The bureaucracy strikes back — and we’re striking harder



Old habits die hard. The Oversight Project filed another lawsuit against the FBI today. During the Biden years, we were in court constantly, suing the bureau more than a dozen times over weaponization and abuse. Many of the cases we fought then connect directly to the scandals now surfacing under the Trump administration. We were over the target back then — and Washington doesn’t do coincidences.

But this case is different.

We’re suing the FBI to force transparency — not for politics, but for accountability. Because if we don’t fix this now, we’ll look back and wish we had.

Monday’s lawsuit strikes at a deeper problem: the FBI’s claim that it has been “reformed” and is now “the most transparent in history.” That phrase is absurd on its face. Compared with the post-COINTELPRO reforms and the Church Committee era, today’s FBI is anything but transparent.

We’re suing because the bureau has built a system designed to violate the Freedom of Information Act. Over time, the FBI has developed a “pattern and practice” of breaking the law to hide information. Reporters across the political spectrum can tell you the same thing. The bureau stonewalls, delays, and hides behind boilerplate responses that make a mockery of the law.

Our case asks the federal judiciary to step in and force the FBI to fix this — to overhaul its FOIA process and follow the law it routinely ignores. This isn’t a step we took lightly. For nearly a year, we tried to resolve these problems through other channels. But the bureau’s “fixes” never came.

Bureaucratic shell game

The FBI has perfected a set of tricks to avoid scrutiny. It uses canned denials for well-defined requests, ignores the public-interest standard written into law, and buries documents under layers of redaction. Even by Washington’s anemic transparency standards, the FBI stands out as the worst offender.

This isn’t theoretical. In practice, the Oversight Project submitted requests naming specific agents — like the infamous Timothy Thibault — and identifying internal systems such as the Lync messaging platform. We asked for communications containing key terms like “Republican” or “Mar-a-Lago.” Those are precisely the requests the bureau continues to battle with gusto.

FBI Director Kash Patel deserves credit for some high-profile disclosures, but we can’t depend on him to keep discovering incriminating documents in “burn bags” or forgotten closets. That’s not transparency — that’s triage. The FBI cannot investigate itself or selectively release information without feeding public cynicism.

The point of FOIA is citizen oversight — not bureaucratic discretion. In a republic, the people are supposed to control government institutions, not the other way around.

A pattern of abuse

If the FBI had obeyed its own transparency standards all along, Americans would already know far more about the scandals that shook their confidence in government: Russiagate, the Mar-a-Lago raid, Operation Arctic Frost, the targeting of Catholic parishes and concerned parents, and the January 6 excesses. Each of these was compounded by secrecy and delay.

RELATED: Video sleuth challenges FBI Jan. 6 pipe-bomb narrative, unearths new evidence

filo via iStock/Getty Images

The bureau’s institutional resistance to disclosure doesn’t just protect bad actors — it perpetuates them. It allows corruption to metastasize under color of national security and procedure.

Time to clean house

At some point, the FBI will no longer be in Kash Patel’s hands. That’s why reform should happen now while the issue is in the public eye. The systems that enable secrecy and abuse must be dismantled before the next crisis hits.

We’re suing the FBI to force transparency — not for politics, but for accountability. Because if we don’t fix this now, we’ll look back and wish we had.

White ex-state trooper files lawsuit over his firing after viral arrest of black LGBTQ leader



An ex-Pennsylvania state police trooper — who is white — is suing his former agency for firing him after his viral arrest of a black Philadelphia LGBTQ leader.

Andrew Zaborowski arrested Celena McLean — then Celena Morrison — and McLean's husband in a March 2024 traffic stop on the Schuylkill Expressway, WPVI-TV reported.

'It's cause I'm black.'

Zaborowski claims in his lawsuit that state police fired him because of his skin color and that he was falsely accused of racial profiling, the station said.

At the time of the traffic stop and arrest, McLean was Philadelphia's executive director of the Office of LGBT Affairs, WPVI reported.

The station said it reached out to state police for comment but did not hear back.

RELATED: 9 arrested after transgender activists clash with police at 'Let Women Speak' event in NYC

As Blaze News previously reported, the March 2 incident — some of which was caught on video — took place on Interstate 76 near the downtown part of the city.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, citing state police, at the time reported that the trooper pulled over Celena Morrison for driving with an expired and suspended registration, driving without headlights activated in the rain, illegally tinted windows, and driving too close to another car.

