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President Donald Trump addresses the audience after signing a bill preventing California from implementing its rule to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035, during an event in the East Room of the White House, Thursday, June 12, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).

The Trump administration achieved a significant win on Wednesday when a Washington, D.C. court permitted the government to retain critical documents outside the reach of open records laws.

In a 14-page memorandum opinion, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who has recently been challenging for the government, denied a move to impose additional record-keeping obligations on the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

In February, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), a nonprofit, nonpartisan government watchdog, sued President Donald Trump and DOGE over a policy purporting to keep the advisory group’s records beyond the reach of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The 19-page complaint challenged DOGE’s records being stored as non-agency records under the Presidential Records Act (PRA).

In late March, the plaintiffs moved for injunctive relief, warning about the possibility of “irretrievable removal, loss, or destruction of DOGE records during the pendency of this case.”

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The judge tidily rejected those concerns.

“[T]he Court ultimately concludes that POGO cannot show that its claimed injury, which turns solely on the risk of document destruction, is ‘certain and great,’ ‘actual and not theoretical,’ and ‘of such imminence that there is a clear and present need for equitable relief.'”

In the underlying case, the plaintiffs argue the PRA is not the appropriate record-keeping statute for DOGE. Rather, they say DOGE should be subject to the Federal Records Act (FRA). This is because, in the broader sense, POGO also claims DOGE is actually an agency subject to the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).

Boasberg, perhaps mindful of the acronym salad before him, says the underlying claims about DOGE being subject to the FRA as a function of the possibility of the APA generally controlling the group’s actions are “immaterial” in the inquiry into the injunctive request.

“[A]s long as some policy protects the records, POGO is safe from the threat of destruction,” Boasberg writes. “Such is the case here given that any PRA-compliant records-retention policy necessarily also obeys the strictures of the FRA. That is because the PRA, by its own terms, covers a broader set of records than does the FRA.”

In other words, DOGE’s records are currently subject to more strenuous record-keeping requirements under the PRA than they would be if the plaintiff’s remedy — the FRA — were enforced on it. That’s because, Boasberg notes, the FRA gives agencies “discretion in determining which records should be preserved.” Meanwhile, the PRA “leaves no comparable room for an official’s judgment.”

The court also noted the PRA has more stringent disposal standards, directly addressing the specter of record disposal during the litigation.

Boasberg explains the difference at length:

Presidential records are presumed to be permanent. During his term of office, the President may dispose of a presidential record only after obtaining the Archivist’s written views regarding the value of its preservation; after the presidential term has concluded, the Archivist must deposit all of the records in a government-operated archival facility, and may dispose of them only if she determines that they lack sufficient value to justify continued preservation. Federal records, however, have no such presumption of permanence. Agency heads regularly submit to the Archivist lists of records, including categories of records, that they believe do not warrant continued preservation and intend to dispose of, and the Archivist authorizes them to do so if she agrees.

And, the court observes that “presidential records are subject to a presumption of disclosure to the public.” While such processes can take decades, the archivist is generally under an obligation to make presidential records “available to the public as rapidly and completely as possible.” Federal agencies, again, have substantial discretion when fulfilling their statutory mandate to single out records of public interest and are then only under an obligation to digitize them.

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