Project 2025 Guys Diggin Thru Yr Emailz
Oh they have fun!
As you’ve probably heard, one of the key aims of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 — its detailed blueprint for authoritarian rule by whatever conservative president might be sworn in next year, nudge-nudge, wink-wink, who could that beeee? — involves mass firings of anyone in the federal workforce who isn’t loyal to that president’s ideology. Determining who’ll go on a future hit list is a serious effort for Heritage and other rightwing organizations.
The executive branch would be emptied of civil servants who know things and stacked with loyalists who would get to work Stephen Millering up the joint, bending policy to the will of the new boss. That way the next conservative president (who could be almost anyone!) wouldn’t be embarrassed by EPA scientists who continue to act like climate change is real, or CDC reports showing that quack cures advanced by rightwing podcasters don’t work.
That’s why you should read this new ProPublica report about three busy-beaver Heritage Foundation “investigators” who in the last year have “deluged federal agencies with thousands of Freedom of Information Act requests” seeking all sorts of information about federal employees’ work emails and other communications, in what sure looks like an effort to identify potential candidates for a Project 2025 purge, or possibly digging up dirt for other efforts to undermine or embarrass federal agencies and their workforce:
Among the documents they’ve sought are lists of agency personnel and messages sent by individual government workers that mention, among other things, “climate equity,” “voting” or “SOGIE,” an acronym for sexual orientation, gender identity and expression.
ProPublica found that the three Heritage FOIAfuckers — Mike Howell, Colin Aamot, and Roman Jankowski — work with the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project,” which is basically an oppo research team that “uses FOIA, lawsuits and undercover videos to investigate government activities.” And what a fine job they do!
In recent months, the group has used information gleaned from the requests to call attention to efforts by the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency to teach staff about gender diversity, which Fox News characterized as the “Biden administration’s ‘woke’ policies within the Department of Defense.” Heritage also used material gathered from a FOIA search to claim that a listening session the Justice Department held with voting rights activists constituted an attempt to “rig” the presidential election because no Republicans were present.
All of this is perfectly legal, of course, because transparent democratic government means you gotta provide public records. But these Three Fucketeers have turned data demands into an art form that not only seeks to dig up any dirt it can for the sake of claiming the government is full of wokey wokesters, but also complying with the near-endless requests is also getting in the way of federal workers doing their jobs.
Howell, the executive director of the Overwhelm Project, bragged to ProPublica that he and the boys
had submitted more than 50,000 information requests over the past two years. He described the project as “the most prestigious international investigative operation in the world.”
And what’s the effect of all those meticulous demands for information? One worker who handles FOIA requests for a federal agency
told ProPublica that the volume of requests from Heritage interfered with their ability to do their job. “Sometimes they come in at a rate of one a second,” said the worker, who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak to the press. The worker said they now spend a third of their work time processing requests from Heritage, including some that seek communications that mention the terms “Biden” and “mental” or “Alzheimer’s” or “dementia” or “defecate” or “poop.”
“They’re taking time away from FOIA requesters that have legitimate requests,” said the worker. “We have to search people’s accounts for poop. This isn’t a thing. I can’t imagine a real reporter putting in a request like that.”
You know, just in case somebody’s email might prove that Joe Biden is a senile geezer who’s always shitting his pants. That’s some SERIOUS BUSINESS because WE THE PEOPLE need to know.
Howell explained to ProPublica that the worker needs to stop sniveling, STFU, and get back to work, capeesh?
“I’m paying them, so they should do their damn job and turn over the documents. Their job is not to decide what they think is worth, you know, releasing or not.” He added that “we’re better journalists by any standard than The New York Times.”
So what sort of dirt are the Trolling Trinity seeking? Basically, anything that might conceivably be useful in identifying federal workers they can accuse of doing Bad Ideological Things, like saying trans people exist and have rights, or that climate change is real, or really, any damn thing. Give up the data and they’ll find an outrage in it.
They had 744 requests for the Interior Department, demanding data on any communications, across multiple platforms, from employees who used terms like “climate change,” “DEI” (diversity, equity and inclusion), and “GOTV” (get out the vote, because why are government employees messing around in politicking?). The story doesn’t mention whether that last one ensnared anyone violating the Hatch Act, but the Heritage hacks had to ask to be sure. The weirdos even demanded
the complete browser history for Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, “whether exported from Chrome, Safari, Windows Explorer, Mozilla.”
The Searchers also wanted to know about federal employees’ communication with Enemy Nonprofits, with hundreds of requests for records of possible contacts with
civil rights and voting rights groups, including the ACLU; the Native American Rights Fund; Rock the Vote; and Fair Count, an organization founded by Democratic politician and voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams.
My god, maybe Deb Haaland talked about climate change with tribal leaders, even! Yes, of course she has, because that’s her friggin’ job.
Mind you, this is all for very serious journalism purposes, Howell oozed when asked if the requests were aimed at creating a hit list of government employees.
Howell said, “Our work is meant to just figure out who the decision-makers are.” He added that his group isn’t focused on simply identifying particular career employees. “It’s more about what the bureaucrats are doing, not who the bureaucrats are,” he said.
Gotta have everything so the next conservative president and his people will know whom to target.
There’s so much more, including a discussion of training videos Heritage has made so that future rightwing government employees will be ready to get to work uprooting all the unholiness in federal agencies. One advises that if these future fascist functionaries aren’t willing to “implement a dramatic course correction because you’re afraid it’ll damage your future employment prospects,” then they should “Do us all a favor and sit this one out.”
As we say, read the whole thing. Another video even tells potential apparatchiks how to avoid putting anything in writing, so it can’t be subject to a FOIA request like those from the “Oversight Project.” As a final reminder that we’re headed toward Insurrection/Inception territory, ProPublica closes by noting that
Heritage’s FOIA blitz has even sought information about what government employees are saying about Heritage and its employees, including the three men filing the thousands of FOIAs. One request sent to the Interior Department asks for any documents to and from the agency’s chief FOIA officer that mention Heritage’s president, Kevin Roberts, as well as the names of Aamot, Howell and Jankowski.
Somewhere in Hell, Joseph Stalin and Mao are lamenting that they ruled before the computer age.
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I don’t feel like someone should just be able to request what amounts to a google search for one word. A request should be a little more specific than that. They need to set some limits on this shit.
Heritage is sending an average of 70 requests a day for 2 years.