Jeff Danziger lives in New York City and Vermont. He is a long time cartoonist for The Rutland Herald and is represented by Counterpoint Syndicate. He is a recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons, a novel and a memoir. Visit him at jeffdanziger.com.
Donald Trump ran for president promising the most transparent administration ever. And the White House claims that is exactly what has been provided.
How then to explain the notice posted on August 14, in the Federal Register, the official government rule change book, proposing to throw out all existing Freedom of Information Act requests unless the requester renews their request?
This looks like a test at one agency designed to significantly reduce and perhaps stop entirely complying with the 1969 law governing how Americans can hold their government accountable by seeking documents, databases, emails, and other materials.
The proposed new rule drew a stiff response yesterday from the libertarian Cato Institute, which said the proposed new rule is “facially unlawful.”
I agree. I rarely embrace Cato’s perspective on public issues, but here its analysis is spot on.
You can be sure that the largest group of FOIA requesters—big corporations and trade groups—will renew because they have a clear business interest. One of the unexpected results of the FOIA law is corporations using requests to find out what competitors, and regulators, are up to. Citizens and journalists are less likely to meet the proposed new re-request rule.
This proposed new rule is part of a piece in which the Trump Administration 2.0 has displayed sophistication in turning away answers to questions it doesn’t like, hiding information, and generally working to create the most opaque administration in history.
It’s not just Donald Trump attacking journalists who ask questions he doesn’t like, calling them various derogatory terms and then moving on after evading the issue. You can see this in the testimony of unqualified and poorly educated cabinet members like Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who can’t tell Artificial Intelligence from A-1 Steak Sauce.
To evade tough questions, McMahon and other Trump appointees often rely on feigned ignorance and irrelevant but long-winded responses that chew up the time of questioning lawmakers who generally are limited to 5 minutes.
All administrations to some degree try to deflect tough questions by journalists, Congress, and constituents. Trump 2.0 is just taking it to a deeper and darker level, often delivered with contemptuous smirks.
The Trump Administration asserts that this rule change is designed to increase the efficient use of limited government resources.
The federal Department of Energy “is being inundated with requests from vexatious requesters and automated bots… These requesters rarely respond to DOE inquiries… Therefore, DOE is undertaking this endeavor as an attempt to free up government resources to better serve the American people and focus its efforts on more efficiently connecting the citizenry with the work of its government.”
No doubt that’s true, but as so often happens with trump loyalists what we are seeing is a meat axe approach rather than a scalpel or even a kitchen knife approach to cutting out the harm, in this case from what appeared to be bogus Freedom of Information act requests.
If you click on this link you can add your thoughts in the Federal Register comments. You don’t need to write anything long or complex. Simply writing that this is an abomination or unacceptable or contrary to good governance and should be rejected out of hand is more than enough.
The more people who respond the better the chances that our TACO president’s minions will chicken out and drop or ease the proposed new rule.
But building a record of public opposition is crucial so I strongly encourage you, whatever your thoughts, to take advantage of the law that lets you as a citizen advise your government on proposed rules changes.
As the notice states: “All responses to this notice must be submitted by email at StillInterestedFOIA@hq.doe.gov.”
Send your thoughts to that address, please, before the September 15 deadline.
Reprinted with permission from DCReport
During her February 13 Senate confirmation hearing, Trump nominee for education secretary Linda McMahon cast doubt on the future of Black history courses in American public schools, saying she’s “not quite certain” if Black history instruction would violate an executive order banning “critical race theory in the classroom." During Biden’s presidency, some right-wing media figures called for the end of Black history curriculum, with one Fox News personality calling it a “Trojan horse.”
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.
President-elect Donald Trump announced late Tuesday that he intends to nominate Linda McMahon, the billionaire former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, to lead the Department of Education, a key agency that Republicans—including Trump and the authors of Project 2025—have said they want to abolish.
McMahon served as head of the Small Business Administration during Trump's first White House term and later chaired both America First Action—a pro-Trump super PAC—and the America First Policy Institute, a far-right think tank that has expressed support for cutting federal education funding and expanding school privatization.
Trump touted McMahon's work to expand school "choice"—a euphemism for taxpayer-funded private school vouchers—and said she would continue those efforts on a national scale as head of the Education Department.
"We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort," Trump said in a statement posted to his social media platform, Truth Social. (McMahon is listed as an independent director of Trump Media & Technology Group, which runs Truth Social.)
The National Education Association (NEA), a union that represents millions of teachers across the U.S., said in response to the president-elect's announcement that McMahon is "grossly unqualified" to lead the Education Department, noting that she has "lied about having a degree in education," presided over an organization "with a history of shady labor practices," and "pushed for an extreme agenda that would harm students, defund public schools, and privatize public schools through voucher schemes."
"During his first term, Donald Trump appointed Betsy DeVos to undermine and ultimately privatize public schools through vouchers," NEA president Becky Pringle said in a statement. "Now, he and Linda McMahon are back at it with their extreme Project 2025 proposal to eliminate the Department of Education, steal resources for our most vulnerable students, increase class sizes, cut job training programs, make higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle-class families, take away special education services for disabled students, and put student civil rights protections at risk."
"The Department of Education plays such a critical role in the success of each and every student in this country," Pringle continued. "The Senate must stand up for our students and reject Donald Trump's unqualified nominee, Linda McMahon. Our students and our nation deserve so much better than Betsy DeVos 2.0."
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, took a more diplomatic approach, saying in a statement that "we look forward to learning more about" McMahon and that, if she's confirmed, "we will reach out to her as we did with Betsy DeVos at the beginning of her tenure."
"While we expect that we will disagree with Linda McMahon on many issues, our devotion to kids requires us to work together on policies that can improve the lives of students, their families, their educators, and their communities," Weingarten added.
McMahon is one of several billionaires Trump has selected for major posts in his incoming administration, which is teeming with conflicts of interest. During Trump's first term, McMahon and her husband, Vince McMahon, made at least $100 million from dividends, investment interest, and stock and bond sales.
The Guardian noted Tuesday that "in October, [Linda] McMahon was named in a new lawsuit involving WWE."
"The suit alleges that she and other leaders of the company allowed the sexual abuse of young boys at the hands of a ringside announcer, former WWE ring crew chief Melvin Phillips Jr," the newspaper reported. "The complaint specifically alleges that the McMahons knew about the abuse and failed to stop it."
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
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