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OPM finalizes rules expanding its power over RIFs, employee appeals

Erich Wagner — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 17:22:37 -0400

The Office of Personnel Management moved Friday to finalize regulations that collectively seize jurisdiction over thousands of employee appeals, as the federal government’s dedicated HR agency moves to centralize power over the federal workforce.

Across three final rules slated for publication in the Federal Register Monday, OPM implemented plans to take over adjudication of federal workers’ appeals of reduction-in-force decisions and suitability actions, as well as cases involving employees still serving in a probationary period. A fourth rule overhauls RIF procedures more broadly, primarily by emphasizing recent performance reviews over tenure.

Currently, a federal employee seeking to appeal an adverse personnel action stemming from a RIF, suitability decision or action that happened while they in their first probationary year of service does so by petitioning the Merit Systems Protection Board. Under the quasi-judicial agency’s jurisdiction, the employee’s case is heard by an administrative judge, with final review by the MSPB’s three-member board. Following a final decision by the agency, the employee—or their employing agency—can appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

But under the new process, appeals would primarily be handled by OPM’s Office of Merit System Accountability and Compliance and ultimately reviewable by the OPM director. Employees would no longer be able to appeal final agency decisions in federal courts.

In a blog post Friday, OPM Director Scott Kupor said the MSPB is too slow to handle its current workload.

“The current MSPB backlog stretches to many months and, in some cases, years,” Kupor wrote. “That is not good for employees who deserve timely resolution of their appeals and it is not good for agencies, which are left in management limbo while cases wind through a slow and costly adjudicatory process. Our proposed internal appeal processes are designed to be faster, more efficient, and, critically, structurally independent, with separate staff handling determinations and appeals.”

MSPB’s backlog in both Trump’s first and second terms stemmed from a lack of a quorum of presidential appointees atop the agency that until last week referred to itself as independent. The 2025 dearth of a quorum began after Trump fired Democratic appointee Cathy Harris in February of that year.

In the case of the regulation turning RIF appeals over to OPM, the HR agency said fully 99% of the around 1,250 public comments were opposed to the measure. Though OPM declined to publish the breakdown of comments submitted in regard to the other regulations, each produced “some” supporters and “many” opponents.

‘An existential threat to due process’

Raymond Limon, a former MSPB member who retired at the end of his term in February 2025, described OPM’s taking jurisdiction of federal employee appeals as a violation of Congress’ intent in enacting the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act. Prior to that law, federal personnel policy and appeal adjudication both were held within the Civil Service Commission; the CSRA bifurcated those roles into two separate agencies—OPM would handle policy, while MSPB would handle appeals.

“It was very clear that an independent adjudicative body was to hear those cases,” Limon said. “’Good fences make good neighbors,’ and that creates due process, organizational discipline and consistency throughout the federal government. What we’re seeing here is an existential threat to due process by going against Congress’ words and intent and moving those due process protections to the personnel office.”

In its regulations, OPM argued that if these adjudicative functions were truly meant for MSPB to handle, Congress would have done so via statute. Instead, the duties were granted via OPM regulation.

“By carving out RIFs conducted under [Title 5 of the U.S. Code] from the MSPB’s jurisdiction, Congress distinguished this type of reorganization activity from the individually targeted personnel actions for which employees have traditionally been accorded formal procedural protections,” OPM wrote. “In the CSRA, Congress did not direct that the MSPB have jurisdiction over RIF appeals.”

But Limon said it’s not that simple, and noted Congress elsewhere has directed RIF appeals to the MSPB for review.

“Two years [after the Civil Service Reform Act], Congress passed the updated Foreign Service Act, in which it allowed foreign service officers to go to MSPB in cases of a RIF,” he said. “Congress knew that employees could go to the Merit Systems Protections Board for a RIF, and so they gave foreign service officers the option: you can appeal to the Foreign Service Grievance Board or to the MSPB.”

While the inability for an employee to appeal OPM’s final decision in federal court is the most noteworthy change as part of the move away from the MSPB, Limon said he was also troubled by the reduction of these cases to a “paper exercise.”

“Under the new process, you won’t have the benefit of an adversarial litigation process in which you have an attorney and can draw and cross-examine witnesses and you have an independent, trained judge to hear your case and hold both parties accountable,” he said. “None of that happens when you appeal one of these matters to OPM. It’s a paper exercise, and it’s really up to some person inside OPM to decide how much due process you get.”

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Education reorganization faces bipartisan pushback, as lawmakers push to disclose price tag

Jory Heckman — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 15:44:49 -0400

The Education Department’s plans to transfer its core functions to other agencies, part of the Trump administration’s effort to shutter the department, are facing bipartisan opposition.

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee advanced legislation Thursday that would reverse more than a quarter of the Education Department’s interagency agreements that undergirded those moves.

The bill would unwind the Education Department’s plans to move its Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services to the Health and Human Services Department, its Office of Postsecondary Education and Office of Elementary and Secondary Education to the Labor Department and its Office of Indian Education to the Interior Department.

The Education Department has signed 14 interagency agreements to move its employees and programs to other agencies on a temporary basis.

The Trump administration can’t close down the Education Department without approval from Congress. Education Secretary Linda McMahon told employees last fall that implementing these interagency agreements would give the department a proof-of-concept to show to lawmakers and convince them that the department is no longer needed.

Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy, R-La., said it “would be a mistake” to transfer the Education Department’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) to the Department of Health and Human Services – but voted against the bill, adding that he’s not opposed to all of the department’s reorganization plans.

“I don't oppose all these IAAs. I do think the administration should be allowed to pilot how to address inefficiencies and the potential for efficiencies by operationalizing these IAAs,” he said.

Cassidy added that he would support Education moving OSERS to the Labor Department, rather than folding it into the “tremendous bureaucracy of HHS, in which we read every day about some crisis or another.”

“Is the Department of Ed staff that will be transferred there empowered and prioritized? I have my doubts,” he said.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said the Education Department’s plan to transfer OSERS to HHS “fundamentally misunderstands the history and intent of the special education program.”

“These transfers are misaligned with their program purposes,” she said.

Collins said the bill “keeps the administration of important landmark education programs at the Department of Education, where Congress specifically put them and where they belong.”

Chad Rummel, the chief executive officer of the Council for Exceptional Children, a special education organization, told Government Executive that the committee sent a "bipartisan, clear message that we are not okay with putting support for students with disabilities at risk.”

“This might throw some sand in the gears of this movement, but this administration is hellbent on bringing down the department,” Rummel said.

McMahon asked congressional leaders to support the department’s reorganization efforts in a letter Thursday.

“Misconceptions have circulated” about the interagency agreements, she wrote, but “have demonstrated measurable results by driving stronger grant competitions, streamlining government operations, and producing better outcomes for Americans.”

Savannah Newhouse, the department’s press secretary, said in a statement that it was “downright malpractice” for lawmakers to reject the department’s reorganization efforts before giving them a chance to demonstrate results.

“Secretary McMahon promised Congress a proof of concept that is currently underway and delivering results across our partner agencies, and it is entirely premature to sabotage this effort before it has the chance to eliminate bureaucratic barriers and fully deliver the results that our students, families, and educators deserve,” Newhouse said.

The committee advanced the bill with an amendment from Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., that would require the Education Department to publicly disclose the costs associated with each of these interagency agreements.

“Secretary McMahon is duplicating the work the department was already working by asking other agencies to do it instead, and then claiming that somehow this makes government more efficient. Fine, prove it. Show us the receipts,” Murray said.

In internal documents, Education officials have raised concerns about offloading work to other agencies and predicted significant challenges along the way. Murray said that in one of the interagency agreements, Education is paying the Labor Department more than a million dollars “to do its job.”

Congress fully funded the Education Department in its spending package for fiscal 2026, rejecting both the Trump administration’s plans for deep budget cuts and transferring programs to other agencies.

Lawmakers wrote in the spending deal that agencies taking on Education Department programs do not have the “experience, expertise or capacity” to carry out the work or properly communicate with stakeholders. The Education Department, however, continues to reassign its work to other agencies.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said the Education Department is transferring its Office of Indian Education to the Interior Department without consultation from impacted tribes.

Murkowski voted for the bill, but said she doesn’t oppose all of the Education Department plans to reassign programs.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., said the Education Department under the Trump administration has “changed for the better.”

“When we stop the government from streamlining operations, it doesn't help students. It simply preserves bureaucracy,” he added.

Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), who has a special needs son, said special education programs at the Education Department have “expanded opportunities not just for my son, but for all sorts of young people who were written off when they should not have been.”

“I appreciate that there are reforms necessary at the Department of Education. There are reforms necessary in the special education system, to be sure, but I don't want us to lose sight of the purpose of this particular unit within the Department of Education and the difference it has made to millions of lives,” Hassan said.

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Survey shows the toll of USAID’s closure on former employees and their families

Sean Michael Newhouse — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 15:13:59 -0400

Jaime Oberlander was a foreign service officer for the U.S. Agency for International Development stationed in Ethiopia last year when administration officials folded USAID into the State Department, resulting in nearly all USAID employees losing their jobs. She said the layoffs hit employees serving overseas—and their families—particularly hard.

“You're being forced to make this huge international move with not a lot of information, changing guidance, not a lot of the resources needed for that level of move when you have to set up housing, set up schooling, set up these things all again,” she said.

