#foia

Shannon Bond and Stephen Fowler at NPR:

The State Department is removing all posts on its public accounts on the social media platform X made before President Trump returned to office on Jan. 20, 2025. The posts will be internally archived but will no longer be on public view, the State Department confirmed to NPR. Staff members were told that anyone wanting to see older posts will have to file a Freedom of Information Act request, according to a State Department employee who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation by the Trump administration. That would differ from how the U.S. government typically handles archiving the public online footprint of previous administrations.

The move comes as the Trump administration has removed wide swaths of information from government websites that conflict with the president's views, including environmental and health data and references to women, people of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community. The government has also taken down signs at national parks mentioning slavery and references to Trump's impeachments and presidency at the National Portrait Gallery. The White House has also launched a revisionist history account of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and has replaced the government's coronavirus resource sites with a page titled "Lab Leak: The True Origins of Covid-19."

The removal of State Department X posts from public view appears to be less about ideological differences with past statements and more about control of future messaging. The directive will see the removal of posts from Trump's first term as well as those under then-Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

[...]

Accounts for embassies, ambassadors, bureaus affected

The State Department directive applies to all the department's active official X accounts, including accounts for U.S. embassies and missions, ambassadors and department bureaus and programs, according to screenshots of internal guidance seen by NPR. The department has used its posts on X and other social media sites for years to share everything from policy announcements and speeches by the secretary of state and ambassadors, to fact sheets for travelers and images from around the world. "These posts to be removed are not just press statements. They include our embassies' July 4 livestreams, photos of COVID vaccine donations to other nations, holiday greetings, condolences, cultural programming, and the day-to-day record of diplomacy. They show who the U.S. engaged with, when, and how—often the only public record of those moments," Orna Blum, a long-serving senior foreign service officer and public diplomacy specialist who retired last year, wrote in a LinkedIn post about the directive.

"Once removed, there will be no easy public, searchable access to this history. [The Freedom of Information Act] is slow, discretionary, and often redacted. It's a backstop—not a substitute for open archives," Blum wrote. Since Obama, the first president to use an official account on the social media site then called Twitter, left office in January 2017, handing over online accounts has been part of the transition process between administrations. Some content is archived, but those records typically remain in public view.

[...] Some high-profile accounts, including those of the president, vice president, first lady and White House, are handled differently. For example, the @POTUS handle on X is handed over from one president to the next with its existing roster of followers, but posts from the outgoing president are moved to a new archive account, such as @POTUS44 for Obama, @POTUS45 for the first Trump term and @POTUS46Archive for Biden. The State Department guidance says the X removals do not apply to official accounts that are already dormant and marked as "archived," like the @SecPompeo account used by Trump's first-term secretary of state, Mike Pompeo.

CHD sued the CDC in 2023 to obtain the documents after the agency failed to respond to CHD’s Freedom of Information Act request.

Read More: https://thefreethoughtproject.com/vaccine-safety-health/cdc-buried-covid-vaccine-death-data-in-lancet-study-internal-documents-reveal

Posting this in case the article gets taken down. It’s Musk’s gov’t email address. Go wild, y’all ;)

Despite issuing public statements claiming there is no client list, no blackmail evidence, and no reason for further disclosure, the agencies are now backpedaling under oath. According to Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, “They are sending out contradictory messages: telling the American people that no Epstein material will be released, while telling the federal court… that the Epstein FOIA review is proceeding.”

The revelation came in court filings from an ongoing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit launched by Judicial Watch, which has relentlessly pursued the truth about Epstein’s connections to powerful figures and possible intelligence ties.

I'll reblog this with the rest, there's a 10 image limit on posts