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Federal acquisition rewrite leaves cybersecurity confusion unresolved

Lindy Kyzer — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 12:03:19 -0400

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The federal government’s Revolutionary FAR Overhaul represents one of the most significant efforts to reshape federal acquisition in decades. Supporters see an opportunity to streamline procurement, reduce regulatory complexity and lower barriers to doing business with the federal government. Critics worry that important requirements could get lost in the process.

For contractors concerned about cybersecurity and controlled unclassified information, however, an important question is not whether the FAR becomes shorter, nor is it whether acquisition becomes faster.

The question is whether this overhaul will finally force government agencies to address one of the most persistent challenges facing contractors today: the inconsistent implementation of controlled unclassified information requirements.

That may sound like an odd question to ask about a procurement regulation. After all, the FAR overhaul does not rewrite the underlying controlled unclassified information framework. But that is precisely the point. The FAR rewrite does not eliminate the government’s controlled unclassified information program. Executive Order 13556 remains in effect. National Archives and Records Administration regulations remain in effect. National Institute of Standards and Technology Special Publication 800-171 remains in effect. Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification requirements remain in effect. Agencies will continue to have obligations to identify, mark and protect sensitive information.

The same rules are still there.

The challenge is that many contractors continue to struggle to determine when those rules apply.

At ClearanceJobs, reporting and industry conversations have consistently highlighted confusion surrounding controlled unclassified information implementation. Security professionals, contractors and acquisition stakeholders frequently point to inconsistent agency guidance, varying interpretations of requirements and uncertainty surrounding what information actually qualifies as controlled unclassified information. The recent State of the Facility Security Officer report found that controlled unclassified information, not personnel security clearances, facility clearances or processing timelines, was the top source of frustration for security professionals. While government has invested significant effort into developing policies and compliance frameworks, implementation across agencies remains uneven, and industry partners expected to enact the rules remain confused.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology itself has recognized the challenge. Recent guidance has attempted to provide greater clarity around identifying and managing controlled unclassified information, acknowledging concerns from both government and industry that organizations continue to interpret requirements differently. Yet despite years of guidance, training and policy development, contractors often find themselves navigating a patchwork of agency-specific practices and expectations.

This is not simply a cybersecurity issue.

It is an acquisition issue.

When contractors cannot determine whether they will be handling controlled unclassified information, they struggle to accurately estimate cybersecurity costs, staffing requirements, technology investments and proposal pricing. Small businesses face particular challenges because uncertainty creates risk and risk often discourages participation.

The government has spent years trying to expand competition, attract innovative companies and reduce barriers to entry. Yet uncertainty surrounding controlled unclassified information frequently has the opposite effect. Contractors are left trying to interpret cybersecurity obligations that may not be clearly defined until well into the acquisition process. In some cases, organizations discover significant compliance requirements only after contract award. In others, they implement costly controls out of caution because no one can provide a definitive answer about whether information qualifies as controlled unclassified information.

That uncertainty is becoming increasingly consequential as the government ramps up cybersecurity enforcement.

A recent Justice Department settlement with Alabama-based defense contractor LOGZONE offers a glimpse of what many contractors may expect moving forward. The company agreed to pay more than $500,000 to resolve allegations that it failed to implement required National Institute of Standards and Technology Special Publication 800-171 cybersecurity controls while performing Navy contracts, despite certifying compliance with contract requirements. According to the government, the deficiencies left sensitive defense information vulnerable to compromise.

The settlement is notable because it occurred before full implementation of the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program. The certification program is built on the same National Institute of Standards and Technology Special Publication 800-171 requirements cited in the case, and the Pentagon has made clear that contractors will increasingly be expected to demonstrate, not simply attest to, their cybersecurity compliance.

The message from government is clear: cybersecurity requirements matter and contractors will be held accountable when they fail to meet them. But that reality makes consistent controlled unclassified information implementation even more important.

The government cannot simultaneously increase enforcement while tolerating inconsistent identification, marking and communication of controlled unclassified information requirements across agencies. Contractors should absolutely be responsible for protecting sensitive information. They should absolutely be accountable for false certifications and inadequate security controls.

Yet accountability works best when expectations are clear.

As enforcement actions become more common and Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification requirements spread across the defense industrial base, the stakes surrounding controlled unclassified information identification will only increase. Contractors need certainty about what information requires protection, what obligations apply and when those obligations begin. Otherwise, organizations will continue to spend valuable resources navigating ambiguity rather than improving security.

Because the FAR overhaul is fundamentally an exercise in simplification, it offers an opportunity to focus less on creating new cybersecurity requirements and more on ensuring agencies consistently communicate the requirements that already exist.

Government should also strengthen accountability for identification and marking practices. Contractors bear responsibility for protecting information once they receive it. But they cannot protect information that government has failed to properly identify.

The proposed FAR controlled unclassified information rule attempts to address that gap through a standardized form that places responsibility on agencies to identify the controlled unclassified information involved in contract performance. In fact, the proposal’s signature feature is a standard mechanism for identifying and communicating controlled unclassified information requirements to contractors before performance begins. The existence of that form is itself evidence that government recognizes a longstanding problem: contractors often do not know what controlled unclassified information they are expected to protect.

The current system often creates a paradox. Agencies require contractors to implement increasingly rigorous cybersecurity controls while simultaneously providing inconsistent guidance regarding the information those controls are intended to protect.

More requirements will not solve that problem. Better implementation will.

The acquisition community has spent years discussing cybersecurity as a compliance challenge. The FAR rewrite provides an opportunity to recognize that it is also an acquisition challenge.

When requirements are unclear, companies cannot accurately estimate costs. They cannot determine the appropriate security architecture. They cannot assess staffing needs. Small businesses, in particular, may decide the uncertainty simply is not worth the risk.

The government does not need another controlled unclassified information rule. It already has plenty of them. The FAR rewrite will not alter the underlying authorities governing controlled unclassified information, but it does create an opportunity to emphasize a lesson contractors have been repeating for years: implementation matters as much as policy. Clear identification, consistent marking and transparent communication of controlled unclassified information requirements would do more to improve cybersecurity outcomes than another layer of regulation.

For more than a decade, industry has struggled with inconsistent markings, varying agency interpretations and uncertainty about where responsibility for identifying controlled unclassified information truly begins. Contractors have repeatedly asked for greater clarity, consistency and predictability, not more regulation.

If acquisition leaders want a more competitive industrial base, stronger cybersecurity and broader participation from innovative companies, they should start by solving one of the simplest questions contractors still struggle to answer:

“Is this controlled unclassified information?”

For too many companies, the answer remains surprisingly unclear. A FAR rule cannot fix that. But agencies committed to clearer implementation can.

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Director of National Intelligence office cuts reach key coordination function

David DiMolfetta — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 10:42:43 -0400

Will Ruger, the deputy director of national intelligence for mission integration, was placed on administrative leave as part of a broader personnel shakeup at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that has removed roughly 50 career and political staffers from their roles since Bill Pulte became acting director Friday, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Around 15 to 20 mission integration personnel detailed to ODNI from other U.S. intelligence units are believed to have been sent back to their home agencies, added the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to communicate the personnel shifts.

The removals could have practical consequences because mission integration is one of the main offices ODNI uses to link work across the intelligence landscape. The directorate is responsible for coordinating the 18 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community and helping ensure they perform as a unified enterprise. The unit also advises the director of national intelligence on how findings are collected, analyzed and used to inform policy and operational decisions.

CBS News first reported details of Ruger’s dismissal. The estimated number of mission integration staff moved back to their home agencies has not been previously reported.

The moves have occurred under the broader shakeup at ODNI since Pulte took over as acting director after former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard left the role. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said Wednesday that Pulte had told him roughly 45 to 50 career officers were being sent back to their home agencies, while a smaller number of front-office personnel were leaving federal service altogether.

Many ODNI employees serve on joint duty assignments, temporary postings that bring personnel from other intelligence agencies into the director’s office.

ODNI has not returned requests for comment about the downsizing plans.

Pulte’s early moves come as Jay Clayton, Trump’s nominee to serve as the Senate-confirmed intelligence chief, awaits Senate consideration, though the president ordered the cancellation of Clayton’s hearing last week until the Senate could confirm the new U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, who would be Clayton’s replacement.

Democrats warned that Pulte’s role in the president’s mortgage fraud reviews last year could foreshadow an abuse of intelligence tools to target the president’s political opponents, leading to the historic lapse of a key surveillance authority earlier this month.

Confirming Clayton would have helped reshore support from key Democrats for the surveillance power. But Trump also asserted that the spying authority — Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — should not pass without the concurrent passage of a controversial voter identification bill that doesn’t have enough support in Congress.

Cotton said Wednesday that Pulte broadly agrees with returning ODNI to its “original size, scope and mission,” including by spinning off some functional centers and sending detailed officers back to their home agencies.

The downsizing push began under Gabbard, whose office had announced plans to cut roughly 40% of ODNI’s workforce and said the effort was a streamlining measure that would save more than $700 million annually.

Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees warned Pulte this week against making major changes while serving in an acting capacity, arguing that large-scale personnel moves and other consequential decisions should be left to a Senate-confirmed director.

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Agencies look to AI to improve hiring and build workforce skills

Sean Michael Newhouse — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 17:21:14 -0400

Artificial intelligence and other technological advances are streamlining federal hiring and improving employee skills assessments, senior agency human capital officials said at an event on Wednesday sponsored by the software company SAP. The event was produced by GovExec, Government Executive’s parent company.

