‘Most Transparent Administration in History’ Is Shredding Documents and Ignoring FOIA

The Trump administration has given itself the moniker “The Most Transparent Administration in History.” It seems like it’s an “in name only” kind of thing, because the New York Times reports that a senior administration official at the U.S. Agency for International Development—the agency that has been stripped for parts by Elon Musk and the extremely cloak and dagger Department of Government Efficiency—told employees to start emptying safes used to store classified documents and personnel files and shred or burn them. The message (see email below) was delivered to the agency’s remaining staffers by Erica Y. Carr, USAID’s acting executive secretary. She told workers to “Shred as many documents first, and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break.” Per the Times, the documents getting prepped for the shredder could potentially contain information that would be relevant to ongoing legal challenges to the Trump administration over its attempts to fre ... Read full article.