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Union renews call for lawmakers to override Trump’s anti-union EO at the Pentagon

Erich Wagner — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0400

The nation’s largest federal employee union last week urged House lawmakers to once again bar the Defense Department from implementing President Trump’s executive order stripping two-thirds of the federal workforce of its collective bargaining rights.

In March 2025, Trump signed an executive order banning unions at most federal agencies, citing a seldom-used provision of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act to exempt workforces from federal sector labor law under the auspices of national security. A second order, signed last August, added a half-dozen more agencies to the initial edict.

The measure—and its implementation—have been tied up in a myriad of court cases ever since. While efforts lawsuits challenging the initiative governmentwide have been thus far unsuccessful in halting its rollout, some unions have preserved feds’ collective bargaining rights at particular agencies, including for Defense Department employees represented by the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers and the Federal Education Association.

Not so for the American Federation of Government Employees, whose contracts Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered terminated in April. In a letter to the top Democrat and Republican on the House Armed Services Committee last week, Daniel Horowitz, AFGE’s legislative director, urged the committee to once again approve a proposal nullifying Trump’s executive order as it pertains to Defense Department workers.

Last year, the panel voted on a bipartisan basis to include the amendment, proposed by Rep. Donald Norcross, D-N.J., in the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, and the bill ultimately passed the House with the measure in tact. It did not become law, as the Senate stripped the provision from its version of the bill.

In the letter, Horowitz argued that Trump’s use of the Civil Service Reform Act’s so-called national security exemption greatly exceeded congressional intent.

“The statutory exemption Congress wrote into Title 5 was deliberately narrow, reserved for agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency whose missions are uniquely incompatible with bargaining,” he wrote. “Applying it broadly across the entire Department of Defense departs significantly from that design and longstanding precedent. It is telling that President Trump never invoked [this exemption] during his first term.”

Though Trump did not cite that authority in his first term, he sought to delegate it to then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper in 2020. Esper ultimately declined to use that power.

Horowitz noted that a group of 16 House Republicans urged members of the bicameral conference committee to keep Norcross’ amendment in the NDAA last year, arguing that the edict “jeopardizes” rather than strengthens national security. And the Pentagon already has safeguards to ensure collective bargaining activity does not interfere with national security concerns.

“Restoring collective bargaining is not about expanding rights or constraining management,” he wrote. “Existing agreements already contain robust management rights provisions, emergency authorities, and national security exemptions that allow commanders and program managers to act when mission requirements demand. What collective bargaining provides is a structured channel for identifying and resolving workforce problems before they become operational ones, including improving safety, retention, productivity and accountability.”

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Practical steps agencies can take to mitigate financial disclosure controversies

John L. Martin — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 07:00:00 -0400

John Windom was the public face of the Electronic Health Record Modernization (EHRM) project for the Veterans Affairs Department. It’s one of the largest IT modernization projects the federal government has undertaken.

The Justice Department recently charged him with “alleged failure to disclose his receipt of thousands of dollars in cash, casino chips, gift cards and other gifts from contractors while leading the project.”

The indictment says he was “fully aware of ethics laws and regulations restricting his acceptance of gifts.” Yet he “routinely accepted personal benefits such as gifts, meals, alcohol, entertainment and other services” in the course of his duties. Further, he “used his position ... to encourage, monitor, and facilitate contracting and subcontracting opportunities.”

Potential weak spots in financial disclosure

Financial disclosure is a mandatory process for any government employee who independently exercises significant judgment in taking action in certain designated areas. The purpose of disclosure is to remove potential conflicts of interest and prevent taxpayer-funded decisions that lead to personal gain.

At the time of this writing, these are only allegations of wrongdoing. Windom is entitled to a presumption of innocence until the matter is settled in court. However, the controversy calls to mind three weaknesses in the financial disclosure process for federal employees.

People can still conceal financial assets to protect their personal interests. While most civil servants are honest people doing patriotic work, there are always bad actors. Disclosure alone isn’t enough to prevent a bad actor from omitting financial interests that conflict with their duties.
People will "forum shop" for an ethics official who gives them a desired answer. In other words, someone asks the same ethics question to multiple offices until they get the answer they want.
There are multiple processes involved in financial disclosure, and these processes are commonly siloed and decentralized. This means there’s no single ethics official or compliance lawyer who sees the whole picture. That may not be true in this instance, or at every agency, but it is not uncommon by any stretch.

3 steps ethics offices can take to reduce risk

Earlier in my career, I served as a government lawyer and became familiar with these issues. In my role now, I work with over 40 different federal agencies on financial disclosure. Indeed, I facilitate a working group of ethics officials focused on sharing best practices.

Those experiences have provided me with a wide-angle view of the financial disclosure landscape — and how to solve these challenges.

1. Create a well-defined and centralized process

Most agencies do have a centralized process for collecting and validating annual financial disclosure forms, such as OGE Form 450 (confidential financial disclosure) or OGE Form 278 (public financial disclosure). What often isn’t centralized is the supplemental forms for widely attended gatherings (WAGs), travel reimbursement and outside activities.

These are all areas of overlap that can be important ethical signals to monitor. For example, travel paid for by third parties can also reveal outside influence or possible conflicts. That signal can go unnoticed in a decentralized environment. The ethics officials who review the annual financial disclosure forms often have no visibility into intermittent travel disclosures by government employees.

The fix is to centralize all related processes. Every ethics official involved in reviewing any of these forms should have access to what is reported by the employee across all forms and previous decisions by other ethics officials, so they have a full picture.

2. Create a clearinghouse and common entry point

A centralized process requires a centralized repository for all related disclosure data. This becomes a clearinghouse for all decisions. Ethics officials should be able to query the system, see who reviewed disclosure forms and see any steps required to mitigate potential conflicts in recent history.

Part and parcel to a centralized process and clearinghouse is a common entry point. Every review of any disclosure form has to start at the same place. This eliminates the opportunity for forum shopping.

3. Drive agency-level alignment on ethics guidelines

The propensity for forum shopping is partly driven by legal interpretation. What one ethics lawyer sees as a potential red flag, another might see as routine.

There are good reasons why this might happen. For example, one ethics official may be less concerned about outside activities, generally, than others in their agency. Or one ethics official has previously encountered issues with certain widely attended gatherings, while another official is unaware of that experience, and so approves of the attendance.

Each agency should strive to align all ethics personnel around common guidelines that fit the needs of their organization. This ensures uniformity, but it can also improve efficiency through self-service tools, like answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs). Ideally, this solves the majority of routine inquiries that fall within a normal distribution.

The best defense against conflicts of interest

Matters like those surrounding John Windom are infrequent, which is a testament to the honesty of the government workforce and the disclosure policies currently in place. However, when incidents do occur, the severity of impact — the cost to taxpayers, negative publicity and the loss of public trust — is quite high.

The best defense is a well-defined and centralized process that gathers every financial or other personal interest disclosure (WAG, travel, outside activities) that any given government employee is required to make. While it cannot prevent a bad actor from concealing gifts and perks intended to influence decision-making, it does facilitate more comprehensive reviews and increases the odds that, at some point, they are going to get caught.

John L. Martin, Esq., is a former government lawyer currently consulting with Intelliworx, where he works with over 40 federal agencies on financial disclosure best practices.

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Another lawsuit alleges DOJ is illegally rejecting telework requests from employees with disabilities

Sean Michael Newhouse — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 17:40:00 -0400

A group of employees with disabilities at the Executive Office of Immigration Review alleged in a lawsuit on June 3 that agency officials are categorically denying reasonable accommodation requests for telework following President Donald Trump’s directive in January 2025 mandating that federal staffers return to in-person work.

While that order ended telework and remote work flexibility for most government workers, civil servants with qualifying disabilities are exempt from its requirements. Plus, agencies are legally required to provide reasonable accommodations (e.g. flexible schedules and accessible technology) to such employees unless doing so would cause an “undue hardship.”

But staffers with disabilities alleged these rules have been flouted by officials at EOIR, a Justice Department agency that adjudicates immigration cases.

“Since late April 2025, on information and belief, the agency has granted no telework reasonable accommodations to EOIR employees, including new requests for telework reasonable accommodations and requests to renew previously approved telework reasonable accommodations,” their attorneys wrote in the filing.

One of the named plaintiffs, Kimberly Panian, said that during a May 2025 meeting to discuss her telework reasonable accommodation request an agency official told her that EOIR had not granted any such requests under the new administration.

Panian, who has worked at the agency as an attorney-advisor since 2018, has Type I diabetes and experiences migraines with stroke-like symptoms. In March 2020, she requested a full-time telework accommodation due to fears that her diabetes could expose her to more severe COVID-19 complications. While that request was approved, all EOIR staffers shortly thereafter were directed to work from home due to the pandemic.

“Ms. Panian also noted [in a 2022 accommodation renewal request] that when she has a migraine episode, she cannot manage her blood sugar, which puts her at considerable risk due to her diabetes,” according to the lawsuit. “Her request explained that she is better able to manage her symptoms from home and emphasized the danger of having a medical emergency at work due to the court’s lack of cell service and trained individuals to help her.”

But her requests for telework have been denied since the policy change, and she was ordered to return to the office by April 20, 2026. Since that date, she has used nearly 250 hours of sick and annual leave and will run out by the middle of June.

“In addition to skyrocketing blood sugar and increased migraines, Ms. Panian has been in a constant state of increased anxiety and has experienced numerous panic attacks and other mental health symptoms. Given her precarious health, the stress and anxiety create a domino effect that worsens her ability to manage her diabetes, migraines and related symptoms,” her lawyers wrote. “The medication and medical equipment on which Ms. Panian relies are incredibly expensive, and she lives in constant fear that she will have to jeopardize her life by returning to in-person work to protect her livelihood and health insurance.”

EOIR attorney-advisor Hoi Yee Baxter, the other named plaintiff, teleworked even before the COVID-19 pandemic but requested work from home as a reasonable accommodation after being diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer in September 2024. That request was approved on Jan. 13, 2025.

Ultimately, however, her accommodation was revoked about a year later, and she was directed to begin working in-person by Feb. 2, 2026. Like Panian, she has relied on leave since then and is set to run out in June.

“[Baxter] has spent the time she would be working [instead] thinking about her lung cancer, stressing about losing her job and contemplating death,” according to the filing. “EOIR’s denial of her telework reasonable accommodation request has had a compounding and negative impact on her mental health. She experiences increased headaches, stress, and anxiety.”

Democracy Forward — a national legal organization that is behind many of the lawsuits against the Trump administration, which is representing the plaintiffs along with the employment law firm Burakiewicz & DePriest — argued that EOIR’s apparent telework policy violates the Rehabilitation Act’s prohibition on disability-based discrimination in federal programs.

“The Rehabilitation Act requires federal agencies to engage in an individualized, good-faith process to provide reasonable accommodations — not impose blanket bans driven by politics and ideology,” said Elena Goldstein, Democracy Forward’s legal director, in a statement. “This policy of categorically denying telework accommodations is unlawful, dangerous and fundamentally inconsistent with the federal government’s obligations under disability rights law.”

In response to a request for comment, EOIR said that it “declines to comment on litigation-related matters.”

The lawsuit cites an April 2025 EOIR email that said officials would take a “closer look” at telework reasonable accommodations because the component has “slightly more than 2% of all DOJ employees” but “is responsible for approximately 11% of all full-time telework reasonable accommodations granted department-wide.”

A separate group of DOJ employees with disabilities alleged in a recent lawsuit that officials discriminated and retaliated against them “as part of a systematic, agency-wide practice of refusing to grant requests for telework as a reasonable accommodation.” And Government Executive previously reported that Terry Jackson, a former DOJ employee with disabilities, settled with the agency after alleging that he was fired for requesting telework as a reasonable accommodation.

Many EOIR immigration judges have been removed since the start of Trump’s second term in what they allege are politically motivated mass firings.

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What makes an effective intelligence chief? A former DNI official points to the answer

Gregory F. Treverton, The Conversation — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 17:30:57 -0400

President Donald Trump’s choice for acting director of national intelligence, Bill Pulte, has proved controversial. Pulte’s lack of background in national security matters has sparked resistance from Democrats on Capitol Hill, which is not surprising. But some Republicans, too, have expressed dismay at the president’s choice, a Trump loyalist who currently runs the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

“I see no evidence of any qualifications for that job,” said U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas.

The current director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, is leaving the job at the end of June 2026.

Here’s why it matters who holds the job of director of national intelligence.

Principal national security adviser

To speak of telling truth to power seems terribly old-fashioned these days, but as a veteran of White House intelligence operations, I know that is the essence of the job.

The director of national intelligence is the president’s principal adviser on intelligence, though the CIA director has remained somewhat co-equal in that role. In past administrations, the director of national intelligence has been responsible for both the President’s Daily Brief, where the most crucial and sophisticated intelligence is presented, and for the work of the National Intelligence Council.

Most of the President’s Daily Brief items are still done by the CIA, but the director of national intelligence or a deputy briefed the president, daily in most administrations but one or two times a week in the first Trump administration. Now, it is not clear the briefings take place.

The issues in those briefings lean toward the immediate and tactical: What is the situation on the ground in the wars in Iran and Ukraine? If the United States does X, how will the Iranian regime or Russian President Vladimir Putin respond?

But intelligence strives to push presidents and their colleagues to think more strategically: What are the implications of hypersonic missiles? What is the trajectory of the relationship between Russia and China? What are China’s geostrategic objectives, and what is the role of the Belt and Road Initiative in that vision? What if, far from toppling it, U.S. and Israeli attacks push the Iranian regime to become more hard line, or even produce some “rally ’round the flag” effect among previous opponents of the regime.

9/11 led to intelligence changes

I was chair of the National Intelligence Council from 2014 to 2017, providing day-to-day intelligence support to the National Security Council and its committees, as well as trying to find time to do more strategic intelligence, looking at trends and connections across issues, producing what are called National Intelligence Estimates.

The director of national intelligence, known as the DNI, sits atop the 17 agencies that make up what is called the U.S. intelligence community. The director neither runs those agencies nor has full control of their budgets.

Rather, the director of national intelligence coordinates them, which sometimes seems like the proverbial herding of cats. They assemble a combined budget for intelligence, but many of the big agencies, such as the National Security Agency, which makes and breaks codes and intercepts signals of interest, belong to the Pentagon.

The creation of the director of national intelligence position was a direct result of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The report of the 9/11 Commission was vividly damning about the failures of communication between agencies in the run-up to 9/11. In meetings in New York that summer, CIA and FBI officers were literally unsure what they could tell each other: The former wondered whether the FBI people were really cleared to hear this, while the latter feared that talking might blow a case they were working on. That lack of coordination played a role in letting the plotters slip through intelligence, often in plain sight.

The result of the commission’s work was the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which created the director of national intelligence position.

Before that, the director of central intelligence wore two hats, as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency and loose coordinator of the broader intelligence community. Hardly surprisingly, directors of central intelligence spent most of their time running the CIA, for that was the source of their troops – and their troubles when they arose.

A score of blue-ribbon panels over 50 years had recommended breaking the director of central intelligence’s conflict of interest – coordinating agencies and their budgets while running one of them – and creating a director of national intelligence position.

James Clapper, the director of national intelligence for whom I worked as chair of the National Intelligence Council, constantly emphasized “integration.” Across agencies, integration mostly means talking to each other and sharing information. This works against the natural tendency to scoop your colleagues.

Across disciplines, integration means better aligning what information intelligence agencies collect with what analysts need.

How integration works

If presidents want to know what the CIA thinks about a particular issue, they can simply ask. Usually, though, the question is what does the intelligence community think, and then the question goes to the National Intelligence Council, the director of national intelligence’s interagency group for intelligence analysis.

The National Intelligence Council is organized like the State Department, with officers for regions and functions. Once a question has been presented, the relevant national intelligence officer will convene his or her colleagues from the other agencies. They will argue about the answer to the question, a process sweetly called “coordination,” then agree on the answer. If need be, the process can be done in a few hours.

Major strategic analyses – national intelligence estimates – like one done in 2022 on the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic out to 2026, may take months. In all cases, though, the analysis carefully records where there are differences of view in the intelligence community.

In my last year chairing the National Intelligence Council, of the 700 or so analyses we did, about 400 were responses to questions – called “taskings” in governmentese – from the national security adviser or one of the deputies.

National intelligence officers are national experts from inside or outside federal government, and their deputies – the heart and soul of the NIC – are all assigned from intelligence agencies. The largest number come from the CIA, but I worked with a cyber analyst from the Secret Service and a wonderful analyst from the New York Police Department.

Resolutely nonpolitical stance

What was striking then and has struck me both times I’ve had the privilege of running a U.S. intelligence agency is the dedication of the officers.

They work for the nation, not for a political party or ideology. As chair of the NIC, I had no idea of the politics of my people, save for the several closest to me. For them, telling truth to power is not a slogan. It is what they do. They are always worried about “politicizing” – producing an assessment to suit a policymaker’s preference or, worse, being pressured to do so.

The president’s daily briefers, for instance, give up a year of their lives to come to work at 4 a.m., learn their briefs and then fan out across Washington to brief senior officials. They like being “on the team” of the person they brief, but they become uncomfortable if the conversation turns political.

The director of national intelligence sets the tone for that resolutely nonpolitical stance and polices it through principles articulated in the agency’s analytic integrity and standards. As chair of the NIC, for instance, I’d receive regular assessments of both the quality of our analyses and whether we risked becoming “politicized.”

For their part, do politicians and agency leaders like it when their pet projects are assessed by intelligence as unwise or infeasible? Of course not. I’ve been on that side of the intelligence-policy divide as well. But the United States is much the better for it.

This story, originally published on Dec. 4, 2024, has been updated to reflect that Bill Pulte has been chosen by President Trump to be the acting director of national intelligence.

Gregory F. Treverton, Professor of Practice in International Relations, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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VA CIO nominee vows to create program management office

Edward Graham — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 14:31:08 -0400

President Donald Trump’s pick to serve as the next IT lead for the Department of Veterans Affairs told lawmakers this week that the agency’s technology operations are “a target-rich environment” for change, and he committed that organizational transformation would be among his top priorities if confirmed to the role.

During a Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing on Wednesday, Gary Shatswell — the administration’s nominee to serve as VA’s next chief information officer and assistant secretary for information and technology — said VA needs “a culture of transparency and accountability, achievable through agile program management, which will also accelerate mission delivery.”

VA’s IT operations are sprawling, with the agency reporting more than 16,000 personnel working on these technology services. Many high-profile modernization efforts overseen by the Office of Information and Technology, however, have received particular scrutiny for delays and cost overruns across administrations.

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told Shatswell during Wednesday’s hearing that “my beef is the bipartisan failure to really modernize the VA,” and said he’s previously had discussions about establishing “a program office that includes members on this committee … seeing the progress every day, so that you've got champions here behind an IT modernization effort.”

Shatswell told him that a program management office is “a necessary piece that does not exist at the leadership level of OIT,” noting that previous attempts to create the unit failed because “there had not been the requisite tooling to ensure that the visibility and the process [were] actually managed.”

He said creating the office is “one of the first tasks that I will be going after” if confirmed to the role, adding that the unit would enhance VA employee accountability and operational transparency by ensuring “that everyone knows what’s going on and what’s the status and the priority of their piece within the work that OIT is doing.”

“I call it a program or portfolio-value office because, at the end of the day, we need to be driving the right value to the veterans, and that's the focus of everything that we should be doing,” Shatswell said.

Shatswell is Trump’s third nominee for the VA CIO role since the start of his administration, and the first to receive a hearing before lawmakers. VA Deputy Secretary Paul Lawrence has been performing the duties of the role in the interim.

Shatswell is a current VA employee, having served as senior advisor to VA Secretary Doug Collins since December.

When asked by Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas — the panel’s chairman — whether the senior advisor role is “the administration's training ground for individuals that they may want to place within the department,” Shatswell told him, “I can tell you my experience: that was the way that it was.”

Shatswell has previously held a variety of tech leadership roles across private industry, including as Group CIO at Unilever Prestige, as CIO at Paula's Choice Skincare, as vice president of IT at Sur La Table and as CIO at Sizzling Platter.

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Trump memo pushes national security agencies to move faster on AI

David DiMolfetta — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 14:16:17 -0400

President Donald Trump on Friday signed a national security memo aimed at speeding up government use of advanced artificial intelligence across the military and intelligence community, while also trying to harden those systems against foreign theft and manipulation.

The National Security Presidential Memorandum reflects a growing view inside the White House that U.S. security agencies are moving too slowly to adopt frontier AI tools, even as the evolving technology improves rapidly and rivals like China seek ways to craft their own versions.

It calls for agencies like the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Office of the National Cyber Director to build “deep, proactive” relationships with AI companies so that cutting-edge models can be made available to national security personnel faster.

It also instructs officials to identify areas where AI could improve government operations, including intelligence analysis and cyber threat detection. At the same time, the memo says the tools cannot be used for unlawful surveillance of Americans, language that speaks to long-running civil liberties concerns over how agencies collect, analyze and process data.

The memo also focuses heavily on protecting U.S.-developed AI models from foreign adversaries. It directs senior officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and NSA Director Gen. Joshua Rudd, to work with private-sector companies on security protocols meant to prevent advanced models from being stolen, copied or compromised.

One area of concern is model distillation, a technique in which an AI system repeatedly queries another AI system in an attempt to mimic its performance and build out a separate model. The White House in April accused China of carrying out “industrial-scale” distillation attacks on U.S. AI systems.

The memo also directs agencies to work with industry to secure the infrastructure that supports frontier AI, including the data centers that store the enormous amounts of computing power needed to run advanced models. Data centers have recently become more attractive targets during periods of geopolitical tension.

Trump recently signed an AI security executive order that leans heavily on voluntary cooperation with industry. That order encourages developers to submit powerful new models to a 30-day government review before public release.

More AI-related guidance is expected soon. Nick Andersen, CISA’s acting director, said last week that the cyber agency is preparing a binding operational directive focused on AI-enabled cyber threats.

The administration’s approach to AI has shifted in recent months as officials confront a new class of cyber-focused models, including Anthropic’s Mythos, that can rapidly identify vulnerabilities across computer networks. The model has become a major driver of government discussions over how advanced AI systems could reshape both defensive and offensive cyber operations.

Last week, Anthropic said it is expanding Project Glasswing — its controlled-access program for giving trusted organizations early access to Mythos — to about 150 additional entities. The new group spans more than 15 countries and includes organizations in water, healthcare, communications and other critical infrastructure sectors.

OpenAI’s recent release of GPT-5.5-Cyber, which also demonstrated sophisticated cyber capabilities, has further heightened concerns in Washington over how quickly these systems are advancing and how they could reshape both cyber defensive and offensive operations.

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Lawmakers aim to force the Army to detail its transformation plans

Meghann Myers — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 17:34:21 -0400

When the Army launched its “transformation initiative” a year ago, lawmakers immediately implored service leaders to show their work as they made plans to buy new things and get rid of old ones, including the cost tradeoffs and a timeline. They didn’t get those answers, so House lawmakers have inserted a requirement for an annual report and briefing into this year’s defense authorization bill.

On Thursday, the House Armed Services Committee completed its markup on the bill, adding detailed instructions for an annual update on the Army Transformation Initiative—and also the Army’s Transformation-in-Contact/Continuous Transformation efforts, requiring specifics on new capabilities and ones that have been phased out.

The goal of the Initiative “was to position the Army for future fights, streamline force structure, and eliminate wasteful spending,” Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., said during a May 15 hearing of the HASC, which he chairs. “Congress shares those goals, but as questions arose, it became clear that the Army hadn't done all of its homework.”

The provision in the House’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act would require the Army to provide an annual report, on or by Feb. 15, “detailing the programmatic choices made to implement.”

By March 15, the service would also have to brief the committee on:

How any changes to the National Defense Strategy, or other DOD planning document, informed the Army’s choices.
An “inventory and assessment” of all exercises related to Army transformation since 2023.
An inventory of all capabilities or capacity phased out as part of Army transformation, with a timeline and assessment of how they have affected readiness.
An inventory of planned investments with an assessment of how they will contribute to the joint force.

The service did send experts for closed-door briefings to lawmakers over the past year, a U.S. official told Defense One, in an attempt to provide details and explain the rationale for its plans.

“We initially saw a ton of support from members of Congress, until it potentially impacted a parochial interest,” said the official, who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record about the matter. “That's when they got all sticky about it.”

The Army’s helicopter purchases were of particular concern to House members both last year and this year, as the service’s budget request included funding to buy just one UH-60 Black Hawk and five MH-47 Chinooks. Army officials said it made sense to buy fewer older aircraft as the MV-75 Cheyenne II approaches.

In hearings, lawmakers expressed concern that reducing purchases would undermine the helicopters’ supply chains.

In May, the House’s first NDAA mark-up bumped up procurement to seven Black Hawks and 12 Chinooks.

“Nobody's saying we don't need Chinooks or Black Hawks or Apaches, we don't need to modernize, etc.,” the official said. “But we have so many more, based on the force-structure side, than we think is required to fight a conflict.”

The question went to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during his May 12 testimony before the House Appropriations Committee, where he announced that the Defense Department would be taking a second look at the initiative.

“There are some very good things in the Army Transformation Initiative, and there are some things that we needed to get another look at,” Hegseth said. “And so I think you'll see a review of some of those things, and we’ll get back to you.”

The Pentagon refused to provide any details on what that review looked like or whether Hegseth had his eye on other updates. A few days later, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll testified before HASC, apparently unaware of Hegseth’s concerns.

“I don't know all the depth of what was implied, but I absolutely agree that we will take a hard look with the Office of Secretary of War and make sure that we are synced with their strategy and their plans as they look across the joint force and balance their requirements and needs of the military as a whole,” he said.

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Trump’s edict making 8,000 feds at-will employees draws swift outcry

Erich Wagner — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 16:57:34 -0400

Organizations representing federal workers and good government advocates were quick to decry President Trump’s move this week to formally strip around 8,000 federal workers of their civil service protections, making them at-will employees, though the exact contours of the initiative’s scope remain unclear.

Wednesday’s executive order implements Schedule Policy/Career, a new job category within the excepted service -- formerly known as Schedule F -- designed for career employees in “policy-related” positions who lack the removal protections in Title 5 of the U.S. Code and of the right to appeal adverse personnel actions. Under Office of Personnel Management regulations that took effect in March, whistleblower complaints from Schedule Policy/Career employees would no longer go to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, instead being referred internally to the employing agency’s general counsel for review.

The edict tasks agencies with reclassifying the roughly 8,000 federal workers into Schedule Policy/Career within seven days -- by June 10 -- as well as set up a separate bonus pool for those workers to recognize “outstanding work.” And OPM is expected to propose new regulations setting up a new governmentwide presidential award program for the job category.

Has the return of Schedule Policy/Career affected you or your work? Reach out to Erich Wagner at ewagner@govexec.com or ewagner.47 on Signal to share your story.

A 200-page appendix accompanying the executive order lists the various positions slated for conversion, subdivided by agency and subcomponent and accompanied by position codes used on an internal basis. As such, the veracity of administration officials’ claims regarding the precise number of impacted employees, or that 97% of them occupy GS-15 or Senior Leader pay grades, remains murky.

The State Department told employees in an email Thursday that Trump placed 100 positions into Schedule Policy/Career with Wednesday’s order but did not specify how many employees would be affected.

“Employees encumbering these crucially important positions will be notified by the Bureau of Human Resources within seven work days,” the email stated. “These changes will allow the department to reward high performance and ensure that we are well equipped to promptly and effectively address poor performance and misconduct. These roles remain career positions and will continue to be filled through merit-based hiring procedures.”

The nonprofit Protect Democracy on Thursday solicited federal employees whose jobs appear in the executive order’s appendix to provide information about their position and duties to better ascertain its scope.

A Defense Department employee, who declined to be named for fear of retaliation, told Government Executive that while they were not personally set for reclassification into Schedule Policy/Career, each of their supervisors are. None of them influence policy, they said.

“First line supervisors are responsible for the oversight of their employees’ projects and the successful execution of those,” the employee said. “They hire and evaluate their direct reports annually and handle execution of disciplinary actions as needed. They have ZERO authority to establish policy. All of that is dictated down to them from their senior leadership.”

Federal employee unions have filed multiple lawsuits challenging the legality of Schedule Policy/Career, filed last year but effectively held dormant until the policy was set for implementation. In statements Thursday, their leaders vowed to block it in court.

“The administration continues to focus on trying to strip federal workers of the rights that Congress gave them instead of letting them do the jobs that the American people count on them to do,” said National Treasury Employees Union National President Doreen Greenwald. “Now that the administration has officially ordered the transfer of an untold number of employees to Schedule Policy/Career—so that they are, in the administration's view, easier to fire—the litigation surrounding this initiative will resume. NTEU looks forward to aggressively pursuing that litigation and fighting to ensure the American people have their government services delivered by federal employees who were hired based on merit and skill, not partisan affiliation.”

“The practical implications of this action are clear,” said Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees. “Workers who once felt comfortable reporting waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement at their place of employment because they were protected from retaliation will now be afraid for their jobs if they speak out. That is a disservice to them and to the millions of Americans who rely on the federal government every day.”

And while it appears those legal challenges are set to finally kick off, Stephanie Rapp-Tully, partner at federal employment law firm Tully Rinckey, PLLC, while some may try to challenge their reclassification before the Merit Systems Protection Board, it could take some time before individual employees can file litigation of their own.

“For an individual to bring an action, they have to have suffered a harm,” she said. “You could be reclassified as Schedule F and maintain your employment, never face an adverse action and retire as planned. That could be your trajectory—you don’t know. It’s not until they pursue an adverse action that someone has suffered a damage.”

A perhaps overlooked change for Schedule Policy/Career employees is the inability to respond to a proposed adverse personnel action before it takes effect.

“Agencies are not required to provide advanced notice or ally for a written reply on any disciplinary or adverse actions,” Rapp-Tully said. “[They’re] also not entitled to see the evidence against them, which is a huge component . . . and they couldn’t appeal agency decisions to the MSPB. It’s the true definition of at-will.”

NextGov/FCW reporter David DiMolfetta contributed to this report.

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Inspector general group announces pick to lead oversight of Iran war following senator’s questioning

Sean Michael Newhouse — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 14:52:05 -0400

Last week, Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., requested that an oversight body for inspectors general assign one of the agency watchdogs to lead oversight of the war in Iran, pointing to a statutory requirement for such a designation with respect to a military “overseas contingency operation that exceeds 60 days.”

On Wednesday, the Defense Department OIG announced that it had been selected to spearhead oversight of Operation Epic Fury; although, officials said that the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency made the designation on May 12.

The U.S. and Israel launched airstrikes against Iran on Feb. 28.

“This lead inspector general designation not only follows the framework required in the IG Act, it also reflects the extensive experience of the [DOD] OIG with comprehensive oversight of overseas contingency operations,” DOD IG Platte Moring said in a statement. “We are collaborating closely with our colleagues to promote accountability and responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars.”

According to the announcement, the DOD OIG’s oversight of the war in Iran will be supported by the IGs for the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development. While the Trump administration folded USAID into State in 2025, the USAID OIG is still active.

When selecting an IG to lead oversight of an overseas military operation, the CIGIE chair is limited to choosing the IG for DOD, State or USAID.

Moring was confirmed as the DOD IG in December 2025. He previously served as deputy general counsel at the department during Trump’s first term. Likewise, Cheryl Mason, who was elected as CIGIE chair in March, was confirmed in summer 2025 as the IG at the Veterans Affairs Department after a stint as a senior adviser to VA Secretary Doug Collins.

Government oversight advocates and congressional Democrats have criticized the president’s penchant for placing individuals, such as Moring and Mason, who have worked in his first or second administration in IG roles and questioned whether they can provide true independent oversight. Moring, though, received bipartisan support during his confirmation hearing.

As the designee, he will be responsible for developing a strategy for oversight of the war in Iran, reviewing the accuracy of associated spending information provided by federal agencies and resolving any jurisdictional crossovers. He also will be required to issue regular public reports on his office’s activities. The DOD OIG said the first quarterly report would be issued in the fall.

Duckworth celebrated Wednesday’s announcement.

“Now, as lead IG, the DOD IG must work expeditiously with his counterparts to conduct independent oversight of all programs and operations in support of President Trump’s costly, disastrous war, and — as I have requested — brief me on these matters without delay,” she said in a statement.

Relatedly, Trump on Monday nominated Carl Anderson to be State IG. The office confirmed to Government Executive that he is a former federal attorney, congressional staffer and has been a legal adviser at State since April 2025.

At the start of his second term, the president fired the former State IG as well as the watchdogs at 16 other agencies.

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GOP advances $70B immigration enforcement funding bill without new limits on ICE operations

Jennifer Shutt, States Newsroom — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 11:58:52 -0400

The Senate approved a nearly $70 billion package early Friday, moving Republicans one step closer to funding immigration and deportation activities for the next three years without negotiating new constraints on federal agents with Democrats.

The 52-47 mostly party-line vote sends the measure to the House, where GOP lawmakers in that chamber could send it to President Donald Trump for his signature as soon as next week.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski was the only Republican to vote no. Colorado Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet did not vote.

Majority Leader John Thune said GOP leaders were forced to draft the package after Democrats “walked away” from negotiations that could have placed restrictions on federal immigration agents.

“Republicans are going to continue to ensure that these agencies have the funding that they need to fulfill their national security responsibilities,” the South Dakota Republican said.

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., argued the measure shows that Republicans are more focused on funding deportations than lowering the cost of living.

“Apparently, Republicans think we cannot afford a single penny to help Americans cover the skyrocketing costs of gasoline, of healthcare, of housing, of food, of energy, you name it,” he said. “But somehow we can afford to give another $70 billion to Trump's rogue agencies.”

Senate approval followed a marathon amendment voting session that stretched throughout Thursday and overnight as Democrats sought to challenge Republican senators on policy differences just months before the November midterm elections. No amendments were approved.

Building on “big, beautiful” law

The bill would provide a second hefty cash infusion to the agencies carrying out the president’s immigration crackdown, building on the $170 billion Republicans included in their “big, beautiful” law.

This legislation would provide:

$38.53 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement
$26.02 billion for Customs and Border Protection
$5 billion for the secretary of Homeland Security

The money would be available through Sept. 30, 2029, the end of the fiscal year. Republicans decided not to include any new guardrails on federal immigration agents.

The measure Republican senators approved was somewhat different from the original version released in early May, which included $1 billion for the Secret Service to make security upgrades associated with the president’s ballroom, dubbed the East Wing Modernization Project.

Republicans also removed $1.46 billion that would have bolstered funding for several Justice Department programs.

Additionally, GOP lawmakers bolstered ICE funding by $350 million compared to the earlier version of the bill.

Republican leaders are moving the package through the complex budget reconciliation process, avoiding the need to secure Democratic votes in the Senate that would otherwise be required to end debate on the measure.

GOP leaders opted to use the special legislative maneuver after they were unable to broker agreement with Democrats to place constraints on federal immigration officers.

Democratic lawmakers said new guardrails, including body cameras and preventing the use of masks, were necessary after federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January.

The impasse led to a 76-day shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security that didn’t end until late April, when Congress approved the annual spending bill without funding for ICE or the Border Patrol.

June 1 deadline missed

The reconciliation process comes with several strict rules that require each section of the legislation to address federal revenue, spending or the debt limit. Proposals also cannot be deemed “merely incidental” to the federal budget.

Trump wanted Congress to approve the funding package ahead of a self-imposed June 1 deadline. But work on the measure ground to a halt after the administration announced plans to establish a $1.776 billion fund to pay people who believe they were wrongly prosecuted by the Justice Department.

Floor debate on the bill resumed again this week after acting Attorney General Todd Blanche testified before a House subcommittee Tuesday the administration was “not moving forward with the fund, period.”

Trump, however, muddied the waters a bit Wednesday when asked during an Oval Office event whether the fund was “dead or on hold.”

“I'd have to ask my lawyers. I don't know,” he said. “Are you talking about the weaponization fund? The weaponization fund, as far as I'm concerned, was a beautiful thing.”

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House panel rejects bid to keep military lawyers focused on military work

Thomas Novelly — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 11:36:51 -0400

House Republicans axed a provision to the annual defense policy bill that would have ended the Trump administration’s practice of using the military’s uniformed lawyers from serving as immigration judges and special U.S. attorneys in Democrat-run cities.

Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo, proposed the amendment during the House Armed Service Committee's markup of the National Defense Authorization Act on Thursday afternoon. The provision would have amended U.S. law to clarify that the judge advocate generals corps could only be assigned to military-related duties. Republican lawmakers, including HASC Chairman Mike Rogers, ultimately batted down the provision in a 31-26 vote, according to the committee’s website. It’s not clear if a similar provision is being debated in the Senate.

“Our JAGs advise commanders in some of the most consequential decisions our military makes, from combat operations, to targeting authorities, to rules of engagement, military justice, personnel matters, and international law,” Crow said. “They are a limited and specialized resource. Their time should be focused on matters that directly affect military operations, unit cohesion, command authority, and mission effectiveness. Assigning them elsewhere takes them away from this critical military work, especially in a time as is as much conflict as we are seeing right now.”

Former uniformed attorneys told Defense One that the amendment would’ve relieved overworked military lawyers. Under the Trump administration, JAGs have been assigned to oversee immigration courts, appointed as special U.S. attorneys to investigate “fraud and abuse” in Minneapolis, and prosecuted violent crimes during domestic National Guard deployments. This year, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has scrutinized the JAG corps with a series of wide-ranging reforms and has fired the military's top lawyers and trimmed the civilian legal staff.

Rogers, R-Ala., defended the administration’s unprecedented use of the military’s lawyers.

“This is a direct attack on the administration, which has used judge advocates in multiple ways to protect national security priorities for the president. Judge advocates have served as special assistants to U.S. attorneys for years,” he said. “That role has been expanded in the current administration to assist other agencies in defense of the homeland national security priority, and great experience and training for our uniformed officers. I trust that the Secretary of Defense, with the help of the Joint Staff, may deploy judge advocates across the United States and the world to ensure the rule of law is followed.”

Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas, also criticized the provision, saying Hegseth “has determined that the homeland mission is essential” and that the extra lawyers are crucial to it.

“The National Security Strategy places a great deal of emphasis on homeland defense, and in order to meet these needs, an increase in attorneys has been needed to litigate in U.S. courts and aid in the administrative hearings across the Department of Justice and Homeland,” Fallon said. “Our uniformed attorneys have the ability to surge into positions when the country needs them.”

Military legal experts have previously told Defense One that there is precedent for uniformed lawyers to prosecute U.S. citizens, but the Trump administration’s wide-spread use of the JAGs has raised fears that it could violate the Posse Comitatus Act which forbids the military to be used for federal law enforcement.

Steve Lepper, a retired Air Force lawyer and a member of a group of former JAGs that has spoken out about the administration’s legal actions, said he wasn’t surprised that the amendment wasn’t passed by the committee.

“I think it's basically restoration of the limits that posse comitatus places on the military,” Lepper said. “When you come right down to it, using the military in a prosecutorial or judicial capacity for cases that have nothing to do with the military is basically a violation of posse comitatus.”

Aaron Brynildson, a University of Mississippi law professor and retired Air Force JAG, also said that uniformed lawyers should be focused on military-related missions when serving as special U.S. attorneys

“Having been previously appointed as a SAUSA while on active duty, the sole reason JAGs should be detailed to these positions is to prosecute civilians committing criminal offenses on military bases. JAGs should not be used to prosecute immigration crimes or as fill-ins for overburdened federal prosecutors.”

Brynildson and Lepper said that the wide-ranging use of the JAGs appears to be at odds with Hegseth’s complaint in March that “military lawyers are sometimes stuck doing civilian side work.”

“What Mr. Crow offered was basically a way to achieve what Hegseth said he wants, which is JAGs to do JAG jobs,” Lepper said. “In this case, I guess the majority in the House Armed Services Committee felt that JAGs should be used for things other than what they are in the military to do.”

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Electronic health record modernization needs better cyber and privacy collaboration, GAO says

Edward Graham — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 17:34:23 -0400

The Government Accountability Office said on Tuesday that the unit overseeing the federal government’s new electronic health record system is not collaborating enough with its partner agencies to secure the software against digital threats or ensure that patient data is sufficiently protected.

In a watchdog report, GAO said the Federal Electronic Health Record Modernization office “doesn't fully follow leading practices for collaboration” when it comes to the cybersecurity and privacy of data with the new EHR system.

