Washington politicians and federal agencies routinely blindfold American citizens on the most important and most reckless decisions the government takes. As President Joe Biden told Special Counsel Robert Hur in late 2022, "We over-classify everything…. And 99.9% of it has nothing to do with anything I couldn't pick up and read out loud to the public."

The change in presidential administrations is the ideal chance for sweeping disclosures of pseudo-secrets that will provide a booster shot for American democracy.

President-elect Donald Trump should follow the precedent set by President Barack Obama. In 2009, Obama speedily released many of the secret George W. Bush administration legal memos that asserted that a president could declare martial law in the US and ignore the Fourth Amendment and other constitutional safeguards. Those disclosures helped portray Obama as a champion of civil liberties, regardless of his novel prerogative that presidents were entitled to assassinate American citizens who were designated as terrorist suspects. Unfortunately, Trump in his first term failed to open the files to disclose Obama's biggest unconstitutional power grabs.

Federal secrecy is perhaps the most important bulwark of the Censorship Industrial Complex. Americans deserve to know how many blindfolds were slapped on Americans in recent years. The Supreme Court took a dive on the censorship issue last year by claiming that the victims did not have legal standing. It would be relatively simple to "correct" that decision by disclosing a torrent of cases of "Censors Gone Wild." How many more humorous memes did the White House or federal agencies demand be suppressed? How many more internal emails or texts reveal White House appointees hellbent on muzzling critics regardless of the First Amendment?

Americans deserve to know whether federal agencies secretly targeted them as terrorist suspects. A year ago, the House Judiciary Committee revealed that, according to federal agencies, anything you purchase can be used against you. And if you didn't want to be categorized as a "lone wolf" potential terrorist, you never should have bought that Bass Pro hat—one of the bizarre warning signs. If you bought a gun or ammo since 2021, federal bureaucrats may have automatically classified you as a "potential active shooter." The shocking details of that surveillance scheme need to be exposed as quickly as possible. At the same time, the feds cast absurdly broad nets of suspicion on average Americans, potentially incriminating details of Biden family dealings with China, Romania, Ukraine, and other nations were kept secret. DC is one paradox after another.

The Founding Fathers recognized the perils of foreign entanglement but federal secrecy has shrouded the vast majority of details of recent US government blundering abroad. As I noted in an April 2023 Mises piece, practically the only candor regarding the Russia-Ukraine war occurred when secret documents leaked out revealing that the Ukrainian military was in far worse shape than the Biden administration claimed. The White House, State Department, and Pentagon were adamant that American citizens had no right to know how their tax dollars were being squandered in East Europe.