Arron Helm, the chief human capital officer for the General Services Administration, said that AI has helped whittle down the amount of time it takes HR officials and hiring managers to develop General Schedule job classifications.

“As we're having our AI do the initial takes, draft the initial narrative and do an initial factor evaluation, our teams still need to go back in there, they still need to work it and massage it and come to agreement, but now we're averaging about two hours to do what was taking six to eight hours,” he said.

Helm added that his agency does 500 to 600 job classifications annually, so the resulting time savings contribute significantly to GSA Administrator Ed Forst’s “million-hour moonshot” to identify one million work hours that can be eliminated, optimized or automated. The CHCO said that officials, so far, have found 600,000 hours.

Colleen Heller-Stein, the executive director of the Chief Human Capital Officers Council and former deputy Treasury CHCO, expressed optimism that a developing effort to consolidate more than 100 agency personnel systems into a single platform would enable the government to pinpoint employees across agencies who could best respond to various challenges.

“I worked in an agency that dealt with financial crises when they popped up,” she said. “When we have something pop up and we've got to stand something up really quickly, thinking about the federal government as a whole, we might be able to more easily tap into talent that isn't right in front of us if we have a repository of [employees’] skills.”

Both officials praised the Trump administration’s pivot away from applicants self-assessing their skills and move toward formal evaluations, particularly for roles related to AI.

“This is seen as a return to merit, where people are showing what they know, not just saying, ‘Hey, I know all of this,’” Heller-Stein said.

Helm added that the feedback from hiring managers about the changes is “phenomenal” and that “[candidate] quality is so much higher than what they’re accustomed to in the past.”

Mid-career development

While both the Trump and Biden administrations prioritized bringing early-career talent into government, Heller-Stein and Helm emphasized the need for agencies to develop mid-career employees, arguing that focusing on one group doesn’t have to come at the expense of the other.

Heller-Stein said that, following the president’s cuts to the civil service, mid-career employees “are moving into leadership roles sometimes more quickly than may have been anticipated” and there’s a need to “build back that bench.”

She noted that Tech Force, a new initiative to recruit early-career technologists into government, also involves bringing on private sector managers to serve temporarily at agencies. Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor said in May that hiring was lagging for the program with only three or four mid-career workers in the onboarding process.

Helm touted a program called “GSA labs” through which early- and mid-career employees from different teams work together on agency-wide problems, such as developing a way to measure AI value and strengthening federal contract oversight.

“Talent development is something that's often been underfunded and underfocused in the government, so we are really building out and investing in our internal talent development pipelines,” he said. “We talk a lot about talent acquisition, but just as important, if not more important, is continuing to grow our internal talent.”

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A plan to dismantle DHS is moving from idea to legislation

David DiMolfetta — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 17:08:25 -0400

The top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee’s cybersecurity panel says she has engaged fellow lawmakers about a sweeping legislative plan to dismantle the Department of Homeland Security that would involve sectioning out key components into their own standalone entities, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

In a phone interview, Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., told Nextgov/FCW that she aims to have preliminary bill language in place that could be introduced at the start of next year, adding that she has spoken with other Democratic colleagues, including Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, Greg Casar of Texas, Seth Magaziner of Rhode Island, Robert Garcia of California and Washington state’s Emily Randall and Pramila Jayapal.

Citing her issues with the Trump administration’s maximal immigration agenda being enacted through Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Border Patrol, Ramirez said she believes DHS has been weaponized. Key components like CISA, the Transportation Security Agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Coast Guard have been starved of resources, she said, adding that her planned legislation would seek to pull those agencies out into more autonomous structures that are harder to defund or politicize.

The White House has especially undermined CISA’s ability to coordinate on critical infrastructure security, she argued, citing various program cuts and workforce reductions put in place in the last 18 months. The agency lost a significant share of its staff over the past year, after the Trump administration moved to reduce and restructure the cyber shop through a mix of layoffs, early retirement offers, transfers and program cuts. It’s also seeking to shed hundreds of millions of dollars from the cyber agency’s fiscal year 2027 budget.

Ramirez’s proposed restructuring would be a significant undertaking requiring broad support in Congress and would likely have to include detailed directives about where DHS components and authorities should sit if the department were taken apart.

“Obviously this is going to be a pretty comprehensive bill. Dismantling DHS would have to then have the specifics of what happens to all of these agencies,” she said. “Do they end up becoming their own agency? Do they become their own department? How do we make sure that we put policy in place to protect their mission and the public, the essential authorities that come across every one of these particular agencies?”

Ramirez was named as the ranking member of the Homeland committee’s cyber subcommittee in April after former Rep. Eric Swalwell of California resigned from Congress.

In her role, she works alongside Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., the subcommittee chairman, whom she has clashed heavily with in the past. Last year, Ogles called for Ramirez to be deported and kicked off the committee. Ramirez was born in Chicago, Illinois to Guatemalan immigrants.

Asked about their relationship, she acknowledged “very vile” past comments from Ogles and “very many” differences between them but said she hopes to find common ground with the chairman on bettering CISA funding and restoring grants that help states and localities protect critical infrastructure from cyberattacks. She added that the two have “done some work together.”

“My hope is that he and I can put some of the politics to the side, especially on their side, and really understand that we have to really fully fund the infrastructure systems necessary for us to be able to keep up with what we see happening with artificial intelligence,” she said.

AI sits at the center of Ramirez’s concerns because, she argues, the evolving technology is innovating fast “without guardrails” in place.

A recent export control order invoked by the White House forced AI company Anthropic to pull back access to a pair of powerful cyber-focused frontier models. The NSA, in particular, has been partially affected by the move. Ramirez said it’s “important for us to be able to have access to the advanced models” but that necessary testing and oversight is in place so that “we are not actually causing unintentionally security threats to our own systems.”

She “absolutely” plans to ask officials at NSA, CISA and the Commerce Department for briefings on how export control actions affect government access to advanced AI models.

Ramirez recently filed an amendment to the annual defense authorization bill that would codify a key cyber vulnerability-tracking program within CISA, after it faced a contracting debacle last spring.

She said the measure ensures “we are not getting another funding lapse that’s going to put us in a really vulnerable state.” The program, known as Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures, has for years provided organizations with a standardized methodology for logging publicly known security flaws. CISA has declined to publicly comment on the bill.

The cyber agency is seeking to hire around 330 staff in the coming months, its acting director Nick Andersen previously said. Ramirez said she had a recent meeting with Andersen, and that, while she’s “grateful that they’re moving towards this 330, really he’s going to have to step up significantly more than that, and it’s not going to happen by the end of this year.”

“I am grateful that the interim director is really trying to move towards making those 330 hires as quickly as possible,” though “these hires don’t happen overnight,” Ramirez said. “In some cases, it takes us three to four months to be able to get the clearances necessary to bring [new hires] on board.”

“In some cases, we think it’s going to take us at least a year, year and a half, to be able to get to the level that is necessary to keep up with the needs of CISA,” she added.

Ramirez said she sees “a lot of vulnerabilities right now on election security,” pointing to potential laws that could restrict ballot access. On Wednesday, President Donald Trump canceled a bill signing for bipartisan legislation on housing affordability, saying he wouldn’t support it until Congress passes his controversial SAVE AMERICA ACT, which would require that people provide documentary proof of citizenship to vote and significantly limit mail-in ballots.

An assessment published by Check Point this month said campaigns, fundraising platforms, public websites and local governments could face phishing, credential theft, AI-generated deception and foreign influence activity ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

“It just comes back to the idea that a lot of people are concerned about what does election integrity mean in terms of what the systems, the software, the polling locations look like on election day, but also what is the other kind of legislation that would make it even harder for people to be able to easily vote,” Ramirez said. “We have a lot of work to do, and this is actually one of the conversations with DHS that we’re trying to have more of.”

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Postal Service faces backlash over voter data rule tied to mail ballot delivery

Jonathan Shorman, States Newsroom — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 16:32:57 -0400

The U.S. Postal Service won’t deliver mail ballots in states that refuse to turn over lists of voters under a proposed rule, the agency’s chief executive said Wednesday, angering Democrats who warn the decision will disenfranchise voters.

Postmaster General David Steiner defended the rule at a Senate hearing and dismissed accusations that the Postal Service was acting politically after President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March restricting voting by mail.

“If a state refuses to turn their absentee voter list over to the federal government, will the Postal Service still mail their ballots under this proposed rule?” Sen. Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat, asked Steiner.

“Under our proposed regulation, no,” Steiner replied.

Steiner’s testimony, before the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee, marked the clearest acknowledgment yet by a federal official that the rule could significantly alter how the Postal Service processes election mail across the country.

If the rule takes effect and states refuse to comply, it would introduce a new federal condition on mail ballot delivery tied to voter data submission requirements.

The Postal Service put forward the rule after Trump ordered Steiner to require states to submit lists of anticipated mail voters to the agency as a condition of having ballots delivered.

Trump cancels signing ceremony

Underscoring the depth of Trump’s interest, as Steiner was speaking Wednesday morning the president abruptly called off a U.S. Capitol ceremony to sign a bipartisan housing bill because of the Senate’s refusal to pass the SAVE America Act. The legislation would require voters to show documents, such as a birth certificate or passport, proving their citizenship.

“Now we have this new rule you’ve put out saying that states have to turn over their voting rolls and you, the U.S. Postal Service, will decide who’s approved to send their ballot through the mail,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat, said. “It’s just another backdoor way of trying to influence this election.“

Slotkin said Trump’s decision to cancel the housing bill signing demonstrated the “level of obsession this president has” over elections.