For example, Oberlander questioned if her family would lose their housing, which had been paid for by the government, and knew it could take months for their belongings to be shipped back to the U.S. She recalled that a colleague’s son was a senior in high school preparing for final exams, only to face the prospect of not being able to finish the school year at all.

Now a graduate student at the University of Michigan School of Social Work with plans to become a therapist, Oberlander decided to study the impacts of the foreign aid agency’s closure on employees and their families. She conducted a survey of nearly 3,800 former foreign aid staffers who worked for USAID or a partner organization, finding that most are still struggling financially and have experienced adverse effects to their mental health.

“Ultimately, I do hope and want and believe it will be a story of resilience, but the community isn't there yet,” she said.

Only 40% of respondents to the survey, which was conducted between March 27 and April 26, reported that they’ve found full-time employment. Of those, 66% said they were making less than their previous salary.

“Former aid sector employees face structural barriers to re-employment: careers built around specialized graduate degrees, mastery of U.S. foreign assistance regulations and overseas networks do not translate easily to a stagnant labor market,” Oberlander wrote in a report on the survey results.

Additionally, 48% of survey participants that were foreign service officers experienced dual job loss. One respondent whose husband also worked for USAID said that they and their two children “found ourselves living temporarily from house to house as we tried to chart a new path. The extreme level of uncertainty caused tremendous stress such that I lost over 15 lbs and my husband suffered from depression and insomnia.”

Based on the survey results, Oberlander also found that younger workers are more likely to have found employment than their older counterparts and that former aid staffers who are Black have the lowest levels of full-time employment of any group.

And 81% of participants said they experienced stress-related physical symptoms, such as headaches, panic attacks or the worsening of an existing condition.

Oberlander’s findings correlate with other recent studies of Trump’s effort to downsize federal agencies. A winter survey of more than 300 fired agency probationary employees found that, of those who found new jobs, 68% reported that their salaries are “lower” or “significantly lower.” And 95% said they’ve experienced “new mental health symptoms that had negative impacts on personal wellbeing” since being terminated.

The former foreign service officer said she plans to conduct similar surveys in the future to examine the long-term consequences of shuttering USAID.

But she also emphasized that former aid workers are not just distressed about losing their jobs; they also worry about the effectiveness of foreign assistance moving forward. A 2025 peer-reviewed study found that cuts to foreign aid under Trump could lead to more than 14 million additional deaths around the world by 2030.

“It's recognizing that people are suffering and people are dying because we can't do our job,” Oberlander said.

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U.S. Digital Corps graduates largest class of fellows yet

Christian Robles — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 13:07:24 -0400

The General Services Administration on Wednesday celebrated the graduation of 71 U.S. Digital Corps fellows, marking the largest graduating class since the program’s inception. Those graduates updated the FedRAMP website, helped streamline Agriculture Department environmental reviews and supported other technology projects during their stints in the federal government.

“This government has starved for talent, for people who understand how to do all the things that we want to do to deliver better,” OPM Director Scott Kupor said during graduation remarks.

Some of the graduates of the two-year fellowship program are continuing civil service while others are headed to the private sector.

“For talented technologists like you, there's going to be a lot of paths … but if you want my take, public service is pretty damn great,” GSA Administrator Edward Forst also said during the graduation event.

Following remarks from Forst and Kupor, several U.S. Digital Corps graduates presented slideshows explaining work they did for federal agencies.

One team of three fellows spent their time in the program updating FedRAMP.gov with exact keyword search, the ability to search by clarification and other new features after running feedback sessions with users. The team estimated that the redesign boosted engaged sessions per user by 180%, average engagement time by 10% and views per active user by 28%, according to their PowerPoint presentation.

“Outside of these numbers, though, they represent agency IT teams spending more time finding the right solution for cloud service providers as decisions for documentation they need. This creates better informed decisions across the federal government,” said one of the graduates. The fellows working on FedRAMP.gov also consolidated two older marketplace websites into one.

Other fellows shared how they led a Health Resources and Services Administration project to create an organ transplant-related dashboard and modernized a National Institutes of Health website often used by academics by moving it to the cloud and updating its search engine.

The U.S. Digital Corps launched in August 2021 and had its first cohort of fellows in June 2022, placing early career technologists across numerous federal agencies. But the two-year fellowship is just one of several initiatives the federal government has recently launched to attract young talent.

The Trump administration in December started the U.S. Tech Force, which aims to hire 1,000 early career technologists to work for two-year stints in federal service with the controversial help of private sector companies. The program has a Defense Department-specific recruiting initiative known as the War Force.

The administration’s hiring push comes after nearly 20,000 technology employees left their roles in 2025, according to OPM data.

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Why treating everything as 'URGENT!' makes government less effective

Alex Snider — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 06:00:00 -0400

I don't have to tell you that public service is hard work. The missions before us are vast, almost unending. Meanwhile, budgets and teams are even smaller than they used to be.

Faced with doing more with less, the result may sound familiar to federal managers: emails with "[Urgent!]" in the subject line, last-minute meetings put on calendars and having lunch at your desk or skipping a farewell party because there simply isn't enough time.

Urgency can be a form of care. Managers, in particular, feel pressure to keep work on track. It signals that our mission matters and that "good enough for government work" has no place in our workplace.

But after 15 years in government, I've come to believe that discernment, not a sense of urgency, is the more important leadership skill.

The costs of urgency

Urgency narrows our attention. It activates a stress response that makes us more reactive and less able to consider the broader picture or tradeoffs of working at high speed.

Sometimes these tradeoffs are strategic. Federal work is complex and depends on stakeholder engagement, collaboration across organizational units and navigating policy and bureaucratic constraints. When timelines become compressed, we skip consultation, cut short discussions about alternative approaches or settle for the status quo rather than something more generative.

Sometimes they are relational. When meetings follow agendas in rigid ways and deadlines are treated as immovable, employees can begin to feel like cogs rather than people. Over time, this erodes trust and contributes to burnout, disengagement and attrition.

And yes, dear federal managers, the tradeoffs can be personal, too. We do not do our best work when we're not able to slow down and make time for our health and family.

Leadership is choosing the right pace

Government will always have moments that demand speed. Emergencies happen. Windows of opportunity close. Sometimes asking more of a team and ourselves is the right choice.

But when this becomes an unquestioned reflex, we risk winning the battle and losing the war. When we don't slow down, we communicate, intentionally or not, that relationships, strategic thinking, recovering between periods of intense work and celebrating wins aren't important.

Good leadership is about discernment. It means distinguishing the moments that require immediate action from the moments when it's time to do the other important things: check in with a key stakeholder, zoom out to consider different approaches or extend a deadline so your team can take a breath.

I often think about Amy, a mentor from my State Department days. At the end of long days, she would remind us, "No one will die if we don't finish this today. Go home."

Urgency is a leadership decision

Perhaps it's time to let go of the idea that caring about our work always means rushing ourselves and one another.

The best public service leaders don't reject urgency. They use it as a tool, recognizing when speed advances the mission and when it undermines it.

Alex Snider is a former public servant and the author of Sometimes You Should Be Late. He served for 15 years in government, including at the State Department, Senate, and General Services Administration, and is the co-founder of Mindful Fed, a cross-government mindfulness community. He writes the Substack Slow Mindfulness.

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IRS could be required to publicly report wait times and backlogs

Jory Heckman — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 17:17:55 -0400

A bipartisan bill focused on improving customer service at the IRS is headed for a full Senate vote.

The Senate Finance Committee advanced the Taxpayer Assistance and Service Act in a 26-1 vote during a Thursday markup hearing. The bill contains over 60 IRS reforms proposed by Republicans and Democrats on the committee and the agency’s National Taxpayer Advocate.

IRS leadership touted the agency’s performance during this year's filing season, despite the agency shedding more than a quarter of its employees. Agency watchdogs, however, have raised concerns with the agency’s level of responsiveness to taxpayers.

Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, said some provisions in the bill would “slash wait times” for Americans who may otherwise “spend an afternoon on hold” with the IRS.

“This bipartisan bill modernizes and streamlines IRS operations, strengthens taxpayer rights, and delivers a more taxpayer-first system,” Crapo said. “It reflects years of bipartisan efforts to translate stories of casework frustrations and tangible fixes designed to make the IRS work more efficiently for the American people.”

Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said many of the bill’s provisions “will help ensure that refunds get out the door on time.”

“They're going to improve customer service. They're going to make it easier for taxpayers to get help during filing season,” Wyden said.

The bill would require the IRS to create a public dashboard on its website featuring metrics on its call volume, backlogs, wait times and the availability of callbacks. It would require the IRS to offer a callback option for all of its phone lines by 2028 whenever calls are not answered within five minutes.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who included these provisions, said the bill would provide added transparency whenever the IRS falls behind on processing returns or correspondence, “eliminating guessing games for taxpayers wondering why their refunds haven't arrived.”

IRS Chief Executive Officer Frank Bisignano told IRS employees just before the start of the filing season that the agency would adopt new customer service metrics, scrapping its level-of-service phone metric that had been in use for about 20 years.

The IRS shed about 27% of its workforce last year largely through voluntary separation incentives. Bisignano told lawmakers in April that the agency saw its “most successful filing season in IRS history,” demonstrating that the IRS can have both “less people and better results.”

National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins, in a report to Congress submitted last month, wrote that “for most taxpayers, the filing season went smoothly,” but that for millions of taxpayers requiring assistance, the filing season was “frustrating, confusing, and financially disruptive.”

