Last month, a message on the White House website declared that “the Trump Administration has been the most transparent and accessible administration in modern American history … ensuring the American people are constantly in touch with what their government is doing.”
But if an administration is defined by what it does, this White House has been anything but transparent and accessible.
In February, the Trump administration barred AP reporters and photographers from covering White House events for not obeying the president’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. A federal court declared the banishment a violation of the organization’s free speech rights.
In September, the Department of Defense required journalists to sign a document promising not to use any material, classified or unclassified, that was not approved for publication by officials. Those who refused lost physical access to the Pentagon. A lawsuit by The New York Times claims the policy prevents “scrutiny by independent news organizations for the public benefit,” in violation of the 1st Amendment.
In December, the Inspector General for the Pentagon found that by sharing information on an unsecure messaging app about an imminent attack on Houthis in Yemen, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth risked the safety of U.S. forces. Hegseth refused to sit for an interview with Inspector General Steven Stebbins. In a written statement, Hegseth said he had a right to declassify the information but did not indicate that he had done so. A Pentagon official claimed the report constituted “a total exoneration.”
Not coincidentally, President Trump himself has broken with historic norms, by firing 17 inspectors general, leaving 75 percent of presidentially appointed inspector general positions vacant, and blocking funds appropriated by Congress for the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency. The administration, which has been slow to respond to Freedom of Information requests, is apparently about to impose a rule ending long-standing legal protection for whistleblowers employed by the federal government.
Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the Department of Justice to release Office of Legal Counsel documents arguing that airstrikes on alleged drug smugglers are legal. “Prompt disclosure of these records,” the plaintiffs assert, “is critically important to ensuring informed public disclosure about the U.S. military’s unprecedented strikes.”
Legal experts, Republicans and Democrats in Congress, and some U.S. military personnel have expressed concerns that drug trafficking doesn’t meet accepted definitions of threats to national security, armed conflict or foreign terrorism. Smugglers haven’t attacked U.S. citizens, have due process rights, and aren’t subject to a death penalty; the alleged list of targets reportedly includes cartels not heretofore designated as terrorist organizations; and most drugs enter the United States through Mexico. Because the U.S. is not in an armed conflict with drug traffickers, critics believe the strikes constitute “extrajudicial killings” — or, more simply, murder.
Nonetheless, the Pentagon has rebuffed requests from members of Congress to review the OLC opinion. The Constitution, U.S. Army general counsel Charles Young maintains, gives the president discretion over releasing information. Young didn’t explain why Trump didn’t exercise that discretion as part of his commitment to transparency.
Asked whether he supported releasing the unedited video of the second strike on a boat that killed two shipwrecked survivors on Sept. 2, Trump replied, “I don’t know what they have, but whatever they have, we’d certainly release, no problem.” A few days later, he asserted, “I didn’t say that. That is ABC fake news.” He then attacked the “obnoxious” reporter who asked him about it. This week, Secretary Hegseth said he would not publicly release the full video.
We have seen this movie before. As he pleaded for the administration to be “as transparent as possible” on the airstrikes, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) made the connection explicit: “We’ve got to release the video. Look, we [also] have to get the Epstein files released.”
Asked in June 2024 whether he would declassify the controversial Epstein files if re-elected as president, Trump, who knew that MAGA influencers including Elon Musk, Laura Loomer, Alex Jones and Kash Patel were leading the charge, said “yeah, yeah, I would.” In September, he repeated, “I’d do the Epstein. I’d have no problem with it.”
In February 2025, Attorney General Pam Bondi declared Epstein files were “sitting on my desk right now to review. That’s been a directive by President Trump.” She then released “the first phase” of documents, most of them already in the public domain.
Trump then changed his mind. Bondi said there was “no client list.” Fake news networks, Democrats and “soft and foolish Republicans,” the president claimed, were focusing on “this creep” to undermine his agenda.
The files , he said, “were made up by Comey. They were made up by Obama. They were made up by Biden.” The FBI should investigate other things, like voter fraud, and “not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein.” A lot of people “could be mentioned in those files that don’t deserve to be,” Trump said. While insisting, “I don’t care about it, released or not,” he pressured Republicans in the House to refuse to sign or withdraw their names from a discharge petition requiring a vote on a bill compelling the Justice Department to release all the files.
When that effort failed, Trump took credit for telling Republicans to do what they had already decided to do: “Because of this request, the votes were almost unanimous.”
“President Trump has been consistently calling for transparency related to the Epstein files for years,” a White House spokesperson asserted, and calling for “investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends.”
Once upon a time, Trump appeared to be a born-again proponent of transparency. His lack of faith, however, has been far more frequent, long-lasting and consequential.
Glenn C. Altschuler is The Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.
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