Bureaucracy Times

All the news fit to be declassified.

The Red Tape Roundup — Week of September 13, 2026

A Note from the Editor

Welcome to the first edition of the Red Tape Roundup — a quick look back at the week that was, a peek at what’s coming, and a status check on our ongoing battle with the federal records system.

This is a newsletter for people who believe that the most consequential information the government produces is also, somehow, the hardest to find. We are a team of writers and editors who have made it our mission to dig through the boring parts of the federal apparatus so you don’t have to — and occasionally to have a little fun with it when the government makes that too easy to resist.

This week was a good one. Our most-read piece was an analysis of the Chemical Safety Board’s investigation files from a Shell plant explosion in June 2025. The CSB released the records; we read them and published. That one found a wide audience, including a particularly enthusiastic corner of Reddit. We’ll take it.

The week’s other crowd favorite was entirely unplanned. A Department of Energy newsletter arrived in our inbox — as hundreds do each week — and this one contained no current news whatsoever. Just highlights from July and August. We debated for about thirty seconds whether to let it slide. We did not let it slide. Many of you appreciated the decision.

This is what we do. We follow the paper trail, we ask uncomfortable questions, and occasionally we poke a little fun at a bureaucracy that has earned it. Thanks for being here. If you enjoy the Roundup, forward it to someone who’d appreciate it. We’re growing, and we’d love the company.

This Week’s Most-Read

The numbers are in. Here’s what you were reading this week:

Coming Up Next Week

A look at what’s heading your way next week:

The $215 Million Quantum Race That Took Washington a Decade to Build — The Department of Energy just launched a major quantum computing competition. Part One of the Quantum Genesis Files traces how Washington got here — and why it took this long.
Déjà Vu on the Clinch River: TVA’s New Nuclear Bet Looks a Lot Like Its Last One — The Tennessee Valley Authority is making another big nuclear push on the Clinch River. The last time it tried this, it didn’t go especially well.

From the Investigative Desk

The Kennedy Center rabbit hole got considerably deeper this week.

What began as a look at the Kennedy Center’s unusual federal structure has turned into something much larger.

We have been working backward through the Center’s congressional history, including hearings and records from the 1960s and early 1970s, when Washington was still figuring out exactly what it had agreed to build, how much it would cost, and who would ultimately pay for it.

One particularly interesting stop was a July 1969 Senate hearing involving legislation to increase federal appropriations for the project. By then, the authorized federal contribution was being pushed from $15.5 million to $23 million, while borrowing authority associated with the parking facility was proposed to rise from $15.4 million to $20.4 million.

Among the problems confronting the project were increased construction costs, heavier-than-expected structural requirements and the rather inconvenient realization that a national performing arts center located near National Airport would need considerably more protection from jet noise.

There was also another problem familiar to anyone who has watched a government construction project age in real time: leaving the unfinished building sitting there wasn’t free. Contemporary testimony warned that prolonged dormancy itself could cost millions.

We are now consolidating the original congressional records, government documents and historical material into a dedicated investigative archive. Some of those records are wonderfully accessible. Others appear to have been digitized under the assumption that nobody would ever attempt to read them again.

This one has grown beyond the scope of a normal Bureaucracy Times article. We’re going to keep pulling the thread.

What we’re trying to answer: How did the Kennedy Center evolve from a federally authorized cultural project into the peculiar public-private institution that exists today, and what did that evolution actually cost taxpayers?

FOIA Watch

Another week, another round of politely asking the government to show us its homework.

DOI puts the Arctic payroll request on the clock. The Department of the Interior formally acknowledged our request for Interior Business Center payroll and personnel-cost records connected to the U.S. Arctic Research Commission. The request, received September 9, is now DOI-2026-009648 and has been placed on the normal processing track. DOI also invoked a 10-workday extension. Translation: the request has successfully entered the federal digestive system.

Virginia Elections came back empty-handed. The Virginia Department of Elections responded to our inquiry into voter-list activity involving the organizations named in our request. ELECT says it found no requests, purchases, subscriptions, or deliveries of its voter-list products involving those parties. That does not end the inquiry. It changes the question. We are now looking at where the voter data used in those outreach campaigns actually came from.

CBP sent answers. Now we get to improve the questions. Responses arrived to our first three requests stemming from the investigation into separated CBP contractors retaining system access. Those responses are being reviewed against the agency’s own FOIA requirements before narrower follow-up requests are drafted. FOIA occasionally works best as reconnaissance for the next FOIA.

CIGIE is getting the press-office treatment first. After our review of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency’s FY2025 reporting raised questions about how its monetary results were calculated, we submitted a targeted media inquiry. A planned FOIA request is temporarily on hold while we see what CIGIE answers voluntarily. No sense filing a records request asking a question the press office might answer for free. Yet.

Still simmering. Requests involving USARC, NSF, GSA and other pieces of the Arctic Commission investigation remain in various stages of the federal records pipeline. The SEC request connected to the MMTLP investigation also remains active, as does our expedited Legal Services Corporation OIG request.

The bottom line: This was more response week than filing week. One agency acknowledged a request, another found no responsive records, CBP gave us material to sharpen the next round, and CIGIE has been given an opportunity to answer before another FOIA joins the pile.

The filing cabinets remain undefeated.

On Our Radar

A few things that haven’t become stories. Yet.

Defense Regional Clocks. The DoD Inspector General published an audit in which all 10 recommendations are classified. We have been reconstructing what prompted an audit whose public version reveals considerably more about the existence of the audit than the audit itself.

USARC’s “news.” While examining the U.S. Arctic Research Commission’s public output, we noticed that much of what appears on its news page points readers to reporting produced elsewhere. That’s now part of our broader examination of what the small federal commission produces, who does the work and what taxpayers are paying for it.

Government websites versus researchers. OCR failures, inaccessible archival PDFs and anti-bot restrictions keep appearing in our research. We’re beginning to document those barriers systematically rather than merely swearing at them individually.

Until next week —

hannotek, Editor @ Bureaucracy.News