The Lacuna Project

lacuna (n.) a gap in a record where something should be

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Agency

The White House

Findings that rest on exhibits naming this entity

  • INF-1.9: On 9 September 2025 the President directed HHS and FDA to act on direct-to-consumer drug advertising, and FDA announced thousands of warning letters, about 100 cease-and-desist letters and rulemaking to remove the "adequate provision" option. FDA's announcement states that warning letters to pharmaceutical companies fell to one in 2023 and zero in 2024.
  • INF-2.2: Executive Order 9182 of 13 June 1942 created the Office of War Information to run information programs "at home and abroad," and Congress on 12 July 1943 limited its Domestic Operations Branch to $2,750,000 of $33,222,504 and barred it from publishing literature for distribution to the public within the United States.
  • INF-2.6: National Security Action Memorandum 328 of 6 April 1965 approved two more Marine battalions and a change of mission for Marine battalions in Vietnam and stated that the President desired the movements "be understood as being gradual and wholly consistent with existing policy"; on 21 October 1964 President Johnson had said "we are not about to send American boys 9 or 10,000 miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves."
  • INF-4.3: CISA's head of its misinformation team testified that CISA forwarded election officials' reports about posts to platforms in the 2020 election, and the record differs on whether it did so in 2022. The district court wrote in 2023 that no evidence produced in the case tied the Trump administration to the switchboarding, and a 2025 Senate Commerce majority report dates DHS's election-disinformation task force to March 2018.
  • INF-4.5: Meta (26 August 2024) and Alphabet (23 September 2025) each wrote to the House Judiciary Committee that senior Biden administration officials pressed them in 2021 over COVID-19 content, and each wrote that the company made its own decisions on removal and enforcement.
  • INF-4.12: Executive Order 13925 (Trump, 28 May 2020) was revoked by Executive Order 14029 (Biden, 14 May 2021). Executive Order 14149 (Trump, 20 January 2025) directs that no federal officer, employee or agent engage in or facilitate conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.
  • INF-4.13: The 2026 consent decree in Missouri v. Biden bars the Surgeon General, the CDC and CISA from threatening platforms with punishment unless they remove or reduce protected speech, and records no admission (para. 17). The Ninth Circuit held in O'Handley (2023) that compliance with a California office's flag was optional for Twitter, with no intimation of adverse consequences, and that Twitter's moderation was not state action. Twitter's 2023 brief in Trump v. Twitter, a litigation position, argues that coercion requires the threat of a government sanction and that the FBI's emails were advisory.
  • INF-5.8: On 26 May 2021 the President stated that the Intelligence Community had "coalesced around two likely scenarios" and had not reached a definitive conclusion. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence's assessment of 29 October 2021 says all agencies assess natural exposure and a laboratory-associated incident as plausible, that the virus was not developed as a biological weapon, and that most agencies assess with low confidence that it probably was not genetically engineered.
  • POL-7.11: On 4 July 2023 the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana preliminarily enjoined officials of the White House, the Surgeon General's office, CDC, FBI, CISA, NIAID and the State Department, finding the plaintiffs likely to succeed on the claim that the government coerced or significantly encouraged platform moderation. The court wrote that the alleged censorship "almost exclusively targeted conservative speech" and that the issues "go beyond party lines."
  • POL-7.12: The Fifth Circuit on 3 October 2023 agreed with the district court "but only as to some of those officials" and removed NIAID and the State Department from the injunction. On 26 June 2024 the Supreme Court held 6-3 in Murthy v. Missouri that "no plaintiff has carried that burden" and so "none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction."
  • POL-7.16: On 8 April 2025 the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted the Associated Press a preliminary injunction against the White House's exclusion of the AP from the press pool and some limited-access events, finding the exclusion viewpoint-based after the AP kept using "Gulf of Mexico." Press accounts report that the D.C. Circuit later stayed the injunction in part.

