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IRS and Social Security bar employees from taking advanced leave

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Pulte announces 30% ODNI staff reduction hours before Clayton vote

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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As presidents gain power, who keeps government accountable?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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AI's growing role in rulemaking raises new transparency questions

Sean Michael Newhouse — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 17:31:10 -0400

While lawmakers are debating what an appropriate regulatory framework for artificial intelligence should be, experts who spoke at a panel on Monday noted that federal employees have been using the technology for years to develop all sorts of regulations.

Cary Coglianese, a regulation professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said that agencies, for example, have been using AI to analyze thousands of public comments that some proposed rules receive.

“Back in the day, contractors would literally photocopy comments, clip them out and sort them in different categories — and do what essentially natural language processing tools can do now so quickly and rather effectively,” he said.

But as the technology advances, speakers on the panel — which was sponsored by the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards, a left-leaning group of more than 220 regulatory-focused organizations — argued that AI could take over more steps in the rulemaking process, potentially supercharging the Trump administration’s efforts to slash regulations and downsize the federal government.

“I worry a great deal that when you have a government and policymakers basically out to destroy huge portions of the public sector, wholesale implementation of AI will provide them a social veneer just to do that rather than using technology in more positive ways to improve the quality and breadth of public services,” said Ben Zipperer, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.

There are higher stakes for federal agencies compared with private companies when it comes to AI implementation, Zipperer contended, because improper usage could lead to individuals losing their benefits or shaky legal justifications for government actions. Unlike in the private sector, however, the economist emphasized that there isn’t a market factor in government to push back on poor AI implementation.

“A private sector company could replace all their workers with AI, but then their product quality would probably suffer, and they'll lose sales. But there's no profitability check on the public sector,” he said. “So if the public sector uses AI as a way or an excuse to make public servants' jobs worse or to cut public services, there's not a non-political check on that, and public services just suffer.”

There already are high-profile examples of the Trump administration using AI in its cost-cutting initiatives. Department of Government Efficiency staffers in 2025 prompted ChatGPT to assess National Endowment for the Humanities grants and respond in fewer than 120 characters whether they fall under diversity, equity and inclusion programs that officials were targeting for elimination.

Based on that incident, which came to light due to a lawsuit over the canceled grants, Jonathan Walter, a senior policy counsel at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, warned that officials could use AI to shut out public feedback they object to on proposed rules.

“It would have been just as easy for them to say, ‘Hey, we're just going to delete or ignore any comment with any mention of race or disparate impact or gender or whatever protected class might have a stake in a rulemaking,’” he said. “Then, there are all of the different downstream consequences that stem from that. It could be that the final rule happens to ignore certain anti-discrimination laws. It might not reflect the amount of participation from a certain group.”

J.B. Branch, a technology expert at Public Citizen, added that he’s worried about which AI systems feds may use — specifically calling out Grok, which has been criticized for generating racist comments as well as responses that are aligned with the opinions of its creator, former DOGE head Elon Musk.

“If someone in the federal government is using Grok, there is a deep concern that whatever output it's providing could be a potentially very biased output,” he said.

Last year, the president signed an executive order that directed agencies to procure “ideologically neutral” and “truth-seeking” AI that is not “woke.”

The Trump administration is pursuing many deregulatory actions, with officials writing in their 2026 regulatory plan that they will “achieve extraordinary cost savings for Americans” and “promote liberty, unleash American energy dominance, preserve products consumers love and eradicate the ideology of [DEI].”

But Lauren McFerran, the executive director of the AFL-CIO Tech Institute, cautioned that an overreliance on AI during the deregulatory process could result in increased judicial scrutiny rather than more rules being cut.

“A court is going to be looking at whether [the agency has] made a rational and supportable connection between the evidence and their reasoning and the ultimate decision. When you get to the more advanced [AI] systems, they're learning from their own processes,” she said. “That creates — the term that tends to be used is a black box. You don't really necessarily know what steps the product undertook to get to certain outcomes, and I think that could be potentially problematic for a court that's trying to review whether the agency, in fact, engaged in the reasonable decision-making process that it was supposed to.”

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Government service delivery needs standard definitions, former government tech leaders say

Christian Robles — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 16:33:23 -0400

Tech Viaduct, a group of technologists and public servants drafting a day one playbook for the next administration, is urging Congress to standardize the definition of common terms — such as disability, homelessness and income — to make government service delivery more efficient.

“Simplifying definitions is necessary and the sensible first step to making technological solutions possible. The next administration should come prepared with legislation that would simplify the laws governing the safety net,” the Tech Viaduct paper reads.

With standard definitions, creating software that can serve as a single front door for government benefits becomes possible, Arabella Crawford, a former U.S. Digital Service employee and paper co-author, told Nextgov/FCW.

The paper, which is the first Tech Viaduct has released since the project launched in January, details how federal and state agencies rely on vastly different definitions for disability, homelessness and income. Those differences, dubbed “administrative homographs,” mean “Americans miss out on benefits they are eligible to receive while agencies are forced to be less efficient,” the paper claims.

For example, the paper notes that the the Department of Housing and Urban Development defines homelessness as “an individual or family who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence” and includes people who stay in places not meant for habitation.

But the Department of Education uses a similar definition for homeless children while also counting people sharing housing due to hardship, living in motels, camping and similar circumstances as homeless.

In practical terms, the discrepancy means that a couch-surfing veteran staying at a friend’s house would not be considered homeless under HUD’s definition but their children staying at the same place would be considered homeless under Education’s definition, the paper explains.

A community-based service organization tasked with supporting the veteran and their children would then have to “track and differentiate its services based on these separate definitions. This level of complexity impedes the efficiency and scope of service delivery when Americans need assistance most,” the paper claims.

Further adding to the complexity is that foster care systems and the federal Runaway and Homeless Youth Act rely on additional definitions of homelessness, the paper adds.

Similar complexities exist between SNAP, Medicaid, Section 8 housing and other programs, which all count income in different ways. The result of those differences is that income data collected for one program likely does not apply to another program even though both try to support the same population.

Congress should reconcile differences with legislation that mandates and provides “funding to develop a common glossary of federally regulated definitions across programs, highlight when these terms differ, and provide guidance on how to reconcile the differences,” the paper urges.

“Even if Congress can’t decide on a single common definition for terms, lawmakers should consolidate where they can and ensure differences are clearly defined and straightforward for agencies to reconcile. In tandem, Congress should instruct the Office of Management and Budget to harmonize program definitions and map out where they conflict in order to identify further changes needed to reduce administrative burden,” the paper adds.

Tech Viaduct is working on additional papers and resources around government procurement, workforce and data management, Christopher Whitaker, paper co-author and executive director of the Alliance of Civic Technologists, told Nextgov/FCW.

Technologists who previously served in the federal government started Tech Viaduct earlier this year, in part as a reaction to the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency.

The group, which is a project of the Democratic think tank Searchlight Institute, wants the next “friendly administration” to adopt plans to make tech-enabled government service delivery thrive, Nextgov/FCW previously reported. Those plans will include structural reform objectives, day-one executive orders, memoranda and more.

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As USDA relocation deadlines near, employees say questions remain unanswered

Jory Heckman — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 10:55:53 -0400

Updated at 4:39 p.m. ET

The Agriculture Department is still sending relocation notices to employees on a rolling basis, despite a lawsuit seeking to put these plans on hold.

Employees also say the department has yet to answer key questions related to these upcoming moves, even as deadlines quicly approach.

USDA is asking thousands of employees to relocate across the country, as part of sweeping reorganization plans it began unveiling last year.

Employees across USDA’s component agencies have been getting relocation notices over the past few months, and must decide this summer whether they will accept relocation or leave their jobs. Staff who opt into the relocation generally must report to their new offices by September or October.

USDA announced last summer that it would relocate more than half of its Washington, D.C.-based headquarters employees out to five regional hubs across the country. It expanded its relocation plans to include many of its subcomponent agencies this spring. The department put part of its headquarters complex up for sale.

Department leaders have repeatedly claimed that most employees who get relocation notices will move to keep their jobs. But in its April 2025 Agency RIF and Reorganization Plan, recently made public by plaintiffs in a lawsuit, USDA states that a “significant number” of employees are not expected to relocate.

In this internal document, USDA planned to cut its total workforce by at least 23%, or by 31% when considering its public safety and inspection workforce.

USDA keeps relocation plans moving despite lawsuit

The Supreme Court ruled last summer that the Trump administration has sweeping authority to shrink the federal workforce through firings and layoffs. But unions and nonprofits leading the lawsuit argue that USDA’s actions “directly conflict” with spending bills passed by Congress that prohibit USDA from carrying out reorganization plans without the approval of lawmakers. They’re seeking a preliminary injunction from a federal judge that would temporarily block USDA’s relocation plans.

Mary Pletcher Rice, USDA’s acting principal deputy assistant secretary for administration, told the court on Friday that the department’s ARRP “does not reflect USDA’s current plans.” Under an agency staffing plan last updated in February, USDA forecasts a “modest increase in staffing,” and seeks to hire nearly 16,000 employees in fiscal 2026.

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California is scheduled to hold a hearing on Sept. 1 on whether to grant the injunction. Despite this upcoming court date, USDA is continuing to send out relocation notices to employees at its component agencies.

Employees say they're making decisions without answers

In a notice reviewed by Government Executive, USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service recently told employees that relocation notices will go out to headquarters staff by July 31 and state staff by Aug. 14.

“NRCS leadership is committed to a transparent process, ensuring fairness, dignity, and respect for all employees. Personnel actions will be executed in accordance with federal merit requirements,” NRCS Chief Colton Buckley wrote in the notice.

Employees at the Food Safety and Inspection Service, which is relocating about two-thirds of its D.C.-area workforce to “mission-critical locations,” were told last month they must decide whether to relocate or quit their jobs by June 30.

Employees at the National Institute of Food and Agriculture also received their relocation notices last month. Non-bargaining unit employees got their notices weeks before those with union representation.

A NIFA employee told Government Executive that her relocation notice states she must decide whether or not she will relocate by July 29, but major questions about the possible move remain unanswered.

“This whole relocation has been marked with pervasive disorganization,” the NIFA employee said. “We’ve been asking about the injunction and if we should still be trying to sell our houses [and] commit funds to moving, but have been told the agency is moving ahead ‘business as usual.’”

Employees will be partially compensated for relocation expenses through the department’s new “lump sum” reimbursement model. Unions say the new reimbursement model is less generous than what USDA offered to employees who relocated under the first Trump administration, and could mean some employees end up spending thousands of dollars out of pocket in moving costs.

If employees opt into USDA’s “management-directed relocation," they receive an automated email that directs them to follow up with their supervisor on next steps. But the NIFA employee said those supervisors don’t have more details to offer, and that staff are running around in circles to get answers.

“The employee reaches out to their supervisor, who has no idea what’s next. The employee gets referred back to the MDR letter, which says someone will reach out. We end up with employees asking each other, ‘How do I talk to a relocation specialist? How does this work? What did you do?’” she said.

USDA officials have said in meetings that the department will roll out a process for employees to request a hardship exemption from relocation. USDA also told employees that there will be a process to review reasonable accommodations that would prevent employees with disabilities or medical conditions from relocating.

According to the NIFA employee, however, that process hasn’t been finalized yet, and USDA officials were surprised to hear in meetings that employees were already being denied relocation exemptions.

“The MOU mentions the ability to appeal, but folks have been told in their hardship denials that there is no appeals process,” the NIFA employee said.

A USDA spokesperson declined to comment, citing pending litigation.

Unions warn relocations could deepen staffing losses

USDA shrank its workforce by about 20,000 employees largely through voluntary separation incentives last year – about a fifth of its total workforce.

Department leaders say the upcoming relocations are meant to bring its employees closer to the farmers, ranchers and other customers that they serve. But about 90% of USDA’s workforce is already outside of the D.C. metro area.

Genny Kotyk, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees’ Forest Service Council, said in a virtual briefing last Thursday that the Forest Service is still issuing relocation notices.

“This week alone, some of our senior level staff are getting their notices, that they're going to have to make a decision about moving or resigning. That's happening in real time right now,” Kotyk said.

Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz told lawmakers that about 500 Forest employees are being asked to relocate as the agency moves its headquarters to Salt Lake City. The agency sent notices to 6,500 employees telling them that they could possibly be impacted by the agency’s relocation plans, but later said not all employees who received notices will be impacted.

Kotyk said that in an internal poll conducted by the union, only 7% of the 3,000 employees who responded said they would relocate if asked. About 40% of those 3,000 employees have some level of qualification that allows them to respond to wildland fires when needed.

“Potentially, that could be 93% of those 6,500 walking out the door along with those fire qualifications,” she said.

Chearice Vaughn, a financial and business loan specialist with USDA’s Rural Development mission area and president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Local 3870, said she is one of about 45 employees who recently received relocation notices to move from D.C. to Dallas.

“Relocating us hundreds of miles away doesn't make the work better,” Vaughn said. “It just adds moving costs, resignations, and lost expertise. That's not good government. That's a waste of taxpayer dollars to solve a problem that does not exist.”

Some agencies expect especially steep losses

According to Vaughn, 64% of impacted employees said in internal polling that they would not move to keep their jobs. Nearly all of them said they would stay in their jobs if they didn’t have to relocate to Texas.

Rural Development employees asked to relocate work for the Rural Utility Service and the Rural Business-Cooperative Service. These offices process loans and grants that fund rural water towers, broadband lines, electric co-ops and small businesses.

“It's a forced choice: Uproot your entire life, or leave federal service,” Vaughn said. “When a loan specialist with 30 years of underwriting experience walks out that door, that vacancy doesn't get refilled overnight. That's an active loan file that stalls, a water project that waits another year, a rural business loan that doesn't close in time to save the jobs that it was meant to create.”

Vaughn said that of the 45 employees asked to relocate, 86% are people of color, 72% are women, 90% are over the age of 40, and half have an approved reasonable accommodation on file.

“Whatever the intent behind this policy, the impact is falling overwhelmingly on Black women, older workers, and people with disabilities,” she said.

Some USDA components might see more severe staffing cuts than others. USDA's ARRP calls for cutting the Food and Nutrition Service’s workforce by at least 46% and directs FNS to “deemphasize the food stamp program,” referring to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

FNS lost about a third of its staffing last year, shrinking its more than 1,700-employee workforce down to less than 1,200 employees.

Officials and former leaders question the impact

Former FNS Administrator Cindy Long said FNS has always been a “leanly staffed organization relative to its massive responsibilities,” but would likely see further workforce attrition amid USDA’s relocation plans.

“Employees and the public have virtually no detail on how the new organization is supposed to operate and how it's expected to improve program operations,” Long said.

Two FNS employees told Government Executive that staff haven’t yet received notices to relocate to regional “hubs” across the country, but have gotten notices to move out of their Alexandria, Virginia headquarters and move to the George Washington Carver Center in Beltsville, Maryland and the Yates Building in downtown D.C.

USDA agencies saw major staffing losses when it relocated hundreds of D.C.-based employees to Kansas City under the first Trump administration — a much smaller-scale plan than what USDA is proposing under the second Trump term.

The Government Accountability Office found the vast majority of employees at the Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture quit rather than relocate to Kansas City in 2019.

“The relocation of USDA agencies under Secretary [Sonny] Purdue, resulted in enormous staffing losses,” Bernie Kluger, a former senior advisor for management in USDA’s Office of the Secretary, now managing director of Prospect Partners, LLC, told Government Executive. Kluger said that this time around, “it would be safe to assume that the numbers would be comparable.”

GAO found that ERS and NIFA dealt with major staffing losses and saw substantial decreases in productivity. According to GAO, it took both agencies about two years to recover from those staffing losses. Even then, the watchdog agency says ERS and NIFA staff are now less experienced and less diverse.

“USDA already ran this experiment on our own agencies in 2019, and the results are sitting in the government's own audit,” said Laura Dodson, the vice president of AFGE Local 3403, which represents employees at ERS and NIFA.

The National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 226, which represents FNS employees, says more than 80% of staff who took an internal survey claim they will not relocate to keep their jobs. The American Federation of Government Employees Local 3403, which represents USDA researchers, said it expects to see similar results.

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Suit alleges DHS targeted people observing and protesting immigration agents

Jacob Fischler, States Newsroom — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 10:26:39 -0400

Three people who observed federal immigration enforcement during the Trump administration’s sometimes-violent surge said in a federal lawsuit filed Friday that the Homeland Security Department illegally recorded them and revoked their status in the department’s trusted traveler programs.

The suit, filed in the Southern District of California, says the administration violated a federal privacy law, administrative law and the First Amendment by targeting people who observed and protested aggressive immigration enforcement, including during the deadly operation in Minneapolis in January.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a legal group that advocates for privacy issues related to technology, is also a plaintiff in the case.

Amid a nationwide surge of immigration enforcement that has included federal agents shooting and killing protesters, observers and immigrants, opponents “did what anyone is supposed to do when they disagree with government action: They exercised their First Amendment rights” by assembling, protesting and recording DHS agents’ activity in public, the suit says.

“In response, DHS decided to record the Americans who were peacefully observing its agents,” the suit says.

Officers with the DHS agencies Immigration and Customs Protection and Border Patrol killed two observers, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis in incidents 17 days apart in January.

"Driven home by ICE"

ICE and Border Patrol agents used facial recognition technology, license plate readers and other technology to identify protesters and observers. The agents would then use that information in efforts to intimidate and retaliate against protesters, the suit says.

Federal immigration officers addressed many legal observers by name, despite having never spoken to them. In Minnesota, legal observers tailing DHS agents in a car would commonly be led back to their own home addresses, according to the suit.

“The experience … is so widespread that Minnesota residents have coined a term for it: being ‘driven home by ICE,’” the suit said.

The practice shows that DHS is no longer following its own 2023 policy on facial recognition, the suit says. The department quietly removed the policy from its website — omitting it even from a set of archived pages — during President Donald Trump’s first month back in office, the suit says.

The complaint argues that amounted to a policy change, which DHS did not conduct through the process agencies must follow under the Administrative Procedure Act.

The department also retaliated against protesters and observers by revoking their status in DHS trusted traveler programs TSA Precheck and Global Entry, the suit says.

Nicole Cleland, a Minnesota woman who is one of the individual plaintiffs in the suit, said Global Entry status was revoked three days after an encounter with a Border Patrol agent whom she was following at a safe distance, according to the suit.

Chilling rights

The suit alleges DHS’ actions have had a chilling effect on First Amendment-protected activity.

Cleland has stopped observing DHS operations for fear of further retaliation, according to the suit.

The two other individuals who brought the suit, Jacquelyn Ivey of South Carolina and Anna Walker of California, said they experienced “fear, anxiety and emotional distress” following their interactions with DHS officers.

The suit also mentions activity in Maine, North Carolina and Chicago.

DHS response

In response to a request to DHS for comment, a spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection, which administers Global Entry, said trusted traveler status can be denied for “inability to demonstrate low-risk traveler status.”

“Global Entry or other CBP Trusted Traveler Program memberships are not revoked because someone exercises their First Amendment rights,” the spokesperson wrote. “Membership may be denied or revoked for reasons such as criminal activity (including pending charges or warrants), violations of customs or immigration laws, or inability to demonstrate low-risk traveler status.”

The spokesperson added that travelers whose Global Entry is denied or revoked can ask for additional review. A Global Entry ombudsman provides “additional oversight” of some cases, the spokesperson said.

A denial of Global Entry is not an impediment to travel, they wrote.

DHS did not respond to questions about its policies for recording or using facial recognition on observers.

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Federal employees say they’ll quit if they have to move to New Jersey

Fariha Rahman — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 17:03:47 -0400

What brings Democratic congressional nominee Brad Lander, Republican Rep. Mike Lawler and the majority of New York’s downstate congressional delegation together? A niche labor protest over the Trump administration’s attempt to move federal workers out of New York City.

The International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) Local 98, representing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ New York District and North Atlantic Division employees, rallied outside 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan on Thursday, protesting the proposed relocation of their offices to New Jersey. New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin and Lander were among those who joined in person, while Mayor Zohran Mamdani sent a statement in support, calling on the federal government to keep the employees in New York. Members of both the Democratic and Republican New York congressional delegations have sent letters to the Trump administration urging them to reconsider the move.

Employees say they were not consulted on the decision to move offices out of New York City. The plan would move approximately 465 employees from the New York District office in Manhattan and the North Atlantic Division office in Brooklyn to a new proposed headquarters – likely in Newark, Hoboken or Jersey City – in an effort they say is aimed at reducing costs.

Critics of the planned move say it’s unfair and expressed concerns about depleting the workforce. When surveyed by the union, 45% of New York-based employees said they would leave their position if the office was relocated to New Jersey. Union members also claimed that this move would disproportionately impact women employees.

“We know that this issue disproportionately is affecting women when you talk about the additional costs that the workers would have to face,” Menin said Thursday. “We’re talking about childcare costs. We’re talking about extra transit costs. We have a situation where both Democrats and Republicans in Congress are opposed to this move.”

A lease for the new headquarters has not been signed yet according to Daniel Kim, president of IFPTE Local 98. An initial planned move for management into the new office is scheduled for Aug. 15 but the lease must be signed by July 31 to meet a 14-day requirement in accordance with the Congressional Review Act.

In a statement to City & State, a spokesperson for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers confirmed that no lease has been signed yet. “The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has an ongoing responsibility to review its facilities and operational footprint to ensure the effective stewardship of taxpayer money,” said spokesperson Hector Mosley. He added they are “committed to ensuring there will be no impact on mission execution.”

Lander blamed President Donald Trump, claiming the move is aimed not at saving money but at weakening the Army Corps of Engineers.

“Their thought is that if they move it across the river, many people won’t stay in their jobs because they can’t manage a life of longer commuting, and they think some people will leave the agency,” he said. “Since they started with (the Department of Governmental Efficiency) they have been looking for a weaker, smaller federal government where they try to bust the labor unions, where they try to weaken the capacity of the essential services that Americans rely on, and we’ve seen that in agency after agency.”

A White House spokesperson referred City & State back to the Army Corps of Engineers when asked about Lander’s comments.

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Bill aims to end blocked congressional access at federal buildings

Sean Michael Newhouse — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 14:19:58 -0400

House Democrats on Wednesday introduced legislation that would require agencies to provide members of Congress with greater access to government facilities for oversight purposes.

“I have personally been denied access to [U.S. Agency for International Development], the U.S. Institute of Peace, a public meeting at the Department of the Interior and repeatedly delayed in conducting oversight at [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] facilities,” said Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., the bill’s sponsor, in a statement. “All of these were clear examples of the Trump administration’s deliberate and repeated efforts to deny, delay or obstruct congressional oversight of the executive branch.”

Specifically, the Congressional Oversight and Agency Access Act (H.R. 9835) would grant members of Congress and accompanying staffers access to any “public building” during regular business hours. Agencies would be mandated to provide access outside of those hours and, if certain conditions are met, to areas that require a security clearance within 24 hours after a lawmaker’s request.

The bill’s requirements would apply even during a presidentially declared emergency or Health and Human Services Department-designed public health emergency. And the definition of “public building” in the bill includes contractor-owned and -operated facilities.

The measure’s introduction comes during a legal battle over a requirement from the Homeland Security Department, which is spearheading increased deportations, for a seven-day notice before congressional oversight visits at immigration detention facilities. In March, a district judge issued a preliminary injunction temporarily blocking the policy. The Trump administration then sought an emergency stay, which was rejected by an appeals court.

Earlier this year, in defense of the seven-day notice requirement, former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem wrote that “unannounced visits require pulling ICE officers away from their normal duties” and that “there is an increasing trend of replacing legitimate oversight activities with circus-like publicity stunts.”

Beyer’s bill is cosponsored by eight other House Democrats and the Project on Government Oversight.

“Congress cannot fulfill its constitutional oversight responsibilities if members of Congress are denied access to the very agencies they are charged with overseeing,” the nonprofit said in a statement. “The Congressional Oversight and Agency Access Act reaffirms Congress’s authority to conduct meaningful oversight and helps ensure transparency and accountability across the executive branch.”

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NARFE still has concerns with OPM’s plan to collect employee health care records

Erich Wagner — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 13:18:06 -0400

The National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association on Thursday said the Office of Personnel Management still has not sufficiently protected federal workers and retirees as part of a plan to collect claims-level health data in an effort to root out fraud.

Last December, OPM published an information collection request that would require insurers who participate in the Federal Employee Health Benefits and Postal Service Health Benefits programs to provide monthly reports with identifiable health data on their enrollees, prompting concerns from ethicists, health care providers, employee groups and lawmakers alike.

In response to those concerns, OPM published a revised proposal last month, purporting to take steps to mask employees and retirees’ identities in the data collection. In an accompanying blog post, OPM Director Scott Kupor described how the anti-fraud effort would still protect workers’ privacy.

“In layman’s terms, OPM’s [Office of Inspector General] . . . will provide an encrypted copy of that data to OPM—but only after stripping out names, Social Security numbers, phone numbers, addresses (except for ZIP codes) and other personally identifiable data,” he wrote. “The only member-level [personally identifiable information] fields that will remain in the data that OPM receives will be our members’ ZIP codes, year of birth and their member ID. To further sanitize these records, OPM will scramble, or pseudonymize, the member ID information using a state-of-the-art cryptographic hashing process, replacing member ID with a random set of numbers and characters that is divorced from the real identity of the plan participant.”

But in a letter to Kupor Thursday, NARFE National President William Shackelford said that while his organization appreciates the steps taken thus far to shield FEHBP and PSHBP participants’ identities, he remains troubled by OPM’s insistence that it be able to re-identify employees via their health records in the future. Under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, health care data should be not just pseudonymized, but de-identified entirely, he wrote.

“NARFE’s position is straightforward. OPM has moved in the right direction,” Shackelford wrote. “But we asked for de-identified data and OPM has offered pseudonymized data, and those are not the same commitment. Pseudonymization does not remove the risk that our members’ health information will be linked back to them; it makes that linkage a matter of OPM’s discretion, exercisable by whoever holds the relevant authority in any future administration.”

Additionally, most of OPM’s reassurances about privacy and the data collection’s anti-fraud purpose exist solely within Kupor’s blog post, and not the proposal published in the Federal Register last month.

“What remains is otherwise the difference between description and obligation,” Shackelford wrote. “We ask OPM to convert what it has described into what it is bound to do: de-identification as the default and pseudonymization as the justified exception, mandatory rather than discretionary safeguards, hard separation of key material from enrollment files . . . and an explicit prohibition on personnel-related use.”

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Attorney general nomination faces another week of scrutiny

Ashley Murray, States Newsroom — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 06:00:00 -0400

Members of the Senate tasked with advancing acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s nomination to be the nation’s top law enforcer on Thursday pushed the vote back one week.

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s delayed vote to send the controversial nominee to the full Senate is “per standard committee practice,” according to a spokesperson for Chairman Chuck Grassley.

The Iowa Republican and the committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., used the time that had been allocated for the vote to comment at length on Blanche’s nomination. Grassley then recessed the session because too many Republicans were absent, which he described as “kind of rude.”

Grassley praised the selection of Blanche and said the Justice Department under his leadership as deputy and acting attorney general “has protected Americans at every turn,” but that committee Democrats “like clockwork, sought to defame him.”

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., led a forum Wednesday featuring former Justice Department officials and a survivor of abuse by the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.

The witnesses questioned Blanche’s fitness to lead the Justice Department following his handling of the Epstein files release, during which several victims’ identities were unmasked, and his role in establishing a nearly $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund as part of President Donald Trump’s settlement with his own administration’s IRS.

Durbin said Thursday he and fellow Democrats oppose Blanche, who worked as Trump’s personal defense lawyer prior to his appointment to the Justice Department, because he "will continue to serve the interests of Donald Trump, not the American people."

Sen. Darline Graham joins committee

Committee members were scheduled to address other business, including voting on federal judicial nominees in Ohio and Oklahoma and approving subcommittee roles for Sen. Darline Graham, R-S.C., sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham. She was sworn in July 14 following the sudden death of her brother.

The committee meeting marked the first for Graham, who was not yet part of the panel when members questioned Blanche for nearly five hours during a confirmation hearing July 15. Her arrival on the GOP-led committee brings the split among members back to 12 Republicans and 10 Democrats and is likely a positive development for Blanche.

Nominations require a majority vote to advance to the Senate floor. All eyes are on whether committee Republicans Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who announced his retirement last year, and John Cornyn of Texas will support Blanche after Trump effectively ended both of their Senate careers.

Trump subjected Tillis to intense criticism for opposing the Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025 and said he would find candidates to oppose Tillis in his primary. Trump endorsed Cornyn’s primary opponent earlier this year.

Both Tillis and Cornyn pressed Blanche during his confirmation hearing about formally ending the "anti-weaponization" fund.

While Cornyn attended Thursday morning’s Judiciary Committee meeting, Tillis was one of several members absent. Grassley’s spokesperson attributed Tillis’ absence to a Senate Banking Committee meeting that convened just a half-hour before the scheduled Judiciary Committee meeting. Tillis’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about his absence.

Blanche was a prosecutor in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York from 2006 to 2014.

He later left the Justice Department for private practice and represented Trump as his personal defense attorney in three criminal cases in 2023 and 2024.

Trump, with Senate Republican approval, installed Blanche as deputy attorney general in March 2025.

Trump announced Blanche as his pick for attorney general in early June, just over two months after former Attorney General Pam Bondi’s departure.

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Selective Service System seeks software to aid the draft

Ross Wilkers — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 05:00:00 -0400

The window is now open for vendors to start working on and submitting prices for software that can simulate the military’s personnel needs in the event of national emergencies requiring a draft.

While the U.S. military is all-volunteer, the Selective Service System still maintains registration lists of males aged 18-to-25 years old and a second special-skills database based on professional licensing lists of workers in certain health care occupations. The Selective Service System is an independent agency charged with running a draft or drafts in the event they are needed to fill personnel gaps.

By launching this request for quotes on Wednesday, SSS is looking to prepare for emergencies that require it to quickly evaluate staffing and resource requirements through the use of readiness simulation software.

SSS also is tasked with comparing different mobilization and policy scenarios, assessing the operational impacts of surge conditions, identifying potential risks and bottlenecks, and support executive planning and reporting obligations.

The RFQ lists these requirements for the software:

Model the full end-to-end mobilization pipeline
Support configurable scenarios
Provide decision-support analytics for leaders, planners and operators
Operates within an SSS-designated cloud environment
Use anonymized aggregate data
Support complete government ownership and sustainment

SSS is embarking on this search for software ahead of Dec. 18, when the requirement for male U.S. residents aged 18-to-25 years old to register themselves in the system will be replaced with a requirement for SSS to automatically register them by relying on other federal databases.

SSS is an independent agency.

Quotes are due by 2 p.m. Eastern time on Aug. 14. The window for questions to SS closes at 2 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, July 28.

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USPS nominations test the future of bipartisan boards

Erich Wagner and Jory Heckman — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 17:42:47 -0400

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Ranking Member Gary Peters, D-Mich, asked Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., this week to put a hold on the current slate of USPS nominees until the administration identifies Democratic nominees to also serve on the board.

The USPS Board of Governors, which currently has two Democratic members, one Republican member and one independent member. The board has five vacancies, and Trump has submitted four Republican nominees. By law, no more than five members of the USPS board can belong to the same political party.

“This imbalance in representation would be unprecedented and would undermine public confidence in the Board’s ability to serve the public interest above any partisan political aims,” Peters wrote.

Trump submitted a mix of Democratic and Republican nominees to the USPS board during his first administration and consulted with congressional leaders from both political parties, keeping with the tradition of prior administrations.

“Unfortunately, President Trump has departed from this long-standing practice and has not engaged in any consultation with the Senate Minority Leader or the Ranking Member of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs,” Peters wrote.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and the top Democrats on several Senate committees sent a letter to the White House last month pushing back on the administration’s broader lack of Democratic nominees for independent agenices.

Peters’ letter comes less than a month after the Supreme Court’s decision in Slaughter v. Federal Trade Commission stripped removal protections from members of independent boards and commissions. Though that decision does not explicitly address instances when Congress has required the president nominate members of the other political party, Chief Justice John Roberts said Congress may not “saddle him with those with whom he cannot work.”

Trump has been more personally involved in USPS operations than his recent predecessors. He signed an executive order in March directing states to send USPS a list of voters who vote by mail, and to refuse to mail ballots to unlisted voters. State governments have the primary responsibility of carrying out elections.

Early in Trump’s second term, USPS agreed to work with Census Bureau this year on a test of the upcoming decennial count. Trump also considered merging USPS with the Commerce Department.

In his first term, Trump threatened to withhold pandemic relief funds from USPS unless it agreed to charge Amazon higher rates to deliver its packages. A Treasury Department task force also recommended privatizing some postal operations.

