The National Archives and Records Administration NARA

For its first century and a half the federal government kept its records wherever there was room, in basements, attics, and warehouses, and lost many to fire, flood, and neglect. Congress created the National Archives on June 19, 1934, and the agency moved into its classical building on Pennsylvania Avenue, designed by John Russell Pope, the next year. It was folded into the General Services Administration in 1949 and regained its independence on April 1, 1985, as the National Archives and Records Administration, headed by the Archivist of the United States.

NARA decides which government records are permanent, which is only a few percent of everything agencies create, and keeps them at the main building in Washington, a large research facility in College Park, Maryland, and regional archives and records centers around the country. Its holdings run to more than 13 billion pages of text plus maps, photographs, films, and electronic records, and are open to anyone. The Rotunda of the Washington building displays the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Through the Office of the Federal Register, NARA publishes the Federal Register, the Code of Federal Regulations, and presidential documents, and it administers the Electoral College process by receiving each state's certificates.

Under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, records of a presidency belong to the public, not the President, and pass to NARA when the term ends. The agency runs the presidential library system, now fifteen libraries from Herbert Hoover to George W. Bush plus the digital records of later presidencies. It also oversees agency records management, the declassification system through the Information Security Oversight Office, and the Office of Government Information Services, which mediates Freedom of Information Act disputes. About 2,800 people work for the agency.

Custody of presidential records has made NARA an unlikely political flashpoint. Its 2022 request for classified documents taken to Mar-a-Lago led to the FBI search and a federal indictment later dismissed. In February 2025 the Archivist was dismissed and the Secretary of State was named acting Archivist, and the administration pressed the agency on records it considered withheld. Archivists and historians warned about the independence of an agency whose authority rests on neutrality. Supporters of the change argued the agency had taken sides in partisan disputes. The question of who controls the government's memory has rarely been so openly contested.