On October 30, 2025, the Sierra Club filed another lawsuit against the Trump Administration after its Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) failed to provide materials in response to one of Sierra Club’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
Established on the first day of Trump’s presidency via executive order, DOGE is behind major cuts to critical government work, including terminating National Park Service workers and slashing funding for climate research, just to name a few. Earlier this year, the Sierra Club sent a FOIA request to the U.S. DOGE Service (USDS) —previously known as the United States Digital Service—seeking communications between DOGE senior staff, including former DOGE head Elon Musk, and people connected with the fossil fuel industry, corporate polluters, and other industry groups.
The request specifically sought communications with known DOGE staffers who had direct ties to industries regulated by agencies that DOGE targeted for budgeting and staffing cuts. For example, Elon Musk, who led DOGE until May, oversaw its significant cuts to multiple agencies that were actively investigating his own companies. Although FOIA has a deadline for agencies to determine how to respond to a request, USDS has neither provided a single document in response to the request, nor even committed to a timeframe for responding, going so far as to say that it is not an agency and therefore FOIA doesn’t apply.
Sierra Club is suing USDS as part of our robust FOIA accountability effort, which aims to shine a light on the corruption and devastating and dangerous actions being taken by the Trump administration across government agencies. Our Environmental Law Program has filed numerous FOIA requests throughout the current Trump Administration to obtain documents about funding freezes, agency terminations, and vacancies of critical staff, as well as companies requesting presidential exemptions to avoid air pollution regulations.
We’re suing to ensure that DOGE is held accountable to the American people, and not to billionaires, polluters, or industry interests. Sierra Club is represented by Environmental Law Program attorneys Elena Saxonhouse, Andrea Issod, and Joya Manjur.