After the traffic stop, Celena Morrison's husband, Darius McLean, pulled up behind them, the paper said, adding that state police said McLean “became verbally combative” and “refused multiple lawful orders" after the trooper approached him.

The trooper attempted to arrest McLean, and Morrison tried to intervene, the Inquirer said, adding that Morrison also was arrested.

In Morrison's video of the arrest, Morrison was heard yelling, “I work for the mayor! I work for the mayor!” as McLean was laying on the shoulder of the freeway, the paper said.

"Please, just stop. No! It's cause I'm black," McLean was heard saying, according to WPVI-TV.

"It's not 'cause you're black," the trooper replied, according to the station.

The trooper then told Morrison to "turn around" and "give me your hands, or you are getting tased," WPVI reported. At one point, Morrison was heard saying, “He just punched me," the Inquirer said.

More from the station:

"This was a simple traffic stop cause you didn't have your lights on. You're tailgating," the officer explains to the couple. "Then, I don't know who you are. I don't need somebody rolling up on me."

"There was no need at all," one person is heard saying.

"You were about to tase me. You pulled your gun on me," another voice says.

"You were fighting with me," says a third voice.

"No, I wasn't fighting you," someone responds.

RELATED: The Zizians’ violent spiral: A trans group tied to killings across America

State police placed the trooper on restricted duty after the incident, the Inquirer reported.

In addition, while state police charged the couple with resisting arrest, obstruction of justice, disorderly conduct, and summary traffic citations, the paper said the office of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner declined the charges, and Celena Morrison and Darius McLean were released from custody on the evening of March 2.

Blaze News reported in January 2020 that then-Mayor Jim Kenney appointed Celena Morrison to run his Office of LGBT Affairs — and that Morrison was the first-ever trans-identifying individual of color to head up the agency.

"While Philadelphia is known as a progressive, LGBTQ-friendly city, we still have work to do," the far-left Kenney said in a statement. "I look forward to working with Celena to build a more inclusive city for our residents."

Morrison added to KYW-AM that being transgender and black will be an asset when it comes to the job's demands of dealing with issues of race and gender.

"Trans folks are not being accepted," Morrison told KYW. "They are not accepted within the LGBT community. They are also not accepted within the black community. That double marginalization calls for a different type of support."

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Tylenol's concerns about possible autism risk date back more than a decade, documents reportedly show



Medical groups, foreign health organizations, and some lawmakers threw a conniption this week after President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dared to take action over the apparent association between autism and prenatal exposure to acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol.

A popular tactic taken by critics was to refute a claim the Trump administration wasn't making, namely that acetaminophen was causally linked to autism.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, for example, stated, "In more than two decades of research on the use of acetaminophen in pregnancy, not a single reputable study has successfully concluded that the use of acetaminophen in any trimester of pregnancy causes neurodevelopmental disorders in children."

Of course, the point the administration was making concerns the apparent correlation, not causation, between Tylenol use during pregnancy and autism in children — a correlation that has been borne out in numerous studies published in reputable peer-reviewed scientific journals such as Environmental Health, JAMA Psychiatry, Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics, and the International Journal of Epidemiology.

While such studies evidently have not swayed organizations cozy with the pharmaceutical industry, they certainly caused alarm behind the scenes at the very company that made Tylenol for six decades.

Pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson made the acetaminophen product Tylenol available over the counter in 1960. In 2023, J&J spun off its consumer health care division Kenvue as an independent company, which now makes the drug.

Damning internal documents recently obtained by the Daily Caller indicate that years before J&J parted ways with Tylenol, some of its senior scientists admitted that a possible association existed between Tylenol and autism.

RELATED: Fact-check: Tylenol confirms 2017 pregnancy warning tweet is authentic

Photo Illustration by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

For instance, when serving as the U.S. director of epidemiology for J&J's pharmaceutical arm Janssen in 2018, Rachel Weinstein noted in an email, "The weight of evidence is starting to feel heavy to me."

After referencing "studies in prenatal exposure and neurodev outcome," Weinstein wrote, "It looks like there are a bunch of papers from 2016 that we somehow missed. Many of them by Liew et al."

One of the papers Weinstein may have been referring to was a study published in the international journal Autism Research. The study indicated that maternal use of acetaminophen for over 20 weeks of pregnancy "increased the risk of [autism spectrum disorder] or infantile autism with hyperkinetic symptoms almost twofold."