Collins wrote that taxpayers in some cases could not reach an IRS employee over the phone despite multiple calls, and taxpayers whose returns were erroneously flagged by identity theft filters had to wait weeks or months to receive their tax refunds.

“With fewer employees and even fewer experienced employees, personal service was harder to come by. That translated to longer waits for assistance, fewer experienced employees available to work on complex account issues, delayed responses to correspondence and, as a result, longer case resolution times,” she wrote.

The bill would require the IRS to accept and process all returns electronically, and to digitize returns and taxpayer correspondence.

The agency, through its Zero Paper Initiative, is trying to digitize incoming paper tax returns and correspondence to reduce processing times. As of December 2025, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that four contractors hired by the IRS to digitize paper tax returns processed about 379,000 of the agency’s 10.7 million paper returns — about 4% of its inventory.

The bill would also take steps to ensure the IRS pays whistleblowers more quickly. The IRS Whistleblower Office, since 2007, has helped the agency recover nearly $8 billion in taxes owed. Whistleblowers are entitled to a portion of the funds the IRS recovers, but they typically wait for more than decade to get paid.

The bill requires the IRS to pay interest on delayed whistleblower awards. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said these reforms “will lead to even greater collections moving forward.”

Several lawmakers raised concerns that the bill doesn’t do anything to address the agency’s widespread staffing losses.

Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., said the bill doesn’t do anything to address the agency’s staffing losses or a growing “tax gap” between what taxpayers owe and what the IRS is able to collect.

“Making sure that the IRS is funded and staffed is essential to having a fair system,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. “We look at the cuts that came through earlier this year. It means we're eliminating trained and experienced revenue agents who can audit and do complex returns.”

The Yale Budget Lab estimated that last year’s staffing cuts resulted a $861 billion decrease in revenue collected by the IRS.

“Those cuts won't produce savings. They just actually cost money," Cantwell said.

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Why time, not timing, is the biggest retirement advantage for federal employees

Tammy Flanagan — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 15:00:00 -0400

As most federal employees covered by the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) know, a comfortable retirement cannot rely on the FERS basic retirement benefit alone. FERS is built on three parts working together to produce a financially comfortable retirement: the basic retirement benefit, Social Security and the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP). Of those three, the TSP is the part employees can most directly influence through payroll contributions, investment choices and time in the market. That is why understanding compounding is not just a financial concept. It is a practical career-long strategy.

It is amazing to learn that the largest TSP account balance was $10,820,000 as of the end of June. However, at the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board's July board meeting, the reported average TSP account balance for June was $157,412, with the average participant contributing for nearly 11 years. Yet most accounts — 4,095,134 of them — were still under $50,000, with an average contribution history of a little more than six years.

The contrast is important: Balances tend to grow most visibly after years of steady saving, reinvested earnings and market participation.

For accounts between $500,000 and $749,000, the average number of years contributed was 21.96 years.
For accounts between $750,000 and $999,000, the average number of years contributed was 23.85 years.
For accounts of $1,000,000 or more, the average number of years contributed was 27.25 years.

Note: Values include FERS, CSRS and uniformed services accounts.

These numbers are a practical reminder that retirement wealth is built through repeated contributions, agency matching dollars, long-term investment discipline and the compounding of earnings over many years. Compounding is the process of earning money not only on contributions but also on prior earnings. In a retirement account, that means the earliest dollars have the longest runway. A contribution made in the first decade of a federal career can potentially benefit from decades of market returns, reinvested growth and additional agency contributions.

For eligible FERS employees, the agency contribution makes early and consistent saving even more powerful. FERS employees receive an automatic 1% agency contribution to the TSP, along with dollar-for-dollar matching contributions on the first 3% of basic pay they contribute and an additional 50 cents on the dollar on the fourth and fifth percent of employee contributions. Setting your savings at 5% or higher is the key to receiving the full available agency match. Missing that match means giving up retirement money today and the future growth that money could have produced.

As of May 31, the C Fund held more than $500 billion of the TSP's total assets, representing a 43.9% share of all TSP fund assets.

As of June 30, 2026, the top companies in the S&P 500 Index, which the TSP's C Fund is designed to track, were dominated by technology and communication services companies, including Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Broadcom, Micron, Meta and Tesla.

Sector weightings showed information technology at 38.0%, followed by financials at 11.8%, communication services at 9.7%, consumer discretionary at 9.3%, industrials and health care at 8.9% each and smaller allocations across consumer staples, energy, utilities, materials and real estate.

The lesson is to participate consistently through a diversified strategy that can benefit as market leaders shift over time. According to S&P Global, the S&P 500 currently represents approximately 83% of total U.S. market capitalization. This broad coverage enables it to closely track the performance of the overall U.S. equity market. The largest companies in the index account for a substantial share of its total market capitalization, giving them the greatest influence on the index's performance.

Consider the performance of the following investments over time:

A $1,000 investment in the S&P 500 made 20 years ago would be worth more than $8,500 today. In 2006, the maximum elective deferral limit was $15,000. Investing $15,000 in the C Fund 20 years ago would be worth around $127,500 today.
A $1,000 investment in Nvidia 20 years ago would be worth more than $560,000 today. Interestingly, Nvidia officially joined the S&P 500 on Nov. 29, 2001, replacing Enron.
A $1,000 investment in Apple 20 years ago would be worth about $130,000 today.
A $1,000 investment in Microsoft at its 1986 initial public offering would be worth roughly $6.46 million today. A $1,000 investment made 20 years ago would be worth approximately $20,088.
A $1,000 investment in Amazon 20 years ago would be worth roughly $90,000 to $135,000 today.
A $1,000 investment in Broadcom 20 years ago would be worth approximately $254,613 today.

These examples are not recommendations for buying individual stocks, as past performance cannot predict future results. Buying individual stocks for retirement is risky because it lacks diversification, demands intensive research and introduces high emotional volatility. In the TSP, most federal employees pursue this kind of long-term growth through diversified funds, such as the C, S, I, F and G Funds, or through Lifecycle Funds that adjust allocations across all five core funds over time.

Looking back to 1980 — a year that was personal for me because I got married, moved to Washington, D.C., and was just beginning my career at age 22 — the leading companies looked very different:

IBM, then the index heavyweight in information technology. If you put $1,000 into IBM stock 20 years ago, it would be worth about $5,700 today.
AT&T, the pre-divestiture telecommunications monopoly.
Exxon, now part of ExxonMobil.
Standard Oil of Indiana, later Amoco and eventually part of BP.
Schlumberger, an energy and oil field services company.
Shell Oil, part of the energy sector.
Mobil, later merged with Exxon.
Standard Oil of California, later Chevron.
Atlantic Richfield, known as ARCO, was later acquired by BP.
General Electric, an industrial leader.

The point is not that one sector is always best. In 1980, energy and oil service companies dominated the top 10. Today, technology and communication services carry much more weight. Federal employees who save steadily in diversified TSP funds do not have to know in advance which companies will lead the next generation. They simply need a contribution plan, an allocation appropriate for their age and risk tolerance and the patience to let compounding work.

Here are some things you can do to prepare for your future retirement:

Contribute at least 5% if you are eligible for the full FERS match. The match is part of your compensation and can compound along with your own contributions. The May TSP Activity Report indicated that 86.6% of FERS employees contributed at least 5% of their basic pay to receive the full match.
Increase contributions when pay increases. Even small increases can become meaningful over a full federal career.
Know the annual limits. For 2026, the TSP elective deferral limit is $24,500. FERS employees age 50 and older may make up to $8,000 in additional catch-up contributions, with a higher catch-up opportunity of $11,250 for those ages 60 through 63.

The following two things can be done automatically by investing in the TSP Lifecycle Fund that matches your time horizon (an investment time horizon is the period during which an investment is expected to be held to achieve financial goals):

Stay diversified. Market leadership changes. Diversification helps reduce the risk of relying too heavily on one company or sector.
Review your allocation periodically. Your investment mix should reflect your time horizon, risk tolerance and retirement income needs.

Do not wait for the perfect time. The most valuable ingredient in compounding is time, and time cannot be replaced later.

Federal service comes with a valuable retirement framework, but the strength of that framework depends in part on the actions you take throughout your career. The FERS annuity and Social Security provide important foundations. The TSP gives employees the opportunity to build personal retirement wealth through disciplined saving, agency contributions, diversified investing and compounding.

A trip down memory lane shows that markets evolve, leaders change and time rewards consistency. For federal employees, the most important step may be the simplest: Start saving, keep saving and give compounding enough years to do the heavy lifting.

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CDC nominee clears key Senate hurdle despite vaccine scrutiny

Shauneen Miranda, States Newsroom — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 14:56:05 -0400

Dr. Erica Schwartz got a step closer in her bid to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after a key U.S. Senate panel propelled her nomination to the Senate floor Thursday.

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions voted, 13-10, to advance Schwartz’s nomination with all GOP members backing her bid. President Donald Trump nominated Schwartz in April.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., was the only Democrat on the panel who voted to move her nomination forward.

Thursday’s vote followed a tense confirmation hearing this month, during which members from both parties grilled Schwartz over how she would deal with any political interference from the Trump administration when it comes to vaccine policy.

The panel’s chair, Sen. Bill Cassidy, appeared dissatisfied with Schwartz’s responses at her confirmation hearing, but ultimately moved to advance her bid.

