#AFPI

[casuallyodd]

I know we all get tired of the endless klaxons about what Trump is doing or is going to do. It's exhausting. It's meant to be. it's meant to wear you down and overwhelm with constant fear, stress, and anger.

That said, this is another thing to be aware of and in ways *more* dangerous than Project 2025 because they are trying to be quiet and change how things work.

So a huge focus of this was the idea that a incoming Republican administration would from the outset be at odds with the 2.3 million people who work in the federal government as career employees, and that their job would be to kind of override the collective will of all these employees and impose the agenda of the administration on the entire sort of federal bureaucracy. The overriding message was that these are the - essentially the enemies located inside the federal government, and this is what you would - theoretically, as an appointee or other employee of a new administration - would have to do to confront these people and overcome any resistance they have to the agenda that you'd be seeking.

The kind of things this group wants would break the government. which is what they want. I know that sounds like hyperbole, but this is the group that honestly loves the old "government small enough to drown in the bathtub"

DAVIES: The America First Policy Institute has a policy book called the "America First Agenda." One of the things, as I understand it, that it calls for is the elimination of civil service protection for government employees. Now, this goes back decades. It's designed to ensure that people who are experts in their field in the government are not subject to political whims, that they can't be punished for not engaging in political work and that they must do their work fairly and, you know, objectively. What exactly does the "America First Agenda" say about this? How does it accomplish it? What is it intended to do?

BENSINGER: Well, the federal government is a gigantic employer, right? I mean, it sort of has two divisions, I guess, we could think of. We have the civil service and we have the military service, and they're, I think, roughly equivalent in size. It's a total of just over 4 million people who take paychecks from the federal government. And, you know, we think of the three branches of government - we think of the executive, and we think of the legislative, and we think of judicial - by far the largest would be the executive, which encompasses not just the White House, which is what we think about, but an enormous number of agencies that touch almost all of our lives pretty much every day, right?

DAVIES: What exactly does the "America First Agenda" say about this?

BENSINGER: So the America First Policy Institute - perhaps its most aggressive idea for a policy in a new Republican administration is this concept of turning federal career employees into at-will hires. What that means is that they would lose a lot of the protections, if not all the protections that they have, that they enjoy, that are supposed to shield them from political influence, that are supposed to protect them and allow them to do their job in a way that is not political, that is supposed to be neutral and unbiased. Currently, most federal employees, of which there are several million, are unionized, and it's quite an elaborate process to discipline and dismiss them. And if the institute had its way, if it gets this through, all of these would instantly be the same as an employee, for example, at a Walmart or at a private institution, where they don't have a contract. They don't have a union to protect them, and they can be dismissed basically for any reason.

In fact, the policy book by America First Policy Institute calls for a summary dismissal, quote, "without appeal" - without the chance to appeal for it. They would simply have to give someone notice in writing that they were no longer wanted in the administration. And as long as it's for nondiscriminatory reasons - that is to say they couldn't fire them for their race or their religion or their ethnicity or their gender - as long as it doesn't fall underneath that umbrella, they could fire them for any reason. It doesn't have to be something sort of defensible in court. They could say, well, you believe, for example, in climate change. You said so, and we as an administration do not share that view, therefore we don't want you here anymore. You're gone. Or someone could have a concept about what clean air is supposed to be and how many particles of one contaminant or another should be in the air. And if that doesn't jibe with what possible Trump administration would want, then the America First Policy Institute would say that those people should be summarily fired.

If you don't get why this is bad, think about all of the things Trump has said or done and then understand that the only reason some of those horrendous ideas never happened is because good government employees followed the rules of government. Maybe they even agreed with the policy in principle but they took their job and their responsibilities seriously.

This would be a huge opening for corruption.

And they know it.

When you sign these documents, you're agreeing to comply with certain things. And so one of them, for example, is you have to agree to disclose how much money you raise for the transition project and who is giving you the money. And you have to agree to a limit of no more than $5,000 of donations per donor. Transition fundraising is just kind of a funny little place in the world of fund raising. It is not - unlike campaign contributions or presidential inauguration fundraising, it is not regulated by the Federal Elections Commission. In fact, the only place that regulates it is the General Services Administration, which puts these limits on it if you sign the document.