Turning over names

Every state would have to provide the names of residents expected to vote by mail. Additionally, eight states and Washington, D.C., conduct elections by mailing all voters a ballot, meaning election officials would have to provide information on every voter. Those states include California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont and Washington.

Trump and his aides argue the restrictions are needed to combat noncitizen voting, which occurs very rarely. Democrats and voting rights groups have sued over the order, arguing it’s an unconstitutional assertion of presidential authority over state-run elections. No judge has yet halted it.

Steiner sought to place himself outside the controversy and said, in response to a question, that the Postal Service would adhere to a court order blocking the rule if one were issued. Asked about the legal authority underlying the rule, he said he would “have to defer that to the courts to understand the authority.”

Steiner, who became the postmaster general in July 2025, cast the rule as primarily focused on best practices for election mail, a description that understates the scope of the proposal, which postal experts call unprecedented.

“I’m not a political person and the Postal Service is not a political organization,” Steiner said.

Dems urge Steiner to withdraw rule

Democrats expressed sharp disagreement with Steiner and accused him of folding to Trump’s efforts to exercise more control over elections. Steiner answers to the USPS Board of Governors, not the president, and his critics say he is testing the limits of agency independence by complying with the executive order.

Every Senate Democrat, as well as two independents who caucus with the party, on Tuesday signed a letter to Steiner urging him to withdraw the rule. The letter warns that aside from the rule’s legal and constitutional problems, it could impose significant operational burdens on election mail processing systems.

“The proposed regulation demands that the Postal Service set up an entirely new system and database to process and transmit millions of absentee ballots that is secure and accessible to every American election official, just months prior to a general election,” the letter says.

At Wednesday’s hearing, GOP senators mostly steered clear of the mail ballot rule, instead focusing on the official topic, the Postal Service’s finances. But Sen. Bernie Moreno, an Ohio Republican, accused Democrats of hypocrisy over their past support of the “For the People Act.”

The sweeping bill, offered when Democrats last controlled Congress, would have required states to offer same-day voter registration and expand mail voting. Opponents said it amounted to nationalized elections.

“Three years later all of them are testifying, ‘It’s outrageous, President Trump is trying to nationalize elections.’ No, he’s not, he’s trying to get rid of voter fraud,” Moreno said, adding that Democrats had now “dug up from their bottom desk drawer” the Constitution.

“Should we get back to post office stuff now?” Moreno said.

“Absolutely,” Steiner replied.

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Bill would limit federal relocations to states with abortion restrictions

Erich Wagner — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 16:04:48 -0400

Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va., and 26 other House Democrats introduced legislation Wednesday aimed at protecting federal workers’ reproductive rights in the wake of the balkanization of abortion rights across the United States.

Since the Supreme Court issued Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the abortion rights spelled out in Roe v. Wade, in 2022, 13 states have enacted—or revived long-dormant—bans on abortion, while another six have restricted the procedure to between the first six to 12 weeks of gestation.

The Federal Workforce Reproductive Rights Protection Act would bar agencies from relocating their headquarters or at least 5% of their employees to states that have erected or re-implemented abortion restrictions in the last four years. It also would ban the purchase or new leasing of property in the state—only lease renewals for existing or entirely in-person public-serving facilities would be exempt.

The bill also would grant federal employees the chance to opt out of details, relocations or reassignments to states that have restricted or banned abortion; similarly, agencies would not be able to condition a job or promotion on the applicants’ living in or moving to those jurisdictions. The proposal also would bar the government from asking federal workers and job applicants abortion-related questions as part of the security clearance process and bans retaliation against employees and jobseekers who avail themselves of the bill’s protections.

And feds living in states that have restricted abortion would be eligible for both paid administrative leave and transportation allowances to help defray the costs of traveling to a jurisdiction to receive reproductive health care. Shortly after Dobbs was issued in 2022, the Biden administration similarly authorized paid leave for abortion-related travel, albeit under the category of paid sick leave.

In a statement Wednesday, Walkinshaw said that federal workers should not be forced to choose between their career and obtaining reproductive health care.

“Federal workers serve this country in every state and territory, and they deserve to know their employer will protect their health, privacy, and family,” Walkinshaw said. “Since Dobbs, millions of Americans have been forced to navigate a dangerous patchwork of state abortion bans and restrictions. For federal employees, who can be ordered to relocate or accept assignments across the country, that threat is especially real. This bill protects public servants from being punished, pushed out or put at risk because they need lawful reproductive health care.”

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Space Force acquisition nominee faces ethics scrutiny over defense industry ties

Thomas Novelly — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 14:27:36 -0400

A U.S. senator wants a Raytheon executive who was nominated to serve as a top Air Force space acquisition official to commit to impartial and ethical business dealings if confirmed to the post, according to a new letter reviewed by Defense One.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is seeking an ethics pledge from Erich Hernandez-Baquero, Raytheon’s vice president for space intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, according to the letter sent from her office on Tuesday. He was nominated by the White House to serve as the Air Force’s assistant secretary for space acquisition and integration in April. In her letter, Warren asked the former Air Force officer and current defense executive to recuse himself from all matters involving his former employer for four years and not to seek money from a firm tied to the Defense Department for four years after he leaves the role.

“Your relationship with a defense contractor that you served for five years as a senior executive will raise concerns about the appearance of impartiality if you are confirmed in your new role,” she wrote. “In order to address the concerns about your conflicts, I urge you to voluntarily commit to mitigate your conflicts of interest and assure Americans that you will serve in their best interest.”

Hernandez-Baquero could not be reached at multiple numbers listed for him in public records.

Raytheon spokespeople did not return a request for comment.

Warren’s letter is part of her continued crusade against the government-defense revolving door, which ethics watchdogs have warned can lead to self-dealing and conflicts of interest within the Pentagon. She has asked for similar commitments from Lloyd Austin, who became defense secretary after serving on Raytheon’s board, and former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Charles Q. Brown, who joined the Trump-backed drone firm Powerus shortly after being booted from the administration.

A 2023 report from Warren’s office listed roughly 700 former high-ranking defense and government officials who were later hired by the top 20 defense contractors. Federal ethics laws prohibit government employees from being involved in matters that concern their former employers for one year; the laws also prohibit being involved in deals that an employee would financially benefit from.

Warren is seeking a more substantial pledge including “committing not to work for or accept compensation for at least four years from any company that you engage with while serving” after exiting the role.

“While these laws create important guardrails, they fall short of fully addressing conflict of interest concerns: they may still allow government officials to work on matters that could affect their previous employers once a one-year period and full divestiture have passed, and they can be undermined by exemptions,” she wrote. “And they still allow officials to move through the revolving door by accepting senior advisory roles within the defense industry or lobbying DoD.”

Hernandez-Baquero joined Raytheon in 2021 after a 27-year career in the Air Force, according to his LinkedIn page. In April, the defense executive signed an ethics agreement where he agreed that once confirmed he would “forfeit my unvested restricted stock units, unvested performance stock units, and unvested stock appreciation rights” after resigning from the defense contractor.

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Education Department layoffs hindered congressionally mandated activities, inspector general reports

Sean Michael Newhouse — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 17:33:55 -0400

Layoffs at the Education Department during the first two months of President Donald Trump’s second term resulted in the agency being unable to perform legally required activities, according to a report published on Monday by the department’s inspector general.

The watchdog found that many Education suboffices were left without any staffers due to reductions in force and various separation incentives, which hindered the department’s ability to perform dozens of statutory and oversight functions between Jan. 20, 2025, and March 31, 2025.

Some of the impacted activities included:

Overseeing states, nonprofits, lending institutions and servicers that are involved in federal financial aid for postsecondary students.
Managing grants to states for helping youth learn English.
Administering a congressionally mandated program that helps educational institutions acquire excess federal property.
Advising department employees on ethics matters.

The IG said that the department did not provide all requested information or allow “unfettered” access to agency staff, which restricted the investigators’ review. Education’s deputy general counsel, Philip Rosenfelt, said in a letter attached to the report that officials’ compliance was limited by court orders.

“Proceding beyond what had been shared — including information contained in, or outside of, the litigation administrative records — risked prejudicing or interfering with the department’s litigation posture and, critically, and potentially contravening the preliminary injunctions or other orders then in effect,” he wrote.

Education initiated the RIF on March 11, 2025, but the action was blocked by a federal judge in May 2025. The Supreme Court in July 2025, however, ruled that the separations could proceed.

Investigators did not consider the court orders to be a valid reason for the department’s noncompliance, arguing that the IG has “a longstanding history of reviewing and protecting sensitive department information, including materials related to ongoing litigation” and that officials never adequately explained why providing access to documents and staff would violate the preliminary injunction.

In addition, Rosenfelt requested in the letter that investigators include language that “some or all” of the department functions the IG identified as not having any assigned staffers were conducted by other offices or agencies. The IG declined.

“We cannot acknowledge, as requested by the department, that some or all of the responsibilities referenced in the report were fulfilled by the department, other agencies or through other means, as no corroborating evidence has been provided to support the department’s assertion that it has continued to discharge those responsibilities since the RIF,” investigators wrote.

In total, the IG reported that between Jan. 20, 2025, and March 31, 2025, the department, which the Trump administration is seeking to eliminate, shed 40% of its workforce, with around 1,200 due to layoffs and more than 350 from voluntary separations like the deferred resignation program.

