The Daily Fuckup

A records fight that began inside the executive branch is now in federal court. On April 1, 2026, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion saying the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional. The next day, White House Counsel David Warrington circulated a follow-on memo on records guidance. On April 24, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the Freedom of the Press Foundation sued, saying the administration was trying to weaken preservation obligations that Congress put in place after Watergate.

The lawsuit does not claim that the law has already been erased. It challenges what the plaintiffs describe as an executive-branch effort to sidestep a statute that still exists unless a court says otherwise. The complaint argues that the April 1 opinion and April 2 memo together threaten how presidential records are handled, including digital communications and other materials that are supposed to be preserved and turned over to the National Archives at the end of an administration.

NARA’s own description of the law is straightforward: Congress passed the Presidential Records Act in 1978, and the statute governs custody, control and management of presidential records when a president leaves office. The plaintiffs say the administration’s new legal stance invites disruption to that system by treating mandatory preservation rules as optional. That is their allegation, not a court ruling.

The legal posture matters. An OLC opinion is an internal executive-branch legal view; it can guide administration conduct, but it does not repeal a statute or decide the law for everyone else. CREW and FPF are asking the court to reject the administration’s position and block any records policy that follows from it. For now, the statute remains on the books, and the dispute is over whether the White House can act as if it is not.