But in a way that no one anticipated, the Trump transition is refusing to sign the document that would require it to comply with that. And what that means and what people close to the transition have told me is that they feel they can raise as much money as they want from individuals and that they never have to share who gave them money. And I should add that, really, I misspoke when I said individuals because it could also be from organization, institutions, private companies and, in fact, foreign entities. It is truly a dark pool of money that if the incoming Trump administration doesn't sign it, no one will ever - basically ever know how much money came in and who it came from. So that's one piece.

The other piece is the ethics code. In order to get access to government agencies and to get national security clearance and all that sort of thing, incoming transition teams are required to create an ethics code that they write and that they sign and they show to the current White House to make sure it conforms with federal law about what the ethics code should say. And that's supposed to prevent conflicts of interest. It's supposed to make sure that when people are getting access to these federal agencies, they don't trade off the information they're being shown; they don't use that for personal gain; they don't, you know, share that with lobbyists or use that for lobbying purposes of their own. You can sort of imagine what it would be like if someone opens all the secret books of every federal agency and all the secret information and protected information they contain, how people who are not scrupulous could trade off that information.

Well, Trump transition has actually developed its own ethics code, but it has not been accepted or not been submitted in a way that is acceptable to the current administration and has not been posted as law online, as law requires. Ethics experts I've talked to have said that, in part, that might be because it doesn't comply with the law. The ethics code proposed by Trump's transition simply falls short of what is required in terms of ethical safeguards and that it is very inadequate in terms of protecting against conflicts of interest.

...

And some people think that the - what the strategy might be from the Trump transition is to do nothing until after the election. If they lose, well, perhaps it's moot. And if they win their leverage over the Biden administration, which would be outgoing at that point, would be huge because, essentially, you can imagine, a giant game of chicken, where the incoming Trump administration would say, look, if you care about national security and you care about a smooth transition so that the country is safe, you're going to find a way to play ball with us, and dare them to refuse to accept whatever terms that the incoming Trump administration desires. Essentially, we're going to give you a watered-down ethics code, and you can take it or leave it.

[inexable]

Trump's Second Term - Transition Planning in Full Swing?

With AFPI stepping up to potentially smooth out the transition plan for a second Trump White House, it seems the groundwork is already in motion. From the deep connections to Trump’s core team to extensive research on Biden-era policies, AFPI is making strides in creating a detailed roadmap for 2025 and beyond. What do you think of such meticulous planning for a potential administration? Are these efforts to preemptively undo current policies a smart move, or should there be broader considerations? Share your thoughts!

[kbanews]

AFPI NTT Bangun Konstruksi Reklame untuk Kenalkan Anies

  KUPANG | KBA – Relawan Anies Baswedan di wilayah Provinsi Nusa Tenggara Timur (NTT) tak lelah bergerak. Ini yang dilakukan simpul relawan Anies for Presiden Indonesia (AFPI) DPW NTT. Relawan yang baru terbentuk tersebut kini mempersiapkan pemasangan reklame banner besar. Saat ini, pemasangan banner tersebut masih dalam tahap pembangunan rangka konstruksi. ‘’Mudah-mudahan segera selesai, dan…

[contemplatingoutlander]

Here is a gift🎁link to the original New York Times article for those who would like to read it.

The Group at the Center of Trump’s Planning for a Second Term Is One You Haven’t Heard of

America First Policy Institute didn’t even exist four years ago. But it is poised to be more influential than Project 2025.

Late this summer, a prominent right-wing think tank invited conservatives from around the country to learn how to work in a second Donald J. Trump administration. In a series of training sessions in Washington, former Trump officials shared strategies with attendees for combating leftist civil servants in the federal government and dealing with the mainstream media. Participants were sent home with a thick binder of materials for further study. One section’s title: “Tales From the Swamp: How Federal Bureaucrats Resisted President Trump.” The classes could easily have been the work of Project 2025, the conservative policy blueprint and personnel project that was created by loyalists to Mr. Trump and that has been turned into a political cudgel by Democrats seeking to link its most radical prescriptions to the former president. But the meetings had nothing to do with that enterprise or its principal backer, the Heritage Foundation. Instead, they were the work of the America First Policy Institute, a right-wing think tank that has, with little fanfare or scrutiny, installed itself as the Trump campaign’s primary partner in making concrete plans to wield power again.