Federal workforce data from the Office of Personnel Management shows that Education went from roughly 4,200 employees in 2024 to nearly 2,300 staffers now.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon testified before Congress in April that some of the department’s staff cuts went too far and noted that laid off Office of Civil Rights staffers were asked to return due to case backlogs.

The IG also found that Education, during the report period, terminated 129 contracts worth a total value of $1.3 billion, some of which were for legally required educational studies. And the department canceled 90 grants with total obligations of nearly $504 million. Of those grants, officials identified 153 awards for termination under a program for partnerships to train school-based mental health service providers.

Rachel Gittleman — the president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents Education employees — contended the report “gives the public the fullest picture to date of the devastation McMahon has wrought.”

"This confirms what we've been saying all along: The Trump Administration has been systematically destroying the Education Department,” Gittleman said in a statement.

As part of the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle Education, the department has signed interagency agreements with several other agencies for them to take on various responsibilities, including most recently transferring special education programs to the Health and Human Services Department and civil rights enforcement to the Justice Department.

Education Inspector General

Education’s IG office has experienced significant leadership turnover since the start of Trump’s second term.

The president removed IG Sandra Bruce in January 2025 as part of a mass firing of the watchdogs. Then, in July 2025, he replaced acting IG René Rocque, who is also the office’s deputy, after she notified Congress that investigators had “experienced unreasonable denials and repeated delays” from the department during an investigation into the administration’s workforce reductions.

The replacement’s — Heidi Semann, who comes from the Federal Reserve OIG — tenure as acting ended at the end of 2025 due to time limits on how long officials can serve in an acting capacity. She is, however, Trump’s nominee to serve as Education IG.

Currently, Mark Priebe is the acting Education IG. He previously held a senior position in the office and appears to have shared social media posts supporting the president.

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FAA awards software and AI contract as part of air traffic control modernization

Edward Graham — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 17:26:47 -0400

The Federal Aviation Administration announced on Monday that it awarded Air Space Intelligence a 12-year, $875 million contract for new software and artificial intelligence capabilities, part of the agency’s ambitious effort to modernize the nation’s outdated air traffic control system.

The software company will provide “two complementary, cutting-edge technologies that will improve how flights are scheduled and managed throughout the National Airspace System,” according to the FAA.

These include Flow Management Data and Services, which the agency said will serve as “the new technological backbone” of a modernized Air Traffic Control System Command Center. ASI is also tasked with delivering a Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories — or SMART — system.

In a fact sheet, the agency said “Using AI, SMART analyzes airline schedules, weather, airport capacity, airspace conditions, and operational constraints to predict traffic flows and identify potential conflicts before they occur.”

The FAA said it is hoping to begin initial deployments of SMART as soon as this fall. ASI said it expects both systems to be rolled out over the next 12 to 24 months.

“Every day, our air traffic professionals knowingly manage thousands of scheduling conflicts across the National Airspace System, which ultimately end up as delays for the traveling public,” FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said in a statement. “FMDS with the SMART capabilities will help us address that challenge by improving how we manage airspace before flights depart, reducing congestion, easing controller workload, and directly cutting down delays across the system.”

The contract is a part of the FAA and the Transportation Department’s broader push to upgrade the nation’s air traffic control system.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the launch of the ambitious effort in May 2025, saying at the time that it would entail some brick-and-mortar upgrades but that “everything else that controls the airspace is going to be brand new.” A key part of this effort, he said, will be replacing legacy systems and antiquated technologies with new capabilities, such as a modernized flight management system and updated ground radar systems at U.S. airports.

The initiative’s launch came on the heels of several high-profile air traffic control outages in the last few years, as well as the crash of an Army Black Hawk helicopter and a commercial airliner near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in January 2025 that killed all 67 people on both aircraft.

During an April event held just shy of the modernization effort’s one-year anniversary, Duffy said a few project workstreams were a “little behind,” but added that “for the most part, we’re on track to have this project completed before President [Donald] Trump leaves office.”

The FAA announced in December that it had selected Peraton as the project’s prime integrator to oversee the new Air Traffic Control System contract.

The One Big Beautiful Bill, which Trump signed into law in July 2025, allocated $12.5 billion for the air traffic control modernization effort, although the agency in December called that amount a “down payment” and said at the time that it would need an additional $20 billion for the initiative.

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Inside the Ford White House years that shaped Alan Greenspan’s idea of public service

Simon Bowmaker and Paul Wachtel, The Conversation — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 14:24:15 -0400

Alan Greenspan, who died on June 22, 2026, at the age of 100, is best remembered for his 18 years at the helm of the Federal Reserve. What many people don’t know is that an earlier and more obscure stint during the administration of President Gerald Ford shaped him as a public servant.

As professors of economics, we haven’t just covered Greenspan’s legacy for our students. We also knew him personally, in different capacities: one of us interviewed him in 2016 for a book on public service, and the other was present as a young professor when Greenspan defended his dissertation at New York University in 1977.

To us, one of the most notable aspects of his career was his commitment to public service, cemented while he served as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1974-77 during the Ford administration.

The early years

The younger Greenspan cut a different figure.

He studied clarinet at the Juilliard School and worked as a professional musician while attending New York University in the late 1940s. He was briefly married to Joan Mitchell, a noted abstract expressionist painter who introduced him to the libertarian writer Ayn Rand.

Through the 1950s, Greenspan was part of Rand’s inner circle — which emphasized radical individualism, self-interest and laissez-faire capitalism — while he developed the building blocks for an economics career.

Greenspan later came under criticism for his early association with Rand. But we believe that his approach to economics was essentially practical and fact-based, not ideological.

“You begin with a conceptual framework of cause and effect,” is how he put it in the book interview. “And then you observe reality and try to anticipate what is going to happen in the future, even though you can never see beyond a certain horizon.

“Data are a measure of what is going on in reality,” he continued. “If you want to endeavor to try to lower the probabilities of forecasting mistakes in the future, the more information you have about the structure of the system, the better off you will be.”

After completing his undergraduate degree at NYU, Greenspan moved on to graduate study at Columbia University, one of the preeminent economics departments in the country at the time. But he left academia in 1954 to join a consulting firm while still managing to publish academic work in economics.

One example was a piece that foretold economist James Tobin’s “Q theory of investment,” a tool to estimate whether a business or market is overvalued or undervalued. That insight was prominently noted in Tobin’s Nobel Prize 1981 citation.

Meanwhile, as he built his consulting firm, Greenspan took great pride in its data-based work.

“My reputation was as an economic forecaster of the United States,” he recounted in the book interview. “Through my company, I became an expert in about 15 different industries. I brought to the table types of analysis which no one else had.”

A professional turning point

It wasn’t until 1974 that Greenspan first considered public service.

Arthur Burns, a close adviser to President Richard Nixon who also served as Fed chairman from 1970-78, had mentored Greenspan and prevailed upon him to join the Nixon administration. While he shared the Republican conservatism of the administration, Greenspan had qualms about some of Nixon’s policies, such as the 1971 price and wage controls. He told Nixon’s chief of staff, Al Haig, that he would quit if Nixon went too far.

Greenspan never had to make that call — Nixon resigned before he took up the post — and he went on to lead the Council of Economic Advisers under Ford, advising the president on economic policy.

“It turned out that working for Ford was more interesting than my eighteen-and-a-half years at the Federal Reserve,” he explained in the book interview.

That job turned Greenspan into a dedicated public servant. “I saw Ford three or four times a week for one-on-one meetings,” Greenspan recalled. “I would just do what I did for my clients before I got into the cauldron of politics. And he responded like a regular businessman. We had a very good rapport.”

Ford was an “extraordinary man” who “always acted as though we were equals, which was quite remarkable,” Greenspan added. “I’ve never run into anything like it before or since.”

Era of free markets

Greenspan was called back to public service in 1987 as Fed chair, ultimately serving five consecutive terms under both Democratic and Republican presidents — Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. He cut a commanding presence in policy circles and congressional appearances, carefully using measured language to explain — or, just as often, to avoid explaining — what he chose to share with the public.

His long tenure as chair coincided with increasing U.S. prosperity, when free markets, free trade and deregulation seemed to serve the global economy well. It was also a period of enormous political change with the demise of the Soviet Union and the opening up of China. And central banks rose in prominence and power, as monetary policy replaced fiscal policy as the primary tool of macroeconomics.

Against this backdrop, Greenspan developed a more public role than most central bankers, in part because the new focus on monetary policy demanded it. At the time, he seemed to relish the attention, but later he looked at it differently.

“I did what I had to do, and I made decisions when I had to make them. I could argue with senators when I had to go up to Capitol Hill, and I held my own very well because I knew a lot more than anybody up there,” he said in his 2016 interview. “But it wasn’t an enjoyable function since none of the people were analytical or conceptual. They had opinions without any reasoning.”

A reckoning after the crisis

Greenspan’s obsession with data notwithstanding, it’s sometimes difficult to uncover an analytical framework underlying his approach to macroeconomics — aside from his preference for a very light regulatory hand, particularly in financial markets. But to his credit, he acknowledged the inadequacies of the frameworks that led to the financial crisis in 2008. While the crash happened after his watch, many scholars point to monetary policy under his Fed in the preceding years as a key factor.

“Each of us has a model in our heads; some of them work, and some of them don’t,” he conceded in the 2016 interview. “What you need to measure is continuously evolving. I know that because the Federal Reserve had an extraordinarily good and very sophisticated model, but it did not capture what was wrong that led to the crisis in 2008.”