The office oversees the government’s effort to deploy one common, interoperable system across the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Defense Department, the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. GAO said the completed system is expected to have “more than 500,000 users providing care to over 18 million servicemembers, veterans, and their families, making it one of the nation’s largest electronic health record systems.”

FEHRM was created through a joint charter signed by DOD and VA in December 2019, with the four participating agencies taking on varying levels of cyber and privacy responsibilities.

DOD is primarily responsible for managing the cybersecurity of the EHR software and the network used to access the system. GAO said VA also has “responsibility for the cybersecurity of its own network.” Each of the four agencies is also responsible for managing their own networks and following applicable privacy laws when it comes to handling users’ data.

While GAO said that FEHRM has “initiated a number of efforts to promote collaboration” with the four agencies, it added that “it has done so without well-defined common goals and outcomes.” The watchdog added this includes concerns that the office does not “monitor, assess or communicate on performance measures” to hold its partners accountable.

“Articulating clear and measurable goals would better position the FEHRM to oversee the coordinated cybersecurity of the federal EHR by providing insight into the specific resources, skills, or time needed to address shared responsibilities,” the report said. “Further, these goals would help hold the FEHRM accountable for demonstrating how its activities, such as the development of the Joint Incident Management Framework, align with the common outcomes it seeks to achieve.”

FEHRM has been working to create the framework since 2021 to streamline agency responses to EHR-directed cyber threats, with GAO saying the guidance was most recently scheduled to be released in April.

Without outlining clear goals and outcomes, the watchdog said “progress on planned efforts, such as the Joint Incident Management Framework, may be impeded or further delayed.”

GAO’s concerns about planning extended to the office’s logistical operations, with the report saying that FEHRM “has not fully articulated specific short- or long-term goals or intended outcomes related to the cybersecurity of the federal EHR or the privacy of health data within it.” This included office officials telling GAO in January 2026 that it was still developing its goals for fiscal year 2026.

The watchdog made two recommendations, including calling for both DOD and VA leaders to press FEHRM “to define common goals, outcomes, and associated performance measures, and monitor, assess, and communicate progress on collaboration efforts toward ensuring the cybersecurity and privacy of the federal enclave.”

DOD did not concur with the report as it was written. VA neither agreed nor disagreed with GAO’s takeaways, but said it initially focused on establishing a unified culture to build trust with partner agencies, which it called “the essential first step.”

While the joint EHR system has reportedly not been directly targeted by a cyberattack, previous cyber incidents have underscored the impact these types of breaches and digital assaults can have on healthcare delivery.

A February 2024 ransomware attack on Change Healthcare — a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group and the largest healthcare payment system in the U.S. — disrupted payments and prescription processing at medical facilities across the U.S. This included VA’s systems, with an agency official saying at the time that it affected just over 40,000 veterans’ medications.

That attack also affected “interface assessments” at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center in North Chicago, Illinois, a joint DOD-VA facility that was in the process of switching over to the new federal EHR system. That rollout, which occurred in March 2024, was the Pentagon’s last site rollout of the new software.

DOD and NOAA have completed their deployments of the new software, and the Coast Guard is reportedly in the final stages of its rollout. VA, however, has faced numerous missteps in its own EHR implementation effort.

VA paused most rollouts of the EHR system in April 2023 to address a host of safety, technical and usability concerns. The agency and DOD subsequently conducted the Lovell deployment during the reset period, which was the sixth VA facility to receive the new software.

The agency recently resumed EHR software rollouts at four Michigan-based medical facilities in April and plans to deploy the system at nine more sites in 2026. VA Secretary Doug Collins told Congress last month that the new rollouts were “phenomenal,” although he said the agency needs to go back and fix issues at the first five sites that received the software.

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EPA’s research efforts are swayed by administration priorities, official says

Edward Graham — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 17:10:33 -0400

The Environmental Protection Agency’s reorganized research office is influenced by the Trump administration’s political appointees, the agency’s top science official confirmed to lawmakers on Thursday.

The EPA shuttered its longstanding Office of Research and Development last July and replaced it with a new Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions, which was placed within the agency’s Office of the Administrator. In a May 2025 press release, the EPA said it was “shifting its scientific expertise and research efforts to program offices to tackle statutory obligations and mission essential functions.”

During a House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Environment hearing, Maureen Gwinn — EPA’s deputy associate administrator for science in OASES — said the restructured office “serves as a coordinating hub that ensures consistency and collaboration across EPA’s research enterprise, advancing gold standard science and strengthening technical assistance to state and local partners.”

It is not surprising for a presidential administration to reshape federal agencies’ missions to align with its political priorities. But committee Democrats said the level of new political oversight over OASES raises concerns about the office’s independence.

President Donald Trump notably signed a May 2025 executive order on "Restoring Gold Standard Science” that some critics believe undercuts independent federal research by giving political appointees more of a say over the direction of scientific studies.

A study published on May 5 by the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility found that, at the time, there had been only 61 peer-reviewed studies published by EPA scientists up to that point in 2026, compared to a total of 339 in 2024.

Rep. Gabe Amo, D-R.I., the top Democrat on the subcommittee, noted during the hearing that an EPA interim approval process memo implemented “a ‘no surprises’ policy for EPA science that requires all OASES activities — scientific activities — be, quote, ‘supported by appropriate political leadership.’” He added that “true science follows the evidence wherever it leads, even if it's surprising, and even if those discoveries are inconvenient for Trump's political agenda.”

Gwinn said she was the one who wrote the memo after discussions with senior EPA leadership about making sure the office’s scientific research "is in agreement with administration priorities.”

“That was part of being sure that the work that we would continue to do in OASES was supportive of the administration,” she added.

When pressed by Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore., about whether any of EPA’s research projects have been “delayed, modified or declined” because they did not align with the administration’s political priorities, Gwinn said there have been some delays in “getting a better understanding of the research, if it was related to something that in an executive order was something that was not moving forward,” although she said she would have to get back to the committee to provide examples.

Republican members said during Thursday’s hearing that the creation of OASES streamlines EPA's scientific research work by connecting it with the offices that could best operationalize that expertise.

Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas — who chairs the full House Science, Space and Technology Committee — said EPA’s restructuring “comes at a time when scientific data, advancements in artificial intelligence and public expectations for transparency continue to grow — making it essential that EPA adapts thoughtfully and effectively.”

He added that embedding researchers within the agency’s program offices that make regulatory decisions “facilitates early communication between scientists and program staff” and helps EPA “reduce duplication, improve coordination and support a regulatory environment that encourages innovation.”

When asked by Babin, however, if the agency has seen “a diminution or an enhancement of science at EPA” since the creation of OASES, Gwinn told him it is difficult to say right now.

“I know you wanted yes or no but … we're six, seven months in,” she said, adding that “during that time, we've been developing new processes and getting things up to speed, so I'm not sure that I can give a yes or no answer at this point.”

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USPS financial crisis won’t be solved until Congress defines its service mission, regulator testifies

Sean Michael Newhouse — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 16:49:32 -0400

The U.S. Postal Service’s regulator on Thursday argued that the agency’s financial woes will not be resolved until Congress sets up a funding system for the USPS that supports its desired service requirements, echoing calls from the agency’s leadership and other oversight entities.

“Only by first specifically defining what America needs of its postal service and what that costs will Congress then truly know how best to fix the fundamental funding structure while preserving appropriate service and delivery standards,” said Robert Taub, the vice chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission, before the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Operations.

Postmaster General David Steiner testified to the panel in March that USPS could run out of money as soon as this fall. Because the PRC in April authorized the agency to temporarily suspend certain employer contributions to the Federal Employees Retirement System, however, Taub said that the looming financial cliff has been pushed back by several years.

“This is not a panacea nor a permanent or long-term fix to the postal service's problems, but it does allow Congress an opportunity to enact thoughtful and fundamental change as opposed to choices of desperation,” he said.

At the time, USPS officials said the FERS suspension would not cause “any immediate detrimental impact to current or future retirees,” and the PRC noted that the agency had only been making partial payments in recent years.

In March, Steiner also told the Government Reform Subcommittee that changes were needed to USPS’ self-sustaining business model and/or its service expectations: “If you want the same number of delivery days and post offices, we can do that, but someone has to pay for it. If you want to have a discussion about reducing services, we can do that.”

The Government Accountability Office also has long reported that USPS’ current business model is unsustainable.

Both Subcommittee Chairman Pete Sessions, R-Texas, and ranking member Kweisi Mfume, D-Md., agreed on Thursday that lawmakers need to reach agreement on what USPS service standards will be going forward in order to shore up the postal agency’s finances.

“If we don't do that, then we've just not done anything,” Mfume said. “I mean, we've just kicked the ball down the road.”

In addition to structural reform, Steiner and the USPS Board of Governors have called on Congress to increase the postal agency’s $15 billion statutory debt limit in response to the financial shortfalls. But Sessions expressed doubts about that proposal.

“There is no reason to assume additional borrowed funds infused into this unintended business model would be anything more than throwing good money at bad results,” he said.

Also during the hearing, PRC commissioners and members of both parties criticized Delivering for America — an ongoing postal modernization plan started by former Postmaster General Louis DeJoy that he predicted would enable USPS to break even by fiscal 2023 generally by slowing some delivery and increasing the prices of certain products. But the agency experienced a net loss of $2 billion in the most recent quarter.

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Trump moves to lock in Blanche at DOJ as confirmation fight takes shape

Ashley Murray, States Newsroom — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 16:42:46 -0400

President Trump will nominate acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, his former personal lawyer, to fill the top role at the Justice Department on a permanent basis, he said Wednesday night.

Trump revealed Blanche as his choice at an outdoor event at the White House, saying “we are going to make him permanent attorney general” and adding that he expects Blanche’s nomination process to “go very quickly.&rdquo

Blanche has been leading the department in an acting capacity since former Attorney General Pam Bondi exited the administration in early April.

Blanche, of Florida, will almost certainly have that state’s two Republican senators, Rick Scott and Ashley Moody, supporting his nomination.

The GOP-led Senate confirmed Blanche as deputy attorney general in early March 2025 on a party-line vote.

Blanche represented Trump in 2023 and 2024 during a New York state hush money case. A jury convicted Trump two years ago on 34 first-degree felony counts of falsifying business records.

The close tie between the president and his pick for attorney general is a major reason Democrats will oppose the nomination, U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Thursday.

“Trump picked Blanche because he’s loyal to the president alone — not the Constitution, not the rule of law, and certainly not the American people, and not to the values that this country has had for 250 years,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “For years, Blanche has been Trump’s personal lawyer and attack dog, and that didn’t stop when Blanche joined the department.”

Anti-weaponization fund
Blanche has taken heat in recent weeks, including from Republicans, for the department’s settlement in Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against his own IRS.

Trump dropped the suit in exchange for the department establishing a nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund for persons Blanche described on May 18 as “victims of lawfare.” The settlement revealed that the fund would be governed by five commissioners hand-chosen by Blanche, with only one involving consultation from congressional leadership.

Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle quickly objected to the proposal, noting the possibility that people convicted — then pardoned by Trump — of assaulting police during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol could receive reparations from the fund.

When pressed at a May 27 Senate hearing on whether violent Jan. 6 defendants who were pardoned could reap taxpayer dollars from the fund, Blanche replied, “Anybody can apply.”

“The commission will set rules, I'm sure,” he continued. “That's not for me to set, that's for the commissioners, and whether an individual, an Oath Keeper, as you just mentioned, applies for compensation, anybody in this country can apply.”

Several lawsuits quickly challenged the legality of the fund, including one from former police officers who deployed to the Capitol on Jan. 6, and another from legal advocates who argued the fund would be illegally shielded from transparency laws.

After intense pressure, Blanche testified to a House Appropriations subcommittee Tuesday that the administration was “not moving forward with the fund, period.”

The concession cleared the way for reluctant Senate Republicans to support a roughly $70 billion immigration enforcement package. Senate Democrats plan to stall the bill on the floor Thursday with a marathon of amendments, including proposals to curtail or outright ban such funds going forward.

The administration is still facing questions from lawmakers about a provision in Trump’s IRS settlement that absolves him, his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization, from tax audits.

Epstein files
Blanche has also come under scrutiny for the DOJ’s handling of the release of files related to the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The botched release last year, when Bondi headed the department, initially exposed names of sexual abuse victims.

Democrats claimed Bondi told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee during a closed-door interview last week that Blanche oversaw the legally mandated release of the files and made the decision to not investigate any possible leads.

Bondi refuted the claim on social media following the interview.

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A record number of feds are retiring. Will that slow your claim?

Tammy Flanagan — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 16:04:20 -0400

Retirement statistics are more than monthly government reports, they offer a practical window into how long claims are taking, where delays may occur and what future retirees should expect. For federal employees planning to leave service, these numbers can help set realistic expectations, guide financial preparation and highlight why understanding the retirement process matters before you submit your application.

New claims processing - This report provides historical data detailing key performance variables, with average processing time presented in days.
Agency retirement case accuracy report - This report reflects the number of non-disability retirement application packages audited and the associated error rate for an agency that had at least 15 cases reviewed in a specified month in the current fiscal year.

Note: The Agency Retirement Case Accuracy Reports do not appear to be current. It is unclear whether the December-July period shown is from 2024-2025 or an earlier year.

How these statistics can help you prepare

Prepare for a period when you may need to rely on personal savings while your CSRS or FERS retirement is being processed.

Within about 2-4 weeks after OPM receives your application, you are usually placed in interim pay status. These temporary monthly payments are estimated and are often much lower than your final benefit.

Set aside about six months of living expenses in case your full benefit is delayed.

If possible, save annual leave and retire near the end of the year so you receive a larger lump-sum leave payout.

A TSP loan may help increase short-term cash reserves, since loans can now be repaid after separation. However, loans are only available while you are employed. They have fees, reduce potential investment growth and may create taxable income if not repaid on time.

Understand how your benefit is calculated, especially when large numbers of retirements are being processed and cases may move at different speeds.

If your case is complex, it may take longer than the average processing time.

High volume can also increase the risk of errors if cases are rushed.

If your agency uses the Online Retirement Application (ORA), your claim may move faster than a paper application.

Public data does not show how long it takes for your application to move from your agency to the payroll provider and then to OPM. Although this should take about four to six weeks after separation, in recent months it has been rumored that it is taking sometimes much longer.

If you have not received your annual leave payout or your Civil Service Active (CSA) number, your claim may not have reached OPM yet.

Key monthly retirement claim trends

Digital (Online Retirement Application) claims received each month:

October 2025 — 6,176 (30% of total claims)
November 2025 — 7,833 (33% of total claims)
December 2025 — 6,055 (45% of total claims)
January 2026 — 9,394 (49% of total claims)
February 2026 — 15,494 (49% of total claims)
March 2026 — 8,830 (59% of total claims)
April 2026 — 8,743 (73% of total claims)
May 2026 — 8,288 (73% of total claims)

Total claims received each month so far in FY 2026 (digital and paper combined), compared with the same months in FY 2016:

What the data suggests

For years, warnings about a federal “retirement tsunami” have been overstated. But with far more employees now at or near retirement age, the recent surge in claims suggests that the long-predicted wave may finally have arrived.

Compared with the same period in FY 2016[1], claim volume in FY 2026 is much higher, increasing the workload for agencies, payroll providers and OPM. The delays in processing resulted from the large numbers of separations, including many that did not result in immediate retirement benefits.

Digital applications are becoming more common, but about one in four claims still arrive on paper.

From FY 2007 to FY 2016, the three cabinet agencies with the most retirements were the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of the Army and the Department of the Navy. In FY 2025, those agencies saw sharply different workforce changes, which may affect future retirement patterns.

Once OPM receives a retirement case, the average processing time in FY 2026 is 46 days for digital ORA claims and 73 days for all claims. In May, the averages were 66 days for 8,761 digital claims and 87 days for 10,672 paper claims. That suggests many of the claims completed in May likely reached OPM three to four months earlier, around February or March. Some were likely part of the usual year-end retirements effective Dec. 31, 2025, while others may have been Sept. 30 retirements delayed by heavy workloads in agency HR and payroll offices.

Because averages include both fast and slow cases, some claims move much faster while others take much longer. If you want to know whether your case may be delayed, consider the factors OPM says can slow processing:

Court orders such as a divorce decree or property settlement. These require an additional step and are sent to the Court Order Benefits Branch for review.
Service as a law enforcement officer, firefighter, air traffic controller, Capitol Police, Supreme Court Police or nuclear materials courier, as these cases use a special annuity computation.
Past or active workers’ compensation claims.
Service as a part-time or intermittent federal employee.
Federal service at multiple federal agencies.
Missing documents and forms or incomplete or incorrect information in your retirement application.
Moving without updating your address with OPM.

The larger message in these statistics is clear: retirement processing times, claim volume and case complexity all affect how quickly benefits are finalized. Employees who understand these trends can plan more effectively, build a stronger financial cushion and avoid being caught off guard during the transition from paycheck to annuity.

OPM also publishes the total number of CSRS and FERS annuitants added to the Annuity Roll Processing System (ARPS) from FY 2000 through FY 2025. These totals include retirements processed as of Sept. 30, so most deferred resignation retirements from last year are not reflected in the 2025 figure.

So far in FY 2026, OPM has processed 119,451 retirement claims with four months still left in the fiscal year — a record pace for the past 25 years.

Historical ARPS retirement totals (FY 2000-FY 2025)

Fiscal year — total annuitants added as of Sept. 30

2025 — 112,679
2024 — 95,477
2023 — 108,387
2022 — 114,505
2021 — 96,956
2020 — 99,529
2019 — 109,991
2018 — 109,850
2017 — 96,459
2016 — 99,242
2015 — 99,710
2014 — 105,037
2013 — 138,039
2012 — 111,641
2011 — 82,837
2010 — 76,864
2009 — 87,907
2008 — 86,615
2007 — 92,349
2006 — 103,292
2005 — 94,977
2004 — 90,441
2003 — 81,128
2002 — 74,153
2001 — 77,330
2000 — 77,383

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Lawsuit claims DOJ is retaliating against employees with disabilities who request telework

Sean Michael Newhouse — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 16:50:52 -0400

A new lawsuit alleges that the Justice Department discriminated and retaliated against two of its employees with disabilities “as part of a systematic, agency-wide practice of refusing to grant requests for telework as a reasonable accommodation.”

Both employees teleworked for years in their roles as supervisory IT program managers in the Criminal Division’s Office of Administration without any adverse impacts to their work, according to the complaint. But President Donald Trump’s January 2025 return-to-office directive for the federal workforce upended that.

Joshua Mauldin, one of the plaintiffs, is a Marine and Air Force veteran who retired from the military in 2021 as a “100% permanent and total disabled veteran diagnosed with service-related post-traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety and several cardiac conditions.”

“Because Mauldin’s psychiatric and cardiac disabilities interact, tasks that might be routine for others, such as attending in-person meetings, working in high-traffic office areas and commuting, carry a significant and documented medical risk for him,” according to the lawsuit. “The limitations are permanent, and the severity can range from moderate interference with concentration to acute, disabling episodes that halt his ability to function until symptoms stabilize.”

Prior to the start of Trump’s second term, Mauldin was required to work in-person one day per week, which he was able to manage because the office was mostly empty due to other employees teleworking.

But offices became fuller after the end of remote work flexibility for most of the federal workforce. So, in February 2025, Mauldin requested a reasonable accommodation to telework, for the most part, at least nine out of every 10 workdays per pay period.

Officials are legally required to provide reasonable accommodations to qualified employees with disabilities, unless doing so would cause an “undue hardship” to the agency. Common examples include interpreters, flexible schedules and accessible technology.

Mauldin in April 2025 reached out to an Equal Employment Opportunity counselor to raise a complaint because his supervisor did not make a final determination on his reasonable accommodation request by a 30-day deadline. A day later, his supervisor issued an interim arrangement that enabled him to report in-person only one day per pay period.

And in July 2025, Mauldin’s supervisor approved another interim arrangement — rather than a final determination — for telework every work day “with in-office presence only when required by mission needs” as a result of an upcoming heart ablation procedure “due to a chronic cardiac condition that had worsened in recent months during a period of sustained job-related stress.”

But in November 2025, Mauldin was informed that he would lose his supervisory duties and that his position would be downgraded from a GS-14 to a GS-13 with a salary reduction. Agency officials said this was the result of a review of his job responsibilities, but attorneys in the filing countered that neither Mauldin or employees he supervised were interviewed.

“The prolonged uncertainty caused by the agency’s refusal to grant Mauldin’s requests for reasonable accommodations, combined with the stress and instability caused by his demotion despite his strong performance evaluations, caused a significant deterioration of Mauldin’s PTSD, anxiety and stress-sensitive cardiac conditions,” his attorneys wrote.

He began medical leave in December 2025.

The other plaintiff, Tarik Smajic, has lived with “chronic pain and progressive spinal limitations” since a drunk driver hit his car in 2017. Before 2025, he teleworked three days per week, but that was a result of DOJ’s policy at the time rather than a reasonable accommodation.

Following the return-to-office directive, however, Smajic requested a reasonable accommodation that would allow him to continue his work schedule of teleworking three days per week. His supervisor, who also oversaw Mauldin, criticized his request during a March meeting, according to the suit.

“When Smajic explained that the refusal to grant his RAs had resulted in increased pain and forced him to increase his pain medication dosage, [the supervisor] responded with words to the effect of, ‘It’s your body, you can choose not to take the pills,’” according to the lawsuit.

In July 2025, he requested telework every work day with “in-office presence only when required by mission needs” because new “MRI scans revealed a measurable deterioration of his condition…resulting in more persistent and debilitating symptoms.” Smajic’s supervisor denied it about a month later.

Shortly thereafter, the plaintiff said that he was put on an “informal performance improvement plan” and received lower performance scores.

Because he was required to work in-person three days per week, Smajic in September 2025 submitted a reasonable accommodation request that the agency provide him with equipment similar to what he had in his home office to relieve pain.

“Smajic reported to the office in person, usually in extreme pain, on Sept. 8, 9, 10, 16, 18, 23 and 29, 2025, and had to leave early on several of those days because of the unbearable pain,” his attorneys wrote. “Because of agonizing flareups, Smajic also took some ad hoc leave on days he had originally planned to come into the office.”

According to the filing, Smajic’s supervisor in November 2025 sent him a questionnaire for his doctor to fill out regarding a type of chair that Smajic previously said would not be effective in reducing his pain.

In December, his supervisor notified him that the agency would not provide any in-office accommodations and “instead intended to pursue involuntary reassignment as an ‘accommodation of last resort.’”

The lawsuit requests that: Mauldin and Smajic receive compensatory damages, adverse personnel actions be reversed, their telework requests be approved and DOJ stop its “systematic practice of refusing to issue final decisions granting telework as a reasonable accommodation for employees with disabilities.”

DOJ did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

Government Executive previously reported that Terry Jackson, a former DOJ employee with disabilities, settled with the agency after alleging that he was fired for requesting telework as a reasonable accommodation.

Several agencies have instituted policies more strictly scrutinizing telework and remote work reasonable accommodations, arguing that many civil servants have abused the system following Trump’s return-to-office directive. Employees with qualifying disabilities are exempt from the mandate.

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Trump signs order moving thousands of federal employees into Schedule F

Erich Wagner — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 16:13:06 -0400

President Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order formally converting nearly 10,000 career federal workers into Schedule Policy/Career, making them effectively at-will employees.

The edict marks the culmination of a years-long push to make it easier to fire federal employees in “policy-related” jobs by removing them from the federal government’s competitive service and placing them in a new job category, initially called Schedule F and now referred to as Schedule Policy/Career. Employees placed into the new schedule would no longer be able to challenge adverse personnel actions before the Merit Systems Protection Board, and whistleblower complaints filed by Schedule F employees would be investigated by their own agency, rather than the Office of Special Counsel.

A senior administration official told reporters Wednesday that, contrary to the administration’s prior estimates that 50,000 feds would be converted to the new job category, just 8,000 jobs are targeted in Wednesday’s executive order. An OPM spokesperson said Trump chose to instead focus on "the most senior level career policy officials."

The official said the vast majority -- around 97% -- of those impacted are either GS-15s or senior leaders (SL). Jobs targeted for conversion include agency office and division heads; C-suite posts like chief information officers; regional officers and their deputies and chiefs of staff; program managers; those who help write federal regulations and attorneys involved in crafting agency or internal policies, as well as advisors, senior HR officials and grantmaking posts.

Schedule F was first proposed via executive order in October 2020, but following Trump’s electoral defeat the following month, officials failed to implement the measure prior to former President Biden’s inauguration. Biden rescinded the edict, and in 2024 the Office of Personnel Management issued new regulations to make it more difficult for a future president to revive the idea.

Though early in Trump’s second term, officials suggested the president could simply “nullify” regulations, OPM ultimately followed the notice-and-comment process to propose new regulations to unwind the Biden-era protections and implement the newly-renamed Schedule Policy/Career. OPM’s final rule implementing the new job category took effect in March.

The policy remains the subject of multiple lawsuits by federal employee unions, who have accused the administration of violating the Constitution, the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act and the Administrative Procedures Act. And good government groups have warned that at-will employment of public employees on the state level have produced mixed results in terms of productivity, while increasing reports of political and personal favoritism in the workplace.

Scott Kupor and another official said Wednesday that contrary to opponents’ warnings that the measure would give rise to a new spoils system in federal employment, there won’t be political litmus tests for employees in Schedule Policy/Career and the traditional hiring process for competitive service positions will be retained in the new job category. Unmentioned, however, was OPM’s decision last year to institute new politicized essay questions as part of the federal hiring process.

“In order to effect the president’s policy priorities, we need people in these senior positions willing and capable of carrying out those directives,” Kupor said. “All this does is basically say: it doesn’t matter what your political views are–and you can have any political views–but if you allow them to interfere in your willingness to carry out lawful orders and directives, this is a mechanism for you to be removed, effectively at-will . . . There are zero loyalty tests in this.”

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GSA lays out step-by-step guide for agencies to cut, streamline and automate work

Frank Konkel — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0400

The General Services Administration published a new playbook Wednesday to provide federal agencies and executives tools, strategies and a modern blueprint to automate repetitive tasks and give employees time back to perform mission-critical work.

The Elimination, Optimization and Automation playbook, developed by GSA, builds on lessons learned from federal pilots, mature automation programs and the agency’s own extensive internal enterprise efforts to improve operations.

While a new product, the playbook is already foundational to the agency’s moonshot goal to save and automate 1 million hours of workload for its staff—a goal it’s more than halfway toward achieving, according to GSA Deputy Administrator Mike Lynch.

Yet Lynch said there’s tremendous potential value in taking what’s worked at GSA and “putting those best practices out back to the broader federal government,” with many agencies grappling with similar problems. In this way, he said GSA is serving as a force multiplier for other agencies.

“I think from what I've seen, at least working in government, is so many of the challenges [agencies] are trying to solve are incredibly consistent,” Lynch said in a recent interview with Government Executive. “So there may be unique nuances based on the mission of the agency, but everyone's trying to understand how to deploy technology and use AI and drive efficiencies within our workflows.”

“We just don't have to start from go every time,” Lynch added. “There are learnings that we can provide from our experience at GSA, where we've had a more formalized process that allows other parts of the government to go faster and better. Hopefully, the results we’ve been able to produce through these types of programs makes it compelling and something that other agencies can use as appropriate within their groups.”

An early copy of the 37-page playbook viewed by Government Executive includes best practices based on technology implementation efforts at GSA and a handful of other agencies, including NASA and the Education Department, during this administration as well as the previous Trump administration. Collectively, the handbook “is formatted to follow a typical EOA project through its lifecycle, from ideation to deployment.”

It outlines a multi-phased approach to EOA projects — opportunity assessments, solution planning and design, implementing and sustaining — as well as an EOA toolkit with tools and templates “to help accelerate your agency’s launch of an effective EOA initiative.”

The playbook lists Lynch, GSA Chief Financial Officer Nimisha Agarwal and Larry Allen, Associate Administrator of the Office of Government Policy as executive sponsors; Chris Grigsby, Executive Director of Digital Finance, Mehul Parekh, Principal Deputy Associate Administrator of OGP, Anthony Cavallo, Division Director of the Business Modernization Division, and program analysts Gabrielle Perret and Will Spelker as EOA subject matter experts; and Andy Stegmaier, President of Management Science & Innovation and Nick Surkamp, Chief Delivery Officer of Management Science & Innovation as EOA playbook authors.

“It is incredible the work the team has done to set this up and provide a top-down framework for the program,” Lynch said.

Once published, Lynch said the next step is evangelizing the playbook across government. Internally, those efforts began with a May 12 Emerging Tech Showcase held at GSA’s Washington, D.C. headquarters and attended virtually by more than 2,000 people. The showcase featured several panels on the playbook featuring many of its contributors, as well as panels on GSA’s internal AI-powered chat platform, AI use cases across the agency and an industry-focused panel.

Lynch said he hopes to host a governmentwide showcase with an even larger audience sometime in July.

Other ‘force multipliers’ at GSA

Lynch said governmentwide demand for USAi has increased steadily since GSA launched the shared service to streamline AI adoption last August. Thus far, the agency has inked 24 agency agreements with USAi with 40 more in the works. Another 82 agencies have asked for demos of the technology available on USAi.

“USAi continues to be a really strong platform for us that's meant to be in very similar fashion to the EOA playbook, where we're trying to host and help provide a safe sandbox for other agencies to start to explore how they deploy AI within their workflows,” Lynch said.

Another governmentwide program, OneGov, has generated some $1.15 billion in savings through negotiated discounts on a variety of AI and software tools using the collective power of the entire federal government. More than two dozen companies, including most leading AI firms, are selling their software at a discounted price to agencies through OneGov. In total, nearly 3.4 million users across government have access to that software through OneGov.

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OPM moves one step closer to HR system overhaul for 2 million federal workers

Nick Wakeman — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 07:00:00 -0400

With one protest withdrawn and a second one denied, the Office of Personnel Management is now free to move forward with its plan to award a 10-year contract to modernize the government’s human resource systems.

OPM released the final solicitation in October for the Federal HR 2.0 contract to modernize systems that cover 2 million employees across the government. The agency wants a single integrated platform that will be the infrastructure for a more data-driven federal HR ecosystem, according to solicitation documents.

Bidders had to submit proposals by Oct. 31 and OPM followed a two-step process for evaluation. After step one, IBM Corp. and then Economic Systems Inc. filed their protests.

IBM filed its protest on Feb. 25 but withdrew without explanation on April 3. Meanwhile, Economic Systems filed a protest on March 2. On Monday, the Government Accountability Office posted on its public docket that it had denied Economic Systems protest.

OPM could not make an award while the protests were active, but it could continue to evaluate proposals. Now it can pick a winner with the protests out of the way.

While no dollar value has been disclosed, the undertaking is massive.

OPM wants the platform to have functions such as position management, personnel action, records processing, workforce analytics, and employee and manager self-service capabilities.

The agency will pick a winner based on four technical factors including past experience and solution readiness, a written implementation approach, systems testing, and a virtual live demonstration.

Last year, OPM awarded a sole-source contract to Workday to fast-track the modernization effort. OPM later rescinded it amid criticism and instead moved to create the current solicitation for a broader, government-wide solution.

Workday is one of several companies in the running for Federal HR 2.0. An award could come anytime this month, according to GovTribe data.

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What DOGE taught us about AI and federal workers

Kristen Cordell and Adrian Brown — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 06:00:00 -0400

Last year, the U.S. Agency for International Development lost 97% of its staff in a matter of weeks. An article published in The New York Times last month found the majority of these former employees were still out of work a year later — not between jobs, but out of the market entirely, with some managers who once earned six-figure salaries applying for part-time retail positions.

I watched this happen. I worked at the State Department until August 2025 and helped create a pro bono coaching network for impacted colleagues, many of whom were deeply traumatized. After thousands of hours of those conversations, one question kept surfacing: who am I now?

The cuts were political, not technological. But strip that away and what remains is the most concrete demonstration we have of what happens when a large category of federal professional work disappears faster than any system can absorb it — and why the standard policy response is not enough to cover these numbers. Over 270,000 federal employees separated from the U.S. government through layoffs, forced resignations and buyouts.

Most impacted workers did not lack skills. They lacked a place where those skills made the most sense. Federal workers who spent careers running HIV programs or managing humanitarian operations did not simply need to update their LinkedIn profiles. They lost the institutional context that made their expertise meaningful. The formal policy response was minimal. Workers relied on informal networks. The DC labor market, despite being one of the most credentialed in the country, has not absorbed their talent.

This is where the federal story becomes a story about artificial intelligence. As deferred resignation agreements were being signed in August 2025, the U.S. government licensed ChatGPT to all federal agencies for a dollar. The State Department reframed AI as the vehicle for development outcomes that USAID's human expertise previously delivered. OpenAI began offering grants to NGOs in regions where USAID once operated.

This is not a Washington anomaly. The Economist devoted its cover earlier this month to a question that was once considered alarmist: whether AI could produce the most significant disruption to working life in a generation. The answer, even among economists who were recently skeptical, is increasingly, possibly ‘yes’ — and governments should not wait to find out.

New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show AI-exposed occupations are already losing jobs, and government employees could be among the most vulnerable, given the large concentration of workers handling the analytical, administrative and policy roles where AI capabilities are advancing fastest. The official numbers are not catching up fast enough. By the time they do, the adjustment will already have failed for the workers caught in the first wave.

There are three things federal agencies and policymakers should be doing now: First, plan for the fiscal squeeze. Federal workforce costs are not just a spending question — they are a revenue question. As AI shifts work from human labor to automated systems, the income tax base that funds agencies, benefits and services erodes at exactly the moment demand for support rises. Brooking Institution modeling shows this fiscal pressure could be severe. Agencies need fiscal scenario planning now, not after the trend is visible in budget projections.

Second, design workforce transition for what people lose. The Office of Personnel Management’s current transition support is built for skills retraining. The evidence from the DOGE displacement, and from every serious study of mass professional job loss, is that the harder problem is purpose and identity, not capability. Transition programs that ignore this will produce the same frustration the DOGE coaching networks documented.

Third, ensure that AI deployment decisions in federal agencies are not made solely by the vendors supplying the technology. The informal support networks that emerged in Washington show what community-level resilience looks like when institutions fail. They deserve federal attention and funding, not just admiration. Workers, communities and agencies affected by AI deployment decisions need a meaningful voice in how those decisions are made.

The DOGE cuts were political, but what they demonstrated is not. Federal agencies are the first institutions in America to run this experiment at scale. The question is whether anyone in government is paying attention to the results.

Kristen Cordell served as Senior Advisor at the US Department of State until August 2025 and is currently Senior Director of Policy at Grand Challenges Canada. Adrian Brown is Founder and CEO of Windfall Trust, a nonprofit working with governments and policymakers on AI economic preparedness.

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OPM to set new requirements to ‘verify’ FEHBP enrollments

Erich Wagner — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 16:40:45 -0400

The Office of Personnel Management on Tuesday published regulations aimed at better verifying that family members of federal workers and retirees are eligible for benefits under two of the government’s employer-sponsored health insurance programs.

Last year, Congress enacted a law requiring stricter screening of participants in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program and Postal Service Health Benefits Program to ensure they are eligible for coverage. That move came following a 2022 Government Accountability Office report finding that the government could be spending upwards of $1 billion per year to cover family members and former spouses of federal workers and retirees who no longer qualified as dependents.

In 2024, OPM instructed agencies to audit a sample of 10% of FEHBP enrollees—the PSHBP had not yet launched at the time—to verify their continued eligibility. But due to a combination of “high transactions” during the 2024 open season and “staffing challenges” last year, the effort never made it off the ground.

In a final rule published to the Federal Register Tuesday, OPM said beginning July 1, federal workers who enroll a child or spouse in health insurance benefits through FEHBP or PSHBP will be required to provide proof of their eligibility. Among the acceptable documentation are government-issued marriage certificates, birth certificates, paternity tests and foster child or adoption paperwork. Parents of adult dependents under 26 may submit their children’s tax returns to confirm eligibility, and in instances involving a disabled adult, a medical certification that they are incapable of “self-support” will be accepted.

Under the new process, agency employing offices or OPM can disenroll a family member of the federal worker “fails to provide adequate documentation” of their eligibility. If someone is disenrolled, they may ask for a reconsideration of that decision within 60 days, but the result of that process is “final.”

While much of the rule is aimed at improving eligibility verification when a dependent is first added to insurance coverage, OPM said it is still preparing for the FEHB Protection Act’s other major provision: an audit of existing enrollments to verify participants’ continued eligibility.

“OPM concurs that there are ineligible family members participating in the program and more can be done to identify and remove them from coverage,” the rule states. “That [GAO] report made several recommendations, many of which OPM concurred with and implemented. While this work progresses, OPM is also preparing for the family member eligibility audit required by the FPA. This audit is a critical piece of addressing ineligible family member coverage and restoring program integrity, but the economic effects of the audit are not included in this rule since it is not affected by this rule.”

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Weakening career staff while boosting political appointees at science agencies is causing ‘generational damage,’ nonprofit warns

Sean Michael Newhouse — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 16:03:13 -0400

The American public is in the throes of experiencing the consequences of the Trump administration’s overhauls to federal science programs, according to Max Stier, the president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service nonprofit. Specifically, during a press briefing on Tuesday, he criticized workforce reductions at science agencies, cuts to government-backed research and efforts to give greater influence to political appointees in the grantmaking process.

“They're all three doing the same thing, which is destroying the extraordinary success that we have been able to enjoy as a nation through scientific development and innovation,” he said. “And they’re ongoing. These are not one and done things.”

In a report published on Tuesday, the Partnership found that federal science agencies lost nearly 118,000 employees between September 2024 and February 2026, as the Trump administration sought to downsize the civil service.

Using data from the Office of Personnel Management, researchers determined that the federal workforce decreased by 12.3% during the same period. Science agencies, however, often experienced deeper reductions.

For example, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration lost 41.7% of its staffers. A coalition of scientists and research organizations recently reported that job cuts at SAMHSA and other science agencies are undermining the president’s efforts to combat addiction.

While the number of federal science employees fell in every state between September 2024 and February 2026, Alaska experienced the largest percentage reduction — 36.7%. The Partnership attributed this to staff cuts at public lands agencies, such as the Forest Service, National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management, which oversee around 60% of land in Alaska.

A similar dynamic played out in other Western states, including Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Utah, which all lost more than a quarter of their federal science workforces during the same period.

“This is not a red state, blue state issue,” Stier said. “Many of the states that most benefit from science investments from the United States government are actually traditional red states.”

The Partnership previously reported that, between fiscal years 2024 and 2025, the federal government spent nearly a quarter less, respectively, on scientific research and development contracts and science agency project grants.

In its latest analysis, researchers noted that this led to 36 out of 50 states and about two-thirds of congressional districts receiving less funding in federal science project grants. Additionally, 32 states got less government research and development contract funding between those two fiscal years.

During his remarks, Stier also criticized a recent proposed rule from the Office of Management and Budget that would overhaul the federal grantmaking process, including by requiring political appointees to approve awards to ensure they advance the president’s priorities.

“It opens the door for additional corruption is what it does,” he said. “[It leads to] choices on the allocation of public dollars on the basis of political interest — and maybe private pecuniary interest — as opposed to the best chances of generating a real return for the American taxpayer and the American public.”

In the proposed rule, OMB officials argued that the changes are necessary to “prevent wasteful spending and misuse or mismanagement of federal funds.” In particular, they criticized awards during the Biden administration for diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

The National Institutes of Health in recent months has modified its grant review process to identify research that contains words associated with diversity (e.g. race or gender), which has held up some grant disbursements and forced scientists to rewrite proposals.

The Partnership recently reported that the number of political appointees in the federal government has swelled during Trump’s second term and that they’re being assigned to agencies that haven’t employed such officials in recent history.

In total, Partnership officials argued that these reforms are causing “generational damage” to U.S. science.

“We're going to start to see scientists moving abroad and not coming back. We're going to start to see the pipelines of talent into government start to dry up,” said Brandon Lardy, the Partnership’s data director, during Tuesday’s briefing. “It's not a switch that you can flip on and off. It's going to take years, if not generations, to recover from some of these losses.”

In a March poll by Nature of roughly 1,600 researchers, more than 75% reported that they were considering leaving the U.S.

