Public Domain Sues Trump Administration Again
Plus, our investigation cited in NYT and featured on Rachel Maddow.
Happy New Year, dear readers!
To kick off 2026, Public Domain late last week sued President Trump’s Interior Department — again. Like the lawsuit we filed last September, this one is meant to force the agency to release public records.
Since Trump took office, we have filed scores of Freedom of Information Act requests with the Interior Department. Many of these requests seek the emails and text messages of political appointees on a wide range of issues. Some of our FOIA requests have already led to significant scoops and investigations. But the Trump administration has generally failed to fulfill our records requests within the timeline required by the law. That failure has hampered our work and undermined the public’s right to know. So off to court we go, with the support of our brilliant attorneys in Chicago. Wish us luck, and if you want to support this sort of hard-hitting accountability journalism please consider a paid subscription.
In other big news, our recent investigation into top Interior Department appointee Karen-Budd Falen and her financial ties to a massive Nevada lithium mine made major waves after we published it in December. On Saturday, The New York Times, citing our work, ran its own investigation into Budd-Falen, who is a long-time fixture in conservative public lands circles. And then on Monday, Rachel Maddow picked up the story. You can watch a clip from her show here, and listen to the full audio here. Maddow cited Public Domain by name, and called our investigation “explosive.” We plan to continue reporting on Budd-Falen — if you have any tips or information about this powerful political figure, please reach out to us. Our most recent FOIA lawsuit seeks to pry loose records related to Budd-Falen’s work inside the agency, as well as numerous other Interior officials.
Finally, a little housekeeping. Starting this week, we are putting our archives behind a paywall. If you would like access to them, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. We need all the support we can get as we undertake aggressive reporting on our country’s most important land management agency.
Thank you, as always, for reading Public Domain! We couldn’t do this work without you.
— Chris, Roque and Jimmy