Latest news with #FOIAFiles
Bloomberg
4 days ago
- Politics
- Bloomberg
What the USDA Spent on the Huge Trump and Lincoln Banners
Welcome back to FOIA Files! What's the deal with the giant portraits of Presidents Donald Trump and Abraham Lincoln that were unfurled on the front of the US Department of Agriculture's headquarters in May? How much money did it cost taxpayers? Was the USDA trying to appeal to Trump's vanity? Those were the questions I hoped I would eventually be able to answer when I sent the agency a FOIA request. Last week, the USDA provided me with 10 pages of documents that contained some responses to my queries. If you're not already getting FOIA Files in your inbox, sign up here. This year marked the 163rd anniversary of the USDA, an agency created by Lincoln in 1862, after the outbreak of the Civil War. It was a time when about half of Americans lived on farms, compared to fewer than 2% today. Lincoln himself spent his earliest childhood years on a farm in Kentucky, called Knob Creek, and once said: 'Every blade of grass is a study; and to produce two, where there was but one, is both a profit and a pleasure.'
Bloomberg
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Bloomberg
DOJ Finally Reveals Sale Price for Seized Wu-Tang Clan Album
Welcome back to FOIA Files! This week, I'm feeling sparks of energy. The government finally disclosed to me the auction price for Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, the seventh studio album by renowned hip-hop group, Wu-Tang Clan. The Justice Department seized the album in 2018 from Martin Shkreli, the notorious pharmaceutical executive and hedge fund manager who was convicted of securities fraud. The government later sold the album but kept the sale price secret. After spending more than four years trying to pry loose that detail, I just got it! Take a trip with me down the Wu-Tang rabbit hole for the whole backstory. If you're not already getting FOIA Files in your inbox, sign up here. I assume most people know the story by now. Wu-Tang Clan sold the only copy of their 31-track album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, at auction in 2015 to Shkreli for about $2 million. The album, conceived as a work of art, was pressed onto two compact discs and stored in a vault in Casablanca before it was sold. The buyer had to agree that they would not duplicate it or play it commercially for 88 years—until 2103.
Bloomberg
27-06-2025
- Politics
- Bloomberg
How Trump's 2017 Iran Strategy Paved the Way for Bombing
Hello FOIA Files readers! This week, I dug out a cache of records I obtained from the State Department about President Donald Trump's policy toward Iran during his first term. I haven't written about these documents before because Trump was long gone by the time the State Department finished turning them over to me. But now, since he authorized airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities last weekend, I thought it would be worth reexamining the trove. If you're not already getting FOIA Files in your inbox, sign up here. Trump has long positioned himself as an antiwar president. That's why his decision to involve the US in Israel's war against Iran divided his base and led at least one Republican member of congress to call the operation unconstitutional.
Bloomberg
21-05-2025
- Bloomberg
The Case of the ‘Lost' FOIA Requests
FOIA requests at numerous federal agencies in February were 'lost' by a government records contractor. It turns out, the 'data failure' was linked to two convicted hackers who worked at the company. Welcome to a special edition of FOIA Files! Today, I published a wild story sparked by an email I received from a federal agency. It alerted me that a few days' worth of Freedom of Information Act requests submitted in February had been 'lost' due to a 'data failure' or an 'outage' at a software company the agencies work with. My investigation into the incident led to a big reveal related to some twin problems. Read on for the backstory! And If you're not already getting FOIA Files in your inbox, sign up here. If you've ever submitted a FOIA request through a federal agency's public access portal there's a good chance you're using an application called FOIAXpress. The software was developed by Opexus, a Washington-based company that provides software services for processing US government records.
Bloomberg
02-05-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Here Are the Job Titles and Salary Ranges of Some DOGE Staffers
Welcome back to FOIA Files! On Jan. 29, a couple of weeks before Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (better known by its acronym, DOGE) began gutting the federal workforce, I tried to figure out who'd been hired to help execute the plans. I filed a FOIA request with the Office of Personnel Management, the government's human resources agency, asking for a list of all individuals hired since Jan. 20, along with their title and job description. I just received that document—keep reading to see what I was able to glean from it. If you're not already getting FOIA Files in your inbox, sign up here. Heads up, I'll be discussing the state of FOIA in a Bloomberg Live Q&A with Edward Ludlow on Friday, May 9 at 1pm EDT. Send me any FOIA-related questions in advance at liveqa@