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Trump appoints housing official to be acting director of national intelligence

David DiMolfetta — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 10:41:07 -0400

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he is appointing Federal Housing Finance Agency director William Pulte to serve as acting director of national intelligence, replacing outgoing director Tulsi Gabbard.

The choice is unusual for the nation’s top spy official, who would oversee 18 intelligence agencies like the NSA and CIA. Trump defended his selection in a Truth Social post, saying that Pulte, who led many of the administration’s mortgage fraud efforts last year, “has deep experience managing the most sensitive matters in America.”

Pulte would still hold his leadership positions in FHFA, as well as his chairmanship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, while serving as acting director, Trump said.

While heading the housing finance body, Pulte leveraged his authority to launch investigations into the president’s political foes, including Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook and New York Attorney General Letitia James. He does not have prior experience working in the intelligence community.

The announcement sparked swift condemnation from former national security leads, who expressed disbelief over the pick for a paramount U.S. intelligence post that has seen major restructuring and downsizing over the past year.

“I would think at a time when we are facing exceptional conflict in the Middle East and tensions around the world, we would want someone with deep experience in intelligence matters to serve as the acting director of the agency responsible for coordinating all of America’s spy agencies,” said a former senior national security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid.

“Moreover, it’s a full-time job, so I can’t see how someone could also serve in an important financial regulatory position at the same time. It makes you think this administration either doesn’t know or care — or both — about this office,” the former senior official added.

Nextgov/FCW has asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, FHFA and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for comment.

Citing her husband's recent cancer diagnosis, Gabbard announced last week that she intends to step down from her position effective at the end of June.

This story is breaking and may be updated.

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Ready, fire, aim: Pentagon cut workforce with little analysis before or since, GAO finds

Meghann Myers — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0400

Pentagon leaders cut their department’s workforce by more than 10% with little regard for the effects—and still has no plans to assess them, according to a congressional watchdog report released on Friday.

The department shed 78,000 civilian employees in 2025 through a mix of voluntary resignations, involuntary layoffs, and a hiring freeze that resulted in nearly 60,000 fewer new hires than in recent years, the report found.

“But we found that DOD didn’t consistently analyze the impacts of these reductions, either in 2025 or in prior years,” according to the report. “DOD also doesn’t have a plan to assess lessons learned from its 2025 workforce reductions.”

In their response to the report, Defense officials agreed that they should “develop and implement a plan for collecting and sharing lessons learned from the Department's implementation of workforce reduction efforts.”

The officials did not indicate whether that would happen.

Soon after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth took office, the Pentagon announced it would cut 5 to 8 percent of its civilian workforce. Within a year, the number swelled to about 110,000—about 14% of DOD civilians—including laid-off probationary employees, deferred resignations, and voluntary early retirements. Some 30,000 people were hired for a short list of jobs exempted from the hiring freeze, putting the net loss at just over 10%.

Of the 28 Defense agencies, offices, and other organizations targeted for workforce cuts by the Trump administration’s fiscal 2026 budget request, at least three did not give the required explanation to Congress about why and how the cuts would be made, GAO found.

Those were the Joint Staff, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, and the Defense Contract Audit Agency, according to the report.

“According to component officials, DOD had not provided guidance for when and how to conduct and document this analysis,” the GAO found.

And further, the GAO found, the Pentagon didn’t plan to assess how the cuts affected productivity.

In March, the Partnership for Public Service published a survey that found morale among DOD employees has tanked during the current administration.

Only 9% of Army Department employees agreed that “Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s political leadership team generates high levels of motivation in the workforce,” the survey found, the most satisfied of any of the large government agencies surveyed.

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OPM's subtle shifts could redefine federal HR

Ronald Sanders — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 07:00:00 -0400

A few weeks ago, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) published proposed regulations that would, among other things, give its director "delegated" authority to approve agency requests for critical pay (that is, an annual salary equivalent to the vice president's) for certain specified positions. That authority is currently vested expressly with the president, according to the Federal Employee Pay Comparability Act of 1991 (or FEPCA), which established an upper limit of some 800 such critical pay positions governmentwide, although less than a dozen of those have ever actually been approved in that regard.

But as noted, OPM's proposed rules rely on an "implied" delegation of that critical pay authority from the president to the OPM director — after all, the proposed rules in the Federal Register argue that the director is the president's statutory agent, complete with the administrative equivalent of power of attorney when it comes to such matters — and those rules further imply that absent some good and compelling reason, the OPM director will approve those requests. I guess the goal here is to make better use of that extraordinary pay authority, in large part because it has been so little used in the past. That's an understatement if there ever was one(!), and in this narrow instance, I say let's "just do it!"

My own history with critical pay

At the risk of sounding a bit self-serving, I should know what I'm talking about when it comes to critical pay. I was the IRS's first chief HR officer when the Congress gave that agency "streamlined" critical pay authority for 50 positions in the now-vintage IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998, thus allowing it to hire folks at a much higher salary than a regular SES position at the time and (more importantly) without all the OPM justification and red tape involved ... to be sure, the critical pay of many of those execs was not as high as the salaries some of them were getting in their private sector jobs, but the psychic value of telling one of those executive recruits that "we'll pay you as much as Vice President Al Gore is getting" did the trick for most of them. And our ability to land them is evidence of how successful we were.

And then, when I went to OPM in 2002, I persuaded my boss, then-Director Kay Coles James, to use the "regular" FEPCA-authorized critical pay authority (one of the very few agency heads to do so) to justify paying that higher salary to OPM's vacant chief actuary position, one that actually reported to me. The person encumbering that position would determine the rates that insurance carriers could charge federal employees for their health benefits, so in our view, critical pay was imminently justified thus, it was far less than a nationally known actuary could command in the labor market. But as with IRS, it was of enormous psychic value, and Director James was successful!

Truth in advertising: I also "owned" the OPM policy and regulations on critical pay when I was associate director of that agency.

However, it was almost 10 years later, when I chaired the Federal Salary Council as a fledgling political appointee in the first Trump administration (from 2018 until I resigned in late 2020 over the then-unadulterated Schedule F), that I really got to know about FEPCA, critical pay and all of its limitations; indeed, despite much official carping to the contrary, I found that the latter authority had barely been used in the time since I had been a career OPM employee. Indeed, it's never ever covered more than a dozen positions out of the 800 authorized, and I convinced the Federal Pay Agent — the directors of OPM and OMB, as well as the secretary of Labor — to include various critical pay "reforms" in their annual report to the Congress. Those reforms would have expanded its use exponentially, albeit through legislation rather than regulatory fiat, but they went nowhere.

Those reforms have been repeated in one form or another ever since, including in various Pay Agent reports, but to no avail. FEPCA and its critical pay positions have remained intact, this despite the fact that they are both woefully obsolete, but that's another story.

And since then, as a private citizen back in 2023, I was part of small group of IRS "formers" who, on behalf of Commissioner Werfel and his team, lobbied the U.S. Congress to provide that agency with the same independent "streamlined" critical pay authority that it once had back in 1998, only to find that our principle opponent on the Hill was not OMB or the Treasury Department — both of them supported the flexibility — but rather, OPM itself (in this case, the Biden OPM) ... they were the ones that argued that IRS did not need such independent authority, as it already existed in OPM. According to them, all IRS needed to do was ask for it.

Hah, fat chance! But its miserly history notwithstanding, that was enough of an argument to prevail, at least as far as the Senate parliamentarian was concerned, and critical pay approval remained with OPM, along with its historically cheapskate attitude! Until now.

Approve the proposed critical pay rules, but narrowly

So, if it were me, I would unequivocally support the proposed OPM rules, IF they're going to be used to narrowly expand (dare I say, liberalize?) the use of critical pay in the federal government. And I would encourage agency heads and their senior career advisors to take the OPM director at his word and submit lots of critical pay requests ... all justified, of course. Hopefully, most will be approved as promised, and we'll approach the 800-position limit in FEPCA.

But I have some reservations that go beyond critical pay, especially with this notion that the OPM director can speak and act for the president under a doctrine of "implied" delegation. That's a very sharp two-edged sword, depending on who's wielding it, so while I personally trust Scott Kupor and his team to wield it as he has so stated in this instance, I'd need to see how else that implied delegation may be used or abused, depending on how it's going to be exercised.

Thus, while I would love to see greater flexibility with respect to FEPCA's (and OPM's) critical pay authority, we need to worry about the precedential price we would pay in so doing. In his recent blog, aptly entitled "Secrets of OPM," Director Kupor asks us to calm down and carry on in that regard, and I agree with him, but actions will speak louder than words, so we shall see.

For example, the other regulatory change recently proposed by OPM — the abolition of the long-standing (but also obsolete) one-year time-in-grade waiting period for promotions under the General Schedule (GS) — should also be approved right away. Indeed, in my view, it should have been abolished years ago. More on that in a subsequent commentary, but what started decades ago as a simple rule of thumb has, in typical OPM fashion, become blindingly formulaic, forcing every federal employee to wait a year before they can be promoted, even if they could demonstrably do that higher-graded work involved from the get-go.

Why? What's so magical about a year? If someone can do the job, let them do it and pay them for it. So, kill it or at least give agencies the opportunity to do so if they so choose.

A subtle shift at OPM?

That said, in a broader sense, the changes I mention here are a great example of an apparent and positive OPM shift, however subtle it may be, if I'm right, that is. For example, the liberalization of critical pay, the recent proposed elimination of the "one-year" promotion rule and even more recently, the "edict" to require some federal employees to sign a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) — and Director Kupor's contemporaneous blog explaining it — are all potential examples of a recognition that agencies need lots of maneuvering room, that their missions are just too diverse for a "one size fits all" model. I hope OPM's latest missives acknowledge that fact.

To be sure, those headlines can be misleading, and I'm wondering how many other times we've been duped. Take the NDA edict. The headlines say that it covers all federal employees, even though it clearly does not. It is NOT a blanket order, as some have reported. Rather, the edict is at an agency head's discretion, and it is limited to those federal employees that have access to sensitive, confidential (not to mention classified) information. Of course, even in limited form, such a restriction is problematic, but it is certainly less so than the headlines would suggest.

There may be better, less litigious ways to plug leaks to the media, especially given the implications for recruiting talent to civil service ranks, a job already made difficult by the Trump administration, and I fear that many of OPM's changes have been exaggerated and hyperbolized in the same way. But as a "glass half full" person, I'll take what seems to be going on with some optimism. I hope it isn't misplaced.

Ron Sanders is a 2006 Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and served on the National Council of the American Society for Public Administration, as well as associate editor of its Public Administration Review. A career civil servant of more than 37 years (and over two decades as a member of the Senior Executive Service), he was DOD’s director of Civilian Personnel; IRS’s chief human resources officer; senior associate director of OPM; chief human capital officer for the intelligence community; and later, the presidentially appointed chairman of the Federal Salary Council. With a doctorate in public administration, he also served as director of the University of South Florida’s School of Public Affairs and as executive director of the Florida Center for Cybersecurity.

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Cyber Force? Senator pushes to create service branch under the Army

Thomas Novelly — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 17:16:13 -0400

A new cyber-focused military service branch would sit under the Army if one senator’s proposal comes to fruition.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., is spearheading a markup amendment to the Senate’s 2027 National Defense Authorization Act that would create a “Cyber Force” as the next armed service branch. The senator’s office confirmed that the amendment proposes to establish the branch under the Army, just as the Space Force and Marine Corps sit under the Air Force and Navy.

Similar provisions are reportedly being floated in the House, according to two people familiar with policy discussions. Earlier this year, Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas, told the Center For Strategic and International Studies that a “Cyber Force is inevitable” and “we’re going to get this done.” A Fallon spokesperson did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Friday asking about a potential amendment.

“New and escalating cyber threats on the battlefield demand a change to our current approach. The status quo and years of incremental changes are not meeting the current threat and are insufficient as that threat grows,” Gillibrand told Defense One in an emailed statement. “I believe, and many experts agree, that the creation of a dedicated Cyber Force will ensure the United States is ready to fight and win on the modern battlefield and protect our national security.”

The proposed amendment marks the latest push in a years-long effort. Gillibrand and House lawmakers have backed the idea before. In the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, lawmakers commissioned the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to study “alternative organizational models for the cyber forces of the Armed Forces.” Those findings have not been released. Details from the amendments showing what a Cyber Force might look like are not yet public, but think tanks and national security experts have already been pitching their own force designs.

A 2024 Foundation for Defense of Democracies report concluded that a Cyber Force could sit under the Army, muster about 10,000 personnel, and need a budget of around $16.5 billion. In August 2025, the FDD and the Center for Strategic and International Studies announced a commission on Cyber Force Generation. A report from those think tanks is scheduled to be released next month.

One former military official said there would be strengths to a cyber-focused service, but putting it under the Army is a bad idea. They argued that cyber would remain a secondary priority amid the branch’s many missions.

“The Army is the largest service by far,” the former official said. “Manpower-wise, it's like half the department, and it's like, ‘we'll put it under because it'll be easy for the Army to just put in another force.’ It's already hard enough to run the Army as it is.”

Mark Montgomery, a retired Navy rear admiral and an FDD senior fellow who advocates for a Cyber Force, argued that this year is an ideal time to create a new service.

“Timing-wise, you need to do this in the beginning or middle of an administration, not at the end of an administration,” Montgomery said.

The proposed amendment would need to survive multiple Senate and House edits to make the final compromise NDAA.

It’s not clear if the Trump administration would support the latest bipartisan push. Last year, the Pentagon rolled out CYBERCOM 2.0, a series of policy changes aimed at beefing up the recruiting, training, and missions of the existing U.S. Cyber Command.

Katie Sutton, the assistant defense secretary for cyber policy and principal cyber advisor to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, defended the Cyber Command reforms during a January Senate hearing, and said a renewed command and a new service could co-exist.

“I think this is a really important debate for us all to be having about the future of the cyber warfighting domain,” Sutton told the Senate Armed Services Committee in January. “I do think one of the most common misconceptions about Cyber Command is that it is a debate between Cyber Command 2.0 and a cyber force, and they are actually separate debates that I believe both need to be had, and we need to look closely at the pros and cons of both.”

Advocates for a separate and independent cyber-focused service branch say it aligns with the Trump administration’s calls for “offensive cyber operations against those planning to kill Americans,” the White House’s new counterterrorism strategy said. It also comes as President Donald Trump and Gen. Dan Caine, the Joint Chiefs chairman, acknowledged the growing role of cyber effects in U.S. military operations in Iran and Venezuela, Defense One and sister publication NextGov/FCW have previously reported.

“The president says, ‘We've got to be more offensive’ but then you got to better generate forces to be offensive, and we don't generate enough forces to do both offensive cyber and defensive cyber operations,” Montgomery said. “A cyber force is clearly necessary.”

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Federal oversight faces ‘structural conflict’ as political appointees enter IG offices

Sean Michael Newhouse — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 16:16:27 -0400

Along with increasing the number of political appointees in the federal government, the second Trump administration is also installing such officials at agencies that haven’t employed political staffers in recent history.

According to a report published on May 28 by the Partnership for Public Service nonprofit, there are 16 agencies and subagencies that had zero non-Senate-confirmed appointees between 2009 and 2024 that had at least one as of March 2026.

Some of the agencies include the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Forest Service, National Archives and the IRS, which has never before had non-Senate-confirmed political appointees.

“These trends reveal that the politicization of federal leadership is not simply intensifying — it is spreading,” wrote Partnership researcher Chris Piper. “In each case, political appointees are displacing or crowding out career officials whose expertise, continuity and institutional knowledge have been the foundation of effective agency operations and mission delivery.”

In particular, the Partnership flagged that there are two political appointees assigned respectively to the inspector general offices for the departments of Housing and Urban Development and Labor.

OIGs provide independent oversight of agency operations. Since at least 2009, according to the report, no other OIG had any non-Senate-confirmed political staffers.

“[OIG] credibility depends on operating free from the direction of the very officials they oversee,” Piper wrote. “A political appointee within an IG office, outside of the Senate-confirmed inspector general, does not merely break a historical norm — it introduces a structural conflict of interest into an institution whose effectiveness depends on independence.”

Good government groups have criticized the president for firing many IGs and replacing most of them with individuals who worked in the first or second Trump administration. The IG for the Labor Department — Anthony D’Esposito, a former GOP congressman — has also faced questions about actions he has taken while in the watchdog position seemingly to prepare for another political campaign, which could have violated ethics rules.

There also are political appointees for the first time at the Federal Labor Relations Authority and Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Both are examples of independent agencies that were created to have some degree of separation from the White House, but the Trump administration has sought to exert more influence over their operations.

The Partnership also emphasized that non-Senate-confirmed appointees have been assigned in “unprecedented numbers” to management offices, such as the Veterans Affairs Department Information and Technology Office and the Federal Acquisition Service under the General Services Administration.

“[U]nlike the career officials they displace, political appointees are unlikely to serve long enough to witness the consequences of the budget decisions they make, the technology investments they oversee or the procurement contracts they negotiate,” Piper wrote. “Political appointments in management functions also raise concerns about undue influence over decisions that should be made on the merits — including the awarding of contracts and the allocation of federal resources in ways that serve political rather than programmatic ends.”

The Partnership also complained that officials generally don’t have to disclose the specific work that non-Senate-confirmed appointees are performing.

“This lack of transparency is not unique to this administration. But it is more consequential when political appointments are reaching new corners of the federal government,” Piper wrote. “This administration has expanded political appointments into agencies and offices where they have not existed in at least 15 years. As a result, appointees are performing functions for which no clear policy-directing rationale applies and where the consequences of politicization may be slow to emerge and difficult to trace.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration finalized regulations for Schedule Policy/Career, a new job classification that would remove civil service job protections for as many as 50,000 government workers in “policy-related” positions. Critics argue that it will result in political appointees replacing career staffers while administration officials have insisted that federal employees will not be removed based on their political affiliations.

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Federal employee NDAs aren’t new, but expanding them requires careful guardrails

Lindy Kyzer — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 13:01:10 -0400

The recent proposal from the Office of Personnel Management to expand nondisclosure agreement (NDA) requirements across the federal workforce has generated predictable controversy. Critics see it as an attempt to suppress dissent. Supporters view it as a long-overdue effort to curb damaging leaks.

But amid the political debate, one important fact is being overlooked: for hundreds of thousands of federal employees, NDAs are already a standard condition of service.

Anyone granted access to classified information signs the Standard Form 312 (SF-312), a legally binding nondisclosure agreement acknowledging their responsibility to protect national security information. Clearance holders understand that safeguarding sensitive information is part of the job. The expectation is clear, the boundaries are defined, and the consequences for violations are understood.

What makes the current proposal different is not the existence of an NDA. It is the expansion of the concept beyond classified information and into a much broader category of what the administration calls “confidential government information.”

That distinction matters, and it mirrors the already expanding government ecosystem of Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI), and the ongoing confusion about how to protect it.

Government agencies routinely handle information that is not classified but still sensitive. Procurement strategies, internal personnel matters, pre-decisional policy discussions, cybersecurity vulnerabilities, law enforcement operations, and draft regulations can all be compromised by unauthorized disclosures. Few federal executives would argue that every internal deliberation should immediately become public.

NDAs also certainly aren’t only the purview of the federal government. Many private-sector organizations require employees to sign confidentiality agreements covering proprietary business information. OPM Director Scott Kupor has pointed to this reality in defending the proposal, arguing that the federal government should not hold itself to a lower standard than private employers when it comes to protecting sensitive information.

From a management perspective, that argument has merit.

Federal agencies cannot effectively develop policy, negotiate contracts, conduct investigations, or plan operations if internal deliberations are routinely leaked before decisions are finalized. Public trust can be damaged not only by secrecy but also by incomplete information released without context.

Yet government is not the private sector. The federal workforce serves the public interest, not shareholders. That distinction requires a different balance between confidentiality and accountability.

The challenge is not whether federal employees should protect sensitive information. They already do. The challenge is defining exactly what information falls within the scope of protection. Confusion about that scope is where an NDA can extend beyond just protecting sensitive information and can become a weapon to unfairly penalize a federal employee, or incorrectly hide information that has no reason to be deemed protected.

Current draft language references “confidential government information,” including pre-decisional and deliberative materials that are not publicly available. Critics argue the definition is too broad and could create uncertainty for employees trying to distinguish between legitimate whistleblowing and prohibited disclosure.

Federal leaders should take those concerns seriously.

The federal government already operates under a complex framework of classification rules, privacy protections, procurement integrity requirements, and whistleblower laws. Any government-wide NDA policy should reinforce and not undermine that framework. Employees must have confidence that legally protected disclosures to inspectors general, Congress, and authorized oversight bodies remain fully protected. The proposal itself states that those rights would be preserved, but implementation details will ultimately determine whether employees trust that assurance.

The experience of the cleared workforce offers a useful lesson. Security clearance holders generally accept strict disclosure restrictions because the rules are accompanied by training, clearly defined categories of protected information, and established adjudication processes. The system is far from perfect, but employees understand where the lines are drawn.

If the administration moves forward with a broader NDA framework, it should adopt the same principles: clarity, consistency, transparency, and robust protection for lawful disclosures.

A poorly defined NDA regime could create confusion, chill legitimate reporting of misconduct, and generate unnecessary legal challenges. A carefully structured one could reinforce existing obligations and help agencies better protect sensitive information without compromising accountability.

The debate should not be framed as a choice between secrecy and transparency. Federal agencies require both. Effective government depends on candid internal deliberation, but it also depends on public trust and lawful oversight.

For federal executives, the real question is not whether nondisclosure agreements belong in government. They already do. The question is whether a government-wide expansion can be implemented in a way that protects sensitive information while preserving the accountability mechanisms that distinguish public service from private employment. That is where the conversation should be focused.

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TSP funds kept climbing in May

Erich Wagner — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 12:41:39 -0400

For the second straight month, each portfolio offered by the federal government’s 401(k)-style retirement savings program finished May in the black.

The C Fund’s common stocks sported the best performance, gaining 5.26% last month. So far this year, the C Fund has grown 11.26%. The international investments of the I Fund came in second, increasing 4.90% in value in May. Since January, the I Fund has grown 16.56%.

The S Fund, comprised of small- and mid-size businesses, finished May 4.49% in the black, bringing its 2026 performance to 13.48%. And the fixed income (F) fund grew 0.33% last month. Since January, the F Fund has grown 0.49%.

The G Fund, which is made up of government securities, increased by its statutorily mandated rate of 0.39% last month. So far this year, the G Fund has grown 1.80%.

Each of the TSP’s lifecycle funds, which shift toward more conservative investments as participants get closer to retirement, similarly gained value last month. The L Income Fund, designed for people who have already begun making withdrawals, gained 1.66%; L 2030, 2.95%; L 2035, 3.44%; L 2040, 3.71%; L 2045, 3.95%; L 2050, 4.18%; L 2055, 5.00%; L 2060, 5.00%; L 2065, 5.00%; L 2070, 5.00%; and L 2075, 5.00%.

So far this year, the L Income Fund has increased 4.93%; L 2030, 8.10%; L 2035, 9.36%; L 2040, 10.03%; L 2045, 10.61%; L 2050, 11.20%; L 2055, 13.34%; L 2060, 13.34%; L 2065, 13.34%; L 2070, 13.33%; and L 2075, 13.33%.

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Federal reform efforts keep repeating the same pattern. Tennessee offers a different model

Howard Risher — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0400

The Pay Agent report released in December may have been missed by the media, but it contained recommendations important to the goal from a June 2025 OPM memo “to establish a high-performance federal workplace culture where excellent performance is celebrated and rewarded.”

It’s an important goal, one that is consistent with the argument in a 2018 National Academy of Public Administration report, “No Time to Wait: Building a Public Service for the 21st Century.”

The NAPA report emphasized that moving to a performance culture is a “fundamental transformation” from “an obsolete human capital system to one tuned to the future.” “Transformation” is the right word. This is culture change. However, the research makes it clear, culture does not change simply because leaders announce new policies.

Federal employees have heard versions of this argument for decades. Presidents of both parties have repeatedly promised stronger performance management, better accountability and improved recognition systems. The underlying challenge has remained consistent across administrations.

It’s not a new argument. Three decades earlier, two reports from commissions chaired by Paul Volcker, “Leadership for America: Rebuilding the Public Service” and “Urgent Business for America: Revitalizing the Federal Government,” argued the civil service system is “a barrier to effective government performance.”

President Carter was the driving force behind the Civil Service Reform Act, but it limited “merit pay” to supervisors (GS-13 through GS-15). President Clinton and the National Performance Review empowered employees and recognized their achievements, but those efforts are still rarely reflected in agency goal-setting systems. The Bush administration described human capital as “a long-standing, government-wide management weakness,” but attempts to introduce change collapsed. The Government Accountability Office first cited human capital management as high risk in 2001, and it remains on the list with “progress needed.” It’s clear – there are "walls" around the civil service system.

There is also an unrecognized problem: the Merit Systems Protection Board, the “guardian of the merit system.” When it has a quorum and the usual staff, its decisions reinforce laws that are outdated. The laws deter change at all levels of government.

Significantly, the walls have not impeded the successful creation of demo projects. When employees are trusted and involved, they readily commit to new management models.

The harder question is what actually produces lasting change inside government workplaces.

Tennessee offers a working example

A state may not be the same as the federal government, but all civil service systems reflect a similar work management paradigm. In the mid-2000s, Tennessee’s civil service system, largely unchanged since the 1930s, was viewed as too process-heavy, too slow to hire and too difficult to remove poor performers.

To change that reputation, HR staff started with training sessions for the highest level of managers, focusing on “what was right for the business of state government.” Their argument was good management has to start at the top.

When newly elected Gov. Bill Haslam took office in 2011, he agreed with the planning and took the lead in promoting civil service reform. His background included years in private-sector management and two terms as mayor of Knoxville. Several of his department heads also had experience managing in large companies.

One of Haslam’s announced goals was to build a “winning” workforce. As he commented in a speech, “Whether it’s in business, government or sports, the team with the best players wins. Unfortunately, in Tennessee state government . . . the rules don’t allow us to go out and recruit great players.”

Haslam’s Cabinet undertook three initiatives that reinforced the need for reform and led to passage in 2012 of the Tennessee Excellence, Accountability and Management Act.

The law rewrote the state’s personnel statute and included a statutory mandate increasing agency flexibility. It retained just-cause termination protections along with grievance and appeal rights. It switched hiring to focus on skills and competencies and established a performance-based pay and evaluation system. It shifted state employment toward a model that emphasizes accountability, competence and recognition.

The planning started with Cabinet members undertaking a top-to-bottom review of each agency, asking first whether services could be provided more effectively and efficiently by the private sector and second whether government was delivering services effectively. Ineffective employment practices repeatedly emerged as barriers to performance.

Second, the deputy governor and human resource commissioner conducted an employee listening tour across the state to understand how to recruit and retain employees. Many of the same themes later appeared in the reform effort. Employees know what’s needed.

In combination, the initiatives sent a clear message — the goal was to improve government performance and civil service reform was a priority.

That was reinforced by specifying in the TEAM Act a requirement that performance management be based on SMART goals and outcomes. The intent was to link individual and team accountability through successive levels of management.

After the act was passed, the state invested three years in training and coaching managers and gathering feedback from employees and managers before transitioning to pay for performance. That sequencing was central to acceptance of the policy and its durability.

At first the Tennessee State Employees Association opposed the law, but negotiations produced amendments that led the organization to support it. Association leaders stood behind Haslam at the signing ceremony.

Another change, promoted by the HR commissioner, was a heightened focus on customers, which “transformed the culture through a statewide training program on customer service . . . written by a former Disney employee.”

Overall, in Haslam’s two terms, the changes transformed the state’s culture through management training, employee engagement and phased implementation.

Federal reform efforts keep returning to the same problems

Looking back, agency performance is not a new problem. To repeat, the civil service system has been “a barrier to effective government performance.”

Furthermore, GAO has repeatedly identified human capital management as a high-risk area since 2001.

Despite repeated reform efforts, structural constraints, legal frameworks and institutional interpretation government needs to find ways to improve performance.

The lessons for federal employees

Looking at Tennessee’s experience alongside federal reform history, several consistent elements emerge.

The state’s focus was improving management. It invested years in developing managers before shifting to performance pay.

The use of SMART goals provided structure for accountability and clarity for employees.

Research consistently shows that perceived fairness and recognition of solid individual performance can be more effective than marginal salary increases in driving motivation.

Tennessee’s approach worked in part because employees were included early and consistently in the process, creating ownership of the changes. That is consistent with the demonstration projects.

The broader lesson is not that one system is superior to another, but that management capacity, employee engagement and implementation strategy determine whether reform efforts succeed.

That remains the central challenge for federal workforce policy today.

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OPM moves to allow agencies to promote workers faster

Erich Wagner — Fri, 29 May 2026 16:06:02 -0400

The Office of Personnel Management this week announced plans to remove a nearly 80-year-old rule requiring federal workers to serve for at least one year in their jobs before they may be considered for promotion.

Time-in-grade requirements, which have been in place since 1950, institute a 52-week waiting period when feds must work in their current positions before they can be promoted. The law that required such a waiting period expired in 1978.

In proposed regulations published in the Federal Register Thursday, OPM said time-in-grade requirements were an “outdated” effort to avoid rapid position inflation at federal agencies, as occurred during World War II, during the Korean War.

Officials wrote that the measure is no longer needed, in part thanks to the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act and subsequent promulgation of the merit systems principles undergirding federal employment. Previous efforts to remove time-in-grade requirements occurred during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations but were unsuccessful.

“When the Whitten Amendment [mandating the one-year waiting period] was first enacted, no effective means existed to prevent employees from advancing quickly through GS grade levels,” OPM wrote. “Today, governmentwide qualification standards, established by OPM, are in place for competitive service GS positions . . . Consistent with the federal shift toward skills-based hiring, OPM is providing agencies with greater control for determining whether an employee has the skillsets needed for promotion to the next higher grade level.”

And OPM argued that it was unfair to continue to mandate time-in-grade requirements for some federal workers but not others. While the waiting period currently applies to General Schedule employees at GS-5 level and above, it does not apply to blue-collar feds hired under the Federal Wage System or to excepted service workers.

“Eliminating TIG enables any federal competitive service GS employee (regardless of current occupation or grade), who meets the qualification standards for a particular position, to become eligible for promotion to a competitive service GS position,” the agency wrote. “Thus, promotions will have a more skills-based focus without TIG.”

In a statement Thursday, OPM Director Scott Kupor said eliminating time-in-grade requirements will enable agencies to better reward top employees and compete with private sector employers for talent.

“Federal employees should be rewarded for what they can do, not how long they have waited,” Kupor said. “This proposed rule strengthens merit, gives managers more flexibility to recognize high performers, and helps agencies move talented people into mission critical roles faster.”

Comments on OPM’s proposal are open until July 27.

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Bipartisan IRS whistleblower reform bill gains momentum in Senate after House approval

Sean Michael Newhouse — Fri, 29 May 2026 13:50:12 -0400

A bipartisan Senate duo recently introduced companion legislation to a House-passed bill that would make several reforms to an IRS whistleblower program that has recovered billions from noncompliant taxpayers.

“The IRS Whistleblower Awards Program demonstrates the power of whistleblowers. These patriotic men and women are critical to preventing tax dodgers and fraudsters from cheating the American tax system,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the measure’s sponsor, in a statement to Government Executive. “Our bipartisan legislation strengthens protections and support for whistleblowers so this program can keep improving compliance and fairness in our tax system.”

Like its House counterpart (H.R. 7959), the IRS Whistleblower Program Improvement Act (S. 4639) would:

Modify the standard for reviewing whistleblower award determinations in the U.S. Tax Court in order to allow new evidence to be introduced during appeal.
Permit whistleblowers to be anonymous before the Tax Court, unless there is a “societal interest” in disclosing their identity.
Require interest on certain whistleblower payments if the IRS does not meet the deadline to inform the individual of an award recommendation, as part of an effort to ensure the tax agency distributes payments in a timely manner.

In 2025, the IRS reported that it has collected about $7.5 billion as a result of protected disclosures since 2007, leading to more than $1.3 billion in awards to whistleblowers. According to the tax agency, payments tend to be 15 to 30% of funds received due to the whistleblower’s information.

“The numbers show that the IRS whistleblower program works, so the Senate ought to look for every opportunity to improve it,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the bill's cosponsor, in a statement to Government Executive. “It takes real courage to blow the whistle and help put an end to illegal tax cheating schemes, and our bill will go a long way to protecting Americans who bravely speak out.”

Grassley and Wyden are the co-founders and co-chairs of the Senate Whistleblower Protection Caucus. Their legislation is supported by the National Whistleblower Center and Taxpayers Against Fraud nonprofits.

The House in April passed its version of the bill in a 346-10 vote. Provisions that are identical to the legislation are also in the bipartisan Taxpayer Assistance and Service Act (S. 3931), which Wyden cosponsored. That measure has not yet been voted on.

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GSA joins White House’s fraud prevention task force

Edward Graham — Fri, 29 May 2026 09:00:00 -0400

The General Services Administration announced on Thursday that it is joining the White House’s anti-fraud task force, a move that enlists a key federal acquisition agency into President Donald Trump’s self-described “war on fraud.”

The unit, led by Vice President JD Vance, was created by a March executive order and is tasked with rooting out waste, fraud and abuse across federal benefits programs.

GSA said in a press release that it is “uniquely positioned to help the Task Force detect irregularities, accelerate investigations, and safeguard taxpayer dollars,” with members of the anti-fraud unit “now leveraging GSA’s unmatched reach in acquisition, shared services, technology modernization, and federal real estate.”

Although the order establishing the task force emphasized efforts to identify federal benefits fraud, GSA said it will support the unit’s work by identifying waste, fraud and abuse across government contracting programs.

“GSA sits at the center of the federal acquisition and contracting ecosystem, making us a critical force in the fight against fraud,” GSA Administrator Edward Forst said in a statement, adding that the agency “will bring advanced analytical capabilities, investigative support, and cross-government coordination to help expose high-risk fraud patterns and stop bad actors from exploiting taxpayer-funded systems.”

Trump’s directive establishing the task force also granted it the authority to withhold funds from states and local jurisdictions “that do not have adequate anti-fraud requirements.”

The effort has been clouded by allegations of political bias, however, with the order creating the unit notably calling out Democrat-led states and accusing public officials of intentionally failing to police benefits programs so migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border can receive assistance.

Vance said earlier this month the unit was “deferring” $1.3 billion in Medicaid reimbursements to California and threatened to withhold payments from other states if they do not adequately enhance their efforts to combat fraud in federal benefits programs. That came after the White House kicked off its anti-fraud push in February by announcing that it was withholding over $240 million in Medicaid funds from Minnesota following claims about the misuse of funds in the state’s social services programs.

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Tech Force set out to hire 1,000 technologists last year. It’s onboarded 10 so far

Natalie Alms — Fri, 29 May 2026 08:00:00 -0400

Late last year, the Trump administration began an effort to recruit early-career software and data engineers after pushing almost 20,000 technology employees out of their government jobs under widespread downsizing imperatives.

The goal of that new effort, called the U.S. Tech Force, was to hire a 1,000-strong cohort — potentially as soon as the end of March, Scott Kupor, the head of the Office of Personnel Management, said in December.

So far, the program has onboarded only 10 new hires, Tech Force Director Kevin Hennecken said during a Thursday event held by the Alliance for Digital Innovation trade association. Overall, the program has made 180 to 200 hires.

“I would love to have everybody here yesterday,” Kupor told Nextgov/FCW in an interview. “But I’m learning the government hiring process does take time.”

OPM is managing the program centrally, working with agencies across the federal government to place fellows into two-year stints. OPM is also partnering with about 40 companies, like Amazon Web Services and Nvidia, to train the new hires, as well as provide managers from within their own ranks to take a leave of absence to work for the government.

Onboarding these new managers has also lagged. Three or four managers are in the process of onboarding now, said Kupor.

The Justice Department issued a memo in March blessing OPM’s plan to allow those private sector managers to keep their deferred compensation packages while working for the government — a setup that’s made ethics experts nervous.

“It’s always going to be slower than we would have wanted, but I don't think we’re discouraged by that at all,” said Hennecken, who said that the goal is to hire 300 to 500 fellows by the end of the summer. “I think it just takes time to build a program.”

A ‘heavyweight process’

Federal hiring is governed by strict rules and processes, some of which were established centuries ago and were meant to move the government from the spoils system to one based on merit.

It’s a “heavyweight process” that moves more slowly than the private sector, said Kupor, who previously worked in venture capital.

Kupor often laments the relatively small number of young workers in the federal government compared to the private sector. How to recruit and hire early-career talent within the federal system has long been a difficult challenge that has intersected with efforts to move the government away from antiquated technology into the 21st century.

Other efforts to hire cybersecurity talent or fill the gap by re-training existing employees with new skills have also stumbled.

For Tech Force, OPM has had to clear up “confusion” among HR officials in agencies about how some of the typical government hiring rules apply, said Kupor. The government typically prioritizes federal employees who have been laid off if they apply for other, open jobs that they’re qualified for.

That could have been welcome news for feds displaced last year as the Trump administration sought to shrink the size of the government workforce, many of whom are still searching for new jobs. But those rules don’t apply to Tech Force because of the type of hiring authority being used, said Kupor.

Government agencies also aren’t used to hiring off of centralized lists like those OPM is using to share Tech Force candidates after centrally testing and screening applicants, said Kupor, although doing more centralized hiring is one of his goals.

The hurdles have inspired an effort to drive a “tighter alignment” between agencies’ HR heads and senior political officials as part of OPM’s broader early career hiring push, said Kupor, so that any questions can be worked through more quickly.

A higher entry point

Eric Sidle, chief information officer and chief artificial intelligence officer at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, said Tuesday that delays in getting the new program going aren’t OPM’s fault.

The government’s HR agency is doing a "phenomenal job,” he said, noting that agency personnel shops themselves are busy balancing this effort against other priorities.

The early career talent that the government does hire as part of Tech Force — which may include cybersecurity-focused employees after OPM added that focus in April — will be making between $150,000 and $200,000, which is more than early-career hires in government typically make.

The government already has an early career tech program, called the U.S. Digital Corps, although it hasn’t onboarded a class since Trump took office for his second term. It pays its D.C. fellows a starting salary of $86,000.

While Tech Force is bringing employees into the government at a GS-14 level on the government’s pay and classification system — one of the highest available on the General Schedule — Digital Corps hires fellows at a GS-9 with the potential for promotions.

For Tech Force, agencies are getting resumes ranging from recent college graduates to people with a few years of experience on the job, one person familiar with the program told Nextgov/FCW.

Whether the relatively high pay being offered to those joining the program will affect the morale of the teams they’re joining is an open question, that person said. The Tech Force applicants being shared with agencies don’t have the typical experience and skills of someone at a GS-14 level, they added.

Those running Tech Force have emphasized that the government often struggles to compete for in-demand tech talent against the private sector, in part because the latter can usually pay more.

Unlike the U.S. Digital Corps, which was designed to funnel early-career talent into permanent roles, keeping the talent recruited by Tech Force in government service isn’t necessarily an expectation.

By working with OPM, private sector companies are meant to prove to potential applicants that the experience they get in the government will be valued on the market when they’re done.

While in the government, many of the new hires will be working in agencies on wholly contained Tech Force teams, but, in some cases, they’ll be integrated into existing units at government agencies, said Kupor.

Three weeks ago, OPM itself onboarded the first Tech Force fellow, who graduated college last year.

Kupor said he’s planning to bring more fellows into OPM to work on the Trump administration’s ‘War on Fraud’ by using data science to flag potential fraud in the government’s health insurance portfolio that is run for federal employees.

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Lacking data policy is more than a research problem, it's a government performance problem

David C. Wilson and Christopher Jackson — Fri, 29 May 2026 07:00:00 -0400

Effective democracies require modern data policies that direct the country’s ability to govern and hold legitimacy. Data policies offer information justice by providing formal guidelines and rules for the collection, management, protection, and disposal of public information — quantitative and qualitative. They can also bolster trust by setting oversight of information quality — ensuring accuracy and accountability. This policy domain of “data” is understudied, undervalued and underemphasized, despite the accelerated use of data against a backdrop of growing public mistrust.

The federal statistical system has long operated as background infrastructure, as something agency leaders and program managers relied on without much thought, the way they rely on relevant domains like electricity or broadband. Data from the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Centers for Disease Control, the National Center for Education Statistics, and their counterparts across the government showed up when needed most in democracy: to justify budget requests, measure program outcomes, allocate resources and demonstrate results to oversight bodies and the public.