“After speaking with Dr. Schwartz again after the hearing, reviewing the transcript and speaking to those who have served with her and know her well, I’m confident that she knows what she is doing and will stand against those who do not,” the Louisiana Republican said July 23, the day the committee had initially scheduled the vote before a postponement.

If confirmed, Schwartz would be responsible for the national public health agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, which has taken heat over the vaccine-skeptical agenda pursued by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Susan Monarez, the former CDC director, told the Senate panel in September she was fired for resisting Kennedy’s orders regarding vaccines.

Schwartz worked as an occupational medicine physician in the U.S. Navy. She transferred to the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, where she achieved the rank of rear admiral.

Schwartz also served as the chief medical officer of the U.S Coast Guard and later as deputy surgeon general of the United States.

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GSA official put on leave for social media post saying veterans’ preference in federal hiring is hampering tech recruiting

Sean Michael Newhouse — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 14:14:41 -0400

Updated at 6:00 p.m. ET July 31

A senior official at the General Services Administration recently posted on his personal social media that veterans’ preference in federal hiring is preventing his team from bringing on qualified tech-focused employees.

“Veterans preference is brutally unfair when taken to the extreme of blocking any consideration of non-veterans, but we're seeing that everywhere these days,” wrote Pete Waterman, the director of FedRAMP, a governmentwide program that sets security and risk standards for cloud products. “Even Tech Force wouldn't let us look at normal folks until we made offers to all the veterans first.”

Veterans’ preference gives former armed forces members priority in hiring for certain agency positions. The Trump administration launched Tech Force last year to recruit software and data engineers for two-year positions. While officials initially said they could bring on 1,000 participants by the end of March, the program’s director announced in May that only 180 to 200 hires had been made so far.

“I would love to have everybody here yesterday, but I’m learning the government hiring process does take time,” said Scott Kupor — the director of the Office of Personnel Management, which is overseeing Tech Force — in May.

Screengrab / GovExec

While Waterman’s LinkedIn post received 127 likes and several individuals voiced support, others criticized what he said.

A CEO commented that “As a veteran I can personally tell you there are many qualified veterans that could fill this role.” Likewise, a recruiter for the Treasury Department wrote, “Rather than directing frustration toward veterans or the laws that protect them, the more effective solution is to focus on strengthening HR training.”

Waterman warned that the hiring issues could hurt his program’s effectiveness.

“The future for FedRAMP is pretty dark if we can't hire experts from private sector who have actually worked on cloud services,” he wrote in the post.

GSA Administrator Edward Forst said in a statement to Government Executive that Waterman “has been placed on administrative leave, effective immediately, until further notice.”

“We categorically and completely disagree with a senior employee’s recent remarks denigrating veterans preferences in hiring. GSA has zero tolerance for comments that disparage or disrespect America’s veterans,” he said. "GSA celebrates our veterans and military spouses. They are a critical backbone of our agency: amazing public servants and true heroes whose service continues to strengthen our nation."

Veterans represent approximately 30% of GSA’s workforce and bring invaluable leadership, discipline and experience to our mission every day," Forst added. "Many of our team continue to serve as members of our military reserves. We applaud this dual commitment. We are better for it. This is the ethos of GSA and the federal government.”

Jenny Mattingley, a vice president at the Partnership for Public Service nonprofit who previously worked on federal hiring reform at the Office of Management and Budget, said that the rules around veterans’ preference have largely gone unchanged since they were created after World War II.

“I think what's happened with veterans' preference, along with many other hiring rules, is that they were created in a different time where things moved at a different pace in terms of hiring and where there were only one or two ways into the competitive service,” she said. “So part of the problem is a lot of those rules have really become procedural hurdles rather than achieving the intended outcome.”

But Mattingley emphasized that agencies have flexibility when it comes to implementing veterans’ preference. When she was in government, for example, she helped lead a program that applied veterans’ preference after, instead of before, applicants’ skills were assessed.

“So you're looking at both qualified veterans and qualified non-veterans. Veterans get first preference when agencies are selecting, but they're all technically qualified for the job,” she said. “That was a big change in how veterans' preference was applied. There’s a lot of cultural norms around applying veterans’ preference up front.”

Mattingley also cautioned that the loss of many HR employees as a result of Trump’s staff cuts to the civil service is likely further slowing federal hiring.

“Unless we actually also focus on HR and building out robust HR functions, it kind of doesn't matter if the laws are changed because a lot of this is whether HR has the ability to understand, work with agencies and be strategic about how they apply these laws,” she said.

This story has been updated with a statement from GSA.

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VA’s third attempt to scrap union contract heads back to court

Erich Wagner — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 13:49:50 -0400

A union representing more than 300,000 Veterans Affairs Department employees is asking a federal judge to block the department’s third attempt to cancel its collective bargaining agreements, this time after talks over a new agreement broke down..

Since President Trump issued an executive order in March 2025 banning collective bargaining at most federal agencies on national security grounds, the VA has twice tried to end its union contracts, first in August 2025 and again last March. Both efforts were blocked via preliminary injunctions imposed by U.S. District Judge Melissa Dubose, a Biden appointee, who found that the department violated employees’ First Amendment rights. The VA’s second attempt prompted Dubose to warn the department it could face contempt proceedings. A federal appeals court upheld most of Dubose’s rulings in May.

The latest dispute centers on whether VA can allow the current agreement to expire while they are still negotiating a new one.

The American Federation of Government Employees on Tuesday filed its second motion asking U.S. District Judge Melissa Dubose to enforce her prior court orders after management said it would terminate the contract upon its scheduled expiration date of Aug. 8. The VA, for its part, argued that it is simply letting the deal expire.

Though her injunction preserves the CBA only for “the remainder of the agreed-upon term,” the union said the VA issued a notice following the appeals court’s ruling in May seeking to begin negotiations for a new term. That action triggers a clause within the CBA—common across government—automatically extending the contract until the parties can reach a new deal.

“[AFGE’s National VA Council] promptly acknowledged VA’s letter in writing,” the union wrote. “The VA and NVAC began negotiating by focusing on preliminary matters, such as the arrangements for ground rules negotiations, including through letters written by NVAC to the VA dated June 5, June 12, June 17, June 26, June 30 and July 8.”

AFGE said that as part of those talks, management said the new deal would only cover the roughly 3,000 VA police officers, firefighters and security guards, in line with the executive order’s exception for such positions. But on July 24, management accused the union of refusing to meet for negotiations within 30 days of its request to begin negotiations, and said it would actually terminate the agreement for all bargaining unit workers.

But the VA, in a filing seeking reconsideration of an order that the department respond to the union’s motion within three days, said its actions were foreseeable and that any claims regarding the 3,000 employees exempt from the executive order must be channeled through the Federal Labor Relations Authority.

“Plaintiffs assert that the VA is seeking to ‘terminate’ the agreement come August 8, 2026,” attorneys for the department wrote. “The master agreement, however, expires August 8, 2026 by its own terms. And plaintiffs do not dispute that the VA informed them as early as May 19, 2026 (and again on July 15, 2026) what the VA’s position was on continued CBA coverage for employees who are not exempt from executive order 14,251. The rush to judgment on plaintiffs’ motion to enforce is a crisis of their own making, when they have been aware of this issue since May.”

The outcome could determine whether thousands of VA employees keep the workplace rules and protections negotiated in their current contract as the Trump administration moves to scale back collective bargaining across the federal government.

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DOJ nominee faces confirmation hurdle over agency commitments

Gabby Birenbaum, The Texas Tribune — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 18:53:12 -0400

Todd Blanche’s path to permanent confirmation as U.S. attorney general appears endangered amid concerns from Sen. John Cornyn, who says the Department of Justice has not provided him with the assurances he needs to vote Blanche’s nomination through the Judiciary Committee.

Blanche, who was formerly President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, has led the Justice Department on an acting basis since April. Cornyn, unburdened by the usual political pressures after losing his Republican primary in May, has been a key undecided vote on putting Blanche permanently in charge of the agency, maintaining his opposition to a nearly $1.8 billion settlement agreement that the DOJ, under Blanche, reached with Trump to pay out victims of alleged DOJ weaponization.

Critics have voiced unease over the possibility that the fund could be used to compensate rioters who assaulted police officers when they stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Though the DOJ backtracked and declared the fund dead, Cornyn has insisted that Blanche pen a written agreement nullifying it and assuring that it will not be revived in lawsuits. The outgoing Texas senator also wants the DOJ to modify, in writing, an audit immunity shield that the agency extended to Trump and his associates as part of the settlement agreement.

Cornyn and Blanche were set to meet Wednesday ahead of Thursday’s committee vote, but the senator said the meeting was called off. He told reporters the DOJ has not come through with the written guarantees he’s requested, and that if his demands were unsatisfied by Wednesday afternoon, the Judiciary Committee may need to pull tomorrow’s vote.

Less than two hours before the deadline, Cornyn said the DOJ had not followed up with him after he had sent over a “redline strikeout of what we need.”

“We’ve tried to make it easy for them,” Cornyn said. “They won’t take the help.”

As of Wednesday afternoon, after the deadline Cornyn laid out, the Senate Judiciary Committee had not made any changes to its schedule, keeping the Blanche vote on tap for Thursday morning.