Paul Steidler, a senior fellow at the Lexington Institute, said it’s important to consider the nominations “in the broader context of the Trump administration’s views about Democratic appointments” and the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that gave the administration sweeping authority to fire members of independent agencies.

“It’s important to see the president’s actions in light of the Slaughter decision, and in light of the fact that the Supreme Court has backed up his ability to remove board members that he doesn’t want to have in place,” Steidler said.

Steidler said the postmaster general “has a ton of power, relative to the board,” and that the board’s political composition shouldn’t distract from the broader issue of postal reform and keeping USPS from running out of cash.

“Whether you like it or not, this gives Trump and the Republicans ownership of fixing the Postal Service,” Steidler said. “The focus has to be in reengineering the Postal Service. Part of that should be having a stronger, independent board that can look into what’s going on, and raise the alarm bells when there are serious issues that should be of concern to the American people.”

A spokesman for the American Postal Workers Union told Government Executive that the union is concerned the Trump administration has submitted nominees without any postal or logistics background. APWU will hold a national day of action outside post offices next Tuesday urging senators to reject these nominees.

“None of the current nominees have any experience in the Postal Service, or even in the wider logistics and delivery industry. Instead, what they share in common is experience in big business, finance, and management consulting,” APWU wrote in a fact sheet.

It’s not unusual for lawmakers to scrutinize the political makeup of the USPS board. In 2014, when the USPS board lacked enough members to hold a quorum, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., put a hold on two of the Obama administration’s Republican nominees for the USPS board, who were already serving on the board and were tapped to serve another term.

Republicans, in turn, placed holds on the administration’s Democratic nominees to serve on the USPS board.

A USPS official who spoke on condition of anonymity said “it’s never good to not confirm nominees,” and that any attempts to hold up confirmations would be “counterproductive.”

“Is the Postal Service going to be any better or worse if we don’t approve these nominees? I know it’ll be worse off if they don’t. Because we’ll end up directionless again, which is what got us in this malaise in the first place,” the official said.

Experts warned that if the Senate moves forward on the USPS nominees, the maneuver may be just an opening salvo in a broader push to clear out Democrats from bipartisan boards. Many positions previously held by Democratic appointees before their 2025 firings remain vacant, such as at the Merit Systems Protection Board, and the Slaughter decision could spur renewed purges of those that remain, such as the recent termination of members of the Election Assistance Commission.

“It’s more than a trial balloon, I think,” said Don Kettl, professor emeritus at the University of Maryland and former dean of its School of Public Policy. “This is a broader, conscious effort brick by brick and step by step to expand presidential power. They’ll continue to do it until the courts say stop . . . This is about much more than the Postal Service just as Slaughter was about much more than the FTC.”

Michael Fallings, managing partner at Tully Rinckey PLLC, a law firm specializing in federal employment issues, said one-party rule over quasi-judicial boards like the MSPB and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission would hurt not just those appealing adverse actions, but the case law these agencies produce.

“If you have just one line of thinking, then those decisions have the potential not to be correct, not to look at the full facts, and generally be one-sided,” he said. “Even if it’s just through a dissent to a decision, that can be reviewed and evaluated for future cases as well.”

Jay Lerner, an adjunct professorial lecturer at American University’s School of Public Affairs and former inspector general of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, said that while Slaughter has effectively short-circuited many of the laws aimed at insulating agencies from presidential power, a Congress looking to reassert its authority could establish new ways of influencing who the president can nominate for multi-member agency boards and commissions. One avenue could be strengthening often vague language requiring nominees to be “qualified” for their posts.

“Congress, depending on how strong it is now or in the next session, could voice objections and apply political pressure. It could pass different laws—not so much focusing on removal authorities, but on how appointees actually perform while in office. I think that Congress could enact laws requiring experts to identify performance standards for individuals holding a particular position. If there’s more specificity to those standards, then at least there are some concrete elements by which to assess an official's performance.”

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Trump appointees confirmed by the Senate are exiting their jobs in record numbers, report finds

Sean Michael Newhouse — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 15:05:00 -0400

Updated at 4:50 p.m. ET July 23

Senate-confirmed officials in the second Trump administration are leaving their positions at record rates, a good government nonprofit found in an analysis published Wednesday that warns the trend could hurt congressional input on who runs agencies.

“Though his first term was seen as turbulent regarding personnel, Trump has seen nearly two and a half times as many departures this administration as his first,” wrote Chris Piper of the Partnership for Public Service.

In total, 27 Senate-confirmed officials, 11.4%, have left the administration to date. That number includes three Cabinet secretaries as well as the heads of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration and IRS.

To compare, 11 Senate-approved officials departed their jobs by this point in Trump’s first term. The average across the first 18 months of the Bush, Obama and Biden administrations was 4.3 departures.

The Partnership reported that the former officials’ average tenure was eight months. Researchers also noted that these individuals waited an average of nearly five months to be confirmed, and 30% spent more time going through the Senate approval process than they did in their positions.

“These departures also squander the time and resources it takes to find, vet and confirm officials,” Piper wrote.

In addition to the record exits, the Partnership found that Trump is making fewer nominations — the lowest since Reagan. Researchers posited that this might be because the administration appears to have relatively fewer White House staffers focused on personnel.

But the result is an increase in acting officials who are not subject to Senate approval.

“Turnover on this scale does not just thin the government’s leadership ranks — it concentrates power in the president,” Piper wrote. “Each seat left to an acting official is one the president can fill on his own terms without the Senate’s advice and consent: no vetting, no confirmation hearing, no vote.”

Piper further cautioned that, because interim agency leadership is not always announced, it can obfuscate who is running agencies. And he warned that a reliance on temporary officials can impede long-term planning.

In response to a request for comment, White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales said: "The president and his entire administration will continue to tirelessly implement the Trump agenda and achieve tremendous results for the American people.”

This story has been updated with a statement from the White House.

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Why your retirement experience may depend more on the agency than the benefit

Tammy Flanagan — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 15:00:00 -0400

As federal employees transition into retirement, they also transition from familiar routines. After many years, if not many decades, of knowing where to go when it is time to access or change their federal benefits, retirement creates a need to learn new methods of communicating with new organizations. For health benefits, life insurance and, most importantly, retirement, the Office of Personnel Management becomes the new "personnel" shop for recent retirees. To turn on Social Security retirement benefits, learning to navigate the Social Security Administration's website and phone system becomes very important.

Instead of watching their lifetime retirement savings continue to grow, it is now time to figure out how to turn those investments into a stream of income that must last for many years and often several decades to come. These organizations provide customer service to help answer questions and guide new annuitants as they learn the ropes of life after retirement. Customer service is the help and support these individuals will rely on before, during and after their service to the federal government comes to an end. In anticipation of a smooth and enjoyable experience, there is an element of not knowing what to expect and the fear that something might go wrong.

For federal employees and retirees, customer service is not an abstract measure of government performance. It determines how quickly a new retiree receives their full annuity, whether a participant can resolve a Thrift Savings Plan account problem and how long a Social Security beneficiary must wait for help with a benefit issue. Recent statistics suggest three very different customer service stories. OPM's Retirement Services operation is still judged largely by claims-processing time and backlog. The Thrift Savings Plan, administered by the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, reports comparatively strong participant satisfaction and short telephone wait times. The Social Security Administration serves a much broader public and has recently shown measurable improvement in telephone service, though its reported averages can mask long waits for some callers.

OPM Retirement Services has one of the most consequential service roles in the federal benefits ecosystem: converting a retiring employee's application into interim and then final annuity payments. The most recent OPM retirement processing data show the scale of the challenge. OPM reported that it experienced a historic surge in retirements in 2025 and responded by expanding the team. However, overall, Retirement Services shrunk 16% from fiscal 2024 to fiscal 2026.

That higher volume matters because retirement processing is document-heavy, depends on agency and payroll office submissions and can be delayed by missing or inconsistent records.

OPM's June 2026 retirement processing report illustrates both improvement and strain. In June, the agency received 8,663 new retirement claims, of which 6,852 were digital and 1,811 were paper. It processed 12,751 total claims that month, but the total inventory still stood at 33,851 pending cases.

The average processing time for all cases was 108 days in June, while digital cases were processed in 96 days and paper claims in 120 days. For the fiscal year to date, the average processing time was 77 days, and the fiscal-year-to-date digital processing time was 52 days. These numbers show why digital retirement processing is central to OPM's service strategy: Digital cases are faster, but the transition is incomplete, and paper cases continue to slow the system.

Compared with the other two agencies, OPM's service problem is the most specialized and the most procedural. The customer may contact OPM for status updates, but the real service outcome is whether the retirement claim is adjudicated accurately and quickly. A retiree waiting months for a finalized annuity may see the process as poor customer service even if phone representatives are courteous. OPM's published data also make clear that modernization is producing benefits, but not yet enough to eliminate large inventories or long waits during claim surges.

The TSP presents a different customer service profile. The TSP is massive. Recent reports show more than 7.3 million accounts and assets surpassing $1 trillion, yet its service statistics are notably favorable. In recent years, the TSP said it issued more than 1 million Forms 1099-R and notified more than 300,000 participants about required minimum distributions.

The March 2026 board materials showed that in February, the ThriftLine received approximately 200,000 calls, with an average waiting time to reach an agent of 11 seconds and 95% of callers waiting 20 seconds or less. Overall participant satisfaction with the ThriftLine exceeded 93% for the 12th consecutive month.

In the May report, it was noted that participants logged in about 4 million times to My Account through the Thrift Savings Plan mobile app during April, accounting for 42% of all TSP logins, up from 32% one year earlier. In April, TSP participants completed nearly 7,000 Roth in-plan conversions totaling approximately $135 million.

These statistics suggest that, among the three organizations, TSP currently offers the strongest measurable front-end customer experience. Its service channels are designed around account access, transactions, withdrawals, loans, beneficiary issues and investment elections. While individual participants may still encounter complex cases, especially around post-separation withdrawals or legal processing, the published service metrics point to a system that is answering calls quickly and satisfying most users who interact with it. The TSP also benefits from a narrower mission than SSA and a more account-based operating model than OPM Retirement Services.

The Social Security Administration is not directly comparable in scale. It serves more than 300 million people with active Social Security numbers and more than 71 million beneficiaries. Its customer service challenge spans retirement, disability, survivors, Medicare-related services, Social Security numbers, overpayments, appeals and in-person field office needs. SSA reports that online and telephone channels now account for most customer contacts, with online services increasingly emphasized through my Social Security accounts and digital transactions.

Recent SSA data show meaningful improvement, especially on the National 800 Number. The agency reported that, compared with service levels in May 2025, reductions in wait times through May 2026 saved the public an estimated 14.2 million hours: 7.6 million through online services, 4.9 million through the National 800 Number and 1.7 million through field office calls and visits. SSA also said it had served 5.9 million more callers in the fiscal year to date, an increase of more than 29% compared with prior years.

An inspector general audit released in December 2025 found that SSA's publicly reported National 800 Number metrics were accurate and that overall telephone service improved in fiscal 2025. The report said SSA served 68 million callers through employees or automation, a 65% increase from fiscal 2024. The average speed of answer was 13 minutes in October 2024, peaked at 30 minutes in January 2025 and fell to 7 minutes by September 2025. That was an improvement over fiscal 2024, when the peak was about 42 minutes and the low was 12 minutes.

Still, SSA's statistics require careful interpretation. The inspector general noted that the average speed of answer does not capture the full wait experienced by every caller. If a caller accepted a callback, SSA counted the call as having zero wait time for that metric, while the later callback delay was tracked separately.

For callers who stayed on hold in fiscal 2025, average queue wait time was about 51 minutes in October 2024, peaked at 1 hour and 40 minutes in January 2025 and fell to 19 minutes in September 2025. Average callback time was about 1 hour and 49 minutes in October 2024, peaked at 2 hours and 32 minutes in January 2025 and declined to about 1 hour and 2 minutes in September 2025. In other words, SSA improved significantly, but some customers still experienced long waits.

Measured by speed and satisfaction, the TSP appears to be performing best. Its recent reported wait times are measured in seconds, and satisfaction has remained above 93% for at least a year. Measured by breadth of service and volume handled, SSA faces the hardest public-facing challenge and has shown the largest recent improvement. Its phone metrics improved substantially in fiscal 2025 and continued to show gains into 2026, but its callback and queue-wait details reveal that averages can understate the experience of customers with complicated needs.

Measured by the consequences of delay, OPM Retirement Services may present the highest anxiety for its customers. A delayed TSP transaction or SSA phone call is frustrating, but a delayed federal annuity calculation can affect a retiree's monthly income for months.

The fairest conclusion is that each organization's customer service record reflects its mission and operating model. TSP service is the most consistently positive in the available statistics, aided by a transactional account structure and strong call center performance. SSA is the most improved, but because it serves nearly the entire public and handles highly varied benefit issues, it remains vulnerable to congestion and uneven experiences. OPM Retirement Services is making progress through digital retirement processing, but its backlog and processing times remain the most visible pain point for federal retirees.

For employees approaching retirement, the practical lesson is clear: Prepare paperwork early, use digital tools where available, monitor account access before separation and keep expectations realistic. The best customer service among the three is currently at the TSP, the most improved is SSA and the most urgent modernization challenge remains OPM retirement processing.

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Russian hackers can steal government emails without victims clicking a link, cyber agencies warn

David DiMolfetta — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:30:00 -0400

Russian state-backed hackers have exploited a vulnerability in widely used email software to steal messages, passwords and authentication data from Western government agencies and other organizations, U.S. and allied cyber-intelligence authorities said Thursday.

The campaign is notable because it does not require victims to click a malicious link or download an attachment. The exploit can instead activate when someone simply opens or previews an email in an unpatched version of the Zimbra Collaboration Suite — a popular alternative to major collaborative messaging platforms like Microsoft Exchange or Google Workspace — according to a joint advisory issued by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, National Security Agency and FBI.

The Russian hacking group, known primarily as Laundry Bear, has successfully targeted more than 10 organizations since July 2025, the agencies said. The campaign has hit the defense industrial base, federal and local governments, law enforcement, technology companies, educational institutions, media outlets and nongovernmental organizations.

The hackers sought to steal email addresses, passwords and two-factor authentication tokens, which could allow them to retain access to compromised accounts even after obtaining a victim’s password. Their tools also attempted to collect an organization’s email directory, as much as 90 days of a victim’s communications and other sensitive information.

The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network purchased a Zimbra standard support subscription in February 2025, according to federal contracting data listed in GovTribe, a federal market intelligence platform owned by Nextgov/FCW parent company GovExec. The purchase does not indicate whether FinCEN used the vulnerable version of the software or was targeted in the campaign.

“Unlike traditional phishing that attempts to persuade a user to take an action, such as clicking a link or downloading a file, Laundry Bear’s current campaign uses a zero-click exploit that only requires a user to view a malicious email,” CISA said in a statement.

Proofpoint, which also investigated the activity, describes the technique as a “half-click” exploit because the victim must still open or preview the email. The company said no additional interaction is required once the message appears in a vulnerable Zimbra webmail client.

The emails were sent from both attacker-controlled Proton Mail accounts and addresses that had already been compromised, according to Proofpoint.

In one example released by the company, the sender claimed to represent a Belgian media-verification organization and proposed cooperation among European institutions combating disinformation. The message contained a legitimate-looking link to a European Union events calendar, but the malicious code was embedded directly in the email itself.

CISA urged organizations to update all Zimbra mail software, monitor their email systems for suspicious activity and review the technical indicators included in the advisory. Organizations that find evidence of a compromise should follow the agencies’ remediation guidance rather than relying solely on installing the available patch.

“CISA continues to see sophisticated and less sophisticated nation-state cyber groups deploy increasingly novel exploits into a highly successful capability to disrupt critical infrastructure or conduct espionage,” said Chris Butera, CISA’s acting executive assistant director for cybersecurity.

The advisory was also backed by defense, cybersecurity and intelligence agencies from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and more than a dozen European countries.

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As FEMA's future hangs in the balance, Senate advances nominee to lead the agency

Jennifer Shutt, States Newsroom — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 06:00:00 -0400

The Senate on Wednesday moved one step closer to confirming the first administrator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency since President Donald Trump took office last year.

The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted 8-4 to send Cameron Hamilton’s nomination to the floor, though it was not immediately clear whether the full Senate would vote before it breaks for its August recess.

Hamilton led FEMA in an acting role at the beginning of 2025 but was fired that May after testifying before Congress that he personally did "not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency."

Trump has said repeatedly during his second administration he would like to reduce the size and scope of the federal government's disaster management role, shifting more responsibility to state and local governments.

Trump created a FEMA Review Council last year to propose substantial changes to the agency, which is housed within the Department of Homeland Security. That group released its recommendations in early May, though neither the administration nor Congress has taken steps to implement those proposals.

Hamilton said during his confirmation hearing in June that if confirmed by the Senate he would ensure FEMA is "objective" and "fair."

He said he believes the agency's "disaster declaration process and also the federal mentorship that goes into it needs to be improved."

"I believe states need to receive better customer service. I have full faith and confidence in the FEMA workforce, but we can do better," Hamilton said. "And there's a significant amount of areas where that process should be simplified, better understood and we owe you answers, I think, much faster."

Hamilton wrote in the ethics paperwork that is a required part of the confirmation process that after being fired from FEMA in May 2025, he worked as a senior adviser at the Education Department until August.

After that, he was hired as the senior vice president of response and recovery at LTS, Inc., in Virginia, where he worked from August until April, when he became a senior adviser/senior counselor at the Department of Homeland Security.

Hamilton reported a salary of $247,916 and a bonus of $350,000 during the roughly eight months he worked at LTS, Inc. He expects to receive another bonus from the company valued between $250,001 and $500,000 at some point in the future.

LTS, Inc., writes on its website that it is "an award-winning enterprise consulting" firm that focuses on emergency response, automated health care solutions and occupational health services.

In the ethics agreement filed with the government, Hamilton wrote that he transferred ownership of his consulting business, Onward Operations LLC, to his spouse in March. He transferred ownership of his retail coffee business, Onward Valor LLC, to his spouse in January.

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Lawmakers look to avoid government shutdown, and reconsider getting rid of them entirely

Jory Heckman — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 17:23:15 -0400

Ahead of this year’s midterm elections, congressional leaders are taking earlier-than-usual steps to avoid a government shutdown this fall.

Federal employees faced the longest government shutdown in history last year, followed by the longest partial shutdown, which impacted the Homeland Security Department. Both shutdowns led to federal workers missing paychecks.

The House passed a continuing resolution on Tuesday that would keep the federal government funded through Dec. 4. The bill passed roughly along party lines in a vote of 220-205, with Republicans overwhelmingly voting in favor of the bill.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters on Tuesday that Republicans are looking to avoid a government shutdown ahead of “a very consequential midterm election.”

“If the Democrats can't support this basic principle, then they alone are going to own the chaos that ensues if the government shuts down after September 30,” Johnson said.

House Democratic leaders rejected the stopgap spending bill, calling it a “premature and desperate attempt by Republicans to abdicate their responsibility to govern while there are still several months left to negotiate a bipartisan agreement.”

Congress hasn’t passed a comprehensive spending deal on time in decades, and often passes a last-minute continuing resolution to continue deliberations.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Tuesday that Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, is working with Democrats on the committee to keep the federal government funded “past the November elections, so that we don’t have the specter of a government shutdown.”

“The disruption, the chaos that creates is just something that both sides ought to be willing to try and avoid. And so I think it's going to be really important that we figure out a path forward to get a bipartisan agreement to fund the government that will keep the government open and ensure that government employees are getting paid,” Thune said.

Meanwhile, the House Appropriations Committee is revisiting legislation that would permanently eliminate the threat of government shutdowns.

The Prevent Government Shutdowns Act led by Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., would trigger an automatic two-week continuing resolution any time a lapse in congressional appropriations occurs. Lankford initially introduced a version of this bill in 2019 along with Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H.

The bill would require Congress and Office of Management and Budget staff to remain in Washington, D.C., until a spending deal is reached. The continuing resolution would remain in effect beyond the initial two weeks if lawmakers don’t reach a deal by then.

Lankford told the committee that the bill puts the burden on Congress to reach a spending deal, and would no longer treat federal employees as a bargaining chip in these negotiations.

“Federal workers and their families should not suffer when Congress has not finished their appropriation work – but they do,” Lankford said.

Lankford said his bill wouldn’t result in a "perpetual CR,” but would instead hold lawmakers accountable for reaching a bipartisan spending plan.

“If we have to be here every day, we will get our work done, because we will find a way to be able to solve the problem,” he said.

The American Federation of Government Employees supports the bill. AFGE National President Everett Kelley wrote in a letter to the committee that “there are no concrete signs that the regular appropriations process will advance spending measures that are enacted in time” to avoid a shutdown on Oct. 1.

“AFGE is growing increasingly concerned that for a second consecutive year federal agencies and departments that depend on annual appropriations will go unfunded, and federal workers unpaid,” Kelley wrote.

Several Republicans on the committee showed support for the bill. Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., said the government shutdowns should not “become an accepted norm in the appropriations process.”

“Government shutdowns are reckless, and they do nothing other than create chaos and uncertainty,” Cole said.

Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, chairman of the interior, environment and related agencies subcommittee, said the risk of government shutdowns is greater with narrow majorities in the House and Senate.

“They’re getting worse and worse. And when you get narrower and narrower majorities, they’re going to become more frequent,” Simpson said.

Democrats on the committee, however, pushed back on the idea of automatic continuing resolutions.

Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said CRs “can be helpful when used sparingly,” and can be important to facilitate full-year funding agreements, but said they “should not be our first choice” to avoid government shutdowns.

“I am sympathetic for the goal of reducing government shutdowns. But the permanent funding proposals we will discuss here today would, in my opinion, create far more problems than they would solve,” DeLauro said.

Democrats have used government shutdowns to push back on the Trump administration’s impoundment and recission of congressionally appropriated funds. DeLauro said automatic CRs would “cement nearly complete control over government funding within the White House.”

“Why would we voluntarily forfeit that authority?” she said.

Rep. Lauren Underwood, D-Ill., said automatic CRs “fail to meet the changing needs of our districts.”

“They do not protect federal workers. They do not protect federal resources,” Underwood said.

Shalanda Young, the OMB director under the Biden administration, told the committee that “what we currently have is unacceptable,” but added that shutdowns are “one of the many symptoms of what is broken” in Congress.

“For too long, congressional dysfunction has been the norm, while congressional leadership uses workarounds as substitutes for the difficult work of legislating,” Young said.

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Despite firings, acting IG says it’s 'the best time to be in the inspector general community' due to focus on fraud

Sean Michael Newhouse — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 16:49:40 -0400

The work of inspectors general to detect and prevent scams has become increasingly important as the Trump administration prioritizes combating fraud in government programs, a panel of the agency watchdogs said Wednesday during a conference in Washington, D.C., sponsored by AGA, formerly known as the Association of Government Accountants.

“This is probably the best time to be in the inspector general community, where there's the renewed focus on fraud, waste and abuse,” said acting Education Department inspector general Mark Priebe.

Even so, members of the audience did ask about the president’s unprecedented firing last year of nearly 20 IGs and whether that is impacting their oversight work. Priebe said that he’s not concerned.

“If a new administration comes in and says we want all of our own IGs, that's fine,” he said. “I really think that the executive branch should have some say over their policies and their procedures and how they enact that.”

Government Executive has reported that Priebe, who previously served as a senior official in the Education IG, appears to have shared social media posts supporting Trump. While IGs are political appointees, they’ve historically served across administrations. Experts have warned that replacing them each time there’s a transfer of power would weaken independent government oversight.

Still, Priebe said that the Trump administration’s push to dismantle the Education Department, which has resulted in the halving of the agency’s workforce, is affecting his IG office.

“We're losing agents and auditors because they're not sure what's going to happen,” he said. “So that's an additional area that we're concerned with — to have a staff and to be able to check the department and go out into the public and fight fraud.”

Based on federal workforce data, Education’s IG office has gone from more than 200 staffers in 2024 to nearly 150 currently.

The IGs on the panel also discussed the challenges of detecting fraud as technology advances.

For example, Fara Damelin, the inspector general of the Federal Communications Commission, said that analyzing metadata is an integral method to verifying the authenticity of a document.

“That's why the government needs to get smarter and use all the technology out there,” she said.

But Priebe warned, based on a recent summit he attended, that fraudsters are figuring out ways to modify metadata.

The watchdogs also said that IG offices are attempting to move away from investigating fraud after it happens and instead prioritize stopping scams before they occur. Kenneth Dieffenbach — the executive director of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, which oversees COVID-19 and One Big Beautiful Bill Act spending — described it as going from a “pay and chase” to a “prevent and relax” model.

“Sometimes when we start an audit or an engagement with our agency, they're like, ‘Well, you can't look at that right now. We're still implementing this program,’” added Eric Rivera, the assistant IG for Audits at the Export-Import Bank OIG. “But we want to look at it right now so we can give them real-time feedback.”

House Republicans recently passed, with some Democratic support, a bill that would establish an IG office within the Treasury Department to counter fraud in programs that provide funding to non-federal entities.

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Unions ask for injunction restoring collective bargaining at Defense

Erich Wagner — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 16:10:07 -0400

A pair of federal employee unions on Monday urged a federal judge to issue a preliminary injunction restoring their collective bargaining agreements with the Defense Department, arguing that Secretary Pete Hegseth failed to follow the Trump administration’s own process for implementing two executive orders banning organized labor at most federal agencies.

Earlier this month, the American Federation of Government Employees and National Federation of Federal Employees sued the Pentagon over the April termination of their collective bargaining agreements, a move that the Defense Department said was aimed at complying with President Trump’s March 2025 executive order barring collective bargaining for two-thirds of the federal workforce on national security grounds.

The lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for Maryland, focuses not on the legality of Trump’s edict, but rather whether Hegseth fulfilled his obligation to conduct “reasoned decision-making” under the Administrative Procedure Act when he ordered CBAs be terminated with just 24 hours’ notice.

“The Hegseth memorandum did not point to any facts showing that any of plaintiffs’ CBAs, much less all of them, were inconsistent with national security,” the unions wrote. “DOD agencies had voluntarily agreed to these CBAs. Nor did the Hegseth memorandum consider the obvious alternatives to immediate mass termination of all CBAs, such as refraining from terminating CBAs until litigation about [the executive order] runs its course, allowing CBAs to expire pursuant to their own terms, or identifying only those specific parts of CBAs that the secretary determined to be inconsistent with national security . . . The Hegseth memorandum was the opposite of the reasoned decision-making that the APA requires before final agency action.”

The unions said that the Defense Department did not even follow a template for terminating union contracts issued by the Office of Personnel Management in February, seemingly designed to address the APA’s requirements for agencies to explain policy changes and consider the reliance interests of stakeholders. Instead, Hegseth wrote simply that the actions were “required” in order to comply with Trump’s order.

“The OPM termination template reinforces that CBA terminations are discretionary and must comply with the APA’s requirements for reasoned decision-making,” the unions wrote. “The OPM template indicates that agencies should specify that, after the issuance of the EO, the agency ‘considered whether to terminate any CBA, in whole or part, as it pertains to those bargaining unit employees who fall within the EO’s scope.’”

Since the contracts’ termination in April, management officials have told union members that their union “does not exist any longer,” and some employees have been required to sign documents attesting that they lack union representation. Employees in disciplinary proceedings are denied access to union representation, managers are unilaterally changing employees’ work schedules with little notice, and the labor groups’ membership is on the decline.

“Plaintiffs face an existential threat because workers are afraid to engage in any union activity or are confused about their right to do so,” they wrote. “DOD is telling plaintiffs’ members and prospective members that they are ineligible to join unions and that their unions ‘do not exist.’ Plaintiffs cannot successfully retain or recruit members under such circumstances, and union membership is declining. These harms are irreparable.”

Since its initial filing earlier this month, AFGE and NFFE’s case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher, a jurist who was nominated to the federal bench by both presidents Obama and Trump.

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ICE ramps up arrests as deportation effort expands

Tim Henderson, Stateline — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 07:00:00 -0400

Immigration arrests reached 1,593 per day in early July in a new push to detain and deport immigrants that has led to deaths in traffic stops. There were more than 43,000 arrests in June, the highest recorded by the Trump administration, according to statistics released Monday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reflecting new bookings into detention facilities.

The June monthly total surpassed the 42,000 arrests in December, which included Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis. If the rate for the first 11 days of July continues for a month it could be even higher, about 49,000 arrests.

Arrest numbers reached as high as 2,000 per day over a five-day period in late June, according to a New York Times report. The Department of Homeland Security has said it is “delivering on President Trump’s promise to the American people to arrest and deport pedophiles, murderers, rapists, and other criminals,” though less than a third of current detainees have a criminal conviction and 40% have never been accused of anything but non-criminal immigration violations, according to the statistics.

The Department of Homeland Security posted a list Monday of 15 immigrants previously convicted of serious crimes it said were arrested “while Americans enjoyed the weekend and the FIFA World Cup Finals.”

The statistics also show that about 2,000 detainees a month have been freed by court-ordered bond hearings, as many federal judges, even many Trump appointees, rule against the administration’s policy of mandatory detention for many immigrants. The U.S. Supreme Court is likely to rule on the legality of the policy in its October term.

Two immigrants were shot and killed during enforcement traffic stops in Texas and Maine this month. After a brief pause, President Donald Trump ordered traffic stops to continue. ICE officers will wear body cameras during such stops, according to border czar Tom Homan.

A man from Mexico, apparently on a valid tourist visa for a vacation, was also killed in traffic in Florida after an encounter with ICE in July. Arrests in New York City immigration courts have also continued despite a court order banning the practice.

Some of the unusual arrests that have come to light in the current crackdown include a nun from Nigeria walking to church in Texas (she was released the same day) and an Alaska state attorney from China.

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

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Inspector general group would be axed under new House GOP bill

Sean Michael Newhouse — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 06:00:00 -0400

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is scheduled to vote Wednesday on a bill that would abolish a central group for agency inspectors general, many of whom have been fired by President Donald Trump.

The Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency is responsible for coordinating governmentwide oversight activities, overseeing investigations into senior watchdog officials and managing IG employee training.

Under the Restoring Integrity and Efficiency to Inspector General Oversight Act (H.R. 9725), however, CIGIE would shutter one year after the bill’s enactment. The Office of Management and Budget would take over establishing IG employee training standards, supervising interagency investigations and resolving jurisdictional disputes.

Last year, OMB blocked CIGIE from receiving funding for about a month-and-a-half but backtracked following objections from some Senate Republicans. At the time, White House officials said that IGs “have become corrupt, partisan and in some cases, have lied to the public.”

In addition, under the new bill, the Government Accountability Office would develop IG inspection standards and Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers would maintain at least one training academy for IG employees.

GAO in June issued a report that found CIGIE often fell short of its own process requirements when investigating misconduct allegations against IGs. For example, investigators warned that a CIGIE staffer is currently disregarding complaints they deem as “frivolous” despite internal policy that such decisions are required to be reviewed by legal counsel.

A Republican Oversight Committee aide cited that GAO report in a statement to Government Executive regarding the rationale behind the bill.

“Continued failures and abuses by [CIGIE’s] Integrity Committee have shown the inspectors general cannot be trusted to investigate wrongdoing in their ranks,” they said. “It is necessary to end the Integrity Committee and transfer CIGIE’s core functions to restore trust in the IG system.”

Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., a member of the Oversight panel, introduced the bill to scrap CIGIE on July 16 and was one of the House Republicans to request the GAO review.

In a letter to the Oversight Committee, the Project on Government Oversight nonprofit argued that transferring many of CIGIE’s responsibilities to OMB represents “a profound structural and philosophical change that should concern anyone, regardless of party, who believes oversight must remain independent of those being overseen.”

“Consider an inspector general investigating OMB’s implementation of appropriations law, impoundment decisions, grant administration or reorganization decisions within their agency. Under this legislation, OMB could simultaneously establish oversight priorities, resolve jurisdictional disputes of investigations and shape the workforce of that inspector general’s office,” wrote POGO Interim Executive Director Isabel Munilla. “This structure would create an unavoidable conflict of interest, undermining both the perception and reality of inspector general independence and fundamentally eroding public confidence in federal oversight.”

CIGIE is currently being led by Cheryl Mason, the IG for the Veterans Affairs Department and a former senior adviser to VA Secretary Doug Collins. Democrats and good government groups have questioned her ability to provide independent oversight because of her previous role in the Trump administration.

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Former Education officials warn agency transfers could undermine core functions

Shauneen Miranda, States Newsroom — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 06:00:00 -0400

Former Education Department officials in Republican and Democratic administrations sounded the alarm Monday over the agency’s efforts to outsource its special education programs and civil rights enforcement to other agencies.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., convened the former officials, along with advocates and educators, at a virtual press conference to blast those sweeping moves, which are part of a broader effort by President Donald Trump’s administration to dismantle the 46-year-old Education Department.