That infrastructure is now under serious strain with pain being felt inside and outside government, at federal, state and local levels. Earlier this year, the social science research company SSRS conducted a survey of more than 500 users of federal statistical data across academia, nonprofit organizations, state and local governments and the private sector. The core question was "have changes to the federal statistical system impacted your ability to do your work?" The findings were resounding, with 93% of respondents reporting that changes to the federal statistical system since the start of 2025 have damaged their ability to do their work. It is quite likely staff inside the government are experiencing similar difficulties.

These respondents describe specific challenges. They report datasets have been taken offline without notice. Expected data publications have been delayed or canceled. Restricted-use data approvals that once took days are now taking months, if they happen at all. Staffing cuts at federal statistical agencies have hollowed out the technical assistance functions that helped users work with complex federal datasets. These stories are not just about citizens, they also represent real breakdowns in the informational infrastructure that federal agencies themselves also depend on to manage programs, respond to Congress and serve the public. These are not failings of politics, they are failings of policy.

For federal leaders, the implications of not having earnest data policy cut in several directions.

The data crisis is a workforce crisis

Respondents to the survey were consistent on this point: the most immediate source of their difficulties is not missing datasets but missing people. When experienced staff depart, they take with them decades of applied knowledge about how data collections work, where the edge cases are and how to help users get reliable answers from complex products. One respondent described the situation plainly: institutional knowledge has been forever lost, and the data user community will suffer in ways that may not be fully known or even detectable. Agency leaders managing through the current period of workforce reduction should treat the departure of statistical expertise as a long-term operational risk, not just a position that can be filled in the next appropriation cycle.

Broken time series are not self-correcting

One of the most consequential findings from the survey involves longitudinal data, the long-running collections that allow agencies, researchers and policymakers to track trends over time. Respondents were clear about what interrupted collections mean in practice. A gap in a time series is not simply a missing data point, it undermines the comparability of all subsequent data, potentially for years. The government shutdown in fall 2025 produced the first interruption to the Current Population Survey in more than 70 years. The October 2025 Consumer Price Index was lost entirely. These are not recoverable losses. They are permanent holes in the historical record, with downstream consequences for economic forecasting, policy evaluation and program management that will persist long after the immediate disruptions are resolved.

There are no adequate substitutes

Public data users in this survey are doing their best to adapt. They are delaying programs until data is available, turning to older archived datasets or private sector sources, leveraging state and locally collected data or building statistical models as workarounds. But they are nearly unanimous that none of these options adequately replace timely, high-quality federal data.

Trust, once lost, is hard to rebuild

More than 70% of these public data users express concern about the long-term erosion of public trust in federal statistics. This is not a soft concern. Trust in official statistics is the foundation on which their practical utility rests. When state and local government planners, nonprofit service providers or academic researchers begin to doubt the integrity or continuity of federal data, they stop building systems that depend on it. The downstream effects on evidence-based management inside agencies are real and compounding.

What would it take to stabilize the situation? Beyond appropriations decisions, effective data policy should direct agencies to preserve statistical expertise as national security and workforce retention priorities, not afterthoughts. Where staff departures are unavoidable, structured efforts to document institutional knowledge, how data collections work, where errors arise and what common user needs exist, could help preserve at least some of what would otherwise be lost.

These public data users are instructive for data policy, they tell us that the federal statistical system is not only a research amenity, it is operational infrastructure. This is equally true for the federal workforce in general. When the data system degrades, government's capacity to know what is working, who needs help and whether resources are reaching their intended targets degrades with it — affecting how ordinary people experience democracy and their government. Rebuilding that capacity will require sustained attention from federal executives who recognize the need for serious data policy that modernizes America’s data infrastructure and take steps to safeguard it.

David C. Wilson is dean and professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy, UC Berkeley, and Chris Jackson is senior vice president at SSRS.

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Citing legal requirement, senator wants a designated inspector general to provide oversight of Iran war

Sean Michael Newhouse — Thu, 28 May 2026 15:01:00 -0400

Updated at 3:58 p.m. ET May 28

A Democratic senator on Thursday requested that an inspector general oversight body designate one of the agency watchdogs to spearhead reviews of the ongoing war in Iran, citing a requirement in federal statute.

In her letter, Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., pointed to a provision in the U.S. Code mandating that the chair of the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency tap an IG to head oversight of a military “overseas contingency operation that exceeds 60 days.”

The U.S. and Israel launched airstrikes against Iran on Feb. 28.

“IG quarterly reporting, audits, inspections and investigations related to OCOs have promoted valuable transparency and accountability across presidential administrations and enable federal agencies to be better stewards of taxpayer dollars,” Duckworth wrote. “The need for you to appoint a lead IG to advance these aims and conduct joint, comprehensive and independent oversight of contingency operations against Iran has never been greater, as the Trump administration’s explanations of the president’s purported mission, lines of effort and desired end states with respect to Iran are constantly shifting, and often contradict themselves.”

Defense Department officials have testified that the war has cost an estimated $29 billion.

The CIGIE chair is limited to selecting the IG for the Defense Department, State Department or U.S. Agency for International Development. While the Trump administration folded USAID into State in 2025, the USAID IG office is still active.

The designated IG would be responsible for developing a strategy for oversight of the military operation, reviewing the accuracy of associated spending information provided by federal agencies and resolving any jurisdictional crossovers. They also would be required to issue regular public reports on their activities.

In her letter, Duckworth argued that the war in Iran meets the definition of an OCO because Operation Epic Fury is identified as one in the DOD’s casualty database and because members of the National Guard have been deployed to the region. Under federal statute, if a military action includes ordering a member of the National Guard to active duty, that qualifies it as a “contingency operation.”

Duckworth requested that CIGIE Chair Cheryl Mason provide her selection for the IG by June 5. Mason also is the IG for the Veterans Affairs Department.

Andrew Cannarsa, CIGIE's executive director, said in a statement to Government Executive that the council has "received the letter from Senator Duckworth and is working to address the senator’s inquiry."

The senator has criticized Mason’s confirmation as VA IG and election to CIGIE chair because she previously served as a senior adviser to VA Secretary Doug Collins. As such, Duckworth and good government groups have contended that Mason cannot provide independent oversight.

This story has been updated with a statement from CIGIE.

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What retiring feds should do before asking for help

Tammy Flanagan — Thu, 28 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400

The transition from employee to annuitant can be stressful, especially when someone is worried about income, benefits, deadlines, taxes or missing paperwork. It helps to get the answers you need when there are delays or a perceived problem with your benefits. These days, it is even harder to get help since many agencies are short-handed and overwhelmed by the number of employees who have retired at the same time. When you find someone who might be able to resolve your problem or explain something that you do not understand, it is important to include the relevant facts and not bury the real issue under too much background information.

One of the best things you can do is present your situation clearly, completely and with supporting documentation. It might be hard to hear this, but when you are speaking to your human resources representative, benefits specialist or government agency, the quality of the help you receive often depends on the quality of the information you are able to provide. Agencies specifically ask applicants to gather identifying records and supporting documents. Missing or incomplete information can delay retirement processing.

Anyone who deals with these issues knows how important it is to separate facts from opinions and to be prepared to provide the evidence that supports your concern. Working with many employees who are transitioning to retirement, one of the basic things we advise is to save copies of all communications, including personnel records on file with your agency, copies of applications and anything else that provides proof of changes in your federal career such as beginning and ending dates, changes in retirement coverage and changes in work schedule. If there is a problem down the road, it is important to have the evidence needed to pinpoint the issue and solve the problem.

Got a question for federal retirement expert Tammy Flanagan? Send to us at newstips@govexec.com and she might answer it during our live webinar on June 18. Stay tuned for details.

Start with the real problem

The first step in asking for retirement help is identifying the actual question. Many people begin with a long story, a list of frustrations or scattered financial details without ever stating exactly what they need. A better approach is to open with a direct statement such as: “I need help understanding when I can retire,” “I need help fixing a pension calculation issue” or “I need help because my benefits application may be missing documents.”

That kind of opening gives the adviser or representative a clear target. It also saves time and reduces the chance of misunderstanding. Clear requests are especially important because retirement issues often involve strict procedures, required forms and eligibility rules. If the core problem is not stated early, the person trying to help must spend valuable time sorting through facts instead of solving the issue.

When I am asked to intervene and help solve a problem, I only agree to help when I can clearly see what needs to be done and the client can provide the details and documents needed to find a solution.

Tell the whole story — but only the relevant story

Besides providing too much information, people sometimes omit important facts because they assume they do not matter, because they are embarrassing or because they do not realize small details are important clues to the solution. Missing facts can lead to bad advice.

There is a fine line between trying not to provide every detail and leaving out important dates, documents or conversations that belong in the discussion.

Organize the information before asking for help

A productive retirement meeting or inquiry usually starts before the conversation ever happens. When my team at Retire Federal counsels current and recently retired federal workers, we begin by asking them to provide specific documentation so we can understand the details of the career the individual is leaving or recently retired from. A comprehensive review of this documentation is essential to identify clues to the root of a problem and often reveals issues the client might not have considered.

Recently, a retiree asked us to review his retirement calculation and compare it to the amount of money he had received from OPM since his retirement date. His concern was that he retired at the end of February 2024 and did not start receiving his full retirement benefit until December 2024. During that time, the amount of his interim payments changed four times and he was having trouble determining whether he had received his earned annuity benefit. He simply wanted a second opinion.

This individual retired under the older Civil Service Retirement System, or CSRS, with close to 52 years of federal service. The first thing that stood out was the fact that he exceeded the maximum amount of service that would provide him with 80% of his high-three average salary by close to 10 years. This only happens under CSRS; the Federal Employees Retirement System, or FERS, does not limit the calculation.

What he did not notice was that he had never been paid for his excess retirement contributions from the years he paid into CSRS beyond the time he had already earned the maximum annuity benefit. He was not aware that, because of his high salary, he had overpaid more than $100,000 into CSRS.

His case appeared to be finalized when he contacted us in February 2026, as he had already been receiving his full retirement benefit for three months. After reviewing the documentation he provided, we were able to reconstruct his retirement benefit and his contributions to CSRS to show him where the problem was.

Once the issue was clearly explained, we submitted a direct request for help to OPM. After several back-and-forth communications, the issue is finally being resolved. We received an email last week from this client saying he had received most of the overpayment amount owed to him but was still waiting for a final payment of more than $17,000. We are getting there, but we will not take this out of the “needs follow-up” file until he is made whole.

Here is what is needed to reconstruct a retirement benefit and determine whether a problem requires attention:

What type of retirement benefit is involved?
What outcome is being sought?
What has already happened?
What deadlines apply?
What records are available?

A timeline is often one of the most useful tools, along with documentation of specific dates and events. This helps the person providing assistance identify patterns, missing steps or contradictions quickly.

Preparation also makes it easier to separate relevant information from noise. Instead of talking in circles, the person can walk through the issue in a logical sequence and allow the adviser to ask focused follow-up questions.

Saying “they calculated my benefit wrong” is far less useful than providing the estimate, prior statements, payroll records, service history or correspondence showing the discrepancy.

In federal retirement matters, supplemental documents such as marriage certificates, military records or court orders can be essential, and federal regulations make clear that required supporting documentation is the applicant’s responsibility. The agency maintains personnel records and the payroll provider keeps track of salary payments and payroll deductions, but only you are likely to notice whether your retirement was computed on 35 years or 36 years of service. We recently assisted an employee who was being underpaid because of a miscalculation involving years of service.

Everyone can make mistakes, but resolving these types of problems can prove challenging without proof of where the error occurred.

Know what documents matter most

Employment history and dates of service
Pension benefit estimates or annual statements
Plan documents and summary plan descriptions
Application forms already submitted
Letters, emails or notices from the employer, plan administrator or agency
Marriage certificates, divorce decrees or beneficiary forms when relevant
Military records, disability records or court orders when applicable

Not every case requires every document, but the person asking for help should bring anything that proves the facts behind the concern. If something is missing, it is important to make note of the missing information.

Be concise and easy to help

People seeking retirement assistance should aim to be complete without using an angry or sarcastic tone when communicating their concerns.

A useful rule is this: Include facts, dates, names and documents that affect the case. Leave out repeated complaints, unrelated family history and background information that does not change the answer.

The person providing help does not need every emotion-filled detail to evaluate a pension formula, application delay, survivor benefit question or eligibility issue. What they need is a clear problem statement, a reliable timeline and records that support the claim.

Being concise is not rude or cold. It is respectful and efficient. It allows the individual trying to help to spend more time solving the problem and less time trying to uncover basic facts.

Asking for help with retirement is not just a matter of reaching out — it is a matter of communicating well. People who need assistance should clearly state the issue, tell the full relevant story, avoid distracting side details and be prepared to provide evidence supporting what they are claiming.

Retirement decisions can affect income, health coverage, survivor rights and long-term security, so vague explanations and unsupported concerns are not enough. The more organized and honest a person is, the easier it is for someone else to give accurate, timely and effective guidance. In retirement matters, clarity is not optional. It is part of the solution.

Most federal employees enjoy a smooth transition to retirement, but when there is a problem, it is important to get help sooner rather than later. It does not help to ignore the issue and hope it resolves itself.

It is sometimes difficult to know who to ask and how to get the help you need. Talk to customer service representatives at the agency from which you need assistance to see whether they can provide direction. Talk to fellow retirees to learn whether they experienced similar issues and how they resolved them. Go back to your agency HR office to see whether it can provide guidance.

The important thing is to ask for help if you think you have a problem and to be as clear and concise as possible so you can improve your chances of a faster and better resolution.

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Top White House cyber policy official to soon depart

David DiMolfetta — Thu, 28 May 2026 12:24:29 -0400

Alexandra Seymour, a top policy official in the White House Office of the National Cyber Director, intends to leave her position soon, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Seymour, who serves as principal deputy assistant national cyber director for policy, is expected to depart within the next week, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details about the move. It’s not clear where she is headed next, or when she would start a new role.

An ONCD spokesperson did not return a request for comment by publishing time.

Seymour previously served as staff director for the House Homeland Security Committee’s cybersecurity subcommittee, where she worked on cyber and critical infrastructure policy issues. She also advised the Senate Commerce Committee on artificial intelligence, quantum technology and CHIPS and Science Act implementation matters, and she co-founded the Congressional Staff Association on Artificial Intelligence.

During President Donald Trump’s first term, Seymour served on the White House National Security Council and at the Pentagon, where she worked on transnational organized crime issues and also served as a speechwriter for the deputy defense secretary.

Her anticipated departure comes as ONCD has sought to take a leading role in AI-related cyber policy matters and as officials in industry and government increasingly question whether the office’s leadership has been able to respond effectively to rapidly advancing artificial intelligence models with potentially dangerous hacking capabilities. A cyber-focused AI executive order was shelved last week amid overregulation concerns from industry.

“Alexandra is one of the nation’s top national security policy executives, and frankly, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see a top company move quickly to bring her on board,” Anjelica Dortch, vice president of operational risk and cybersecurity policy at the Independent Community Bankers of America, told Nextgov/FCW in response to the news.

“She has been an invaluable collaborator on efforts including the National Cyber Strategy, the reauthorization of the 2015 Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, and ensuring that industry perspectives are meaningfully integrated into our nation’s cyber policies,” added Dortch.

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Labor oversight official faces ethics complaint for apparent congressional campaign moves

Sean Michael Newhouse — Thu, 28 May 2026 07:00:00 -0400

A government watchdog nonprofit on Tuesday requested an investigation into whether Anthony D’Esposito, the inspector general for the Labor Department, violated the Hatch Act, a law that restricts the political activity of civil servants.

The Project on Government Oversight’s complaint to the Office of Special Counsel, which enforces that law, argues that the former GOP lawmaker ran afoul of ethics rules by seeming to take steps preparing for another congressional run as a confirmed IG, a position that oversees independent audits and investigations of agency operations.

“We can't have inspectors general that are seen as attachments of the president or attachments of the agency,” said Joe Spielberger, a senior policy counsel at POGO, in an interview with Government Executive. “[If so] it means that when [the IGs] receive complaints, there's no guarantee that they will take those complaints seriously if they're directed against the executive branch or the party in power.”

In its complaint, POGO flagged several potential violations including:

D’Esposito’s campaign committee is still active based on the Federal Election Commission’s website.
Shortly after he was sworn in, he said during a radio interview that: “there’s no question that we’re exploring” a run for Congress,” “we’re doing the polling [and] we’re talking to people on the ground and we want to make sure that the resources are going to be there,” his Democratic successor is a “disastrous member of Congress” and that it’s important for Republican candidates to have funding to deliver effective campaign messaging.
Media reports that D’Esposito was planning to announce his candidacy.

Under the Hatch Act, there is a prohibition on federal employees from being candidates in partisan elections, which extends to preliminary activities such as conducting polls, having campaign strategy meetings or authorizing others to take such actions on their behalf. The law also bars government workers from engaging in political activity in their official capacity and from soliciting or receiving political contributions.

While D’Esposito ultimately opted not to enter the race, Spielberger argued that an OSC investigation is still warranted.

“His decision to withdraw his name from potential candidacy doesn't absolve him from what are potentially previous violations of the Hatch Act,” he said.

POGO’s complaint also notes that D’Esposito frequently shares political social media posts, such as ones criticizing Democratic immigration policies, praising congressional Republicans and echoing slogans associated with President Donald Trump.

Under federal law, IGs are required to be appointed “without regard to political affiliation.”

In an interview with Bloomberg Law published on Wednesday, however, D’Esposito said that he didn’t see any issue with his public statements.

“I’m never going to shy away from the fact that I’m a conservative Republican,” he said. “I’m never going to shy away from the fact that I support the agenda, especially as it pertains to this office, just because I want to maintain an appearance. That’s absolutely ridiculous.”

In April, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington nonprofit requested that the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, an oversight body for the watchdogs, investigate D’Esposito over matters similarly raised by POGO.

Trump recently nominated Charles Baldis to lead the OSC. Baldis is a former Senate staffer and current chief counsel at the agency who has been the designee of the OSC’s acting chief since spring 2025.

The president’s first OSC nominee, Paul Ingrassia, withdrew in October 2025 following objections from Senate Republicans over reports of sexual harassment accusations and racist text messages.

In March 2025, Trump removed the incumbent special counsel — Hampton Dellinger, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden — before the end of his five-year term. On one of the first days of his second term, the president also fired IGs at 18 agencies, including the DOL IG who D’Esposito later replaced.

The DOL OIG did not respond to a request for comment, but D’Esposito has previously testified that he is “well aware of the Hatch Act.”

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House draft of defense policy bill leaves some of Trump admin’s top priorities unfunded

Thomas Novelly — Wed, 27 May 2026 17:08:46 -0400

An initial draft of the annual defense policy bill shows the House is still banking on billions of yet-to-be-approved funds for the Trump administration’s top military priorities.

The HASC chairman’s mark of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act released on Tuesday detailed $1.15 trillion in baseline defense spending. But the Pentagon has asked for $1.5 trillion. To fully fund administration efforts like Golden Dome, shipbuilding, and a crucial munitions build-up, Congress would have to approve an additional $350 billion. But one senior committee staffer said HASC Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., is confident Congress will approve those reconciliation funds.

“I think you know the chairman is, as I said before, relatively confident that we'll be able to achieve reconciliation this year,” the staffer told reporters Tuesday. “But in the event we're not, we will have those discussions with our appropriators and with the administration later in the year about how we cover those priority items, and munitions is at the very top of that list.”

The Pentagon’s $350 billion reconciliation funding request includes $47 billion to “accelerate the delivery and drive” of munitions investment, roughly $17 billion for Golden Dome, and $7 billion for shipbuilding efforts.

Rogers told attendees at Space Symposium last month that the House would “try” to fund those priorities through reconciliation—a funding process for “mandatory” spending that only requires a simple majority to pass, unlike annual discretionary budget appropriations.

Despite last year’s reconciliation squabbles and the large amount of defense priorities tied to yet-to-be-approved funding, the committee did not reconfigure the discretionary budget to account for the possibility of the additional measure failing.

“We did not secret squirrel money away, we did not pad lines in the discretionary to account for those things that are in the mandatory column,” the senior staffer said.

The chairman’s mark of the House NDAA has 646 total items in it, 362 bill language amendments, and 284 reporting requirements, the staffer said. It’s the initial agreement between Rogers and Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash. HASC members plan to markup and add more amendments to the bill on June 4, according to the committee’s website.

“The chairman would obviously like to see us pursue a reconciliation bill that addresses that mandatory column, and so we are going to move ahead with the assumption that at some point the House and the Senate will attempt to do that,” one senior staffer said. “We will make a later determination about how successful that attempt is and address a reconciliation between those two columns at a later time.”

White House budget projections predict that baseline defense spending will increase from $1.15 trillion to $1.36 trillion through 2036. They do not anticipate asking for reconciliation funding past fiscal year 2027.

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Someone robbed the SEC during the shutdown

Eric Katz — Wed, 27 May 2026 15:34:08 -0400

When federal agencies closed their doors for a record-setting 43 days last fall, one person saw an opportunity.

An individual is awaiting trial after burglarizing the Securities and Exchange Commission during last year’s government shutdown. The alleged thief did not wait long before entering the SEC regional office in Fort Worth, Texas, as the individual entered the building during the shutdown’s first week.

A contracted security officer was present for the incident, but failed to stop the person, identify them or sign them in, as building protocols require, the SEC’s inspector general said. The burglar “bypassed” a locked door, walked past the security guard and entered the SEC’s office suite. The security guard failed to escort the individual through the building and in the elevators, also in contravention of the building’s security policies.

The person then stole four laptops valued at more than $5,000, a bluetooth earpiece and a rolling briefcase.

Federal employees are generally prohibited from using their government devices during a shutdown if they are placed in non-working furlough status, but are required to report to their offices on the first day of a lapse to ensure their devices are secured. SEC furloughed 88% of its workforce during the most recent funding lapse, though an IG official was not aware of how many employees may have been reporting to the office during the burglary.

The SEC IG worked with local law enforcement to identify the suspect, who is now being held in a Texas corrections center on multiple burglary charges—including the SEC incident—while awaiting trial. While the suspect was arrested, the stolen laptops and other items were not recovered.

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Supreme Court rejects lower court bid to review immigration judge gag order

Erich Wagner — Wed, 27 May 2026 15:15:31 -0400

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an appeals court’s effort to investigate whether the Trump administration has effectively neutered the law undergirding the federal civil service on procedural grounds.

Last year, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit revived a 2020 lawsuit filed by the National Association of Immigration Judges challenging a policy barring its members from speaking or writing publicly about immigration in their personal capacities.

The union alleged that the so-called “gag rule,” first issued in 2017, made more restrictive in 2020 and revised again in 2021, violated the judges’ free speech rights. But a district court judge dismissed the case in 2023, finding that they must first challenge the policy before the Merit Systems Protection Board.

But last year, the Fourth Circuit panel issued a ruling that revived the case, instructing the lower court to examine whether the Trump administration’s push to fire political leaders at independent agencies like the MSPB and U.S. Office of Special Counsel had “so undermined” the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act as to deny federal workers meaningful review of agency actions.

Both the Trump administration and the immigration judges’ union asked the Supreme Court to intervene in the case. In a ruling Tuesday, the court reversed the appellate judges’ decision and sent the case back to them for further proceedings.

In an unsigned opinion, the court found that the Fourth Circuit could not issue its decision questioning the CSRA’s continued viability because neither party raised it as an argument before the judges. There were no noted dissents.

“As [NAIJ] conceded below, our precedent establishes that Congress, through the CSRA, intended to channel covered claims to the MSPB,” the justices wrote. “The parties thus confined their arguments to the narrow question whether respondent’s claims were, in fact, covered. Unsatisfied with rejecting respondent’s arguments on that question, however, the Fourth Circuit sua sponte addressed a much broader one and remanded for further proceedings on that question.”

Justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett issued a concurring opinion stating that they would have also decided the case in favor of the Trump administration on the merits, as well.

“Neither the president’s view that he can remove federal executive officials, nor his having done so, change the meaning of the statute or the binding nature of this court’s interpretation of it,” they wrote. “’Conditions may have changed, but the statute has not.’ Courts may not ‘rewrite the statutory scheme in order to approximate what we think Congress might have wanted had it known that’ the president or courts may conclude that its removal restrictions were ‘beyond its authority.’”

In a statement Tuesday, NAIJ President Holly D’Andrea said that while her union was disappointed in the decision, it would continue to fight the Justice Department’s gag rule as the litigation moves forward.

“The case has been remanded to the Fourth Circuit, and NAIJ will continue fighting to protect the free speech rights of immigration judges, to seek meaningful review of the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s speech policies, and to ensure that immigration judges may engage in public discourse on immigration matters in their personal capacities,” she said. “Justice cannot endure when judges are intimidated into silence, nor can a nation remain free when the rule of law is subordinate to the whims of political ambition.”

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Disability advocates sue over website accessibility delays

Chris Teale — Wed, 27 May 2026 13:20:46 -0400

A disability rights group is suing two federal agencies over the delayed implementation of a rule requiring that state and local government websites be accessible to people with disabilities.

The National Federation of the Blind filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against the departments of Justice and Health and Human Services over the decision earlier this month to give governments another year to comply with a rule under the Americans with Disabilities Act. That rule would have required states and localities to ensure their websites meet various internationally recognized standards from the World Wide Web Consortium under Title II of the ADA.

In its suit, which also is filed against Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., NFB said DOJ and HHS “upended rules that had been years in the making and were carefully crafted to strike the proper balance between ensuring equal access for people with disabilities and feasibility for covered entities.”

NFB accuses DOJ and HHS of not following required procedure around the final rule’s public comment period in extending its implementation deadline, and said both agencies acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner when it made the regulation an Interim Final Rule, which would become effective immediately after publication and does not have a pre-publication public comment period.

“For over fifty years, our laws — specifically Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act — have promised blind Americans and other Americans with disabilities equal access to all areas of life, including digital spaces and services. Yet today this promise remains unfulfilled, and now our government is compounding the outrage by asking us to wait even longer,” Mark Riccobono, NFB’s president, said in a statement. “We will not wait. We will fight to ensure that the promise of America’s laws, and indeed its founding documents, finally becomes reality for blind and disabled Americans.”

The DOJ initially rolled out this regulation in 2024 during former President Joe Biden’s administration, under a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, which required a public comment period before a final rule was issued. But just months before the original compliance deadline of April 24, 2026, for governments with populations over 50,000 people, the DOJ referred the rule to the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs as an Interim Final Rule.

That set off a furious lobbying blitz as groups on both sides of the issue sought to influence the DOJ's final decision. Various government groups had argued that compliance was too costly and a drain on stretched staff resources, while disability groups had said the rule and the clarity it would bring were long overdue.

In the end, the DOJ announced in the Federal Register that governments would have an extra year to comply rigorous standards under the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1, known as WCAG , which means states and localities with populations above 50,000 people now have until April 26, 2027, to comply, while those with populations under 50,000 have until April 26, 2028, to comply. The delay left the plaintiffs in this case furious.

“For years, people with disabilities have fought for equal access to the digital services that increasingly shape everyday life — from healthcare and education to voting and public benefits,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of national legal organization Democracy Forward, which is helping represent NFB, said in a statement. “The Trump-Vance administration’s decision to abruptly delay these protections at the last minute is harmful, unlawful, and deeply disruptive for people who have already waited far too long for equal access. Disability rights are civil rights, and government agencies cannot simply ignore years of work, public input and legal obligations.”

NFB argued that the delay and changing of the rule type violated the Administrative Procedure Act, and so wants a judge to find DOJ and HHS’ actions to be illegal and vacate the Interim Final Rule. They also want the judge to declare all Interim Final Rules to be illegal under that law and award them legal fees.

The lawsuit accuses the DOJ and HHS of trying to “functionally repeal a policy consistent with the Trump Administration’s deregulatory agenda without the burden of a full rulemaking.” And while the suit says that DOJ officials realized that implementation was a far bigger burden than they had realized, especially for state and local governments worried about lawsuits in the event of non-compliance, it does not pay enough attention to the harms the disability community will continue to suffer if it is not implemented.

“[NFB and its members] relied on the Final Rules to fix an issue they regularly face: websites and apps that cannot be effectively used due to design barriers that make them inaccessible using access technology, like screen readers,” the lawsuit says. “Without relief, Plaintiff, its members, and the broader disability community will continue to face substantial barriers and uncertainty in accessing basic services, programs, and activities and participating equally in society.”

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They were told they’d move on. A year later, many fired federal employees say they haven’t been able to

Sean Michael Newhouse — Wed, 27 May 2026 12:56:57 -0400

As part of its effort to downsize the federal workforce in February 2025, the Trump administration conducted a mass firing of thousands of agency employees in their probationary periods, which generally last for the first year after a worker has been hired by or promoted within the government. Such staffers have weaker civil service job protections.

In September 2025, U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled that the removals were unlawful. He didn’t order agencies to reinstate affected employees, however, due to an earlier Supreme Court decision and because, as he put it, “The terminated probationary employees have moved on with their lives and found new jobs.”

So, a group of former probationary employees sought to find out if their colleagues had, in fact, “moved on.” Between February and March, they conducted a survey of more than 300 individuals impacted by the firings, representing 12 federal departments as well as 43 states and one territory.

The results show that many fired probationers haven’t found new jobs, are experiencing poor mental health and remain concerned about their former agencies’ effectiveness with reduced workforces.

Unemployment

The most frequent answer to a question in the survey asking how long it took to find a new job was “still unemployed.” Relatedly, around 80 participants reported that they have submitted more than 100 job applications.

Jacob Saunders, a respondent who worked at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for five weeks before he was fired, said that he still hasn’t found a full-time job. In the meantime, he is a high school lacrosse coach, has taken on sporadic gig work and sells items on eBay.

“It does annoy me when somebody thinks that it's pretty simple. I've applied to 15 jobs in one week. I might apply for three jobs a day or two jobs a day,” he said. “I've applied to a lot of jobs.”

The president in January defended his cuts to the civil service by claiming that employees who were pushed out are now in the private sector making double or triple their government salaries.

In contrast, the probationary survey found that, among respondents who found new roles, 49% reported that their salary is "significantly lower” than what they made in the federal government with another 19% saying their salary is “lower.”

The survey data was published by 27 UNIHTED, an organization of former National Institutes of Health employees established in response to the second Trump administration.

Mental health

In the survey, 95% of participants responded that they experienced “new mental health symptoms that had negative impacts on personal wellbeing” after being terminated.

Liz Crandall, one of the respondents and a fired field ranger from the U.S. Forest Service, wasn't surprised by that result.

“I'm seeing it still from friends that were probationary employees that were fired. They're still not doing well. I would almost argue they're doing worse because it's grief mixed with embarrassment and shame that they're still not able to get through it,” she said. “A lot of people have had to go on new medications and take out loans. And our health insurance is obviously taken away since we were fired.”

Crandall had been in her position for more than one year but had not yet received full civil service job protections because she was hired under Schedule A, a mechanism for agencies to bring on workers with disabilities that has a two-year probationary period.

Many civil servants hired under Schedule A who had been in their jobs between one to two years have argued that they wouldn't have been impacted by the probationary firings if they were recruited through another pathway.

Nearly 85% of survey respondents said that their agencies were not transparent about their firings. Crandall, for example, thought she might have been spared from the removals because initially only probationary employees with less than one year in her division were terminated. But she was let go the next day.

“Nothing made sense, no one had answers, HR had no idea what was happening. No one had any idea,” she said. “It was so bizarre and unprecedented and chaotic and even my conservative [coworkers] were crying.”

Likewise, Saunders said that his supervisor didn’t know he had been fired. He was the one who informed him.

Effect on agency operations

The two most common responses to a question in the survey asking about negative impacts to the public due to the probationary firings were: “larger (sometimes unmanageable) workload for remaining employees” and “loss of institutional knowledge.”

Crandall is worried, in particular, about her former agency’s continued ability to combat wildfires. Like many other USFS employees who were fired or otherwise pushed out by the Trump administration, she held a “red card” — meaning she was certified for firefighting duties and could be deployed as needed.

Government Executive previously reported that at least 1,400 USFS employees with “red cards” left the agency, but officials asked some of them to volunteer to return for the 2025 fire season.

Beyond personnel numbers, Crandall said that she possessed localized knowledge like locations of non-designated campsites and unofficial roads.

“Instead of people having to risk their safety to go in and navigate this insane spider web of roads, they would look to people like me and say ‘Where are the sites so that we can just go in and evacuate those directly? So we don't have to wander while a fire is creeping up on us,’” she said. “That was really important. That's the mixture of institutional knowledge, on-the-ground knowledge, local/regional knowledge as well as personnel.”

Both Saunders and Crandall said that they were offered their positions back following court orders but declined due to fears that they would still lose their jobs through layoffs under reduction in force procedures, which is another method the Trump administration has used to reduce agency headcounts.

“You can't put the toothpaste back into the tube,” Saunders said. “Once I had already gotten fired, what's stopping it from happening again?”

Crandall now works for a conservation nonprofit.

The Office of Personnel Management, which Judge Alsup determined illegally required the probationary firings, did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

Additional findings

The former probationers who conducted the survey noted that respondents’ participation was based on self-selection rather than a random sample.

A quarter of respondents reported that they were reinstated to their federal jobs. Another 15% said they got their positions back but were then terminated later.

While probationary periods are associated with workers who are new to government, around 45% of survey respondents said they previously worked for a federal agency as a contractor.

The Trump administration recently launched several efforts to recruit early-career workers to serve in a federal agency.

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OPM proposes requiring all feds to sign an NDA

Erich Wagner — Tue, 26 May 2026 17:56:33 -0400

The Office of Personnel Management is set to propose requiring all federal employees to sign a nondisclosure agreement barring them from divulging “confidential” information in most cases, a move that experts warn violate workers’ First Amendment rights and statutes aimed at protecting whistleblowers from retaliation.

OPM announced its plan in a filing set for publication in the Federal Register Wednesday. In justifying the requirement, officials cited reporting in Government Executive and other news outlets disclosing controversial proposals to overhaul federal layoff and performance management rules—and internal warnings against their implementation—prior to their formal publication.

“Unauthorized disclosures of confidential government information disrupt agency operations and erode public trust,” OPM wrote. “In recent months, unauthorized disclosures have included internal government materials not intended for public release such as pre-decisional documents and interagency comments exchanged during internal coordination processes . . . Such disclosures risk chilling candid interagency feedback, disrupting orderly decision-making and weakening trust within and among federal agencies.”

According to a draft copy of the proposed NDA, feds would be required to sign a document barring them from disclosing information related to internal agency operations, personnel and procurement matters and “any sensitive, pre-decisional or deliberative material” and vowing to inform their agency if they learn of others making such a disclosure.

The draft NDA includes language stating that it does not conflict with the Whistleblower Protection Act, and that whistleblowers may continue to disclose information either to Congress or their agency’s inspector general’s office. But Kevin Owen, a partner at Gilbert Employment Law, a firm that specializes in federal employment issues, described those exceptions as mere “lip service.”

“Time and time again, we see circumstances where whistleblowers try to go through internal channels—either through an IG or agencies like the Office of Special Counsel—and for one reason or another, either they’re overburdened with work, or with this administration particularly, politically captured and therefore don’t do the necessary work,” Owen said. “So a lot of those channels are ineffective. Only once wrongdoing becomes more widely known is there an appropriate remedy to the waste, fraud and abuse going on. Simply having OPM pick and choose the channels for whistleblowers is not in accordance with the Whistleblower Protection Act.”

Michael Fallings, managing partner at Tully Rinckey, another federal employment law firm, said it will be hard to gauge the NDA’s true impact until a final draft is released, likely after OPM’s 30-day comment period. As things stand now, much of the document’s language is “over-broad,” he said.

“When you’re dealing with NDAs, you have to be careful about impacting somebody’s rights to engage in protected activity,” he said. “Even in the private sector, they still have the right to disclose waste, fraud and abuse, and with government entities, you have to be careful of employees’ First Amendment rights as well. That’s the fear of a lot of the employee rights organizations and attorneys right now, especially given what has happened with this administration and the sense that it is trying to prevent employees from speaking out.”

Owen noted that federal agencies already have longstanding rules governing the unauthorized disclosure of internal government information. OPM’s proposed NDA, which the agency explicitly tied to its effort to assert governmentwide firing power through suitability determinations, could create a new class of federal firings, shielded from Merit Systems Protection Board oversight. An employee deemed unsuitable not only would lose their job but also could be barred from being rehired into government for up to five years.

“The impact of this is, coupled with other recent changes to its regulations, OPM could become the sole arbiter of whether it is abiding by these rules,” he said. “OPM is now trying to become this super personnel office that centralizes its authority over all federal employees, ostensibly at the direction of the White House. By now controlling how federal employees are even able to communicate about matters of political concern, it’s one further step toward enacting a spoils system and making the civil service a political arm of the White House.”

Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, blasted the proposal as an effort to “silence” federal workers.

“This proposed NDA is another attempt by the administration to purge the civil service of nonpartisan career employees and replace them with loyalists who won’t speak out against waste, fraud and abuse,” he said. “Federal employees do not surrender their First Amendment rights when they accept federal employment, and the public has a right to know about this administration’s abuses.”

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Beekeepers are losing a key USDA backstop at the worst possible time

Jennie L. Durant, The Conversation — Tue, 26 May 2026 15:28:05 -0400

America’s bees and beekeepers are losing a valuable ally just when they need its help most.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture plans to soon close the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, a 6,500-acre agricultural research station in Maryland that is home to the nation’s premier bee research and disease diagnosis hub, the Beltsville Bee Research Lab.

The closure comes at a critical moment for bees. In winter 2025, many beekeepers lost over half their operations as pesticide-resistant varroa mites spread, bringing deadly viruses. The losses have led to low honey production, and soaring fuel costs have made shipping bees cross-country for agricultural pollination increasingly expensive, further stressing the industry.

During my 14 years researching bees and beekeepers, and in writing my new book, “Bitter Honey: Big Ag’s Threat to Bees and the Fight to Save Them,” I’ve seen beekeepers frequently turn to the USDA bee labs for support during crises like this. Because honey bees contribute roughly $15 billion to U.S. crop production – native and managed bees pollinate more than 130 crops – these labs help stabilize the nation’s food system.

Today, that scientific support system is at risk, just as beekeepers face their greatest challenges and native bee populations continue to decline.

Why the Beltsville Bee Lab matters

USDA’s bee researchers have served beekeepers for over 130 years, including nearly 90 years at the Beltsville station. One of the Beltsville Bee Lab’s standout services is its bee disease diagnostic service, where beekeepers can send samples for analysis free of charge.

Since the early 2000s, Beltsville researchers have helped beekeepers respond to varroa mites – a primary driver of high colony losses each year. Now, the lab is helping them prepare for a deadlier mite that is infesting honey bees in Asia, Tropilaelaps mercedesae, or “tropi” mites – by developing detection and response protocols that beekeepers can use to protect their colonies.

While the Beltsville Bee Lab supports beekeepers nationwide, it’s located in a prime farming and beekeeping region. Its closure would leave a critical research gap in the Northeast, where beekeepers help pollinate cranberries, squash, blueberries and other crops.

Its location has also allowed researchers to conduct extensive studies on winter colony losses, research that would be difficult to replicate at the remaining USDA bee labs, which are primarily located in more temperate climates.

Hidden costs of bee lab closures

The USDA states that it will decommission the entire Beltsville Agricultural Research Center because building maintenance and renovations would cost an estimated $500 million. But closing the lab could cost beekeepers, farmers and consumers far more.

For example, in winter 2025, beekeepers experienced their highest losses in U.S. history. Many opened their colonies in January that year and found that more than 60% of their colonies had died – nearly 1.7 million colonies nationwide. Beekeepers contacted Beltsville, and researchers quickly flew out to test affected colonies for pesticide residues, diseases and varroa mites, data that could help guide beekeepers’ treatment response.

A few weeks later, as the lab’s scientists were working on the crisis, the Trump administration fired probationary researchers and staff at the bee labs, along with thousands of other employees across the USDA. The Beltsville team was hobbled, and the remaining staff restricted from communicating with beekeepers.

Because of the communication lockdown, it took nearly six months for researchers to deliver their findings. By then, the season was over and beekeepers had been forced to navigate the crisis on their own.