Exhibits naming this entity

  • Exhibit 865 4 July 2023. U.S. District Court, Western District of Louisiana (Judge Terry A. Doughty): Missouri v. Biden, No. 3:22-cv-01213 (W.D. La.), Memorandum Ruling on Request for Preliminary Injunction, Doc. 293
  • Exhibit 866 3 October 2023. U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit: Missouri v. Biden, 83 F.4th 350 (5th Cir. 2023) (revised opinion), No. 23-30445
  • Exhibit 867 11 September 2024. U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, Subcommittee chair Nancy Mace: Letter from Rep. Nancy Mace to President Biden and Vice President Harris regarding Mark Zuckerberg's 26 August 2024 letter
  • Exhibit 878 8 April 2025. U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Judge Trevor N. McFadden): Associated Press v. Budowich, No. 1:25-cv-00532 (D.D.C.), Memorandum Order, Doc. 46
  • Exhibit 990 9 September 2025. The White House (President Donald J. Trump): Memorandum on Addressing Misleading Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Advertisements
  • Exhibit 998 13 June 1942. Franklin D. Roosevelt: Executive Order 9182, Consolidating Certain War Information Functions Into an Office of War Information
  • Exhibit 1004 6 April 1965. White House (McGeorge Bundy): National Security Action Memorandum No. 328, Presidential Decisions Re U.S. Policy in Vietnam (FRUS 1964-1968, vol. II, doc. 242)
  • Exhibit 1008 17 June 1971. Richard Nixon: Remarks About an Intensified Program for Drug Abuse Prevention and Control
  • Exhibit 1072 26 May 2021. The White House: Statement by President Joe Biden on the Investigation into the Origins of COVID-19
  • Exhibit 1103 2 December 2022. Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi), Twitter thread: The Twitter Files, Part One: How and Why Twitter Blocked the Hunter Biden Laptop Story (thread, 2 December 2022)
  • Exhibit 1105 9 December 2022. Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi), Twitter thread: The Twitter Files, Part Three: The Removal of Donald Trump, October 2020 - January 6th 2021 (thread, 9 December 2022)
  • Exhibit 1115 26 December 2022 (posted 14:10 UTC per the post ID; the capsule index lists 28 December). David Zweig (@davidzweig), Twitter thread: The Twitter Files: How Twitter Rigged the Covid Debate (thread, 26 December 2022)
  • Exhibit 1118 25 March 2026. U.S. District Court, W.D. La. (Judge Terry A. Doughty), entered on the consent of the plaintiffs and the federal defendants: Consent Decree, Missouri v. Biden, No. 3:22-cv-01213 (W.D. La.), Doc. 478
  • Exhibit 1133 1 May 2024. House Committee on the Judiciary and Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government (majority staff): The Censorship-Industrial Complex: How Top Biden White House Officials Coerced Big Tech to Censor Americans, True Information, and Critics of the Biden Administration (interim staff report)
  • Exhibit 1138 26 August 2024. Meta Platforms, Inc.: Letter from Mark Zuckerberg (Meta Platforms) to Chairman Jim Jordan, House Committee on the Judiciary
  • Exhibit 1139 23 September 2025. Alphabet Inc. and YouTube (through counsel): Letter from Daniel F. Donovan (King & Spalding, counsel for Alphabet Inc. and YouTube) to Chairman Jim Jordan, House Committee on the Judiciary
  • Exhibit 1140 30 October 2025. House Committee on the Judiciary, Democratic staff (Ranking Member Jamie Raskin): Letter from Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (House Judiciary Committee Democrats) to YouTube CEO Neal Mohan
  • Exhibit 1143 8 February 2023. Engadget (Karissa Bell), reporting testimony of Anika Collier Navaroli to the House Oversight Committee: Trump White House asked Twitter to take down Chrissy Teigen's mean tweet about him (Engadget, 8 February 2023)
  • Exhibit 1145 18 August 2021. Meta Platforms, Inc. (Facebook): How We're Taking Action Against Vaccine Misinformation Superspreaders (Meta newsroom)
  • Exhibit 1157 28 May 2020 (published 2 June 2020). President Donald J. Trump: Executive Order 13925, Preventing Online Censorship (85 Fed. Reg. 34079)
  • Exhibit 1158 14 May 2021 (published 19 May 2021). President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.: Executive Order 14029, Revocation of Certain Presidential Actions and Technical Amendment (86 Fed. Reg. 27025)
  • Exhibit 1159 20 January 2025 (published 28 January 2025). President Donald J. Trump: Executive Order 14149, Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship (90 Fed. Reg. 8243)
  • Exhibit 1160 27 August 2024. Agence France-Presse (via TechXplore): Meta CEO Zuckerberg says US pressure on Covid-19 posts was 'wrong' (AFP, 27 August 2024)
  • Exhibit 1242 24 May 2004. George W. Bush, President of the United States (White House Office of the Press Secretary): President Bush, remarks at the Army War College: President Outlines Steps to Help Iraq Achieve Democracy and Freedom