I thought this comment to the Times article reflected exactly what I was thinking:

TG California | Oct. 24 Do you have known about this all summer and are just bringing it up now? There is so much awful about Trump, but your editorial choices were to write 80 articles about Biden’s age while ignoring Trumps clearly worse age driven deterioration along with his shadow government policy groups designed to enrich the already wealthy, defund education and destroy scientific leadership by making civil servants at will employees. So you spend time screaming for more details from Harris, while giving Trump a pass because these policies are not officially his, but any sensible person would say that of course they are his. They were written by his people, just hidden away. And the fact they were hidden, although in plain sight, is even more reason to be suspicious. Thanks for finally writing this but you are months late.

10/25/2024

by 

Peter Montgomery

The New York Times profiled the MAGA movement organization America First Policy Institute this week. AFPI was created as a sort of Trump administration in exile after voters dumped Donald Trump from office. AFPI has provided jobs and salaries to a lot of Trump loyalists, who are working to put Trump—and themselves—back into power. And they’re preparing to make the most of that power.

AFPI’s own version of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 agenda for a new administration reportedly includes nearly 300 executive orders for a returning Trump to sign. Right Wing Watch reported last year on an AFPI summit called “Laying the Groundwork for the Next America First Administration,” at which the group’s president Brooke Rollins bragged about the “revolutionary” nature of its ambitions to “seize control of the administrative state and use it—while also dismantling it,” describing “an America First confrontation against anti-conservative institutions.”

Now that there’s bad blood between MAGA insiders and the Heritage Foundation over the unfavorable publicity Project 2025 brought Trump’s campaign, AFPI is positioned to be in control of the transition team and domestic policy agenda if Trump wins. One example of what that could look like: the Times reports that AFPI’s plan to allow Trump to fire federal employees and replace them with political loyalists is even more radical than Project 2025’s proposal—it would essentially turn the entire federal workforce into a political patronage system. 

One important aspect of AFPI’s work that this week’s Times story did not explore is AFPI’s partnership with dominionist Lance Wallnau and his “Courage Tour” to turn out conservative Christian voters in crucial swing-state counties in the upcoming election. As the Times noted, one of AFPI’s funders and board members is Texas pastor-billionaire Tim Dunn, whose funding and theocratic vision have been aggressively pushing the Texas Republican Party further to the far right. 

[youthchronical]

New office-bearers for AFPI Ernakulam unit

The installation of the new office-bearers of the Ernakulam unit of the Academy of Family Physicians of India (AFPI) for 2025-27 was held here on March 19. The inauguration of the activities of the new committee was also held on the occasion. AFPI general secretary Dr. Resmi S. Kaimal inaugurated the event, according to a release. The office-bearers of the Ernakulam unit for 2025-27 include Dr.…

[collapsedsquid]

There’s an impulse from a lot of people who think the chaos of his first term resulted in the constant friction between Trump and the “adults in the room” who limited his worst impulses. While there has been planning done to ensure his second term is staffed with “loyalists,” I also think a lot of people are misdiagnosing what went wrong. It wasn’t that they were “adults in the room” that got them fired. It’s that they had plans and ideas that weren’t Trump’s ideas at that given moment in time. The people surrounding Trump now—Vance, Musk, RFK, Heritage, AFPI, Claremont, and various Wall Street execs—are no different. They all represent various aspects of factions of the modern GOP, and all of them have their own agendas. These agendas might intersect with Trump’s mercurial agendas from time to time, but one by one they will find themselves taken out back and shot when they do something that upsets him. Meanwhile—underneath the rotating cast of administrators—institutions will carry on as they always do. The various civil servants will continue to work the machinery of bureaucracy. Without any sort of unified vision of what exactly the Trump administration wants, there’s no reason to think that DHS will just unilaterally start roundups of people. Not to mention, consumed by the whiplash of constant firings, who exactly would want to stick their head out to be the public face of a policy that would almost certainly be reviled by the general public? Knowing you’re going to be thrown to the wolves the second something goes wrong hardly instills confidence in wanting to lead a highly visible project.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Right Wing Watch:

Pam Bondi, President-elect Donald Trump’s second pick for U.S. Attorney General, has ties to New Apostolic Reformation dominionists who worked hard to put Trump back in office and believe his election will bring about a spiritual “great awakening” that will help like-minded right-wing Christians take control of the “seven mountains” of influence in America—government, business, education, media, arts and entertainment, religion, and family. 

