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All Access
6 items
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State
Gov. Glenn Youngkin has ordered state police to investigate explosive allegations from a conservative blog that Fairfax County Public Schools officials helped multiple underage girls obtain abortions in 2021 — a probe whose findings may not surface before Election Day but could still sway voters in the court of public opinion. Virginia law requires minors to obtain either parental consent or a successful court petition to undergo the procedure. Such records are also exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. The Mercury asked the Fairfax County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court whether any petitions were filed at all in 2021 and how many have been filed in subsequent years, which they did not provide. Still, the possibility that a public school broke state law and bypassed parents’ consent rights is quickly becoming a political talking point for Republican candidates this year.
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State
Walter Curt Jr., the man who first published allegations that employees of Fairfax County Public Schools assisted students in getting abortions without their parents’ knowledge, has familial ties to Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears and Attorney General Jason Miyares. Virginia Scope sent a Freedom of Information Act request to FCPS asking for any communications about any investigations into these allegations, internal or external, between March 1, 2025, and August 13, 2025. FCPS declined to give Virginia Scope the records requested. Virginia Scope then followed up and asked for the number of records that FCPS is withholding, which they are required by law to disclose. They declined to provide the number.
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Local
The Staunton School Board recently began livestreaming one of its two monthly work sessions. Staunton, the only [local] school board that holds regular work sessions, previously held all of its work sessions in the second floor school board conference room in city hall. Because of logistical issues, those meetings were not livestreamed, although they were open to the public. The board does not take votes during work sessions, but many of the topics on the regular meeting agenda are discussed in detail. In January, community member Bryan Flavin contacted the board with concerns over what he felt was a lack of transparency.
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In other states-South Carolina
In a rare move, the Beaufort (South Carolina) City Council will meet Monday to consider hiring outside legal counsel to investigate the inadvertent release of 9,000 unredacted documents earlier this month as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. The city notified the public Aug. 5 about the massive release of emails and attachments, which were sent to Kiel and Autumn Hollis. The Hollises had submitted a Freedom of Information Act Request regarding the search for their missing daughter in February. Their daughter was located after a few days later, but the couple was displeased with the way police handled the case. However, the city, when it turned over the information, failed to redact sensitive information that is not public, such as social security numbers of various individuals, and information relating to ongoing litigation. The mistake sent city officials scrambling to figure out exactly who had been compromised and trying to retrieve the information from the Hollises, who still have the documents but have pledged not to make them public.
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The Department of Homeland Security rebuffed a request for public records related to the National Guard deployment in Los Angeles this summer, saying that the agency had not maintained text message data among top officials since early April, according to its communications with a nonprofit watchdog group. A July 23 letter from the Homeland Security Department’s public records office, in denying the request from the nonprofit American Oversight, said that “text message data generated after April 9” was “no longer maintained.” Under the Federal Records Act, government agencies are required to preserve all documentation that officials and federal workers produce while executing their duties, and they have to make federal records available to the public under the Freedom of Information Act unless they fall under certain exemptions.
The Seattle Times
Welcome back to another edition of FOIA Files. This week, I’m resurfacing dozens of emails from my FOIA archives that I obtained in 2018 from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These seven-year-old documents, some that were previously unreleased, are timely again! They relate to a tweet Trump posted in 2018 ahead of a monthly jobs report, and the stunned reactions by officials inside BLS, as it’s known. The emails are a reminder that Trump’s relationship with the Department of Labor unit as it relates to employment data has long been acrimonious.
Bloomberg
“Democracies die behind closed doors.” ~ U.S. District Judge Damon Keith, 2002
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