The loss of bee colonies ultimately cost beekeepers an estimated $600 million in lost honey production, pollination income and colony replacement costs – far more than the one-time projected costs to modernize the entire Beltsville Agricultural Research Center.

These losses can hit consumer pocketbooks too.

When beekeepers lose nearly half their operations, they often need to charge farmers more for pollination services to stay afloat. Those added costs can ripple through the food system and affect what everyone pays for the fruits, vegetables and nuts that depend on pollinators.

More cuts planned to US pollinator research

The Beltsville Bee Lab closure is not an isolated case. The administration has proposed eliminating the U.S. Geological Survey’s Ecosystems Mission Area, a move that could defund the USGS Bee Lab, an essential resource for research on native bees.

It also plans to decommission 16 USGS research centers nationwide, including the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center in North Dakota, the highest honey-producing state in the nation. For decades, beekeepers have brought colonies to forage on grasslands in the region. Researchers have been tracking how the shift from grasslands to crops has affected honey bee health and beekeeper revenue.

The U.S. Forest Service also faces widespread cuts, including the planned closure of 57 of its 77 research stations throughout the United States. Since the Forest Service manages over 193 million acres of federal lands that support native plants and pollinators, those closures could affect crucial pollinator habitat as well.

These closures risk a severe brain drain.

When the first Trump administration moved the USDA Economic Research Service from Washington to Kansas City, Missouri, in 2019, the agency lost over 75% of its experienced research staff. A recent survey suggests that history may repeat itself. If the reorganization goes through, farmers and beekeepers will lose experts with decades of institutional and technical knowledge.

The Beltsville Bee Lab is a key part of the often-unappreciated federal research infrastructure that supports the health of pollinators and the nation’s food supply.

If the USDA and the USGS move forward with their plans to close bee labs and research sites, the result could be slower responses to bee threats, weaker tracking of native bee populations and diminished pollinator habitat for bees – all of which raise costs and risks for beekeepers, farmers and everyone who depends on the food system.

Jennie L. Durant, Research Affiliate in Human Ecology, University of California, Davis

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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FAA surges medical staff after whistleblower alleges issues with certifying pilots and controllers

Eric Katz — Tue, 26 May 2026 13:17:02 -0400

The Federal Aviation Administration has added 40% more staff to review health certifications of pilots and air traffic controllers after an employee blew the whistle on severe shortfalls that allegedly endangered the public.

The backlog may have led to hundreds of pilots flying who should not have been medically cleared to do so and delayed hiring efforts for new controllers, the whistleblower alleged to the Office of Special Counsel. OSC, which reviews allegations from federal whistleblowers, recommended the FAA employee for a monetary award as a result of his disclosure.

“I thank the whistleblower for coming forward and their steadfast commitment to safeguarding the flying public,” said Charles Baldis, OSC’s chief counsel. “The disclosure prompted meaningful reforms at the FAA, and the whistleblower’s actions reflect the essential role federal employees play in identifying risks and improving the safety of our nation’s aviation system.”

The whistleblower first filed his complaint in 2023 and OSC referred it to the Transportation Department for an investigation the following year. As part of the staffing issues, the whistleblower alleged that 1,200 individuals who were flagged for potential medical issues were flying without further evaluations from FAA and that long waits for the agency’s sign off causes some pilots not to disclose illnesses and injuries. The shortages also risked creating backlogs in hiring air traffic controllers, who, unlike pilots, must clear medical exams conducted by FAA staff before taking their positions.

At the time, the whistleblower said, around one-in-three medical officer roles were vacant at FAA, while their workloads had increased by 250% over the previous seven years.

Transportation ultimately did not substantiate the allegations, finding instead that bottlenecks can occur at several stages of the medical review process and no gross mismanagement or public safety risks occurred. Pilots first go through a screening with a private doctor, and those who are certified to fly then go through an automated, algorithmic review by FAA for any "anomalies." Most of those are resolved before FAA’s medical officers get involved, Transportation found in its report, and it was unlikely that 1,200 pilots were flying aircraft with medical conditions that would put them at risk.

The department concluded that an exceedingly small number of pilots require a lengthy review of their medical certificates and therefore the public is not at risk. It also noted pilots have an affirmative duty to report any medical issues they might have.

Still, FAA has made a concerted effort to bring on more physicians to review medical exams from pilots and air traffic controllers. That initiative got underway in the Biden administration, but carried forward after President Trump took office. The medical officer staff were exempt from workforce reduction efforts and the federal hiring freeze, and has grown by nearly 40% since September 2024. The agency has also sought to better educate potential pilots on the information and documents required of them and contracted out some of the administrative work required for ATC approvals.

OSC disputed Transportation’s decision declining to substantiate the allegations, noting FAA struggled to meet its mandated 60-day window to complete reviews of medical certifications. It also found FAA has for several years been on a controller hiring spree, while the medical staff remained stagnant. In 2023 it took 133 days for a controller to receive medical clearance and controllers cannot begin working or training without such clearance.

“OSC does not find the agency’s conclusions regarding the lack of safety risks appear reasonable, but we appreciate that the agency prioritized corrective actions to greatly increase staffing and efficiency in AAM to nonetheless resolve these concerns,” Baldis said.

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Congress must tie any USPS bailout to real reform

Kevin Yoder — Tue, 26 May 2026 07:00:00 -0400

The U.S. Postal Service just announced a projected loss of $1.95 billion for the second quarter of 2026 — its fifth quarterly loss in a row after 19 consecutive years in the red. Postmaster General David Steiner has warned that USPS could run out of cash by early 2027 without help from Congress. But no matter what lawmakers decide to do, any legislation should also enforce accountability, accessibility and affordability requirements to keep USPS from squandering yet another effort by Congress to financially stabilize the agency.

The instinct in Washington will be all too familiar: Raise the USPS borrowing authority, tolerate yet another round of steep price increases and call it a rescue. While it’s clear that Congress must take action soon to keep USPS from going broke, now is not the time for another blank check. That’s because USPS doesn’t have a revenue problem; it has a spending problem. Without holding USPS accountable, any financial relief from Congress will just be a band-aid on a gaping wound, setting the stage for a massive taxpayer bailout.

When former Postmaster General Louis DeJoy unveiled the 10-year Delivering for America plan in 2021, he projected USPS would break even by fiscal year 2023 thanks to aggressive, frequent rate increases, operational cost cuts and a pivot to packages over mail. Yet instead of breaking even, USPS has lost more than $30 billion since the Delivering for America plan was launched — even after the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022 eliminated $120 billion in liabilities. And although the stated intent of the reform law was to prevent the need for large rate increases, DeJoy plowed ahead with frequent stamp hikes, raising prices seven times in five years at rates above inflation — a move that the Postal Regulatory Commission has said reduced mail volume and revenue.

DeJoy’s Delivering for America plan has only produced higher prices for consumers and has done scarcely nothing to control spending. And despite the Delivering for America plan’s failures, the USPS Board of Governors and Postmaster General Steiner are continuing down the same path, even though the Postal Service is hemorrhaging cash and customers.

Cuts should, and could, be made without compromising universal service and affordability. USPS operating costs increased by nearly 10 percent between 2021 and 2025. Lower-cost, part-time positions declined, but full-time staffing increased by 37,783 from 2020 to 2024, and only fell by about 2,000 since then. Meanwhile, USPS total factor and labor productivity has fallen to the lowest levels in the modern agency’s history, as the one-to-three-day service standard for First Class mail increased to five days.

In recent testimony before Congress, Postmaster General Steiner advocated for raising the stamp price to nearly $1. Higher prices are not the answer. In fact, they are contributing to the Postal Service’s financial woes. As the Postal Regulatory Commission, the agency charged with USPS oversight, explained in a January report, the shift to twice-a-year rate increases accelerated mail volume decline and revenue losses by pricing out both consumers and business. With each price hike above inflation, the Postal Service cannibalizes the mail, which is still its biggest revenue source.

Steiner also asked Congress to raise the Postal Service’s borrowing authority, which is currently capped at $15 billion — a limit that has already been met. Given that USPS is facing $8 billion in projected losses this year, even doubling its borrowing authority isn’t likely to even carry it through 2027.

Privatization is also not a panacea. While European countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands have privatized their mail delivery, they’ve experienced widespread service deterioration and rising costs. It also wouldn’t work in the U.S. due to the sheer size of our country. No private courier could, or would, deliver mail for all Americans.

If DeJoy’s Delivering for America plan taught us anything, it’s that raising rates and borrowing more money isn’t a path to solvency for the Postal Service without cost control and productivity requirements. A CPI-based price cap, for example, would require USPS to improve efficiency and live within its means. Any service reductions must be required to provide guaranteed savings and the Postal Regulatory Commission’s oversight should be strengthened to ensure USPS improves efficiency and cost discipline. USPS could break even and improve profitability over the next five years if it cuts costs by just 2 percent annually.

Any private bankrupt entity would be expected to restructure before borrowing more. Congress should expect nothing less from the Postal Service, otherwise American taxpayers will be left holding the bag (of mail).

Kevin Yoder is a former Republican congressman from Kansas and executive director of Keep US Posted, a nonprofit advocacy group of consumers, nonprofits, newspapers, greeting card publishers, magazines, catalogs and small businesses.

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The White House is ordering agencies to place its new app on all employees’ government phones

Eric Katz and Natalie Alms — Fri, 22 May 2026 17:08:23 -0400

Updated May 22 at 8:57 p.m.

The White House recently unveiled a new app to give the public “unfiltered” access to “key priorities,” “historic moments” and “policy breakthroughs.” Now, it’s directing agencies to help install it on the government phones of federal employees.

The Trump administration launched the app, which promises to “[keep] you connected to President Donald J. Trump and his administration like never before,” in March.

The push to install the app on the devices of millions of government employees drew surprise from current and former federal officials, who called the move highly unusual and even dangerous.

The White House launched its new app in March 2026.

In at least one agency, the automatic downloads will start next week in a move directed by the White House itself, according to internal communications obtained by Government Executive. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Earlier this week, agency chief information officers got orders from the federal CIO, Greg Barbaccia, to help the White House understand the mechanics of installing the app across all government-furnished mobile phones in the executive branch, according to an internal email obtained by Government Executive.

“The White House App gives all Americans direct access to White House live streams, breaking news alerts, new policy initiatives, social media posts, and more,” said Olivia Wales, a White House spokesperson. “Government devices typically include pre-installed apps that provide value to government employees’ day-to-day work.”

The move is “dangerous,” Sonny Hashmi, a former longtime government IT executive, told Government Executive.

Cybersecurity researchers warned about vulnerabilities in the app soon after it debuted, like how it shares the IP addresses, time zones and other data of users with third-party services. The app also raised initial concerns about its potential GPS tracking capability, but the White House has since removed that functionality.

Forcing agencies to install it on employee’s government furnished phones should be “cause for alarm,” said Hashmi, who worked at the General Services Administration for years, most recently as a Biden administration appointee. “Any app that is installed on government issued devices can potentially create backdoor access to government networks behind the firewall.”

The Federal Aviation Administration told employees on Friday that its IT team “will automatically install ‘The White House’ application on all FAA-issued iPhones and iPads, as mandated by the White House,” adding the process would occur automatically and employees “do not need to take any action.”

“The application will grant access to breaking news, policy updates, livestreams, videos, photos, social media content, and exclusive early-access information,” it said.

The app includes official statements and policy announcements from the administration, as well as a feed of social media posts from White House accounts and the president.

A button gives the option to “text President Trump,” which, when clicked, opens a text message to a pre-selected number with the default text “Greatest President Ever!” Sending the text signs the user up for alerts, which individuals can also do through the app itself.

While the instructions to install the administration’s app on government phones may sound like a way to simply communicate with the government workforce more directly, “this isn’t really operational,” former government tech official David Nesting told Government Executive, pointing to the fact that it’s the same app available to the general public.

“It's just making sure all federal employees are forced to see the same propaganda they push out to the public,” said Nesting, who previously worked in career, civil service government roles as the deputy CIO at OPM and also did stints at the federal Office of the Chief Information Officer and U.S. Digital Service before it was DOGE.

The app includes videos and messaging that are overtly political or directly related to campaigns, the type of material with which employees are typically discouraged from engaging while on the clock due to the non-partisan nature of their work.

Barbaccia’s email to government IT executives suggests that how to force the app to install across phones wasn’t immediately apparent to the White House, as it requested help with the “mechanics” of pushing the app out across government phones.

This marks at least the second time the administration has sought to make it easier to communicate with the entire federal workforce all at once.

In the days after Trump moved back into the White House last year, the Office of Personnel Management set up a new, first of its kind governmentwide email system – something that didn’t previously exist. It later used the new system to send out the administration’s “Fork in the Road” deferred resignation offer to get hundreds of thousands of federal employees to resign from their roles.

This story has been updated with comment from the White House.

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Agency leaders back GSA bid for full access to federal building repair funds

Sean Michael Newhouse — Fri, 22 May 2026 14:09:48 -0400

General Services Administration chief Ed Forst has long advocated for his agency to be given full access to the Federal Buildings Fund. His latest entreaty to Congress, however, came with backing from the leaders of more than 20 federal departments and agencies.

“Despite the rental payments made to GSA by federal departments and agencies, GSA is consistently unable to access requisite [repairs and alterations] funding due to persistent underfunding by Congress,” the agency heads wrote in a Thursday letter to House and Senate leaders. “Consequently, cyclical reinvestment to maintain federally owned facilities in a state of good repair has become a luxury — rather than a necessity.”

As explained by the Congressional Research Service, lawmakers created the FBF as a revolving fund for the government’s property agency: “GSA pays lessors for the space it rents on behalf of other agencies, and agencies then repay GSA by depositing funds into the FBF. GSA then uses the rental payments it collects for all of its real property activities, such as the construction of new facilities, lease payments and repairs to federally-owned properties.”

But Congress puts annual limits on how much funding GSA can spend from the account for budget reasons, which the letter signers argue has significantly contributed to an estimated $26 billion deferred maintenance backlog.

“As we seek to do more with less and ensure that Americans' scarce tax dollars are spent wisely, GSA should be able to access the entirety of its FBF annual agency rent receipts to perform work that federal tenants believe will be addressed by virtue of our providing timely rental payments,” they wrote.

Specifically, GSA reports that the FBF has been “chronically underfunded” since 2011 by more than $15.6 billion, which, in turn, makes it more difficult for the agency to implement the Trump administration’s goal of reducing the number of federal buildings through consolidation.

The agency heads in the letter also called on lawmakers to increase the prospectus threshold needed for GSA to obtain congressional approval to alter government properties from nearly $4 million to $75 million for “routine and emergency maintenance” and $10 million for all other cases.

The Biden administration also sought to provide GSA with full access to the FBF, offload excess agency facilities and raise the prospectus threshold.

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Gabbard to resign as director of national intelligence, citing husband’s health

David DiMolfetta — Fri, 22 May 2026 14:08:00 -0400

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard will resign from her role in the coming weeks, her office confirmed to Nextgov/FCW on Friday.

Gabbard’s husband, Abraham Williams, was “diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer, and she is stepping away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle,” Olivia Coleman, a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said in an email.

In a Truth Social post that included Gabbard’s resignation note, President Donald Trump said she would be leaving June 30. It marks the fourth major cabinet departure of his second term.

During Gabbard’s roughly 16-month tenure overseeing the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies, the former Democratic congresswoman and 2020 presidential candidate sought to reshape ODNI around Trump’s priorities while facing persistent scrutiny over her past comments on Russia, Syria, Edward Snowden and surveillance authorities. She was narrowly confirmed to the position in February 2025.

In office, Gabbard launched a sweeping restructuring effort aimed at shrinking ODNI, including plans to cut staffing and consolidate or eliminate several offices tied to cyber, foreign influence and intelligence integration functions. Supporters framed the moves as long-overdue reforms, while critics warned they could weaken coordination across the intelligence community.

Gabbard also became a central figure in Trump’s efforts to target former intelligence officials viewed as political adversaries. Last year, she revoked security clearances for dozens of current and former national security officials, accusing some of politicizing intelligence and leaking classified information, which drew sharp criticism from Democrats and former intelligence leaders.

Her tenure was additionally marked by renewed disputes over U.S. intelligence assessments, including intelligence findings involving Venezuela.

Gabbard’s political rise was built in part around opposition to U.S. interventionism and what she called “regime change wars,” a posture that at times appeared increasingly at odds with White House actions involving military operations in Iran and Venezuela.

In March, a Senate hearing highlighted growing tensions between intelligence community assessments of the war in Iran and the administration’s framing of the conflict. It also came a day after the departure of then-aide and National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent, who said he could not agree with the Trump administration’s premise for the war, which was launched alongside Israel in February.

In the hearing, Gabbard told senators that it’s “not the intelligence community’s responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat” and that the president has authority to make such conclusions.

In a Friday statement, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va. the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said his thoughts were with Gabbard and her family.

“Anyone who has watched a loved one go through a serious illness understands the toll it takes, and I wish him strength and hope for a full recovery in the difficult days ahead. I also appreciate her willingness to serve her country in a variety of different roles,” he said.

“The Director of National Intelligence is entrusted with one of the most serious responsibilities in government: providing objective, fact-based intelligence to policymakers and the American people, regardless of politics or pressure from the White House,” added Warner, who often sparred with Gabbard over issues involving her office.

“At a time when the boundaries between verified intelligence and politically convenient claims have too often been blurred, it is critical that the office remain grounded in facts, independence, and the rule of law,” he said.

“I thank Tulsi Gabbard for her service in this administration and in uniform, and I wish her the very best as she supports her husband Abe in his battle with cancer. Please join me in sending them prayers for a full and fast recovery,” said Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., the intelligence committee chairman.

Editor’s Note: This story was updated with additional details.

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NTEU asks Trump administration to ease telework rules as gas prices spike

Erich Wagner — Fri, 22 May 2026 13:55:18 -0400

The National Treasury Employees Union on Thursday called on the Trump administration to help federal workers cope with rising gas prices, as the president’s war in Iran threatens to enter its third month.

Since the effective closure of the Strait of Hormus since shortly after the United States began military strikes in February, the average price of gas has increased from less than $2.81 per gallon in January to $4.56 as of Thursday.

In a pair of letters Thursday, NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald called on agency leaders to take steps to help insulate federal employees from the recent spike in fuel costs, specifically by lifting Trump’s effective elimination of telework for most feds and by authorizing a mid-year increase to gas reimbursement rates for official travel.

In a letter to OPM Director Scott Kupor, Greenwald argued that allowing feds to work from home again would have a knock-on effect to lessen recent price increases’ impact on all Americans. She said agencies should reinstitute the workplace flexibility at least until the average gas price falls back below $3.00 per gallon.

“Not only does telework save the government money through reduced leasing costs, reduced energy expenses and increased productivity, it reduces traffic congestion and saves employees time and money commuting,” Greenwald wrote. “It also helps those who can’t telework by reducing commute times and fuel demand, which helps ease fuel cost increases for everyone. Mandating that all employees must work in person in federal offices, even though many of these jobs were done successfully remotely for years, creates a significant financial burden with gas prices so high, especially for those who live in more rural areas that may be further away from their official worksites.”

The union leader said the administration should abandon its planned pay freeze for federal civilian employees next year and instead impose a “fair” pay increase to help the workforce cope with rising energy and other costs.

And in another letter Thursday, this time to Internal Revenue Service CEO Frank Bisignano, Greenwald called for a mid-year increase to gas reimbursement rates for official travel.

Although the General Services Administration typically sets the government’s reimbursement rates for travel and lodging, those actions are capped by the IRS’ maximum rate at which taxpayers may deduct fuel as a business expense. The IRS has made mid-year increases to those caps three times since the turn of the century, most recently in 2022.

“This is a matter of fairness and basic equity for all Americans,” Greenwald wrote. “Failing to increase the mileage reimbursement rate in response to rising fuel costs shifts unreimbursed business expenses onto employees and creates unnecessary financial strain for all workers who must rely on their cars to perform their jobs, including federal employees.”

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Ryan Donaghy returns to CISA as first chief operating officer

David DiMolfetta — Fri, 22 May 2026 13:36:16 -0400

After departing the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency last fall, Ryan Donaghy returned to the agency this week to serve as its first chief operating officer, according to a Thursday announcement.

Donaghy, who held acting director roles in two of the cyberdefense agency’s divisions, had moved to the Transportation Security Administration in October of last year, Nextgov/FCW first reported.

“As COO, Ryan will serve as the principal advisor to CISA’s Senior Leadership on agency operations, business functions, financial and acquisition management, policy development, and interagency efforts supporting our strategic goals,” the agency said in a LinkedIn post. “She will help ensure these efforts reflect the Director’s priorities and comply with applicable laws and regulations, while strengthening coordination across enterprise programs and DHS.”

Donaghy has held several leadership assignments in the cyberdefense agency, including chief of metrics and analysis within the Office of Infrastructure Protection, senior data scientist in the National Risk Management Center and deputy chief for chemical security policy, rulemaking and engagement.

Several of CISA’s units have been targeted for restructuring amid sweeping Trump-era cuts and reorganization efforts at the agency.

CISA has faced staffing reductions, program reviews and broader shakeups as the administration moves to scale back parts of the federal cybersecurity and infrastructure security apparatus. The White House is seeking to reduce the agency’s budget by a net amount of $360 million for the 2027 fiscal year.

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Agency partnerships are a potential financial lifeline for USPS, watchdog reports

Sean Michael Newhouse — Thu, 21 May 2026 17:22:08 -0400

With the prospect of running out of money by fall 2026 looming, the watchdog for the U.S. Postal Service recently laid out how the agency could partner with other government departments to expand access to services and shore up its finances.

“Although the additional revenue government services may yield is uncertain, they could contribute to the bottom line and meaningfully advance USPS’s role as essential public service infrastructure,” the USPS inspector general wrote.

For example, investigators highlighted that USPS could expand the number of facilities providing FBI biometric identity verification services (e.g. taking of fingerprints). They reported that roughly 30.4 million people, 9% of the U.S. population, live more than an hour away from a post office offering these services, which can be needed for employment or international travel background checks.

The OIG also emphasized an ongoing pilot program between USPS and a private company to offer TSA PreCheck enrollments and renewals at post offices.

“If the Postal Service was able to work with the TSA to provide the service at the 1,250 postal locations already equipped with biometric hardware, USPS would improve access for applicants, in particular in rural areas where private vendors lack a physical presence,” investigators wrote.

The Federal Communications Commission also suggested that postal facilities could lease their roofs for 5G and broadband towers in order to expand access, especially in rural areas. This would not be wholly unfamiliar territory for USPS, as the OIG noted that the postal agency already leases space for communications infrastructure at around 60 locations.

Nonpostal government services in fiscal 2025 yielded $387 million for USPS, about 0.5% of total operating revenue. Of that amount, 80% came from passport processing, which post offices have been offering in conjunction with the State Department since the 1970s.

The OIG stressed that USPS is not limited to federal partnerships. The Postal Service Reform Act of 2022 authorized the post office to work with state, local and tribal governments. Despite this, officials have no interagency agreements with these governments and have not conducted outreach.

State agencies in Texas, for example, told the OIG that postal facilities could act as “multi-agency hubs” to “bridge service gaps in remote areas where citizens may currently travel over 100 miles for state services.”

Investigators did note that USPS between 2021 and 2022 partnered with the California Department of Motor Vehicles on a pilot program to install DMV kiosks in post offices for vehicle registration renewals. They wrote that it was not continued due to “insufficient demand.”

The OIG recommended that USPS establish a strategy with steps to identify and gauge opportunities to expand services across different levels of government. USPS officials agreed with the recommendation and said they would “formalize and refine” past similar efforts into a singular roadmap.

Postmaster General David Steiner has expressed support for creating more partnerships with other agencies. He recently testified that USPS could run out of money as soon as fall 2026.

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Army’s transformation efforts are under fire 1 year in

Meghann Myers — Thu, 21 May 2026 17:21:00 -0400

A year after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the Army to take on a long list of tasks—including jettisoning unwanted vehicles and aircraft and re-focusing on unmanned systems—the Army Transformation Initiative is on uncertain ground.

Hegseth has said he’s giving the document “another look,” but has declined to be more specific, frustrating lawmakers who want a detailed roadmap and timeline they can fund—or not.

“We'd like to see a concrete plan on how the Army intends to modernize, where it invests, where the investments will be made, what risks to readiness will be absorbed, and what impact it will have on the industrial base,” Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., told the Army secretary and acting chief of staff on Friday during a House Armed Services Committee.

Those comments came three days after the defense secretary acknowledged that ATI might need a revamp.

The Army always intended ATI to be a living document, a U.S. official told Defense One, but the defense secretary’s office hasn’t reached out to the service to discuss any changes.

“No plan is designed to survive first contact with the enemy, and as conditions evolve, as things change, we must be willing and able to transform and change quickly with it,” said the official, who was granted anonymity to comment because they were not authorized to speak on the record.

The Pentagon refused to answer a query from Defense One about which parts of ATI Hegseth would like to revisit, or whether his office had discussed them with the Army.

Officials instead pointed to the secretary’s May 13 remarks, which included a response to a question from Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., about the Army’s proposal to slash helicopter procurement. DeLauro’s district includes the Sikorsky factory that manufactures the UH-60 Black Hawk.

The conciliatory tone of the response was a departure from Hegseth’s customary ripostes to lawmakers’ questions, especially Democrats’.

Though many of ATI’s items include initiatives the Army had been pursuing for months or years, Hegseth took ownership of the plan by unveiling it in a memo issued last April. The plan quickly drew questions from lawmakers during the Army’s budget hearings last year.

Many of the questions appear to remain unanswered, as Driscoll and acting Chief of Staff Gen. Christopher LaNeve make the rounds of the armed services and appropriations committees this month. LaNeve is on track to replace the ousted Gen. Randy George, who had relentlessly promoted the Army’s many “transformation” efforts.

“We want to make sure the Army has done a careful analysis of how transformation will affect our capabilities and force structure,” Rogers said Friday. “We want to understand how the Army intends to sustain the legacy capabilities our service members still need and use. We want to avoid spending this historic influx of money ineffectively and wasting the opportunity to bolster the [defense industrial base].”

Lawmakers’ questions reflected particular concern about how the Army’s plans to buy fewer aircraft might throttle production lines and supply chains, which can’t necessarily rebound a year or two later if the Army decides it wants to start buying again.

“Nobody's saying we don't need Chinooks or Black Hawks or Apaches,” the U.S. official said. “We need to modernize them, etc. But we have so many, based on the force structure side, that we think it’s what is required to fight a conflict.”

Instead, service leaders have been told to “tighten their belts,” the official said. So they are making trade-offs, spending that helicopter money to refill munitions stockpiles and buy, attritable drones, new weapons and cyber capabilities.

That appears to contradict Hegseth’s congressional testimony May 13, when he announced he wants to restore funding for the Air Force’s E-7 Wedgetail, which was not in the original fiscal year 2027 Pentagon budget request.

“I think that mindset was indicative of a mindset that we’ve shed, which is the divest-to-invest mindset,” the secretary said.

Ultimately, final budget decisions go through the White House’s Office of Budget and Management, so the U.S. official couldn’t comment on why the Army is making these specific tradeoffs.

The service has sent many experts to Capitol Hill to brief lawmakers on ATI, the official said, and will continue to do so.

Still, Congress wants more.

“What exactly is it that you intend to do? What are the top three or five parts of that initiative?” Rep. Jim Garamendi, D-Calif., asked Friday. “We're going to have to give you the authority—or maybe we disagree and don't want you to go in that direction—but what we're seeing here is enormous inconsistency in direction, and that is not going to suffice as we put together the future direction and laws that the Army is going to have to carry out.”

A spokesperson for the House Armed Services Committee declined to provide a more detailed example of what lawmakers would like to see on ATI.

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Appeals court upholds order reinstating VA’s union contracts

Erich Wagner — Thu, 21 May 2026 16:54:02 -0400

A federal appeals court last weekend upheld a March ruling that restored collective bargaining rights to Veterans Affairs Department, though not a later requirement that the department “comply” with its contracts with the American Federation of Government Employees.

U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose previously found that VA Secretary Doug Collins violated the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedures Act last year when he terminated the department’s collective bargaining agreements with AFGE in connection with President Trump’s executive order banning unions from most federal agencies under the auspices of national security.

The VA appealed that decision, along with a second order enforcing the initial ruling after management asserted that it could reinstate the contract but ignore all its provisions and then sought to terminate the CBA a second time to “moot out” the court case, and requested a stay from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

The three-judge panel, comprised of Biden, Obama and Trump appointees, unanimously denied VA’s request to pause enforcement of the initial injunction but found that the courts could not force management to abide by the contract “in both form and substance.” Writing for the court, Chief Judge David Barron determined the VA’s claim that its union contracts were rendered “inoperable” by Trump’s executive order was faulty, as judged by its own five-month delay in terminating the contract after the edict’s signing in March 2025.

“Indeed, we note, the record shows that the defendants chose to keep the CBA in place, seemingly as if it remained binding on them, for months after the president issued the EO, even though they were not subject during those months to any court order to do so,” Barron wrote. “It may be that there is some reason why it was more workable to keep the CBA in place as a binding agreement at that time than it is now. But, if so, the defendants do not contend that the CBA has since become any more unworkable than it was when they chose to keep it in place during that period.”

However, the panel did agree with VA officials, who argued that the April district court ruling to enforce the injunction “greatly expanded” the scope of DuBose’s initial decision, creating a mechanism “utterly foreign” to labor relations lawsuits.

“The question here concerns whether, even after the CBA has been reinstated as a binding agreement pursuant to a preliminary injunction, the district court may then modify that injunction as a means of enforcing it by ordering specific performance in each instance in which it finds that there has been a breach of one of the CBA’s terms providing for ‘grievance and arbitration’ procedures,” Barron wrote. “After all, such an individual breach would not in and of itself suffice to show that the CBA had not been reinstated as a binding agreement and need not itself result from the defendant having in that instance ‘acted outside their scope of authority.’”

As the VA fought to stay the injunction and enforcement order in this case, it separately and successfully lobbied the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, a federal agency that facilitates arbitrated grievance proceedings across government, to cease processing arbitrator requests in connection with VA grievances, instead placing those cases in abeyance until the conclusion of the broader litigation.

In a statement Monday, MJ Burke, president of AFGE’s National VA Council, applauded the ruling.

“For nearly two months, the VA has tried every which way to get around complying with the preliminary injunction ordering them to restore union rights to more than 320,000 nurses, housekeepers, social workers, cemetery caretakers, claims processors, and so many others who are represented by AFGE/NVAC and show up every day to serve veterans,” she said. “Every VA public servant who cares for a veteran depends on a workplace where they can do their job without fear of retaliation for exercising their rights.”

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What federal employees get wrong about divorce and retirement

Tammy Flanagan — Thu, 21 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400

Sometimes, life comes with unpleasant surprises. From a financial planning and retirement preparation perspective, one of the most difficult is divorce.

One person who knows a lot about this topic is Dan Jamison, a CPA and retired FBI special agent. Over the years, he has shared information with me that might help those going through this process. Dan specializes in assisting federal employees and annuitants with the division of retirement benefits in divorce and has written the popular FERS Retirement and Benefits Guide.

CSRS or FERS retirement benefits

The number one misunderstanding, in Dan’s experience, occurs when a former spouse of a federal employee is granted a pro-rata award of a federal retirement benefit, but there is no mention of a survivor annuity that is payable to the former spouse.

Another common oversight is when a survivor annuity is awarded to a former spouse without the level of survivor annuity being defined. In such cases, the Office of Personnel Management interprets it as a full survivor annuity.

Many times, employees don’t fully understand this until after retirement. After the retirement or death of the employee, the survivor annuity portion of a divorce agreement or court order can’t be modified.

Got a question for federal retirement expert Tammy Flanagan? Send to us at newstips@govexec.com and she might answer it during our live webinar on June 18. Stay tuned for details.

Another problem can arise if the former spouse was awarded full survivor benefits and the employee remarries. The survivor annuity is paid on a “first come, first served” basis, which means the former spouse will receive the court-ordered benefit and there may be little to nothing left for the new spouse if the employee dies before either of them.

In this situation, you should elect the survivor benefit for your current spouse that you would have chosen if there wasn’t a court-ordered award to your former spouse.

Remember that your current spouse will not receive the benefit, however, unless the former spouse loses entitlement due to his or her death or remarriage before age 55. If your marriage had lasted 30 years or more, remarriage will not cause the former spouse to lose entitlement.

You also can choose an “insurable interest” survivor election at retirement so your current spouse would be entitled to 55% of your reduced retirement benefit, even if the former spouse is eligible for the court-ordered benefit.

This would cause your retirement to be reduced twice, so it can be expensive. You must select the insurable interest survivor benefit at the time of retirement and prove your insurability, meaning your good health.

Remember, if your current spouse is not entitled to a spousal survivor annuity, they also might lose entitlement to health benefits if you die first unless they are entitled under their own federal employment or retirement benefit.

If an employee provides an insurable interest survivor annuity and the former spouse subsequently loses title to their survivor annuity, the insurable interest survivor annuity can be converted by OPM back to a normal spousal survivor annuity.

Dan says that in most cases the intent of the parties in a divorce is to award a survivor benefit in the same amount as the annuity award so that the former spouse receives the same amount of annuity regardless of whether the retiree is alive or deceased.

For example, if the portion of the retirement annuity payable to the former spouse is $20,000 per year, then the survivor annuity is often spelled out in the divorce agreement as the same amount.

If the employee has not yet retired, the divorce decree can be superseded at OPM by a new court order with revised survivor annuity terms.

Follow-through failure

Another area of concern, according to Dan, is the lack of follow-through after a divorce is finalized.

Upon finalization of a divorce in which a portion of a retirement annuity and/or Thrift Savings Plan funds are awarded to the former spouse, separate court orders for the TSP and OPM must be prepared to divide the funds.

The dividing order for the TSP is called a Retirement Benefits Court Order. The order for OPM to divide the annuity is called a Court Order Acceptable for Processing.

A COAP may award several retirement-related benefits, including survivor annuity, refunds of retirement contributions, health benefits and assignment of life insurance, as well as a portion of the retirement.

If you have been through a divorce, take a moment to locate a copy of your decree and/or settlement agreement.

Ensure that the appropriate court orders have been obtained and sent to the appropriate agencies at least one year prior to your anticipated retirement.

OPM will mail a determination letter to both parties after receipt of a COAP. Locate that letter as well and make sure it reflects your understanding of the award.

Another mistake employees sometimes make is failing to inform their Federal Employees Health Benefits Program carrier about their divorce.

Dan said he recently talked to someone who had been divorced for two years and was still carrying his ex-wife on self-and-family FEHBP enrollment. This is not allowed.

Upon the issuance of a divorce decree, only your current spouse and your dependent children can be covered under your FEHBP plan.

I know of divorced feds who are being sued for tens of thousands of dollars by FEHBP carriers for this mistake.

A former spouse may have rights to carry FEHBP coverage through spouse equity provisions of the law, but he or she must enroll in their own plan and pay both the employer and employee share of the premium.

Causes for delay

Here are a few additional divorce-related factors that can cause delays in processing a retirement application:

OPM automatically rejects a court order that isn’t a certified copy, and an applicant may not even know this has occurred. If you’re unsure whether a court order sent to OPM is certified, call the agency’s Court Order Benefits Branch at 202-606-0222 or email retire@opm.gov.
OPM does not automatically start annuity payments to a former spouse upon an employee’s retirement. The former spouse must apply to OPM by written letter, confirming their marital status, personal identifiers and the status of the COAP.
Many former spouses fail to continue health insurance under the FEHBP temporary continuation of coverage program or coverage under the spouse equity provisions of the Federal Employees Retirement System within the prescribed 60-day period after the marriage ends. This can leave the former spouse without health insurance benefits.
You must notify your agency’s human resources office, and you need to complete SF 2809, the Health Benefits Election Form, if you want to change your enrollment from self and family or self plus one to self only, or vice versa. You must let the health plan know the date of the divorce so that your ex-spouse can be removed from your enrollment.

If you’re facing the possibility of divorce or if you’ve already gone through the process, OPM provides a publication that may come in handy: Court Order Benefits for Former Spouses.

Federal Employees Group Life Insurance qualifying life event

Divorce is a life event under FEGLI when an employee, not a retiree, may elect Basic insurance and all Optional insurance coverage, including up to the maximum number of multiples of Option B and/or Option C coverage.

The time limit for making a life event election is 60 days after the date of the qualifying event.

You must file the election with your employing office using the Life Insurance Election form, SF 2817, or its electronic equivalent, along with proof of the event.

You can either file the election before the event, to be followed up with the necessary proof within 60 days after the event has taken place, or you can file the election and provide the necessary proof no later than 60 days after the date of the event.

Proof of an event is your divorce decree. Your employing office determines what is acceptable proof of the life event, not OPM or OFEGLI.

You may want to consider completing a new designation form.

For example, a divorce does not invalidate a designation that names your former spouse as beneficiary, nor do state laws invalidate a designation unless a valid court order names the former spouse to receive FEGLI benefits.

You need to complete a new SF 2823 to remove a former spouse.

In addition to filing your court order with OPM’s Court-Ordered Benefits Office, if there is a FEGLI benefit provided for in the court order and you are an active employee at the time of filing, a copy of the court order must be filed with your agency, too.

Example: Martin is a married employee with FEGLI coverage. He has no designation of beneficiary form on file. He divorced his spouse, Kayla. They have no children.

The divorce court order provides that Kayla is entitled to a future share of Martin’s retirement annuity and to 100% of his FEGLI insurance.

Kayla’s attorney properly files a copy of the court order for the future annuity share with OPM’s Court-Ordered Benefits Branch but does not file a copy with Martin’s agency. Martin also does not file the court order with his agency.

Martin later dies as an active employee. Because the court order awarding FEGLI benefits is not on file with the appropriate office, in this case his employing agency, at the time of his death, FEGLI proceeds will be paid based on the order of precedence, so his parents will receive the proceeds.

You may assign your insurance to comply with an order issued by a divorce court requiring that a former spouse and/or children from a previous marriage be named as the beneficiary of FEGLI proceeds.

If a court order requires you to make an assignment, you must still complete an assignment form for the assignment to take place. A court order requiring an assignment is not a valid assignment.

You may make an assignment by completing an Assignment, Federal Employees’ Group Life Insurance form (RI 76-10).

Only the insured, or an assignee reassigning the insurance, may assign the insurance. No one may make an assignment on the insured or assignee’s behalf.

The assignment form must be signed by two witnesses. An assignee cannot be a witness to the assignment.

An assignment is effective on the date your employing office receives the properly completed, signed and witnessed form.

The assignment must specify percentages or fractions of the insurance to go to each assignee. The percentages must total 100%, or fractions must equal 1.0.

You cannot name contingent assignees in the event the primary assignee or assignees predecease you. You cannot assign dollar amounts, and you cannot assign specific types of coverage.

The TSP and divorce

Your former spouse could be awarded a portion of your TSP account if a valid Retirement Benefits Court Order to divide your account is issued.

The RBCO can be issued at any time in divorce, annulment and separation proceedings.

Read the TSP booklet Court Orders and Powers of Attorney to learn more about RBCOs and how they can affect your TSP account.

The rules for qualified domestic relations orders that apply to private-sector plans do not apply to the TSP.

A valid RBCO requires the TSP to freeze your account, preventing you from taking any new loans or withdrawals until the award is paid out or the order is otherwise resolved.

However, a freeze will not prevent you from making contributions or changing your contribution allocation or investment choices, and you will still be required to make payments on existing loans.

In addition, the TSP’s Court Order Center provides a booklet, Court Orders and Powers of Attorney.

Social Security benefits for former spouses

If you were married for at least 10 years before your divorce, your ex-spouse may qualify to receive benefits on your record.

Or you may qualify for benefits as an ex-spouse on his or her record if you are not currently married.

Note: If you were married to the same person more than once during a 10-year period, you or your ex-spouse may still qualify.

Social Security can count those marriages as one if you remarried no later than the calendar year after the year the divorce became final.

Contact Social Security or make an online appointment if you want to file for divorced spouse’s benefits.

For more information about spouse benefits, see Who can get Family benefits.

Widow’s and widower’s benefits

If you are the widow or widower of someone who worked long enough under Social Security, you may be eligible for benefits on his or her record.

Social Security will use the information you give about your prior marriage along with your other responses to evaluate whether you can receive benefits on your deceased spouse’s record.