After Bondi left office as Florida’s Attorney General, she joined the America First Policy Institute, a think tank created by former staffers that, like the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, has been laying the groundwork for a “revolutionary” plan to “seize control” and dismantle the “administrative state” -- federal agencies charged with protecting American workers, consumers, and communities from corporate wrongdoing. This year, AFPI partnered with dominionist Lance Wallnau’s Courage Tour, which mixed religious revival with Christian nationalist politics and pro-Trump political organizing. Wallnau celebrated the announcement of Bondi’s nomination as a “great pick,” noting, “She’s part of the America First Policy Institute, a great group I had the privilege of working with in the last year.”  Reflecting the MAGA movement’s increasingly aggressive Christian nationalist orientation, AFPI claims scriptural foundations for every aspect of its right-wing policy agenda, which it has called “10 Pillars for Restoring a Nation Under God.” 

Former Florida AG Pam Bondi, who Donald Trump tapped to replace Matt Gaetz for the DOJ head job, has ties to Seven Mountains Dominionists and Christian Nationalists.

[charmcoin]

girl came in wearing an afpi jacket and it took every part of me to not reach across the counter and strangle her

[mariacallous]

Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that Donald Trump was considering Brooke Rollins — his former Domestic Policy Council director now serving as president of a MAGA think tank, the America First Policy Institute — to serve as his chief of staff should he return to the White House.

Within 24 hours, stories emerged that AFPI — dubbed the “White House in waiting” for its quiet role mapping out a second Trump term — had been hacked by the Chinese.

But inside Trump’s inner circle, that wasn’t exactly news: The institute’s online security perimeter had been breached almost a full year prior, then again earlier this month.

The reason news seeped out this time? Because, some Trump confidants speculate, someone who didn’t like Rollins wanted it to.

“The knife-fighting is underway,” one said. “Someone’s like, ‘Oh, she wants to be chief of staff? Well, she can’t even stop her own organization from getting hacked.’”

It’s just one vivid example of the behind-the-scenes jockeying playing out over a crucial White House role even before Trump wins the election. The chief of staff job has always been seen as particularly crucial and particularly fraught for Trump, who ground through four chiefs in four years during his first term. Each, despite wildly different styles and personalities, struggled to rein in Trump and keep him and his administration focused.

Trump himself, those around him say, has been superstitious about making plans before a victory and has been reluctant to discuss the matter much. But among those orbiting the ex-president, tongues are freely wagging.

A host of insiders view the job as crucial to a potential second Trump administration’s success — and had plenty to say about the three people most discussed for the role: Rollins, Susie Wiles and Kevin McCarthy.

[todayisafridaynight]

SOME NEW SMALL TEASERS FOR EACH LAD8 CHARA DROPED !!!!

Here's sawashiro's :)

https://youtu.be/m01WdM-AFPY?si=aDltGQnZ3YNxmyjH

CRYINGELEKJVELAKJ I DIDNT EVEN SEE THIS BEFORE POSTING MASU'S SUBMISSION

[echo-ghost-noise]

(echo ghost noise)

[inexable]

Trump’s 2025 Vision: Reading Between the Lines and Future Impacts

With an elaborate yet somewhat clandestine effort unfolding, the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) is spearheading preparations for a potential second Trump administration — completely separate from the official Trump campaign. With key figures from the former administration involved, the focus is on creating a streamlined, efficient plan to reverse Biden's policies swiftly.

What are your thoughts on the implications of AFPI’s behind-the-scenes strategy? How might this affect the dynamic between a possible Trump administration and current federal structures? And critically, how do you view the involvement of think tanks like AFPI in shaping government policy? Let's discuss!

[kbanews]

Dari Ende NTT, Dideklarasikan AFPI untuk Kemenangan Anies Baswedan pada Pemilu 2024

ENDE | KBA – Semakin banyak yang mendukung bakal calon Presiden (capres) Anies Baswedan. Seperti yang dilakukan di Kabupaten Ende, Provinsi Nusa Tenggara Timur (NTT). Di pantai Kotaraja, telah dideklarasikan Anies For Presiden Indonesia (AFPI) DPW Provinsi NTT. Deklarasi dilakukan pada hari Minggu, 6 Agustus 2023. ‘’Kami akan berjuang tanpa kenal lelah untuk memenangkan Bapak Anies Baswedan…

[saywhat-politics]

The America First Policy Institute, a MAGA movement think tank founded by former Trump aides, has raised millions in tax-exempt funds to promote policies that would undermine public education, restrict access to abortion, limit voter registration and voting, roll back environmental protections, gut government’s ability to regulate corporate behavior, pursue campaigns against transgender people, and more.

