By David Cuillier
By all measures, the ability to see what the government is up to in the United States has plummeted to new depths since the beginning of the second Trump administration.
For National Sunshine Week in 2025, I wrote about secrecy creep, the adoption of federal secrecy protections implemented by state and local authorities. In Florida and throughout the United States, this threatens the public’s right to be informed about its government.
A year later, this creep toward secrecy has become an all-out slide.
As director of the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida, I track the state of government transparency in the U.S. What has changed since January 2025 is unprecedented.
Clouds in the Sunshine State
Florida is a good example of this slide. Once viewed as a leader in transparency, the Sunshine State now charges exorbitant copy fees that discourage average people from requesting public records.
According to the nonprofit MuckRock, 24% of public records requests in Florida come with a copy fee, averaging US$1,623. Only Oregon charges fees more often, at 28% of the time. Fees are intended to help agencies cover the cost of large requests, but they tend to be arbitrary and are often used as a way to get pesky people to go away.
And that’s assuming you even get the information you want. One of my own studies from 2019 indicated that, on average, if you requested a public record in Florida, you would receive it about 39% of the time, placing the state 31st in the nation.
In 2025, MuckRock put the percentage dipping lower, at 35%. In March 2026, it was at 34%.
In Florida, more and more government agencies are thwarting the public’s right to know, including attempts to hide the details behind Alligator Alcatraz, the temporary immigrant detention center built in the Florida Everglades in June 2025. The state’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, office has pushed cities to be more transparent while withholding its own records.
Members of the state Legislature are attempting to strengthen the public records law. This would improve transparency in Florida’s state government, but I’d argue it doesn’t go far enough. Other states, such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Connecticut, have implemented stronger laws, including independent enforcement of their sunshine laws, to ensure their governments comply.
It starts at the top
State and local governments appear to be taking their cues from the federal government.
President Donald Trump’s administration heralds itself as the most transparent in history, pointing to the president’s willingness to talk informally to the press or directly to the public through social media.
While that may be one definition of transparency, the federal government’s willingness to provide documents that show what the government is doing – not just what it says it is doing – has been eviscerated under the second Trump administration. Examples include:
- Refusing to provide tax returns, again, unlike every other president in modern history, and then suing the IRS for $10 billion when some returns were leaked.
- Removing government websites and databases.
- Firing the national archivist and the director of the Office of Information Policy, the agency within the U.S. Department of Justice that oversees government agencies’ compliance with requests under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA.
- Firing and pushing out experienced staffers assigned to handle FOIA requests as part of the 2025 U.S. DOGE purges. This led some agencies, such as the Department of Energy, to apply unorthodox practices, including closing out pending requests.
- Axing the new Open Government Federal Advisory Committee, which was launched to find ways of improving FOIA.
- Pulling out of the Open Government Partnership, which the U.S. helped found in 2011 to foster transparency around the globe.
Anadolu/Anadolu via Getty Images
Typically, the Department of Justice releases annual statistics on FOIA requests every March. When I examined initial reports posted in January, when just 11 agencies had provided their reports, backlogs – that is, requests that remain unresolved after a year – had increased 67% from the previous fiscal year. The time to process simple requests nearly doubled.
Plummeting to historical depths
In order to understand how secrecy in the United States now compares to historical precedent, I reached out to people who have researched freedom of information for decades, some going back to the 1970s.
I asked them a simple question: How does the current state of affairs in freedom of information compare historically?
Here is what they told me:
Jane Kirtley is a longtime FOIA scholar from the University of Minnesota who wrote in 2006, “The Bush administration’s contempt for the public’s right to know amounts to an organized assault on freedom of information that is unprecedented since the enactment of the Freedom of Information Act 40 years ago.”
Today, in comparison? “Abysmal,” she wrote to me via email. “It was abundantly clear from the moment Elon Musk and his ‘musketeers’ invaded and pillaged government electronic records that we have entered a new era of deletion, obfuscation, fabrication and utter contempt for the concept of data integrity and the public’s right to know.”
Thomas Susman, who helped craft the 1974 FOIA amendments and currently assists the American Bar Association, wrote in 2005 that increasing delays and backlogs threatened FOIA’s intended purpose.
In February 2026, he wrote to me that the “arc of the FOIA universe has for six decades bent toward greater public access to government information − until now. If ‘democracy dies in darkness’ (according to The Washington Post’s official slogan), America’s democracy is threatened with becoming dead meat. We’ve survived the Civil War, the Great Depression, Vietnam, Watergate and more. If we fight back hard enough, this too shall pass, though not quickly, and likely with lasting scars.”
