Heritage Foundation Staffers Flood Federal Agencies With Thousands of Information Requests

Three investigators for the Heritage Foundation have deluged federal agencies with Freedom of Information Act requests over the past year .

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” The think tank’s Oversight Project is an arm of the conservative group that uses FOIA , lawsuits and undercover videos to investigate government activities.

A government worker who processes FOIAs 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.

ProPublica obtained the Department of Interior requests as well as tallies of FOIAs from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , the Environmental Protection Agency and the Health Resources and Services Administration through its own public records requests.

Several of the Heritage Foundation’s requests focus on gender, asking for materials federal agencies presented to employees.