AFPI has provided money, an institutional home, and political platforms to many of the people Trump has nominated to run the country; quite a few high-level Trump nominees have AFPI connections, including:

Pam Bondi, Attorney General (Chair, AFPI Center for Litigation; co-chair Center for Law and Justice) 

Kash Patel, FBI (Senior Fellow, AFPI Center for American Security)

Linda McMahon, Education (Board chair; chair, Center for the American Worker)

Lee Zeldin, Environmental Protection Agency (Chair, China Policy Initiative & Pathway to 2025)

John Ratcliffe, Central Intelligence Agency (C-chair Center for National Security)

Doug Collins, Veterans Affairs (head of Georgia AFPI Chapter)

Brooke Rollins, Agriculture (Co-founder, President and CEO)

Kevin Hassett, National Economic Council (Chair, Board of Academic Advisors)

Matthew Whitaker, NATO (Co-chair, Center for Law & Justice)

Casey Mulligan, Small Business Administration, chief counsel (Board of Academic Advisors)

[news-9-miami]

A moment meant to honor athletic achievement turned into a flashpoint in Oregon’s ongoing debate over fairness in women’s sports. During Saturday night’s state track and field championship, two high school seniors: Reese Eckard of Sherwood High and Alexa Anderson of Tigard High made a bold, silent protest when a transgender athlete joined them on the high jump medal podium. Rather than standing beside the competitor, the girls turned away and stepped down. As medals were being handed out, an official appeared to confront the girls, gesturing for them to move. They complied, stepping to the side of the ceremony and watching from a distance. "This Isn’t Hate—It’s About Fairness," Says Anderson The act sparked immediate reaction online. Social media erupted with support, and among the first to speak out was former NCAA swimmer and outspoken advocate for women’s sports, Riley Gaines. The protest, according to Anderson, wasn’t born out of hostility. “We didn’t refuse to stand on the podium out of hate. We did it because someone has to say this isn’t right,” she told. “In order to protect the integrity and fairness of girls sports we must stand up for what is right.” That statement quickly spread across digital platforms, turning Anderson and Eckard into symbolic figures in a growing grassroots resistance to trans inclusion in female sports categories. A National Trend: More Athletes Speak Out Oregon isn’t alone in this reckoning. Across the country, female athletes are increasingly taking public stands, sometimes literal ones. Just weeks earlier, at a sectional final in California, Reese Hogan of Crean Lutheran High made headlines when she boldly stepped onto the first-place podium after a trans competitor, AB Hernandez, vacated it. That quiet but powerful gesture also drew praise from Gaines and like-minded advocates. And back in April, fencer Stephanie Turner made international news when she took a knee before a match against a trans athlete in Maryland. That act of protest cost her a suspension, but earned her widespread attention. Legal Battles Brewing Over Title IX Rights The protests aren’t just happening on the track or in gymnasiums, they’re hitting courtrooms too. Last week, the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) filed a Title IX discrimination complaint against the state of Oregon, challenging the legality of allowing biological males to compete in girls' sports. The complaint was submitted to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, joining similar filings from states like California, Minnesota, Maine, and Massachusetts. AFPI’s Jessica Hart Steinmann, who serves as executive general counsel and vice chair of the Center for Litigation, condemned Oregon’s policies: “Every girl deserves a fair shot – on the field, on the podium, and in life,” she said in a statement. “When state institutions knowingly force young women to compete against biological males, they’re violating federal law and sending a devastating message to female athletes across the country.” The Trump Administration’s Pushback https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6znuAxNhLuo This issue has also escalated to the federal level. On February 5, President Donald Trump signed the “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order. Since then, his administration has prioritized enforcing it, particularly in Democratic-led states that allow transgender athletes to compete in female categories. The Department of Justice has already launched a lawsuit against Maine for defying the order. And during a recent appearance, Trump hinted at withholding federal education funds from California, following the backlash surrounding athlete AB Hernandez. Oregon Championship Becomes Focal Point While the Oregon School Activities Association has yet to respond to inquiries about Saturday night’s podium incident, the debate is unlikely to quiet anytime soon. The transgender athlete in question had previously competed in the boys’ division during the 2023 and 2024 seasons. Their presence in the girls’ category this year has reignited long-standing concerns from athletes and parents alike. For now, Eckard and Anderson’s podium protest has added yet another chapter to a polarizing national conversation, one that continues to test the boundaries of law, fairness, and gender identity in American sports. Read the full article

