Is There Anyone Who Can Respond to My FOIA Requests? Anyone? by Al Shaw August 11, 2026, 5:00 am

Is There Anyone Who Can Respond to My FOIA Requests? Anyone? Asking the federal government for public records didn’t always feel like a shell game. But bounced emails and broken portals seem like the new normal. https://www.propublica.org/article/foia-requests-responses?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=majorinvestigations&utm_content=secondary by Al Shaw August 11, 2026, 5:00 am Is There Anyone Who Can Respond to My FOIA Requests? Anyone? At ProPublica, we file a lot of Freedom of Information Act requests. But since the start of the second Trump administration, getting public records has become a “Kafkaesque” process of bounced emails and broken portals, writes news apps developer Al Shaw. The government’s own data shows that 600+ information specialists — staffers who administer FOIA and the Privacy Act — have resigned or been fired since the start of the second Trump administration. The Office of Personnel Management, which maintains data about who works in the federal government, had a backlog of over 1,600 FOIA requests at the end of the 2025 fiscal year — seven times more than at the end of fiscal year 2024. The average processing time for a simple request at the agency slipped to over 84 days — twice as long as the year before. OPM did not respond to a request for comment.