The company documents were provided to the Caller by the law firm Keller Postman, which is leading a class-action lawsuit against Kenvue as well as against retailers that sell their own store-branded acetaminophen.

Ashley Keller, lead attorney for the families whose suit will be heard before the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit beginning on Oct. 9, told Blaze News, "The emails confirm that the company's nothing-to-see-here response to the administration's announcement is pure spin."

"Internally, the company was aware of the growing body of scientific evidence linking prenatal Tylenol use to neurodevelopmental harm in offspring," Keller added.

'There are dozens of studies showing a link between Tylenol and neurodevelopmental harm in offspring.'

Weinstein wrote in a 2014 letter to one of the researchers behind the 2014 study titled "Acetaminophen use during pregnancy, behavioral problems, and hyperkinetic disorders," which was published in JAMA Pediatrics, "We recognize the substantial strengths of the study and the data sources."

That study concluded, "Maternal acetaminophen use during pregnancy is associated with a higher risk for HKDs and ADHD-like behaviors in children."

Referencing her correspondence with the researcher on the 2014 paper, Weinstein and other top J&J scientists considered backing follow-up studies; however, she then noted, "Do we really need to stick our neck out and make this offer?"

Slides for a 2018 internal presentation labeled "privileged and confidential" discussed epidemiological studies concerning potential links between Tylenol and various neurodevelopmental disorders. The slide summarizing the studies under review states, "Individual observational studies show a somewhat consistent association of increased occurrence of neurodevelopmental outcomes with prenatal exposure."

Internal communications further indicate that some J&J employees were reportedly also aware of a 2018 scientific review that indicated nine recent studies had suggested "an increased risk of adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes following prenatal [acetaminophen] exposure."

The Caller indicated that Weinstein could not be reached for comment.

A spokesperson for J&J told the Daily Caller, "Johnson & Johnson divested its consumer health business years ago, and all rights and liabilities associated with the sale of its over-the-counter products, including Tylenol (acetaminophen), are owned by Kenvue."

The current maker of Tylenol, Kenvue, in turn continued downplaying a link between its drug and autism.

"Nothing is more important to us than the health and safety of the people who use our products," said Kenvue spokeswoman Melissa Witt. "We have continuously evaluated the science and continue to believe there is no causal link between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and autism."

When asked about Kenvue's assertion that "there is no credible science that shows taking acetaminophen causes autism," Keller, the attorney representing families in the class-action lawsuit against Kenvue, told Blaze News, "To quote the late, great Justice Scalia: 'Pure applesauce.'"

Alluding to some of the credible science that has been undertaken to date, Keller underscored there is cause for concern.

"There are dozens of studies showing a link between Tylenol and neurodevelopmental harm in offspring. The direct measurement studies that look at biomarkers all show dose response (more Tylenol, more risk)," Keller said. "They also show very elevated odds ratios (double, triple, quadruple, even quintupling of the risk). The animal models, which can control for genetics far better than human observational studies, show that acetaminophen is neurotoxic."

"Does that mean causation has been definitively established? No, it is simply likely," Keller continued. "But even if you only think it is plausible, we shouldn't have to wait for definitive proof of causation before we warn pregnant women of risks."

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Trump Sues New York Times for Defamation, Saying Paper Has Become 'Mouthpiece' for Democrats

President Donald Trump announced Monday that he has filed a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, saying that the paper has served as a "mouthpiece" for the Democratic Party and illegally aided Kamala Harris's presidential campaign last year.

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'Sick Game': Democratic Megadonor David Geffen, 82, Faces Sordid Grooming Lawsuit from Porn Star Husband, 32, as Top Cultural Centers Take His Millions and Toast Him on Both Coasts

Democratic megadonor David Geffen, known for hosting the Obamas and celebrities like Oprah Winfrey on his $450 million superyacht, is accused of plying his ex-porn star husband—50 years his junior—with drugs and trotting him around the globe as a "paid sex worker" to show off to his famous friends, according to a bombshell lawsuit. 

The post 'Sick Game': Democratic Megadonor David Geffen, 82, Faces Sordid Grooming Lawsuit from Porn Star Husband, 32, as Top Cultural Centers Take His Millions and Toast Him on Both Coasts appeared first on .