Greenspan was often accused of excessive self-confidence. But his own description of his role — an introvert and the “side man” in the dance band — might be more accurate. The man who began his career reading scores written by other people in the band ended up with the whole world trying to read him.

Simon Bowmaker, Distinguished Clinical Professor of Economics, New York University and Paul Wachtel, Emeritus Professor of Economics, New York University

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

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Federal acquisition overhaul moves from plan to proposed rules

Nick Wakeman — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 12:21:00 -0400

The government is finally dropping a large batch of proposed rules on Tuesday to formalize changes to the Federal Acquisition Regulation.

Over a year in the making, the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul aims to strip out regulations not mandated by statute and give acquisition teams greater control and flexibility in how they develop, award and manage contracts.

This first set of proposed rules cover four groups of FAR parts. Several more proposed rules remain under review and one of them is FAR Part 19, which governs small business acquisition.

The first proposed rule includes FAR Parts 1, 2, 4, 33, 39, 40, 52, and 53. A second covers parts 5, 24, 29, and 52.

The third covers Parts 3, 49, and 52. A fourth covers Parts 6, 7, 10, 18, 26, 37, 41, and 52. Part 52 is in all four proposed rules because it essentially is the FAR’s clause library.

The government has set a comment window of 30 days, the bare minimum time period. The clock will start ticking when the proposed rules are published.

The FAR parts covered in these four proposed rules span topics including protests, contract terminations, and audits. Many of the changes give contracting officers more discretion by converting mandatory requirements to actions where COs have the option to act or not.

A second example is that agencies will not be required to publicly announce contract awards worth more than $5.5 million. Agencies were previously required to report awards exceeding $4.5 million.

They “may” announce these awards, but are not required to. This will raise concerns about transparency in government operations.

Formerly a blank and reserved section, Part 40 will now house security requirements. The government is consolidating security requirements from other FAR parts into Part 40.

The rule proposes to reorganize security requirements into three subparts in Part 40: processing supply chain risk information, security prohibitions and exclusions, and safeguarding information.

These include controlled, unclassified information and the government’s "Do Not Buy" list that details companies and products that agencies cannot purchase from.

Part 40 also is an attempt to harmonize security requirements.

Another change is the consolidation of market research, formerly Part 10, into Part 7, which governs acquisition planning. A-76 public-private clauses are being deleted completely from Part 7 because Congress placed a moratorium on them in 2008.

Several more proposed rules are expected in the coming months covering the parts of the FAR that most directly shape how contracts are competed and won.

This includes:

Part 8, which governs required sources including the GSA Schedules
Part 12, commercial item acquisitions
Part 13, simplified acquisition procedures
Part 15, the rules governing competitive proposals and source selection
Part 19, small business acquisition

With tight deadlines for the first set of proposed rules, it promises to be a busy summer and fall.

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Congressional Dems demand info on revised workforce survey

Erich Wagner — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 15:29:30 -0400

A group of 23 Democrats in both the House and Senate called on the Trump administration to detail its plans to administer the 2026 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, nearly a year after officials flouted federal law in cancelling it because of needed “transformation.”

Each year, the Office of Personnel Management is required by law to conduct a survey of federal employees’ workplace engagement and morale, with 16 of its questions mandated by federal regulations.

But last year, OPM Director Scott Kupor canceled the survey, citing the need to remove questions to conform with the president’s anti-diversity executive orders and to "refocus” it on performance and efficiency. OPM also scrubbed data and analysis stemming from a series of diversity-related questions added to the survey during the Biden administration and removed most demographic data about federal workers from its workforce data suite FedScope.

In a letter to Kupor last week, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., and Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va., led congressional Democrats in demanding information on when and how OPM intends to relaunch the questionnaire, which has been a key tool for agencies to improve operations and for observers to conduct oversight for decades.

“In 2025, the federal workforce experienced dramatic, and, in many cases, illegal changes,” the lawmakers wrote. “According to OPM’s own data, approximately 317,000 employees left the federal government in 2025. The Pew Research Center noted that the federal workforce decreased by 10.3% in 2025. While the FEVS is critical in any year to fulfill statutory requirements and help improve the civil service, it is deeply concerning that in a year of significant change that this survey was cancelled.”

In an interview with Federal News Network last month, Kupor said his agency is reshaping the survey to focus on “micro level” questions related to employee expectations and efficiency, and has previously touted his agency’s use of quarterly “pulse surveys” to fill in the gaps left by the cancelled FEVS. But unlike FEVS, Kupor’s reporting of the results of those surveys omits the text of the questions asked and the underlying data.

Though FEVS originally was sent to just a sample of employees across the federal government, lagging response rates led OPM to switch to a census model, which solicited all eligible workers’ response, in 2018.

The lawmakers’ letter comes as FEVS’ traditional spring administration window closes—OPM previously postponed FEVS in the fall of 2020 due to disruption caused by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. They asked for the list of questions planned for the 2026 survey, the timeline for its deployment, as well as any changes to how it solicits responses.

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Lawmakers warn acting intelligence chief against major workforce changes

David DiMolfetta — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 15:10:05 -0400

Top Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees warned acting spy chief Bill Pulte on Monday not to use his temporary post to make major changes at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, citing concerns that he could pursue sweeping personnel cuts or politically motivated declassification decisions before a Senate-confirmed director is in place.

In a June 22 letter to Pulte, Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Pulte should not take actions “more appropriately left to a Senate-confirmed Director” and reminded him of his legal obligation to preserve records related to any actions he takes in the role.

The warning comes days after Pulte began serving as acting director of national intelligence following the cancellation of a Senate hearing for Jay Clayton, Trump’s nominee to permanently lead the intelligence community. The delay ensured Pulte would assume the acting role, prolonging a fight that has already complicated bipartisan efforts to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a powerful foreign spying authority that lapsed earlier this month.

Democrats have warned Pulte’s role in the administration’s mortgage fraud reviews last year could foreshadow the use of intelligence tools to pursue the president’s political opponents.

In Monday’s letter, Himes and Warner sharpened that concern, saying Pulte’s record as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency showed “a willingness to misuse your position, including your access to sensitive information,” to pursue Trump’s perceived political enemies.

The lawmakers said they expect Pulte to not declassify information in a way that would compromise intelligence sources and methods or “weaponize the declassification process for partisan political purposes.” They also said any declassification effort should follow established policies and include input from career intelligence officials on the national security risks of releasing classified material.

The letter also directly addresses multiple reports that Pulte could soon fire or place on leave hundreds of ODNI employees. Himes and Warner said they were concerned by those reports and argued that any large workforce reduction would come after substantial downsizing at ODNI already occurred this year.

Pulte could serve in the acting role through August, The New York Times reported Monday, citing an administration official.

“Given your lack of experience within the Intelligence Community, it is difficult to imagine that in such a short amount of time you have already developed fully-informed views as to how to shrink ODNI without incurring risks to national security,” they wrote.

A spokesperson for ODNI didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

The office was created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to improve coordination across the intelligence community. Trump has said he wants Pulte to further downsize the office and continue election-related investigations launched under former DNI Tulsi Gabbard.

Himes and Warner said Pulte should refrain from making significant structural changes to ODNI, including any reduction in force, while serving in an acting capacity and without consulting Congress.

The lawmakers also said Pulte and ODNI employees must preserve records related to declassification, publication or release of classified materials, as well as personnel actions. They said that obligation extends to electronic messages sent through official or personal accounts, text messages, phone-based messaging apps and encrypted software.

They requested that Pulte soon acknowledge the letter and confirm his “full and immediate compliance” with legal records-preservation requirements.

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Pentagon's growing role as an investor draws new scrutiny on Capitol Hill

Lauren C. Williams — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 09:00:00 -0400

The Pentagon office that lends money to weapons developers would be allowed to take equity stakes in private companies deemed critical to national security under draft provisions of the 2027 defense policy bill.

“We have allowed them to take equity in certain sectors. We have, what I think, is a very robust reporting regime and ethics regime, and we are working to reorganize or rationalize equity at the department by co-locating it with the loan authority at the Office of Strategic Capital and leaving the industrial-based fund, IBAS, as a tool for smaller dollar grants…as it's traditionally been used,” a congressional staffer with the Senate Armed Services Committee told reporters last week.

Meanwhile, the defense spending bill passed out of the House Appropriations Committee’s defense panel would give the Office of Strategic Capital $2.16 billion in loan authority and $216 million “to carry out the capital assistance program, including loans, loan guarantees, and technical assistance,” according to legislative language and the bill summary.

The Senate Armed Services Committee passed its version of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act earlier this week to be considered on the Senate floor. It included provisions regarding the Pentagon’s ability to take financial stakes in defense contractors.

Using existing authorities, the Pentagon has already taken equity stakes worth more than a billion dollars in defense-related companies. High-profile examples include taking a $400 million stake in a rare-earths producer last July and a $1 billion stake in L3Harris’ solid rocket motor business in April. The latter drew congressional scrutiny.

The SASC bill does several things with respect to equity investments, according to the bill summary:

Explicitly bestows that power to the Office of Strategic Capital, which facilitates private investment in critical technologies through loans, and creates a “defense equity investment account” in the U.S. Treasury;
Requires congressional notification of debt and equity investments
Mandates the defense secretary to conduct ownership reviews, including “any conflicts of interest before obligating or disbursing any funds for an equity investment;” and
Bars the use of the Pentagon’s industrial-base fund, which is used to address supply chain vulnerabilities, assess and expand the defense industrial base, for equity stakes.

