On July 14, Grantmakers Without Borders and OMB Watch released a paper, Collateral Damage: How the War on Terror Hurts Charities, Foundations, and the People They Serve, and hosted a panel discussing the topic. Six experts all agreed that shortsighted, undemocratic policies are stifling free speech, constraining the critical activities of the charitable and philanthropic sectors, and ultimately impeding the fight against terrorism. OMB Watch and Grantmakers Without Borders were lauded by many speakers and attendees for drawing attention to this issue.

July 4 marked the 42nd anniversary of Congress' passage of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a report showing improvements in how the law is being implemented, including a reduction in backlogs of FOIA requests at agencies. Other reports, however, paint a much starker picture where backlogs continue to remain high (despite a one-year modest drop) and where the full granting of FOIA requests has dropped to the lowest level since records have been kept.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) released an audit report on June 18 that found Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employees have an inconsistent understanding of prohibited political intervention by charities and religious organizations. It also found the IRS has not been timely in evaluating cases under investigation. The report acknowledged improved educational efforts but failed to recognize the inherent difficulty in explaining the overly vague "facts and circumstances" test the IRS uses to determine if prohibited partisan activity has occurred.

Federal officials are having difficulty providing consumers with information on two recent food-borne illness outbreaks. Investigators are still searching for the source of an ongoing salmonella outbreak, and officials have been unable to provide detailed information for consumers on a batch of E. coli-contaminated beef, which has spread to a number of states across the country.