Murray rebuked the transfers as “outrageous” and “completely unacceptable,” noting that while she is fighting “tooth and nail” against any effort to dismantle the agency, she is “especially concerned about what this could mean for all students, especially students with disabilities.”

The agency in June said the Department of Health and Human Services will administer programs under Education’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, or OSERS, while civil rights enforcement under its Office for Civil Rights will be transferred to the Department of Justice.

The Education Department had announced 10 earlier interagency agreements, or IAAs, with HHS, Labor, Interior, State and Treasury, which transfer several of Education’s responsibilities to those agencies.

The department has said it “will continue to perform all statutorily required duties and responsibilities” involving special education programs and civil rights enforcement.

OSERS is responsible for administering the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, which guarantees a free public education for students with disabilities. The umbrella unit OSERS includes the Office of the Assistant Secretary, Office of Special Education Programs and the Rehabilitation Services Administration.

The civil rights office is tasked with investigating complaints from students and families.

"Learners, not patients"

Katy Neas, CEO of The Arc of the United States, an advocacy group for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, said that the transfers “would split apart the offices responsible for making disability rights real in schools, leaving families chasing answers across the federal government instead of getting accountability from one education agency.”

Neas was the deputy assistant secretary and acting assistant secretary at OSERS during the Biden administration.

“The stakes have never been higher,” she said. “If we allow the Department of Education to be dismantled, we not only undo decades of progress, we also risk abandoning the promise that every child deserves a chance to try and to succeed.”

Catherine Lhamon, executive director of the Edley Center on Law and Democracy at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law said the “new interagency agreement between the Department of Education and the Department of Justice is what someone would create if the person were designing a system to fail.”

Lhamon served as assistant secretary for civil rights during the Obama and Biden administrations.

“The principal harm of this new agreement is that it guarantees lengthier continued silence from the federal government on the classic kinds of discrimination cases families experience,” Lhamon said. Examples include restraining or secluding students, she said.

It raises “the core question (of) whether students with disabilities have the free appropriate public education to which the law entitles them,” Lhamon added.

Stephanie Smith Lee, co-director of policy and advocacy at National Down Syndrome Congress, pointed out that “IDEA is an education and civil rights law, not a healthcare program.”

“Students with disabilities are learners, not patients,” added Lee, who served as director of the Office of Special Education Programs under the George W. Bush administration.

“Moving special education and vocational rehabilitation to the Department of Health and Human Services would separate them from the rest of federal education policy and weaken the expertise and coordinated oversight that students, families and states depend on,” she said.

Savannah Newhouse, a spokesperson for the Education Department, dismissed the criticism, saying in a statement to States Newsroom that Murray and the former officials were part of a failing status quo.

“As Senator Murray is well aware, the Department of Education’s interagency partnerships do not alter the Trump Administration's dedication to students with disabilities and federal civil rights laws,” she wrote. “These agreements simply ensure that well-positioned agencies can support the workload, pool their expertise, and ultimately strengthen protections for students.”

House bills "dead" in Senate

Meanwhile, earlier in July the House Committee on Education and Workforce advanced a package of 10 bills permanently transferring several of Education’s functions to other departments and largely reflecting many of the earlier IAAs.

Notably, that package does not include any efforts to transfer Education’s responsibilities regarding special education programs and civil rights enforcement to other agencies.

“As long as this former preschool teacher is a United States senator, every one of those bills is dead on arrival,” Murray said.

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CDC shifts HIV prevention funds away from groups tackling this work

Jory Heckman — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 18:25:54 -0400

The Trump administration will not reauthorize millions of dollars in HIV prevention funding that used to go directly to community-based groups, opting instead to redirect that money to state and local health departments.

The money that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention previously distributed to community-based HIV prevention organizations will now go to states, which will decide whether or not to fund the CBOs. Roll Call first reported on these changes in federal HIV grants.

CDC’s National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention (NCHHSTP) told staff in an email Tuesday that it will not renew a federal cooperative agreement supporting “Ending the HIV Epidemic in the U.S. through Community-Based Partnerships,” a stream of federal funding that supports dozens of organizations.

CDC employees and nonprofit groups said these changes will result in more administrative costs and will take longer for federal funds to reach community-based groups carrying out HIV-prevention work.

The CDC, in a related funding announcement from December 2020, wrote that “CBOs are uniquely positioned to complement and extend the reach of HIV prevention efforts implemented by state and local health departments and education agencies.”

“They support the optimization of services across public, private, and other community-based organizations to achieve objectives of increased identification of HIV diagnoses, referral for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and non-occupational post-exposure prophylaxis (nPEP) services, earlier entry to HIV care, and increased consistency of care,” the agency wrote.

Department of Health and Human Resources Press Secretary Emily Hilliard said in a statement that “CDC remains committed to supporting HIV prevention efforts nationwide, including the critical work of community-based organizations.

“As CDC streamlines HIV prevention funding through health departments, local decision-making will remain central to combatting HIV, ensuring that local data inform local strategies and interventions,” Hilliard said. “CDC will continue to support HIV testing, diagnosis, and linkage to care, expand access to PrEP, and help people living with HIV achieve and maintain viral suppression.”

A CDC employee told Government Executive said that the agency is reverting back to an old model of awarding federal grants that wasn’t as effective at getting funding to the communities hardest hit by HIV.

“The result is more overhead cost for the states, which means less money that ultimately ends up with the CBOs for HIV prevention,” the CDC employee said. “A lot of money gets lost going down to the CBOs, and it helped with CDC being able to coordinate directly with them.”

A second CDC employee said that under this new funding model, state health departments would subcontract these community-based organizations, “leaving gaps in oversight and the loss of technical support provided directly from CDC to CBOs.”

“This is a serious attack on communities, as CBOs are on the boots on the ground for HIV work and losing them would be a major loss,” the second CDC employee said. “Many of the CBOs are run by folks with not only expertise but lived experience – which is critical in the HIV space given trust and stigma."

The second CDC employee said that in the interim, “many CBOs will either be shut down completely or have to lay off staff.”

“Local politics will play a much larger role in what happens with the CBOs [and] if they get funding,” the employee said

CDC employees said the agency was previously planning to renew this federal grant funding for another five-year cycle starting in fiscal 2027. Save HIV Funding, a coalition of over 150 organizations and advocates, said in a statement Monday that community-based organizations currently receiving these awards were provided a three-month extension through September 2026, but have now been informed that a new funding opportunity will not be released.

Jeremiah Johnson, the executive director of PrEP4All and co-founder of the Save HIV Funding campaign, said that some impacted organizations which have spent decades building relationships with communities hardest hit by HIV may have to lay off staff or shut down “if this critical funding stream is discontinued or altered beyond recognition.”

“As we have already seen too many times in the past year, when we lose critical CDC funding and infrastructure, we see more illness and associated healthcare costs in our communities,” Johnson said.

More than 1.2 million Americans are currently living with HIV, according to HIV.gov

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OPM moves to implement long-awaited retirement fix for federal first responders

Erich Wagner — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 17:27:51 -0400

The Office of Personnel Management is set to propose new rules this week implementing a 2022 law aimed at reforming retirement benefits for federal first responders who are injured during their service and forced to pursue jobs elsewhere in government.

Federal workers in professions like law enforcement and firefighting participate in the federal government’s defined benefit retirement program on an accelerated basis—in exchange for paying more toward their pensions each paycheck, they become eligible for their full annuity once they have served 20 years and reached age 50. They are also subject to mandatory retirement at age 57.

But if a federal first responder is injured on the job and unable to continue in their current role, they lose access to the accelerated retirement timeline, despite the increased payments they have already made along the way.

A proposed rule set for publication Wednesday in the Federal Register would implement the First Responder Fair RETIRE Act, a 2022 law aimed at fixing this flaw. The legislation allows first responders forced to take a job elsewhere in the federal government to continue to pay accelerated contributions and reach retirement when they originally planned. And it grants feds the chance to be refunded the extra half-percentage point of their salary that went toward retirement if they leave federal service altogether prior to reaching retirement age.

The regulations establish criteria by which an employee may be eligible to retain their accelerated retirement timeline after returning to federal service following an injury: the employee must be serving as a law enforcement or Customs and Border Protection officer, firefighter, air traffic controller, nuclear material courier, or members of the Capital or Supreme Court police; their injury must be the “direct result” of something that happened while they were performing their duties; they must be “permanently unable” to serve in their original post; and they must not yet be eligible for voluntary or mandatory retirement.

But OPM hesitated at implementing Section 2 of the law, a “sense of Congress” statement in favor of retaining national security workers and their institutional knowledge.

“It is in the best national and homeland security interests of the United States for federal agencies to retain the specialized knowledge and expertise of individuals who suffer an injury or illness while serving in a covered position (as defined under the amendments made by this act),” the law states. “Federal agencies should ensure, to the greatest extent possible, that an individual who can no longer carry out the duties of a covered position, and is reappointed to a position in the civil service that is not a covered position, is reappointed within the same federal agency, in the same geographic location, and at a level of pay commensurate to the position which the individual held immediately prior to such injury or illness."

"Section 2 provides guiding principles for interpreting the statute, but it does not convey authority to issue regulations to achieve the stated objectives or to take other actions not otherwise permitted by law,” OPM wrote. “OPM has broad authority to regulate the [Civil Service Retirement System] and the [Federal Employees Retirement System]. Nonetheless, that regulatory authority is limited to regulations that are necessary to ‘carry out’ subchapter III of chapter 83 (the CSRS law) and chapter 84 (the FERS law). Section 2 is not part of those laws.”

Nonetheless, OPM said it would seek to implement at least the second half of the sense of Congress statement through other regulations governing workplace injuries.

“However, the Sense of Congress can be connected to the requirements in . . . a provision in the federal employee workers’ compensation law that provides for reemployment and retention rights for individuals who resume employment after overcoming injury or disability,” the rule states. “[If] it is not possible to reemploy the employee in a position in the same employing agency, that agency should seek OPM assistance with placing the employee.”

OPM is soliciting public comments on its proposal until September 30.

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Transportation looks to AI to accelerate its modernization initiatives

Edward Graham — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 07:00:00 -0400

The Department of Transportation is ramping up its use of artificial intelligence, according to a top agency official, with the emerging capabilities playing an increasingly important role in the agency’s ongoing modernization efforts.

Speaking at GovExec’s Government Efficiency Summit on July 16, Transportation Deputy Secretary Steven Bradbury said internal adoption of the technologies has already helped to accelerate needed software upgrades, with growing workforce use of AI poised to further expand its impact on agency operations.

Transportation released its 1DOT IT strategy last September to help guide its digital infrastructure transformation, which includes a focus on modernizing and replacing its outdated systems.

Bradbury said uses of the emerging capabilities have already helped Transportation speed up its software production timelines from 18 months down to 18 weeks, noting that “when we have a need for new software applications, we can bring AI to bear to help.”

Agencywide experimentation with AI tools has also highlighted a broader range of potential benefits from the technologies, Bradbury said.

He cited internal figures that found that “80% of DOT people are now looking at the uses of AI,” and said current adoption of the capabilities highlights how the technologies can provide further benefits to the American people.

“We're using it in making our rulemaking faster, more effective,” Bradbury said. “We get tens of thousands of comments on the complicated rules that we issue. We need to be able to digest those quickly, understand them [and] respond to them. AI can obviously help with that. Similarly, reviewing hundreds and hundreds of grant applications to make the right decisions about which projects to support through our grantmaking — AI is going to be instrumental in helping us do that as well.”

Beyond internal uses of AI, the capabilities are also set to play a key role in the Trump administration’s broader push to upgrade the nation’s outdated air traffic control system. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the modernization effort in May 2025, saying at the time that the multi-billion dollar effort would include a modernized flight management system and updated ground radar systems at all U.S. airports.

Although Congress approved $12.5 billion for the modernization effort as part of the Big, Beautiful Bill, Bradbury said “we do need more” to finish the effort by the end of President Donald Trump’s second term.

He noted that the Federal Aviation Administration, which is overseeing the initiative, is already in the process of setting up a Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories — or SMART — system “to use all of the information available, [including] weather, what's going on at the ground [and] where airplanes are being prepared for takeoff across the whole system to know in advance what the conflict points are.”

The FAA announced last month that it awarded Air Space Intelligence a 12-year, $875 million contract for new software and artificial intelligence capabilities, including for the SMART system.

Bradbury said that “AI is going to be essential to make this happen.”

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Homan says ICE officers will wear body cameras during traffic stops

Ariana Figueroa, States Newsroom — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 06:00:00 -0400

In the wake of two fatal shootings in Texas and Maine, Immigration Customs and Enforcement officers will wear “at least one body camera” during traffic stops, Tom Homan, the president’s border czar, said over the weekend.

Homan, who President Donald Trump has tasked with leading his mass deportation campaign, said in a Sunday interview on Fox News that ICE’s acting director has instructed officers to wear a body camera “whenever possible” during vehicle stops.

This month, two immigrants — 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero and 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo — were shot and killed by ICE agents who stopped their vehicles. Neither man was an initial enforcement target, the Department of Homeland Security said.

During Sunday’s Fox and Friends Weekend program, Homan said he supported body cameras because “they exonerate more law enforcement than they convict.”

“I want officers to wear body cameras because I want the American people to see what the officers saw when they took that action,” Homan said.

Federal immigration officers have shot 22 people and killed six, including three U.S. citizens, during the second Trump administration. Most shootings have stemmed from traffic stops, which Homan said officers were continuing.

After the back-to-back shootings of Salgado Araujo in Texas and Guerrero in Maine, DHS instructed agents to pause vehicle stops, but Trump quickly reversed those plans.

Congressional standstill

Homan blamed Democrats for the reason immigration agents don’t have body cameras, pointing to the weeks-long shutdown of DHS. He also accused traffic stops of becoming more dangerous because of Democrats criticizing ICE.

“They're more dangerous now than ever because Democratic members of Congress, Democratic mayors and governors have preached for the past year ‘ICE isn’t a real law enforcement agency. ICE has no authority. Resist,’” he said.

Democrats refused to approve funding for DHS unless restraints were placed on ICE and Border Patrol officers, such as the requirement for body cameras, after two U.S. citizens were killed by federal immigration officers in Minnesota in January.

Congressional Republicans last year used a special legislative maneuver to allocate roughly $175 billion to DHS for immigration enforcement, detainment and deportations, without needing Democratic support.

GOP lawmakers used the same move following the shutdown this year to fund $75 billion for ICE and Border Patrol until September of 2029.

In a separate interview, on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday, Homan again gave his support for body cameras on ICE officers and blamed Democrats for a lack of body cameras.

“I think body cameras are the way to go,” he said.

After the two killings in Minnesota in January, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said DHS would be issuing body cameras to immigration officers.

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OPM shrinks its workforce by a third, seeks further staffing cuts

Jory Heckman — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 19:40:49 -0400

The federal government’s human resources office shed more than a third of its total workforce so far under the second Trump administration and is seeking further staffing cuts through another round of voluntary separation incentives.

The Office of Personnel Management shrank its total headcount by 35% between December 2024 and March 2026, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office.

In its analysis of federal workforce data, GAO found that more than half of OPM employees who left during this period had 11 or more years of service.

“These actions have reduced institutional knowledge and operational capacity at the agency,” GAO wrote, adding that these staffing cuts may worsen skills gaps it previously flagged at OPM.

Nearly 60% of OPM employees who have left under the second Trump administration did so through the deferred resignation program. Layoffs through a reduction in force account for 10% of OPM’s staffing cuts.

OPM is pursuing further workforce cuts. Last month, the agency announced it would give employees in its healthcare and insurance division another shot at opting into the deferred resignation program.

OPM set a July 13 deadline for eligible employees to opt in to the latest DRP offer. But employees age 40 or older have until Aug. 27 to consider the agreement. OPM employees accepted into this round of the DRP will go on paid administrative leave, starting at the end of August, and will officially separate from the agency in March 2027.

An OPM employee who opted into the latest DRP offer said it’s not yet clear how many coworkers have made the same decision.

“We are all curious, but no one is sharing unless they’re fully committed to staying,” the OPM employee said.

The latest DRP offer comes a few months before OPM’s busy Open Season, a one-month period in which federal and Postal Service employees can make changes to their healthcare plans.

Open Season starts in November and ends in December. Health plan changes made during this period go into effect in January.

An OPM spokesperson did not specify how many employees have opted into the latest DRP offer, but said in a statement that “we feel very confident in our staffing levels and OPM’s ability to deliver on a successful open season.”

Amid these workforce cuts, OPM has seen some processing delays.

OPM has been rolling out a long-awaited online system for federal retirees and marked its “last day” of paper-based processing this month. But federal employees who accepted the DRP offer last year are still waiting on OPM to finalize their retirement paperwork.

A former IRS employee who took the deferred resignation program last year said she is still waiting for her retirement checks to arrive.

“Those of us in this position have been forced to drain our savings, withdraw money from our 401(k)s and use credit cards to pay bills while waiting for our retirement checks to start,” she said.

The retired IRS employee said agency management held several meetings with employees about the deferred resignation offer and what it would mean for employees. But she said that “waiting almost a year for your retirement checks to process was not part of that discussion.”

She said she wouldn’t have taken the DRP offer if she knew she’d be waiting this long for her paperwork to be processed.

A former federal employee who retired from the National Cancer Institute last year said that OPM has not yet fully processed his retirement application. An OPM representative recently told him that his application has been adjudicated, but is still waiting to be reviewed.

"I can't help but wonder how many retirees are in the same boat,” the former NCI employee said.

An OPM spokesperson said the agency “remains committed to ensuring federal retirees receive the benefits they have earned while modernizing a decades-old retirement processing system,” and that the transition from a paper-based system will reduce processing times and provide a better experience for retirees.

GAO’s report found OPM’s retirement services office saw a 16% staffing decrease between fiscal 2024 and fiscal 2026.

OPM, earlier this year, proposed taking over the work of adjudicating the appeals of certain terminated federal employees from the Merit Systems Protection Board. But OPM’s Merit System Accountability & Compliance division, which would take on this work, has seen a more than 40% staffing cut.

OPM, in its FY 2027 budget justification, proposed using AI tools and modernizing its IT systems to carry out its work with fewer staff.

GAO wrote that it requested additional documents from OPM regarding its reorganization efforts and the rationale behind closing or consolidating offices, but OPM officials did not provide any of the requested documents, meet with GAO officials, or respond to GAO’s written questions.

Dawn Locke, the director of GAO’s Strategic Issues Team, said OPM provided additional information after GAO released its report on Monday. Locke said GAO requested this information from OPM more than five months ago, and has not yet had an opportunity to review the materials that OPM just submitted.

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Arbitrator restores telework for IRS workers

Erich Wagner — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 18:52:35 -0400

An independent arbitrator last week became the latest to order a federal agency to restore 2024-era telework agreements to its workforce, concluding that the Internal Revenue Service unlawfully repudiated its union contract when it effectively ended the workplace flexibility last year.

The National Treasury Employees Union first filed the grievance in March 2025, shortly after the IRS unilaterally cancelled telework and remote work agreements en masse, despite a collective bargaining agreement that required a “case-by-case” review of employees’ eligibility along with a detailed list of potential rationales for doing so. IRS rejected that grievance in May 2025, leading the union to request the help of an arbitrator.

But in late March, the agency told arbitrator Christopher Shulman that he was “no longer authorized to accept or adjudicate any grievances involving the IRS and NTEU,” and that management was withdrawing from all pending grievance proceedings. This corresponded both with a push by the Office of Personnel Management that month to encourage agencies to formally terminate their union contracts in accordance with President Trump’s 2025 executive orders banning unions at most federal agencies due to their purported national security work, as well as a push by some in the administration to prevent the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service from assigning arbitrators in the first place.

Shulman and NTEU then conducted a hearing in May with the agency in absentia, citing an provision within the parties’ collective bargaining agreement allowing proceedings to continue with only one party’s consent.

Shulman bemoaned the uncertainty surrounding much of the federal collective bargaining apparatus, as a variety of lawsuits challenging the validity of Trump’s anti-union executive orders and their implementation continue to work their way through the courts.

“It is not hyperbole that most federal sector labor practitioners await a final judicial determination on this issue with bated breath,” he wrote. “If the EO’s exclusion of the agency from [the federal sector labor management statute’s’] ambit is ultimately upheld, then the agency’s termination of the parties’ collective bargaining agreements and subsequent withdrawal from the arbitration process will be deemed legal. If the IRS exclusion under executive order 14251 is not upheld, then the agency will likely have committed an unfair labor practice by terminating the collective bargaining agreement and withdrawing from this arbitration.”

But that is all moot, he said, because IRS terminated its telework and remote work agreements before the March 2025 executive order and the ultimate March 2026 contract termination.

“It is black letter law that expiration of a collective bargaining agreement does not terminate rights and obligations arising under the contract during its term,” Shulman wrote. “The obligation to arbitrate survives expiration where (as here) ‘the dispute arose during the life of the contract but arbitration proceedings had not begun before termination. The same would be true if arbitration processes began but were not completed, during the contract’s term.’”

Despite IRS’ lack of participation, Shulman approximated the agency’s argument, based upon its announcement that it would withdraw as well as its initial decision denying the union’s grievance. Like other agencies, IRS said it was compelled to implement its return-to-office mandate by Trump’s Jan. 20 memo instructing federal workers to return to agency offices full-time and OPM’s declaration that telework is a management right, making CBA provisions governing the workplace flexibility “unenforceable.”

But Shulman described OPM’s guidance to agencies as an “unqualified overstatement” of a Federal Labor Relations Authority caselaw.

“As noted by the union, telework and remote work arrangements do not address what work duties employees are to perform, which employees will perform the work, how they are to do so, or when,” he wrote. “Instead, these arrangements simply discuss where employees will perform assigned work. As such, FLRA and the courts have held these arrangements do not affect an agency’s rights to determine mission or to assign work.”

Shulman ruled that the agency must restore bargaining unit employees’ telework and remote work agreements, as well as rescind any adverse personnel actions stemming from the cancellation of the workplace flexibilities. IRS has 30 days appeal the decision to the FLRA.

In a statement Monday, NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald argued that telework and remote work are programs that are beneficial to employees, management and ultimately the public.

“Not only does telework save taxpayers money through reduced leasing costs, reduced energy expenses and increased productivity, it also boosts employee recruitment and retention, reduces traffic congestion and helps ease rising commuting costs,” she said. “NTEU is ready and determined to continue fighting to enforce our win on behalf of the employees we represent.”

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Secret Service is examining apparent Iranian video outlining Trump motorcade routes, assassination opportunities

David DiMolfetta — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 15:00:00 -0400

The U.S. Secret Service is examining a video that appears to have been produced by Iranian operatives and aims to identify opportunities to assassinate President Donald Trump, including supposed motorcade routes used by his protective details in Florida and New York.

The video, which was sent to Nextgov/FCW by a U.S. government official, is titled “Where to Kill Trump?!” with the title written in a blood-stained font alongside a bloody silhouette of the president’s side profile. In high-quality, likely AI-generated red, black and white graphics of people, buildings, vehicles, roads and other infrastructure, it claims to show how the president and his Secret Service detail commute from Palm Beach International Airport in Florida to his Mar-a-Lago estate, and from LaGuardia Airport to Trump Tower in New York City.

It has been taken off several sites since reports of it surfaced around the end of last week. The Secret Service is “aware of it and we’re looking into it,” a spokesperson for the agency said in a brief phone interview on Friday.

“Protecting the president and those under our protection is a responsibility we take extremely seriously,” a spokesperson added in a follow-up email. “While we do not comment on the specifics of protective intelligence, our teams work around the clock to assess real-time information and intelligence, ensuring our protective operations remain layered, adaptive, and fully aligned to address the climate.”

The video is narrated in Persian with English captions. “This is no ordinary report,” the captions say. “Based on the most complex security protocols between 2024 and 2026, Donald Trump’s routine movements in the US have been gathered and decoded.”

Almost three minutes long, the video describes the apparent core arrangement of the president’s motorcade, alongside the routes that are supposedly taken in each location. The Florida route also claims to show how Trump is escorted from Mar-a-Lago to the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach during the weekends.

Nextgov/FCW is withholding details of the routes, road closures and security measures described in the video, on grounds that, if its contents are accurate enough, it may expose protective details that could put officials in danger. About halfway through the video, the captions say a specific location along one of the purported routes “seems like a very suitable location for the free people of the world!”

At the end of the video, as it describes supposed street closure arrangements around Trump Tower, the captions tell viewers: “Stay tuned … we are going to get even closer than this.”

It’s not immediately clear how widely the video has been circulated or who specifically produced it, nor when it was completed and disseminated, or whether more follow-up videos exist. Some social media posts last week attributed the clip to Iran’s state-backed Fars News Agency, though this could not be immediately verified.

But if the video's contents are sufficiently precise, it could raise concerns that Iran has expanded its surveillance and targeting efforts against the president, potentially revealing details about the routes and protective measures used by his Secret Service detail.

Tehran has long threatened to assassinate Trump in retaliation for the 2020 U.S. drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force. Those calls from Iranian leaders have intensified since Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in a joint U.S.-Israeli strike earlier this year that began the ongoing Iran war.

The president makes regular trips to Florida to stay at his Mar-a-Lago estate, where he and his team often land at the Palm Beach airport, now officially named President Donald J. Trump International Airport. A Nextgov/FCW analysis of White House travel pool reports shows that the president appears to have only made two trips to New York City via LaGuardia last year. Throughout 2026, Trump made visits to New York, but they appear to not have involved LaGuardia as a destination airport.

Former presidents receive lifelong Secret Service protection. In 2024, while out of office, Trump regularly traveled by Secret Service motorcade from Trump Tower to the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse for his criminal hush-money trial. Trump also used his private Boeing 757, nicknamed “Trump Force One,” to travel between Florida and New York during the trial, including flights into LaGuardia.

Iran’s permanent mission to the United Nations did not return a request for comment.

“What’s most telling about this video is what it does not include,” said Paul Eckloff, a former Secret Service official who oversaw presidential protection duties for then President Barack Obama and for Trump in his first term. “Is this video a coded signal to attack things that are not listed?” he said, referring to the fact that presidential routes in Washington, D.C. are not described.

“That would be a concern of mine, that there is another target that they’re trying to steer concern away from. Or is D.C. such a hard target that they wouldn’t attempt it? I don’t know,” Eckloff said. He added that fear is a “primary export” of Iranian groups and opined that even a small attack on the president in D.C. would shake confidence more profoundly than an attack in Florida or New York.

The Secret Service is likely conducting a forensic review of the video with assistance from the intelligence community, Eckloff said.

Investigators would look for distinctive words, phrases or technical clues that could help trace the video to its original source, including the AI model or other tools used to make it. Any credible findings could then be shared with the president’s protective detail, which may adjust motorcade routes or strengthen security along them, he added.

The video illustrates how generative AI is increasingly being used in information operations and modern-day warfare. AI tools can give such content a more polished and realistic appearance, but the apparent use of AI doesn’t necessarily prove whether the routes or scenarios depicted are based on actual gathered intelligence.

“The Secret Service has all sorts of intelligence sources … both in this country and outside, so it’s understandable that they would already have this and be evaluating it in terms of the procedures followed,” said A.T. Smith, a former Secret Service deputy director who served in the agency for nearly 30 years between the Reagan and Obama administrations.

“It’s not uncommon for these sorts of things to pop up when you’re having these kinds of events in the world,” he added. “I’m sure the service is getting information from not only American intelligence agencies and sources, but probably around the world as well.”

Earlier this month, Trump departed the NATO summit in Turkey aboard the older Air Force One instead of the Qatari-donated Boeing 747-8 after U.S. officials received Israeli intelligence warning of a possible Iranian plot to target him, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The video has emerged as the war between the United States and Iran continues to widen, with American forces striking Iranian targets and Tehran retaliating against U.S. personnel and regional allies. At least two U.S. service members were killed Friday while defending against an Iranian missile and drone attack in Jordan, the U.S. military said over the weekend.

“Given Trump’s worsening war in Iran, this video is very concerning, and I hope the Secret Service investigates it properly and adjusts protectee operations as necessary to counter this threat,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the ranking member on the House Homeland Security Committee.

“However, I have become increasingly concerned the Secret Service does not have the proper resources to do its job after its funding has been diverted to construction of Trump’s ballroom and it has frequently been forced to devote vast resources to act as a chauffeur for JD Vance and his family,” he said, referring to recent reports that federal funds were redirected toward security work connected to the White House ballroom and that agents have grown frustrated with the Vance family’s frequent, last-minute travel requests.

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Traffic stops become a flashpoint in ICE shootings

Ariana Figueroa, States Newsroom — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 14:35:42 -0400

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on July 13 killed 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a Colombian national with legal work authorization, in Maine, making him the 22nd person shot at by federal immigration officers during President Donald Trump’s second term.

Nearly all of those 22 incidents – 19 – involved Department of Homeland Security officers shooting upon people in their vehicles during traffic stops, a crucial nexus, according to a States Newsroom review of news reports and documents. The encounters spanned the nation, from Colorado to Texas to Oregon to New Jersey.

Since Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, where he promised to carry out an aggressive immigration crackdown, federal immigration officers have killed six people, three of them U.S. citizens. Four deaths came during traffic stops.

Following Guerrero’s death, the second immigrant to be killed by ICE officers during a traffic stop in a week, DHS put a pause on traffic stop enforcement. But Trump quickly ordered the department to abandon those plans.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that officers will conduct vehicle-related enforcement stops “in order to continue their deportation campaign.”

The agency has plenty of funding at hand. Congressional Republicans last year used a legislative maneuver to allocate roughly $175 billion to DHS for immigration enforcement, detainment and deportations, without needing Democratic support. GOP lawmakers did the same move this year to fund $75 billion for ICE and Border Patrol until September of 2029.

After the ICE shooting in Biddeford, the entire Maine congressional delegation called for an independent investigation, with Republican Sen. Susan Collins urging an end to vehicle enforcement.

A Thursday report from the American Civil Liberties Union found patterns of misconduct by immigration agents during Trump’s second term, identifying 432 incidents where agents either used or threatened to use force against immigrants and bystanders.

The report reviewed more than 1,200 incidents across eight states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland and New Mexico.

Of the traffic-related enforcement, the ACLU found in 76 instances, people and passengers were pulled from their cars; windows were smashed 47 times; officers 14 times rammed vehicles into people’s cars; and they hit people with cars six times.

What happened afterward

In the moments after those 22 shootings, DHS has quickly accused those who were fired upon of using their vehicles as weapons against immigration officers.

But independent video has often contradicted that narrative.

In at least five cases DHS brought, charges were dismissed after the department accused U.S. citizens and immigrants shot by federal agents as being the aggressors.

In August 2025, Francisco Longoria, a Mexican national, was driving his vehicle in San Bernardino, California, when federal immigration agents in unmarked cars tried to pull him over. He fled and the agents fired upon him.

The Department of Justice charged him with attempting to harm agents, but prosecutors couldn’t defend the DHS actions and charges were dismissed. Longoria was not injured.

Marimar Martinez was labeled a domestic terrorist by DHS and indicted after she was shot in her car five times by Border Patrol agents in October 2025, during the Trump administration's aggressive immigration deportation campaign in Chicago. DOJ dropped its charges against Martinez, a U.S. citizen, after the Trump administration accused her of using her car as a weapon.

When the president initially directed immigration agents to the nation’s capitol, Phillip M. Brown, a U.S. citizen, was pulled over by law enforcement, including an immigration officer who shot into his vehicle. During the October 2025 shooting, Brown was not injured, but charged with fleeing from law enforcement. The U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute the case.

During the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation drive in Minneapolis in January, that left two U.S. citizens dead, a Venezuelan immigrant, Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis was shot by a federal agent while in his home. DHS accused Cesar Sosa-Celis of striking an immigration officer with a broom handle, but Cesar Sosa-Celis denied it and surveillance video contracted the federal government's claim.

The immigration agent who shot Cesar Sosa-Celis was prosecuted by local Minnesota officials and arrested in May for falsely reporting a crime and for assault.

In Houston, on July 7, ICE officers killed 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, saying he tried to run over agents as has been the case in other incidents.

Salgado Araujo was driving several other people to work that morning when immigration officers approached his van. He was not considered a person of interest, DHS has stated.

The FBI has sought a search warrant to seize plastic bags with “crystal-like substances,” to test for methamphetamine, according to the Texas Tribune. One of the lawyers representing Salgado Araujo’s brother, who was in the van during the shooting, said it was granulated salt.

A grim beginning to the year

The most people shot by federal immigration agents was in January. Three of the five people shot by ICE and Border Patrol officers were in Minnesota, with two of them fatalities.

