In this week’s FOIA round-up, calendars and emails reveal communication between Trump administration officials and corporate executives in a mining project, a contract with a private pretrial services firm raises questions about the role of for-profit companies in the legal system, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention records reveal that rates of people detained with criminal records has decreased in the past couple of years. Also, a Supreme Court ruling is bad news for people seeking government records pertaining to private entities.

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, we’ll be accepting submissions and suggestions all week for new requests to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for prominent figures in LGBTQ+ history. Each suggestion will be submitted free-of-charge and made publicly available.

Last month, San Francisco became the first municipality in the country to ban the use of facial recognition by city departments. Later today, Somerville, Massachusetts may join its ranks. Agencies in other cities, however, aren’t waiting for city councils to weigh in, implementing policies that bar the use of facial recognition. Though the agency-level limits are not subject to the public development and enforcement that support city or state-level rules, they can be important measures in an agency’s own relationship with residents.

Tennessee’s Montgomery Bell State Park is usually a tranquil place, but that changes when white nationalist groups rent its conference center - and state taxpayers are left footing the bill.

Last Friday, lawmakers made two major moves in challenging the use of privately-owned detention centers and prisons in the United States.

Exactly one year ago, Emma Best sent the Central Intelligence Agency a FOIA request for emails on WikiLeaks. In response, the Agency has repeatedly attempted to stonewall the request using a series of tactics, the latest of which appears to be simply ignoring the matter. Now it’s time to sue.

Earlier this year, we reported on an upcoming Supreme Court case, Food Marketing Institute v. Argus Leader Media, which some in the FOIA community feared might severely restrict the public’s ability to track the flow of tax dollars into private companies.

Today, SCOTUS passed down its ruling, and it appears those fears were justified.

Last August, with support from the Online News Association, we partnered with the Engagement Lab at Emerson College and the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism to explore new ways of teaching public records to students and the broader community. A new website and downloadable guide details what we’ve learned

Last week, we added a link to our newsletter page in the site footer, set the default to be capped for crowdfunded requests, started adding new payment addresses for agencies, and a number of other small tweaks to the site.

In this week’s FOIA round-up, an email exchange between two White House officials and National Aeronautics and Space Administration head Jim Ridenstine show the administration asked NASA to “systematically sidestep” the “nonsense” of man-made climate change, documents reveal that Mexico had already planned immigration concessions months before tariff threat, and records show Chicago Police sergeant under investgation for alleged sexual assault had previously been reccomended for firing are investigating a transgender woman’s sexual assault claim against one of their own sergents.

A letter in the Central Intelligence Agency’s declassified archives shows that in late 1959, the Agency received an unsolicited suggestion from a helpful citizen on how to best weaponize haberdashery. While there’s no record that the CIA ever followed through on the advice, or even responded to the letter, it apparently left enough of an impression to remain classified for the next 44 years.

The 86th Texas Legislative session ended on May 27th, and just last week, Governor Greg Abbot finished signing bills into law. According to the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, 193 of those bills discussed were related to public records - three of which deserve particular attention.

Last week, Advay Mengle submitted a pull request that helpfully includes prior subject lines in emailed communications. We’ve also got a test version of a new Assignments landing page that better highlights recent contributions and open Assignments you can help.

In this week’s FOIA round-up, a photographer used Federal Bureau of Investigation records to track down the location where a man was murdered 50 years ago for a photo project on the white power movemnt, medical marijuana registry data shows a decline in the rate of medical marijuana patients, and the New York Times Editorial Board calls for a repeal of law that keeps police misconduct records secret.

Unwilling to wait for federal regulation to develop, municipal leaders from California to Massachusetts are pushing their own rules on the acquisition and use of facial recognition technology.

A pioneer of the contemporary gay rights movement was forced to use an alias to protect his father’s career. Jack Nichols, Jr., co-founder of the Mattachine Society of Washington, conducted most of his activism under the pseudonym “Warren Adkins” at the request of his father, Jack Nichols Sr.. The senior Nichols was a Special Agent at the Federal Bureau of Investigations, and believed his son’s sexuality and related advocacy would bring serious career repercussions.

According to records released to Emma Best as part of the Freedom of LGBTQIA+ Information project, Special Agent Nichols was right.

If you’re in Tunis or Houston, come say hi and see what’s in store as we continue integrating MuckRock and DocumentCloud. On the development front, only minor updates this week, including a tweak to stop our site statistics from breaking and more robust username handling.

In this week’s FOIA round-up, the Interior Department releases heavily redacted documents to regarding the deployment of law enforcement officials to assist Border Patrol at the U.S.-Mexico border, Michigan authorities issue search warrants for the devices of former governor Rick Snyder as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into the Flint water crisis, and the Intercept obtains emails suggesting the Tennessee governor’s office and Volkswagen worked together suppress the United Auto Workers’ attempts to unionize a factory in Chattanooga.

North Carolina has exactly 100 counties, and two weeks ago, MuckRock sent a public records request to each one of them in an effort to learn more about inmates’ options for prison communication.

Formerly TOP SECRET records in Central Intelligence Agency’s archives, only declassified in 2013, outline the Office of Strategic Services plan to wage psychological warfare against Nazi Germany ahead of the D-Day invasion.

Shortly after lunchtime on what was shaping up to be a relatively uneventful Wednesday, the @FBIRecordsVault Twitter account - which posts sporadic updates to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s FOIA reading room - tweeted out the words “Bigfoot” and a link. And with that, the Wednesday officially became eventful.

Longtime MuckRock readers might have noticed that there are two ways to link to responsive records on the site: A direct link to the .pdf on our server, or a link to the DocumentCloud document viewer on the request page. Wherever possible, we try to link to the latter, as it has a few advantages over your standard browser viewer that we’d like to highlight today.

After a 2016 Inspector General report in which Defense Intelligence Agency Deputy Director David Shedd defended his use of a government-issued vehicle to travel to and from restaurants by arguing that trips were necessitated by the poor food quality in the DIA cafeteria, JPat Brown filed a FOIA for the agency cafeteria complaints. After three years of processing, the DIA released 110 pages of responsive records - the most horrifying of which make it sound like Shedd might have had a point.

There are nearly 600 exemptions to the Tennessee Public Records Act, and the list keeps growing. However, a new state law could slow the adoption of new exemptions because it requires the Tennessee House’s Government Operations Committee to review any legislation that creates an exception to the TPRA, which requires government records to be open to public inspection.

Last week, no new features on MuckRock, but we rolled out new unit tests to improve overall site reliability in future updates. We also continued cranking away on CivicPulse … but no new name.