The Blanche episode is the most prominent example yet of how Cornyn — long a team player and steady hand within the Republican conference — is using his leverage over the administration in the final months of his Senate career. Republicans control 12 of 22 seats on the Judiciary Committee that is deciding whether to advance Blanche’s nomination to the full chamber, meaning a defection from Cornyn would leave the committee deadlocked in a tie.

Cornyn ran for a fifth term but lost the Republican nomination to Attorney General Ken Paxton in a May runoff. The senior senator was the Senate’s second-in-command during Trump’s first term and pushed heavily for the president’s endorsement in his primary, even filing a bill to rename a section of highway after the president. After holding out for months, Trump endorsed Paxton, a longtime ally who tried to overturn the 2020 election results in key battleground states.

In the months since his runoff loss, Cornyn has played hardball.

“Maybe they think I’m just going to give up or go along,” Cornyn told reporters Wednesday morning. “But they’re mistaken.”

He successfully urged the Trump administration to move faster in releasing funds that Congress appropriated last year to reimburse states for border spending during the Biden administration, much of which is expected to go to Texas. And he threatened to vote against diplomatic nominations unless he received assurances that the Trump administration would distribute unspent funds on a global program combating HIV that began during George W. Bush’s presidency.

Meanwhile, Trump said he expected Blanche’s confirmation to be routine — and offered his own interpretation of Cornyn’s position.

“Maybe John Cornyn’s upset with me because I didn’t endorse him,” Trump said Wednesday afternoon in the Oval Office. “I don’t know what it is. But I haven’t heard that there’s a problem. I heard he’s going through quite nicely.”

Blanche did not answer questions from reporters Wednesday about his discussions with Cornyn or what he’s offered the senator.

At issue in Blanche’s nomination is whether Trump, or others, will be able to access taxpayer money over claims that the government was weaponized against them, and whether certain guardrails will be placed on the immunity from tax audits. Cornyn wants a guarantee in writing that the audit protection applies only to people who were parties to the lawsuit, and that it does not provide immunity for would-be future cases nor prevent other federal agencies from pursuing audits.

“They know what they need to do,” Cornyn said Wednesday morning. “But they simply refuse to do it.”

He added that he is “not prepared to vote yes” on Blanche’s nomination.

Could Trump’s potential support of the fund and the audit shield be the obstacle?

“I can see why he wants it, because it provides immunity from audits that no other taxpayer could possibly get,” Cornyn said. “That’s why we need to conform the actual document to what Todd Blanche testified to under oath.”

In a highly unusual move, Trump sued his own government in January, bringing a case against the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of the Treasury over the unauthorized release of his tax returns in 2019 and 2020. As part of the May settlement between Trump and the DOJ, which represented the IRS, Blanche issued an order barring the tax agency from auditing or examining the tax returns of the president, his family and his businesses.

The agreement was met with widespread criticism and allegations of corruption. Blanche eventually agreed to terminate the “anti-weaponization fund.” At his nomination hearing in mid-July, he called the issue moot and assured Cornyn that the fund was dead.

The verbal commitment proved insufficient for Cornyn, who has remained set on establishing concrete assurances that the fund cannot be brought back to life in any form and that the audit immunity will be as narrow as Blanche said he intends it to be during his Judiciary hearing. At Blanche’s nomination hearing, Cornyn pressed him on the potential for the fund to be resurrected by end-runs such as future breach of contract lawsuits from Trump or others in his orbit. Blanche continued to state that the fund was dead but conceded that, absent a written agreement or addendum, a plaintiff could sue.

The question-and-answer period between Cornyn and Blanche was, in typical Cornyn fashion, a polite exchange. But the former Texas attorney general and Supreme Court justice pointed out that Blanche’s promises were not reflected in the text of the agreement, and he has been unwilling to budge on his quest for the settlement agreement to be changed in writing.

Leading up to the nomination vote, Cornyn reiterated to reporters that this remained the key sticking point for whether he would support advancing Blanche to the Senate floor. He suggested Thursday’s vote could be postponed in order to get a termination clause on paper.

Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who, like Cornyn, sits on the Judiciary Committee and is in his final term, has expressed similar reservations about confirming Blanche.

Cornyn and Tillis’ opposition has left Blanche’s nomination at serious risk, a rare occurrence in a GOP-led Senate that has shown significant deference to the White House on nominees. The Senate has yet to formally reject any of Trump’s picks, and the White House has only had to withdraw a handful of picks.

Beyond the anti-weaponization fund, a group of Jeffrey Epstein survivors has also pushed senators to block Blanche’s nomination based on his handling of the late child sex trafficker’s case and alleged treatment of them. They met with Cornyn’s staff Wednesday morning.

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.

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Staffing cuts are leaving federal statistical agencies stretched thin

Jory Heckman — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 18:03:11 -0400

Federal statistical agencies, including the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau, are facing deep staffing cuts and minimal hiring, raising alarms about their long-term ability to deliver objective datasets that drive policymaking and the economy.

All 13 principal federal statistical agencies have seen staffing cuts since the start of the Trump administration. Six of them shed at least a third of their headcount, and two of them lost more than two-thirds of their employees.

The American Statistical Association, in its midyear report, warns that these staffing cuts and persistent leadership vacancies “put the agencies in a weakened and vulnerable position to meet rigorous production schedules,” and “keep up with the demands of producing relevant, timely, and accurate statistics for decisionmakers and the public.”

“While hiring has resumed at seven agencies, current recruitment has barely begun to offset earlier losses and does not immediately address the loss of expertise and experience that occurred in last year’s downsizing,” the report states.

Steve Pierson, the director of science policy at American Statistical Association, told Government Executive that “everyone is doing more these days because of these cuts.”

“The loss of staff is not just the numbers. It’s the expertise, it’s the mentorship,” Pierson said. “You lose that, and it does affect the long-term productivity, as well as possibly the production of these reports.”

Some agencies have seen particularly deep staffing cuts. The National Agricultural Statistics Service lost nearly 40% of its staff since 2024, and is expected to see further workforce attrition as part of the Agriculture Department’s sweeping relocation plans. NASS employees had until July 8 to decide whether to accept relocation to St. Louis or one of the agency’s regional offices. Relocated staff are expected to report to their new offices by Sept. 21.

The Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics lost nearly all its employees last year, as part of the Trump administration’s ongoing plans to dismantle the department. NCES shrank from about 100 staff to just four employees last year, but now has about a dozen full-time staff.

Claire McKay Bowen, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute who leads its data governance and privacy team, said the remaining staff at these agencies are spread thin and often juggle work for several positions.

“Federal statistics are the eggs that go into cake that we like to eat, and the capacity aspect is the fact that we’re not having enough bakers now at this point,” Bowen said.

Meanwhile, many former federal statistical officials are still out of work following last year’s widespread layoffs and voluntary separation offers.

“That means that you get a bunch of folks who are highly educated flooding the market,” Bowen said.

Last summer, President Donald Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after the agency produced a monthly jobs report that showed hiring had slowed. The incident raised concerns about the long-term independence of federal statistical agencies, but after pushback from Congress and those who rely on BLS data, Pierson said the Trump administration is unlikely to target the heads of other statistical agencies.

“We have full confidence that the products being released by the federal statistical agencies have not been improperly influenced or manipulated by this administration. It’s too hard to do. They don’t seem to have the desire to manipulate the data, and if that would happen, just given the processes, given the commitment of our civil servants, we would learn about it,” he said.

The Trump administration hasn’t named many permanent leaders to oversee these agencies. The Bureau of Justice Statistics hasn’t had a permanent director in three years. The Census Bureau, which is gearing up for the 2030 population count, has been under acting leadership for about a year and a half. About a third of leadership positions at BLS are vacant.

Bowen said the lack of permanent leadership makes it harder for these agencies to set longer-term goals.

“Nobody likes uncertainty, at the end of the day. Not knowing who is the leader, or what their priorities are, people are going to be hesitant to commit to making certain changes or proposals,” she said.

Bowen said that with the proliferation of acting leaders, many federal statistical officials are handling multiple roles.

“A lot of the folks that I’ve talked to across the agencies, a lot of them are wearing three, four, five hats – which is not great,” she said. “That person is doing the best they can, but you can imagine that that means their bandwidth is just very split.”

ASA found in a report last year that widespread staffing and spending cuts, along with policy changes under the Trump administration, led to certain public-facing data sets being delayed, suspended or canceled.

“Whether these developments prove temporary or mark a longer-term reduction in the nation’s statistical capacity will depend largely on future staffing, funding, leadership appointments, and policy decisions, requiring close attention and strong actions from Congress and the administration,” the 2026 midyear report states.

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Inspectors general are conducting fewer oversight reports after 18 months of upheaval

Sean Michael Newhouse — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 14:53:02 -0400

Agency offices of inspectors general have performed less oversight work since President Donald Trump fired many of the independent watchdogs and pushed out swaths of staffers, according to a report published Wednesday by a good government nonprofit.

“Inspectors general are the mechanism by which the executive branch examines itself, and the volume of that examination has declined sharply in a single year,” the Partnership for Public Service researchers wrote. “The result is not a leaner oversight operation. It is agencies with less scrutiny of their programs and their personnel.”

Compared with the average between fiscal 2020 and 2024, OIGs for Cabinet departments in the first half of fiscal 2026 produced an average of 6% fewer audits and 25% fewer investigative reports. Audits are a review of an agency’s program, while investigations look into alleged misconduct.