The two deaths were in Minneapolis, where the Trump administration conducted an aggressive deportation campaign that targeted the city, which has a high Somali refugee population.

That month, federal immigration agents shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both U.S. citizens, and shot and wounded Cesar Sosa-Celis.

Good was killed while in her vehicle, which then DHS Secretary Kristi Noem labeled her as a domestic terrorist. DHS accused Good of using her SUV as a weapon, but independent video did not uphold that allegation.

A week later, federal immigration officers shot and killed intensive care unit nurse Pretti, who was recording agents on his phone and helping a woman who was pushed down by them. Noem again labeled him a domestic terrorist and said he was attacking agents, but multiple videos taken from different angles do not show that.

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Energy Department removes more than 1,600 webpages from public website

Kate Yoder, Grist — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 13:04:55 -0400

If you wanted to save some money by learning how to check your home for air leaks, poor insulation, and power-hungry lightbulbs, the Energy Department website was ready to help. And if you needed an expert, the site guided you to another page for help lining up a professional energy assessment, a well-established first step to cut utility bills and curb pollution at the same time.

That is, until this summer, when both of those resources vanished from the agency’s site, each now redirecting to “Page not found.” They were taken down by July 3, around the same time that the Department of Energy deleted more than 1,600 pages from the Energy Saver section of its site, gutting a resource for people looking to conserve energy and lower bills.

“I can’t remember another time that, with DOE specifically, we’ve seen an entire domain go down the way that [it] has been reported on now,” said Izzy Pacenza, who monitors government websites for the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative. Over a 30-day span this summer, as swaths of the country suffered under heat waves, more than 300 of the webpages had received 160,000 page views, according to an analysis from The Guardian.

The news coverage of the missing websites has focused on the disappearance of one recommendation in particular. Ahead of a heat wave that roasted New York City with 100-degree temperatures earlier this month, Mayor Zohran Mamdani asked businesses and residents to set their AC to 78 degrees to conserve energy, drawing the ire of Republicans who mocked the restrictions as “socialism.” Internet sleuths were quick to notice that similar guidance had vanished from the Department of Energy’s website, which used to direct people to keep their thermostat between 75 and 78 degrees. The timing suggested that the agency might have removed the pages as a rebuke to Mamdani’s advice.

The purge looked suspiciously timed for another reason: On July 2, the Energy Department announced a proposed rule to make it harder for future administrations to approve energy efficiency standards for household appliances, saying it would “permanently end Green New Scam appliance mandates.” The move was part of the Trump administration’s broader attack on energy efficiency requirements.

The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative has argued that Trump’s federal agencies tend to remove information from their websites related to regulatory changes they just announced, which limits access to information people could use to oppose agency proposals during the legally required public comment period. But the facts that would be most relevant here — the agency’s information about its Appliance and Equipment Standards Program — remain on the site, pointed out Andrew deLaski, the executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project. “I haven’t seen things come down that are directly related to the appliance standards program,” he said.

The Energy Department did not respond to questions about why it removed the webpages. But the purge could be understood as part of a broader pattern of removing the most accessible, actionable public information about climate change from federal government websites. Last summer brought an abrupt end to the government website that hosted the National Climate Assessment, a series of congressionally mandated reports that broke down how climate change affects the regions where people live. Around the same time, Climate.gov, the widely used site that translated the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s research into easy-to-understand resources, vanished too.

Energy Saver provided a similar service, distilling technical knowledge about conserving energy into advice for ordinary people: shopping for efficient appliances, installing “cool roofs,” and do-it-yourself guides to saving energy and money.

“These things are seen as authoritative resources and tools given to us by the government for us to think about how climate change interacts with our daily lives,” Pacenza said. “And now that interaction, and that relationship, is being broken or interrupted.”

This kind of consumer advice on how to save energy clashes with President Donald Trump’s “energy dominance” framing. The administration has promoted a narrative that energy use, powered by fossil fuels, “is a tenet of American values and of our identity,” Pacenza said. Telling people to be aware of their energy use is in tension with this narrative. Even if the DOE’s website purge wasn’t driven by Mamdani’s statements about conserving energy, a similar impulse may lie behind the decision.

The debate over asking Americans to adjust their thermostats to save energy is actually decades old: During a fuel shortage in the summer of 1979, President Jimmy Carter required retail stores, restaurants, and other public and commercial buildings to keep the thermostat no warmer than 65 degrees in winter and no cooler than 78 degrees in summer (sound familiar?). President Ronald Reagan reversed those restrictions in 1981, calling them “an excessive regulatory burden.”

In general, though, energy efficiency measures used to be in the realm of bipartisan agreement. Reagan went on to sign the National Appliance Energy Conservation Act of 1987 into law, establishing minimum efficiency standards for refrigerators, freezers, and other household equipment. But recent years have seen air conditioners, laundry machines, shower heads, and other items get roped into the culture wars. Republicans have argued that government efficiency standards interfere with “consumer choice” and have been undoing regulations passed by Democratic administrations.

“This administration isn’t doing anything to improve efficiency standards — they’re only trying to go backwards,” deLaski said.

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/politics/energy-department-saving-disappear-website/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.

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GSA wants other agencies to borrow what's working on tech

Frank Konkel — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 11:59:52 -0400

As the General Services Administration closes in on achieving its 2026 moonshot goal to save and automate 1 million hours of work for its employees, the agency will showcase and share those internal efforts — and a host of other proven tech efforts — with a governmentwide audience on July 30.

Registration for the Emerging Technology Showcase is open to all federal employees, and though the event will be held in person at the Interior Department’s Yates Auditorium, it will be livestreamed for a virtual audience likely in the tens of thousands.

“The administration has looked at GSA to lead” on approaches that make government more efficient, effective and responsive, GSA Deputy Administrator Mike Lynch said Thursday at the Government Efficiency Summit.

GSA hosted an internal tech demo day in late spring, featuring several agency employees — including Lynch and Chief Information Officer Dave Shive — who showcased several ways technology was being used across the agency to save time, improve efficiencies, deliver better outcomes and services or make employees’ jobs easier. Several thousand employees tuned in, and Lynch said its in the agency’s DNA to share what’s working.

“That's really a core to GSA's mission and a convening function that we've heard: a lot of demand and interest throughout government to expand what we were doing internally and offer it up more broadly,” he added.

One certain talking point for the event will be a step-by-step guide GSA released in June to cut, streamline and automate work called the Elimination, Optimization and Automation playbook. The playbook builds on lessons learned from federal pilots, mature automation programs and GSA’s own extensive internal enterprise efforts to improve operations. One such effort, the agency’s push to save and eliminate 1 million hours of employee work within the calendar year, is pacing far ahead of schedule.

“We're at roughly 850,000 [hours identified], which has been amazing, and we've been blown away with kind of the adoption that's taken place, largely driven by technology,” Lynch said Thursday. “We put that in [the] playbook, and we're now showcasing that as part of the forum on the 30th that should be available to all of government to see where to use that within your own workflows.”

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How a little-known Trump directive reshaped the government's counterterrorism approach

Melinda Haas, The Conversation — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 11:37:33 -0400

A little-noticed presidential national security directive is now the legal engine behind a wave of terrorism prosecutions against left-wing protesters.

That domestic campaign now has an international dimension, one that American officials had been planning for months, culminating on July 16, 2026, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism drew representatives from more than 65 countries to Washington. The gathering was informally called the “Antifa summit.”

Rubio described antifa-aligned networks as sharing infrastructure across borders and accused Iran and Cuba of helping bankroll the movement, without offering evidence. The White House declared the summit the start of an “unprecedented global offensive” against what it calls “radical left terrorism.”

This offensive is built on the same domestic legal architecture that has now sent American activists to prison for decades.

That architecture is National Security Presidential Memorandum/NSPM-7, issued on Sept. 25, 2025, which for the first time appeared to authorize preemptive law-enforcement measures against Americans based not on whether they are planning to commit violence but for their political or ideological beliefs.

Nearly a year later, that blueprint has moved from paper into practice.

The Justice Department has built task forces staffed by counterterrorism prosecutors. The FBI has set up its own NSPM-7 mission center to oversee investigations into left-wing movements, including a joint effort with the IRS to investigate nonprofit groups.

The Justice Department has used this machinery to convict activists and send some of them to prison for decades.

NSPM-7 was not passed by Congress. It’s a lesser-known tool of executive power: a presidential memorandum.

As an international relations scholar who has studied U.S. foreign policy decision-making and national security legislation, I recognize that presidents can take several types of executive actions without legislative involvement: executive orders, memoranda and proclamations.

This structure allows the president to direct law enforcement and national security agencies, with little opportunity for congressional oversight.

Presidential national security powers

Executive memorandums direct agencies to prepare reports, implement policies, or align programs with the administration’s priorities. Unlike executive orders, they aren’t required to be published. When they relate to national security, like NSPM-7, they’re called national security directives – many of which stay classified and may not be declassified for years or decades.

The stated purpose of NSPM-7 is to counter domestic terrorism and organized political violence, focusing mainly on perceived threats from the political left. The memorandum identifies “anti-Christian,” “anti-capitalism” or “anti-American” views as potential indicators that a group or person will commit domestic terrorism.

The memorandum claims that political violence originates with “anti-fascist” groups that hold the following views: “support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”

The strategy includes preemptive measures to disrupt groups before they engage in violent political acts, empowering multiagency task forces to investigate potential federal crimes related to radicalization and the groups’ funders. Former Attorney General Pam Bondi’s December 2025 implementation memo went further, ordering a five-year review of agency files on antifa. A task force staffed with counterterrorism and organized-crime prosecutors is carrying out these investigations.

‘Domestic terrorist organizations’

The memorandum directs the Department of Justice to focus FBI resources from approximately 200 Joint Terrorism Task Forces on investigating “acts of recruiting or radicalizing persons” for the purpose of “political violence, terrorism, or conspiracy against rights; and the violent deprivation of any citizen’s rights.”

NSPM-7 also allows the attorney general to propose groups for designation as “domestic terrorist organizations.” That includes groups that engage in “organized doxxing campaigns, swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, destruction of property, threats of violence, and civil disorder.”

Existing laws allow the secretary of state to designate groups as “foreign terrorist organizations” that are then subject to financial sanctions.

But these laws do not permit the president to label domestic groups this way.

That gap hasn’t stopped prosecutions. In Texas, eight defendants tied to a “North Texas Antifa Cell” were sentenced in June 2026 for a 2025 armed confrontation at the Prairieland immigration detention center. One man received 100 years, and others who never fired a weapon still drew decades in prison under terrorism sentencing guidelines.

In Minnesota, 15 members and associates of a group called Direct Action Minnesota were indicted in June 2026 on conspiracy and assault charges. A 94-page indictment cited behavior such as wearing an “I’m Antifa!” sweatshirt, possessing a bullhorn or including a devil emoji in a Signal message.

NSPM-7 marks a major conceptual shift in U.S. counterterrorism policy, departing from approaches that primarily targeted foreign threats.

Earlier directives, dating to Ronald Reagan’s presidency, treated terrorism as a global menace countered through military power and diplomacy. In the 1990s, the Clinton administration reframed it as a domestic challenge after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

After 9/11, the Bush administration fused counterterrorism with national defense through the global war on terrorism. The Obama administration later tried to narrow those powers, asking whether targeted individuals “pose a continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons” — a standard focused on tactics and capture feasibility, not ideology.

The first Trump administration used a “travel ban” against several “terror-prone”countries, while President Joe Biden redirected focus toward weapons of mass destruction.

Notably, the “domestic terrorist” label itself has rarely produced actual charges. The State Department designated four antifa-aligned groups as foreign terrorist organizations. But antifa is a decentralized movement, not a formal group with a roster.

This designation lacks any real legal weight because U.S. law has no formal domestic terrorist organization category. Creating one risks infringing on First Amendment protected speech. Domestic terrorism itself is not a chargeable offense.

Prosecutors have instead leaned on older statutes such as material support for terrorism and conspiracy laws, tools originally built for cases like the ones above, not protest movements.

First Amendment rights at risk

There is no single official definition of terrorism in U.S. law; definitions vary by purpose – criminal law, intelligence collection, civil liability.

Definitions in all those areas typically focus on identifying violent or dangerous acts done with the intent to intimidate or coerce civilians or influence government policy.

But more than redefining terrorism, NSPM-7 reorients the machinery of national security toward the policing of belief.

The First Amendment generally prevents the government from punishing people for unpopular opinions. It also protects the ability for people to associate to advance public and private ideas in pursuit of political, economic, religious or cultural goals.

The directive’s emphasis on ideological orientations – “anti-Christianity,” “anti-capitalism” and “anti-American” views – as indicators of domestic terrorism potentially jeopardizes First Amendment rights.

Thirty-one members of Congress sent a letter to Trump in October 2025expressing “serious concerns” about NSPM-7, warning that it poses “serious constitutional, statutory and civil liberties risks, especially if used to target political dissent, protest or ideological speech.”

As the ACLU warns, any definition of terrorism that includes ideological components risks criminalizing people or groups based on belief rather than based on violence or other criminal conduct.

Congress has declined to create a domestic complement to the foreign terrorist designation in large part because of the potential for impinging on First Amendment–protected association and speech.

But I fear that chilling speech may be the point.

Silencing dissent

NSPM-7 does not criminalize previously legal conduct.

Rather, it states that the Trump administration will focus investigations around the identity and ideology of supposed perpetrators. Prioritizing investigations into this broad swath of ideologies serves to instill fear, silencing anti-fascist and other messages in opposition to the Trump administration.

Law professor Steve Vladeck frames this chill as “obeying in advance,” in which organizations self-censor rather than risk investigation, prosecution or defending against the “domestic terrorist” label. Federal judges in the Prairieland case have shown little sympathy for that distinction: One judge described the protest itself as “an assault on democracy,” even for defendants who never touched a weapon.

Although left-wing violence has risen in the past decade, empirical evidenceshows it remains far below historical levels of right-wing or jihadist violence.

Most domestic terrorists in the U.S. are politically on the right, accounting for the vast majority of domestic terrorism fatalities.

Yet NSPM-7 focuses disproportionately on left-wing ideologies. NSPM-7 departs from prior U.S. counterterrorism frameworks by prioritizing the suppression of ideologically motivated dissent, even where, as in Minnesota, judges have already dismissed roughly half of similar federal cases for lack of evidence.

This is an updated version of a story originally published December 3, 2025.

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Labor nominee defends administration’s strategy for shifting Education Department work

Shauneen Miranda, States Newsroom — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 09:38:08 -0400

President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Labor Department on Thursday defended the agency’s major role in a broader drive by the administration to dismantle the Education Department.

Grilled by Senate Democrats, acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling stood behind the multiple interagency agreements, or IAAs, Education has so far signed with Labor, likening his agency’s functions in the transfer to a “firm that’s just consulting and helping them move these programs’ money, but not the actual programs themselves.”

The agreements — also made with the departments of Health and Human Services, State, Treasury, Interior and Justice — are a main part of the Trump administration’s plan to axe the 46-year-old Education Department.

Sonderling appeared before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions in his bid to serve as the next Labor secretary, where he touted his extensive Labor Department experience.

“Few people have had the opportunity to experience the department from so many different perspectives, from the outside in private practice, as a policy adviser, as an agency head, as an adjunct professor, as deputy secretary, as acting secretary, and now as the nominee for Labor secretary,” he said. “These experiences have prepared me to lead this department with a deep understanding of its mission, its people, and most importantly, the Americans we serve.”

The Floridian took on the role as acting secretary in April after Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned amid misconduct allegations.

Sonderling was also named by the president in June to serve as acting director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics and was confirmed by the Senate in March 2025 as deputy labor secretary.

The committee will vote July 23 on whether to advance Sonderling’s nomination to the full Senate.

"It makes zero sense"

At the hearing, a handful of Democrats dug into the Trump administration’s continued dismantling of the Education Department and Labor’s role in several of Education’s programs.

“Right now, you are working with (Education) Secretary (Linda) McMahon to take over the Department of Education programs to help Trump abolish that department,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who noted that Sonderling has built his “own anti-worker record at DOL.”

Murray pointed out that “it makes zero sense that DOL, an agency whose expertise is in supporting wage earners and job seekers, is being tasked now with taking over complex education programs from the Department of Education to help kindergartners and elementary school students.”

Through multiple IAAs, the Department of Labor is taking on expanded roles in administering Education’s programs surrounding elementary and secondary education, postsecondary education and career, technical and adult education.

The Education Department has stressed in fact sheets that it would maintain its statutory responsibilities and oversight of the programs covered by the IAAs.

In the House, a package of 10 bills permanently transferring several of Education’s functions to other departments and largely reflecting many of the earlier IAAs advanced out of the House Committee on Education and Workforce on Wednesday.

Programs still run by "career experts"

Sonderling stood behind the administration’s efforts, saying “it makes a lot of sense” for DOL to handle more grant responsibilities and work with Education.

The nominee also emphasized that the interagency agreements are “not dealing with policy,” but instead with providing the Department of Education “a service.”

Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., said the Trump administration’s scattering of education programs across the federal government, including at DOL, creates a system that’s “much more complicated and much less efficient, particularly for states and public school districts.”

But Sonderling argued that those programs “still all remain” at the Education Department and are “being run by career experts” there.

He added that “for efficiency purposes, we’ve moved a few tranches of employees to the Frances Perkins Building (DOL’s headquarters), where they all have their own offices, they all have their own computers, they have parking, and they are working out of that building.”

Pressed by Baldwin on any evidence he would present showing that “transferring these programs to the Department of Labor has made anything better for students, teachers, parents,” Sonderling expressed his commitment to providing the senator with that data.

“There's a right way to do reform — come to the committee and say, ‘Hey, look, this is in statute but there’s a better way to do it, so let’s work on a better way to do it,’” said Sen. Tim Kaine.

“The wrong way to do it is to treat the (Education Department) like it’s a furniture store and having a discount going out of business sale and hand off pieces willy-nilly to agencies that don’t have the expertise to deal with them,” the Virginia Democrat said.

“That’s my concern about what’s happening right now.”

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Pentagon closes cyber apprenticeship applications early after receiving over 15,000

Edward Graham — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 09:22:46 -0400

The Pentagon prematurely closed the job listing for its new Cyber Registered Apprenticeship Program after receiving more than 15,000 applications, according to a Department of Defense official, although the agency is planning to announce additional opportunities in the coming weeks.

The 12-month apprenticeship is overseen by DOD’s Office of the Chief Information Officer, which announced that the application window for the program went live on July 6. Although applications for the first opportunity were slated to be accepted through July 17, the Pentagon ultimately moved up the end date to July 13.

The official said the number of interested applicants “demonstrates there is not only an immense interest in cyber careers but also a real need for the federal government to provide alternate pathways for individuals to learn hands-on cyber skills and join the cyber workforce.”

The Pentagon first announced the launch of the program in April and said the pilot would help fill relevant cyber vacancies across its operations by, in part, emphasizing skill-based hiring. That focus aligns with the Trump administration’s overall effort to prioritize job experience over academic backgrounds in the federal hiring process.

The now closed job posting for the apprenticeship highlighted this lower bar to entry by only requiring that candidates be over 18 years of age, are U.S. citizens and have the ability to obtain and maintain a government security clearance. The program is designed to train apprentices for entry-level DOD positions, including as cyber defense analysts, cyber defense infrastructure support specialists and cyber defense incident responders.

Even before the posting went live, however, the Pentagon reported overwhelming interest in the apprenticeship. Speaking at the SAP NOW summit in Washington, D.C., last month, DOD Chief Information Officer Kirsten Davies said the program had “already generated more than 70,000 inquiries,” even though it had not yet officially launched.

The Pentagon official told Nextgov/FCW on Thursday that opportunities to participate in the program will continue moving forward.

“As one of the nation’s largest employers of cyber talent, the [Pentagon] recognizes the critical need for cyber training and education, especially now that the digital domain is integral to our national defense,” they added. “We are rolling out additional apprenticeship positions over the next few weeks and encourage applicants to apply for open positions, which will be posted on USAJobs.gov.”

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Trump stretches declassified China intelligence into broader 2020 election claims

David DiMolfetta — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 09:20:00 -0400

President Donald Trump used newly declassified intelligence Thursday night to revive his claims about 2020 election issues, pointing to findings that China possessed or analyzed more than 200 million U.S. voter records. But the documents do not appear to subvert the intelligence community’s prior conclusions that China did not alter votes or interfere with the results of the election.

The declassified records provide substantially more detail about Chinese intelligence collection involving U.S. voter data and reveal internal debate within the intelligence community over how analysts should characterize Beijing’s election-related activities.

But many of the documents reviewed by Nextgov/FCW do not appear to contradict the intelligence community’s longstanding public conclusion that it found no evidence that China altered voting systems, changed ballots or interfered with the mechanics of the 2020 election.

In a speech to the nation, Trump used the disclosure to press Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, casting the records as evidence of broad weaknesses in U.S. election systems and arguing that tighter federal voting requirements are needed ahead of future elections. The SAVE Act would require documentary proof of citizenship to register and photo identification to vote in federal elections, but it faces steep odds in Congress.

“We will be working closely to mitigate any harm, and we’re taking swift action to ensure that sensitive voter data is better protected, so it can never be bought, it can never be hacked, and we can never watch a stolen election again,” Trump said.

The documents suggest Chinese intelligence used U.S. voter-registration information for identity matching and political analysis, while also collecting other large sets of Americans’ personal data. But they do not show that China altered voter rolls, manipulated ballots or changed the election’s outcome.

In April 2020, intelligence agencies concluded that Beijing analyzed several states’ voter registration datasets to conduct public opinion analysis on the 2020 election, but the publicly released intelligence did not establish that China stole the data.

“China has all along adhered to the principle of non-interference in other’s internal affairs. The U.S. election is an internal matter of the U.S. Its outcome is determined by the votes of the American people. China has never and will never interfere in the presidential elections of the U.S.,” Chinese embassy spokesperson Liu Chang said in a statement.

Some of the newly declassified records appear to bolster rather than overturn the intelligence community’s earlier public findings. An August 2020 National Intelligence Council assessment concluded that China preferred Trump’s defeat but “did not intend to try to affect the election,” while separately warning that Russian actors were already amplifying claims that mail-in voting would lead to fraud and that U.S. elections were “rigged” months before Americans cast their ballots.

That same assessment did warn that foreign actors could exploit poorly secured election infrastructure and potentially manipulate vote-counting systems in isolated cases. But it also drew clear limits around that risk: a coordinated effort to change results at scale would be difficult, audits and paper records would likely detect it and attacks on results-reporting systems would probably delay publication rather than affect certified totals.

Trump also said a separate DHS review had identified approximately 278,000 noncitizens registered to vote in federal elections, though it’s not clear how that finding was reached. Federal law already prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections, and studies and audits have generally found such voting to be rare.

“Foreign countries have tried to interfere in elections for years. This is not new,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee. “His repackaging of old lies with old, cherry-picked intelligence to try to confuse the American people will not change the outcome of the 2020 election, will not change the outcome of the nearly 60 lawsuits rejecting his election fraud claims, and will not change the fact that the 2020 election was secure.”

The U.S. intelligence community has previously disagreed over how to characterize China’s actions during the 2020 election. A declassified intelligence assessment released in 2021 concluded that China considered, but ultimately did not undertake, influence efforts intended to change the presidential election’s outcome.

The assessment also found no indication that China or any other foreign actor attempted to alter election infrastructure like vote tabulation machines. Intelligence agencies instead assessed that Beijing continued longstanding efforts to collect information on U.S. voters, public opinion, political parties and candidates while seeking to shape American policy through economic pressure, lobbying and other traditional tools.

Not everyone inside the intelligence community agreed with the assessment’s conclusion on Chinese influence. The National Intelligence Officer for Cyber issued a minority view concluding that China had taken at least some steps to undermine Trump’s reelection prospects, primarily through social media, official statements and state media. The dissent still agreed there was no information suggesting Beijing tried to interfere with election processes.

At the time, then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe — now Trump’s CIA director — backed that minority view in a memorandum attached to the assessment, arguing the broader intelligence community had not fully or accurately described the scope of China’s activity. Ratcliffe cited an intelligence community ombudsman’s findings that analysts had applied terminology inconsistently, that alternative assessments had faced institutional pressure and that some analysts working on the majority view did not have access to all relevant compartmented reporting.

Several of the declassified records focus on the process behind producing intelligence assessments. Emails declassified Thursday night show officials ultimately agreed to publish a separate alternative analysis, placing the dissenting view on the record without holding up the intelligence community’s broader assessment.

Ratcliffe ultimately concluded that China sought to influence the 2020 election. But neither his memorandum nor the minority assessment concluded that Beijing altered votes, manipulated vote counting or interfered with the technical administration of the election.

“I have long publicly highlighted China’s nefarious efforts to influence the 2020 election against President Trump, as evidenced by my dissent to the flawed January 2021 Intelligence Community Assessment. The documents declassified today shed further light on China’s intentions,” Ratcliffe said in a statement after the speech.

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House GOP cancels VA overhaul vote again

Erich Wagner — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 17:24:41 -0400

House Republicans for the second time postponed consideration of a measure overhauling veterans’ benefits and Veterans Affairs Department operations, reportedly due to some GOP members’ concerns regarding a plan to offset the cost of some benefit increases by reducing those associated with two of the most common service-connected disabilities.

The Take Care of America’s Veterans Act (H.R. 9237) is a collection of more than 60 bills related to the VA and veteran care, including benefits increases for severely disabled veterans and the families of service members who died in the line of duty. Its centerpiece is the Major Richard Star Act (H.R. 2102), a bill that would allow veterans who were forced to retire early due to a combat injury to collect their full military retirement pay in addition to VA disability benefits.

But Democrats have decried the measure as an effort to take the sails out of an ongoing discharge petition to force a House vote on the Star Act on its own. Packaged with the aforementioned benefit increases are roughly $60 billion in cuts, particularly to disability benefits associated with sleep apnea and tinnitus, as well as plans to further privatize veterans’ health care and reduce the collective bargaining rights of VA psychologists.

Despite narrowly defeating a motion to send the bill back to committee by a 211-210 vote, House leaders postponed final consideration of the measure, the second time since last month. According to Punchbowl News, House Speaker Mike Johnson blamed “misinformation” for the holdup and said he would bring the measure back up for consideration in September.

During floor debate Thursday, House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Mike Bost, R-Ill., argued that the Trump administration would soon move forward with regulations, first proposed under the Biden administration, to potentially reduce sleep apnea and tinnitus benefits later this year. Without passing the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act, those benefit cuts would go back to the U.S. Treasury rather than be reinvested, he said.

“This is moving forward regardless,” Bost said. “The question is whether the savings associated with the changes by the VA should remain in their control and the bureaucrats’ control, or do we use our Article I power to reinvest it into veterans and their families.”

Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., questioned the provenance of the news, which broke Wednesday, that the VA would indeed move forward with a plan to change how the VA compensates veterans suffering from hearing loss or sleep apnea. The Biden administration all but abandoned its proposal due to backlash from veterans’ groups, he said, and VA spokesman Quinn Slaven told Government Executive last month that changes were neither “planned or imminent,” and that the original regulatory proposal would need “significant changes” before finalization.

Takano also took issue with Bost’s contention that no current veterans would see their benefits slashed. Although the proposed changes to sleep apnea and tinnitus benefits would not impact veterans who have already received a disability rating associated those conditions, it would impact current soldiers, as well as any veteran who applies for an additional disability benefit.

“[Bost] has been very specific that this bill . . . would not impair current veterans, but I’m not sure if the chairman fully understands how disability benefits, how the system works,” Takano said. “[The] bill can and will lead to cuts for those who already have service-connected disability ratings for sleep apnea or tinnitus. This is because any time a veteran applies for a rating increase or for a new rating for some other condition, the VA can and does review previous ratings, sometimes even lowering them.”

Bost also argued the offsets were necessary in order for the bill to be taken up by the Senate, as the Major Richard Star Act has stalled for years in Congress in part due to its high price tag.

“We’ve sat and looked at these over and over and again,” he said. “We’ve also passed some of these bills but sent them over to the Senate to die because they don’t have an offset.”

But Democrats said appeals to fiscal responsibility ring hollow as House leaders prep $95 billion in supplemental funding to go toward President Trump’s war with Iran. Takano and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., proposed that, instead of changing sleep apnea and tinnitus benefits, Congress should simply earmark $57 billion in already appropriated but unspent Defense Department funds from last year’s budget reconciliation law to cover the cost.

“It is clear Republicans do not have the support they need to pass the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act because of their unacceptable and unconscionable proposal to cut benefits for disabled veterans,” Blumenthal said in statement Thursday. “It is equally clear there is bipartisan momentum behind the Blumenthal-Takano proposal to use unobligated and unspent Department of Defense funds to cover the costs of this bill. There are other viable ways to pay for this legislation, and Republican leaders must now come to the table to engage in meaningful bipartisan discussions about the path forward.”

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A year after State layoffs, ex-feds say U.S. is paying the price in Iran and Ebola crises

Sean Michael Newhouse — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 15:35:33 -0400

Megan Fotheringham, who served as the deputy director in the Office of Infectious Disease at the U.S. Agency for International Development before it was shuttered last year, showed a small, circular plaque to a crowd that assembled on Thursday in front of the Capitol Building.

“[The plaque] was given to a USAID foreign service advisor in 1976 after the first recognized Ebola outbreak was contained in Zaire. For me, it represents 50 years of U.S. commitment to stop Ebola at its source before it reaches our shores,” she said. “This plaque was on my desk during what became USAID's last Ebola response effort. When I was allowed back in my office for 15 minutes to collect my things, this was the very first thing that I grabbed because it is just symbolic of everything that was being lost.”

There’s currently an Ebola outbreak in Central Africa, and public health experts have argued that the Trump administration’s decision to fold USAID into the State Department, which pushed out nearly all USAID employees, has hindered response efforts.

Fotheringham was one of several former federal employees who shared their experiences at the event recognizing the one-year anniversary of layoffs at the State Department, which impacted 1,350 individuals. Speakers, including union officials and members of Congress, contended that the staff reductions are damaging the standing of the U.S. around the world.

“[The layoffs were] unfair to individuals who had built up experience and careers over a period of time. It disrupted their lives in a way that they should never have had to experience and hurt their families,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md. “But they would be the first to tell you that, most of all, what it did was hurt our country. It hurt our capacity to advance our interests and values overseas.”

In particular, speakers cited negotiations to end the war in Iran as a process that is being hampered by there being fewer career foreign affairs staffers.

“Instead of sending someone that's competent that knows how to write an [a memorandum of understanding], they sent two real estate developers — who have no idea what diplomacy is about — to write an MOU,” said House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y.

Special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, both of whom are real estate developers, are spearheading the peace negotiations with Iran. Hostilities recently resumed in that war after the collapse of a ceasefire.

While the Trump administration has argued that cuts to the government workforce in general are necessary to improve efficiency, Maryum Saifee, a former foreign service officer, said that feds with relevant expertise have been ordered not to work.

“When war broke out in Iran, many of us — foreign service officers — [our jobs] were still sitting in limbo. I'm fluent in Arabic. I served in Baghdad. So some of us volunteered to staff the evacuation task force,” she said. “Guess what the department did? They said ‘No thank you.’ So we just sat on the sidelines.”

Additionally, an information panel set up next to the press conference speakers reported that, as result of job cuts at State’s Bureau of Energy Resources, “the office built to weaken Iran’s oil leverage and keep [the Strait of] Hormuz open was shuttered seven months before the conflict that saw gas prices spike.”

In response to a request for comment, the State Department praised career employees’ roles in responding to 2025 Hurricane Melissa in the Caribbean and upholding a ceasefire between Cambodia and Thailand.

"The RIFs have not had any negative impact on our ability to respond to operations, our ability to plan and our ability to execute in service to Americans,” the spokesperson said in a statement to Government Executive. “In fact, we have been able to respond quicker and more effectively, which was the entire point of the reorg — to empower personnel in the field while allowing us to move at the 'speed of relevancy.'"

At Thursday’s press conference, Democratic lawmakers also expressed optimism that laid off State and USAID employees could rejoin the federal workforce in the future.

Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., touted new legislation that would exempt foreign service officers who were involuntarily separated or retired between Jan. 20, 2025, and Jan. 31, 2030, from having to take any written or oral test if they want to rejoin.

“There’s no reason you have to take the [Foreign Service Officer Test] again when you come back in,” he said. “But I’m sure you’d pass it.”

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Why Social Security's uncertainty is becoming a federal workforce issue

Tammy Flanagan — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 15:00:00 -0400

This week, Sens. Tim Kaine, D-Va., Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Bill Cassidy, R-La., Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and Angus King, I-Maine, introduced a bipartisan proposal to encourage congressional action on Social Security: the Protecting Retirement Opportunities and Maintaining Income Security for Everyone, or PROMISE, Act.