For more information about benefits for widows and widowers, go to Who can get Survivor benefits.

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DOGE is about making government services easier to access, its head says

Natalie Alms — Thu, 21 May 2026 07:00:00 -0400

Department of Government Efficiency acting Administrator Amy Gleason says that efficiency — the tagline billionaire Elon Musk heralded during his involvement in the early days of DOGE — is about making accessing the government easier.

Although that message ties back to much of the history of the Obama-era office that President Donald Trump reshaped into DOGE, the U.S. Digital Service, it diverges somewhat from what DOGE has made itself known for, like dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development, pressing for unprecedented, high-level access to sensitive government data and pushing thousands of government employees out of their jobs.

Musk and his allies also emphasized reducing government spending as part of their mission, although they were ultimately largely unsuccessful.

Gleason told an audience at a government IT industry event Wednesday that the group’s priorities today are improving government services, modernizing government systems, combating fraud and hiring tech talent after the administration pushed 20,000 technology-focused government employees out of their jobs last year.

“I think of efficiency really as reducing that friction, administrative burden, both from our public users as well as our federal workforce, and even state users that we're working with,” she said. “Our citizens have come to expect their government experience to feel like the private sector experience, where it's modern and easy to use.”

When Trump moved back into the White House last year, he quickly transformed USDS — set up in the wake of the botched healthcare.gov launch to prevent future such failures — into the U.S. DOGE Service.

Many of those on the existing team were laid off or resigned in protest. Some stayed and continued to work on the types of citizen-facing projects the Obama-era team was known for, although experts have told Nextgov/FCW that DOGE made these types of good-government projects more difficult by souring what the public thinks about when it hears the words “government modernization.”

Gleason herself was relatively unknown to the broader public when the White House named her acting administrator of DOGE last spring, after Trump evaded the question of who was in charge for weeks. She previously worked at DOGE’s precursor during Trump’s first term and during the Biden administration.

Despite her title, it’s not clear how much sway Gleason had over DOGE during its zenith. Some on Musk’s government-cutting team have since said that she never led a DOGE meeting they attended, and that they didn’t know what her job was.

DOGE’s social media still appears to be rooted in the Musk days. Recent posts on the team’s X account include images of a doberman on the White House lawn with the text, “DOGERMAN.” Another post simply reads, “America loves DOGE.”

Public polling from last year says otherwise, with more Americans opposing DOGE than rating it positively.

Gleason, who also works at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, spoke Wednesday about her inspiration working in the healthcare tech space because of the experience of her daughter, who was diagnosed with a rare disease when she was 11. Gleason said she wants to improve the access patients have to their own healthcare data.

Asked to expound on the biggest challenges in government AI, Gleason said that trust is the “biggest thing.”

“We have to figure out how to overcome the trust barrier,” she said.

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TSA workforce, aviation leaders challenge Trump push to expand privatized airport screening

Eric Katz — Wed, 20 May 2026 16:04:00 -0400

Updated May 21 at 5 p.m.

Industry and government employee representatives alike pushed back on President Trump’s attempt to mandate the privatization of screening efforts at small airports on Wednesday, suggesting during congressional testimony the program should remain optional and could lead to worse outcomes.

The airline industry, the head of a major airport and the top official representing Transportation Security Administration employees all threw cold water on the president’s plan, which the White House proposed earlier this year. Trump is looking to dramatically scale up the Screening Partnership Program to include hundreds of participants, compared to the current roster of just more than 20 airports.

Former Gov. Chris Sununu, R-N.H., now the president of Airlines for America, said his members do not want to see airports have their choices taken away. The overwhelming majority of airports in the United States have since the Sept. 11 attacks used federal TSA screeners at their checkpoints, though the law creating the agency allowed them to opt in a partnership with the private sector.

“Ensuring SPP remains an option for airports and does not become a mandatory program is paramount to the U.S. aviation industry,” Sununu said, adding that while some of the airports that have elected to participate in the privatization program have done so successfully, “airports need the flexibility to make their own choices.”

Chris McLaughlin, CEO of Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, said TSA staff at his facility “do an amazing job” and he is therefore uninterested in joining the program.

“I think it's important for airports to have choices,” McLaughlin said. “I think there might be places where an SPP model could work for specific airports.”

Trump’s privatization plan would lead to job cuts of around 4,500 TSA employees. He proposed eliminating another nearly 5,000 jobs by reallocating resources that the agency said will lead to more efficiency, as well as by tasking states and localities to staff exit lanes. The budget proposed an additional $477 million for SPP to get more airports to enroll, though the White House said it would ultimately save $52 million.

“The budget begins the privatization of TSA’s airport screeners by requiring small airports to enroll in the Screening Partnership Program, under which TSA pays for private screeners at designated airports,” the White House said. “The airports that already use this program have demonstrated savings compared to federal screening operations.”

The president has also launched TSA Gold Plus, which would enable airports to leverage private sector investment in providing technology and staffing for screening while maintaining federal oversight. That differs from SPP, which uses federal dollars to contract with private screeners.

The administration has pointed to the two extended government shutdowns in fiscal 2026 that have forced TSA employees to go months on only the promise of back pay to justify the privatization push, suggesting non-government personnel maintained their pay throughout the funding lapses.

Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents TSA workers, said the pre-9/11 era demonstrated the pitfalls of privatized airport screening.

“The consequences of reverting to a contractor-driven model are not theoretical,” Kelley said. “We lived them before September 2001 and the historical record is unambiguous.”

Most Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee that held Wednesday's hearing said forced privatization would be a mistake that would lead to worse outcomes for both travelers and TSA personnel. Workers at private companies would earn less than most TSA staff, they said, while losing their collective bargaining rights—a shift the administration is already seeking to implement at the agency.

“Airports recognize the downsides of privatization over the last 25 years,” said Rep. Lou Correa, D-Calif. “Airports have had the option to join SPP at any time, and only a small handful have done so.”

Republicans, meanwhile, expressed an openness to the plan, noting Democratically controlled cities have either implemented SPP (San Francisco) or are considering doing so (Seattle and Atlanta).

“I applaud the administration’s establishment of a new TSA Modernization office, reporting directly to the TSA administrator,” said Rep. Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., who chaired the hearing..” This new office directly answers this committee’s calls to modernize and reform the agency while increasing public-private partnerships in striving toward greater security outcomes.”

After the hearing, Garbarino clarified that private-public partnerships should be just one part of TSA's modernization, which should include new technology and streamlined screening for certain populations. He has supported bipartisan legislation to allow TSA to retain all of the fees it collects from travelers and to allow families with young children to receive expedited screenings.

"When it comes to optional programs like SPP, the most important thing stressed at this week’s hearing is that this is one of many avenues available to airports as they determine what frameworks work best for their needs," Garbarino said. "That was an important conversation to have across party lines, and I appreciated the testimony from all of our witnesses on how we can work together to protect the traveling public and our dedicated TSA workforce.”

Kelley suggested TSA employees should be applauded for their efforts while seeing their paychecks delayed, collective bargaining rights stripped and threats of thousands of job cuts.

“Despite all of this, they have continued to show up,” Kelley said. “They have continued to screen nearly three million passengers a day. They have maintained their unblemished record of keeping the flying public safe from terrorist violence.”

This story has been updated with additional comment.

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Survey: Feds were less engaged, less satisfied and more burnt out in 2025

Sean Michael Newhouse — Wed, 20 May 2026 15:29:29 -0400

Federal employee morale dropped last year, as President Donald Trump downsized and otherwise overhauled the civil service, according to a new data analysis from Gallup.

“[A]fter the reforms took effect, federal workers experienced declines in employee engagement and job satisfaction, alongside increases in burnout and job-search activity,” the researchers wrote. “These shifts were larger than those observed among comparable state and local government workers — and private sector counterparts — during the same period.”

The analytics firm noted, however, that the data shows there was a “rebound” in some areas by the end of 2025.

For the analysis, researchers compared federal employee worker engagement metrics with those of state and local civil servants. Between 2022 and 2024, the two groups exhibited similar worker satisfaction score trends.

“By comparing the change in federal employees to the change in state and local employees — rather than looking at federal trends alone — the analysis isolates the portion of the shift that occurred uniquely among federal workers after the reforms,” the researchers explained.

In the second quarter of 2025, the percentage of “engaged” federal employees decreased by six points more than it did for state and local workers. That gap narrowed to a four-point difference by the first quarter of 2026.

Likewise, feds were roughly 15 points less likely than their state and local counterparts to report having “high job satisfaction” in the second quarter of 2025. The difference between the two groups never went below 10 points for the remainder of the year.

Between the second and fourth quarter of 2025, feds went from being about eight to nine points more likely to report “high burnout” compared with state and local workers to approximately four to six points.

Feds were also around eight points more likely to be searching for a new job in the first quarter of 2025 than state and local civil servants, but “federal job-search behavior [by Q4 2025] was essentially indistinguishable from state and local peers and remained so in Q1 2026.”

For this analysis, Gallup researchers looked at data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the company’s ongoing workforce survey data of U.S. adults. The statistical models were controlled for characteristics like age, gender and race.

In March, Gallup reported that the percentage of feds who are classified as “thriving” decreased by 10 points between 2024 and 2025.

The Office of Personnel Management in 2025 did not conduct the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, with officials saying that changes were necessary to the annual poll of the government workforce in order to comply with Trump’s anti-diversity executive orders.

In response, the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan good government group, developed its own survey of more than 10,000 current feds. It found that all 30 agencies represented in the poll experienced decreases from their 2024 FEVS scores; although, Partnership officials acknowledged that the results are not directly comparable because OPM’s survey includes significantly more respondents.

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Reported exposure of federal cybersecurity agency login data prompts Hill scrutiny

David DiMolfetta — Wed, 20 May 2026 15:25:50 -0400

Top Democratic lawmakers on the House Homeland Security Committee have requested a briefing from Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency acting Director Nick Andersen following reports of a contractor-linked leak of internal agency credentials.

Independent journalist Brian Krebs reported Monday that researchers identified a publicly accessible GitHub repository connected to government contractor Nightwing that allegedly exposed a broad collection of sensitive access information tied to systems used by CISA and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security.

“We demand a briefing as soon as possible on how this serious security lapse occurred, any potential security consequences, remediation activities, corrective actions related to the contractor personnel involved, and efforts to monitor for and prevent similar activity from occurring in the future,” wrote Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the committee’s ranking member, and Rep. Delia Ramirez of Illinois, the ranking member of the panel’s cyber subcommittee, in a Tuesday letter shared with Nextgov/FCW.

The materials, stored in a repository labeled “Private CISA,” reportedly included items like authentication credentials, AWS GovCloud information and other sensitive data. The repository was later removed from public view. Nextgov/FCW has not independently verified its contents.

“Security researchers said the content openly available online included information on ‘how CISA builds, tests and deploys software internally,’ and they described it as ‘one of the most egregious government data leaks in recent history.’ We agree,” said the letter, referring to the contents of Krebs' reporting.

A Nightwing spokesperson referred inquiries to CISA.

“We do not comment on congressional correspondence but respond to members directly,” an agency spokesperson said.

A separate letter to Andersen was sent by Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., Axios reported Tuesday.

CISA has undergone significant workforce cuts in the last year, which Thompson and Ramirez say may have contributed to the incident. They worry that “a substantially reduced workforce, coupled with the administration’s indifference to security, created the conditions that allowed such a significant security lapse to occur. Moreover, we are concerned that the incident undermines CISA’s credibility.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated to include a comment from CISA.

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EPA’s restructuring could change who shapes chemical risk decisions

H. Christopher Frey, The Conversation — Wed, 20 May 2026 15:13:44 -0400

For decades, the Environmental Protection Agency has relied on an independent scientific program to answer two basic questions when chemicals come up for review: Does the chemical pose a threat to human health? If so, how much exposure is necessary before it becomes a problem?

The scientists involved in that program, known as the Integrated Risk Information System, or IRIS, served as neutral scientific referees.

Now, the Trump administration is dismantling the program and moving the scientific assessment role to policy offices, opening the door for political pressure. The administration is also making it easier for past IRIS assessments to be revisited or overturned.

This change is not merely bureaucratic: It reshapes whether future assessments of chemical dangers will be ignored, delayed by time-consuming legal fights or understated by the federal government, potentially with real consequences for public health.

Numerous chemicals are hazardous to human health. For example, ethylene oxide is used to sterilize medical equipment. However, studies show ethylene oxide poses elevated cancer risks to people who live near facilities that release it. Chromium-VI, used as a corrosion inhibitor and for metal finishing, can contaminate drinking water. Made famous by the Erin Brockovich case, it has been linked to cancer and other adverse health effects. Formaldehyde, found in building materials and household products, has long raised concerns about cancer and respiratory disease.

EPA scientists assessed each of these chemicals through the IRIS program. Now, the IRIS program itself, as well as many of its formal assessments of more than 550 chemicals developed over four decades, is being challenged under the Trump administration.

What IRIS did – and what it didn’t do

In any high-stakes game, the referee enforces the rules so the outcome rests on the facts, not on who shouts the loudest or has the most at stake.

IRIS played that role for chemical safety. It was part of the EPA’s Office of Research and Development, which was recently dismantled by the Trump administration. Its scientists assessed whether chemicals cause harm and weighed how health risks changed with a person’s increasing exposure to the chemical. These scientists did not estimate real-world exposures, decide acceptable risk or make regulatory choices. Those functions were handled in policy offices.

I have worked with IRIS assessments from multiple perspectives – as a professor of environmental engineering, as a reviewer for the National Academies and EPA science advisory processes, and as assistant administrator of EPA’s Office of Research and Development from 2022 to 2024, where I oversaw the IRIS program.

IRIS assessments were written by EPA scientists and rigorously reviewed by independent external peer reviewers with experience in each specific chemical. The assessments have been used across EPA programs and by states, local governments and tribes, and internationally. Industry representatives, environmental groups, other federal agencies and members of the public all had opportunities to comment on the drafts of assessments before they were finalized.

When disagreements arose over IRIS assessments, independent scientific experts were asked to weigh the evidence and advise the EPA on how to move forward. That process, relying on scientists, not stakeholders, was meant to ensure that scientific judgments were grounded in evidence, not in policy preferences or financial interests.

The actual policy decisions to regulate chemicals were made elsewhere, by EPA officials and, in some cases, by states or other jurisdictions. IRIS provided the scientific foundation so those decisions could be informed by an evidence-based understanding of chemical hazards.

IRIS assessments effectively set the standard for assessing chemical hazards internationally. Other agencies and countries rely on IRIS assessments precisely because they are comprehensive, transparent and independently reviewed.

Why critics wanted IRIS dismantled

That track record matters.

Some industry-aligned organizations have argued that IRIS assessments are flawed or biased and have called for eliminating the program.

However, independent scientific reviews have repeatedly examined these concerns and found that IRIS methods reflect the current state of the science and have strengthened in rigor, transparency and consistency over time.

It’s true that IRIS assessments often took years to complete, but that was because extensive interagency review and limited staffing slowed the pace at which assessments could inform regulatory decisions. Delay is not the same as poor science.

What changes when the referee disappears?

With IRIS eliminated as an independent program, chemical hazard assessments will be overseen by regulatory offices that also weigh economic impacts, legal risk and policy priorities.

When scientific assessments are developed within offices responsible for policy decisions, it becomes harder to maintain a clear separation between evaluating evidence and weighing its regulatory consequences. That separation has historically helped ensure that scientific conclusions are grounded in evidence alone.

Courts generally give weight to agency expertise when decisions are supported by a clear and well-documented scientific record. However, when agencies fail to clearly explain how the evidence supports their decisions, including when agencies depart from their own scientific assessments, courts can block those decisions under the Administrative Procedure Act or other laws, such as the Clean Air Act.

The result can be prolonged litigation and delays in developing or implementing regulations, with consequences for public health.

How communities are affected

Industries have long challenged scientific findings that show their products can cause harm – from tobacco smoke to particulate air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels.

When public health is at stake, I believe independent referees are essential to ensure that facts are determined by evidence, not by the industries that would benefit. Shifting away from independent scientific review risks undermining that foundation.

H. Christopher Frey, Professor of Environmental Engineering, North Carolina State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Nuclear waste oversight at risk as staffing vacancies mount, watchdog warns

Eric Katz — Tue, 19 May 2026 18:27:25 -0400

Updated May 20 at 9:10 a.m.

Nearly half of the positions in the federal government’s office responsible for handling and cleaning up nuclear waste are currently vacant, according to a new audit, after the Trump administration incentivized a wave of departures at the agency.

The Energy Department’s Environmental Management office lost around one-third of its employees in fiscal 2025, the Government Accountability Office found in a new report, most of whom left as part of the “deferred resignation program” that allowed employees to sit on paid leave for several months before exiting government. It already maintained a vacancy rate of 20% in 2023, GAO said. About half of the nuclear waste office’s unfilled positions were in mission-critical roles.

In a separate report in 2024, GAO found Environmental Management faced challenges in cleaning up nuclear waste due to understaffing, as it forced schedule delays, cost overruns and workplace accidents. At its 15 clean up sites, the Energy office is tasked with deactivating contaminated buildings, remediating contaminated soil and operating facilities that treat millions of gallons of liquid radioactive waste.

At its location in the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the office has a vacancy rate of 62%. The rate was among the lowest of any EM facility at its headquarters, where it was still 39%. Over the last 10 years, the office’s low point in staffing was in 2024 at 1,279, or more than 30% than its current level.

Each of EM’s six mission-critical occupation groups experienced a decrease, including nuclear engineering, general engineering and general physical science. Positions for facilities representatives, who provide the office’s “on-site presence for safety and compliance purposes” including worker health, are 44% vacant. All of the positions at the Carlsbad Field Office are vacant, while Los Alamos has just one remaining.

“This understaffing includes shortages in mission-critical occupations that are integral to carrying out EM’s mission, which includes addressing contaminated buildings, soil, and groundwater, and treating radioactive waste,” GAO said.

Energy officials told GAO the nuclear clean up office is currently reorganizing and reassessing its staffing needs. It is planning to hire 174 workers in fiscal 2026, they said, and it is not planning any changes to its responsibilities. Such hiring would still leave the office with 19% fewer employees than it had when President Trump took office last year, as well as with a 33% vacancy rate in the office according to its own previously assessed needs.

The officials suggested EM may eliminate some vacant positions and that could reduce the vacancy rate, GAO said. Some of the planned hiring, however, will come from transfers within Energy, potentially creating more vacancies elsewhere. The officials added that it will take at least a year to train many of the new hires.

"The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management remains fully equipped with the expertise necessary to carry out mission-critical projects, including with regards to addressing contaminated buildings, soil, and groundwater, and treating radioactive waste,” a spokesperson said. “Thanks to President Trump, the Energy Department’s Environmental Management Office is advancing common sense solutions that protect public health and safety, fulfill cleanup responsibilities, and deliver greater value for the American taxpayer.”

Employees within the office told GAO the vacancies are taking a toll.

“According to EM officials, leaving these positions vacant means there are fewer people to manage the workload, resulting in employees potentially burning out with heavy workloads, which gives them concern over the safety of operations,” GAO said.

The officials added that the office “was not hiring any entry-level people and was losing knowledge at a rapid rate as employees continue to retire and resign.”

This story has been updated with comment from the Energy Department.

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USDA is using AI, but doesn’t have the required controls to manage risks, watchdog finds

Natalie Alms — Tue, 19 May 2026 17:16:45 -0400

The Agriculture Department is using artificial intelligence to identify risks in the supply chain, estimate yearly corn and soybean yields and make recommendations during the permitting process.

But the department doesn’t have all of the required cybersecurity and governance controls to keep that technology in check, according to an inspector general report released last week, which found that Agriculture doesn’t even have a generative AI policy at all.

The department hasn’t fully implemented cyber and risk controls in its AI systems, as required by federal standards, because it has prioritized using AI over setting up controls for the technology. The Trump administration has sought to aggressively roll out AI across the government, in addition to efforts to dominate with the technology on the world stage.

At USDA, AI systems “could be vulnerable and lack critical security controls, leaving the agency susceptible to data breaches or reputational harm” because of the lack of strong governance around the technology, the new report says.

Agriculture hasn’t followed all the risk management and governance controls set in place by the Office of Management and Budget during the Biden administration and modified by the Trump administration. The department has installed a chief AI officer as required, but it hasn’t updated agency policies — or implemented minimum risk management practices for AI systems deemed especially risky, like those that affect civil rights or critical infrastructure.

Almost none of the AI use cases in the department’s fiscal year 2024 inventory had an authority to operate, a formal approval issued for technology systems meant to make sure that the government thinks through the risks associated with different technologies before using them.

That means that management doesn’t have assurance that the department has cybersecurity controls in place, the report says.

The inventory itself may also be insufficient to account for all potential dangers, as the OIG said the department is at risk of shadow AI — technology used by employees that management isn’t aware of or hasn’t approved — creeping across the department, since it relies only on an annual data call for employees to self-report AI that they use.

The watchdog included several recommendations for the department to implement controls and update policies, all of which Agriculture agreed with.

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Newest inspector general nominees show shift from overtly political backgrounds

Sean Michael Newhouse — Tue, 19 May 2026 16:55:04 -0400

On one of the first days of his second term, Donald Trump fired 17 agency inspectors general. And most of the president’s picks who have been confirmed to lead the watchdog offices previously worked in his first or second administration, raising concerns from good government groups about their ability to perform independent oversight of federal programs.

Trump’s latest IG nominees, however, generally have experience working in an IG office and appear to be more typical picks for the nonpartisan watchdog role.

Justice Department

Trump nominated Don Berthiaume, a career IG employee, to lead the DOJ IG office, where he is currently serving as a senior advisor.

The president tapped Berthiaume as the acting IG at DOJ from October 2025 through January 2026, but his tenure was cut short by rules that limit how long an individual can serve in an acting position.

Specifically, the Federal Vacancies Reform Act generally restricts officials from filling a role in an acting capacity to no more than 210 days after a vacancy occurs. The position at DOJ opened up in June 2025 when former DOJ IG Michael Horowitz left to become the IG for the Federal Reserve.

The deputy DOJ IG, William Blier, is currently performing the duties of the IG.

If confirmed, Berthiaume will face several politically sensitive challenges. Lawyers for a DOJ whistleblower in March accused the IG office of not investigating multiple misconduct allegations. And the DOJ watchdog in April announced that it would audit the department’s compliance with the law mandating the release of government files related to the deceased sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein.

But Mark Lee Greenblatt — former Interior Department IG who was fired by Trump and who has been critical of the president’s IG selections — praised Berthiaume’s nomination.

“In my experience of working literally next to [Berthiaume] for years on very sensitive political cases, he showed to me that he is a straight shooter,” Greenblatt said. “When compared with some of the IG nominees that President Trump has put forward in other significant positions, this [nomination] is — from my perspective — a home run.”

Education Department

Like Berthiaume, Trump’s pick to serve as Education IG — Heidi Semann — comes from the IG community and had a stint as acting IG.

The president in July 2025 replaced acting Education IG René Rocque, who is also the office’s deputy, with Semann. The swap came after Rocque notified Congress that investigators had “experienced unreasonable denials and repeated delays” from the department during an investigation into the administration’s workforce reductions.

In December 2025, however, Semann’s tenure as acting IG ended, and she returned to her position as a senior special agent at the Federal Reserve OIG. A spokesperson for the Education OIG confirmed to Government Executive that this was due to time limits on acting officials in the Federal Vacancies Reform Act.

Mark Priebe, who replaced Semann as acting and is still in the position, was a senior official in the Education OIG who appears to have shared social media posts supporting Trump.

Similarly, Greenblatt argued that Semann, given her oversight experience, is a “marked improvement” from Trump’s past IG nominees. But he still has some concerns.

“She seems to be having this meteoric rise from obscurity to an incredibly important sensitive role, so I think that does raise a question in my mind,” he said. “But since she’s coming from the OIG community, and with an oversight background, then hopefully she is coming to this position with that fair, objective and independent mindset.”

Housing and Urban Development Department

At the end of April, Trump nominated Jeffrey Ledbetter of Virginia to be IG at HUD. Neither the White House, the HUD OIG or Republicans or Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee, where his nomination has been referred, responded to a request to confirm who Ledbetter is or otherwise provide biographical information.

The president had selected Jeremy Ellis, who has more than two decades of investigative experience, as his HUD IG nominee, but that nomination was withdrawn in September 2025.

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'Your 30 days has become 30 hours’: AI is reshaping federal cyber defense

Frank Konkel — Tue, 19 May 2026 13:09:48 -0400

Advanced AI models with unique hacking capabilities like Anthropic’s Mythos should bring federal agencies that handle some of the government’s most sensitive information to a “reflection point,” according to one of the CIA’s top tech officials.

“I think it is a reflection point and I think people need to view it in that fashion,” said Dan Richard, Associate Deputy Director of the CIA’s Digital Innovation Directorate. Richard spoke on a panel Friday at the Qualys ROCon Public Sector 2026 conference in Tysons Corner, Virginia.

A previous version of the Mythos software was released to a limited group of tech companies in April with much fanfare, due to its ability to detect countless software bugs and defects.

Security researchers and experts reacted with a mix of excitement and caution, with some warning the software could usher in a new era for hackers and lower the barrier to entry for would-be attackers. Mythos and competing models like OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 have forced executive agencies to grapple with their capabilities and prompted emergency briefings for lawmakers.

Richard said he feels “bullish in terms of the opportunities that are out there,” largely because these AI models can help agencies like the CIA deal with the deluge of data they generate and automate responses to potential threats. He likened the current Mythos-driven moment to Ukraine’s response to Russia’s invasion in 2022.

“[Ukraine] had gone through a decade of the Russians infiltrating their networks and having to deal with that implication, but when the Russians attacked in 2022 the Ukrainians were prepared because they understood they couldn’t do it themselves,” he said. “Shoulder-to-shoulder with them were the private sector vendors to support what they were doing and to help what they’re doing.”

Richard said the U.S. government is in the “same position” now, and public-private partnerships will be key to ensuring the nation gets it right.

“80% of our nation’s critical infrastructure is in private sector hands, so there is no solution that does not include private sector partners,” Richard said. “We talk about partnership all the time, but this is really different. This isn’t transactional. This is us, as a country, figuring out with the academic community, with the private sector community and with our public sector partners working together to be able to defeat and take advantage of what I see as an optimal opportunity for the agency, but for the country.”

Joe Kelly, division director of the Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence and Security at the University of Maryland, said advanced AI models are going to lower the barrier to entry for would-be hackers.

“The real danger when we look at something like Mythos — whether you believe the hype or not — is it certainly creates what we already see with Claude Code, the ability for script kiddies to cause real damage even without knowing what they’re doing,” Kelly said. “It’s going to lift all those. I do worry about the complexity that we’re entering in this era.”

‘It’s moving so fast, it’s scary’

IonQ Chief Information Officer Katie Arrington, who spent most of 2025 serving as the Pentagon’s chief information officer, said the influx of advanced AI tools — and the speed at which they’re emerging — will test government to the extreme. Existing governance requires IT security vulnerabilities be patched within 30 days, and 15 days for vulnerabilities designated “critical.”

“You don’t have time like that anymore,” Arrington said during a panel at the Qualys event. “We’re talking about a tool that can find every vulnerability in seconds on a platform.”

Arrington said these kinds of advanced AI models weren’t a discussion item even 12 months ago. At that time, the Pentagon was just trying to improve the speed that it could bring general AI tools into its networks.

“It’s moving so fast, it’s scary,” Arrington said. “It scares me and it excites me how fast Mythos came alive.”

Qualys CEO Sumedh Thakar said federal agencies may need to take a more proactive — rather than reactive — approach to risk management to deal with the growing range of threats from advanced AI tools. His company is using its AI-powered cybersecurity tools, including TotalCloud, which recently received authorization to operate in the government’s FedRAMP High environments, to allow customers to automate vulnerability patching, reducing some of the manual processes and “dashboard tourism” cyber professionals otherwise deal with.

Thakar said autonomous remediation allows savvy customers to “battle AI with the speed of AI.”

“Now with attackers leveraging AI, as soon as a patch comes out, they can reverse engineer the patch and they can start to figure out the exploit. Your 30 days has become 30 hours, or three hours,” Thakar said. “What we really focus on is to get over the fear of autonomous remediation. It’s not an option.”

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The century-old GS system is 'disintegrating' and government can't agree on how to fix it

Howard Risher — Tue, 19 May 2026 07:00:00 -0400

Both Republicans and Democrats see it as a barrier to better government but for totally different reasons. It is central to the “compliance culture” that impedes better government. It still reflects the way work and workers were managed a century ago. It has not been modified, except for separating the Senior Executive Service and adding locality pay, since it was created in 1923.

It’s more than ironic that in that era the head of the Bureau of Efficiency was prominent in the administration of the civil service system. The buzzword then was “scientific management.” Workers were expected to do what they were told, and managed as a cost. That is still true in smaller, owner-managed companies.

Not surprisingly, Elon Musk is known for top-down control. Quotes attributed to him confirm a very negative view of the federal government: “Regulations are immortal.” “The bureaucracy is the problem.” Musk and his chainsaw created an us-vs-them distrust of management. The workforce was “traumatized,” to quote Max Stier, of the Partnership for Public Service.

Now, the government is moving full-steam ahead with AI. It also threatens job security. What has not been addressed is that jobs will be changing rapidly and that is at odds with job classification. A year or two from now the GS system is likely to be unsupportable. AI is exacerbating the already poor employee morale.

Employee costs are not the problem

By any standard, the costs attributed to building a productive workforce are a small percentage – less than 5% – of what the government spends. The cost to raise GS salaries to market rates would be less than 1%.

A related point highlights the political problem. No administration has been concerned with how much federal contractors pay their people. Added to that are the organizations receiving federal grants. Those organizations are not expected to defend how much they pay their staff. That’s true of the Federal Reserve System and the many independent agencies.

There is an alternative management philosophy. That is employees should be managed not as costs but as valued assets. That emerged in the 1990s. It started a few years earlier with W. Edwards Deming’s book, Out of the Crisis, where he argued the problem was not workers, it was the system they work in. Over the decade Gallup first cited research showing engaged workers are more productive. Fortune's “Great Places to Work” lists first appeared. And research confirmed employees are managed differently in “High Performance Organizations.” Those companies have been high on lists of the best performers.

It’s not coincidental that in the 1990s the Clinton-Gore National Performance Review (NPR) confirmed “empowered” federal workers are fully capable of significantly better performance. That initiative resulted in the deletion of over 350,000 jobs and savings in excess of a billion. In that context employees were committed to improving operations.

But just before President Bush took office, the Heritage Foundation released the report, “Taking Charge of Federal Personnel.” It influenced the new administration to centralize management with OMB, returning day-to-day operational control to appointees. That effectively ended the brief recognition that employees are ready to play a role in improving performance.

The Government Accountability Office, then led by David Walker, initiated reform in the late 1990s when budget cuts and staffing reductions forced a strategic restructuring. Walker is known to be a conservative but his reforms emphasized employee empowerment and deep employee involvement in the planning. GAO has been at or close to the top of the Partnerships’ Best Places to Work in the Federal Government Rankings for mid-size agencies since the list was created.

Strategic human capital management has been consistently on GAO’s High Risk list since 2001.

The Pay Agent’s Recommendations for the GS Framework

In December, the Pay Agent’s “Annual Report” stated it would not “approve of further additions to existing locality pay area boundaries or the creation of new locality pay areas at this time.” It was not like prior federal reports in that it was highly critical of the “antiquated” GS system. From the report:

The locality areas “do not align with geographic realities or labor market conditions.”
“It makes no sense to continue expanding locality pay boundaries – or to tinker with the arcane methodology ... given the need for a better pay system.”
“ ... a methodology that produces implausible results while ignoring occupational realties, mission needs, and performance considerations.”

It went on to state, “It has long been clear what the locality pay system’s flaws are” and referred to the 2002 Office of Personnel Management (OPM) white paper, “A Fresh Start for Federal Pay: The Case for Modernization.” The authors contended the GS system “hinders the performance of the Federal Government.”

As the director of the project in 1990 that led to the Federal Employee Pay Comparability Act, I agree with their critique. It was passed as a rider, and there were too many compromises. The Bureau of Labor Statistics radically changed its survey methodology soon after passage. Over the years BLS has made additional changes. Today it’s so complex it’s doubtful anyone at OPM or involved with the Federal Salary Council meetings could describe the analytic methodology. It is completely different from anything used in other sectors and far more costly.

The Pay Agent’s report briefly discussed three recommendations “for improving the General Schedule:”

“Assess the total compensation gap.” This is not a new idea. It has been the focus of several Congressional Budget Office reports arguing the cost of government provided benefits offsets the lower salaries. The flaw in that argument is clear in the BLS statistics. Smaller companies provide fewer benefits and their numbers distort any comparison with government’s true talent competitors. Moreover, BLS does not include cash incentive income or stock related income. It would have to be an “apples-to-apples” comparison to be meaningful.
“Provide different pay ranges for different occupations.” This could be a practical answer for high demand occupations. Obviously, the Federal Wage System is based on this argument. It’s also the rationale for the Law Enforcement Officer (LEO) pay system. And from the recommendations in our 1990 locality pay report, the Department of Veterans Affairs was successful three years later in establishing a separate pay policy under Title 38 for physicians, dentists, nurses and several other medical care specialists. It is the answer for high demand occupations.
“Eliminate GS steps and create an open range” to shift to pay for performance. While this has been highly controversial, there is a list of pay demos and independent pay systems with successful pay for performance systems. The state of Tennessee transitioned successfully in the years before COVID to a performance based pay policy. The state is a model for how to make the transition. A core point is that this is culture change. Tennessee invested three years in manager training and practice before actually changing the pay policy. Federal managers and employees are far from ready today.

The Pay Agent report is accurate – the GS system is “a legacy framework from the 1950s.” “It is disintegrating.” The government needs to provide better services. The public’s support continues to decline.

The 2020 Rand report, “Federal Civilian Workforce Hiring, Recruitment, and Related Compensation Practices for the Twenty-First Century,” evaluated the many successful initiatives to develop “modern” pay systems. A common thread is that employees were involved in the planning and implementation. The most notable failure was the roll out of the National Security Personnel System (NSPS) covering 226,000 Defense Department employees. It initially had employee support but they were not involved and after three years the system was terminated.

Employees want their organization to be seen as a success, and as the Clinton-Gore NPR made clear, they understand the problems better than outside experts and want to be involved in improving performance.

There have been repeated recommendations to replace the GS system. It will be a substantial undertaking, far more complicated than the study leading to FEPCA. However, the history here and in other countries suggests it is necessary to improve government performance.

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ICE agent faces assault charges in Minneapolis case raising questions about federal-local law enforcement coordination

Alyssa Chen, Minnesota Reformer — Mon, 18 May 2026 17:38:38 -0400

Minnesota prosecutors charged Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Christian J. Castro, 52, on Monday with assault for the alleged Jan. 14 shooting of Julio Sosa-Celis in north Minneapolis.

The ICE agent, identified for the first time publicly on Monday, faces four counts of second-degree assault as well as one count of falsely reporting a crime.

The latter charge stems from Castro’s earlier accusation that Sosa-Celis and the subject of the agents’ car chase, Alfredo Aljorna, both Venezuelan immigrants here legally according to state prosecutors, had assaulted him with a broom and a snow shovel before Castro opened fire.

The Justice Department dropped its assault charges against Sosa-Celis and Aljorna after federal prosecutors belatedly reviewed surveillance camera footage that contradicted the accounts of Castro and a second ICE agent. In a rare move, the ICE acting director said the agents appeared to have made “false statements.”

“A violent crime did occur that night, but it was Mr. Castro who committed it. He shot through the door of a home with many people, including children, inside while fortunately missing several others,” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said in a Monday press conference.

Moriarty’s office has issued a nationwide warrant for Castro’s arrest. Moriarty said they do not know where Castro is, but there are “mechanisms out there to find him.” She added that she feels “pretty confident that we will get him in here to start this process.”

The case is currently in state court, though Moriarty said her office expects Castro’s defense to try to move the case to federal court, after which he can assert immunity under what is known as the Supremacy Clause, which protects federal agents for reasonably carrying out their duties. If Castro were convicted, she noted, he would be ineligible for a presidential pardon.

Both Moriarty and Attorney General Keith Ellison, who is partnering with the county, emphasized that “there’s no such thing as complete immunity.” Ellison also noted there is a “long line of cases” in which state prosecutors have charged federal agents for breaking state law, a practice that stretches back to the 1800s and has had mixed results.

Castro was identified mainly through the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Moriarty said. Investigators arrived at the scene on Jan. 14 and heard FBI agents identify him. She added that her office received no cooperation from the federal government in obtaining evidence.

In Castro’s original statement to the FBI, he claimed Sosa-Celis and Aljorna repeatedly struck him with a broom and a snow shovel. He said he then drew his gun and “simultaneously fired” a round as they were running toward their home. Sosa-Celis and Aljorna have maintained that they never attacked Castro and that Castro shot Sosa-Celis in the leg through the front door.

The arrest warrant filed by prosecutors, based on an investigation by the BCA and citing surveillance camera footage, aligns with Sosa-Celis and Aljorna’s accounts that Castro fired at the front door of the house. It includes a description of holes from the bullet’s trajectory through the front door, a foyer wall, a closet and the wall of a child’s bedroom.

The shooting was the second of three injurious shootings in Minneapolis during the federal immigration surge this winter, occurring between the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. The Jan. 14 case, which drew more than 100 protesters to the scene, was initially shrouded in mystery compared with the other two shootings, since there was no video evidence of the altercation before the city of Minneapolis released surveillance footage in April.

The federal government has corrected its own account multiple times, including its initial press release that incorrectly identified Sosa-Celis as the driver of the car and a subject of a “targeted traffic stop.” It later determined that ICE agents had mistaken Aljorna, who was driving the car, for another Latino man wholly uninvolved in the incident, and that Sosa-Celis, Aljorna’s roommate, was not involved in the car chase at all, according to an affidavit accompanying the DOJ’s charges.

Aljorna and Sosa-Celis were both detained for weeks after the shooting, then re-detained by ICE after a judge ordered their release. Their partners were also detained and transported to Texas in January. They have all since been released from detention and were temporarily barred from deportation during the case against them, the Star Tribune reported.

The charges come a month after Minnesota prosecutors filed their first charges against an ICE officer for allegedly brandishing his service weapon at two people in what prosecutors said appeared to be a road rage incident. Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr., the ICE agent, is still not in custody, though Moriarty said they have made “substantial progress” in getting Morgan to state court.

Moriarty said her office is still working on the fatal shootings of Good and Pretti and that she does not have a clear timeline for when they will be confident enough to decide whether to charge the federal agents who killed the two U.S. citizens. As in the Jan. 14 shooting, local investigations into the killings of Good and Pretti have been significantly hindered by federal non-cooperation, including denial of access to evidence. In March, Minnesota prosecutors filed a lawsuit seeking evidence from the federal government on the two fatal shootings and the Jan. 14 shooting.

Minnesota Reformer is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com.

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EEOC says government must pay damages to some employees subject to Biden's vaccine mandate

Eric Katz — Mon, 18 May 2026 15:08:22 -0400

The Biden administration unlawfully discriminated against some Interior Department employees who were denied religious exemptions to the now-defunct COVID-19 vaccine mandate, an oversight body ruled on Monday, saying the workers will be entitled to monetary compensation.

The administration’s denial of three Bureau of Indian Education employees seeking religious accommodations to get out of the mandate then-President Biden put in place for federal workers in 2021 violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said in its ruling. Interior said at the time accommodating the employees would cause undue hardship on the agency and create unsafe working conditions for their colleagues, but EEOC ruled the agency failed to prove those claims.

“No one is above the law, especially the federal government entrusted to enforce it,” said said EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas, adding Monday’s decision “is a step toward justice for federal employees who suffered under the pandemic-era policies of the Biden Administration.”

Biden issued the mandate to some controversy, particularly as it allowed for agencies to discipline or fire workers who failed to comply with it. The order was eventually paused by various legal challenges and later revoked altogether, but not before 93% of the workforce got vaccinated and another 5% successfully sought a religious or medical exemption.

The Biden administration ultimately disciplined few employees for failing to comply with its mandate. Some agencies accepted anyone’s request for a religious accommodation without seeking further follow ups, though Interior, EEOC found, took a more nuanced approach.