“Every report that did not happen represents oversight that did not occur,” the researchers wrote. “An audit not conducted means a program went unexamined — no findings, no recommendations and no formal decision the agency must make and answer for. An investigation not opened means an allegation went unresolved and lost taxpayer dollars were never recovered.”

Additionally, the Partnership reported that, as of May 31, the average Cabinet OIG workforce is 19% smaller than it was in December 2024. The researchers found that the three offices with the most significant staffing losses also experienced the largest reductions in investigative reports.

“Investigations are mostly discretionary, left to the OIG’s judgment as to which are necessary or desirable,” they wrote. “When an office loses a quarter of its staff, the discretionary work is the first to go.”

Trump has fired nearly 20 IGs since the start of his second term, with the White House arguing that the oversight officials have become “corrupt, partisan and in some cases, have lied to the public.” Most of the IGs who the Senate has confirmed since January 2025 previously served in the president’s first or second administration.

The Partnership also has reported that the administration proposed cutting funding for OIGs in its fiscal 2027 budget request and installed political appointees at certain IG offices, which the organization contended “introduces a structural conflict of interest.”

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How TSA passenger screening became an immigration enforcement tool

Ariana Figueroa, States Newsroom — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 14:47:27 -0400

The Trump administration has for more than a year used personal information airline passengers provide to the Transportation Security Administration for immigration enforcement, according to documents obtained by a government watchdog group.

The documents, collected by the government accountability organization American Oversight, show for the first time a formal data-sharing agreement between TSA and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that has been in place since May 2025.

The agreement contradicts congressional testimony from a TSA official who told lawmakers passenger data was not being collected for the purpose of immigration enforcement.

American Oversight obtained the records in a federal lawsuit to compel their release through a Freedom of Information Act request. The group posted the documents online Tuesday with a cover letter showing they were obtained July 23.

The New York Times first reported on the agreement between TSA and ICE.

As the Trump administration continues its aggressive deportation campaign in the country's interior, access to passenger information opens a larger group of people to immigration enforcement. It is unclear from the documents how many deportations or other immigration enforcement actions the agreement has generated.

Any noncitizen who has an expired visa, is awaiting a legal status renewal or is not authorized to be in the country could have their passenger information handed over to immigration officials under the agreement.

American Oversight Executive Director Chioma Chukwu said in a statement the agreement sets "a dangerous precedent with consequences far beyond immigration."

"Americans provide their personal information to board a plane safely, not to become part of an immigration enforcement system or a government surveillance network," Chukwu said. "Once the government begins expanding how it uses Americans' personal information, it raises profound concerns about privacy, civil liberties, and public trust."

TSA and ICE are both within the Department of Homeland Security. The agreement between the agencies will remain in effect until officials terminate it. It will be reviewed every five years to determine whether it should continue, according to the agreement.

Testimony to Congress

In January, acting TSA Administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill told lawmakers on the House Homeland Security Committee that the agency shares some information with ICE but does not "send the information to ICE."

Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., asked McNeill about an agreement with ICE to share information for the purpose of checking whether passengers have a deportation order.

"That is not what is occurring," she said. "We don't send the information to ICE, we help ICE check against information."

Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., also asked McNeill what passenger information TSA was sharing with ICE.

McNeill did not detail the information TSA shares with ICE but said her agency was "within our authorities to share information within the Department of Homeland Security to further the national security mission."

In the newly released documents, TSA cites the 2008 Secure Flight Final Rule as its authority to share data with ICE. The TSA regulation lays out federal procedures for using passenger information for aviation safety.

David Cummins, the president's pick to be TSA administrator, did not detail the information TSA and ICE share when pressed by Michigan Democratic Sen. Gary Peters during his Senate confirmation hearing this month.

Cummins said he would "try to provide as much as we can within our bounds" but said he could not commit to sharing details.

TSA and DHS did not respond to States Newsroom's request for comment.

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Senate confirms Clayton as Trump’s next intelligence director

David DiMolfetta — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 10:00:17 -0400

The Senate on Tuesday night confirmed Jay Clayton to serve as President Donald Trump’s second permanent national intelligence director, replacing an acting chief whose leadership alarmed Democrats and disrupted efforts to renew a major foreign surveillance program.

Clayton was confirmed in a 51-47 vote. He will oversee the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which coordinates the work of the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies and serves as the president’s principal intelligence adviser.

His confirmation ends Bill Pulte’s roughly six-week tenure as acting director, during which the Trump loyalist presided over repeated personnel cuts and faced accusations that he was politicizing the intelligence community. Pulte said Tuesday that ODNI had completed a fifth round of cuts without disclosing details of who was affected.

Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and a former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman during Trump’s first term, was initially viewed by some Democrats as a stabilizing alternative to Pulte. Democrats had pushed the White House to nominate a permanent intelligence director and agreed with Senate Republicans to move Clayton’s confirmation process quickly, hoping to curtail Pulte’s time in the role.

But Clayton shed much of that prospective support during his confirmation hearing this month, when he repeatedly declined to say directly that former President Joe Biden won the 2020 election. The Senate Intelligence Committee advanced Clayton’s nomination last week in a 9-8 party-line vote, with every Democrat and Democratic-aligned independent on the panel opposing him.

Clayton also faced scrutiny over subpoenas his office issued to New York Times journalists in an effort to identify the sources behind reporting on security shortcomings of Trump’s new, Qatari-donated Air Force One.

During his hearing, Clayton defended the Justice Department’s handling of the investigation and said he was comfortable that prosecutors had followed the proper process. The department withdrew the subpoenas days later, however, after a federal judge sharply questioned government attorneys about how they had obtained reporters’ phone records and whether they had complied with legal safeguards intended to protect journalists.

Clayton also signaled that he wants the intelligence community to devote more attention to the connections between economic competition and national security, an emphasis informed by his time overseeing U.S. financial markets.

“National security and economic security are synonymous,” Clayton told lawmakers. Understanding the economic consequences of major events and their broader effects, he added, should be a larger part of what the intelligence community provides policymakers.

His arrival could also revive negotiations over Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the government to collect the electronic communications of non-U.S. citizens located abroad without a warrant.

The authority statutorily lapsed in June after Democrats joined other lawmakers in blocking a largely unchanged renewal package, citing Pulte’s installation as acting intelligence director. Democrats had argued that they would reconsider an extension once the Senate confirmed a permanent official to lead the intelligence community.

Intelligence collection under Section 702 has continued despite the expiration, with providers still complying with government requests to furnish communications for spy agencies, House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., told Nextgov/FCW last week, but he added that, at any moment, “they can decide to challenge the validity of the request” and he is “very concerned” by that possibility.

Asked whether a Clayton confirmation would help get votes necessary to legislatively reauthorize Section 702, Himes said “I think that certainly helps.”

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IRS and Social Security bar employees from taking advanced leave

Jory Heckman — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 06:00:00 -0400

Employees at the IRS and the Social Security Administration – both led by the same official – are no longer able to tap into reserves of annual leave or sick leave time they haven’t accrued yet.

Federal employees are generally allowed to use “advanced” annual or sick leave for several reasons – including major medical emergencies, family care and bereavement of an immediate family member – if they have already exhausted their annual leave or sick leave. With advanced leave, employees are essentially borrowing from a reserve of leave hours they will eventually earn.

Human resources officials told IRS and Social Security Administration employees last Friday that they will no longer grant advanced annual leave or advanced sick leave until further notice.

In nearly identical emails, the IRS and SSA told employees this policy change will ensure both agencies are providing a high level of customer service to the public and address several individual cases where employees took excessive amounts of advanced leave.

“Just spent the last two hours talking to employees impacted,” an SSA official told Government Executive last Friday, as the email hit employees’ inboxes. “It’s going to be hard on those employees who already have negative leave balances.”

Pending requests for advanced leave at both agencies will be denied. Employees at both agencies can still donate their unused annual leave to coworkers through the Voluntary Leave Transfer Program, or go on unpaid leave through the Family and Medical Leave Act.

These changes have no impact on an employee’s ability to use accrued annual and sick leave.

Both agencies are led by Frank Bisignano, the Senate-confirmed SSA commissioner and the first chief executive officer of the IRS. Bisignano, speaking at an industry conference last month, compared leading both agencies as “like running a large company."

“If you think about these two organizations, I view them as businesses – the business of collecting taxes and administering and upholding the law on taxes, and the business of paying out Social Security payments,” Bisignano said at the Government Service Delivery summit.

The IRS and SSA told staff that the suspension will remain in effect, pending efforts to reduce “existing significant advanced leave balances.” Both agencies wrote that in several cases, employees are unlikely to earn back the large amounts of advanced leave hours they’ve already used.

“This is debt carried against the future work of all our employees, work that has not yet occurred, and work the public expects us to deliver. This constrains our ability to invest in the people, tools, and resources our mission requires,” both emails state.

SSA told employees that “the American people depend on SSA to deliver on its mission every day, and that mission depends on a workforce that is present and performing the public service they rely on us for.”

“Advanced leave, which is leave granted before it is earned, means employees are compensated for time away from our mission before the work has been done,” SSA wrote. “The cumulative effect over the years of this policy is significant and unsustainable and impacts our service to the public.”

AFGE Council 220 President Jessica LaPointe, whose union represents field office and teleservice center employees, said advanced leave functions as a sort of short-term or long-term disability insurance program for federal employees.