The PROMISE Act tackles the long-term finances of Social Security's retirement program by moving reform out of endless discussion and into an actual legislative process. The bill itself does not raise payroll taxes, reduce benefits, change the retirement age or alter eligibility rules. Instead, it creates a framework in which those options, or some combination of them, could be evaluated, amended and put to a vote.

The Social Security 2026 Trustees Report was released earlier this year and showed that within six years, if Congress does nothing, Social Security income will cover only about 78% of scheduled retirement benefits. That warning is especially consequential for federal employees covered under the Federal Employees Retirement System because FERS was built on three coordinated sources of retirement income: the FERS basic benefit, Social Security and the Thrift Savings Plan. For federal workers, Social Security reform is not an abstract national budget debate. It directly affects retirement timing, income planning, TSP savings decisions and confidence in the federal retirement promise.

Because FERS employees pay Social Security taxes and rely on Social Security for a meaningful share of retirement income, changes to the program's solvency, claiming rules, disability protections or benefit formulas can directly affect their retirement planning. Understanding the role Social Security plays in that plan is essential. It helps employees estimate lifetime income, decide when to claim benefits, determine how much to save in the TSP, evaluate survivor and disability protections and judge whether they can afford to retire at a particular age.

Social Security's YouTube channel has a variety of recorded training videos that explain what to know before signing up, earnings limits, how survivor benefits work, how to change your address and even the history of Social Security.

Social Security planning is especially important for retirees who receive the FERS retirement annuity supplement, which is designed to bridge the gap between federal retirement and first eligibility for Social Security. According to OPM, the supplement stops at the end of the month before a retiree turns 62, even if the retiree chooses not to apply for Social Security at that time. As a result, some federal retirees may feel financial pressure to claim Social Security as soon as they become eligible at age 62 to replace the income lost when the supplement ends. Others may choose to delay claiming to achieve a higher monthly benefit, but only if their TSP savings, FERS annuity, spouse's income or other resources can cover the gap.

A 2025 poll released by the Bipartisan Policy Center on Social Security's 90th anniversary underscores why reform has broad public urgency. The survey, commissioned by BPC's American Savings Education Council and conducted by Public First, found that 93% of Americans consider Social Security a valuable federal program and 83% believe addressing its challenges should be a top priority for Congress.

The same poll found deep anxiety about the program's future: 74% of respondents were concerned Social Security could run out before they retire, 80% worried Congress would cut benefits and 41% expected Social Security to be their primary source of retirement income. For federal employees covered under FERS, Social Security is not a supplemental benefit. It is one of the system's three core retirement pillars. If workers broadly fear benefit reductions or insolvency, FERS employees have reason to reassess retirement dates, TSP contribution levels, survivor planning and assumptions about post-retirement income.

The poll therefore reinforces that Social Security reform is not only a national retirement issue but also a direct workforce and financial security issue for current and future federal retirees. The findings also showed bipartisan appetite for action, with majorities of Democrats and Republicans agreeing that lawmakers should work across party lines to strengthen the program.

The current funding debate also echoes the Social Security crisis of 1982, but with an important difference in timing and scale. In the early 1980s, the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance trust fund was projected to run out of money as early as August 1983, leaving the program only months away from being unable to pay full benefits on time. That emergency led to the Greenspan Commission and the 1983 Social Security Amendments, a bipartisan package that accelerated payroll tax increases, delayed cost-of-living adjustments, taxed some benefits, gradually raised the full retirement age and brought newly hired federal employees into Social Security.

Today's crisis is less immediate but potentially harder to solve. Trust fund depletion is still several years away, yet the long-term gap between scheduled benefits and dedicated payroll tax revenue is larger and driven by demographic pressures that have been building for decades. The lesson for today is that waiting until the last minute may preserve political convenience, but it narrows the choices available to workers, retirees and federal employees who need time to adjust their retirement plans.

The PROMISE Act would not guarantee a particular outcome, but it could make it harder for lawmakers to postpone decisions indefinitely. The bill would create a structured congressional process for developing and voting on a long-term Social Security solvency plan.

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DHS plans ‘all-out war’ on immigration scammers as fraud complaints double

J. David McSwane and Naisha Roy, Medill Investigative Lab, ProPublica — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 12:51:35 -0400

The Department of Homeland Security is investigating a sophisticated network of scammers who target people caught in immigration proceedings, bilking them of their savings and causing some to be deported, following a ProPublica report that complaints of such fraud doubled under the second administration of President Donald Trump.

Homeland Security Investigations, the subagency known for tracking international crimes such as human trafficking, has asked about specific cases detailed in the story, including the tale of a woman who, fearful of Trump’s nationwide immigration sweeps, enlisted someone she thought would help her keep her legal status. After the scammers got her money and caused her to miss a court date, she was deported to Nicaragua.

That was one of thousands of cases in which scammers lured their marks through social media posts and sent them through fake court hearings and other official-looking steps, charging large sums along the way. Now, the federal government is ramping up its efforts to track the scams, according to sources involved in the investigation.

A DHS statement said the agency was “declaring an all-out war” on the scammers.

“Immigration scammers contribute to a lawless environment, undermining our immigration system and posing risks to national security and public safety,” the statement said.

DHS is looking for URLs, WhatsApp numbers and identifying information on the payment app Zelle that might trace back to scammers, said sources knowledgeable about the inquiry. The department’s investigation is ramping up as such scams skyrocket.

ProPublica analyzed Federal Trade Commission data and found that victims and advocates reported at least $94.4 million was stolen over five years. The more than 6,200 complaints included everything from fake Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents demanding personal details and threatening deportation to fraudsters asking international students for money by exploiting their visa status.

Scammers often pretend to be lawyers offering ways to avoid in-person court hearings, taking advantage of anxieties among even lawful residents after ICE officers began rounding up people during immigration proceedings.

Experts say the scammers often advertise on places such as Facebook and TikTok before shifting the conversation to the encrypted messaging platform WhatsApp, asking for money in exchange for real-looking immigration filings. Sometimes known as “notario fraud,” these scams often rely on a mistranslation of the word “notary,” which implies legal credentials in many Latin American countries.

In recent weeks, agencies including the New York Department of State, Florida Bar and local police departments issued warnings about these scams. The American Bar Association, which has also warned about impersonators, has recently been in contact with DHS investigators.

In South Florida, immigration attorney Angel Leal encountered hundreds of AI-generated videos of his likeness offering aid on WhatsApp. His office had to hire an anti-piracy agency to remove the content and over 6,000 fake profiles, according to local news reports.

The videos, hundreds across Instagram, are strikingly realistic. “Leal” sits on an office chair, his facial hair and expressions matching that of the real attorney. The AI-generated figure speaks fluent Spanish with enthusiastic hand gestures, a potted plant or mug in the foreground and a law degree behind him. Slight details betray the ruse: some mouth movements don’t match the words, gibberish text appears on documents and objects meld together.

Advocates and law enforcement say people targeted should document all ads, text conversations and payment information. And DHS warns consumers to be wary of lawyers advertising directly on social media, operating on WhatsApp and taking payments over Zelle.

In April, ProPublica spoke to several victims who attended fake court hearings via WhatsApp, recounting their stories to “agents” wearing phony government uniforms. Spanish speakers are the primary targets, experts say, and the scammers often pretend to be affiliated with prominent advocacy groups such as Catholic Charities USA, which has been inundated with reports of fraudsters using their brand to find potential marks.

“Directly reaching out to people via an ad or via WhatsApp and asking for money over Zelle, that is not something Catholic Charities agencies would ever do,” said Kevin Brennan, vice president for media relations at Catholic Charities USA.

Such groups have found it difficult to get imposter ads and accounts removed. Even when they do, it’s cheap and easy for scammers to create new websites and accounts.

“It’s Whac-a-Mole,” said Charity Anastasio of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, another group whose staff and image have been impersonated.

This story was originally published by ProPublica.

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Trump’s intelligence pick pressed on 2020 election, defends handling of New York Times subpoenas

David DiMolfetta — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 06:00:00 -0400

President Donald Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence faced pointed pushback from Senate Democrats Wednesday over his answers about the 2020 election results and broader election security concerns ahead of this year’s midterms.

Jay Clayton, who currently serves as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, told lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee that former president Joe Biden was “certified” president in 2020 after the election commenced, but would not outright say Biden won when asked multiple times.

“I’m not an election denier,” Clayton contended in the hearing. But the answer was not satisfactory for multiple senators who got into back-and-forths with Clayton over his responses.

“You refuse to answer a basic question about who won a presidential election, but you ask to lead America’s intelligence community?” said Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga. “Isn’t it humiliating to be unable to answer this question, to have to indulge the president’s delusions? We know, you know, everybody in this room knows the truthful answer to that question. Why can you not give it?”

Election security has become a flashpoint at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence as the agency has grown involved in Trump’s effort to revisit the 2020 election. Former DNI Tulsi Gabbard appeared at a February FBI search of a Georgia election facility and oversaw a review of Puerto Rico voting machines, while Trump more recently authorized acting DNI Bill Pulte to declassify 2020 election records.

The activity has fueled concerns that ODNI, which manages America’s intelligence apparatus that is meant to predominantly track and counter overseas threats, is being drawn further into Trump’s election claims. On Thursday night, the president is expected to unveil what the administration says is evidence of foreign interference in the 2020 election and vulnerabilities in voting machines.

Throughout his testimony, Clayton asserted the job of ODNI is to focus on foreign intelligence threats and not domestic matters.

Days before his June 11 nomination, Clayton spoke on CNBC and appeared to criticize the nation’s election administration processes.

“On the [election] integrity side, we are doing an absolutely terrible job, and the American people are right to question it. How come we can have an audit trail in every other aspect of our lives that’s important?” he said at the time.

Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, questioned why Clayton opined on those matters.

“For the record, I wish you would share any evidence you have that asserts that there was any problem of voter fraud significant enough to change the results of an election in this country,” King said.

Asked by King whether there is a voter fraud problem in the nation, Clayton said, “I don’t think we can say definitively whether there is or is not until we have better processes.”

On cybersecurity, he said that the topic was a top-of-mind issue for him, especially on election influence matters. He said he would commit to assessing whether ODNI’s cyber and foreign influence components — which were downsized under Gabbard — should be resourced again.

In his current position, Clayton oversees one of the nation’s most prominent prosecutorial offices. He previously chaired the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first term, and he spent more than two decades at law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, focusing on corporate transactions and capital markets.

Clayton argued that he worked closely with intelligence and law enforcement on terrorism, espionage, cyber threats and illicit finance cases during that work history. He has no prior experience working inside the intelligence community. Clayton’s office is notably prosecuting deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife on narcoterrorism, drug-trafficking and weapons charges following their capture by U.S. forces in January.

If confirmed, he would inherit an intelligence office already undergoing significant workforce changes. Pulte, a major Trump ally who led the administration’s controversial mortgage fraud investigations last year, has initiated multiple rounds of personnel cuts and received broad permission from Trump to declassify records, prompting concerns from former officials about the exposure of sensitive intelligence capabilities.

Clayton was also questioned during the hearing about his office issuing subpoenas last Friday seeking grand jury testimony from four New York Times journalists who reported that Trump returned from a NATO summit aboard an older Air Force One after security officials raised concerns about the Qatari-gifted aircraft that was meant to replace it. The Times reported that the newer plane lacked some of the prior aircraft’s advanced security features, including antimissile capabilities. Some subpoenas were delivered to the journalists’ homes.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., criticized the subpoenas as an attack on press freedom and the First Amendment.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., also questioned how quickly they were issued, arguing that Clayton’s explanation was difficult to reconcile with the fact that security concerns about the Qatari-donated plane had been known for months.

Clayton defended his handling of the matter, saying he was “comfortable” with the process. He declined to discuss specific details because the investigation into the disclosure of classified information remains ongoing, but said he consulted other lawyers before issuing the subpoenas and respects the First Amendment and the press’s role.

“I’m not going to get into the details. But what I can tell you is that we followed the procedures,” he said.

Trump nominated Clayton last month after his decision to install Pulte as acting intelligence chief drew resistance from Democrats and some Republicans. Clayton’s first scheduled hearing was abruptly postponed after Trump said the Senate should first approve his chosen replacement at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and demanded action on unrelated election legislation.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the vice chairman of the intelligence panel, told reporters after the hearing that he was disappointed in Clayton’s responses and has “a lot to think about.” The senator previously noted that he has known Clayton for many years and believes “he is a capable public servant.”

“I was very disappointed with a number of Mr. Clayton’s answers. It’s not in many ways reflective of the person that I’ve worked with over the years,” Warner said. “I worry that there seems to be this criteria that this administration is putting out, about no one who’s put up for any position can tell the truth about the 2020 election. That’s deeply unsettling.”

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More than 50 Dem lawmakers demand more Schedule F transparency

Erich Wagner — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 17:34:34 -0400

More than 50 congressional Democrats on Wednesday called on President Trump to produce more detailed information about last month’s conversion of roughly 8,000 federal jobs into Schedule Policy/Career, a new job category in which career employees serve on an at-will basis.

The group, which is led by Rep. James Walkinshaw and Tim Kaine, both D-Va., oppose the policy, formerly known as Schedule F, by which career positions in purportedly “policy-related” areas are removed from the federal government’s competitive service and the employees filling them stripped of most civil service protections.

“These federal employees are best able to fulfill [their] duties without fear of the politicization of their positions,” they wrote in a letter to Trump. “We are concerned that the thousands of positions and federal employees who were reclassified through Schedule Policy/Career will face political pressures that undermine the integrity of their critical work and be subjected to greater threats of termination without just cause or due process. All of this will greatly weaken the nonpartisan nature of the civil service.”

The lawmakers questioned how “completely apolitical” jobs like those in HR and procurement have been targeted for reclassification and said it is difficult to understand the true scope given the only limited disclosures regarding Schedule Policy/Career’s implementation. As of press time, the only documentation provided by the administration has consisted of a list of reclassified jobs, without any information regarding where jobs sit in agencies’ organizational charts or how many employees were associated with each job.

“The lack of transparency into the Schedule P/C process compounds our concerns about the intent and impact of the policy,” they wrote. “To date, only an appendix listing the agencies, position titles and corresponding position description codes that were classified to Schedule P/C has been made public. But that appendix does not include the exact total number of positions affected, how many employees are affected within each position, the seniority levels of the different positions, or their governmentwide occupational series numbers, leaving the public and Congress without a clear understanding of the exact extent to which the federal workforce is being politicized.”

The lawmakers demanded more—and more granular—data regarding the first tranche of Schedule P/C conversions, including the total number of employees impacted for each agency and subagency and their demographic information. They also requested details on whether any agencies’ requested reclassifications were denied, how agencies will handle adverse action appeals that began prior to an employee’s reclassification, and what safeguards are being put in place to protect whistleblowers from retaliation.

The lawmakers’ letter comes as, despite the White House’s claims to the contrary last month, agencies may be prepping for a second round of reclassifications in Schedule Policy/Career. Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor told Bloomberg Law in an interview last week that a new round could focus on GS-13 and GS-14 posts, and NOTUS reported a new list of jobs could be sent to the White House for conversion by the end of September.

“This policy change opens the door for corruption and inefficiency in government, the likes of which we have not seen since before passage of the Pendleton Act [in 1883],” the lawmakers wrote. “When the people tasked with carrying out the law can be fired for telling the truth, waste goes unreported and bad actors go unchecked, it’s the American people who will suffer as a result.”

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FEMA overhaul proposal spotlighted by bipartisan lawmakers

Sean Michael Newhouse — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 16:58:55 -0400

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee used a Wednesday hearing to tout a bipartisan bill that would overhaul the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as President Donald Trump also seeks to reform the disaster response and recovery agency.

Representatives from both parties and experts argued that the FEMA Act (H.R. 4669) would enable disaster survivors to receive federal assistance more quickly.

“We make them figure out FEMA instead of building a system around them,” said Craig Fugate, who was the agency’s administrator during the Obama administration. “We are not survivor-centric. We are process- and program-centric.”

The measure, which the panel last year advanced in a 57-3 vote, would create a unified disaster application system and make FEMA an independent, cabinet-level agency. Supporters contended that the agency’s current location under the Homeland Security Department creates unnecessary layers of leadership.

“This needs to be an independent agency with a direct line to the president of the United States,” said Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., one of the bill’s original cosponsors. “It will save time on emergency management proclamations. It will save time in emergency response, and make the whole process much quicker.”

The legislation makes several changes to FEMA’s assistance programs with the goal of expediting payments and streamlining requests.

“For some smaller counties, they just don’t have the staff or the expertise to navigate through some of these application processes,” said Cynthia Lee Sheng, representing the National Association of Counties. “When we make it much more simpler…I think that will greatly help our local capacity.”

While Trump proposed eliminating FEMA at the start of his second term, an administration-backed review council earlier this year instead recommended that state and local governments take a greater share of responsibilities following emergencies.

On Wednesday, committee Chairman Sam Graves, R-Mo., said there’s overlap between the administration’s proposals and the bipartisan bill.

“While there are some differences, the goals and many of the approaches to those recommendations mirror our FEMA Act,” he said. “For example, we all agree reforms must be focused on a system that is state-led, locally executed and federally supported.”

Several speakers expressed a similar sentiment; although, Chuck Chaitovitz, who represented the Chamber of Commerce, added that “empowering local leadership cannot mean weakening the federal role.”

Throughout the hearing, panel Democrats accused Trump of politicizing FEMA, pointing to administration-led staff cuts and a report that the president has approved 89% of disaster funding requests from states with a Republican governor and two Republican senators compared with 23% for states with Democratic leadership.

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CDC nominee faces questions over whether she can lead the agency independently

Jennifer Shutt, States Newsroom — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 15:55:59 -0400

President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention didn’t appear to secure the support needed to take over the public health agency during a lengthy and often tense confirmation hearing Wednesday.

While Dr. Erica Schwartz told lawmakers on the U.S. Senate Committee that oversees health policy she would “never betray the science,” she didn’t seem to win the trust of Democrats or key Republicans needed to advance.

Chairman Bill Cassidy, R-La., repeatedly questioned Schwartz about whether she would follow the example set by former CDC Director Susan Monarez, who testified last year that she was fired after refusing to pre-approve vaccine recommendations or fire career officials for no reason.

“We need unbiased leaders who make decisions based upon science, not politics or ideology, and are committed to protecting children's health,” Cassidy said in his opening statement.

More than two hours later, at the end of the hearing, Cassidy told Schwartz he believed administration officials had overprepared her and that some of her answers missed the mark.

“I felt like you were always trying not to answer my question, which was disappointing,” he said.

Cassidy, or any Republican on the committee where the party holds a thin 12-11 majority, could effectively block Schwartz’s nomination if Democrats unanimously oppose it.

Restoring trust

Schwartz, who worked as a Navy occupational medicine physician, earning the rank of admiral, and deputy surgeon general, testified that, if confirmed, she would work to rebuild the CDC’s reputation among all Americans.

“My first priority will be restoring trust in public health institutions through radical transparency and unwavering scientific integrity,” Schwartz said. “As CDC director, my sacred responsibility is to provide the American people with public health guidance that is clear, honest and evidence-based.”

Schwartz said she would work to “modernize the CDC into a near real-time public health enterprise” while ensuring local, state and tribal governments become the “operational backbone of American public health.”

Schwartz testified in response to questions from both Democrats and Republicans on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that she "accept(s) that evidence" that vaccines don’t lead to an autism diagnosis. She said mRNA vaccine “technology is safe and effective."

Tracking abortions

Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley asked Schwartz to look into the possible health implications for people who live close to a data center, saying his constituents regularly ask him about it and he doesn’t know what to tell them.

Schwartz said she didn’t know whether the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which is housed within the CDC, had done any research on potential data center health implications. If confirmed, she committed to working with Hawley and his staff to look into the issue.

Hawley also asked Schwartz if she would ensure the CDC secures data from every state in the country on when and how abortions take place.

“The CDC collects data on abortions that are committed in the United States of America through a system called the Abortion Reporting System,” Hawley said. “This system is voluntary, and so a number of states, not coincidentally large blue states, do not turn over any data, so that it's difficult to get a picture of just how many abortions and under what circumstances are committed in this country.”

Schwartz testified she would look into the issue if confirmed, adding that “abortion surveillance is absolutely a critical component of what the CDC is currently doing.”

“But I also want to also make sure that certain states are not conflating emergency services and hiding abortions in that emergency services case definition,” she said. “We need to make sure we're pulling out true abortions and making sure that we're really having clear case definitions regarding abortions, so the data is actually accurate.”

Cyclosporiasis

Washington Democratic Sen. Patty Murray asked about the ongoing outbreak of cyclosporiasis and the CDC’s disease monitoring programs during her round of questions.

Schwartz said she believed “that one of the core missions of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is tracking outbreaks domestically and also internationally.”

Schwartz said she was unaware the Trump administration moved to make reporting of cyclosporiasis optional last year after Murray asked whether there would be “any scientific or medical justification for CDC having eliminated mandatory reporting of that parasite.”

“The CDC used to conduct surveillance on this very infection through a program called FoodNet, but in July of '25, thanks to Trump, CDC made reporting on that illness optional,” Murray said. “Now we are here a year later, and we're already seeing over 7,000 confirmed or under investigation cases and over 100 hospitalizations with no single cause having yet been identified.”

Schwartz didn’t commit to reinstating mandatory reporting of cyclosporiasis if confirmed to run the CDC, but said she would work with Murray and her staff to understand why that stopped and what the options would be moving forward.

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VA’s push to shorten benefits forms needs more public input

Edward Graham — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 15:34:28 -0400

The Department of Veterans Affairs is pushing for more public feedback on its proposals to reduce the amount of paperwork that veterans and their survivors must complete to apply for benefits.

VA published two recommendations last month proposing to shorten the length of the forms needed to apply for disability compensation benefits and for Dependency and Indemnity Compensation, survivor’s pension and accrued benefits. The department highlighted these ongoing efforts on Wednesday and noted it is accepting additional public input on its recommendations.

VA’s proposal to reduce the amount of paperwork needed to complete the disability compensation benefits form was published in the Federal Register on June 23, with the department saying its Veterans Benefits Administration component is looking to reduce the complexity of the paperwork by the end of calendar year 2026. The outlined recommendation would shorten the form from 15 pages to five pages and decrease the average amount of time needed to fill out the paperwork from 25 minutes to 15 minutes.

“The primary objectives are to enhance the experience for Veterans, lessen the administrative burden and time required to submit a claim for benefits, and accommodate preferences for submitting forms either through VA.gov or via paper, while preserving accessibility,” according to the notice.

The proposal to shorten the DIC application was similarly published in the Federal Register on June 25 and also notes VBA’s desire to reduce the complexity of the form’s paperwork by the end of this year. The notice said the department is looking to shorten the application from 20 pages to seven pages and reduce the average response time from 40 minutes to 25 minutes.

VA said in both proposals that it is looking for comments on how to revise its information gathering process, such as “ways to minimize the burden of the collection of information on respondents, including through the use of automated collection techniques or the use of other forms of information technology.”

Public input on the recommendations, however, has been relatively muted thus far. As of this article’s publication, the two proposals had a combined nine comments — two for the disability compensation benefits recommendation and seven for the proposed DIC application changes. Feedback on both proposals will be accepted through Aug. 24.

VA has already been working over the past several years to shorten or digitize many of the forms that veterans and their beneficiaries must complete to apply for and receive services. These efforts have included a push to create standardized claim and appeal forms, as well as an effort to pre-fill some forms with information from verified VA.gov profiles.

“No Veteran or surviving family member should face unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles when seeking the benefits they’ve earned,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said in a statement. “These proposals reflect our commitment to putting Veterans and their families first — reducing paperwork, saving time, and making the application process as straightforward as possible.”

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Space Development Agency resumes launches with its future in doubt

Thomas Novelly — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 13:20:06 -0400

After a nine-month pause, the Space Development Agency is finally scheduled to launch its next batch of satellites for its sprawling military-communication constellation—even as draft legislation weighs dissolving the agency.

SDA is scheduled to launch its next 21 Tranche 1 satellites on Thursday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base. Their payloads will be part of the data-transport layer of the agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, a network of hundreds of low-earth-orbit satellites to be used for space-based military communications and threat detection. After the first two batches of those satellites were sent into orbit this past fall, SDA paused further launches as officials worked through technical problems.

“We did see software and hardware issues on the ones on orbit right now,” Gurpartap Sandhoo, the Space Development Agency’s director, told reporters on Wednesday. “That's why we kind of delayed and took a pause to make sure we fix at least the known issues. We expect this launch to be a lot smoother than the last one.”

After Thursday’s launch, Sandhoo said, the agency will have roughly half of the transport layer’s satellites on orbit. Satellites for the next layer, known as Tranche 2, are anticipated to start going up in fiscal year 2027.

Despite the delays, Sandhoo said SDA is “in a better place in terms of schedule.”

Yet his agency might not survive long as an independent entity. A draft version of the National Defense Authorization Act aims to fold the agency and authorities into the Space Force’s portfolio acquisition executive.

Sandhoo said SDA employees may have “some concerns” with the draft language. But workers are “here for the mission” and to get the architecture done, he said.

Government watchdogs have repeatedly questioned the technology behind the satellite constellation.

Last year, the Government Accountability Office raised concerns about its laser-communications technology, saying that it “hasn't fully demonstrated that it works in space.” The agency pushed back on the report and said it had achieved “baseline objectives” with tests.

In January, GAO reported that SDA’s program “is at risk of being unable to deliver capability as quickly as planned” and said the agency “should be more realistic and transparent on the technology it can deliver.

Sandhoo pushed back on those findings as well, telling reporters that the agency needs to take risks to bring crucial space-based technologies to the troops.

“I would want you to go back and look at the Apollo program. I mean, you did not wait until Apollo 8 landed before you start building Apollo 9, right? You just had to do it,” Sandhoo said. “That's the kind of mindset we're taking. That's what I think the nation needs right now.”

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Arbitrator restores telework and remote work at the Forest Service

Erich Wagner — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 17:02:59 -0400

Some 20,000 U.S. Forest Service employees could soon get their telework and remote work agreements restored—and for some ex-workers, their jobs back—after an independent arbitrator last week found the agency violated union contracts when it canceled those deals last year.

In April 2025, Forest Service management unilaterally canceled the two workplace flexibilities en masse, as part of the agency’s implementation of President Trump’s January 2025 directive that federal employees report to agency offices on a full-time basis. The National Federation of Federal Employees, a union that represents around 20,000 Forest Service workers, filed a grievance, asserting violations of its contract with the agency, which mandated that telework could only be canceled because of an employee’s performance, changes in eligibility or because of a “business need.”

Office of Personnel Management guidance issued in 2025 said that agencies should implement Trump’s return-to-office mandate “in accordance” with their collective bargaining obligations but advised without evidence that telework provisions of union contracts were “unlawful and unenforceable.”

In proceedings before an independent arbitrator, NFFE argued that the agency’s disregard of its CBA amounted to an unfair labor practice, as well as a violation of merit systems principles, which bar “arbitrary” personnel actions. Union officials testified to a chaotic rollout of return to office, as the agency struggled to cobble working arrangements for jobs that traditionally had little in-office component.

“Our Forest Inventory and Analysis employees—their job is to go out to the field and count trees literally, and go back to their office and record those data...those were often remote employees because, if you have a unit that has to cover a dozen states, it does not make sense for the agency to have, you know, little, tiny offices or rental arrangements,” said Carl Houtman, negotiations chairman for NFFE’s Forest Service Council, per the arbitrator. “It’s just the way it has been for a very long time. And employees have built their lives around this type of remote work.”

The agency, for its part, argued that the cancellation of telework and remote work agreements constituted an evocation of management rights, and argued that implementation of a presidential directive constituted a “business need” for the purposes of the CBA.

“The agency denies that it committed an unfair labor practice by failing to bargain the change and by unilaterally implementing a change tor remote assignments,” arbitrator Robert T. Simmelkjaer wrote. “From the agency’s perspective, it ‘had no choice regarding whether or not it implemented the directives set forth in the presidential memo and therefore had no duty to bargain over the changes.’”

But Simmelkjaer disagreed, finding that Trump’s return-to-office memo was legally akin to an executive order or change in federal regulations, which courts have found do not take precedent over pre-existing provisions of collective bargaining agreements. That means that the Forest Service should have waited until the next set of contract negotiations to broach the issue, he wrote.

“Absent express contract language granting the agency unilateral authority to terminate the individual remote and telework agreements, irrespective of supervisory input, and assuming arguendo that the agency purportedly had no choice except to implement the president’s memorandum, this arbitrator cannot construe the PM and its RTO as preempting the terms and conditions of a legally binding CBA,” Simmelkjaer wrote.

Simmelkjaer ordered the Forest Service to reinstate telework and remote work agreements that existed prior to Trump’s memo, as well as to offer those who left the agency due to the return-to-office mandate their old jobs back.

In a statement, NFFE Forest Service Council President Genny Kotyk said the decision could serve as a needed reprieve from the Trump administration’s plan to reorganize the agency and move its headquarters to Utah.

“This favorable decision could not have come at a better time,” she said. “Our employees are currently being threatened to move across the country and uproot their lives—supposedly to cut costs—or being forced to leave the agency. With telework and remote work agreements lawfully reimplemented, many employees will be relieved of having to make that difficult decision, while also saving taxpayers the substantial cost to relocate.”

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ICE is pulling back on vehicle stops after 2 fatal shootings

Ariana Figueroa, States Newsroom — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 15:43:24 -0400

The Homeland Security Department on Tuesday ordered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to cease vehicle-related enforcement stops following the deadly shootings of two men in their vehicles, according to multiple media reports.

A DHS spokesperson did not respond directly to States Newsroom's question about what some reports characterized as a new nationwide order.

"We are always evaluating our procedures to keep our officers safe and criminals off our streets," the spokesperson said. "We will not disclose or discuss law enforcement tactics."

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who is up for reelection in one of the nation's most closely watched races, said on social media Tuesday that she spoke with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin on Monday night and "urged him to cease all non-urgent vehicle stops." ICE officers killed a 26-year-old Colombian man with legal status in his vehicle in Biddeford, Maine, on Monday.

As the Trump administration aims to carry out mass deportations, aggressive enforcement has occurred across the interior of the country, with at least 21 shootings involving federal immigration agents. At least 10 of those incidents have been deadly.

Monday's shooting in Maine, coupled with another by federal immigration officers who on July 7 killed 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national, during a traffic stop in Houston, renewed congressional anger and demands for answers.

Neither man was an initial person of interest for immigration enforcement, DHS said.

Hispanic Caucus calls for abolishing ICE

On Tuesday, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus condemned federal immigration agents for the recent shootings, calling for congressional oversight and the dismantling of ICE.

"An agency that acts as though it is above the law cannot be reformed at the margins," said Rep. Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y. "You cannot put a Band-Aid on a system that is fundamentally broken. We must abolish ICE."

"Here we are again, a brown man, a Latino, killed," said Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus said the recent killings reflect a pattern in immigration enforcement under the Trump administration, coupled with conflicting statements from the Department of Homeland Security and independent video recordings of the incidents.

The department came under intense scrutiny after federal immigration officers shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January, Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Minnesota prosecutors announced Monday that they started receiving evidence from the federal government about the killings after the Trump administration initially refused to turn over evidence to local law enforcement.

Espaillat said members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus will hold a field hearing in Houston on July 24 with House Democrats on the Homeland Security Committee. Democrats plan to focus the hearing on the killing of Salgado Araujo, a construction worker, husband and father of three U.S. citizen children.

ICE to get billions

Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, said Congress must not only use its subpoena power to conduct oversight but also freeze hiring at ICE and refuse to fund the agency.

Congressional Republicans funded ICE and Border Patrol with $70 billion through September 2029 through a special legislative process after Democrats refused to fund DHS for fiscal 2026.

Additionally, congressional Republicans last year approved roughly $170 billion for DHS to conduct immigration enforcement and hire more ICE and Border Patrol agents.

"We have to disband ICE in this Congress," Castro said. "Otherwise, these killings will continue. There will be another victim in a few days or a few weeks."

Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas, said she has a meeting with Mullin this week, where she plans to ask questions related to the Texas and Maine shootings.

"This is a human life," she said of Salgado Araujo. "He was not the target. He had no criminal record. He may not even be the right man. Those are very troubling questions for everybody."

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Former civil servants and union request IG investigation into transfer of Education program to Labor

Sean Michael Newhouse — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 14:40:47 -0400

Updated at 2:55 p.m. ET July 14

As the Trump administration continues to move federal education programs to other agencies as part of an effort to ultimately eliminate the Education Department, a federal employee union and former Education officials are asking a government watchdog to investigate the consequences of the transfers.

