Public Citizen v. Department of State

In February 2026, the State Department released a “fact sheet” touting the administration’s eleven new bilateral critical minerals frameworks or memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with foreign countries, as well as ten other critical mineral frameworks or MOUs that it had previously negotiated and seven where it had reached completion of negotiations. The Trump administration has kept the text of these agreements hidden from public view.

Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking records of those agreements. After the State Department failed to process the FOIA request in a timely manner, Public Citizen filed suit to compel production of the agreements.