Biden's Legacy: Leaving FOIA In Shambles
Editor's Note: The following is the first in a series of articles on President Joe Biden's legacy when it comes to press freedom, whistleblowing, and government secrecy. The series will be published from now until January 2025.
President Joe Biden’s administration promised a “recommitment to the highest standards of transparency,” and officials were well aware of the extent to which Donald Trump’s administration had engaged in censorship and undermined the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Despite promises, when it came to FOIA and the public’s right to know, the Biden administration was just as bad or slightly worse than the Trump administration during its last fiscal year in office. In fiscal year 2023, United States government agencies censored, withheld, or claimed that they could not find any records two-thirds of the time.
According to Matthew Connelly, author of “The Declassification Engine: What History Reveals About America’s Top Secrets,” the Biden administration did not give “policymaking in this area much more priority” than the Trump administration. “After his first year, advocacy groups were unable to find anyone in the White House who was even working on the issue.”
Read the full article at The Dissenter
Ralph Nader said that a year ago the Biden Administration ordered the State Department to stop reporting on their known death count in Gaza which today should be close to 400,000 according to military estimates and when accounting for disease dehydration and the destroyed health care system is double that and which the media has refused to cover and Congress has refused to investigate for Biden’s transparency legacy.
Thank You Kevin