Specifically, the American Federation of Government Employees and ex-leaders at the Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education on Monday requested that the Education inspector general examine the interagency agreement that transferred OCTAE to the Labor Department.

OCTAE oversees programs that are related to adult education and literacy, career and technical education as well as community colleges.

The letter signers argued that the move has led to undocumented costs, such as overhauling grant infrastructure and relocating staff, and could slow decision-making due to possible jurisdictional conflicts between Labor and Education.

While the Trump administration has argued that the interagency agreements will reduce bureaucracy, the union and former officials alleged that, in certain cases, grantees now need to use several Labor grants management systems as opposed to only one Education program.

An Education spokesperson said in a statement to Government Executive that: "[T]he Trump Administration is breaking up the federal education bureaucracy and streamlining program management to ensure that all Americans are prepared for a fulfilling and meaningful career. "

An IG spokesperson said that the office hasn’t yet received the letter in question.

The Education IG recently reported that layoffs and other staff reductions at the start of Trump’s second term hindered the department’s ability to perform statutorily mandated activities. Based on federal workforce data from the Office of Personnel Management, Education’s workforce has gone from more than 4,200 in 2024 to nearly 2,300 currently.

House package

On July 9, Republicans on the House Education and Workforce Committee introduced 10 bills to codify the Education Department’s agreements with other agencies to transfer various programs.

“The legislative package reflects a simple principle: education policy should be focused on helping students succeed — not preserving a federal bureaucracy for its own sake,” said Chairman Tim Walberg, R-Mich., in a statement. “Rather than allowing unnecessary layers of Washington bureaucracy stand between families and the services they rely on, the bills would transfer key statutory authorities to agencies better equipped to carry them out while maintaining continuity for students and stakeholders."

The panel is scheduled to mark up the measures on Wednesday.

In contrast, the AFGE local for Education employees contended that the proposals would “break” the department.

“These bills are named ‘less bureaucracy,’ but they actually create many more layers of red tape for the American public and for federal employees trying to serve students and families,” said AFGE Local 252 President Rachel Gittleman in a statement. “States, grantees and taxpayers are already paying the price for education programs being unlawfully transferred to other federal agencies: funding delays, confusion and chaos for both employees and the public, wasted taxpayer dollars and no accountability or oversight.”

This story has been updated with a statement from the Education Department.

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AI won’t replace human claims processors, VA officials say, as Democrats worry over staffing levels

Christian Robles — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 12:57:18 -0400

Artificial intelligence tools the Department of Veterans Affairs is using to speed up disability claims processing will not replace human reviewers, agency officials told lawmakers Monday, but Democrats contend claims processing also need sufficient staffing levels, not just new technology.

“Every disability claim is decided by a trained VA employee, not by AI or automation. These tools support human decision making; they do not replace it,” Robert Orifici, acting deputy chief information officer at VA’s Office of Information and Technology, said during a House Veterans’ Affairs Technology Modernization Subcommittee hearing.

“What we really strive to do is look at those really high volume, highly administrative tasks, focus our resources and [apply] really basic automation on those capabilities, so that we are really supporting and augmenting the productivity of our employees,” added Derek Herbert, acting chief production officer at VA’s Veterans Benefits Administration.

Rep. Tom Barrett, R-Mich., who chairs the subcommittee, expressed support for VA’s focus on maintaining human disability claim reviewers, saying Congress “will make sure that there are strong guardrails where no veteran claim is fully decided by AI or automation.”

The comments come as VA is actively using AI to speed up disability claims processing by prepopulating toxic exposure memos veterans must file, streamlining information gathering and facilitating other procedures. VA is also planning to acquire or develop additional AI and automated tools for disability claims, Nextgov/FCW reported in March.

But Rep. Nikki Budzinski, D-Ill., the panel's ranking member, argued that the new technologies may actually hinder VA reviewers’ ability to quickly process claims.

“I hear from employees that the so-called fixes that VA has pushed, like automation and pilots of artificial intelligence tools, often produce incorrect information, compounding issues and slowing production,” Budzinski said.

The congresswoman said new technology cannot solve declines in VA staffing, adding that she is alarmed that VA has lost 1,100 claims examiners this fiscal year, along with 2,700 examiners and 120 IT specialists since January 2025.

Rep. Maggie Goodlander, D-N.H., said she shared Budzinski’s concerns that a lack of adequate VA staffing is leading to less accurate reviews of claims.

Goodlander pressed Hebert to reveal how many claims examiners the VA has on staff and confirm the total has declined since January 2025. Hebert did not have specific numbers but said he would get those to the lawmakers while noting that VA is currently hiring. VA had several open claims examiners positions on usajobs.gov as of Tuesday morning.

Sterling Thomas, the Government Accountability Office’s chief scientist, similarly told lawmakers that federal agencies need a workforce with the right skills to harness new technologies. He argued that solutions such as a federal digital services academy could help VA and other agencies field the talent they need.

Thomas also recommended that VA turn to GAO’s AI framework of key practices as it continues to roll out new AI and automated technologies for claims processing. The framework says federal agencies should document the data used to build AI models, articulate system-level technical specifications, continuously monitor AI performance, assess that performance and take other measures to ensure technology is responsibly deployed.

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What federal officials still haven't explained about the Houston ICE shooting

Alex Nguyen, The Texas Tribune — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 19:02:24 -0400

Nearly a week after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, important details are still unclear.

Federal authorities have offered limited information about the July 7 shooting beyond saying Salgado Araujo tried to hit an agent with his van, prompting calls for an independent investigation and pressure from protestors and Democratic lawmakers for ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, to release evidence.

The Texas Tribune has repeatedly posed detailed questions about the Houston shooting in emails to ICE and Homeland Security, but federal officials have not addressed most of them.

Separately, the FBI’s Houston office — which is leading an investigation into the potential assault on a federal officer — said Monday that it does not discuss ongoing investigations and redirected all questions to Homeland Security.

Here is what we know and still don’t know about the Houston shooting.

What happened during the shooting?

Hours following the shooting, Homeland Security released a statement saying Salgado Araujo had tried to ram an ICE vehicle, refused to follow multiple verbal commands and “weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over” an ICE agent before the officer fired his weapon in self-defense.

Three men who were also in the van have since disputed that narrative, saying in written and oral comments that ICE vehicles rammed Salgado Araujo’s work van and the agents were not at risk of being run over. An agent ran toward them from the side and yelled “Stop!” before firing from the van’s passenger side, hitting Salgado Araujo in the abdomen, according to accounts provided to The Washington Post by a lawyer for some of the men, who remain in ICE custody.

As of Monday, no video footage had emerged fully showing what happened during the shooting.

Homeland Security said agents involved in the incident were not wearing body cameras, blaming Democrats for the lack of the equipment. In addition, ICE vehicles had no dashcam footage of the incident, according to U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, a Houston Democrat who said that information was provided by acting ICE Director David Venturella. The department didn’t respond to the Tribune’s repeated questions about why dashboard camera footage was not available.

Homeland Security also didn’t address multiple detailed questions about the circumstances of the shooting, including how many ICE agents were involved, how many shots were fired at the van and whether an ICE vehicle had rammed Salgado Araujo’s van at any point.

Who killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo?

Homeland Security has refused to identify the ICE agent who fatally shot Salgado Araujo, citing rising violence and threats against federal officers involved in the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operations.

The Atlantic reported last week that the unidentified agent was “a veteran with more than two decades’ experience,” attributing the information to an unnamed senior ICE official.

It’s also unclear if the agent remains on duty while separate investigations by the FBI and Homeland Security’s inspector general continue. The agencies have either declined to answer this question from the Tribune or ignored it.

Local authorities have similarly been kept in the dark, according to Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare, who has launched an independent investigation into the shooting. During a Monday news conference, he said his office would usually know the identity of state or local officers involved in fatal interactions within 12 hours.

“We're almost a week in and no one on the state level knows who they were or where they are right now,” Teare said. “That’s unacceptable.”

Which agency gave the tip to ICE?

In a Thursday statement, Homeland Security said it received a “credible tip” from unspecified “law enforcement partners” that led ICE agents to watch a Houston residence where two white vans had been seen. Salgado Araujo was driving a white van.

The identity of the law enforcement agency remains unclear.

Homeland Security didn’t respond to repeated questions about which agency provided the tip. The Texas Department of Public Safety, the Houston Police Department, the Harris County Sheriff’s Office and the Precinct 6 constable’s office have told the Tribune that they did not supply the tip.

ICE has also said agents were engaged in a “targeted operation.” The New York Times reported the agency was seeking at least one Guatemalan man with a prior removal order.

The agency has declined to answer questions about its operational plan that day and who it sought to arrest, but Garcia has announced that Salgado Araujo was not the intended target. He had no criminal history and was in the process of obtaining legal authorization to be in the U.S. after being sponsored by one of his U.S. citizen sons, according to his family.

The three other passengers in the white van, which include Salgado Araujo’s brother, were Mexican. They do not have prior deportation orders or a criminal record, according to local congressional staff and available public records. Homeland Security spokespeople did not clarify the criminal or immigration history of the passengers.

Homeland Security officials also did not respond to questions about their situations or the intended target.

Will federal authorities share evidence?

After mounting calls for transparency and accountability, local authorities have vowed to pursue independent investigations of the shooting but caution there are challenges to gaining access to evidence held by federal authorities.

“We’ve attempted to communicate with any number of federal agencies. We’ve had varying success in that,” Teare, the district attorney, said Monday, adding that his office has yet to speak with Homeland Security’s inspector general office.

Houston Mayor John Whitmire said last week that Police Chief Noe Diaz asked the FBI to “start sharing information” and that Diaz has a meeting with the agency’s Houston bureau chief this week.

A spokesperson for the FBI’s Houston office declined to answer whether it would share evidence with local officials, directing the Tribune to Homeland Security, which didn’t respond to the question.

Teare said his investigators have visited the shooting scene, collected surveillance footage from area businesses and fielded “well over 100 communications” from the community. He also is in contact with the Hennepin County attorney’s office in Minnesota, which is investigating the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents in January.

“In all likelihood, this will take many, many months — potentially years — before we finally get the answers that we all need,” Teare said. “But we will not rest and we cannot do it without the support of the public and the support of our commissioners.”

This was not the first deadly shooting by federal immigration agents during the second Trump administration in Texas or across the country. It is also not the latest: An ICE agent fatally shot a motorist Monday in Maine.

Lomi Kriel, Uriel J. García and Gabby Birenbaum contributed to this story.

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.

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Duffy faces new ethics complaint over official social media post promoting wife’s book

Sean Michael Newhouse — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 17:25:00 -0400

A government oversight nonprofit requested that the inspector general for the Transportation Department look into possible ethics violations by Secretary Sean Duffy over a post on his department social media account promoting his wife’s book.

“Agency social media accounts are meant to convey important information relevant to all Americans about the agency’s work and mission — in this case DOT’s efforts to improve transportation across the country — not to highlight or promote side business projects of an agency official’s family,” wrote Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington President and CEO Donald K. Sherman in the July 7 letter.

CREW’s request centers on a post from Rachel Campos-Duffy, a Fox News host, promoting her book, which is described as “a celebration of the people, the history and the spirit that make America great, from sea to shining sea.” The official X account of the Transportation secretary, her husband, shared that post, but the letter notes that it appears to have been deleted.

Federal ethics regulations prohibit agency officials from using their position “for their own private gain,” “for the endorsement of any product, service or enterprise” or “for the private gain of friends, relatives or persons with whom the employee is affiliated in a nongovernmental capacity.”

A DOT spokesperson, however, said in a statement to Government Executive that: “A staffer inadvertently retweeted the post, and once the error was realized it was taken down.”

In addition to assessing whether Duffy violated any ethics rules due to the social media repost, CREW’s request also calls for ensuring “sufficient internal controls” are in place to “reasonably prevent additional violations” in the future.

The Transportation IG told Government Executive that the office has no comment.

In May, CREW also requested that the department watchdog investigate whether any ethics rules were broken due to Duffy and his family’s participation in a U.S. travel web series produced by an entity backed by several transportation companies. The secretary has said that the government didn’t spend any money on the show, his family didn’t receive any financial benefits and career officials reviewed and approved his involvement.

But the watchdog nonprofit argued that the web series and social media promotion suggest a trend.

“[Duffy’s] use of his office, for at least the second time this year, to provide for the private gain of his own family shows a pattern of taking advantage of the privilege of public service to create opportunities for his family that other American families lack because they do not have access to the government’s resources,” Sherman wrote in the investigation request. “This pattern must be stopped.”

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DHS network intrusion was twice ruled a false positive before breach confirmed

David DiMolfetta — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 17:15:50 -0400

Department of Homeland Security personnel twice dismissed signs of cyber intruders inside the agency’s Homeland Security Information Network as harmless activity, allowing hackers to remain undetected inside for weeks and eventually steal credential files, according to an internal incident readout viewed by Nextgov/FCW.

HSIN was breached about two months ago, Nextgov/FCW first reported in late June. The network houses sensitive, unclassified data that’s shared between federal, state, local, industry and overseas partner organizations.

Department investigators have still not determined the affiliation of the hackers, according to two people with knowledge of an ongoing probe into the incident. DHS may send staff to brief Congress on the hack in a classified setting in the coming weeks, added the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to communicate the department’s thinking.

Between May 15 and May 24, the infiltration was detected by analysts inside FEMA, where they observed the hackers had altered files on testing and live servers, used a legitimate web-server program to run malicious code and deleted activity logs that could have exposed their movements, according to the readout. The activity was ruled a false positive.

Between May 25 and June 3, the hackers used similar methods aiming to leave scant trace of their activity, setting off more alerts that were again dismissed as benign. On June 4, they installed hidden backdoors and stole credential data — typically employed to verify users’ identities and grant access to accounts or systems — where personnel then declared a breach was active.

It’s not clear why the intrusion was deemed benign two times over such a wide timeframe, but the incident highlights how a mistaken assessment can give hackers significantly more time to deepen their access into a target’s environment. The hack involved techniques meant to mask activity as normal, which, generally speaking, can make it very difficult for analysts to determine what is legitimate or not, one of the people said.

It’s also unclear what materials, if any, were copied from HSIN systems, though the fact that hackers targeted credential files indicates they sought out access to accounts or systems beyond what they could initially reach.

"The Department of Homeland Security is aware of a recent cyber incident involving a specific, unclassified legacy information sharing environment," a DHS spokesperson wrote in the same statement it provided earlier this month that confirmed the hack. "We immediately took action to isolate the affected systems, mitigate the vulnerability, and launch a comprehensive forensic investigation. There is no indication that classified networks were impacted, and the system remains operational for our partners. As this is an ongoing investigation, we cannot provide further operational details at this time."

Approved users lean on the network to securely access data, exchange requests with partner agencies, coordinate safety and security for planned events, respond to incidents and share information needed to protect their communities, per its website.

HSIN has been used to support ongoing World Cup games and recent America250 events, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., said in a statement after the breach was reported.

“The information in HSIN, while not classified, is highly sensitive, and its exposure risks national security,” he said at the time.

As the United States hosts World Cup matches nationwide, the hack could raise questions about whether the intruders gained access to security plans, interagency communications or emergency response plans for one of the world’s most visible sporting events. It’s also possible that World Cup data was not a target.

Nation-state and criminal hackers routinely target U.S. systems to gather intelligence, steal sensitive information and maintain access to government networks. In February, a suspected China-linked breach of an FBI surveillance system likely exposed the phone numbers of people the bureau was monitoring. Last fall, a widespread breach at FEMA let hackers make off with employee data from both the disaster management office and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Editor's note: This article has been updated to include a statement from DHS.

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The biggest story in the federal workforce cuts isn't how many left, it's who wasn't replaced

Ali Akram — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 13:31:40 -0400

The story of the 2025 federal workforce reduction has been told in headcount. In September 2025 alone, about 121,000 civilian employees left federal service, nearly six times the figure for the same month a year earlier, the bulk of them through a governmentwide deferred resignation program with an end-of-September deadline. The number is large, and the debate about whether the government is now too small or right-sized will continue. But headcount is the wrong number to watch. What determines whether agencies can still do their work is not how many people left. It's who got replaced.

I looked at public Office of Personnel Management data on federal separations and accessions, and I want to be precise about the window. This is a snapshot of one unusual month, the month the deferred resignation deadline fell, compared with the same month in 2024 to strip out the seasonality in federal hiring. It is not a yearlong trend. It is a close look at what happened during a single, intense contraction. For every occupation, I computed a simple replacement ratio: hires divided by departures. A ratio near 1 means departures are being refilled. A ratio near 0 means they are not.

In that month, replacement broke sharply along skill lines. The occupations that went barely replaced were the analytical, technical and acquisition roles. The ones that kept being refilled were frontline service roles. Behind the percentages are stark raw counts, all for September 2025. Among management and program analysts, 8,218 people left and 106 were hired, a 1% replacement rate. In information technology, 7,456 left and 181 were hired, a 2% replacement rate. Contracting, the function that runs federal procurement, saw 3,520 departures and 174 hires, a 5% replacement rate. Statisticians saw 319 departures and three hires. By contrast, nurses saw 1,185 departures against 731 hires, a 62% replacement rate. Medical officers were replaced at 58%, while criminal investigators were replaced at slightly above one-to-one.

How do we know this is unusual and not just how these jobs always hire? Because a year earlier, hiring followed a much more typical pattern. In September 2024, management analysts saw 497 departures against 608 hires, information technology workers saw 645 departures against 814 hires and statisticians saw 16 departures against 27 hires. In an ordinary month, these roles refill at or above replacement. The single-month comparison is one baseline, not a law of federal hiring, but it is a clean one, and it shows that what happened in 2025 was a break from the prior year, not the normal rhythm of these occupations.

A word on how I separated higher-skill from lower-skill work, because it matters. I ranked occupations using a simple composite of attributes the OPM data already report: share with a bachelor's or advanced degree, share in STEM or health fields, average tenure and average pay. The conclusion does not hinge on the exact recipe. The same split appears if you rank occupations by any one of those measures alone, for instance degree level or salary. The composite is a convenience, not a black box on which the finding depends.

Why did the break fall this way? Two policies acted at once, and here the data are clear about the mechanism even where they cannot prove intent. A near-total hiring freeze shut off replacement across the board, which is why hiring fell from hundreds to handfuls. At the same time, the deferred resignation program drove departures, and it drew most heavily on the technical occupations. Between 86% and 94% of the 2025 departures in management analysis, information technology, contracting and statistics came through that program, compared with roughly 20% for nurses and medical officers. Frontline roles, with statutory or operational staffing floors, continued hiring. An across-the-board instrument produced a sharply uneven result.

What the data show is the replacement gap. What they do not directly measure, but what reasonably follows, is the consequence. When a contracting shop loses most of its officers and refills almost none, the expected result is slower procurements and thinner oversight. When information technology replacement stops, modernization and security work are the likely casualties. When analysts and statisticians leave and are not refilled, leadership has less capacity to answer its own questions with evidence. These are inferences about capability, not measurements of it, and they should be read that way. But they are the natural reading of a contraction that hit hardest exactly where expertise is most concentrated and slowest to rebuild.

The narrower, defensible point is this. Headcount, vacancy rates and attrition all registered a smaller workforce. They did not show that the composition of what remained had shifted away from the hardest-to-rebuild skills. But that shift is measurable in close to real time with data the government already publishes. A replacement ratio computed by occupation and checked against the prior year is a simple early indicator that a chief human capital officer could act on through targeted hiring exceptions, retention or knowledge transfer while the expertise can still be recovered.

A workforce reduction is a policy choice, and reasonable people will disagree about its size. But there is a difference between deciding to be smaller and, without quite meaning to, deciding to be less capable. In this one episode, the numbers point to the second. That is the kind of thing worth measuring before it becomes the kind of thing you only notice in hindsight.

Ali Akram is a data scientist and independent researcher in Minneapolis who studies public sector workforce capacity and staffing. He previously served as the Human Resources Workforce Data Analyst for the City of Minneapolis. He holds an M.S. in Data Science from the University of St. Thomas.

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Sen. Lindsey Graham dies, leaving Senate seat vacant

Jane Norman, States Newsroom — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 12:37:23 -0400

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., died on Saturday night of a “brief and sudden illness,” his office announced early Sunday.

“Senator Graham’s family appreciates prayers at this time and asks for privacy during this incredibly difficult period,” the statement added.

Graham, who had just turned 71 on Thursday, was a close ally of President Donald Trump and chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. In June, he defeated five Republican challengers in the Senate primary in South Carolina and was to face Democrat Annie Andrews in the general election.

Trump, on social media, called Graham “one of the greatest people and Senators I have ever known.”

“He was always working, and was a true American Patriot. Lindsey will be greatly missed!!! DETAILS AND ARRANGEMENTS TO FOLLOW. So sad!”

Graham, who had just returned from a visit to Ukraine, had been scheduled to appear on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday morning. Instead, Trump appeared as a guest and told host Kristen Welker he spoke with Graham on Saturday night, “sometime in the sevens,” apparently not long before Graham died.

“He was really a worker but he sounded great, actually,” Trump said, adding that Graham said he was “a little tired” after the trip overseas.

“I got a message about 1 o'clock in the morning from one of the people in his office that he had passed away,” Trump said.

“He was a great politician actually,” said Trump, who had endorsed Graham. “There was nobody like him. He loved being a politician, and he was going to win his election, he was going to win it big.”

Trump said if he “had a problem with a Democrat, he could work it out,” and added that Graham in their final conversation underlined his advocacy for the SAVE America Act, an elections bill stalled in the Senate.

Asked by Welker if he had anyone in mind who should be appointed to the seat, Trump said, “I have somebody that I think would be great, but I don't want to say it now because ... it's too soon.”

Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, also on "Meet the Press," said, “The entire state has lost a statesman. I have lost a friend.” He said he expected at least one or two U.S. House members from South Carolina would be considered for the appointment to Graham's seat.

Former President Joe Biden, a Democratic member of the Senate from Delaware before his election to the presidency, said on social media he and Graham served together for more than a decade and worked closely on many issues as members of the Foreign Relations Committee.

“We disagreed often, and sometimes loudly,” Biden said. “Lindsey and I did agree on the profound importance of public service. Like me, he loved the Senate as an institution, even with all its flaws and complexities.”

Return from Ukraine

Graham, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs, met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy while in Ukraine. Zelenskyy posted photos of the two on X on Friday.

“This is already his 10th visit to our country, and we appreciate this support,” Zelenskyy said.

Early Sunday, Zelenskyy posted on social media: “Deeply saddened by the news of the passing of United States Senator Lindsey Graham. Lindsey was a true defender of freedom and the values that make our world safer.”

He said they had met twice during Graham's most recent visit.

Graham's office did not provide additional details on the circumstances of his death.

The Washington Post, citing police scanner audio, reported that emergency responders at Graham's Washington, D.C., home worked to stabilize a man Saturday night and transported him to a hospital.

NBC News reported the response, according to emergency responders' audio, was to a call for “cardiac arrest” and CPR was in progress.

“Photographs from the scene reviewed by NBC News show paramedics carrying a person on a stretcher from Graham's home to an awaiting ambulance. Police cars and fire trucks were also on site,” NBC reported.

'My heart is heavy'

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said in a statement “my heart is heavy” to learn of Graham's death.

“Lindsey's long and dedicated service in the Air Force and in Congress carried him to far-flung regions of the world,” Thune said. “He was a strong advocate for the United States and a strong ally to freedom-loving countries across the globe. He believed in the might of America to achieve good in the world and dedicated his life to advancing that cause.”

Graham, who was born in Central, South Carolina, first joined Congress in 1994 when he was elected to the U.S. House from the state's 3rd Congressional District. He was elected to the Senate in 2002 and reelected in 2008, 2014 and 2020.

He earned undergraduate and law degrees from the University of South Carolina and spent six and a half years on active duty as an Air Force lawyer. He then served in the South Carolina Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve, according to his official biography, retiring as a colonel in 2015.

Under the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the governor must schedule an election to fill an empty Senate seat. South Carolina law allows the governor to appoint someone to fill the seat for the remainder of Graham's term, which expires in January.

South Carolina law also requires a special primary election to select the next Republican nominee for the seat Graham held. The special primary is set for Aug. 11, with a runoff, if needed, on Aug. 25.

The Democratic Senate nominee, Andrews, expressed her condolences on X.

“From his small-town South Carolina roots to the halls of the U.S. Senate, he was a man of great faith who proudly served our nation as a JAG officer and Air Force colonel,” she said. “I hope that South Carolinians will join me in setting partisanship aside and offering gratitude to Senator Lindsey Graham for his service to the great state of South Carolina.”

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said on social media he and his family were “devastated” by Graham's death.

“Lindsey Graham is irreplaceable,” he said. “The fiercest of fighters for South Carolina and America - and a loyal and steadfast friend.”

Narrow margin in Senate

Republicans control the Senate with 53 seats.

Graham's death came as concerns have mounted about the continuing absence of 84-year-old Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, whose office has said he has been hospitalized since June 14 for an undisclosed condition.

Senators expressed their condolences after awakening Sunday to the unexpected news.

“I'm shocked and saddened by the passing of my friend and colleague Senator Lindsey Graham,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C. “Lindsey was a lifelong public servant, a tireless champion for South Carolina, and an outspoken advocate for America's role in protecting freedom throughout the world.”

Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said Graham represented South Carolina and America “with pride and determination. He guided the Senate through our toughest battles while chairman of both the Judiciary Committee and the Budget Committee. He carried the day with his mission clarity and steadfast leadership.”

Vice President JD Vance, a former Republican senator from Ohio, said on social media that Graham “came from humble beginnings and became one of the most powerful lawmakers in the most powerful nation on Earth.” Vance also recalled a shouting match they had during a Senate lunch over a Ukraine funding bill, saying he later learned Graham was quietly pushing rail legislation that Vance wanted.

“That was Lindsey Graham. He fought like hell for the things he believed in, and he was just as willing to go to bat for you when it counted,” Vance said. “Lindsey had the best sense of humor in the Senate. He loved the game of politics. He was constantly asking which races were up and down, and how he could help. As he liked to say, 'I don't care if you're an isolationist or a religious fanatic, so long as you have an R next to your name, I want you to win.'”

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Trump empties out election commission leadership just months before midterms

David DiMolfetta — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 16:05:21 -0400

President Donald Trump removed the remaining members of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission on Thursday, leaving the independent agency without any sitting commissioners just months before the 2026 midterm elections, according to a White House official.

“The President, and head of the Executive Branch, reserves the right to remove individuals that may not be totally aligned with the important task of securing America’s elections and ensuring every legal vote is counted,” the official said in a statement to Nextgov/FCW. “The Slaughter decision gives the President precedence to do so.”

Democratic commissioners Benjamin Hovland and Thomas Hicks were fired, while remaining Republican commissioner Christy McCormick resigned. VoteBeat first reported the dismissals.

The changes leave the commission, which helps oversee federal voting system certification and election administration programs, without the bipartisan leadership responsible for approving some of its most consequential decisions.

The EAC is perhaps best known as a clearinghouse for administering federal election grants and certifying voting systems under the nation’s voluntary voting system guidelines. While those standards are not mandatory, they have become the benchmark many states rely on when purchasing, testing and deploying election technology.

Although the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency serves as the federal government’s lead agency for protecting election infrastructure from cyber threats, the EAC has become an important partner in the broader election security and election education ecosystem. The commission works with CISA, state election officials and voting system manufacturers on issues like system testing, certification, security guidance and information-sharing.

“The Administration from the start has been working across all agencies and local partners to safeguard elections from fraud and abuse, and investing in a strong infrastructure to sustain that mission especially in the midterm elections,” the White House official said.

The removals could raise questions about how the agency will carry out some of its statutory responsibilities as federal officials, states and voting system vendors prepare for this year’s midterm elections.

Career staff can continue many of the agency’s day-to-day operations. Still, the absence of commissioners would complicate actions that require a formal vote or approval, potentially slowing decisions involving voting system standards, certifications and other matters.

The White House official did not offer a specific reason for Trump’s action. But the commission has previously declined to change the national voter registration form to require applicants to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship, a step Trump called for in a sweeping March 2025 executive order on U.S. elections.

A federal judge later blocked that portion of the order, ruling that it exceeded the president’s authority because the Constitution gives Congress and the states primary responsibility over election administration and oversight. The administration has said it plans to appeal.

The dispute underscored the limits of the White House’s authority over an agency Congress created as an independent, bipartisan commission following disputes during the 2000 presidential election. Under rules set by the 2002 Help America Vote Act, the EAC is led by four commissioners, with no more than two members from the same political party.

It’s unclear when the administration plans to nominate replacements or how long the commission could operate without sitting members. Any new commissioners would require Senate confirmation.

The leadership vacuum comes as election officials continue preparing for the 2026 midterms while confronting cyber threats, foreign influence operations and persistent efforts to undermine public confidence in the security of U.S. elections.

The removals are an “extraordinary step that demands an immediate explanation from the administration and raises profound concerns about political interference in the institutions that support our elections,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who serves as vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

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Fired EPA dissenters sue for reinstatement, alleging First Amendment violations

Erich Wagner — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 09:00:00 -0400

More than half a dozen former Environmental Protection Agency staffers, fired last summer over their participation in an open letter criticizing agency leadership, sued last month over their removal, alleging illegal retaliation for exercising their First Amendment rights.

In June 2025, hundreds of EPA employees signed an open “declaration of dissent” addressed to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, criticizing him for abandoning science and environmental justice efforts and instilling a “culture of fear” at the agency. In response, EPA suspended 150 employees who signed the letter by name in their personal capacities, eventually meting out punishments from letters of reprimand through termination.

Twenty employees ultimately were fired for their role in signing the dissent letter. While the majority have begun pursuing appeals before the Merit Systems Protection Board, seven lack that avenue as they were fired while still on their one-year probationary period, before most civil service protections vest.

Across two lawsuits, one filed in the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., and another for eastern Illinois, the seven former probationary workers accuse EPA leadership of ignoring both the advice of legal counsel and the results of an investigation into the letter—which found none of the employees signed it while at work or using agency resources—to retaliate against them.

“The speech at issue did not disrupt the workplace, impede plaintiffs’ ability to do their work, or harm the mission of the agency,” they wrote. “The agency had no evidence of any such disruption or harm when it decided to terminate plaintiffs. Instead, the agency’s own investigation concluded that there was no interference with plaintiffs’ work. Nevertheless, the agency selected plaintiffs for termination—not based on any assessment of the impact of their conduct on the agency, but rather because they lacked the right to appeal their terminations to the Merit Systems Protection Board.”

Ordinarily, probationary employees seeking to appeal their termination must instead go to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel to request an investigation. The seven employees said they did so last December but implied that the office has informally tabled any investigation.

“Plaintiffs’ counsel discussed the complaint with the OSC investigator via email and phone on numerous occasions, including phone calls on December 19, 2025; January 28, 2026; February 23, 2026; April 24, 2026; and May 18, 2026,” the lawsuit states. “[During] the calls, the investigator indicated that OSC was investigating plaintiffs’ complaints but that he could not provide details regarding the steps taken in the investigation or a timeline for its completion . . . As of the filing of this lawsuit, it has been nearly seven months since plaintiffs filed their OSC complaints. Plaintiffs have received no indication from OSC of whether it intends to seek corrective action on their behalf.”

A group of 22 Democratic senators lent their support to the fired staffers’ cause last month, urging Zedlin in a letter to reinstate them due to the “lack of any evidence of wrongdoing whatsoever.”

“In early April, E&E News reported that an EPA personnel lawyer warned EPA political management that disciplining the employees for speaking out would trample their First Amendment rights,” they wrote. “EPA leadership pursued discipline anyway. When the legal investigation into these employees failed to produce a valid case, the agency resorted to a vague charge of ‘conduct unbecoming of a federal employee’ to justify retaliation against an employee for speaking out.”

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IRS missed hiring goals for 2026 tax season, which watchdog says impacted service performance

Sean Michael Newhouse — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0400

The IRS fell short of its hiring goals for certain positions ahead of the 2026 tax filing season, which a new inspector general report found caused the agency to scramble in order to fill shortfalls.

While officials were authorized to bring on 1,900 employees to process tax returns and fix related errors, the IRS was unable to fill 1,100, or about 58%, of those positions. Likewise, the division that answers taxpayer questions missed its hiring goal by 34%.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration noted that job posting announcements were held up by a new requirement for the IRS to receive approval from the Treasury Department before making certain hires. The watchdog also reported that offices were unable to onboard all of the employees they hired before the start of filing season.

Investigators found that, due to the staffing shortages, the taxpayer assistance division decreased its service performance expectation levels. They also reported that, in part because of the reduced workforce, backlogs in five of seven tax return processing programs increased.

