For the fourth time in the last year, Public Domain has sued President Trump’s Interior Department to force the release of public records.
Our latest lawsuit, filed earlier this month in federal court in Washington, demands release of emails and other communications from Interior Deputy Secretary Kate MacGregor and other top agency appointees pertaining to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota as well as Endangered Species Act regulations.
Public Domain has extensively covered the Republican campaign to strip conservation protections from public lands near the Boundary Waters, including MacGregor’s efforts to convince Congress to use an obscure 1996 law to rescind a Biden administration-era mining ban and pave the way for a foreign-owned corporation to develop a copper-nickel mine on the doorstep of the beloved wilderness.
We’ve also reported on the Trump administration’s attacks on wildlife protections, including convening the rarely used “God Squad” committee to exempt Gulf of Mexico oil and gas developers from complying with ESA requirements.
Since launching Public Domain in February 2025, our team has consistently delivered scoops and investigations to our growing audience — stories that would otherwise have gone unreported. Much of our work relies on public records sleuthing, which can be time consuming, expensive and ultimately require litigation. Among other things, our previous lawsuits have sought to pry loose the communications of Karen Budd-Falen, a scandal-plagued political appointee at DOI who we have extensively investigated.
We simply can’t do this kind of aggressive reporting without financial support from readers like you. If you’re already a paid subscriber, THANK YOU! If not, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription so that we can keep shining light in dark corners and holding the powerful to account.
— Jimmy, Chris and Roque
Excellentl. Thank you!!