After giving the employees a temporary pass on the mandate, religious exemption seekers went before a panel of Interior officials who sought to affirm the employees’ religious sincerity. It found the use of fetal cell lines in the initial development of the vaccine conflicted with certain employees’ religious beliefs, but said accommodating them would create intolerable risk and cost the agency up to $10,000 per unvaccinated employee per year to provide adequate masks and tests.

The employees who brought their case to EEOC still declined to get the vaccine, though they never faced any resulting disciplinary action. In its internal review of their complaint, Interior determined the employees were not entitled to any relief because they never faced any consequences. EEOC disagreed, arguing they suffered "redressable injuries" that were not alleviated by the "fortuitous intervention" but various federal courts.

The commission also noted it had to consider the case under a new precedent. The 2023 Supreme Court case Groff v. DeJoy affirmed that federal agencies — and all employers — must allow staff to practice their religion to the greatest extent possible unless doing so would impose an undue hardship on business operations. In this case, EEOC said, Interior should have implemented an alternative that allowed it to keep employees safe while still accommodating staff with religious objections to the vaccine.

“Testing and masking ostensibly effect similar safety goals as vaccination,” EEOC said.

It added the department’s complaint of the cost of masks and tests were unfounded as Congress authorized funding for explicitly that purpose.

EEOC instructed Interior to take the next four months to conduct a new review and determine what damages the impacted employees are owed, and to make those payments within the subsequent two months. The department must also train relevant management officials on the Civil Rights Act and create a new process for granting religious accommodations.

“The government clearly fell short of its obligation under the law,” said Lucas, who Trump first appointed as a commissioner in 2020 and made chair in 2025. “Under my leadership, the EEOC is committed to pursuing accountability, ensuring compliance, and securing justice for all workers, in both the private and public sector.”

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HHS to start Schedule P/C conversions while withholding details on new RIFs

Eric Katz and Sean Michael Newhouse — Mon, 18 May 2026 14:35:18 -0400

The Health and Human Services Department has started the process of converting some of its employees to Schedule Policy/Career, a new job classification with weaker protections that many civil servants and good government experts fear is an attempt to replace career staff with political appointees.

HHS on Friday afternoon sent an email to supervisors that the initial conversions are “expected to apply to a relatively modest number of GS-15 positions — on the order of hundreds, not thousands — with additional tranches to follow as implementation progresses.”

Officials have estimated that around 50,000 agency staffers governmentwide will be targeted for conversion. Employees designated for the new schedule will no longer have the same notice and appeal rights regarding adverse actions, such as firings and suspensions, as the vast majority of the civil service enjoys.

“Conversion to Schedule P/C is based on the nature of a position, not the performance or conduct of an individual,” according to the email obtained by Government Executive. “These actions are administrative in nature and are not intended to be punitive or to signal concerns about an employee’s work.”

Schedule P/C is a revived iteration of Schedule F, an unsuccessful effort from President Donald Trump’s first term to remove most civil service job protections for federal employees in “policy-related” positions, making them at-will workers who can be fired for virtually any reason.

An HHS official told Government Executive that the reclassifications to Schedule P/C will only take effect after Trump issues an executive order.

“This will strengthen accountability for positions with significant policy-influencing responsibilities and applies to a relatively modest number of positions,” the official said in a statement.

The Schedule P/C email at HHS was first reported by Reuters.

Agencies across government had to turn over by April 2025 their recommendations for which staff would fall under the new classification. Some agencies began notifying impacted workers they would be converted to at-will status last year, but the administration walked those back as the notices were deemed premature.

The Office of Personnel Management cemented Schedule P/C regulations with a final rule in November, and all agencies are expected to begin notifying impacted staff of their conversions under that policy following Trump’s forthcoming executive order.

As the Trump administration has sought to downsize the civil service, the Partnership for Public Service nonprofit recently reported that the number of career employees in the Senior Executive Service has decreased by nearly 30% since 2025. Conversely, the federal political appointee workforce is at its largest size in decades.

Layoffs

Also on Friday, employees from agencies across HHS reported there was another round of reductions in force. But they were uncertain about the scale and why impacted workers had been targeted.

Over the weekend, an organization of former and current National Institutes of Health employees put out a video saying that the layoffs seemed to affect staffers who had initially expressed an interest in one of the administration’s retirement incentives and, therefore, were exempt from last year’s layoffs.

“Often these people were the only person in their entire department that wasn’t RIF’d last April,” said Jenna Norton — an NIH employee, speaking in her personal capacity — in the video. “They’ve sort of been hanging out, waiting, knowing this was coming for months. And Friday, it finally happened.”

Similarly, at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an employee familiar with the matter told Government Executive that the newly laid off staffers were a part of teams that had been entirely eliminated during the 2025 layoffs, but they were spared for unclear reasons and, unlike at NIH, had not indicated any interest in a separation incentive. The CDC employee said that supervisors assumed the retention of these workers was an oversight and did not ask questions, hoping to avoid what eventually transpired on Friday.

Affected workers at CDC are slated to be off boarded in 90 days.

In several instances over the last year, HHS has unwound small patches of the roughly 10,000 layoffs it implemented last April. The department shed roughly one-quarter of its workforce last year, or around 20,000 employees, through the layoffs and various separation incentives. Now, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is pledging to hire 12,000 new staff to fill gaps in the department.

HHS did not respond to a question about the recent RIFs.

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OneGov AI deals are now reaching millions of federal users, GSA says

Edward Graham — Mon, 18 May 2026 14:31:25 -0400

Millions of federal users can now take advantage of artificial intelligence-specific tools offered through the General Services Administration’s OneGov initiative, an agency official said on Friday.

Speaking on a panel at the ACT-IAC Emerging Technology and Innovation Conference, Birgit Smeltzer — director of GSA’s Office of IT Products, IT Category — said “more than 120 orders have been placed against OneGov’s AI offerings, and that has provided this new technology, or availability, to about 3.4 million across government for this particular technology.”

GSA launched OneGov in April 2025 as a way to offer agencies discounted rates on select private sector technologies and software services by treating the government as one customer. Twenty companies, including Microsoft and Adobe, have reached agreements with GSA so far to offer significant cost savings on some of their products.

These deals have also provided agencies and government personnel with the opportunity to onboard new AI capabilities, which GSA officials previously said is helping speed up government use of and experimentation with the tools.

Smeltzer said multiple agencies have already taken advantage of OneGov’s AI offerings, including the departments of Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, Transportation and State, among others. She added that AI offerings accessed through OneGov can enhance workforce familiarity with the tools as the government looks to increase adoption of the capabilities moving forward.

“Now, the agency makes it available to you for maybe a limited time, but you're able to use it in your workday, and can see how it can benefit you and get your work done more efficiently — perhaps without losing your job over [using] it,” Smeltzer said.

GSA officials have touted the cost savings associated with using products purchased through the initiative.

“We want GSA not to just be a shared service across government, but a force multiplier across the government,” GSA Deputy Administrator Mike Lynch said Tuesday at the Coalition for Common Sense in Government Procurement Spring Training Conference in Falls Church.

He added that GSA has identified $1.15 billion in savings through the OneGov program through negotiated discounts of a variety of AI and software tools using the collective buying power of the federal government. The program, Lynch said, will continue to mature in the coming year.

Lynch also said acquiring AI at discounted rates achieved through OneGov is an ideal follow-up for agencies that have experimented with AI and large language models through the USAi.gov shared service platform. Several thousand federal employees have used the USAi platform since GSA launched it last August in response to President Trump’s AI Action Plan.

“We want to see where we can add value, and we’re constantly checking in with industry partners and with agencies to ensure we’re providing world-class service,” Lynch said.

In a statement to Nextgov/FCW, a GSA spokesperson said the AI use and cost savings made possible through OneGov “are real, measurable results from unified buying and direct engagement with [original equipment manufacturers].”

GovExec Editor-in-Chief Frank Konkel contributed to this report.

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Why federal agencies still need to defend hiring standards

Robert J Choi — Mon, 18 May 2026 07:00:00 -0400

In October 2024, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division reached a proposed $2.75 million settlement with the Maryland Department of State Police after alleging that the agency’s written exam and physical fitness test disproportionately excluded Black and female applicants and were not job-related or consistent with business necessity. The agreement required monetary relief and priority hiring opportunities for up to 25 previously disqualified candidates who met lawful hiring requirements.

Four months later, in February 2025, new Justice Department leadership moved to dismiss the case. Two months after that, President Trump signed Executive Order 14281, “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy,” which directed federal agencies to deprioritize disparate-impact enforcement to the maximum extent permitted by law.

For federal managers, the shift is real, but it should be described precisely. The underlying statutes did not disappear. Title VII’s disparate-impact framework remains codified in federal law. The Supreme Court has recognized disparate-impact claims under the Fair Housing Act.

Private Title VII plaintiffs can still bring disparate-impact employment claims, and private Fair Housing Act plaintiffs can still bring disparate-impact housing claims. Title VI is different: Under Alexander v. Sandoval, private plaintiffs cannot enforce disparate-impact regulations under Title VI, leaving agency enforcement especially important in that area.

The Equal Credit Opportunity Act is also in flux. In April 2026, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized a rule stating that ECOA does not authorize disparate-impact liability under Regulation B, a position that changes federal regulatory enforcement but does not prevent future litigation over the statute’s meaning.

The doctrine being deprioritized has a specific employment-law origin. In Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971), the Supreme Court read Title VII to prohibit facially neutral employment practices that screen out protected groups when the practices are not meaningfully related to job performance.

Congress later codified the disparate-impact framework in the Civil Rights Act of 1991. Under that framework, a plaintiff must identify a specific employment practice that causes a disparate impact; the employer may defend the practice by showing that it is job-related and consistent with business necessity; and the plaintiff may still prevail by showing that a less discriminatory alternative was available and refused.

That is more exact than saying that statistical gaps alone constitute discrimination, although statistical gaps often trigger the burden and cost of defending a selection system.

The cost record is substantial. The Maryland matter is one example. Gulino v. Board of Education, a long-running New York City teacher-certification case, produced judgments and payouts on an extraordinary scale, with public reporting placing the city’s potential exposure near $1.8 billion and the New York City comptroller identifying Gulino as a major driver of salary-claim payouts.

Federal departments have also entered consent decrees involving police, fire and other public-sector selection systems across several decades. The recurring operational pattern is familiar to HR leaders: A test produces adverse impact, the agency must defend the relationship between the test and the work, and the litigation risk often makes settlement more attractive than years of validation fights.

The premise underwriting this enforcement model deserves direct examination. Disparate-impact enforcement does not formally require perfect proportionality, but it often encourages agencies to treat demographic imbalance as presumptively suspicious before causation has been established.

That is a serious analytical problem. Groups differ in median age, geography, educational preparation, occupational concentration, language background, prior experience, applicant-pool composition, self-sorting and dozens of other variables that may sit upstream of any hiring decision.

A serious federal hiring system must distinguish barriers created by the agency from variation that arises before the agency’s selection process begins.

That said, federal managers should not read the executive order or later regulatory changes as permission to abandon validation. A selection device that does not predict job performance is bad management regardless of who passes it.

Reading comprehension may be defensible for troopers who prepare incident reports. Physical capacity may be defensible for officers expected to respond to emergencies. Content knowledge may be defensible for teachers responsible for classroom instruction.

The defensible question is not whether a test produces identical pass rates across groups; it is whether the test measures something the job actually requires, whether it does so fairly, and whether the agency can explain that relationship before a court, an inspector general, a union, Congress or the public.

Three concrete steps follow for federal HR leaders.

First, review existing consent decrees, corrective-action plans and workforce-reporting practices for provisions tied to disparate-impact theory, particularly where the agency is relying on older regulatory assumptions that may no longer reflect current federal enforcement policy.

Second, document the job-relatedness of any selection device the agency intends to keep, because private Title VII litigation remains available and statistical evidence will continue to appear in court even if federal enforcement priorities have changed.

Third, separate workforce reporting that identifies possible agency-created barriers from reporting that merely records demographic variation. The first is a management problem. The second is a descriptive fact.

Confusing the two has absorbed years of public-sector bandwidth that should have been spent improving mission performance.

The durable lesson for federal hiring is that standards should be defended through evidence, validation and operational relevance rather than through demographic balancing by another name.

Robert J. Choi is a former government executive and public-sector consultant. He previously served in the Central Intelligence Agency and as deputy chief people officer at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

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FEMA is not ready for hurricane season due to Trump upheaval, House Democrats argue

Sean Michael Newhouse — Fri, 15 May 2026 14:02:00 -0400

Senior Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee in a letter on Thursday urged leaders of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to stabilize the disaster workforce before more storms are expected to hit the U.S.

“Hurricane season begins June 1, and by every available measure FEMA is less prepared to respond than it has been in a generation,” wrote ranking member Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Timothy Kennedy, D-N.Y., the top minority member of the panel’s Emergency Management and Technology Subcommittee.

In particular, the Democrats criticized the Trump administration’s staff cuts at FEMA. They wrote, based on a communication from the agency to the committee, that officials have pushed out more than 5,000 employees since January 2025. FEMA employs more than 20,000 people, according to its website.

The Homeland Security Department this month brought back around 200 FEMA contractors who were previously terminated, in part because of the upcoming hurricane season.

Thompson and Kennedy also pointed out that roughly half of FEMA’s top leadership positions are listed as vacant on the agency’s website, raising concerns about proper management.

On Monday, Trump announced his nominee, Cameron Hamilton, to serve as FEMA administrator. Hamilton was fired from being acting chief of the disaster agency in 2025 after testifying to a congressional panel that he did “not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate” FEMA.

The president had previously expressed a desire to shutter FEMA, but an administration-backed Review Council recently recommended that the federal disaster agency instead scale back operations in favor of state and local governments taking on a larger share of response and recovery.

In their letter, the lawmakers also cited a report from POLITICO that Trump has approved 23% of disaster funding requests from Democratic-led states compared with 89% for Republican ones.

“Regardless of seasonal forecasts, it only takes one storm to produce catastrophic loss of life and property,” Thompson and Kennedy wrote. “Americans in hurricane-prone communities deserve a FEMA that is fully staffed, operationally ready and nonpartisan. By every measure, they do not have that today.”

FEMA did not respond to a request for comment.

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Intelligence office names 2 officials to coordinate election security efforts ahead of 2026 midterms

David DiMolfetta — Fri, 15 May 2026 11:22:41 -0400

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence recently named two officials to a role coordinating with the nation’s spy agencies on threats against the 2026 midterm elections, according to a congressional source and a second person familiar with the matter.

Dave Mastro and James Cangialosi will jointly oversee the intelligence community’s election threat mission, serving in the role of election threats executive. Both sources requested anonymity to communicate the appointments.

Mastro serves on the National Intelligence Council, which produces intelligence assessments drawn from findings across the nation’s spy agencies, including reports requested by Congress and senior policymakers. Cangialosi serves as deputy director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center.

“We have an expansive team of professionals at ODNI focused on carrying out President [Donald] Trump’s and [Director of National Intelligence Tulsi] Gabbard’s election integrity efforts,” which includes Mastro and Cangialosi, ODNI spokesperson Olivia Coleman said in a statement.

The office is also “providing robust briefings, on par with efforts traditionally carried out during election years, to protect election integrity this midterm cycle,” Coleman said.

For months, it was unclear if ODNI ever named an election threats executive responsible for leading the intelligence community on election security for the coming midterm cycle.

The Record first reported the appointments.

Established in 2022, the Foreign Malign Influence Center was designed to coordinate spy agencies’ efforts to identify and assess foreign influence and disinformation threats targeting elections. But an overhaul inside ODNI launched last summer shifted many of the center’s responsibilities to the National Counterintelligence and Security Center and the National Intelligence Council, with ODNI arguing the previous structure raised constitutional concerns over coordination with social media companies.

The election threats executive — created in 2019 during Trump’s first term — typically oversees an “Experts Group” that analyzes intelligence on foreign interference efforts.

Election threats can include cyberattacks on voting systems, foreign influence operations and disinformation campaigns aimed at undermining public trust in elections.

The assignments come as Gabbard has faced criticism over her involvement in the White House’s broader review of election security outcomes, including scrutiny from Democrats tied to her presence during an FBI raid on a Georgia election office and ODNI-led examinations of voting machines in Puerto Rico.

This year’s annual intelligence assessment of worldwide threats to the U.S. did not describe foreign threats to the nation’s elections, the first time in nearly a decade.

Trump has continued to falsely claim the 2020 election was stolen from him, despite courts, audits and state reviews finding no evidence of widespread fraud that would have changed the outcome.

The appointments also come amid broader changes to the federal government’s election security apparatus ahead of the 2026 midterms. In recent months, Democrats and state election officials have raised concerns over cuts to election-focused programs at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which has lost around a third of its workforce in the last year.

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More GLP-1 options are coming for federal retirees, but they come with a catch

Kevin Moss — Fri, 15 May 2026 08:00:00 -0400

OPM requires FEHB plans to cover at least one GLP-1 prescribed for weight loss, and this extends to any Part D or Medicare Advantage plan offered by an FEHB carrier. As a result, most annuitants with federal retiree coverage have had a path to these drugs for years.

But that hasn’t been true for the broader Medicare population. When Congress created Part D more than two decades ago, it explicitly excluded coverage of drugs prescribed solely for weight loss or gain, meaning Medicare beneficiaries without employer-sponsored retiree benefits could only access GLP-1s if they had a qualifying condition like diabetes or cardiovascular disease.

This summer, that changes. CMS is launching the Medicare GLP-1 Bridge program, which will extend coverage of certain GLP-1 medications for weight loss to eligible Medicare beneficiaries, regardless of whether they have an underlying medical condition.

For annuitants enrolled in Part D, this program could expand your options. Here's what it covers, who qualifies, and what it means for you.

What is the Medicare GLP-1 Bridge Program?

CMS is launching this demonstration project on July 1, and it will provide access to a limited selection of GLP-1 weight loss drugs to eligible Medicare Part D beneficiaries. The program will operate outside of Part D’s benefit and payment structure. CMS is establishing a central processor to run the program.

Who qualifies for the program?

Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in Part D either from a standalone prescription drug plan (PDP) or from a Medicare Advantage plan that bundles Part D (MA-PD) who meet the prior authorization criteria are eligible. FEHB carriers provide Part D options through employer group waiver plans (EGWPs), and these types of plans are eligible for the program.

For the beneficiary to qualify, a provider must submit a prior authorization request to the program that attests “the beneficiary is prescribed the requested drug to reduce excess body weight and maintain weight reduction in combination with current and ongoing lifestyle modification including structured nutrition and physical activity consistent with the applicable FDA approved label, and the beneficiary is at least 18 years of age with a BMI greater than or equal to 35.” For beneficiaries with underlying medical conditions, the BMI threshold is lowered to 30 or 25 based on the diagnosis.

Will I save money in this program?

Not necessarily. The GLP-1 Bridge Program charges a $50 copay for each covered drug, which could be more than what you’d pay with Part D coverage from your FEHB plan. For example, the .25mg injectable version of Wegovy is $35 from the Part D plan with BCBS Standard and $45 from the Part D plan with BCBS Basic.

You’ll need to check the prescription drug pricing tool on your FEHB carrier’s website and compare prices to find out if there are any savings.

Will I have greater access to GLP-1’s in this program?

Probably, and this will likely be the biggest advantage for federal annuitants. The GLP-1 Bridge Program provides access to all formulations of Wegovy and Foundayo, and the KwikPen formulation of Zepbound.

While OPM requires each FEHB plan to cover GLP-1 medications, they aren’t required to cover all of them. For example, BCBS covers Wegovy in their Basic and Standard plans, but they don’t cover Zepbound and Foundayo. In fact, Foundayo just received FDA approval last month and many FEHB plans aren’t yet covering this medication. Annuitants should go to the carrier website for their plan and use the prescription drug lookup tool to see which medications the plan covers.

Are there reasons not to use this program?

Yes. Since this program operates outside of your Part D plan, it means that the $50 copay does not go toward the Part D catastrophic limit ($2,100 in most FEHB Part D plans) or the medical catastrophic limit of your FEHB plan. Not having those costs counted could lead to higher overall out-of-pocket costs.

This demonstration project also has an expiration date of December 31, 2027, at which point it could lead to greater GLP-1 adoption in the Medicare program, or it could simply be terminated.

I’m subject to IRMAA and have opted out of Part D, should I reconsider?

Maybe. You'll need to weigh the Part D IRMAA surcharge against the potential drug cost savings. Here's an example using Wegovy (0.25mg injectable):

Without Part D (BCBS Standard): $640.30/month
With Part D (BCBS Standard): $35.00/month
Highest IRMAA surcharge: $91.00/month

Even at the highest IRMAA tier, enrolling in Part D would cost you $126/month ($35 drug cost + $91 surcharge), a savings of $514.30/month compared to paying out of pocket with regular prescription drug coverage from BCBS Standard. It's also worth noting that Part D eligibility only requires Part A enrollment, so if you've opted out of Part B, you don't need to enroll to access Part D savings.

How do I use the GLP-1 Bridge Program?

Talk with your doctor, not your FEHB plan. They’ll submit the prior authorization request to the program’s central processor for an eligible GLP-1 drug. You’ll pick up your medication at the pharmacy and pay the $50 copay there. More operational details will be forthcoming from CMS in the next few weeks prior to the July 1st launch.

Kevin Moss is a senior editor with the Guide to Health Plans for Federal Employees provided by Consumers’ Checkbook. Watch more of his free advice and check here to see if the Guide is available for free from your agency. You can also purchase the Guide and save 20% with promo code GOVEXEC.

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House Homeland panel gets a rare look at advanced AI tool amid escalating cyber concerns

David DiMolfetta — Fri, 15 May 2026 07:00:00 -0400

Members of the House Homeland Security Committee were briefed Wednesday on Mythos, the Anthropic artificial intelligence model that has drawn vast attention across the cybersecurity community for its advanced hacking capabilities.

Anthropic executives provided the panel with a live demonstration of Mythos, allowing members to see how advanced AI can identify and reason through software vulnerabilities, according to a committee aide who attended the briefing and requested anonymity to communicate details of the demo.

“What we saw reinforced the urgency of ensuring that federal agencies, including our civilian cyber defenders, can responsibly access and deploy the most advanced U.S. models to find and patch vulnerabilities before foreign adversaries or criminal actors exploit them,” said the aide, who noted the briefing was one of the first live demonstrations delivered to Congress.

President Donald Trump is meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week, where AI competition is expected to come up in the discussion. Last month, the White House accused Beijing of attempting to copy components of U.S. AI systems to build similar models of its own through a process known as distillation.

“As the [People’s Republic of China] aggressively works to close the AI innovation gap with the United States, the committee remains focused on ensuring that America’s AI leadership translates into a durable national security advantage, not a temporary lead that adversaries can copy, steal or rapidly commoditize,” the aide added.

The briefing was “productive and focused on a range of AI security and competitiveness issues,” according to a second person familiar with the demo.

Members discussed how the U.S. can preserve its advantage in AI, including maintaining leadership in compute power and preventing China from obtaining advanced chips, said the person, who added that attendees discussed safeguards for advanced AI models and ensuring future systems are developed and deployed safely and securely.

Lawmakers also asked questions about Anthropic’s engagement with the federal government, including whether an ongoing legal dispute over a Defense Department supply chain risk designation against the company is affecting conversations about the use of AI models across federal agencies, including at CISA, which reportedly doesn’t have full access to the model.

The second person did not add additional details about who in the government has access to Mythos, but said “the implications of advanced AI tools for state and local governments and under-resourced critical infrastructure sectors, including water systems, were also discussed.”

Mythos, unveiled last month, was held back from a full public release on the grounds that it could pose national security risks in the wrong hands. U.S. critical infrastructure stakeholders have been vying for access to the tool so it can be run against their own systems to identify and patch previously undiscovered vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers.

The Hill first reported news of the demo.

It’s unclear which government agencies have access to Mythos, although multiple reports and people familiar with the matter previously confirmed to Nextgov/FCW that the NSA is among them.

Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., told Politico that he and Chairman Tom Cotton, R-Ark., were briefed on Mythos by Gen. Joshua Rudd, who leads Cyber Command and the NSA, but did not provide further details.

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White House withholds $1.3B in Medicaid payments to California amid broader fraud crackdown

Edward Graham — Fri, 15 May 2026 06:00:00 -0400

Vice President JD Vance announced on Wednesday that the federal government is “deferring” $1.3 billion in Medicaid reimbursements to California and said the administration would withhold payments from additional states if they do not ramp up their efforts to root out fraud in federal benefits programs.

The notice came as part of President Donald Trump’s “war on fraud,” which Vance is leading as the head of the White House’s anti-fraud task force.

The unit, established in March by executive order, was granted the authority to withhold funding from state and local jurisdictions “that do not have adequate anti-fraud requirements,” per the order, although the effort has been somewhat clouded by allegations of political bias. The directive establishing the task force noticeably specifically called out Democrat-led states for failing to address fraud in their benefits programs.

The White House kicked off its fraud prevention efforts by announcing in February it was withholding more than $240 million in Medicaid funding from Minnesota following allegations of misuse of public funds in the state’s social services.

Vance said the move to withhold Medicaid payments from California, in particular, was because the administration believes the state “has not taken fraud very seriously.”

He downplayed any partisan undertones for the administration’s broader fraud prevention push, saying “we have red states and blue states that go after fraud aggressively,” although he added that “we also unfortunately have some states — mostly blue states, unfortunately — that do not take Medicaid fraud very seriously.”

During Wednesday’s news conference, Vance also said the federal government plans to review every state’s federally-funded Medicaid Fraud Control Units — or MFCUs — and will “turn off” funding for those watchdogs if their fraud prevention efforts are deemed insufficient.

“And if we continue to find problems, we can turn off other resources within their state Medicaid programs as well,” he added.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on Wednesday that attorneys general in all 50 states received a letter from Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General Thomas Bell stating that the administration will be conducting “a robust review” of their MFCUs to ensure they are effectively combating Medicaid fraud.

“We want to help you use technology and other tools to get rid of the fraud, to get to the root of the fraud,” Vance said during the news conference about working with states to bolster their fraud prevention efforts. “We want to help you, but we can only help these state programs if those state programs are willing to help themselves. So these letters are the first step — the first effort — to try to force these states to get serious about prosecuting fraud, and that's exactly what we're doing.”

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also announced on Wednesday that it is implementing a six-month freeze on all new Medicare enrollments for hospices and home health agencies to halt what it called “high-risk categories” for fraudulent activity.

Since the start of Trump’s second administration, CMS has touted its use of new tools and technologies, including artificial intelligence, to better identify improper payments.

During a March interview with Nextgov/FCW, Kim Brandt — deputy administrator and chief operating officer at CMS — said the agency was using many of these capabilities in its Fraud Defense Operations Center to help “detect spikes or aberrancies in current claim submissions.”

Brandt said at the time FDOC’s work, including the use of AI and enhanced data analysis, allowed the agency to save over $2 billion that would have otherwise gone toward improper Medicare payments. She added that CMS was looking to expand out its new technologies to identify further waste, fraud and abuse in the Medicaid program.

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Secret Service funding fight sharpens over White House modernization push

Jennifer Shutt and Ariana Figueroa, States Newsroom — Thu, 14 May 2026 16:08:09 -0400

House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday pressed for increased funding for the Secret Service, arguing most of the money Senate Republicans included for the agency in their immigration enforcement bill is for security needs, not building a new ballroom at the White House.

The Louisiana Republican added during a morning press conference he didn’t want to “prejudge” the $72 billion package before the Senate approves a final version this month and sends it to the House.

“I don't have the pen in the Senate. They’re writing the bill,” he said. “We’ll see what we get.”

Johnson noted there are several more steps the legislation must go through in the Senate, including a review by the parliamentarian to make sure all provisions fit within the strict rules of the reconciliation process, committee debate and a marathon amendment voting session on the floor.

Johnson said President Donald Trump “is excited about building a ballroom with private funding,” though that project comes with additional needs that will likely require taxpayer dollars.

“The Secret Service says that as we enhance the White House grounds and the modernization there that obviously we have to think differently about security,” he said. “We live in a very dangerous time and there are new and increasing threats that we have never faced before. And so Congress has a role in funding that and we’ll have to see how it all works out.”

Urgent request

Johnson asserted the bill Senate Republicans released last week “very specifically defined” how the Secret Service could use the additional funding.

The legislation would provide $1 billion available until Sept. 30, 2029, for “security adjustments and upgrades … to support enhancements by the United States Secret Service relating to the East Wing Modernization Project.”

The bill would limit the Secret Service from using any of the funding “for non-security elements.”

Johnson said GOP lawmakers added the funding to the immigration enforcement spending bill after the Secret Service “put in an urgent request for additional security measures.”

“We’ve needed some of these security measures for a long time,” he said. “And that’s what this is all about.”

Congress provided the Secret Service with $3.25 billion in the annual funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security that lawmakers passed in late April.

Republicans approved an additional $1.17 billion for the Secret Service in their “big, beautiful” law that the agency can use through September 2029 for personnel, training, technology as well as performance, retention and signing bonuses.

Normally, the White House budget office would publicly send Congress a supplemental spending request, asking lawmakers to approve the additional money. That would then be vetted by the Appropriations Committees, though that didn’t happen in this case.

The Trump administration also could have included a boost in funding in the budget request officials sent Congress in early April that asked members to approve $3.5 billion for the Secret Service in the annual funding bill for the agency due by the end of September.

Funding breakdown

Secret Service Director Sean Curran gave Republican senators more details about how the agency plans to use the additional funding during a closed-door lunch this week, though the bill would not actually require the agency to spend the money as outlined.

A breakdown obtained by States Newsroom showed:

$220 million would go to “hardening” the East Wing Modernization Project with additional bulletproof glass, drone detection technologies and filtration systems designed to detect chemical or other contaminants.
$180 million would go toward construction of a “long overdue” White House visitor screening facility.
$175 million would bolster Secret Service training as well as its training facilities.
$175 million would help the agency “secure frequently visited venues facing heightened risk due to their public visibility and static nature.”
$150 million would go to the branch of the Secret Service that focuses on drones, aircraft incursions, biological threats and “other emerging threats” through investments in state-of-the-art technologies.
$100 million for “high-profile national events that require significant planning.”

Republican senators said after that meeting they wanted more information from the Secret Service on exactly how the agency would spend the additional funding before they vote on the package.

Thune predicts passage next week

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Wednesday morning most GOP senators will ultimately support the additional funding for the Secret Service “that's needed to enable them to do their jobs.”

“Obviously there are security implications related to the modernization of the East Wing. And that represents, I think, of the total request that Secret Service made, about 20%,” he said. “The balance of it, I think, are things that they've been putting off for a long time, but need to be done, especially in a modern threat environment where you've had, you know, now, three assassination attempts in the last two years.”

Thune said his “aspirational timeline” is to have committees debate their bills early next week, followed by floor action on the full package later in the week.

“It can always be affected by other factors,” he said. “But I think at least right now, that's the goal.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said during a floor speech that Trump’s focus on building a “gilded ballroom” shows the president “is living in the theater of the absurd.”

Schumer said Americans don’t want to see government leaders focused on the ballroom project when inflation, food costs and gasoline prices have all increased.

“I would say Trump has completely lost touch with the American people, but that would assume that Trump was ever in touch with the American people to begin with,” he said. “And on this issue he sure as heck isn’t.”

President Donald Trump has promoted the ballroom project as part of a broader White House modernization effort.

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VA security personnel aren’t detecting knives or booze, according to a watchdog report assessing medical facility security

Sean Michael Newhouse — Thu, 14 May 2026 15:04:16 -0400

Police officers who guard Veterans Affairs Department medical facilities failed to address security issues in a majority of covert tests conducted by the Government Accountability Office, which also determined that VA leaders have not fully implemented federal building security best practices.

The report, which was published on Wednesday, found that:

VA staff at all 30 locations that were examined failed to detect a multi-tool with a prohibited knife blade. Investigators noted that only two of the buildings had metal detectors: one of them was not in use and in the other case the device set the detector off but officers did not act on it.
In 25 out of 26 tests, VA employees did not notice or respond to an undercover GAO investigator who was drinking from a bottle that appeared to contain alcohol in a waiting room, even though guards were nearby in more than a quarter of the cases.
At eight of 16 facilities, investigators were able to enter nonpublic spaces, such as offices, treatment rooms and a blood draw lab.

In 2025, GAO similarly reported that contracted guards for agencies governmentwide failed to detect prohibited items in about half of its covert tests.

The VA has more than 4,300 police officers, physical security specialists and investigators as well as roughly 800 contract security guards.

VA’s inspector general found that in fiscal 2025 police officers were the most frequently reported severe nonclinical occupational staffing shortage in the department, with 58% of medical facilities saying they didn’t have enough security personnel.

Quinn Slaven, VA’s press secretary, said by email to Government Executive that officials have worked to address the issue by collaborating with the Office of Personnel Management to reclassify department police officers so that they can receive higher pay. He also said that the VA has consolidated law enforcement operations under one office, so that officers aren’t reporting to multiple different medical center directors.

GAO also faulted the VA for not adhering to Interagency Security Committee risk management standards for federal buildings. Specifically, officials are not consistently documenting why they make certain security decisions considering available resources or measuring the performance of protective measures.

The watchdog recommended that VA enact the government facility security guidelines.

“By fully implementing this standard, VA will be better able to make informed decisions, effectively allocate resources and prioritize security efforts at its medical facilities,” they wrote. “In addition, fully implementing this standard could help VA ensure it has appropriate security at its medical facilities to create a safe environment for veterans and VA staff.”

In the new report, GAO also found that about 98% of the approximately 74,700 crimes reported by the VA police in fiscal years 2024 and 2025 were nonviolent.

GAO said in the report that the VA did not provide comments on the investigation. Agencies typically offer feedback on investigations by the watchdog that officials then incorporate into the report. Slaven, however, told Government Executive that the VA did submit comments but that GAO didn’t include them.

In response, a GAO spokesperson said that VA submitted a message agreeing with the recommendations in the report after it had been sent to the senator who requested the investigation.

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Waiting to retire could be worth thousands of dollars

Tammy Flanagan — Thu, 14 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400

Federal employees are no different from other workers. Sometimes leaving a 9-to-5 grind can be very enticing, especially if you are eligible to receive your retirement benefits. There is nothing wrong with retirement; in fact, many retirees I talk with wish that they would have done it sooner. However, there are employees who might benefit from sticking around a little longer. The benefit of a few more months, or maybe a couple of years, can be surprising.

For many federal employees, the retirement question isn’t “Can I retire?” so much as “Should I retire now, or is it smarter to wait?” The answer is rarely about being in a hurry. It’s about trade-offs between guaranteed lifetime income, access to health insurance, taxes and lifestyle priorities. Because federal retirement income is typically built from three pillars — your pension (CSRS or FERS), Social Security and the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) — the best timing choice is often the one that coordinates all three instead of optimizing just one.

1) Your federal retirement benefit: Why waiting can increase lifetime security

Your FERS benefit is retirement income that behaves like a traditional paycheck replacement: It’s predictable and designed to last your lifetime. This is also the benefit where your insurance premiums for FEHB, FEGLI, FEDVIP and FLTCIP will be deducted. That stability is exactly why waiting — when you can — often improves outcomes.

In broad terms, the pension grows in two main ways: (1) by adding more creditable service time and (2) by raising your “high-3” average salary, which is the daily average of your highest basic pay rates paid over 36 consecutive months. Even a modest pay increase in your last few years can permanently increase your annuity because the formula is applied for life.

There is an additional computation “bonus” for employees who retire at age 62 or later with 20 or more years of service (the 20 years can include credit for unused sick leave). Instead of the calculation providing 1% of your high-3 times your years and months of service, the formula changes to 1.1%. This means that 20 years of service is now worth 22% of the high-3 rather than 20%. If the high-3 were $120,000, this is an increase of $2,400 per year or $200 per month.

Where people get caught is not always the formula — it’s the eligibility rules. Under FERS, an “immediate, unreduced” retirement generally happens when you meet one of the big combinations (such as minimum retirement age — or MRA — with 30 years, age 60 with 20 years or age 62 with at least 5 years).

If you separate at your minimum retirement age with at least 10 years but less than the combinations above (often called “MRA+10”), you can be eligible for an immediate annuity, but it may come with a permanent age reduction equal to 5 percent per year you are under age 62, prorated monthly. In many cases, separating at your MRA with 10 or more years of service (but less than 30 years) and then postponing the start of the annuity is a way to avoid some or all that reduction — so “retiring” and “starting the pension” don’t always have to be the same date.

Two other timing issues matter for many FERS employees. First, cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) on the FERS basic annuity typically do not start until age 62 (with exceptions in certain circumstances). That means leaving at, say, 57 or 60 can create a multi-year period where your pension check stays flat while inflation marches on. Second, some retirees are eligible for the FERS annuity supplement — an additional payment intended to bridge the gap from retirement to age 62, when Social Security becomes available. Eligibility for the supplement depends on your retirement type and timing, so it’s another reason not to retire “in a hurry” without confirming which rule set you are under. The supplement is only payable for employees who retire under age 62 with an immediate, unreduced retirement. MRA + 10 and disability retirements do not qualify and early retirements under VERA and DSR are not eligible for the supplement until reaching the FERS MRA.

That said, retiring sooner can still be a rational choice if you’ve already locked in what you most value — such as eligibility to continue Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) into retirement, or if you’re leaving under an early retirement authority. The key is to separate the emotional reason to retire (time, health, family or burnout) from the financial mechanics and then decide whether the income trade-off is “worth it” for you.

2) Social Security: The strongest “wait” incentive (but not always)

Social Security is where “waiting to claim” can have the biggest impact on the size of your monthly check. You can start as early as age 62, at your Full Retirement Age (FRA) or as late as age 70. Claiming early permanently reduces your benefit; delaying past FRA increases it for each month you wait, up to age 70. For people born in 1943 or later, delayed retirement credits increase benefits by up to 8 percent per year (credited monthly) beyond FRA. After age 70, there is no further increase for delaying. These rules turn Social Security into a longevity hedge: a larger, inflation-adjusted benefit later in life helps protect you if you live longer than average.

How long is average? Consider an unreduced Social Security benefit at FRA of $3,000 per month would be payable at $2,100 per month at age 62 and $3,720 per month by waiting to age 70. Collecting $2,100 per month from age 62 — 82 without adding cost-of-living adjustments or additional earnings after age 62 would add up to $504,000. Collecting $3,000 per month from age 67 — 82 would add up to $540,000; and collecting $3,720 per month from age 70 — 82 would add up to $535,680. Notice that the total amount is not very different. However, if this person lived to age 92, the total amount from age 62 to 92 would be $756,000; from age 67 would be $900,000 and from age 70 would be $982,080. That is more than $225,000 difference in the total received at age 62 compared to waiting until age 70. Cost-of-living adjustments begin at age 62, regardless of the age you claim your benefit.

Work plans matter, too. If you claim Social Security before FRA and continue working, the retirement earnings test can temporarily withhold some benefits when earnings exceed annual limits. This limit is $24,480 in 2026 if under your FRA. Your benefit is reduced by $1 for every $2 earned over this limit. In the year you reach your FRA, the 2026 limit is $65,160 and your benefit is reduced by $1 for every $3 earned over this limit before reaching your FRA. This can surprise new retirees who expected a Social Security check right away while still earning wages. The important nuance is that withheld benefits are not necessarily “lost forever” — your benefit is recalculated later to reflect months when payments were withheld. Still, cash flow timing matters, so it’s wise to consider whether you’re retiring from federal service but continuing in another job.

Social Security claiming is often a household decision, not an individual one. Spousal and survivor benefits can change the best answer — especially if one spouse has a significantly higher earnings record. A practical starting point is to review your Social Security statement and estimate benefits at different start ages. If you’re trying to decide whether you’re “in a hurry,” remember you can retire from federal employment without immediately turning on Social Security, and many people do exactly that to let their Social Security benefit grow. If you can afford to do this without reducing your retirement savings by too much or by working part-time to supplement your FERS retirement, then it is worth considering.

3) TSP: The flexible lever — and the one most affected by taxes

If the pension is the “foundation” and Social Security is the “longevity insurance,” TSP is the flexible middle: It can fill gaps, fund big one-time expenses or provide steady monthly income. That flexibility is also why the timing question isn’t simply “Should I retire?” but “When should I start taking money — and from which bucket?”