In response to these issues, according to the report, the IRS relied on overtime and temporarily reassigned hundreds of employees. Government Executive previously reported that IRS directed many human resources and information technology employees to help with filing season workloads.

TIGTA’s interim report only looked at the 2026 filing season through Feb. 28. Tax season lasted from Jan. 26 through April 15.

The Taxpayer Advocate Service, another IRS watchdog, recently reported that the agency “performed better than expected” this tax season despite needing to implement changes to the tax code mandated by the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act, employing about a quarter fewer employees due to the Trump administration’s civil service cuts and experiencing leadership turnover.

But the TAS also flagged that having fewer personnel made it harder for taxpayers to access assistance.

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Calls grow for an independent probe into fatal Houston ICE shooting

Katlyn Ma, The Texas Tribune — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 07:00:00 -0400

Four Houston Democratic members of Congress on Thursday demanded an independent investigation into the fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Tuesday in Houston’s Magnolia Park neighborhood, saying ICE has not released video evidence to support claims that Salgado Araujo “weaponized his vehicle” to try to run over the agent who fired the fatal shot.

In the letter, sent to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director David Venturella, the lawmakers said the agencies’ account of the incident mirrors statements made after other fatal ICE encounters, including the January killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

"DHS and ICE continue to lose the American people’s trust and confidence. Instead of answers and accountability, DHS and ICE released a statement echoing the same stories we have heard before," the letter says.

U.S. Reps. Sylvia Garcia, Lizzie Fletcher, Al Green and Christian Menefee also argued that the lack of video footage and limited public information on the shooting has left key questions unanswered.

The lawmakers demanded that DHS and ICE provide “complete and unedited” body camera footage for the officer who fired the deadly shot as well as footage from other officers present.

ICE claimed the agents attempted to stop Salgado Araujo’s vehicle as part of an unspecified “targeted enforcement operation,” then he attempted to ram an ICE vehicle and tried to run over the ICE agent.

But Salgado Araujo’s family and local officials dispute that account and say federal authorities have not provided evidence to support it.

His son, Ronaldo Salgado, said at a Wednesday press conference that his father may have panicked after unmarked cars followed him, suspecting that someone was trying to steal his van and his construction tools. The family says there is no eyewitness testimony or released video showing the alleged ramming, and that videos taken in the immediate aftermath of the shooting do not support ICE’s version of events.

Salgado Araujo had no previous criminal record. “Why was he a target?” Garcia asked in an interview with Houston Public Media.

The Democrats’ letter asked what led to the targeted enforcement operation, who authorized it, what evidence supported the sequence of events leading to the shooting and how many DHS, ICE, FBI and other federal officers were in the immediate area.

Gov. Greg Abbott’s office declined to comment on the shooting.

"This is an active investigation and we have nothing to add,” said Andrew Mahaleris, Gov. Greg Abbott’s press secretary, “we are gonna let the investigation play out."

After federal agents killed Good and Pretti in Minnesota, DHS released footage of Good’s shooting three days later and still has not released official video of the events leading up to Pretti’s death.

Disclosure: Houston Public Media has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in The Texas Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.

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Transportation loses its top tech official amid wave of CIO departures

Alexandra Kelley — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 06:00:00 -0400

The chief digital and information officer of the Department of Transportation is resigning from his position effective Sept. 4, according to an email obtained by Nextgov/FCW.

Pavan Pidugu, who has been the CDIO at the agency since February 2025, sent the email Thursday announcing his departure to his staff and expressing gratitude for his colleagues and their work. He wrote that serving alongside “this incredible team for the past many years has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career.”

“When we set out on this journey together, we shared a bold vision to fundamentally transform how technology serves the Department and the American public. Thanks to your hard work, dedication, and true builder mentality, we didn't just meet those expectations—we exceeded them,” the email continued.

Pidugu told Nextgov/FCW in August 2025 that he wanted to turn the Transportation IT shop into a place “where we build technology,” modernizing the agency amid the federal operations overhaul executed by the Department of Government Efficiency during the start of the second Trump administration. Pidugu led the crafting of the department’s “1DOT IT strategy,” which guided Transportation’s modernization agenda.

He said in the Thursday email that, during his tenure, his office achieved “unprecedented milestones” in their tech policy efforts, including conducting a mass, agency-wide transition to Gmail software to achieve about 70% cost savings, creating the internal T-Cloud environment and pursuing long-term plans to migrate legacy IT infrastructure.

The contract between Transportation and Google through software reseller Carahsoft is particularly important, with a value ceiling of $89 million to bring the Google Workspace suite to the agency and build a “modern collaboration environment,” as Pidugu called it in his Thursday email. The department was able to leverage the software at discounted rates negotiated through the General Services Administration’s OneGov program.

“These accomplishments are a direct testament to your talent and your willingness to embrace a product-centric culture,” Pidugu wrote. “By working together, we have broken down historic silos to operate as a truly unified enterprise.”

In his email, Pidugu did not state his reason for resigning or who will take up his position after he leaves.

Over the course of the week, reports of at least three federal CIOs planning to depart their posts in the government have emerged. Federal CIO Greg Barbaccia is set to leave his role by the end of August, and the Department of the Interior CIO Paul “Macca” McInerny also stepped down from his position last week. Department of Housing and Urban Development CIO Eric Sidle has been tapped to take over leading the Interior tech shop.

Pidugu received a Federal 100 award this year for his work at the Transportation Department in 2025.

GovExec Editor-in-Chief Frank Konkel contributed to this report.

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HUD's tech chief appears headed for Interior

Edward Graham and David DiMolfetta — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 16:02:15 -0400

Department of Housing and Urban Development Chief Information Officer and Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer Eric Sidle is expected to soon take up the Department of Interior’s top tech post after the latter agency’s CIO departed, according to two people familiar with the matter.

He is finalizing the paperwork process and could be onboarded in the next one to two weeks, said both people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the selection has not been made public.

Sidle joined HUD in May 2025 after serving in the private sector for a number of years in a variety of tech-specific roles. He previously worked for two years at tech consulting firm Fabrum Advisors as a technology advisor, operating partner and coach.

Prior to that position, Sidle oversaw autonomous driving hardware at NIO, served as chief technology officer at ChargePoint and worked as an engineering manager for special projects at Apple.

Interior’s prior CIO Paul “Macca” McInerny — a former SpaceX engineer that aligned himself with the Department of Government Efficiency’s mission — left the department last week after just over a year in the role, with a top strategy official at the agency, Matt Luby, tapped as interim CIO, Nextgov/FCW reported Monday.

One suspected source of frustration under McInerny involved the department’s effort to consolidate and speed up permitting systems — including systems tied to Bureau of Land Management leasing and energy development — that would likely demand significant overhauls to the agency’s IT stack.

HUD and Interior spokespeople did not return multiple requests for comment.

Sidle has publicly discussed his push to bolster anti-fraud initiatives while at HUD, an effort that aligns with the Trump administration’s broader “war on fraud.”

Speaking at the Government Service Delivery conference in Washington, D.C., last month, Sidle said HUD’s outdated technologies and disparate databases made it difficult to identify companies gaming the agency’s programs, noting that the median age of its systems was 20 years.

“Across different agencies, we’re now talking about how we’re going to be dealing with data sharing, Delta Sharing and all this other stuff,” he said, adding that “even before AI, just the basics of data analytics wasn’t being done — let alone now you have AI, which is going to take off and be able to protect this.”

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No more paper: Navigating OPM’s new digital retirement process

Tammy Flanagan — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 15:00:00 -0400

OPM recently announced that over 95% of retirement applications are now submitted electronically, signaling an end to an agency long defined by physical files, snail mail and manual data entry. With the full launch of the Online Retirement Application (ORA), OPM has officially reached its "Last Day of Paper." While June figures are still pending, May data showed that digital submissions already accounted for 70% to 75% of all applications.

The mission behind ORA is simple: make retirement seamless. By eliminating the physical transport of documents between agencies and payroll offices, the digital system provides better tracking and slashes the risk of human error — the kind that often crops up during manual processing.

The scale of this shift is massive. OPM reports that ORA managed more than 155,000 applications last year. To put that in perspective, processing over 100,000 new retirees in a single year is a rare feat — it has only happened nine times since 2000 — including high-volume years like 2013 and 2025.

While the 2025 data is currently missing totals from November and December, early indicators for 2026 suggest the momentum is holding steady, with nearly 100,000 claims processed through May.

It is possible that OPM's numbers include claims still being worked on. Early data for 2026 suggests another busy year — with nearly 100,000 claims processed through May.

Efficiency is also on the rise. Between January and May, digital claims were finalized in 34 to 66 days on average — a significant improvement over traditional paper-based methods.

October:

Digital claims processed: 1,686 in an average of 45 days

Total claims processed: 8,751 in an average of 79 days

November:

Digital claims processed: 4,363 in an average of 38 days

Total claims processed: 8,707 in an average of 66 days

December:

Digital claims processed: 3,506 in an average of 40 days

Total claims processed: 9,428 in an average of 67 days

January:

Digital claims processed: 6,465 in an average of 48 days

Total claims processed: 15,571 in an average of 77 days

February:

Digital claims processed: 7,054 in an average of 34 days

Total claims processed: 18,149 in an average of 71 days

March:

Digital claims processed: 10,817 in an average of 39 days

Total claims processed: 22,237 in an average of 60 days

April:

Digital claims processed: 7,394 in an average of 50 days

Total claims processed: 17,175 in an average of 78 days

May:

Digital claims processed: 8,761 in an average of 66 days

Total claims processed: 19,433 in an average of 87 days

Modernization isn't just about filing; it's about getting paid faster. OPM is now beginning the approval process while final payroll details are being wrapped up. The new target? Delivering the first pension payment within seven days of retirement for complete applications submitted by a worker's final day on the job.

The digital transition also applies to former employees eligible for deferred or postponed retirement. Although the RI 79-9 paper form may still appear online, ORA is now the mandatory portal for these applications. If you have already submitted a paper file, OPM recommends checking in to see if you can resubmit digitally. Agencies are no longer the gatekeepers for these claims; their role is now to help you navigate ORA so you can take control of the process yourself.

To support this shift, OPM has revamped its online resources for planning and applying: https://www.opm.gov/retirement-center/csrs-information/planning-and-applying/. Here is the essential guidance for your application (pay close attention to the Application tips to avoid common delays):

Applying for retirement

To get payments from CSRS or FERS, you must apply using the Online Retirement Application (ORA) platform.

How to submit your retirement application

If you have been out of federal service for more than 30 days, you must send your application directly to OPM through the ORA portal. If you are still working, talk to your human resources office to start the process.

If you are still working, contact your human resources office to start your application through ORA.

Application processing

Processing your retirement involves your former agency, the payroll office, and finally OPM, which approves your payments.

Reducing delays in processing

You can help avoid delays by applying early and making sure your Official Personnel Folder (OPF) is complete. Also, review our Application Tips to see if you need to include any extra documents.

If you apply early, your human resources office can finish their part before you retire.

How your application is processed

Your human resources office

Your HR office does the following to process your application:

Verify any service not fully documented in your OPF. If documentation is missing, verification may be obtained by contacting federal record centers. If the human resources office is unable to obtain verification, OPM will complete verification upon receipt of your retirement application and records.  However, this process will cause a delay in processing.

Transfer your enrollment under the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) program to OPM.

Transfer your coverage under the Federal Employees' Group Life Insurance (FEGLI) program to OPM.

Prepare your separation Notification of Personnel Action (SF 50)

Complete the human resources checklist and send your retirement application package to the payroll office.

Your payroll office

Once HR finishes, your payroll office will:

Authorize your final paycheck and lump sum payment for unused annual leave.

Prepare your Individual Retirement Record (IRR), SF 2806 (CSRS) or SF 3100 (FERS), which reflects service, salary history, and annual retirement deductions.

Complete the payroll checklist and submit the final retirement application package to OPM.

Opm claim processing

Once OPM receives your application, they will:

Send you a welcome notice with your Civil Service Annuitant (CSA) claim number.

Obtain any missing information or documents from your retirement application package.

Determine your eligibility for an annuity and to continue health and life insurance benefits.

Calculate your annuity amount.

Send you information about your ability to pay an unpaid deposit or redeposit.

Authorize your annuity payments which are paid by the Department of the Treasury.

Provide you with your retirement benefits booklet which is available through Retirement Services Online.

Your csa claim number

When OPM gets your application, they will send you a welcome notice with your Civil Service Annuitant (CSA) claim number. This number looks like A8DXXXXX0. You must use this number whenever you contact OPM.

With your CSA number, you can log in to Retirement Services Online (RSO). There, you can track your application and update your tax withholding, address, and direct deposit. RSO will be your main portal for managing benefits.

If you have questions before you receive your claim number

If you need to contact OPM early, check your status on the ORA platform first. If it hasn't been sent to OPM yet, then contact your former HR office.

If you didn't use ORA, contact your former HR office to see when they sent your package to OPM. Former employees can contact OPM directly by phone, mail, or help request.

Annuity payment schedule

Monthly payments are sent on the first business day of the month for the month before. For example, your June 1 payment is for May.

Time frame for processing application

For current times, visit our Retirement Processing Times page.

If your records are complete, your application may be processed faster than average. However, it can take longer if we have to contact you or your agency for more info.

Deferred retirement

Deferred retirement is for former employees who left before they were eligible for an immediate annuity. Your annuity starts once you reach the required age and service years (like age 62 with 5 years). Apply through ORA at least 60 days before you want your payments to start.

Note that health and life insurance cannot be restarted with a deferred retirement. To apply, create an ORA account, verify your ID with Login.gov, and submit your application. Be ready with your service dates, military info, and any previous refund or workers' comp data.

Postponed retirement

Postponed retirement is different. It is for those who left at or after minimum retirement age with 10+ years of service but waited to start payments. Unlike deferred retirement, this may let you restart health and life insurance if you had them for the five years before you left.

You must also use ORA and apply at least 60 days before your start date. This date must be the first of a month and before your 62nd birthday. This is critical " — " if you wait until age 62, it becomes a deferred retirement, and you lose your insurance benefits forever.

To apply, create an ORA account and verify your ID. Provide the same info as deferred retirement, plus your start date and insurance info.

This is a bold step forward, but it isn't a magic fix. While ORA breaks the slow paper chains of the past, accuracy remains paramount.

Delays can still happen if you have missing service info, court orders or need Social Security info.

Financial experts still advise keeping a six-month cash reserve while your retirement is finalized. Many employees strategically save annual leave for a lump-sum payout, which is why retirement spikes are common at the end of the leave year.

The "Last Day of Paper" marks a new era for the federal workforce, offering a transparent and efficient route to retirement. For OPM, it's a tool to manage growing retiree numbers with precision. Ultimately, the success of this digital age will depend on clear communication and the workforce's ability to adapt to these new rules.

Here is where employees as well as former employees who are applying for a deferred or a postponed retirement can begin the process: https://retire.opm.gov/portal

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Judges block Trump effort to narrow public service loan forgiveness

Benjamin Leff, The Conversation — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 12:08:46 -0400

Two federal judges in different courts have blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to deny employees of nonprofits that oppose the Trump administration’s political agenda access to a program through which they could avoid having to pay off all of their student loans. Both issued their judgments on June 30, 2026.

As a law professor who studies the nonprofit sector, I believe that both judges made the right decision because the historical strength of the nonprofit sector in the U.S. is its independence from government control. The First Amendment requires that laws governing nonprofits be neutral, and that no administration can punish an organization merely because its actions or views are at odds with the White House.

Forgiving student debt owed by public service workers

Congress approved the legislation that created the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program in 2007. This program cancels the remaining balance on federal student loans after eligible borrowers consistently make payments on their student debt for 10 years.

Only borrowers with public service jobs may participate and be eligible to have some of their student loan balance canceled. That is, they need to work for the government at any level, including public schools, or at any charitable nonprofit.

One of the program’s goals was to encourage young Americans, especially those with significant student debt, to do jobs that serve the public good but pay less than what they might earn in the private sector.

The government does not cancel any student loan debt until the Education Department verifies that eligible borrowers have met all requirements, including a decade of steady payments from public school teachers, government officials and employees of nonprofits of all kinds – such as food banks and museums.

But that promise of debt relief for borrowers at some nonprofits was jeopardized prior to these two rulings.

To date, the program has canceled more than US$87 billion in student loans for nearly 1.2 million Americans. On average, borrowers have seen about $74,000 in debt erased.

Trump administration’s attempt to revise the program

President Donald Trump issued an executive order on March 7, 2025, directing the Department of Education to change who can be eligible for public service loan forgiveness.

In the order, he complained that some of the program’s participants may have worked for organizations that “actually harm our society and American values, sometimes through criminal means.” The order does not name any of those nonprofits, but it named some examples: aiding immigrants, treating minors’ gender dysphoria, advancing diversity, equity and inclusion goals, and helping to organize left-wing protests.

Trump said he wanted the government to refuse to forgive loan balances of borrowers who work for those employers. The order itself was not legally binding, but it guided the drafting of a new regulation the Education Department issued on Oct. 31, 2025. The regulation ordered the exclusion from the debt forgiveness program of employers that “engage in specific enumerated illegal activities such that they have a substantial illegal purpose.”

The phrase “substantial illegal purpose” comes out of nonprofit law; organizations with an illegal purpose can’t be tax-exempt charities. But the doctrine has been employed in very limited circumstances in the past, and the government has never developed rules to ensure that it is not abused.

Instead of developing those rules, the regulation identifies specific issues that the Trump administration objects to and has treated as high priorities.

Doing those activities would disqualify an employer from participation in the program under that regulation, if the Education Department determined that those organizations employed illegal means to advance their goals.

A group of 22 state attorneys general and a coalition of nonprofits, municipal governments and labor unions filed separate lawsuits on Nov. 3, 2025, to block the regulation. Those lawsuits were later combined. Another group of nonprofits filed a similar lawsuit the next day.

Why the judges struck Trump’s revised rules

On the day before the new rule was set to go into effect, , in Massachusetts, and , in Washington, D.C., struck it down – preventing the Department of Education from implementing it.

More than a year after Trump’s executive order, both judges found that the statute that Congress passed was unambiguous about which employers qualified for the program: all nonprofits with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. And because the statute was so clearly written, the Education Department has no authority to change the eligibility criteria to exclude particular organizations, the judges found.

Because organizations that serve an illegal purpose already can’t have tax-exempt status, no such organization may participate in this loan forgiveness program. Both judges held that the Education Department exceeded its authority by granting itself the power to determine which nonprofits’ employees can’t be eligible.

In short, judges Joun and Ali said the Trump administration can’t change federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness program rules to punish people who work for certain kinds of nonprofits that the administration doesn’t like – or to use the program to advance its agenda.

What this means for borrowers and nonprofits

These rulings are good news for borrowers who work for nonprofits whose missions are at odds with the Trump administration’s agenda.

Both rulings vacated the new regulation, which means the federal government cannot implement its revised rule anywhere in the country.

The U.S. Supreme Court held in 2025 that district court judges couldn’t impose nationwide injunctions. But that ruling does not affect court rulings that strike down agency regulations.

If the administration appeals, an appellate court could restore the new regulation.

The Supreme Court could even get involved at some point. But although the court has been expanding executive power in some situations, the justices have reduced the leeway administrative agencies have to issue regulations that add additional requirements to clear statutes.

In my view, the Supreme Court would therefore be unlikely to side with the administration if it were to hear this case.

Implications for everyone else

Both judges held that the revised rule exceeded the Education Department’s authority. Joun in Massachusetts went further than Ali in Washington.

Joun held that the new regulation “is facially unconstitutional because it discriminates on the basis of viewpoint.”

That’s important because he recognized that “selectively targeting” organizations because their goals are contrary to those of the administration is very different from trying to prevent the employees of criminal organizations from having their student loans forgiven.

The Trump administration has been aggressively jumbling these two things together. Because organizations’ viewpoints are protected by the U.S. Constitution, the government can’t discriminate in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program against an organization that advocates for undocumented immigrants to stay in the country, for example – or one that seeks to have them removed.

On the other hand, violent or illegal tactics are not protected by the Constitution or eligible for tax-exempt status. That means an organization that employs them can be denied benefits.

The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program regulation that the Trump administration has sought to implement expressly blurs these lines. I think it’s reasonable to interpret this jumbling as a tactic intended to chill protected activity by instilling fear in those who disagree with the Trump administration’s policies. And I see Joun’s opinion as a bulwark against that type of intimidation.

These rulings should give Americans of all political stripes more confidence that their rights will be respected, no matter who is in office.

Benjamin Leff, Professor of Law, American University

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

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Unions sue to restore DOD collective bargaining rights, asserting ‘chaos’

Erich Wagner — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 07:00:00 -0400

A pair of federal employee unions last week sued Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over his April directive that the department terminate most of its collective bargaining agreements, alleging he violated the Administrative Procedure Act and exceeded his statutory authority when he sought formal implementation of President Trump’s anti-union executive order.

In March 2025, Trump signed an executive order citing a seldom-used provision of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act to strip roughly two-thirds of the federal workforce of their collective bargaining rights on national security grounds. Unions and the Justice Department have engaged in pitched legal battle ever since, across more than half a dozen court cases.

Agencies have since moved to implement the order, along with an August 2025 sequel banning unions at more agencies, in fits and starts, in part due to the litigation. While many agencies took informal steps to comply, such as cancelling the automatic collection of union dues, they largely refrained from terminating their contracts with labor groups until last August.

At that point, the Office of Personnel Management changed its guidance regarding the executive orders and suggested agencies could “choose” to terminate their CBAs. OPM again changed course in February, then recommending that agencies “should” take that that step.

A new lawsuit filed by the American Federation for Government Employees and the National Federation of Federal Employees in the U.S. District Court for Maryland accuses Hegseth of violating the Administrative Procedure Act for ordering the department to cancel its union contracts with just 24 hours’ notice and no plan to carry it out in an orderly fashion. The result, the unions say, was “chaos.”

“DOD did not have any uniform process for implementing the termination of CBAs, and in many cases there were virtually no notification or communication at all about what actions were being taken, if any,” the lawsuit states. “Some local union leaders were informed by phone that their unions’ CBAs were being terminated; others were informed by email, or by letter; others received no communications at all—their agency counterparts just went ‘radio silent,’ or started refusing to answer routine questions. Beyond these ‘official’ notifications (or lack thereof), Secretary Hegseth’s memorandum begat a firestorm of confusion and misinformation at facilities nationwide—about who still did or did not have collective bargaining agreements, and why, and since when.”

The unions argued that the slapdash rollout also resulted in employees losing their union rights despite being ostensibly exempt from Trump’s executive order. While the order states that the “local employing offices” of police officers, security guards and firefighters will continue to be covered by federal sector labor law, in practice the Pentagon has continued to recognize the union rights only of first responders, not the dispatchers, IT workers and other staff they work alongside.

“Yet DOD failed to prepare any list of subdivisions that are not covered by the EO because they employ police officers, firefighters or security guards before issuance of the Hegseth memorandum, nor did the Hegseth memorandum provide for such a list to be created before implementation of the memorandum,” the unions wrote. “[Thus], across DOD, subdivisions have declared that employees who work alongside police officers, firefighters and security guards—workers in the same ‘local employing office’ within the meaning of the EO—no longer have the protections of their CBAs or any rights under the [federal labor statute], in direct contradiction of the EO.”

AFGE and NFFE’s lawsuit mirrors a similar legal challenge filed last year by the International Federation of Professional and Technical Employees, which successfully resulted in a court order blocking the Defense Department from terminating their contracts. It sets aside the broader question of whether Trump’s executive orders are lawful and focuses on how the Defense Department sought to implement them.

The unions argued that since Hegseth neither moved to terminate CBAs either last August when OPM first said agencies could elect to do so, nor in February when OPM said they “should” take that step, he was required by the Administrative Procedure Act to explain the change in policy.

“For nearly a year after the issuance of EO 14251, DOD continued its longstanding policy of honoring the CBAs into which it has entered,” they wrote. “The DOD’s April 9, 2026 decision to terminate those CBAs within 24 hours irrationally and improperly failed to explain why the DOD would no longer honor existing CBAs, or why termination was necessary within 24 hours notwithstanding the agency’s prior honoring of CBAs and the predictable chaos that would result from DOD’s abrupt reversal.”

They also asserted that by stripping employees who work alongside departmental policy officers, firefighters and security guards of their collective bargaining rights, Hegseth exceeded the authority granted him by the executive order, since the edict exempted those employees’ entire offices from its coverage.

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Iran War supplemental deepens FY27 budget uncertainty

Shaun McDougall — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 17:26:59 -0400

A recent $87.6 billion supplemental funding request from the White House to pay for the Iran war and other expenses complicates an already tense budget process in Washington. The supplemental follows the release of a record $1.5 trillion defense budget request in April, putting additional pressure on Congress to sort out what has become a complex three-part defense budget comprising a $1.1 trillion base budget request, a $350 billion reconciliation request, and the new supplemental request.

Most of the new supplemental funding, $67.1 billion, or 77% of the total, would go to the Pentagon. Other investments outside of the Pentagon include $11 billion for the Department of Agriculture, $3.4 billion for the Department of State, and $2 billion for the Department of Homeland Security, among others.

Within the defense portion of the supplemental, most of the funding is allocated toward direct costs of the war in Iran. The single biggest item in the entire supplemental is $21 billion for munitions, which would help rebuild stockpiles after thousands of offensive and defensive missiles and bombs were expended during the opening months of the war. The rapidly growing demand for munitions was already highlighted in the FY27 defense budget request, which sought $76.3 billion for munitions, up 185%over the $26.8 billion allocated in FY26. Combined with the supplemental, the administration has now asked for $97.3 billion for munitions across multiple military services this year. For context, that figure is more than three times the size of the Army's entire FY26 procurement budget of $30.5 billion.

The next largest item requested by the White House is $17.3 billion for operational costs of the war. The initial campaign against Iran included a wide array of aircraft, ships, and ground assets that require fuel, maintenance, and repairs. The subsequent naval blockade sustained many of these logistics expenses, which were exacerbated as fuel costs rose due to Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz. In May, military leaders warned that they would have to begin curtailing some regular training exercises and operations this summer if Congress didn't backfill the operations budget with supplemental funding.

Infographic by Jorge Morejon

The White House is also asking Congress for an additional $2.4 billion for drones, which could be used to replace one-way attack and interceptor drones used during the war, as well as at least two dozen MQ-9A Reapers lost in combat. The Air Force faces a problem with the Reaper, however. The MQ-9A is no longer in production, leaving the service with a capability gap. The Air Force could try to accelerate a follow-on capability, but that could take longer than desired to meet immediate replenishment needs. Alternatively, the service could procure the larger MQ-9B, which features a 79-foot wingspan compared to the 66-foot wingspan of the older MQ-9A. It's also possible that some of this funding could be used for other emerging drone programs.

The fragile state of the conflict also raises questions about ongoing war costs. A fragile ceasefire has been interrupted by sporadic skirmishes, and the recent Memorandum of Understanding intended to help end the war lacks substance and relies on further negotiations that have already faced several roadblocks. For the time being, the cost of the Iran war will continue to escalate slowly upwards if the status quo remains unchanged, but the shortfalls and need for additional resources could spike if all-out hostilities resume. A true lasting peace agreement would avoid additional war costs down the road, but that outlook is far from certain.

Beyond the War

The defense supplemental is more than just an Iran war request. While most of the defense portion of the request does support items like operational costs and equipment replenishment related to the war, it also includes other priorities that aren't directly related to the conflict. For example, the White House wants $4 billion for Airborne Moving Target Indication (AMTI) and the Space Data Network (SDN) Backbone, which are related to the president's Golden Dome homeland air and missile defense effort.

The Space Force is pursuing a space-based AMTI capability that would allow satellites to track airborne threats. This program would complement the Air Force's future E-7 Wedgetail fleet, which is replacing the legacy E-3 AWACS. The service requested $7.1 billion in FY27 to begin procurement of a space-based AMTI system, but all the funding was allocated in the reconciliation portion of the request. The Air Force did lose one of its E-3 AWACS to an Iranian strike at an airbase in Saudi Arabia, but this AMTI funding is more of a long-term follow-on than a direct replacement for a particular E-3 aircraft.

Meanwhile, the Space Data Network Backbone represents part of the communications layer of the planned Golden Dome architecture. The SDN, formerly known as MILNET, is being pursued in place of Transport Layer Tranche 3 satellites, which would have been competed among several contractors. SpaceX is working on both of these programs, and in May the company was awarded a $2.3 billion SDN contract and a $4.2 billion AMTI contract. The Space Force requested around $3 billion for the SDN through the FY27 reconciliation request. Other vendors will continue working on earlier Transport Layer tranches, which will be integrated with SDN. Officials have also said that additional AMTI awards to multiple vendors are planned later in the year.

The supplemental also sets aside $12.1 billion for classified programs. The original FY27 request included $98.7 billion in classified funding, split between $61.5 billion for research and $37.2 billion for procurement, according to Forecast International's U.S. Defense Budget Forecast database. If approved by Congress, the supplemental would increase the classified topline by more than 12%, which is a sizeable change. Naturally, we're unable to determine how much, if any, of that classified funding is directly related to the war.

The administration also wants $5.1 billion to support cybersecurity and autonomy, which appears to be a request for emerging tech rather than direct war costs, but the supplemental lacks transparency and doesn't allocate funding to individual line items in the budget.

A Complicated Budget Outlook

Even before considering the new supplemental, the administration's approach to mixing base and reconciliation funding in its FY27 request creates risk and uncertainty for the Pentagon. The defense budget process involves four defense committees (the House and Senate Armed Services Committees and the House and Senate Appropriations Committees) releasing markups of the budget request that contain line-item adjustments that add or remove funding at the program level. So far, three defense committees have released markups of the FY27 defense budget, and none of them have addressed the $350 billion reconciliation portion of the request. That funding will have to be considered during a separate process, but some GOP lawmakers have expressed doubt about passage of another reconciliation bill.

Adding the supplemental bill to the mix further complicates an already fraught legislative landscape. The supplemental has faced resistance in Congress. Democrats largely oppose the bill, arguing it pays for a war that Congress did not authorize. This position is bolstered by passage of resolutions against the war in both chambers. While mostly symbolic, the resolutions underscore the difficulty of getting a controversial war spending bill through both chambers. Rep. Mark Harris, R-NC, suggested Republicans may have to use the reconciliation process to pass a war supplemental in the face of Democratic opposition, but that approach won't necessarily guarantee success.

The Pentagon would still be left with a $1 trillion budget even without the $350 billion reconciliation package and the new supplemental, but it would still face challenges. The most immediate impact would be the reduced training and operations this summer. New efforts to dramatically scale up munitions procurement, which are heavily reliant on supplemental funds, would also be significantly curtailed. Other key initiatives, such as Golden Dome and new investments in autonomous systems, would similarly be affected. These programs would have to be slowed or reduced in scope in the near-term in the absence of reconciliation or supplemental funding.

Several legacy programs would also be negatively impacted due to how the administration structured its request. For example, 53 out of 85 F-35 fighters requested in FY27 were allocated to the reconciliation portion of the budget, while nearly one-third of the Navy's KC-130J request is tied to the reconciliation package.

The administration has set high expectations for its FY27 budget request and its new supplemental proposal, but the complex realities of the budget process could result in a final spending plan that looks very different from the original request.

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GSA taps White House design team to revamp Login.gov

Frank Konkel — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 15:45:04 -0400

Login.gov, the government’s identity-proofing platform housed within the General Services Administration, is collaborating with the National Design Studio to enhance the user experience of millions of Americans who regularly use the shared service.

The collaboration aims to “make it easier for people to access government services, while operating with privacy, transparency, and security at the core of everything we do,” according to an internal email sent to staff Tuesday by Greg Hogan, acting assistant commissioner of Login.gov, and obtained by Nextgov/FCW.

Currently, more than 100 million Americans have accounts through Login.gov to access a variety of government services like Social Security accounts, unemployment insurance, passport services and more across 50 states and agencies.

The National Design Studio was stood up via an August 2025 executive order to improve how Americans experience and interact with government agencies online and in-person. Housed within the Executive Office of the President and headed by Joe Gebbia, the National Design Studio has collaborated with several agencies across government, including on a major effort with the Office of Personnel Management to make federal retirement applications fully electronic.

Per Hogan’s email, “ND Studio has drafted a proposed set of changes that will help modernize and streamline the sign up, sign in, and identity proofing process.” Hogan makes clear that while National Design Studio is providing a service to Login.gov, it “does not oversee or operate” the service, nor is it “building a replacement Login.gov website.”

The National Design Studio instead built a separate “experimental version” of the site to test different design concepts and improvements that it pitched to leadership.

“The ND Studio will have resources available to support us in real-time thinking through these immediate changes and identifying areas where their expertise would be beneficial for the long term,” Hogan said in the email. “I believe our combined skills can greatly benefit the American public.”

