal.
ProPublica obtained a series of FOIAs from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Health Resources and Services Administration, as well as requests from the Department of the Interior through its own public records requests.
Several of the Heritage Foundation's requests focus on gender, asking federal agencies for material presented to employees or service providers that refers to “DEI,” “transgender,” “equity,” or “pronouns.” AmeriCorps and the Chemical Safety Board, among other agencies, said it believes the group has uncovered evidence that “unpopular and simply sexually offensive and sexually disturbing ideas are now being translated into official words, words, policies, procedures and guidance documents.”
Heritage's FOIA campaign even sought information about what government officials were saying about Heritage and its employees, including three individuals who filed thousands of FOIAs. A request sent to the Department of the Interior asked for any documents to and from the agency's FOIA director naming Heritage President Kevin Roberts, as well as Amott, Howell and Jankowski.
