The Trump administration is being sued for pulling the plug on a public website that showed how federal money is being spent. The lawsuit says the move is illegal and hides key information from the public and Congress.
In recent days, a website managed by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) suddenly went offline. The site tracked “apportionments,” which show how federal agencies are allowed to spend money that Congress approves.
“There was no explanation. It just went dark,” said the lawsuit, filed by the nonprofit Protect Democracy Project in federal court in Washington, D.C.
The group is accusing the administration of breaking the law. The site was required by a recent law passed under the Biden administration, which says the public must be able to see this information. The lawsuit names OMB and its director, Russell Vought, as responsible.
“Congress mandated prompt transparency for apportionments to prevent abuses of power and strengthen Congress’s and the public’s oversight of the spending process,” the lawsuit states. “Absent this transparency, the president and OMB may abuse their authority… without public or congressional scrutiny or accountability.”
Protect Democracy said the data is critical. It’s “the only public source of information on how DOGE (Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency) is being funded — information that Congress and journalists have used in reporting and oversight.”
Democrats have been slamming the administration for weeks, calling the site’s removal an effort to hide how taxpayer money is being controlled behind closed doors.
Russell Vought defended the decision in a letter last month, saying the site couldn’t stay up because it revealed “sensitive, predecisional, and deliberative information.”
“By their nature, apportionments and footnotes contain predecisional and deliberative information,” the letter said. Vought added that these are “interim decisions” that change based on circumstances and needs.
But the Government Accountability Office (GAO) fired back. In a letter to Vought, the watchdog agency made it clear: the shutdown isn’t just wrong — it’s against the law.
“We disagree,” the GAO wrote, responding to OMB’s claim that the data is too sensitive. The GAO explained that apportionments are “legally binding decisions on agencies under the Antideficiency Act,” and therefore, “by definition, cannot be predecisional or deliberative.”
The watchdog also shot down the idea that national security concerns justify hiding the data. “While there may be some information that is sensitive… it is certainly not the case that all apportionment data meets that standard,” the GAO wrote.
It reminded OMB of its legal duty: “There is a statutory requirement for OMB to post the apportionment data on a public website.”
This isn’t the first lawsuit over the site. The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has also sued the Trump administration for taking it down.
At the heart of both lawsuits is the same issue: the public’s right to know where federal money is going — and who’s making those calls behind the scenes.