The bill also limits use of the direct equity investment account to fund “critical minerals, materials, and chemicals; and batteries,” and direct equity investments would be limited to 40 percent “of the total amount of all equity investments made to the entity,” according to the text. Investments would also be capped at $500 million.

The bill would also create an Economic Defense Unit, which would meet quarterly and enforce briefing requirements, including the defense secretary’s “ownership review of all companies in which the Department of Defense holds equity” and certification the Pentagon “does not hold, and does not have the option to hold, any seat on the board of directors or any other form of voting representation or control in any entity in which the Department holds equity,” according to the bill’s executive summary.

“We can see some value in this tool. We have differing opinions about how much value,” the SASC staffer said.

Senators on the committee are aiming for a long-lasting solution to match the yearslong challenge of reshoring supply chains and sectors to the U.S.

“Because whether you're talking about critical minerals, batteries, some of these other fundamental sectors where the Chinese have domination—this is going to be a decade-plus long project,” the staffer said.

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VA redesignates LGBTQ+ care coordinators and limits further ‘gender-ideology’ services

Edward Graham — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0400

The Veterans Affairs Department iis moving to further restrict services for LGBTQ+ retired servicemembers, with the dedicated care coordinators for these veterans set to be redesignated as part of a new directive aimed at limiting activities that the agency says conflict with White House mandates.

In a June 12 memo titled “Reiterating Executive Order Compliance Responsibilities” — a copy of which was obtained by Nextgov/FCW — VA said it is prohibiting agency resource allocation that “diverts from merit-based, mission-focused operations.”

The memo was signed by John Bartrum, under secretary for health for the Veterans Health Administration, the VA’s healthcare arm. VHA officials have 14 days to confirm in writing that all noncompliant activities have ceased.

The Advocate first reported news of the directive on Saturday.

This memo says these steps include restricting the use of “VHA funds, official time, facilities or resources” being used for “any activities promoting gender-ideology or gender-identity,” as well as requiring VA facilities to ensure “that local policies, SharePoint sites, communications, websites, and training materials” comply with the presidential directives. Another section says “uniform standards and attire policies” must also comply with the White House guidance.

The most notable change, however, redesignates “LGBTQ+ care coordinators” as simply “care coordinators” who will be “dedicated to facilitating VA health and benefits for all Veterans, regardless of race, color, creed, sex, or sexual orientation,” the memo states.

VA’s website, as of June 18, says that there is an LGBTQ+ care coordinator “in every VA health care system.” These personnel act as care advocates for LGBTQ+ veterans, including by helping them to access programs and services to meet their needs. Roughly one million veterans are estimated to identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender.

Memo expands on previous admin orders

Four current and former VA employees who have worked with LGBTQ+ veterans told Nextgov/FCW they were concerned that the administration’s moves jeopardize the well-being of a community that already experiences higher rates of discrimination and suicidal ideation.

They also cited confusion about the latest memo and previous guidance, noting that there has often been a level of ambiguity when it comes to implementing the administration’s requirements facility-by-facility and how all of these moves will impact VA’s overall LGBTQ+ Health Program.

On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order recognizing male and female as the only two sexes and limiting federal funds from being used “to promote gender ideology,” as well as another order terminating federal government diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

Trump’s gender-focused order previously led to the VA adjusting its policies to comply with the directive, with the department announcing in March 2025 that “it will phase out medical treatments” for transgender veterans. That edict included a carveout for veterans already receiving such care from VA and for those who were “receiving such care from the military as part of and upon their separation from military service and they are eligible for VA health care.”

One current VA employee, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, said LGBTQ+ veterans were already experiencing adverse mental health outcomes from implementation of the administration’s prior orders.

“We've had some challenges with people needing to go to the hospital and being a little less mentally stable because of news and fears of what could happen next, and we've had to develop a lot more support services,” that person said.

VA’s moves, as well as ambiguity over how to effectively implement previous memos, have also frustrated LGBTQ+ care coordinators and even pushed some out the door.

Renae DeLucia worked as an LGBTQ+ care coordinator at the VA Hampton health care system in Virginia before leaving her position last month. She said VA’s previous directives were “a big factor in my decision to quit because I do what I do to help LGBTQ+ veterans, and I felt like I wasn't being able to do the job that I was hired for with all the restrictions in place.”

DeLucia also cited a lack of clarity with previous guidance issued by the department, saying VA would release memos “about how to actually put these things into practice and what is allowed and what is not, and guidance would come out months later.”

“So it was so confusing, and basically it allowed leaders with personal biases to do whatever they wanted,” she added.

Some of that confusion, others have said, also extends to the latest directive.

The current employee noted that the memo gives facilities 30 days to update the job descriptions for the care coordinators at each facility. They said one rumor that previously floated around the workforce last year was that the agency would direct facilities to remove transgender from the acronym and rework the role into more of an LGBQ-focused coordinator.

“I feel like maybe that's what they're trying to do here,” they added, pointing to the memo’s wording that the redesignated roles be for veterans “regardless of race, color, creed, sex, or sexual orientation.”

Several of the current and former VA employees also expressed concern about the future of several LGBTQ+ resources offered by the agency, including the PRIDE in All Who Served health education program. The 10-week closed group session helps to foster an open dialogue between LGBTQ+ veterans.

As of June 18, VA’s LGBT-focused webpage says research shows “that LGBTQ+ Veterans expect to experience discrimination in VHA facilities which may prevent engagement in care;” and that “due to stigma, stress, and discrimination, LGBTQ+ Veterans as a group experience higher rates of several health conditions compared to non-LGBTQ+ Veterans, including higher risk for suicide.”

In an email to Nextgov/FCW, VA Press Secretary Quinn Slaven said the memo is the best source for answering media questions. He also said redesignating LGBTQ+ care coordinators as care coordinators is “the plan, full stop,” and that the memo’s request for officials to confirm within 14 days that any non-compliant activities have ceased also “applies to anything you read on the website.”

Slaven did not address a question about whether the memo’s mention of uniform standards and attire policies was in reference to requiring transgender individuals to dress in clothing that correlates with their genders at birth.

One lawmaker and federal union have already raised concerns about the new memo.

In a statement to Nextgov/FCW, Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif. — ranking member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee — said “the changes this VA is making will degrade care for LGBTQ+ veterans, who have specific health needs that VA has a clinical obligation to meet.”

“Good medicine requires seeing the whole patient: their medical history, their risk factors, the full picture that determines the care they need,” Takano added. “Strip away what a clinician knows about a veteran's history and risks, and you're not treating them equally, you're treating them blind, and you’re putting veterans at risk. Every veteran should be able to walk into a VA, get the care they've earned through their service, and be treated with dignity and respect. Stripping away the tools clinicians use to deliver that care is a disservice to those who served, and I won't stand for it."

The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents VA personnel and other federal employees, also said in a Wednesday press release that the directive is “designed to suppress the rights of veterans within the LGBTQ+ community and the federal employees tasked with ensuring their health and safety.”

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Jim Flyzik helped transform government IT from back-office function to mission enabler

Nick Wakeman — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 07:00:00 -0400

The federal government went through tremendous changes in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

The Clinton Administration’s National Partnership for Reinventing Government to streamline processes and cut bureaucracy was one of them. Then there was the Y2K threat and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

These were large momentous events that became watershed moments and elevated the role of information technology from a back-office function to a mission-enabler.

Jim Flyzik, who died on June 4 at age 72, played a critical role in this transformation as a long-time IT executive at the Treasury Department and one of the government's first chief information officers. He helped stand up the infrastructure for the launch of Homeland Security Department.

Flyzik is being remembered by colleagues and friends for his many accolades and accomplishments and for his character and integrity.

“Jim Flyzik was the rare kind of colleague who quietly made everyone around him better,” said Ira Hobbs, a long-time government executive and former Treasury CIO. “He possessed a beautiful combination of selflessness and dedication.”

Charles Armstrong, another former government CIO, described how Flyzik built his career around hard work, determination, and relationship building.

“During the 1990s, Jim pushed for adoption of the internet in government. He helped leaders from the vice president to the rank-and-file program leader under the value of new technology in terms they could understand,” Armstrong said.

Flyzik’s career also intersected with the passage of the 1996 Clinger-Cohen Act, which created the CIO position across the agencies. That law also led to the formation of the Federal CIO Council and more governmentwide cooperation.

Flyzik was one of the early leaders of the council and was recognized as a proponent of finding common solutions across agencies.

His accolades included being selected for the Federal 100 and Eagle awards given by FCW, now part of NextGov and GovExec.

It is hard to imagine how disconnected government IT was then, but Flyzik was a driving force at the CIO Council that he served as vice chair for.

Flyzik came into his own with the passage of the Clinger-Cohen Act, said Ed Meagher, a former Veterans Affairs Department staffer.

“Many of us post Clinger Cohen CIOs were zealots who wanted to storm the bastions of entrenched resistance to change,” Meagher said. “But Jim was the ultimate pragmatic tactician. He knew how to calm us down and work methodically to get every CIO reporting directly to the secretary of their department.”

Flyzik's ability to speak in a non-threatening way to those entrenched bureaucrats was a key to his success, Meagher said.

“One could count on the monthly council meetings having a packed agenda, be high energy and sprinkled with zingers and humor. And then Jim summing up, "Okay, so this is how things will go down,” said Alan Balutis, a long-time government official and a former senior director and distinguished fellow at Cisco Systems.