Patrice McDermott directed Open the Government from 2006 to 2017 and pointed in 2007 to an underlying tension throughout government: “the ability – and willingness – to harness the promise of digital information for public access and accountability while not abusing its potential for control of that information.”
Today, she writes that, as Benjamin Franklin put it, we “have a Republic … if (we) can keep it” and are committed to the fight for our constitutional form of government.
Perhaps advances can be made to reverse the secrecy trend and carry out the intentions of the Freedom of Information Act, as expressed by Lyndon B. Johnson upon its adoption nearly 60 years ago: “I signed this measure with a deep sense of pride that the United States is an open society in which the people’s right to know is cherished and guarded.”
David Cuillier is Director of the Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida.
Truth says
Secrecy means corruption and dishonesty, open records proves there is nothing is being done incorrectly.
If the government is going to hide reports from taxpayers then taxpayers no longer should be paying taxes.
The behavior of the Republican party taxpayers no longer trust the government. It’s a party that can only blame themselves.
Laurel says
What’s disturbing is, there are many U.S. citizens who don’t know, or understand what is happening to our nation.
I cannot tell you how offended I am when I see signs stating “Free Florida” as if it wasn’t free before all the new restrictive laws put in place by DeSantis.
We’ve even seen this locally with a combative school board. The good news is, people started recognizing what they were doing. Now, they must continue to recognize what is not only happening locally, but also nationally.
This is intentional manipulation.
Endless dark money says
Not surprised. The gop pedo terrorist only care for the 3 branches of government……pedophiles, corporations and Israel..
PaulT says
While King Donald obsesseses and demands the funds needed for his armies to prosecutes a Crusade in the Levant, the robber barons like Duke Ron lately of Sicily strivs to keep the peasants in his fiefdom poor and in the dark,
Welcome back to the 12th Century.
Jim says
It is sad that so many of us buy into the “Free State of Florida” as if that is a real thing. Ron DeSantis made sure all his travel records were not available to the public while he was running for president. If you recall, the explanation given was it was for the governor’s “safety”. I always found that quite amusing and was amazed that anyone accepted that. If you are doing nothing wrong and everything is on the “up and up”, why would it need to be kept from the public. I could be wrong but common sense tells me that AFTER you make the trip, your “safety” can not be compromised. What hiding the records does raise questions about are (1) how did you travel (government plane or commercial), (2) did taxpayers pay, (3) was it a campaign trip or Florida state business. There would be many other questions but we could start with those. If you’re not doing anything wrong, why would you hide it???
Of course, you can’t question DeSantis’ ethics. After all, there’s the $10M diverted from a legal settlement with a Medicaid operator to Hope Florida which, coincidentally, is his wife’s “charity”. Again, coincidentally, that $10M went to finance anti- marijuana propaganda in the election to determine whether to legalize it. Again, nothing to see here!
In Florida, an illegal gathering is legally defined as an unlawful assembly, which occurs when three or more persons meet together with the common intent to commit a breach of the peace or to do any other unlawful act. This was enacted in 2023, I believe. So, if three people gather and a police representative decides they have committed a breach of peace, they can be arrested and charged. Almost makes you wonder if this might be targeted to clamp down on any gathering the government decides is illegal. Not that there is any indication in this state that laws might be interpreted different ways for different groups.
As this article points out, our Florida DOGE team advocates “openness” while refusing to allow any inspection of their records. Ah, the Sunshine Law state!
Just a few examples of what the “Free State of Florida” provides it’s citizens as “freedoms”.
At some point in the future, I think we’ll get to see DeSantis’ flight records, the records for Hope Florida and all the other secrets this state does not want us to know. I only hope that if that ever happens, those that support people like DeSantis take a minute to absorb that reality and, perhaps, in the future take anything done by the government with great skepticism and always ask the question “what is this doing for the citizens of this state?”. You might also question whether it’s even legal….
PaulT says
None of ‘Us’ buy into Ron’s absurd claim, Jim.
But most of ‘Them’ seem to, and yes I say Them because ‘They’ currently control the Florida legislature and the State Hous as well as the Divided States of America.
Laurel says
You are preaching to the party who voted in Rick Scott after his company was found guilty of Medicare fraud.
Jay Gardner says
In Flagler County you can request public records per Florida law. Copies are $0.15 per page. ($.20 for double sided) If it takes more than 30 minutes to prepare you pay for the lowest priced person that can prepare them. The labor charge is typically for the redaction of confidential information. Think drivers license, social security, employee medical records, etc. If they are digital it would be no copy charge. The change that occurred recent is that the public records of elected officials home addresses are now confidential. This change may be related to the increase in personal threats. If there was no charge it would possible for someone to overwhelm my office with frivolous request just because they think their tax bill is too high. If you need public records just let us know and we will prepare the as cheaply and as fast as possible.