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Chris D'Angelo at HuffPost:

When it comes to the public’s ability to pry documents loose from federal agencies, Donald Trump’s supporters accept nothing less than full disclosure and have spent the past few years bombarding federal agencies with requests for records. But it seems overwhelmingly likely that posture will soon change ― right around noon on Jan. 20.

Take Trump-era Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, who is now a key member of the president-elect’s transition team and is widely expected to land another powerful administration post next year. In a May 2023 episode of the America First Policy Institute’s podcast, “The Tank,” Bernhardt bemoaned that left-wing organizations he’d “never heard of” had “inundated” federal agencies with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests during Trump’s first term, “to the point that it created a lot of activity in terms of slowing down the agenda.” “Frankly, I think they were very effective,” he said. “They’re highly funded by non-disclosed entities, and that’s fine. I was even surprised to find that much of their activity is tax-deductible.” “I’m not suggesting it’s illegal, but what I am suggesting is that it is incredibly one-sided,” he added. “That one-sided effort meant that their voice was often the only voice in the echo chamber surrounding policies related to the administration.” Bernhardt’s condemnation of perceived political adversaries using the 1967 law as intended to shine light on the inner functions of government is ironic. As a longtime lobbyist for oil, gas, mining and agricultural interests, Bernhardt entered the Trump administration with so many potential conflicts of interest that he had to carry around a card listing his former clients. Under his watch, the Department of the Interior repeatedly meddled with FOIA, going as far as to withhold information about Bernhardt ahead of his confirmation hearing to take over as secretary after the departure of scandal-plagued Ryan Zinke. And over the last couple of years, right-wing organizations, including the America First Policy Institute — many of them tax-exempt nonprofits and led by former Trump administration officials — have swamped the Interior Department and other federal agencies with thousands of records requests, many of them targeted at specific employees. (Bernhardt is chair of AFPI’s Center for American Freedom.)

Leading that sleuthing effort is the Heritage Foundation, an influential right-wing organization that spearheaded Project 2025, the extreme-right policy blueprint that GOP operatives compiled to guide Trump in a second term. Mike Howell, a former Trump administration official and current executive director of Heritage’s Oversight Project, told ProPublica last month that the foundation has filed more than 50,000 FOIA requests since 2022. Many of those requests target specific career civil servants and seek communications that mention a variety of “culture war” topics, including climate change action and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Others target internal discussions about Trump.

[...] One employee in the FOIA office of a government agency told ProPublica that the right-wing effort has jammed up the FOIA queue to the point that it has severely affected the agency’s ability to keep up with requests. And ethics watchdogs expect that the fishing expedition is part of Project 2025’s authoritarian vision of dismantling federal agencies and replacing tens of thousands of career staff — so-called rogue bureaucrats — with Trump loyalists willing to advance right-wing policies.

[...] The Trump administration has a record of doing exactly what Howell takes issue with. During Trump’s first year in office, federal agencies set a new record for censoring and withholding government documents requested through FOIA, The Associated Press reported at the time. Trump’s Interior Department changed its FOIA policy to allow for political appointees to review public information requests prior to their release and at one point proposed new regulations to grant the agency the ability to reject “burdensome” records requests and impose monthly limits for individual requesters. In a 2020 report, the Interior Department’s internal watchdog concluded that political appointees blocked the public release of documents related to Bernhardt ahead of his confirmation hearing in March 2019.

[...] Trump and his allies are pledging, yet again, to dismantle the “deep state” bureaucracy that they claim is conspiring against them. That is likely to include dismantling federal offices they deem not essential to an agency’s core function, including those working on climate change and environmental justice. What they conveniently forget is that the people in government they view as the enemy are, by and large, simply carrying out the Biden administration’s agenda.

Donald Trump’s first term was a censorious mess with FOIA requests. His 2nd term will be much worse.