“He was a leader in getting the CIO Council up and running, especially making the link between the newly created agency CIOs and the Office of Management and Budget,” said Mark Forman, a former federal CIO. “He was always positive, a person with humor and class.”

Meagher said that it was Flyzik who lured him back into government service to take VA CIO post.

“He was the master of the soft sell,” Meagher said.

While Flyzik was a leader who saw the value of IT and how it can contribute to the mission of government, many of his former colleagues talked about what he meant to them as a person.

“He cared about people both personally and professionally. He taught many of us to think beyond the boundaries that we set for ourselves,” Armstrong said.

Rob Guerra, another former government executive, shared how Flyzik liked to mentor young people. After Flyzik retired from government, he joined a consulting firm that Guerra formed with Phil Kiviat.

“Jim was a very talented and impactful guy,” Guerra said.

“One of our brightest stars went out,” said Bob Woods, a former General Services Administration official. “He was open-minded and a collaborative kind of guy. He knew that you got a better product when you had more people involved.”

After his retirement, Flyzik also joined Tom Trezza as part of the Federal Executive Forum radio program to showcase government leaders who make an impact. Flyzik became the host and moderator.

“I can’t remember a single person who would ever refuse him because of his reputation and the respect for what he accomplished while in government,” Trezza said.

Flyzik’s obituary speaks about his love for his family. His wife Candace and a daughter were by his side when he died June 4 in Myrtle Beach, S.C., with his wife.

A celebration of Flyzik’s life was scheduled for June 19 at the Tower Club in Vienna, Va.

A second celebration of life is set for July 25 in Flyzik’s hometown of Lansdale, Pa., at the Cannoneers Sports Club. That event will run from 3-6 p.m.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made in his name to the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation at pulmonaryfibrosis.org or March of Dimes at marchofdimes.org/dmv.

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Unions urge court to force ruling in ‘loyalty question’ lawsuit

Erich Wagner — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 15:59:19 -0400

A coalition of federal employee unions this week urged a federal appeals court to compel a lower court judge to act upon a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s introduction of essay questions that many say amount to a presidential loyalty test for federal jobseekers.

The American Federation of Government Employees, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the National Association of Government Employees sued the Office of Personnel Management last November after the government’s dedicated HR agency introduced four essay questions to be issued with all federal job postings, including one question asking applicants their favorite Trump policy or executive order.

While OPM has insisted that the essay questions are optional and will not be used to adjudicate hiring decisions, the unions have argued mere presence alone serves to both coerce or chill the speech of federal jobseekers and highlighted evidence that at least in some instances, responses were, in fact, mandatory.

The unions had asked U.S. District Judge George O’Toole, a Clinton appointee in Massachusetts, for a preliminary injunction blocking federal agencies from including the essay questions as part of their job application process. Both parties had filed their legal briefs on the matter by December 10, and a hearing on the unions’ motion was held on March 11.

But since then, the case has ground to a halt. The unions on Monday filed a writ of mandamus with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, requesting the appeals court compel O’Toole to publish a decision on the proposed injunction “promptly.”

In their filing, the unions said that in the time since they first requested the court take action, the deployment of the essay questions has expanded rapidly.

“When the unions filed their complaint, the loyalty question had appeared on over 5,800 job postings on USAjobs.gov, the website operated by OPM that serves as ‘the federal government’s official employment site,’” they wrote. “By the time briefing was completed on the motion, approximately 8,500 jobs had been posted with the loyalty question. On April 27, 2026, the unions informed the court that they had learned, contrary to the government’s representations, that applicants could not skip answering the loyalty question on USAJobs postings. In the same notice, the unions apprised the court that the loyalty question had appeared on over 33,000 job postings.”

As of press time, nearly 48,000 job postings on USAJobs featured the essay questions as part of the application process, according to an online tool that scrapes the various listings on the job site.

“Every day that the [Merit Hiring Plan] is not stayed or enjoined, the unions’ members who are interested in federal jobs face the dilemma of how to respond to this plainly unconstitutional loyalty question—by speaking favorably about the current administration’s policies regardless of the individuals’ own personal convictions; by speaking on political matters (when they would prefer not to speak); by remaining silent when they would prefer to offer their sincerely held views but feel they cannot; or by declining to apply to jobs that include the offending question,” the unions wrote. “In other words, every day, the unions’ members endure irreparable First Amendment injury.”

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Interior’s use of park fee revenue raises questions over federal funding rules

Amelia Twyman, States Newsroom — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 14:00:00 -0400

House and Senate Democrats, mostly from Western states, are demanding transparency from the Interior Department after media reports revealed the Trump administration redirected roughly $90 million in national park fees to help fund renovations and upcoming celebratory displays in Washington, D.C.

The administration’s use of fee revenues to pay for fountain repairs, statue upgrades and fireworks shows in preparation for America’s 250th birthday on July 4 diverts money from national parks in desperate need of billions of dollars in maintenance, lawmakers wrote in two separate early June letters to Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum.

“The public deserves to know how their park fees are being spent, and Congress cannot conduct appropriate oversight without basic information about these transactions,” Rep. Gabe Vasquez of New Mexico and seven other Democratic representatives wrote in their letter, dated June 12.

A group of 11 Senate Democrats, led by Sen. Adam Schiff of California, sent a similar letter to Burgum on June 10.

According to a DOI spokesperson, the National Park Service “has not only been focused on beautifying the district but has also been working on many deferred maintenance projects throughout the country,” pooling money from “endowment funds” and the sale of park passes.

How the funding stream works

The National Park Service, housed within Interior, gets a portion of its funding from entry fees and visitors’ purchases of recreational passes. Under the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act, at least 80% of the fee money must go back to the national park where it is collected.

The remaining 20% is available for overall Park Service use, a policy meant to help support parks that do not charge entry fees or only make a small amount of revenue, according to NPS. Just over 100 parks charge an entrance fee out of the more than 400 that make up the National Park System.

The National Mall in Washington and various memorial sites are part of the group that do not charge visitors to enter, meaning it is legal for DOI to spend leftover revenue on projects in its own backyard.

But the amount the department has allocated to renovations so far this year appears to greatly exceed how much it has put toward maintaining the district’s public spaces in the past, according to Tony Irish, a former Interior senior attorney under Trump and an attorney under earlier presidents who is now senior counsel with the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

Reflecting pool repair

Multiple news outlets, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, reported NPS is using at least $60 million in fees paid by parkgoers to fund the repair of nine ornamental fountains across Washington, D.C.

Documents showed an additional $7 million was redirected to help pay for the renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, while more will be put toward funding a $1.6 million Fourth of July fireworks display.

“While other administrations have let the city fall into decay, President Trump has made Washington, D.C., safe and beautiful again, and we should all be grateful,” the Interior spokesperson said in an emailed statement on June 16.

In their letters to Burgum, lawmakers also demanded clarity on the reported use of revenue from the sale of digital park passes, called America the Beautiful passes, as there is no current law that requires those funds be spent in a specific place.

“Credible sources with direct knowledge of these matters have now reported to Congress that much, if not all, fee revenue from online America the Beautiful passes is being used to fund the President’s ‘beautification’ projects in Washington,” they wrote.

Along with Vasquez, the House letter was signed by Reps. Sarah Elfreth of Maryland, Darren Soto of Florida, Adelita Grijalva of Arizona, Dina Titus and Susie Lee of Nevada, Joe Neguse of Colorado and Jill Tokuda of Hawaii.

Joining Schiff in signing the Senate letter were Sens. Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, Angus King of Maine, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper of Colorado.

Delayed park maintenance

Many critics are pushing back against the Trump administration for not channeling fee funds back into the national parks that need them, including popular travel destinations such as Grand Teton and Yellowstone.

“Last month, I was in Joshua Tree exploring one of our beautiful national parks and was again reminded what a treasured legacy these lands represent,” Schiff said in a June 17 statement to States Newsroom.

“This is just the latest scheme by the President to put himself before the American people, and it will have devastating impacts on parks that millions of people visit every year,” he added.

The National Park System is backlogged with about $24 billion worth of repairs to buildings and infrastructure, according to NPS.

Vasquez said New Mexico’s Carlsbad Caverns National Park “has over $45 million in deferred maintenance” alone.

“The administration is choosing to let roads, trails and wastewater systems in the park fall into disrepair amid the peak summer visitor season so it can paint statues gold in Washington,” he said in a June 15 statement to States Newsroom. “This is unacceptable, and I am demanding action from the Department of the Interior to correct course.”

Irish also said DOI’s current use of fee revenues for D.C.-area renovations could lead to more money being spent in the long run because of the rush to complete some projects, like the $14 million reflecting pool. Completed just at the beginning of June, the reflecting pool has already amassed clumps of green algae.

“Not only are we displacing higher-priority needs right now, but we’re still going to have unmet needs in the future at an additional cost to the taxpayer, the fee payers within that,” Irish said.

Vasquez and his colleagues, in their letter, asked that NPS restore funding to national parks to help preserve them for future generations.

The senators went even further, including a list of detailed questions about park funding in their letter and asking DOI to respond by June 23.

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NSF is using its HQ move to revoke telework for workers with disabilities, employees say

Sean Michael Newhouse — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 13:41:48 -0400

The National Science Foundation is reviewing employees’ reasonable accommodations, as the agency relocates its headquarters to a nearby building. But several employees allege that officials are using the move to revoke telework flexibility for workers with disabilities.