“We have workers going through cancer treatment. We have workers that have been the victim of car accidents, unexpected emergencies. We have caregivers of sick children, sick parents, elderly parents. We have been able to use this — not abuse it — to supplement our low wages. And now that we don’t have it, federal workers that are administering disability and retirement benefits are being forced to not get paid when disaster strikes,” LaPointe said.

A report from the Strategic Organizing Center, a research partner for AFGE, found that 54% of the 36,000 frontline SSA employees represented by the union were paid less than a living wage for their geographic region. A living wage is the minimum income needed for an individual to afford the minimum standard of living in their community.

In a survey of more than 800 current SSA employees, 17% of respondents with over 20 years on the job told SOC they are working a second job. Nearly two-thirds of survey respondents said they were struggling to provide at least one necessity for their families.

“We have workers at this agency that don’t make a living wage, that can’t pay their bills,” LaPointe said. “If we go into leave without pay and can’t pay our bills, can’t pay our health insurance premiums, can’t pay for food, rent, all those things, that stresses you out. And when you’re stressed, and you have a preexisting condition, it gets worse and so you have more leave without pay.”

SSA employees told Government Executive that managers previously approved employee requests for advanced leave, as long as they had a documented reason for needing it -- but up until recently, all requests had to go through the agency chiefs of the components for approval.

“The administration is using the ‘fraud, waste and abuse’ phrase,” a second SSA employee said. “Management were the ones to approve with documents. Then they forced everyone to be approved by the chief of field operations. That lasted a month. Now [it’s a] full stop.”

Both agencies oversaw major staffing losses last year. The IRS shed more than a quarter of its employees largely through voluntary separation incentives. About 7,000 SSA employees took those same incentives last year, bringing the agency to its lowest staffing level in about 50 years.

Bisignano, however, has touted the performance metrics at both agencies, telling lawmakers that SSA and IRS don’t need more employees to meet public expectations. Both agencies have relied on widespread employee reassignments to address acute staffing shortages across their operations.

According to the Office of Personnel Management, agencies may grant a maximum of 240 hours of advanced sick leave to a federal employee, although the total number of hours permitted varies depending on the circumstances.

A third SSA employee said she has a chronic history of migraines and had advanced leave pending approval before the agency’s policy went into effect. Having exhausted her other leave options, she said she must now go on unpaid leave for the time she’s requested.

“It’s just disheartening and really lowers the morale when we run into things like this,” the employee said. “We’re dealing with people who have disabilities, and you have to be sympathetic and empathetic to them – which we are, because we’re living with it ourselves sometimes. But the agency is not giving us the same respect that we give to the community.”

Federal employees replenish their annual and sick leave over time. Federal employees who leave government service with a negative leave balance must refund the cost of that advanced leave, and agencies may deduct it from their final paycheck.

“The leave transfer program, it’s great if you have friends and family that have leave available and that are willing to donate it to you. I’m not in that boat, and a lot of people I work with aren’t," the third SSA employee said. "There’s only so much leave that people are going to give up and give away to people.

An SSA spokesperson told Government Executive in a statement that “this change ensures that SSA’s workforce is available to deliver the high-quality service the American people rely on and deserve.”

An IRS spokesperson said the policy change “aligns with the agency’s efforts to build a high-performing, highly engaged workforce operating as One IRS to deliver a world-class customer experience and aligns to our commitment to be responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars.”

“The IRS continues to offer a comprehensive and competitive benefits and leave program that promotes employee well-being, flexibility, and long-term financial security,” the IRS spokesperson added.

LaPointe said AFGE has filed a grievance about these changes. The union alleges SSA has repudiated a provision of its collective bargaining agreement with the union.

“We have workers today going on a leave-without-pay status. We have workers today who are stressed about how they’re going to pay their health insurance premiums. How are they going to put food on the table? How do you recover from an illness or an injury without getting a paycheck?” LaPointe said.

Doreen Greenwald, national president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said in a statement that “NTEU will vigorously challenge this move and continue defending our members’ rights under the law and our contract.”

“This is not only an illegal violation of the collective bargaining agreement, but it’s unnecessarily cruel and harmful to IRS employees who either themselves are facing a medical crisis or caring for an ill family member,” Greenwald said. “Any insinuations that IRS employees are abusing their leave or assertions that taking such leave would harm public services are completely unfounded.”

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New documentary recounts ‘free-for-all attitude of cruelty’ toward axed federal employees

Sean Michael Newhouse — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 05:00:00 -0400

When the documentary first features Katie Sandlin, a former employee at the National Institutes of Health, she apologizes that her car is making a “weird noise” but promises that it’ll stop once she gets on the road.

Sandlin — who was fired last year during the Trump administration’s downsizing of the federal workforce, after serving in her job for only a month — shared with the filmmakers some of the comments she had received online since posting about her job loss.

“You’re an oversized, unhealthy, bloated, fat f***, and thank God you’ve been fired,” she reads from her laptop. “Hopefully, soon at least you’ll not have the money to keep eating like a pig.”

Sandlin is one of several fired, laid off or otherwise pushed out civil servants featured in “Heist,” an Emmy-nominated short documentary that chronicles the personal and political impacts of federal job losses during the first half of 2025.

“We really felt we had to archive this no matter what happened,” said Ilene Kristen, one of the film’s producers. “No matter whether we could make this into a film — or not a film — we knew that we had to to capture this.”

The filmmakers, for instance, recorded newly unemployed federal employees trying to meet with lawmakers in the halls of Congress, asking them to push back on the administration’s agency job cuts and expressing concerns about the continued effectiveness of the programs they worked on. Several Capitol Hill offices called the police to remove the individuals.

There’s also many clips of axed civil servants exiting their former headquarters with the contents of desks and offices. At the U.S. Agency for International Development, workers were each assigned a 15-minute time slot to clear out.

“This happened because of a minority of people with agendas that are very destructive and greed-oriented,” said Rebecca Cammisa, the film’s director and a two-time Oscar nominee. “It was a free-for-all attitude of cruelty.”

The Trump administration argues that its agency staff cuts and reorganizations — including at USAID, which lost nearly all of its workforce after it was folded into the State Department — will enhance efficiency and slash spending.

The filmmakers behind “Heist,” however, contend that the downsizing of the civil service is benefiting individuals allied with the president. For example, the documentary highlights that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, one of the top agencies targeted for job cuts by the Elon Musk-headed Department of Government Efficiency, had been set to regulate one of Musk’s companies.

“We can't even have real debates about policy and what we think is right when government is no longer honest and the levers of power are quietly being pulled by the people who pay for that access,” said David Cowan, one of the producers.

The producing team is continuing the focus on civil servants; their next planned documentary will be about former feds running for office.

“Federal workers aren't people who are just purged and are down,” Cammisa said. “They've created organizations to help feed people. They've created organizations to help each other. Federal workers have created all kinds of things now that they're free to do it — and run for office because they're trying to reclaim government for the people.”

Still, the filmmakers are worried that the federal firings and layoffs could leave lasting damage to public services. With this in mind, they began and ended the documentary at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial on the National Mall.

“I think it was a good framework because these are the policies that are being screwed around with [by the Trump administration] that were part of [FDR’s] New Deal to put people back to work and to give people certain protections,” Kristen said.

The documentary’s closing shot features a young person taking a picture of statues in the FDR Memorial representing an unemployed couple during the Great Depression. The tourist puts her “Make America Great Again” baseball cap on them, remarking, “They became Trump supporters,” with a laugh.

“After the young lady left, Rebecca sat and cried,” Kristen recalled. “This is our country, folks. Like it or not, this is our country.”

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Pulte announces 30% ODNI staff reduction hours before Clayton vote

David DiMolfetta — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 17:51:13 -0400

Acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte announced another round of sweeping personnel cuts at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Tuesday, hours before the Senate was expected to confirm his permanent replacement.

Pulte wrote on X that "we are, this morning, Executing a 5th and Near Final Round of TERMINATIONS, an approximately 30% Staff Reduction from Weeks Ago."

“The Intelligence Community must protect the American people, NOT the political whims of the bloated and corrupt elite class,” he added.

He did not disclose the number of workers affected, what parts of ODNI were targeted or whether the terminations involved employees being dismissed from federal service or intelligence officers being returned to their home agencies. A significant part of ODNI’s workforce consists of personnel detailed from other parts of the intelligence community.

It was also unclear what baseline Pulte used to calculate the 30% reduction. ODNI had already undergone substantial downsizing before he took over, including workforce reductions launched under former intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard.

The announcement came just two days after Pulte said ODNI had completed a fourth round of layoffs, which he characterized as “thoughtful” and “measured.”

Pulte has moved rapidly to shrink the office since becoming acting director in June. His earliest changes included the departure of six career and political employees and the return of roughly 50 intelligence officers to their home agencies. Affected officials have included the deputy director of national intelligence for mission integration.

President Donald Trump selected Pulte, who also leads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, to temporarily oversee the nation’s 18 intelligence organizations after Gabbard stepped down earlier this year, citing her husband’s cancer diagnosis.

Pulte’s appointment drew criticism over his lack of intelligence experience and his use of the housing agency to pursue mortgage-fraud allegations involving perceived Trump adversaries, including Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. In his brief tenure leading ODNI, he has been involved in a sweeping document declassification spree tied to Trump’s insecurities about U.S. election security.

The Senate is scheduled to vote on Tuesday night on the nomination of Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and a former Securities and Exchange Commission chair, to permanently serve as director of national intelligence, removing Pulte from the acting role. Clayton is expected to be confirmed after his nomination cleared a procedural vote Monday in a 51-43 party-line tally.

