In this week’s FOIA round-up, we take a look at the news on schools brought to you by public records: UNC fight to hide sexual misconduct, employee terminations in Illinois, UMichigan’s lengthy court fight, and the racial breakdown of Seattle school recess.

Data from Rhode Island show efforts to eliminate lead poisoning have not succeeded, but government officials and community organizers both find progress in the effort.

You submit the perfect public records request. Weeks pass. When a FOIA officer finally replies to your most recent plea for documents, you open their email and your heart drops: your beloved agency is charging you with a public records fee.

A report released last week by the Inspector General for the Department of Veterans Affairs highlighted the current recordkeeping shortcomings for the Veterans Health Administration, tasked with the care and health of the country’s military veterans.

In 2017, the Department of the Interior announced a new initiative to “reemphasize hunting and fishing” at the DOI: “Secretary’s Shotgun Showdown,” a video game tournament in which employees would take on then-Secretary Ryan Zinke in a game of “Big Buck Hunter Pro” for the chance to win “bragging rights” and a “Beverage on the Balcony.” Just days before the game was dropped off, key details had yet to be finalized.

For more than two years, Detroit has been employing facial recognition technology. Last week, Rep. Rashida Tlaib brought it to national attention when she called the city out for its use of the system.

Just a few minutes of your time will help create a resource for reporters and advocates investigating ICE’s family separation policies.

During my time at MuckRock, I’ve written extensively about the triumphs and tragedies of the Central Intelligence Archive cafeteria(s), including such FOIA favorites as “The Jazz Salad Incident,” “Bacon Accounting,” and “That Scene From Animal House But It’s All The Guys Who Couldn’t Kill Castro.” Before I go, I wanted to share one of my favorite finds from the CIA archives: The description of an employee’s aborted attempt to smuggle chicken out of the cafeteria in her purse.

When we first started MuckRock, it was an experiment in building a better way to file, track, and share public records requests. Almost a decade later, we now have 20,000 completed requests to prove transparency still works.

Last week, we pushed out some small improvements in processing mail that we hope to deploy more widely soon. We also started refactoring GovLens, our open source government site monitoring tool. Finally, we’d love your feedback on a few features and tweaks we have in the works.

In this week’s FOIA round-up, the number of animal welfare citations issued by the USDA has decreased by 65% under the Trump Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is placing record numbers of migrants in solitary confinement, many of whom are mentally ill, L.A. official Michael LoGrande was lobbying private developers while serving as the head of the city’s Planning Agency, and the Tennessee Court of Appeals rules that state agencies still have to release public records that are part of criminal investigations.

Changes to the detention of non-citizen minors and families entered the Federal Register today, despite tens of thousands of public comments in opposition to the changes and serious concerns about its effects on migrant families and children.

As part of MuckRock’s collaboration with Food & Water Watch, we’ve submitted a request to the City of Harrisburg to learn more about their plans and existing conversations with private water companies.

Last week, the Tennessee Court of Appeals ruled that state agencies can’t withhold public records just because they’re relevant to a criminal investigation.

An undated regulation uncovered in the Central Intelligence Agency archives, formerly classified SECRET, appears to outline the “Dos and Don’ts” for Agency historians. While most of the consideration goes into avoiding exposing the identities of undercover agents (and acknowledging the inherent difficulties therein), one surprising paragraph instructs historical officers to avoid “embarrassing incidents” or “unflattering statements” unless absolutely necessary.

New documents raise questions about Denver Police Department continued participation in a controversial Obama-era counterrorism program.

Food & Water Watch intern Gabrielle Rosenthal shares what she learned working on our project to look into water privatization across the country.

Sitting on the shores of Lake Michigan, Racine, Wisconsin lays claim to inventing the hairdryer and garbage disposal. With Milwaukee to its north and Chicago to its south, the town is tapping into that legacy as the first municipality with fewer than 100,000 residents to be chosen for the Smart Cities Readiness Challenge.

Last week, we started including links with details on how to cancel or change your subscription settings. We also put into writing some more of the reasoning behind the GovLens project.

In this week’s FOIA round-up, High Country News obtains the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ new employee harassment policy, documents obtained by the Voice of San Diego show Immigration and Customs Enforcement is neglecting to care for detainees with serious medical conditions, and sexual misconduct allegations against doctors in California have drastically increased over the past two years according to data obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

MuckRock recently learned about Huntington Park, California’s “RoboCop.” Help us learn if your local police are looking to purchase a new robo-officer.

In July of 1955, Lewis Strauss, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, wrote to CIA director Allen Dulles over matters of mutual interest. In one of those letters, uncovered in the Agency’s archives, Strauss thanked Dulles for a package he had sent him, using deliberately vague terms to describe its contents as to “avoid classifying this letter.” Strauss’ efforts were in vain however. Not only was the letter classified for just shy of 50 years, but the vague descriptor itself remains classified to this day.

Tennessee officials were surprised to learn that its state retirement system owned over 7,000 shares of stock in a real estate investment trust that provides capital for the medical marijuana industry. While the state sold those shares, citing “policy implications,” recent Securities and Exchange Commission filings show that Tennessee remains invested in other substances that, while legal, have major health policy implications.

In a Federal Bureau of Intelligence bulletin dated May 30th, 2019, the FBI’s Phoenix Field Office warned that it was “Very Likely” that “Fringe Political Conspiracy Theories” such as Pizzagate and QAnon would eventually motivate its adherents to violence. Somewhat surprisingly, the bulletin later goes on to concede that the conspiratorial mindset underpinning such theories may be influenced by “the illegal, antidemocratic, or harmful activities by high level government officials and political elites” - also known as actual conspiracies.

A MuckRock user found an interesting memorandum from the late ‘70s in our recent assignment From the Archives: Memos mentioning Senator Joe Biden, in which the Central Intelligence Agency bemoaned the “burdens” placed on it by the recently strengthened Freedom of Information Act.