Your TSP distributions may include taxable and tax-free payouts. If you receive a TSP distribution or withdrawal before you reach age 59½, in addition to the regular income tax, you may have to pay an early withdrawal penalty tax equal to 10% of any taxable portion of the distribution or withdrawal not rolled over.

If you are a public safety employee as defined in section 72(t)(10)(B)(ii) of the Internal Revenue Code, payments made after you separate from service during or after the year you reach age 50 or have 25 years of service under the TSP.
Up to $5,000 of any payment received within one year following a birth or qualified adoption in accordance with section 72(t)(2)(H) of the Internal Revenue Code.
Annuity payments.
Automatic enrollment refunds.
Payments resulting from total and permanent disability.
Payments resulting from death.
Payments made from a beneficiary participant account.
Up to $1,000 per calendar year of payments used for emergency personal expenses.
Up to $10,000 (or 50 percent of the vested account balance, whichever is less) of any payment received within one year following domestic abuse.
Payments made to an individual with a terminal illness.
Payments made in a year you have deductible medical expenses that exceed 7.5 percent of your adjusted gross income.
Payments made as a qualified disaster recovery distribution as defined and limited by section 72(t)(11) of the Internal Revenue Code.
Payments ordered by a domestic relations court.
Substantially equal payments over your life expectancy.

In addition, you will be subject to Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) April 1 of the year after you turn 73 or older and have left federal service if you were born before 1960 (age 75 if born in 1960 or later). A required minimum distribution (RMD) is calculated as illustrated in the following example: If a retired participant reaches age 73 in 2027.

As of Dec. 31, 2026 (the last day of the calendar year immediately preceding the RMD year), the value of the participant’s TSP account is $265,000. Based on the Uniform Lifetime Table for Calculating Minimum Distributions table that can be found on page 23 of the "TSP Tax Rules About TSP Payments" booklet, the expected distribution period (in years) for a 73-year-old individual is 26.5, so the RMD is $265,000 divided by 26.5. Through this calculation, the participant determines that the 2027 RMD is $10,000. RMDs cannot be rolled over to an IRA or eligible employer plan.

If you choose to roll over all or part of a distribution in a year in which you have an RMD, the TSP is required to make sure you satisfy the RMD before any rollover takes place. Distributions of Roth money won’t count toward satisfying your RMD because Roth money in your account isn’t subject to RMDs. In addition to TSP funds, you may also consider other retirement savings and investments that may supplement your lifetime FERS and Social Security retirement benefits.

Because tax rules are complex, you may also wish to speak with a tax advisor or the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The TSP can assist you with your withdrawal but cannot provide tax advice.

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Future shutdowns could temporarily halt senators’ paychecks

Jennifer Shutt, States Newsroom — Thu, 14 May 2026 14:02:09 -0400

The Senate approved a resolution Thursday that will prevent senators from receiving their paychecks during any government shutdowns that begin after this year’s midterm elections.

The voice vote on the measure from Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., will not affect members in the House of Representatives since each chamber of Congress is able to set its own rules and procedures.

The two-page resolution requires the secretary of the Senate to disburse but then hold lawmakers’ paychecks if Congress fails to fund any agency within the federal government on time.

Kennedy said during a floor speech Wednesday he hoped the resolution would reduce the likelihood of future government shutdowns, following three within the last year.

“It’s got to stop,” he said. “Shutting down government should not be our default solution to our refusal to work out our issues and our differences.”

Similar to how federal employees receive back pay after a shutdown ends, Kennedy said his resolution would do the same for senators.

“The senator’s salary just would not be available to that senator while we’re in a shutdown, but once a shutdown is over you’ll get your money,” he said.

In order to get the votes to adopt the resolution, Kennedy said he “had to make a few accommodations,” including that it did not apply to the House and would not take effect before the elections to comply with the 27th Amendment.

Members of Congress earn $174,000 annually, with those in leadership positions making more. The Constitution allows lawmakers to set their own salaries, which are covered by a permanent mandatory appropriation.

Lawmakers and the president, unlike staff who work for them or others throughout the federal government, received their salaries during past shutdowns unless they took action to halt their paychecks.

Several members asked either the House chief administrative officer or the Senate finance clerk to hold their paychecks during the first shutdown.

Congress is supposed to pass the dozen annual government funding bills before the start of the new fiscal year on Oct. 1 but has not completed all of its work on time in three decades.

Lawmakers regularly approve at least one stopgap spending bill to keep federal programs running mostly on autopilot while the House and Senate work to finalize those appropriations bills during the fall, typically sending them to the president sometime in December.

Policy differences and heightened political tensions, however, led to three shutdowns of varying impact during this fiscal year.

The first began last October and lasted through Nov. 12 as Democrats tried unsuccessfully to force Republicans to extend enhanced tax credits for people who buy health insurance on the Affordable Care Act marketplace.

Lawmakers were able to pass six of the spending bills before a brief partial shutdown took place from Jan. 31 through Feb. 3. The law that ended that funding lapse included five more of the spending bills, leaving the Department of Homeland Security as the only department without its annual appropriations bill.

Democratic demands for constraints on immigration enforcement after federal officers shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis led to a third shutdown for many of the agencies within DHS. That lasted from Feb. 14 through April 30, when Congress approved its final funding bill without new spending for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol.

Republicans plan to use the budget reconciliation process to approve $72 billion that would cover three years of immigration enforcement activities. GOP lawmakers can do that without Democratic votes in the Senate as long as they comply with the rules.

Lawmakers in both chambers have also begun work on the next fiscal year’s batch of 12 government funding bills, though it is highly unlikely they will all become law before the end of September.

That presents the possibility of yet another government shutdown just weeks before voters head to the polls in November’s midterm elections to decide which party will control Congress for the next two years.

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'Going to be a s***show': Parks, Interior struggle to hire temporary staff ahead of busy season

Eric Katz — Thu, 14 May 2026 13:01:50 -0400

The Interior Department is struggling to keep up with even the diminished pace of hiring for its busy season it experienced last year, according to several officials and internal documents, raising concerns about its capacity to handle the upcoming surge in both park visitors and wildfires.

Interior had around 4,200 seasonal employees on board as of early April, according to internal figures obtained by Government Executive, a 1% decrease from the same period in 2025 and down around 14% from the same period in 2024. As of late March, Interior was tracking 7% behind its 2025 seasonal hiring figures.

The department brings on temporary staff each year to handle the surge of tourists who visit National Parks, as well as federal monuments, historical sites, wildlife refuges and other federal lands, as well as to support the response to wildfire season. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said last year the National Park Service alone would hire 7,700 seasonal staff—in part to offset dramatic decreases in the agency’s permanent workforce—but internal data show the agency peaked at around 5,150 temporary workers, or 33% short of its target.

Interior has shed around 11,000 permanent employees, or 17% of its workforce, since January 2025, while NPS has reduced its rolls by around 4,000 workers, or 22%. It last month offered another incentive for a large swath of its workforce to leave the department.

While seasonal hiring typically ramps up significantly in May and June, the department has already fallen behind last year’s pace and employees say it no longer has the infrastructure to execute widespread onboarding as quickly as it typically does. Interior has lost around 18% of its human resources staff, which several current and former employees said has diminished its capacity to move seasonal hires through the system. The department lost more than 100 additional HR personnel during last month’s “deferred resignation” offer, according to multiple employees.

“We don’t have the staff to hire, do backgrounds or even onboard,” one Interior HR official said.

Internal messages from Interior’s central HR office, obtained by Government Executive, made clear the capacity issues. One such email told staff to expect delays for any hire submitted less than two full pay periods before the requested start date due to processing difficulties, including with security clearances. Some hires with offers in hand are having their onboardings pushed into June, a slower turnaround than the seasonal staff typically experience.

“Thank you for your patience and understanding as we work through these backlogs,” the email read.

Another message implored staff to stop seeking updates on hired individuals as it was further slowing down the process.

“We understand that parks are eager to onboard their seasonal staff and recognize the importance of getting teams in place quickly,” the email read. “Please know that both the personnel security team and our processing team are committed to supporting this effort and are working as quickly as possible to facilitate the onboarding process.”

Multiple employees also said recruiting has dried up due to a more negative perception of working for the department and the government in general. They cited the staff reduction efforts—particularly those focused on new hires at the beginning of President Trump’s second term—budget cuts and a snafu in paying seasonal staff during last year’s shutdown as a deterrent to potential applicants.

“We are also struggling to fill the funded seasonal vacancies we do have,” an HR staffer said. “People just don’t want to work for the government after seeing everything that happened last year.”

The first official noted the new questions on most federal job applications asking potential hires to opine on their preferred Trump administration policies has also discouraged individuals from seeking the jobs.

“The political questions gross out a lot of applicants, so we aren’t even getting many,” the official said.

Despite the setbacks, Burgum told the House Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday that Interior was on schedule for its seasonal hire. He added NPS had hired “thousands and thousands” of employees and that figure would grow if Congress reauthorizes the Great American Outdoors Act Trump originally signed into law in 2020.

“We’re staffing up,” Burgum said. “And hiring is going really well this year across parks and across wildland fire.”

Interior employees took issue with that characterization, with one official simply responding “LOL.” The employees noted they expect a particularly busy summer this year as the nation celebrates its 250th birthday.

“It’s going to be a s***show,” one of the HR officials said.

In a statement, an Interior spokesperson focused only on wildland firefighting personnel and said it would meet the same level of hires — around 5,700 — this year as it brought on in 2025. It also castigated its employees for leaking information to the press instead of focusing on their other responsibilities.

"At a time when communities are preparing for wildfire season, the priority should be operational readiness and mission execution, not anonymous political sniping," the spokesperson said. "Americans expect wildland fire personnel to be focused on readiness and response, not internal political distractions."

Other employees noted the significant reductions in permanent staff have made it nearly impossible for even a robust seasonal hiring spree to fill the gaps. An employee based in a National Park in the Intermountain Region said his park is down to one permanent custodian, has no rangers to oversee trails and roads, various chief positions are vacant and half of maintenance roles are unfilled.

“[We are] quite literally fucked,” the employee said. “We were unable to hire as many seasonals as there were positions.”

Interior has shifted thousands of employees working in functions like IT, contracting and HR away from individual bureaus like NPS to instead consolidate them within Burgum’s office. It is also moving firefighters out of the bureaus and into a newly stood up U.S. Wildland Fire Service. That new agency is gearing up for peak fire season in the coming months, though a reduction in the number of seasonal hires could lead to a diminished cadre of staff with “red cards.” Those employees hold certifications for firefighting duties and deploy as needed to wildfires.

Jayson O’Neill, a spokesperson for Save Our Parks, said seasonal staff who typically help visitors staying at campground check in and assist people looking to hike backcountry areas get permits are not present to fulfill those duties. He added that rangers are being deployed to collect entrance fees, filling what would normally be a seasonal job.

“That means that ranger is not out there when they are needed,” O’Neill said. “Rangers aren’t able to protect people because they’re not there.”

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A familiar name returns to lead ICE amid renewed political pressure

Ariana Figueroa, States Newsroom — Wed, 13 May 2026 16:35:12 -0400

Long-time federal immigration official David Venturella will lead U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency spearheading President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, according to a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson.

Venturella will replace outgoing ICE acting director Todd Lyons, who last month announced he would leave his position by May 31, the DHS official told States Newsroom on Wednesday. Venturella will also take on the role on an acting basis. ICE has been without a permanent, Senate-confirmed director since Trump first took office in 2017.

Venturella will oversee an agency that has come under intense congressional and public scrutiny after federal immigration agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January.

The deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti led to a months-long shutdown of DHS after Democrats pushed for constraints on federal immigration officers. The shutdown ended last month and Republicans are moving forward with funding ICE and Customs and Border Protection for the next three years through a complex legislative process that does not require Democratic votes.

Venturella worked at DHS during the Obama administration, when he led the Secure Communities program in which local law enforcement shared fingerprints and booking information with federal immigration officials to identify immigrants in the country without legal authorization. The Obama administration eventually ended the program, but Trump revived it in 2017.

Venturella has also worked for the private prison company GEO, which earns billions in government contracts to detain immigrants across the country. He retired from GEO in 2023 after serving as the vice president of client relations.

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‘Sermonizing’ Easter email prompts USDA employees to sue agency

Sean Michael Newhouse — Wed, 13 May 2026 16:06:02 -0400

A group of Agriculture Department workers and the National Federation of Federal Employees union on Wednesday filed a lawsuit over an email to the agency’s workforce celebrating the Easter holiday sent by Secretary Brooke Rollins.

Specifically, the plaintiffs objected to language in the communication that assumes the recipient is Christian such as: “Today we celebrate the greatest story ever told, the foundation of our faith, and the abiding hope of all mankind.”

“We work for the federal government, not a church. I just want to go to work and make my country better — I shouldn’t have to suffer through sermons and other religious messages forced upon me by the head of a federal agency,” said plaintiff Ethan Roberts, an atheist and Agricultural Research Service employee based out of Illinois, in a press release statement. “When the secretary sends an email, I have to read it. And when those emails are telling me what to believe, they make me feel unwelcome in an agency I’ve dedicated ten years to.”

The lawsuit asks the courts to bar department officials from “continuing to send or otherwise communicate proselytizing Christian messages to USDA employees,” arguing that Rollins violated the First Amendment.

“Secretary Rollins’s practice and policy of subjecting agency employees to proselytizing messages conveys the expectation that USDA employees share in the secretary’s religious beliefs, even when doing so would betray an employee’s own beliefs,” the attorneys wrote. “It is exactly the sort of government-sponsored religious coercion, religious sermonizing and denominational preference that the Establishment Clause prohibits.”

The lawsuit notes that Rollins, at the start of her tenure, referenced God in agencywide emails in a non-denominational manner (e.g. May God continue to protect the United States of America and may His favor shine over all her land) and that the secretary has never sent any messages acknowledging non-Christian religious holidays.

Plaintiffs are represented by the Americans United for Separation of Church and State not-for-profit, Democracy Forward legal organization and Bryan Schwartz Law.

In response to the lawsuit, a USDA spokesperson said in a statement to Government Executive that: “While we do not comment on pending litigation, we will keep the plaintiffs in our prayers during this process.”

The Office of Personnel Management in 2025 issued guidance reiterating that federal employees can seek to "persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views” so long as they are “not harassing in nature.”

USDA is in the process of a reorganization that will relocate many employees away from the Washington, D.C., area.

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House GOP probes agency settlements with federal workers

Erich Wagner — Wed, 13 May 2026 08:00:00 -0400

Republicans on the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Monday announced they would investigate the rate at which federal agencies settle cases involving allegations of prohibited personnel practices, implying they go easy on poor performing or misbehaving federal workers.

In a letter to Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor, Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., requested data on federal employment cases heard before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which investigates allegations of workplace discrimination, the Federal Labor Relations Authority, which oversees union issues, the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates whistleblower retaliation and Hatch Act allegations, and the Merit Systems Protection Board.

Comer argued that agencies’ success in defending employment actions before the MSPB is incongruous with their high acceptance of settlement agreements and suggested payouts stemming from those settlements are a waste of taxpayer money.

“In adverse action cases that are not dismissed at the MSPB, agencies opt to settle 68% of the time,” Comer wrote. “Among cases that proceed to decision, more than 80% of agency adverse action decisions are upheld, suggesting that agencies are frequently and inexplicably settling cases with taxpayer dollars that they would otherwise win. This raises the question of whether cases are being settled despite a high likelihood of government success on the merits, and, if so, whether systemic incentives are driving outcomes that prioritize short-term expediency over long-term accountability and savings for taxpayers.”

But Michael Fallings, managing partner at federal employment law firm Tully Rinckey, PLLC, said agency attorneys conduct the same analysis as private sector employers—and litigants in other court settings—when determining whether to settle a case.

“People and agencies settle for a multitude of reasons, but mainly: each side wants to prevent liability,” he said. “The government wants to avoid losing and having to perhaps pay even more money [than they would have under a settlement], and in each case it does an analysis of whether there is liability. And it’s the same for the employee: they don’t want to lose the case and be left with nothing. It’s a risk assessment, and it’s not just used in employment law.”

And if agencies were to abandon settlements and take every adverse action appeal before the MSPB or other adjudicatory body, the cost to taxpayers would increase, not decrease, he said.

“If there was an executive order or what-not preventing settlements of any MSPB appeals or similar cases, you’d see a much bigger expense utilized by the federal government in defending these claims,” Fallings said. “You’d have to pay to pull people out of their normal jobs to go to hearings, you’d have to produce all kinds of documents in a discovery process, and you have to pay the attorneys representing the agency. You’d easily expend as much, if not more, by trying to prevent a settlement from happening.”

Comer also argued that extensive use of settlements could serve to mask systemic issues of favoritism or other management malfeasance in cases where employees’ appeals were justified.

“While settlement may promote administrative efficiency, excessive reliance on it carries real costs: it forecloses the development of beneficial legal precedent, masks patterns of prohibited personnel practices, and allows agencies to manage recurring legal liability without addressing the underlying misconduct,” he wrote. “Congress cannot exercise meaningful oversight of the federal workforce when a supermajority of disputes are resolved through opaque, non-public agreements.”

But Fallings said that doesn’t reflect the reality of settlement talks, which still usually require the agency rectify any underlying misbehavior.

“Settlements don’t just involve money,” he said. “If the claim or appeal involves a prohibited personnel practice, that mostly likely will be discussed and be resolved as part of the settlement. A settlement can’t make everything go away, but in my experience, if an agency’s counsel is aware of a PPP happening, they are taking action to remedy that.”

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$1 billion Secret Service funding boost plan draws scrutiny over limited details

Jennifer Shutt and Ariana Figueroa, States Newsroom — Wed, 13 May 2026 07:00:00 -0400

Several Republican U.S. senators left a closed-door lunch with Secret Service Director Sean Curran on Tuesday saying they still have questions about how the agency would spend an additional $1 billion.

“I’ve asked for a lot more data,” said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine. “If there are needs for new training ranges, for example, that should have been in the president’s budget.”

Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, tucked the significant increase into a larger immigration enforcement bill, leading to concerns from some of his GOP colleagues and criticism from Democrats the money will go toward construction of a White House ballroom.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said after the lunch meeting the additional funding is predominantly for regular Secret Service activities, not to support the creation of a new ballroom.

“The ballroom is being financed privately but the security associated with it represents about 20% of what this request was,” Thune said.

A breakdown of how the new funding would be used by Secret Service, obtained by States Newsroom, showed:

$220 million would go to “hardening” the East Wing Modernization Project with additional bulletproof glass, drone detection technologies and filtration systems designed to detect chemical or other contaminants.
$180 million would go toward construction of a “long overdue” White House visitor screening facility.
$175 million would bolster Secret Service training as well as its training facilities.
$175 million would help the agency “secure frequently visited venues facing heightened risk due to their public visibility and static nature.”
$150 million would go to the branch of the Secret Service that focuses on drones, aircraft incursions, biological threats and “other emerging threats through investments in state-of-the-art technologies.”
$100 million would go for “high-profile national events that require significant planning.”

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., said he wants the Secret Service to share more information.

“I think the bottom line is, people want to be supportive, right? They want security for the president, but they want more detail,” he said.

The $1 billion for the Secret Service would be in addition to the $1.17 billion Republicans approved for the agency in their “big, beautiful” law as well as the agency’s annual funding level.

The White House released its budget request in early April, asking lawmakers to approve $3.5 billion for the Secret Service in an annual funding bill, a $36 million increase.

Senators want more specifics

Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, said he wants “more specifics” from the administration in addition to what lawmakers saw during the lunch.

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said he’s asked for more information from the Secret Service about its needs.

“They're trying to make it very clear that what they're talking about are the security improvements that should be included if we're making major reconstruction within the White House itself,” he said. “So I think as more of the information begins to come out, I think people are going to feel a lot more comfortable with what they're requesting.”

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said he supported the additional Secret Service funding, arguing that security at the White House can be complex.

“I’m fine with that,” he said. “So long as it’s used for security purposes.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said she wanted to see a detailed breakdown of where the $1 billion would go before committing to supporting the move.

No details from Judiciary chair

Grassley, who included the line item for “security adjustments and upgrades” for the East Wing Modernization Project in his panel’s immigration enforcement bill, didn’t share details before the lunch about how he landed on the $1 billion figure.

“It was just kind of a consensus among all of us,” he said, later adding the agreement was among Senate GOP lawmakers, not with the White House.

Grassley said he didn’t expect to know before the end of the week whether the Secret Service funding would stay in the $72 billion package that is intended to fund immigration activities for the next three years.

The Judiciary Committee bill and one written by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which will be combined in the coming days, would provide Immigration and Customs Enforcement with $38.175 billion, Customs and Border Protection with $26.02 billion, the secretary of Homeland Security’s office with $5 billion and the Department of Justice with $1.457 billion.

GOP leaders in Congress hope to approve the bill next week, sending it to President Donald Trump before the Memorial Day weekend break.

Opportunity for Dems

Senate floor debate on the package includes a marathon amendment voting session that will give Democrats, or even Republicans, the chance to hold up-or-down votes on the additional spending.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, said Democrats “will certainly be able to put our colleagues on record” about the additional Secret Service funding.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Democrats will “fight this bill tooth and nail.”

“We’ll offer amendments and we’ll force Republicans to vote again and again on one simple question — are you with working families or are you with Trump’s ballroom,” he said.

Thune said earlier in the day that Republicans “can’t have a lot of hiccups right now” and still send Trump the package before the president’s June 1 deadline.

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Hegseth rethinking Army reforms, cuts to aviation

Meghann Myers — Wed, 13 May 2026 06:00:00 -0400

A year ago, Pete Hegseth handed the Army a to-do list that has reshaped the service’s capabilities and how it acquires new ones. But now he’s rethinking some of those changes.

That includes the makeup of the Army’s aviation assets, the defense secretary suggested Tuesday during a House Armed Services Committee defense panel hearing into the Trump administration’s $1.5 trillion defense-budget request.

“I actually think it's something we're taking another look at,” he said in response to questioning from Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., whose district includes the Sikorsky factory that makes UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters.

The Army’s portion of the Pentagon proposal would slash aircraft procurement, in line with efforts to phase out AH-64D Apaches and cut back on Black Hawk procurement as the service prepares to bring the MV-75 Cheyenne II online.

“Your department's budget request cuts over $5 billion from the industrial base in the aviation sector alone, effectively shutting down all current Army aviation platforms,” DeLauro said. “How did the department arrive at the conclusion that reducing procurement for these Army aviation platforms strengthens rather than weakens the aviation industrial base?”

While the Army requested less money for helicopters this year, leaders have said consistently that the Black Hawk will be in service for decades. So, too, will Apaches, though the Army wants to focus on the E variant.

Reduced funding means slowed production lines, though, at a time when Hegseth has been pushing to get the Defense Department on a “wartime footing,” including major investments in the defense industrial base.

The Army, for its part, believes that foreign military sales will sustain production lines while the service finds the right mix of aircraft, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said on Tuesday.

“What we are trying to do is get out in advance of the number that we will have at total, as we start to bring on things like [Cheyenne II]—what does that ideal balance look like?” Driscoll told the Senate Armed Services Committee during a hearing. “And so that's what you see reflected in the current budget.”

The Army appears to be reconsidering some of ATI’s other mandates as well. The service had planned to stop buying Humvees and transfer its remaining ones to the reserve component, but Driscoll suggested the vehicle may get new life.

“The Humvee has been an incredible asset for the U.S. Army for decades, and what we are not trying to say is that it will no longer have a role.”

The service is working to balance its missions with the newer infantry squad vehicle, experimenting with the possibility of an autonomous Humvee, Driscoll added.

“Humvee is going to be able to help us on the border. It's going to be able to help us with natural disasters. It's going to be able to help us in a lot of theaters, where it may still have a lot of relevance, even if it's not the one-stop solution anymore,” he said.

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DOT inspector general reviewing complaint against Sean Duffy over reality show

Eric Katz — Tue, 12 May 2026 17:17:04 -0400

A new reality show may have forced its star, Transportation Department Secretary Sean Duffy, to flout federal gift and travel rules, according to a complaint lodged by an ethics watchdog group this week.

Transportation’s inspector general should probe the cost of Duffy’s forthcoming YouTube show, The Great American Road Trip, to U.S. taxpayers, who approved the ethics arrangements, whether any sponsorship deals violate those arrangements and whether the secretary improperly accepted any gifts, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said in a letter to the IG on Monday.

Duffy announced the production last week, saying he had filmed it with his family in bits and pieces over the course of seven months. A trailer showed Duffy, his wife and his nine children traveling to various parks, landmarks and historical sites around the country.

The show was not publicly funded and is produced entirely by The Great American Road Trip, Inc., but it has raised ethical concerns from observers who noted companies that Transportation regulates, such as Toyota, United Airlines, Enterprise, Royal Caribbean Group and Boeing, are major backers of that organization.

A presentation made public by Politico on Tuesday unveiled that The Great American Road Trip offered sponsorships to interested parties ranging from $100,000 for bronze-level packages to $1 million for platinum-level. While the show was produced by the outside group, the trailer was posted to Transportation’s official YouTube page and Duffy presented himself in his official capacity.

Federal officials are prohibited from accepting gifts from anyone who might have business before their agency, CREW noted, while travel regulations prohibit them from using government funds for any personal trips. CREW questioned whether Duffy received an ethics sign off for the show, he is personally benefiting from his official position, government funds were used to pay for other Transportation staff related to the show and other potential regulatory or statutory violations.

Ada Valaitis, a spokesperson for Transportation's inspector general, confirmed the office received the complaint and is currently reviewing it.

In a post on X, Duffy dismissed any concerns about his show, saying it was coming from the “radical, miserable left” who found the production “too wholesome,” “too patriotic” and “too joyful.” He said no taxpayer dollars were spent on the show or his family, that he and his family received no salary or royalties, it was filmed in one-to-two day production windows and that career ethics and budget officials reviewed and approved of his participation and travel.

Nathaniel Sizemore, a Transportation spokesperson, added The Great American Road Trip, Inc. paid for things like gas, car rentals, lodging and activities. Because he was also conducting official business on his trips for the show, the department paid for the secretary’s flights.

“Celebrating America’s 250th Anniversary is part of Secretary’s Duffy official duties and The Great American Road Trip is one aspect in support of those responsibilities,” Sizemore said. “On these brief stops, the secretary also often conducted additional visits like touring air traffic control towers and assessing port infrastructure.”

He added the department had no involvement in any sponsorship deals and such deals would have no impact on its regulatory decisions.

“The Great American Road Trip Inc is an independent organization,” Sizemore said. “How and who they accept donations from in furtherance of their mission to celebrate America’s 250th birthday is their decision.”

Donald Sherman, CREW’s president, said the department’s explanation was insufficient.

“The department has claimed that taxpayer funds were not used to pay for the trip, but Secretary Duffy has used government resources to promote the project,” Sherman said. “In addition, accepting travel from companies with business before DOT potentially implicates even more significant corruption and misconduct concerns.”

He added that “public trust requires” the inspector general to conduct an investigation, as it would “ensure integrity in the use of official resources and protection of public funds.”

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Watchdog recommends nearly 100 ways for agencies to save tens of billions

Sean Michael Newhouse — Tue, 12 May 2026 16:31:29 -0400

The Government Accountability Office on Tuesday released its annual report highlighting duplicative federal programs and opportunities to promote effectiveness and efficiency across agencies. Officials estimated that implementing their new and past open recommendations could save more than $100 billion.

Some of the new 97 recommendations for lawmakers and agencies include:

Officials should consolidate mission-support services (e.g. payroll and travel) among agencies, which GAO reported could save tens of millions of dollars over three years. Specifically, the watchdog recommended that the Office of Management and Budget and General Services Administration improve data collection with respect to the effectiveness of shared services.
The departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs should identify more opportunities to share healthcare resources, which could reduce fragmentation and also save tens of millions of dollars annually.
FBI should lead the creation of a government-wide anti-scam strategy to spur collaboration, as 13 different agencies work to prevent scams.

Investigators reported that, as of March, agencies had fully or partially addressed 1,662 (77%) of recommendations that GAO has made in these annual reports for the last 16 years, yielding about $774.3 billion in financial benefits. Officials acknowledged, however, that this is a “rough estimate based on a variety of sources that considered different time periods and used different data sources, assumptions and methodologies.”

In the latest report, GAO also flagged past recommendations that remain unimplemented including:

Establishing an inventory of federal programs, which includes funding and performance information, to help identify duplication and overlap. The watchdog found in a March report that such an inventory created by OMB is missing statutorily required information.
Setting up a process to identify and remove ineligible family members from the Federal Employees Health Benefits program, which the watchdog said could save more than $1 billion over nine years. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was enacted in July 2025, included a requirement to fulfill such a recommendation, but the Office of Personnel Management hasn’t implemented it yet.
Improving the IRS’ enforcement efforts. Congressional Democrats in 2022 approved nearly $80 billion for the tax agency, in part, to enhance tax collections, but lawmakers since then have rescinded more than two-thirds of that funding.

The House Republican fiscal 2027 legislative branch appropriations bill would cut GAO’s funding by nearly 25%. Congress in fiscal 2026 held the watchdog’s funding level flat despite an attempt by the House GOP to halve it. The Trump administration has criticized GAO for issuing several findings that officials illegally withheld congressionally approved spending.

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‘It would be insane’ for spy agencies to not have AI model early access, lawmaker says

David DiMolfetta — Tue, 12 May 2026 15:40:39 -0400

Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday it would be “insane” for U.S. intelligence agencies to not have early access to advanced artificial intelligence models that could be used for hacking and cyberdefense.

His remarks, delivered on a panel at Politico’s Security Summit, come as the Trump administration is reportedly considering a major AI executive order and debating whether the Commerce Department or intelligence community should oversee evaluations of AI models. They also come as President Donald Trump makes a planned trip to China this week, where he is expected to discuss AI matters with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“Making sure that, in particular, where our real computational brains are, the National Security Agency, making sure they have access to the most capable hacking tools … it would be insane not to do that, right?” he said.

The NSA, the spy community’s premiere hacking, codebreaking and foreign eavesdropping giant, has been testing Mythos, a major Anthropic model that’s been held back from full public release due to its substantial cyber capabilities, multiple people familiar with the matter said.

On Monday, The Washington Post reported the Trump administration is split over whether to give spy agencies or the Commerce Department dibs at evaluating models. Commerce officials are pushing back against a White House proposal to house an AI evaluation center within the intelligence community, according to the report.

Himes said the Commerce Department should also have a role to play in AI policy.

“Across the government, we should be looking at these capabilities,” he said, adding that “we ought to be cultivating — not damaging — our relationship with the producer of this remarkable new technology,” in a nod to the ongoing legal complaints Anthropic has lodged at the Defense Department, which deemed it a supply chain risk earlier this year after the company said it wouldn’t meet certain Pentagon demands.

Himes said he doesn’t think the legal spat between the DOD and Anthropic has set back the intelligence community in the near term, though “if this drags out, if [Defense Secretary] Pete Hegseth gets a bee in his bonnet about this and just decides to target because his ego is damaged … that will be a massive liability for United States national security.”

Officials are circulating draft policy documents with language clarifying the government’s ability to use private sector tech without outside stipulations, Nextgov/FCW reported last week. It’s not clear if the contracting language is part of a coming executive order or a separate policy initiative.

The ongoing discussions highlight how the Trump administration is closely examining cyber threats brought on by advanced AI models and is looking to take a more hands-on approach toward the AI sector, despite prior laissez-faire positions.

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Trump taps former FEMA official ousted after defending agency

Jennifer Shutt, States Newsroom — Tue, 12 May 2026 11:01:36 -0400

President Donald Trump on Monday nominated Cameron Hamilton to run the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a former acting chief who was fired in 2025 shortly after he told a congressional panel FEMA should continue to exist.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will likely schedule a hearing in the coming weeks for Hamilton to testify about his goals for the agency as part of the confirmation process.

The panel will then schedule a vote on whether to send his nomination to the floor, where Hamilton will need to secure approval from a majority of senators before he would become FEMA administrator.

Taking on that role will be no easy task, especially since Trump has spoken repeatedly during his second administration about reducing the size and scope of the agency.

“We want to wean off of FEMA and we want to bring it down to the state level,” Trump said in June. “We're moving it back to the states so the governors can handle it. That's why they're governors. Now, if they can't handle it, they shouldn't be governor.”

The FEMA review council that Trump created to review the agency submitted its report last week recommending states shoulder more of the cost and responsibility of disaster relief.

Not ‘in the best interest’ to kill FEMA

The previous disconnect between Trump and Hamilton about whether FEMA should continue led to Hamilton being removed from his role leading the agency last year.

Hamilton testified before a House panel in May 2025 that he personally did “not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”

“Having said that, I'm not in a position to make decisions and impact outcomes on whether or not a determination, such as consequential as that, should be made,” he said at the time. “That is a conversation that should be had between the president of the United States and this governing body on identifying the exact ways and methodologies in which what is prudent for federal investment, and what is not.”

One day later, he was ousted as the senior official performing the duties of the administrator at FEMA.

David Richardson has been the senior official performing the duties of FEMA administrator ever since. He was previously the assistant secretary of the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office at the Department of Homeland Security.

Podcast tell-all

Hamilton detailed his time leading FEMA on an episode of the “Disaster Tough” podcast that aired in September, saying he had developed a plan to address that the agency had “become too bureaucratic.”

“I was very clear and poignant that the cause of most of the problems in FEMA is because we keep putting too much crap in FEMA’s rucksack that never should have been there,” he said.

Hamilton then spoke about the Shelter and Services Program, which provides grant funding to organizations that help house, feed and assist migrants released by the Department of Homeland Security.

He argued that is not an “emergency management requirement” and that “FEMA has become a functional multi-tool.”

Housing was a “prime example” of where another federal department, like the Department of Housing and Urban Development, could take over some of the tasks that FEMA currently handles, he said.

“I said, we need to aggressively talk to HUD about them having a larger stakehold in that particular missions field because they are more uniquely suited,” he said.

But Hamilton insisted he was not supportive of plans to completely eliminate the agency.

“I was not hired to abolish FEMA. That was never a part of the conversation and that’s never something that I would have agreed with,” he said on the podcast. “And I was very clear, I wanted some reform. I wanted to cut wasteful spending. I wanted to downsize the agency. There's no denying that. And I think most of those things could be done wisely and properly.”

Any offloading of responsibilities from the federal government to states, he said, would include “a gradual phasing out.”

“We needed to give the states some time to see what that entails and to respond accordingly,” he said. “Not just, ‘Hey, the water is now shut off. You're on your own.’ That's not wise. That's not being a good partner.”

‘I wanted to choke some people’

Hamilton also discussed what happened before and after he testified in front of a House subcommittee a year ago, including that he was polygraphed in March.

“One of the more difficult things for me to deal with was when my character was being attacked, and when I was being accused of being a liar and a leaker, and I was polygraphed for it,” he said. “DHS requested that I be polygraphed. And they said in their statement, you know, my character, judgment, my stability, my ethics were all in question.”

Asked by the podcast host if he wanted to put on his “Navy SEAL hat” when that was happening, Hamilton responded: “I wanted to choke some people, that's for sure.”

Hamilton said he knew that he was about to be fired and that on the day he testified before Congress, officials “notified my security that my access was eliminated. So before the testimony, I knew it was coming, and I knew it was coming weeks in advance.”

Later in the episode, Hamilton said he knew he would be asked during the hearing about Trump’s comments regarding FEMA and spoke with former FEMA Administrator Pete Gaynor to work through how best to answer the question.

The two then “came to the agreement” that Hamilton would say “it's not in the best interest of the American people.”

“I cannot get behind this position that abolishing FEMA is the answer,” he said. “There are so many things that we can do before we go that extreme and put the American people at what I believe to be extreme risk unnecessarily.”

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Federal discipline was never supposed to be punitive. The MSPB appeal framework reflects that

Justin Schnitzer — Tue, 12 May 2026 06:00:00 -0400

There is a legal principle embedded in the federal disciplinary system that most federal employees never hear about, and that most federal managers are not taught, even though it is the single most important concept for understanding how the Merit Systems Protection Board evaluates adverse actions.

Federal discipline is supposed to be rehabilitative, not punitive.

This is not an attorney's argument or an advocacy position. It is the doctrinal foundation of the Douglas factors framework established in Douglas v. Veterans Administration, 5 MSPR 280 (1981), which remains the controlling standard for penalty review in MSPB cases forty-five years later. The Board's twelve-factor analysis is built on a core question: not "how bad was this," but "does this person have the potential to be rehabilitated into a productive federal employee."

That distinction matters for both managers and employees, and it is worth examining carefully against the current backdrop. For readers who want the structural framework before reading the analysis, this MSPB appeal walkthrough covers how the Douglas factors function within the broader appeal process.

What the Douglas framework actually asks

When an MSPB administrative judge reviews whether a penalty is proportionate, the twelve Douglas factors build a profile of the employee, not just the offense. They include the nature and seriousness of the conduct, the employee's job level, their past disciplinary record, their length of service and prior performance, the potential for rehabilitation, and the existence of mitigating circumstances such as unusual job tensions, personal difficulties, or provocation.

Factor 10, potential for rehabilitation, is where cases are often decided. An employee who accepts responsibility for the conduct, demonstrates understanding of why it was wrong, and shows concrete steps toward not repeating it is signaling rehabilitation. An employee who denies, deflects, or makes false statements during the investigation is signaling the opposite, and that signal carries significant weight with administrative judges.

This framework also requires agencies to impose consistent penalties. Douglas Factor 6 asks whether the penalty is consistent with penalties the agency has imposed on similarly-situated employees for similar conduct. Douglas Factor 7 asks whether the penalty is consistent with the agency's published table of penalties. Agencies that deviate from their own established penalty ranges are required to justify that deviation, and recent precedent has opened more discretion for judges to mitigate feds' punishments, reinforcing the proportionality review.

What the current caseload reflects

The MSPB received 20,335 initial appeals in fiscal year 2025, approximately four times its normal annual volume, according to the Board's Annual Performance Report published April 3, 2026. The surge was driven largely by probationary terminations and reduction-in-force actions. Of the 9,050 cases processed at the regional and field office level in FY 2025, only 55.8 percent were resolved within 120 days.

That caseload volume does not change the legal framework. The Douglas factors review applies regardless of the number of cases on the docket. What it does change is the practical context in which managers and HR professionals are operating. Adverse actions issued at volume, without individualized Douglas factors analysis, without consistency review, without consideration of rehabilitation potential, create appeals that are more likely to generate either Board reversals or settlements on unfavorable terms.

Settlement rates have been declining for years. It has been becoming rarer for federal agencies and employees to resolve adverse action disputes through settlement, and the FY 2025 data confirms the trend has continued. The legal test for penalty proportionality is not relaxed because the agency is processing a large number of actions simultaneously. Administrative judges apply the same framework to mass actions that they apply to individual ones.

The reply stage as the first checkpoint

For employees facing proposed adverse actions, the procedural structure gives them a meaningful opportunity to engage the Douglas framework before the case reaches the Board. Under 5 U.S.C. § 7513(b), employees have the right to reply in writing and orally to the deciding official before the final action is taken. An effective reply frames the employee's conduct in the rehabilitative context, demonstrating accountability, context, and a clear case for proportionality under the Douglas factors. In my practice, that framing gives the deciding official a substantive basis for reducing or withdrawing the proposed action.

What federal managers should understand

Managers who initiate proposed adverse actions under the assumption that the Board will simply defer to the agency's judgment are operating on outdated assumptions. The Federal Circuit affirmed 91 percent of MSPB decisions reviewed on the merits in FY 2025, which means the Board's decisions are robust to appellate review. But the Board will apply the Douglas factors to whatever the agency proposes, and penalties that are disproportionate, inconsistent with established tables, or unsupported by evidence of the employee's rehabilitation potential are subject to mitigation. The MSPB has long advocated nontraditional approaches to discipline for precisely this reason.

The most defensible adverse action from the agency's perspective is one that can demonstrate, against each applicable Douglas factor, that the penalty selected is proportionate, consistent, and based on individualized assessment. That standard is more demanding than simply documenting the misconduct.

The rehabilitative framework is not an idealistic legal theory. It is the law that governs whether the penalty your agency imposed will survive review.

Justin Schnitzer founded The Law Office of Justin Schnitzer, a Washington, D.C. federal employment law practice focused on MSPB appeals, federal EEOC matters, and adverse action defense. His analysis of federal workforce policy has appeared in Forbes, US News & World Report, NBC News, Newsweek, and the ABA Journal.

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