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AFGE sues over EEOC’s apparent shutdown of class action cases against agencies

Erich Wagner — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 16:40:12 -0400

The nation’s largest federal employee union on Tuesday sued the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to force the quasi-judicial agency undo an unpublished edict that has blocked all class-action cases involving federal agencies for more than six months.

The American Federation of Government Employees accused EEOC Chairwoman Andrea Lucas of surreptitiously issuing a directive halting proceedings in all class-action discrimination and harassment complaints involving federal agencies last December. Though the document has never been published, administrative judges have since issued indefinite stays or otherwise paused class action case proceedings, including certifications, hearings and other appearances, and evidentiary and discovery processes.

“Effective immediately, all case processing in the above-captioned matter must be paused until further notice,” wrote EEOC Administrative Judge Erania Ebron on Dec. 10, 2025. “All scheduled deadlines and appearances are also cancelled. This notification applies to all class cases in the federal sector, including those alleging disparate impact.”

AFGE filed the suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia alongside union members and U.S. Bureau of Prisons correctional officers Deanna Chelette and Alexzandria Boyd, both of whom are within a certified class alleging their employer does not do enough to prevent rampant sexual harassment of female employees by inmates at the Federal Correctional Complex in Pollock, La. Their EEO case, filed in 2024 and receiving class-action certification for around 200 employees in March 2025, reports that inmates routinely verbally harass female correctional officers and subject them to “exhibitionist nudity,” public masturbation, rape threats and unwanted touching.

The EEOC’s own regulations encourage the use of class-action cases as a cheaper and faster manner of resolving allegations of discrimination or harassment than requiring each employee to file complaints individually—or filing individual or class-action lawsuits in federal court—and requires that class complaints “shall be processed promptly.” The union’s lawsuit accuses the commission of violating its own regulations, engaging in arbitrary and capricious decision-making in halting the processing of cases without any public announcement or rationale, among other violations of the Administrative Procedure Act.

“Defendants have not published the suspension directive or provided any explanation or authority for the decision,” the union wrote. “They have provided no procedure for an affected party to seek an exception or case-specific review. The directive has no stated termination date, leaving thousands of federal employees with no indication of when the EEOC will permit the adjudication of class claims to resume, and under what circumstances.”

AFGE argued that Lucas’ directive does far more than simply block class action EEO cases from moving forward. Because of how classes are determined by the commission, individuals who are not involved in a case but could be covered by its class cannot pursue their own claims on their own.

“The directive is also harmful to absent class members. In class cases, they cannot opt out, as their overlapping individual complaints are subsumed as soon as a formal class complaint is filed,” the union wrote. “They therefore cannot pursue their own claims in any form, administrative or judicial, while the proceeding that governs their rights remains frozen.”

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As presidents gain power, who keeps government accountable?

James-Christian Blockwood — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 12:08:08 -0400

The Supreme Court ruling in Trump v. Slaughter, a 6-3 decision that overturned Humphrey's Executor, significantly limits statutory protections that prevent the president from removing certain independent agency heads without cause. This marks a major shift from longstanding precedent in the American administrative state and paves the way for broader changes in the relationship between the executive branch and independent agencies.

Good government has never depended solely on a president. Like many important elements of our democracy, responsibility is distributed across an engaged electorate, principled leaders, effective oversight bodies and individual public servants committed to the Constitution. As presidential powers expand and the balance of authority evolves, the strength of American government will increasingly rely on its institutions, particularly the people entrusted to lead them.

Civil servants and institutional leaders must act with integrity and stand firm in their principles of leadership, especially when facing potential political pressure.

Supporters of the Slaughter ruling argue that it restores constitutional accountability and will allow future presidents to more effectively implement the policy agendas on which they were elected and better fulfill the promises made to voters. Critics caution that reducing the independence of agencies is likely to increase politicization and weaken important institutional safeguards. Regardless of where one stands, the decision places greater importance on democratic accountability.

Congress has an increasingly important role to play. Congressional leaders should fully embrace their oversight responsibilities and reinvigorate the legislative branch's role as an essential constitutional check on executive power.

The decision also places renewed emphasis on whom we elect as president, whom we send to Congress and whom the Senate confirms to lead our nation's institutions. We the people, particularly civil servants, should recommit ourselves to strengthening the institutions that nurture and preserve accountability, transparency and the rule of law. We should also want, expect and empower our duly elected president to lead within these boundaries.

Our institutions are resilient and purpose-built. We should not lose faith in our system of governance because of the outcomes it sometimes produces.

We rely heavily on the judgment, courage and ethical leadership of individuals. Laws and institutions are important, but they have always depended on people willing to uphold and enforce them.

Independent agency heads have significant discretion. They can risk termination and demonstrate strength by resigning when circumstances require it. Some already have. These institutional leaders must be able to manage their agencies in unbiased and apolitical ways.

Throughout our history, politically appointed leaders and career civil servants alike have spoken truth to power, upheld the public trust and reminded us that leadership is an act of character.

While presidents wield enormous constitutional authority, that authority remains subject to our system of separated powers. Congress possesses immense oversight and accountability powers, provided it chooses to exercise them. Our elected and appointed leaders must possess both a strong moral compass and a steadfast commitment to the Constitution and the public they serve.

Presidential actions depend on leaders to implement them and are subject to oversight by Congress, review by the courts and accountability to the American public. Ultimately, the integrity of agency leadership will continue to shape our independent institutions. Likewise, the reach of executive authority will continue to be influenced by Congress, the judiciary and what the American people are willing to accept through the democratic process.

Whether one celebrates this decision or views it with concern, we should carefully monitor what happens next, mindful of personal responsibility and institutional accountability.

The strength of our constitutional republic has never rested with one branch or one individual. It is kept by principled leaders, institutions worthy of public trust and citizens who are willing to exercise both their rights and their responsibilities in defense of good government.

James-Christian Blockwood is president and chief executive officer of the National Academy of Public Administration, a congressionally chartered nonprofit that helps leaders build more effective, efficient, accountable and transparent organizations. He previously held roles at the Partnership for Public Service and the departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs, as well as the Government Accountability Office, and is a career member of the Senior Executive Service. He is an adjunct professor at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

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Dem senators demand answers on SSA field office closures despite Bisignano’s vow

Erich Wagner — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 06:00:00 -0400

This story has been updated at 4:30 p.m. ET.

A group of Senate Democrats on Tuesday demanded information on how staffing shortages and reassignments are impacting the Social Security Administration’s ability to keep its 1,200 field offices open to the public.

Last year, after years of chronic underfunding of SSA’s administrative functions already brought its workforce to a 50-year low, the Trump administration shaved the agency’s headcount by another 7,500 employees. According to OPM data, SSA had around 49,500 employees as of May. Bisignano has also reassigned more than 1,500 employees from the field offices and other subcomponents to man Social Security's 1-800 customer service line.

Earlier this year, Bisignano wrote in a private letter to Warren that he would “keep every field office open” and ensure they are “providing better and high-quality service.” But over the last several months, dozens of field offices have been listed at various points either closed entirely or only offered services via telephone. As of Monday afternoon, 16 field offices across the country provided no or limited services.

In a letter to SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano Tuesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and three other Democrats requested information on these temporary closures and the underlying reasons for each shuttering.

“Many of these offices were reportedly closed to the public due to maintenance needs or other operational issues—which may be a valid reason,” the lawmakers wrote. “But several offices appear to have been effectively closed due to staffing shortages, and some of these offices have allegedly remained ‘temporarily closed’ for an extended period of time.”

Last April, union leaders spoke to Government Executive about three rural field offices that had already been closed for over a year. Two of those locations—Bloomsburg, Pa., and Logan, W.Va.—remain on SSA’s list of closures.

“These closures are not unprecedented, and have occurred under previous Republican and Democratic presidents,” Warren wrote. “But in your case, these temporary closures to the public come after you made explicit commitments not to close offices, and have made a series of ongoing staffing cuts and assignment changes that appear to have added to the threat of closures.”

Additionally, Bisignano testified—falsely—last month that his predecessor, former Commissioner Martin O’Malley, instituted a policy for field offices by which members of the public were “turned away” if they had not previously scheduled an appointment. But as of Monday afternoon, the field office in Silver Spring, Md., offers only “limited in-person service with an appointment.”

The lawmakers wrote that the field offices mostly likely to suffer from staffing shortage are often the most rural locations, and their temporary closure create greater challenges for Americans seeking in-person service.

“Closing field offices and resident stations for in-person services also means Americans must travel further to get assistance,” they wrote. “In fact, recent analysis finds the closure of any field office would double the time it takes the average American to drive to their second-closest office.”

In a statement Tuesday, an SSA spokesperson contested Warren and union officials’ assertion that the closures are at least partially due to staffing gaps. They said both the Bloomsburg, Pa., and Logan, W.Va., field offices remain closed due to structural issues but did not give a timeline for their reopening or replacement.

“None of SSA's field offices are closed or offering limited service due to staffing issues,” the spokesperson wrote. “The field office closures listed on the Social Security website are not permanent. The offices are temporarily closed or providing limited service due to planned renovations, required maintenance, or facilities issues that we are actively working with GSA and building owners to resolve. SSA’s resident stations are located in rural areas and typically have one or two employees assigned to provide in-person services.”

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