When President Donald Trump signed Executive Order (EO) 14398 on March 26, 2026, all agencies subject to Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) were barred from requiring contractors to maintain diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs on their workforces because such initiatives are inherently racially discriminatory.

But one agency — the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board (FRTIB) — was exempted from FAR coverage by Congress, which left the agency in something of a statutory limbo regarding the Trump EO. The FRTIB manages the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) that covers millions of government employees as part of their retirement benefits and oversees the investment of billions of dollars.

On June 2, Amanda Haas, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) officer in the FRTIB General Counsel’s office, responded to a request for the agency’s current contracts with BlackRock and State Street for investment management of TSP funds contributed by federal workers. The FOIA request was submitted by Thomas Jones, the head man at the American Accountability Foundation (AAF). The AAF is a nonprofit government watchdog that routinely files FOIA requests and related litigation with dozens of federal agencies.

The award/effective date of the still-in-force contracts was October 21, 2020. But wait! There are more significant dates in this story.

On August 12, The Federalist published a story based on information provided by Jones, based on the Haas documents, with the headline proclaiming that “DEI Mandates In Federal Retirement Agency Contracts Are At Odds With Trump’s Discrimination Ban.”

And on August 27, The Washington Stand published a story by this journalist that advanced The Federalist story and noted that spokesmen for FRTIB and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the White House had been asked for comment, but none was received.

Now two more dates must enter into this confusing picture of a typical day in the nation’s capital for journalists, FOIA officers, nonprofit advocates, and federal agency spokesmen.

The day after the TWS story appeared, FRTIB Director of External Affairs James Kaplan, responded to this journalist’s comment request by noting two important dates and actions regarding the contracts with Blackrock and SSIM:

“In February 2025, the FRTIB executed contract modifications removing provisions relating to their reporting on the manager’s use of women/minority owned businesses, data on the firm’s management composition as it relates to women/minorities, and a summary of the firm’s diversity philosophy. In July 2026, the FRTIB executed contract modifications that added to these contracts FAR Clause 52.222-90 ‘Addressing DEI Discrimination by Federal Contractors’ to ensure compliance with EO 14398.”

In other words, Jones, TWS and The Federalist were correct in describing FRTIB contracts as out of compliance with Trump’s EO, based on the documents provided by Haas. And Kaplan was correct in rejecting that description, based on the February 2025 and July 2026 contract modifications.

So, who’s to blame?

Well, Jones was responding based on the documents provided by FRTIB. The Federalist said neither FRTIB nor OMB responded to its requests for comments. The OMB also didn’t respond to the TWS request and Kaplan didn’t until the day after the TWS request. Journalists live with deadlines and the reality that there is always tomorrow in the news process.

In a subsequent extended email conversation with this journalist, Kaplan noted that “there is a pending FOIA request for our current contract. That request is currently under review. The version you have is not the current version of the contract as modified during the current administration.” So, Haas provided the only version of the contract that was available at the time she processed Jones’s FOIA request.

Speaking as a journalist who long ago lost count on the number of FOIA requests I have submitted to more agencies than I remember, I have dealt with dozens of federal agency FOIA officers, and found the vast majority of them to be highly competent, energetic, and hard-working. I’ve not met Haas, but the facts of this sequence of events suggests no failure on her part.

Bottom line: Reporting the news in this town accurately in the most competitive market in the world and dealing with the journalists on the beat can sometimes produce honest mistakes and incomplete reporting. But that’s why reporting the news is a never-ending challenge — there almost always is more to the story.