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Top donors to colleges and universities sometimes want to remain anonymous, said Noah Drezner, an associate professor at Columbia University's Teachers College. "Oftentimes when institutions are not giving out names, it was because it was at the donor's request," said Drezner, who studies giving to colleges and universities. The University of Arkansas, Fayetteville released gift agreements or supporting documents for 11 gifts in response to an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette request for records of the university's top 10 gifts in fiscal 2017.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
In the latest zig-zag in the legal battle over President Trump’s profiting from his lease of his Washington luxury hotel, a federal district judge on Thursday faulted the General Services Administration for inadequately responding to a Freedom of Information Act request. Judge Beryl Howell, chief of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, ruled in the case brought by the nonprofit transparency group American Oversight that GSA, though it had delivered thousands of emails from the Trump transition team, had not “adequately supported” its decisions to redact some documents and withhold some email attachments in the name of privacy. “While the FOIA request does not explicitly refer to attachments, the scope of the request for ‘all records reflecting communications’ plainly covered parts of email communications that were in the form of an attachment,” the judge wrote in instructing GSA to turn over more documents. “GSA’s blinkered literalism, distinguishing emails from email attachments, is at odds with the agency’s ‘duty to construe a FOIA request liberally.’ ”
Government Executive
Top aides to Scott Pruitt at the Environmental Protection Agency are screening public records requests related to the embattled administrator, slowing the flow of information released under the Freedom of Information Act — at times beyond what the law allows. Internal emails obtained by POLITICO show that Pruitt’s political appointees reviewed documents collected for most or all FOIA requests regarding his activities, even as he’s drawn scrutiny for his use of first-class flights and undisclosed dealings with lobbyists. While past administrations have given similar heads-ups to political aides for certain records requests, FOIA experts say this high-level vetting at EPA appears to have increased compared with the Obama era.
Politico
The ACLU on Friday filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking internal CIA records on the spy agency’s push to get Gina Haspel confirmed as its new director, the latest sign of civil rights and liberal groups ramping up their bid to defeat Haspel’s nomination. Haspel’s confirmation prospects remain murky amid bipartisan concerns in the Senate about her involvement in the use of brutal interrogation tactics against detained terrorist suspects during the George W. Bush administration. With that in mind, the ACLU’s request for documents specifically asks the agency to clarify whether Haspel — who now serves as acting CIA director after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s confirmation — has the power to decide on requests to declassify material related to her own background.The ACLU on Friday filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking internal CIA records on the spy agency’s push to get Gina Haspel confirmed as its new director, the latest sign of civil rights and liberal groups ramping up their bid to defeat Haspel’s nomination.
Politico
The U.S. National Security Agency collected 534 million records of phone calls and text messages of Americans last year, more than triple gathered in 2016, a U.S. intelligence agency report released on Friday said. The sharp increase from 151 million occurred during the second full year of a new surveillance system established at the spy agency after U.S. lawmakers passed a law in 2015 that sought to limit its ability to collect such records in bulk.
Reuters
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 “Oftentimes when institutions are not giving out names, it was because it was at the donor's request."
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“The feature could allow government employees to delete public records subject to federal, and state open government and Freedom of Information laws.”