While President Donald Trump ended work from home for most of the federal workforce at the start of his second term, his administration exempted employees with disabilities who telework under a reasonable accommodation. Officials are legally required to provide reasonable accommodations (e.g. accessible technology) to better enable a worker to perform their job, unless doing so would result in an “undue hardship” for the agency.

Nevertheless, employees at several agencies — including now NSF — have contended that the Trump administration is blocking civil servants with disabilities from receiving telework reasonable accommodations.

“There are people with cancer, people who cannot walk and people with major disabilities, and [officials] are telling them that telework will not be an option,” said an NSF employee who preferred to be unnamed due to fears of retaliation.

In employee testimonials provided by American Federation of Government Employees Local 3403, which represents federal research staffers, NSF workers said the officials reviewing reasonable accommodations are offering unclear guidance and pushing alternative accommodations that don’t meet their needs.

One worker said that the experience “created an environment where I no longer felt psychologically safe advocating for my medical needs” due to fears of retaliation or having to leave their job if a reasonable accommodation isn’t granted, while another said their stress level has gone “through the roof” and that they’ve “developed additional symptoms related to [their] disabilities as well as a new physical condition as a result.”

Likewise, a different NSF employee, who said they’ve previously renewed their reasonable accommodation without issue, wrote in a testimonial that the agency HR’s response to emails has been “incredibly delayed,” but workers are required to fulfill requests for additional information with “fast turn arounds.”

Agency employees are particularly perplexed by the apparent crackdown on telework, as most of them are currently working from home due to the headquarters move. The Housing and Urban Development Department began transferring its workforce to NSF’s former headquarters in Alexandria, Va., this spring.

NSF is in the process of moving to a building that is close to its old headquarters, and the agency employee said the expectation is that workers will start working from that office in a staggered schedule over the summer.

An NSF spokesperson said in a statement to Government Executive that the agency “prioritizes the health and safety of its staff and remains committed to fulfilling all legal obligations under the Rehabilitation Act. Exercising due diligence, NSF continues to implement the reasonable accommodation process and assess the new workplace environment while most of its staff are teleworking during the transition to its new headquarters.”

The agency did not address a question about the schedule of the relocation.

The NSF employee said that the scrutiny of reasonable accommodations is worsening morale at the agency, which has also been impacted by the Trump’s administration’s staff reductions and changes to the grantmaking process.

NSF’s workforce went from around 1,700 employees in 2024 to just under 1,150 in 2026, according to federal workforce data. And the Office of Management and Budget recently proposed overhauling the federal grantmaking process, including by requiring political appointees to approve awards to ensure they advance the president’s priorities.

“[These are] the foremost scientists and administrators in the country, who for decades have ensured that not a penny of taxpayer money is wasted, and [they’re] now being collapsed and attacked by a bunch of folks who have no scientific training,” the NSF employee said.

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HHS plans AI pilot for employees who need more than chatbots

Alexandra Kelley — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0400

The Department of Health and Human Services is seeking industry feedback on the formation of a short-term, fixed-price pilot program to inform how the agency can best employ artificial intelligence solutions across the enterprise, focusing on tools that go beyond the basic chat and summarization technologies.

In a Request for Information published on June 8, HHS is focusing on how to implement an AI product that can cater to the department’s “power users,” or individuals that leverage advanced functions in technologies and systems. The goal is for HHS to empower these users to explore advanced AI models and capabilities to see how they can acclimate to and accelerate HHS workflows.

“HHS needs to observe how power users utilize advanced AI capabilities, how those capabilities map to HHS mission workflows, what guardrails and administrative controls are necessary, what can be enabled immediately, what requires configuration or integration, and what requires additional security, privacy, records, accessibility, or authorization work before enterprise scaling,” the draft RFI reads.

HHS specifies the need for a fixed-price contract that offers “inclusive, all-you-can-eat-style access bundles” to try a variety of solutions for power users. This approach is intended to help the agency determine baseline power-user AI usage, along with an operational methodology that works for the agency as a whole.

The pilot will also examine what advanced AI models and their features will require customization to work effectively with agency workloads; how to establish security and authorization logic; and ways to contribute to a shared operational AI use framework for HHS. Specific capabilities HHS wants its power users to access and investigate include premium reasoning, long context, agentic-capable models and more.

“The pilot is intended to generate operational evidence that cannot be obtained from paper market research alone,” the RFI reads. “HHS needs to observe how power users utilize advanced AI capabilities, how those capabilities map to HHS mission workflows, what guardrails and administrative controls are necessary…and what requires additional security, privacy, records, accessibility, or authorization work before enterprise scaling.”

As the pilot begins, the RFI states that the chosen model may be accessed by up to 1,000 authorized, portable HHS power users, but includes an option to scale access to up to 10,000 power users within the agency, depending on what the developer offers.

HHS’s endeavors follow the workforce reductions at the agency that were part of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency efforts to reduce bureaucratic bloat and backlog. In May, the agency experienced more layoffs and also began undergoing job reclassifications that would shift which positions have civil service job protections and which can be more easily terminated.

In light of the staff reductions, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in April that the agency intends to hire 12,000 employees in an effort to “rightsize” the agency.

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AI skills are becoming part of the hiring baseline at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency

Thomas Novelly — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 07:00:00 -0400

As the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency rebuilds its workforce after last year’s DOGE cuts, job applicants need to bring some AI proficiency, the agency’s associate operations director said Tuesday.

“We're hiring now, and every single new person we hire has to prove some capability of AI and data management,” Navy Rear Adm. Michael Baker said at the Defense One Tech Summit. “Every single new hire has to go through AI and data management training.”

It’s not just the new employees, Baker said: “Every single old hire has to go through AI training and data management so that all of us are operating inside of the reality of what this ecosystem is.”

NGA leaders have grand visions for weaving AI into the agency’s operations. For example, officials are exploring its use for human resources tasks, a move Baker said would take “the burden off of the operator.” (Recently, a deputy director of human development at NGA expressed fears that employees would get so dependent on AI that their skills would atrophy.)

Baker said he uses an AI agent at work.

“And a real ideal is, in the future, that agent is also helping to train me.” Baker said. “We're working together as we go back and forth to think through a problem. That's been the power of, really, this agentic AI, generative capabilities that you can have as you're thinking through things … In the past, maybe you are using the machine to help you understand history. We're moving to the place where I'm using the machine to help me try to predict and understand the future.”

The Navy admiral said AI agents might eventually be used for high-level strategic planning, and said it could be used to navigate the “insatiable requirements that the intelligence community” demands when calculating risk.

Baker said it’s a balancing act when adopting that technology, and said he wants the agency to rapidly innovate but also wants to be mindful of security and avoid “chaos.”

“That is the complex pace that we're in,” Baker said. “That's a really hard challenge for leaders, but it's a pretty fun space to be in.”

NGA currently has about 14,500 civilian, military and contract employees, according to its website. It’s not clear how many people left in the Trump administration’s rush to reduce intelligence-community headcount by thousands of workers last year. Employment figures for the community’s largest agencies are classified, Reuters has reported.

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In rare move, full appeals court agrees to hear case challenging Trump’s ‘Article II’ firings

Erich Wagner — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 17:22:53 -0400

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Wednesday granted two former Justice Department employees’ request to expedite the appeal of their 2025 firings, which the Trump administration has argued were exempt from civil service rules.

Megan Jackler and Brandon Jaroch were removed from their positions as immigration judges last year, with Article II of the Constitution cited as the sole justification for their termination. An administrative law judge overturned both employees’ firings, but in March, the Merit Systems Protection Board reversed that decision, in the process relinquishing jurisdiction over cases in which federal agencies cite constitutional authority to justify an adverse personnel action.

MSPB’s decision, upending decades of precedent, found that inferior officers, like federal immigration judges, may be removed at-will, provided their responsibilities do not exceed “limited duties and no policymaking.” That ruling came after the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion arguing that the quasi-judicial body is “obligated” to consider agencies’ constitutional claims during adverse action appeals.

But attorneys for Jackler and Jaroch, who appealed MSPB’s ruling directly to the Federal Circuit, said the decision misconstrues a description of inferior officers in a Supreme Court case involving removal protections for principal officers for a distinction creating two tiers of inferior officer—some whose responsibilities are limited and for whom removal protections are legal and others whose duties exceed that threshold and may be removed at will.

The former immigration judges appealed MSPB’s decision directly to the Federal Circuit court and requested that the entire court hear the case, rather than the traditional three-judge panel. Appellate courts rarely grant such requests—the last instance in recent memory was when the same court agreed to hear legal challenges to President Trump’s International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariffs, which the Supreme Court ultimately invalidated earlier this year.

“The petition and response were referred to the circuit judges in regular active service,” the court’s order states. “A poll was requested and taken, and the court decided that the petition for review warrants en banc consideration.”

Since Trump returned to office last year, hundreds of Justice Department workers have been subject to so-called “Article II firings,” including immigration judges, employees previously assigned to cases investigating the president and prosecutors who worked on January 6 cases. The immigration judges’ appeal has attracted support from federal employee unions, Democratic lawmakers, as well as a professional association representing MSPB workers, who all have filed friend-of-the-court briefs.

In a statement Wednesday, Nathaniel Zelinsky, an attorney with the Washington Litigation Group representing the fired feds, applauded the court’s ruling.

“The Federal Circuit’s decision to hear this case en banc indicates how important this appeal is,” he said. “The government has asserted a constitutional right to neuter the laws that protect our nation’s public servants from abuse and discrimination. That is as legally wrong as it is deeply unjust. We look forward to arguing this matter before the full court of appeals.”

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