“Our team at GSA remains responsible for every change made to the service. Any proposal must go through our normal reviews for engineering, security, accessibility, privacy, compliance, performance, and product before it gets shipped to users. We’ll implement only changes that improve the user experience and meet our standards,” he added.

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DOD's CIO says it's time to rethink the Pentagon's technology playbook

Edward Graham — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 14:55:58 -0400

Federal officials are increasingly seeking to adopt new technologies to enhance agency operations. At the Pentagon, the Office of the Chief Information Officer is looking beyond IT transformation to ways it can more effectively get digital capabilities into the hands of warfighters.

Pentagon CIO Kirsten Davies recently spoke with Nextgov/FCW about her digital transformation strategy, efforts to refine the department’s acquisition process and more. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Nextgov/FCW: What are some of your office’s priorities under the current administration?

Kirsten Davies: President Donald Trump and Secretary Pete Hegseth have given us a tremendous opportunity with a mandate for change. What you're seeing out of the Department of War now is enormous enthusiasm and momentum around that.

For example, the secretary has been very clear that we will take acquisition risk today in order to reduce operational risk tomorrow. Operational risk, in this case, means that at the core of everything we do is our work to enable and empower our warfighters. When I came into this role, I really wanted to bring the cause of the warfighter straight into the DNA of the Office of the CIO.

We're shifting gears tremendously away from being just a policy shop. Policy work is extraordinarily important, but operational effectiveness, warfighter readiness and empowerment from a digital perspective are critical. Through the work of the Office of the CIO, what we're able to do is really shift gears and transform how we think about that.

It's not IT for the sake of that “T.” It's developing a technology footprint that enables and empowers our warfighters from the core all the way to the edge.

Nextgov/FCW: How are you going about transforming the Office of the CIO’s operations to meet that mandate for change?

Davies: We have four pillars for the transformation we are undertaking. The first is establishing an enduring digital foundation, so thinking of all the things we do when it comes to network transport and data centers. We are modernizing our data transport ability across this space and transforming the way we think about it from undersea to celestial, so satellites and everything in between. We obviously have a lot of work we're doing to build out the infrastructure for artificial intelligence and modernize the way in which we think about that.

Pillar two is the agile digital capabilities. I say agile very specifically because we are not going to do fast waterfall. We are going to get after agile delivery and agile development, so truly get into industry best practices when it comes to the software development life cycle and when it comes to the totality of the agility we need to get digital capabilities to the warfighters faster, more securely and more resiliently.

The third pillar is cybersecurity of the warfighting ecosystem. What you will be seeing out of my office is a much more holistic and transformative approach to cybersecurity, and that includes operational technology and the internet of things. When it comes to OT, we can’t treat it like IT, and we can’t neglect it as if it doesn't exist. So you're going to see a lot more focus on OT out of my shop as well.

And then pillar four is upskilling, cross-skilling and partnering. We can talk about people all day long, and we can talk about the fact that everyone owns security. We need to embrace that as an ethos for us and work across our defense industrial base and across our allies and our partners internationally as well. And then also work with our interagency partners at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, FBI and the National Security Agency.

Nextgov/FCW: Can you talk more about the work you’re doing on the operational technology front?

Davies: Everything is connected, so the digitization of our industrial base is critical for us. The secretary has talked about reinvigorating our industrial base. From a cybersecurity perspective and from a technology perspective, all these devices are connected. There's more than automation involved. Now it's machine learning and also AI that are being more and more deliberately rolled out and leveraged in industry and in government.

When we talk about the OT aspect of these things, that's everything from building management systems to the critical infrastructure that supports our installations here in America and abroad. It is working with our defense industrial base partners.

All of this is foundational operational technology. We must have appropriate availability, resiliency and security in order to ensure our warfighters have what they need when they need it. And this is underpinned by our technology footprint that goes from the core all the way to the edge.

What we're working through now is setting up an OT council. The notion of this is to have industry expertise, department use cases and defense industrial base partners come to the table and say, “How do we get after this better?”

Nextgov/FCW: How are you outlining your strategic vision in a way that enhances private-sector engagement and drives technology modernization?

Davies: We are transforming from what has been a back-office IT function into a forward-leaning strategic department function that includes, by necessity, very strong collaboration across the building.

I’ve got great partnerships with Emil Michael, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, where the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office is, and with Undersecretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment Mike Duffey’s shop, where he is radically transforming the way in which we approach acquisition and procurement.

You'll see there’s no daylight among us as a leadership team as we move forward with the secretary's vision to enable and empower our warfighters and to ensure the lethality, resilience and readiness of our warfighters from a very specific perspective.

Acquisition at the department has historically been a very long process and was often focused on massive capital investments like ships. We have to shift gears when it comes to technology, when it comes to software, when it comes to cloud, when it comes to infrastructure buildout. Technology changes at a much more rapid cycle than planes and ships and all those things.

What we're working on inside the building and across the leadership is how do we drive not only a more agile approach to developing and delivering capabilities, but how do we drive a more agile approach to acquisition for things that can shift every six months? Infusing that kind of methodology into our thinking is what we're getting after.

Nextgov/FCW: How are you trying to speed up the department’s acquisition and procurement processes?

Davies: We're underway right now on a refinement of our risk management framework. The RMF and the authority to operate are legal frameworks for the ways in which industry partners can work with us. Right now, if we are testing software in one part of the department, that approval, we’ll call it, doesn't necessarily transfer over to another part of the department. And that doesn't make common sense.

We’re not just going to digitize a piece of paper to a PDF; we are actually going to refine the totality of the process itself, including moving to more automation and moving to inheritance of one ATO to another ATO. We want to actually overhaul the whole ATO process in and of itself.

I think that's a very specific example of how we are getting after what the secretary's vision is, which is to reduce barriers to entry. It's to reignite our defense industrial base and really reduce these compliancy and check-the-box exercises to get at meaningful outcomes.

Nextgov/FCW: How is a platform like GenAI.mil helping enhance AI comfortability across the department?

Davies: GenAI.mil is such a brilliant example of the first of many initiatives that are to come out of the department. The adoption and usage rates have been extraordinary. We have 1.3 million users right now, which is amazing. We have over 100,000 agents that have been built by users to support their tasks and their work cycles. In some cases, they have been able to take a two-week task and complete it in two hours.

This is such a beneficial and helpful tool when it comes to day-to-day tasks that our employees and our warfighters can do much more rapidly now. What I love seeing about this is it saves our people for meaningful work. When we can leverage automation, machine learning, supervised machine learning and AI, that frees up time for people to apply their critical thinking, their analytical thinking, their skill sets, their experience and their expertise. From the warfighters to the civilians to the contractors, it frees them up to focus on work that really adds tremendous strategic value to the department, ultimately enabling our warfighters to have greater capabilities at their fingertips.

We recently announced partnerships with eight AI companies to deploy their tools on our classified networks. What you're seeing is this acquisition reform in motion.

The other thing you're seeing is the tremendous leadership from President Trump when he said he wants America to be tops in technology, in AI and in cybersecurity, and you are seeing that worked out at the Department of War. We are implementing that vision.

Nextgov/FCW: How do these efforts fit into DOD’s overall modernization strategy?

Davies: Traditional modernization can be like evolution. It can be an incremental change and take a really, really long time. True transformation goes at speed, and we are working at the speed of warfighters. We need data supremacy for decision dominance.

We have modernized the architecture to be deployed. We are getting after the defense business systems rationalization. In the midst of all that, in parallel, we’re seeing great advancements not only in the core enterprise technology aspects that I oversee, but also the edge use cases that are worked out by our service members and our joint forces and supported by our Office of Research and Engineering and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

You're seeing that change at pace. And one of the things I’ve been really vocal about across the department and especially with our defense industrial base is that their innovation is our warfighter innovation. Their strength is our warfighter strength. Their security is our warfighter security. So we are really getting after these things in a partnership way that is with speed. It is with agility. When we find barriers, we are breaking them down. When we find unnecessary burdensome check-the-box exercises, we're tackling them at pace.

Nextgov/FCW: How are you expanding the department’s future IT and cyber workforce?

Davies: We are working on an extended plan rollout to build on the great work this office has already done. The president and the secretary have given us a mandate to really get after skills-based training, which is what we’re pursuing.

Throughout my entire career, I have been trying to eliminate the requirement for degrees before people can get a job because if threat actors can be script kiddies and teenagers, then we need to be employing great skills where the skills are and figuring out how to incorporate them. You’re going to see a full life cycle approach out of my office, which is also working with Katie Sutton, who is the assistant secretary of war for cyber policy.

We are working on a full life cycle approach to skills-based hiring, cross-skilling and upskilling. We're looking at how we can develop a much more fulsome model for our warfighters who go into veteran status to ensure they are well trained to continue to support the national security mission wherever they go next. You're going to see a lot more of that coming out of my office.

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Some disabled veterans say losing telework accommodations is making it harder for them to keep working at the VA

Sean Michael Newhouse — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 10:13:01 -0400

Many disabled veterans serve in agencies. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in 2024 about one-fifth of employed veterans with a service-connected disability worked for the federal government.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Veterans Affairs Department is one of the most common agencies where veterans work. It employs more than 105,000 vets, according to federal workforce data from the Office of Personnel Management, which is nearly a quarter of the department’s workforce.

Several disabled veterans who work at the VA told Government Executive, however, that they feel the department is pushing them out of their jobs.

At the start of his second term, President Donald Trump terminated work from home for the civil service, arguing that the workplace flexibility had been abused following the COVID-19 pandemic. But his directive exempted qualifying feds with disabilities — many of whom are eligible for telework through a reasonable accommodation, which agencies are required to provide under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 unless doing so would result in an “undue hardship.” Other examples of reasonable accommodations include interpreters for people who are deaf and accessible work stations.

Multiple VA employees interviewed by Government Executive said that since the department undertook a review of reasonable accommodations in response to Trump’s directive that officials have denied and rescinded telework accommodations, which is impacting many veterans with disabilities.

“There's a joke within the VA that the VA supports disabled veterans, unless you work for the VA,” said Galen Wheless, the president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 1594 in St. Petersburg, Fla.

“I guess they fully expect me to quit or lose the job”

Kevin Price medically retired from the Army after a particularly bad helicopter landing during training that has led to flare-ups of pain in his legs. Oftentimes, he works from bed for half of the day.

“I treat it like a slow computer. Sometimes it takes my body — not all the time — but sometimes it takes my body a little bit longer to wake up,” he said.

Because Price was on a telework reasonable accommodation, he and his young family in 2024 were able to move more than three hours away from his office to live closer to relatives. He received permission from his supervisors for his relocation, with one saying in an email Price shared with Government Executive that the reasonable accommodation allows him “to live anywhere in the state of Florida.”

In February, however, the VA rescinded his reasonable accommodation. While Price appealed — emphasizing his move and that he’s limited to driving no more than 30 minutes because of his disability — department officials responded in an email that an “employee’s commute to and from the worksite is generally considered outside the scope of the position’s essential functions; therefore, the agency is not responsible for providing accommodations related to commuting.”

Cheri Cannon — a partner at Tully Rinckey who specializes in federal employment law — said the VA’s contention regarding accommodations and commuting is “not a lawful justification.”

“The Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act require employers to accommodate known disabilities if a person could otherwise perform their job duties,” she said. “So if you can perform your job duties at home and you need a reasonable accommodation in order to do that, driving is a life function just like walking, talking, reading, hearing and seeing. Driving is a life activity covered under the statute.”

VA press secretary Quinn Slaven disputed that characterization in a statement to Government Executive, calling claims that the department is violating the Rehabilitation Act "absurd." He pointed to guidance stating that agencies may review previously granted telework accommodations and replace them with "an effective alternative reasonable accommodation."

Based on department emails reviewed by Government Executive, the VA offered Price alternative accommodations onsite, including extra breaks, a wellness room and an ergonomic chair. He said that several coworkers received the same suggested accommodations, even though they have different disabilities.

Those emails also show that VA officials said there wasn’t any space in an office closer to Price’s new home.

“So they fully expect me to drive over 150 miles one way, Monday through Friday,” Price said.

Price hasn’t yet had to undertake the approximately six-hour total commute because he started parental leave around his mandated return-to-office date. But he said the rescission of his reasonable accommodation has already taken a toll on his health.

“I had an urgent doctor's appointment because my blood pressure was skyrocketing,” he said. “I was in hypertension. I wasn't sleeping. I was stressed out of my mind.”

And Price’s parental leave ends later this month, so he’s unsure if he’ll be able to stay at the VA.

“I guess they fully expect me to quit or lose the job,” he said.

“It’s extremely draining”

Daniel Solee — a VA employee and Navy veteran with PTSD and a traumatic brain injury — had been working under a telework reasonable accommodation since 2021. It was rescinded, however, in July 2025 in what he believes was retaliation for criticizing his management.

“[My supervisor’s] reasoning was that [Trump’s] order requested all employees return back to the office, which is correct, but it did not say that the Rehabilitation Act is revoked,” he said.

Solee said that he continued to work remotely, but his supervisor eventually revoked his access to systems that he needs for his job and he was terminated in October 2025 for not showing up in person.

With support from his union, he challenged his firing before the Merit Systems Protection Board, which hears federal employees’ appeals. Ultimately, Solee was reinstated as a result of a settlement agreement viewed by Government Executive under which the VA also agreed to participate in a new reasonable accommodation process and provide backpay that Solee said totaled $30,000 before taxes.

After returning to his job in March, the VA offered Solee telework two days per pay period as an alternative reasonable accommodation, according to documentation viewed by Government Executive. But he declined, saying his doctor argues that he requires full-time telework. Now in a standoff, Solee said that he is continuing to work remotely every day, but his supervisor is again limiting his access to systems. And he’s only receiving about half of his normal paycheck due to being deemed AWOL, he said.

“It's extremely draining. It usually increases my TBI with a headache,” he said. “It's constant stuff daily that I go through. I used to have a mental health appointment every three months. Now I have to do it every two weeks because of the stress level.”

He emphasized, however, that he does not want to leave the VA, arguing that the MSPB settlement shows his supervisor is at fault.

“I should leave my job for a person that just cost the VA money? For a person that illegally tried to terminate me? For a person that illegally tried to revoke my reasonable accommodation?” he said.

VA’s Slaven also defended the department’s broader return-to-office policy.

“Under President Trump, VA took thousands of employees off remote work and brought them back to the office, where they can work as a team to better serve veterans,” Slaven wrote. “At the same time, VA is ensuring accommodations are granted to employees who need them the most.”

Regarding Price’s and Solee’s experiences, Slaven said the VA cannot provide information about employees unless they sign a “Request for and Authorization to Release Health Information” form. Government Executive relayed this information to both individuals who declined to sign, citing concerns about sharing their health information.

In addition to the alleged professional and medical harms, disabled vets who work at the VA say the return-to-office directive has caused other consequences for them.

One such employee, who preferred to be unnamed due to fears of retaliation, estimates that he is spending an additional $500 per month on transportation and clothing. This individual said that he previously teleworked because it was department policy at the time rather than a need due to a reasonable accommodation.

“This is a moral issue”

Government Executive previously reported on a June 2025 VA memo that outlined a new policy to provide stricter scrutiny of reasonable accommodations as part of an effort to “maximize” in-person work. Similar processes have played out since the start of the second Trump administration at other agencies, including the departments of Treasury, Health and Human Services and Justice as well as the National Science Foundation.

But Douglas Massey, president of AFGE Local 17 for VA’s Central Office in Washington, D.C., said that he received reports of department employees across the country getting their telework reasonable accommodations denied as early as spring 2025.

“This is a moral issue,” he said. “These are veterans. We’re supposed to be serving veterans.”

Wheless, the local president from Florida, said that union officials from other areas have not reported widespread reasonable accommodation recissions. But his local is currently representing nearly 150 impacted individuals.

“These are people with, for example, epilepsy. It's illegal for them to drive, so they can't come into the office. We have stories of a person missing half a lung who is immunocompromised that can't be in an office environment,” he said. “We have folks with PTSD that literally were blown up in wartime that need to be out of an office environment. They’re still valid, capable workers that can still do all the essential functions of their job, but they just shouldn't be doing it in an office environment, per their doctor's orders.”

Another disabled veteran who works at the VA said that she requested a short-term telework reasonable accommodation after a major car accident exacerbated a service-connected mental health disability that temporarily prevented her from driving. While she used to regularly telework in her position, officials denied the request, contending that the department is not responsible for her commute.

“So I talked to my husband, he went to his job and they changed his schedule. They accommodated him for me, so he could drive me to work and pick me up,” she said. “The VA — my VA, my military, my country — basically would not help me, but his work would. That really bothered me.”

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Unions sue to block USDA reorganization, arguing it’s a RIF in disguise

Sean Michael Newhouse — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 18:10:59 -0400

Updated at 11:35 a.m. ET July 8

A coalition of federal employee labor unions, nonprofits and local governments is asking the courts to halt the Trump administration’s reorganization of the Agriculture Department that entails moving thousands of employees away from the Washington, D.C., area to new regional hubs across the country. The plaintiffs are arguing that the pending employee relocations to other areas of the country are an attempt to downsize USDA’s workforce.

“The actions of this administration to reorganize USDA are a ruse for forcing employees to quit because they work on programs — like feeding low-income women and children, protecting our forests or scientific research — that this administration opposes for political reasons,” said Corinne Johnson — a partner at Altshuler Berzon, one of the lead co-counsels representing the plaintiffs — in a statement. “That is unlawful.”

The filing alleges that the USDA reorganization, which officials began to implement this spring, needs congressional approval, as Agriculture’s fiscal 2026 appropriations bill included a provision blocking officials from relocating offices or employees without authorization from the legislative branch. Specifically, the filing is part of an existing lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s reorganization of federal agencies more broadly.

According to the attorneys, USDA employees have started to receive letters ordering them to report to new locations by September or October.

“USDA’s actions will force many of the experienced and dedicated employees who run the agency’s programs to leave, thereby gutting programs, interrupting and eliminating the delivery of important services and harming the employees and their families,” they wrote in a memo. “USDA’s actions will also eliminate locally based services and research. The harms are as certain and as widespread as if USDA had imposed a large-scale reduction-in-force and cut program staff directly.”

One such letter obtained by Government Executive from USDA’s Research, Education and Economics division gave employees until near the end of July to decide whether to accept the relocation assignment. The letter said the department would provide “relocation benefits” but also is offering Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (“early out”) and Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments (“buyouts”) to impacted REE employees regardless of whether they’re retirement eligible or not.

A USDA spokesperson said in a statement to Government Executive that the department "will not comment on pending litigation." They did not address a question about whether the VERA and VSIP offer is available to impacted employees departmentwide.

Department officials have previously argued that the reorganization would not interrupt “critical” programs and that moving offices to cities across the country would lead to improved service delivery.

According to federal workforce data from the Office of Personnel Management, USDA’s workforce has already decreased from more than 98,000 in 2024 to around 77,500 currently.

This story has been updated with a statement from the Agriculture Department.

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House Homeland committee seeks briefing on DHS network hack

David DiMolfetta — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 18:07:31 -0400

House Homeland Security Committee staff are requesting a briefing from the Department of Homeland Security on the breach of the agency’s Homeland Security Information Network, according to a committee aide with knowledge of the matter.

Staffers are hoping to be briefed on the intrusion — first reported by Nextgov/FCW last week — by Friday, said the aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter is sensitive.

Hackers are believed to have penetrated HSIN sometime between late May and early June, though their affiliation and whether any contents were pilfered from the platform is unclear, a person familiar with the matter previously said.

Approved users lean on the network to securely access data, exchange requests with partner agencies, manage operations, coordinate safety and security for planned events, respond to incidents and share mission-critical information needed to protect their communities, according to its website. HSIN carries unclassified but sensitive information shared among federal, state, local, territorial, tribal, international and private-sector partners.

The intrusion comes as the U.S. oversees security for World Cup games across the country, placing added scrutiny on the systems federal, state and local officials use to coordinate major events. A breach of the platform may raise concerns about whether hackers gained insight into security planning, interagency coordination or response procedures surrounding one of the most visible international events hosted predominately in the United States.

Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., said last week that the network is being used to support the World Cup and America250 events. He added that it played a key role for emergency responders during last year’s mid-air collision between an American Airlines flight and an Army Black Hawk helicopter outside Washington, D.C.

“The information in HSIN, while not classified, is highly sensitive, and its exposure risks national security,” Warner said. “DHS and DOJ must thoroughly investigate who breached HSIN, what the attackers accessed, and ensure all DHS partners are provided with timely information and the tools necessary to mitigate any associated risks from the breach.”

When asked by Nextgov/FCW about the committee briefing request, a department spokesperson sent the same statement it provided last week that confirmed the hack.

The statement said staff “immediately took action to isolate the affected systems, mitigate the vulnerability, and launch a comprehensive forensic investigation,” and added that an investigation is ongoing and more details can’t be provided.

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Trump wants to scrap a key framework for federal employee discipline

Erich Wagner — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 17:46:02 -0400

The Trump administration last week proposed new regulations that would nullify a decades-old legal framework agencies use to mete out and justify federal employee discipline in favor of what critics say will be a vaguer and less fair standard.

In a proposed rule published in the Federal Register, the Office of Personnel Management and Merit Systems Protection Board jointly called for “retiring” the Douglas factors, a list of 12 criteria agencies are expected to employ when they consider disciplinary measures, developed in a 1981 MSPB case shortly after the implementation of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act. They include, among other things, the severity of the offense, an employee’s past performance and conduct and their potential for rehabilitation.

But OPM and MSPB argued that rubric had grown too restrictive, and that agencies had taken a “mechanical” approach to apply each factor to a given disciplinary case, disincentivizing managers from pursuing adverse actions against their employees.

“In proposing this departure from the 12-factor Douglas test, MSPB acknowledges that Douglas has long been a cornerstone of federal employment law,” the agencies wrote. “However, over the ensuing decades, agencies and, occasionally, MSPB, have applied Douglas in a rigid, mechanistic way that the original decision never contemplated or prescribed. For the reasons set forth in this proposed rule, and in conjunction with OPM’s streamlining of performance management policy, the board proposes to correct this rigid application and reaffirm the board’s commitment to adjudicating disciplinary action appeals under a more flexible standard in conformance with its statutory authority.”

Raymond Limon, who served as a Democratically appointed member of MSPB from 2021 until February 2025, said that while he agrees that the Douglas factors are designed to be “illustrative” rather than rigid, the administration’s description of how they are applied doesn’t jibe with his experience adjudicating employees’ appeals, particularly given agencies better than 80% success rate before the board.

“It’s possible that some agencies on their own have created a more formalistic approach requiring supervisors to complete it like a checklist and address every issue,” he said. “But to me, if they’re doing that, that’s because they’ve developed a poor policy or don’t understand the law correctly . . . I feel like the proposed regulation assumes that Douglas is the disease, but it may simply be the stethoscope.”

OPM and MSPB’s new standard—to simply consider the “totality of circumstances” when considering a disciplinary measure—is vaguer and ripe for abuse, said Michael Fallings, managing partner at Tully Rinckey PLLC, a firm specializing in federal employment law.

“’Totality’ is just a vague way of saying that we’re going to consider factors, but what they’re trying to say is, ‘We don’t have to consider certain factors that may some times be in favor of the employee,’” Fallings said. “What we’ve seen [in my practice] over the past year are employees proposed for removal for one instance of misconduct and no prior discipline. We’ve seen some where the alleged event occurred years ago, with no prior discipline and good performance since then. It’s a way to say, ‘We’ll consider the circumstances, but we don’t have to.’”

The regulations would require additional training for managers and supervisors on performance and misconduct issues, something long requested by good government groups. And it formally reintroduce a number of policies from Trump’s first term aimed at making it easier to fire poor performers, including reducing the length of performance improvement plans to 30 days, banning settlement agreements that remove documentation of poor performance or misconduct from an employee’s record, and barring the use of union official time to help an employee pursue adverse action appeals.

The that the administration’s latest proposal was jointly offered by OPM and MSPB undermines a key tenet of the Civil Service Reform Act, Limon argued.

“The MSPB was designed by Congress to be an oversight body over OPM and that also to be an independent institution,” he said. “That’s why the Civil Service Reform Act was created: to split up the Civil Service Commission. The policy wing became OPM, and MSPB would do the commission’s adjudication work. Good fences make good neighbors, but they’re collapsing that.”

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Greg Barbaccia to leave federal CIO role at end of August

David DiMolfetta — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 15:00:00 -0400

Federal CIO Greg Barbaccia is leaving government service, capping off an 18-month tenure as the government’s top IT lead where he sought to overhaul how the U.S. agencies acquire and interact with tech services.

Barbaccia will depart Aug. 31, according to a White House official with knowledge of the matter, who requested anonymity to communicate the departure. It’s not clear where Barbaccia is headed next.

The Office of Management and Budget confirmed his departure date.

“Greg has done an excellent job as Federal CIO and Chief AI Officer,” a spokesperson told Nextgov/FCW. “He will certainly be missed when his time here comes to an end.”

The move was first reported by FedScoop.

“Greg Barbaccia has been an incredible partner at GSA. He has fundamentally reshaped our work on the federal government’s technology and the products GSA delivers across the federal workforce on behalf of the American taxpayer,” GSA Administrator Edward Forst said in a statement to Nextgov/FCW. “I’m deeply grateful for his extraordinary service to President Trump and the American people.”

Barbaccia joined OMB in January 2025 after a decade at Palantir and later stints at blockchain intelligence firm Elementus and Theorem, a machine-learning-enabled asset manager. A former Army intelligence sergeant and intelligence community analyst, Barbaccia had not worked in government since 2009 and had not previously served as an agency CIO.

Barbaccia was charged as federal CIO with overseeing governmentwide IT policy, helping shape the federal technology budget and setting the direction for agency modernization efforts. He also served as the federal chief AI officer and became the government’s service delivery lead under the Government Service Delivery Improvement Act.

During his tenure, he pushed agencies to rethink how they buy and manage technology, arguing that the government should default more often to buying commercial tools rather than building systems in-house. He also sought tougher enforcement of FITARA, the 2014 law giving agency CIOs authority over technology investments, and explored ways for OMB to more closely track major IT decisions across agencies.

Barbaccia also made culture a central theme of his tenure, saying his role had become less about “deep diving” into technical architecture and more about changing how the government thinks about technology, compliance and modernization. He pushed the federal CIO office to gather more feedback from agency technology leaders and sent staff into the field for in-person meetings with agencies.

“I came into the job thinking this would be much more of a technical undertaking about deep diving into technical systems and technical architecture,” he told Nextgov/FCW in February. “I’m understanding changing the culture and the way we think about tech and the government is a way more effective means of making change, so that's what I’m focused on — primarily changes across culture, tech and then the compliance regime.”

His departure comes after a turbulent period for the federal technology workforce, including Department of Government Efficiency’s push to downsize government as a whole, broad personnel losses across government — including portions of the federal tech workforce — and a reshuffling of many agency CIO roles. Barbaccia has acknowledged those disruptions but argued that artificial intelligence and a new early-career U.S. Tech Force program could help the government rebuild technical capacity.

Barbaccia also championed a “digital front door” for government services, questioning why taxpayers must repeatedly provide the same information to different agencies. That vision, he said, would require more responsible data sharing and a willingness to make difficult decisions around identity proofing, including the future of Login.gov and the government’s use of commercial identity tools.

During his tenure, the federal government began to confront a new class of advanced AI models that officials and researchers say will forever overhaul how organizations manage defensive and offensive cyber strategies. The models’ advent has raised ongoing questions for agency technology leaders about model-sharing and coordination amid a recent export control debacle that impacted parts of the government.

Nextgov/FCW Managing Editor Edward Graham contributed to this report.

Editor's note: This article has been updated to include a statement from GSA Administrator Edward Forst.

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OPM proposes ‘decentralized’ FEVS with fewer questions and less transparency

Erich Wagner — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 18:07:55 -0400

The Office of Personnel Management last week proposed new regulations that would end the HR agency’s annual administration of the Federal Employees Viewpoint Survey, instead passing the task along to individual agencies with fewer guardrails and less transparency.

OPM Director Scott Kupor announced the plan in a blog post, arguing without evidence that the annual survey of federal employee engagement and job satisfaction had become a “box-checking exercise” for some agencies and a “vanity” project for others. The proposed changes come after OPM failed to administer the FEVS in 2025, a violation of federal statute.

“Employee engagement surveys should therefore be designed, administered and acted upon by the agencies that understand their own missions, structures, workforces and management challenges—not administered by OPM as a government-wide ritual. Done right, surveys become a management tool for agency leaders to measure what matters, identify where alignment is breaking down, and take responsibility for improving the employee experience.”

In addition, the proposal would cut the overall number of questions that must be asked each year from 16 down to 10. While a few questions have been retained, most have either been significantly revised or replaced entirely, particularly those questions pertaining to employee morale and workload. In their place are questions pertaining to managers’ “expectations” for workers and how efficiently agencies remove perceived poor performers.

Jenny Mattingly, vice president of policy and stakeholder engagement for the Partnership for Public Service, which each year collates FEVS results into the Best Places to Work in the Federal Government rankings, said those changes effectively eviscerate the questions upon which the survey’s Global Satisfaction Index are based. While the law requiring agencies to survey their workforces was aimed at measuring employee engagement and morale, last week’s proposal—tucked into broader regulations around strategic human capital—suggests the Trump administration wants to use it more as a workforce planning tool.

“There seems to be some conflation here between strategic planning and using workforce surveys as a planning tool,” she said. “Which could be a right idea—agencies can and should be doing these things—but FEVS is supposed to be an engagement tool. Those are two separate things.”

And while the plan ostensibly preserves the requirement that the annual surveys’ results be published, the manner in which agencies post their results—and in how much detail—will largely be up to the organizations’ discretion.

“Although the operative statute requires that survey results be posted publicly on the agency’s website (unless doing so would jeopardize or negatively impact national security), these specific requirements are not spelled out in the statute requiring annual employee surveys,” the regulations state. “Instead, OPM proposes to note simply that each agency may determine the specific content of its public disclosure of its annual survey results."

OPM’s proposal is unusual in that most regulatory and policy changes it has initiated since Trump’s return to the White House have sought to pull functions into the HR agency’s orbit, not decentralize them. Don Kettl, professor emeritus and former dean at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy, said the move seems to be of a piece with OPM’s previous actions to reduce the utility and longevity of Fedscope data and to release only limited information on positions affected by Schedule Policy/Career.

“It is important to understand what’s happening right now within the historical context, but without that historical data, that makes it that much harder,” Kettl said. “FEVS in particular, we didn’t have it at all last year, and this year they’re talking about a fundamental change. Did it need an update? Absolutely. But if you break the chain of evidence, it becomes that much harder to understand what is and isn’t happening with employee engagement, which is at the core of our relationship with government.”

Mattingly took issue with Kupor’s characterization that the FEVS had limited utility for individual agencies with different needs. Agencies previously were able to ask OPM for supplemental questions to be asked alongside FEVS, and some HR offices have successfully used the survey to drive performance. Without a government-wide survey—and centrally conducted annual analysis in the form of an annual governmentwide report—senior officials and the public will lose out on valuable trend data on the state of public service.

“Chief human capital officers, HR offices and senior leaders are definitely aware of the survey and look at it as one tool in their toolbox,” she said. “[With] all this significant workforce reshaping that is happening, you have a lot of changes to employees’ workloads and morale, and you have reorgs and other things going on as well. Removing some of these satisfaction questions and devolving the overall survey back to agencies, it removes our ability to publicly benchmark these changes against previous administrations, previous actions and previous iterations of agencies. So it really is a tool that helps both agency leadership, but also the public to see how these things are impacting employees, and ultimately service delivery.”

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Trump says Pulte can declassify ‘whatever’ he wants, sparking fears of exposing intelligence secrets

David DiMolfetta — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 09:00:00 -0400

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that acting spy chief Bill Pulte can declassify “whatever” records he wants and can declassify “almost everything,” a sweeping green light that has alarmed former intelligence officials, who warn that careless releases could expose sensitive intelligence capabilities and sidestep standard review processes with other spy agencies.

Trump said Wednesday that acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte would only serve in the job for “a month or two months or something,” but has his permission in the interim to release classified records.

“Bill is there just for a fairly short period of time,” Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. “But while he’s there, I said you can declassify whatever you want.”

Under U.S. law, records declassification is usually handled through a structured review process meant to identify national security risks before materials are released. Trump’s comments appear to give Pulte political backing to move aggressively, but they don’t necessarily address how agencies with involvement in any records would be consulted first.

“My guess is that NSA and CIA are losing their minds at the idea of Pulte declassifying a lot of stuff,” said a former official, who, like others for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid and for fear of retribution.

“If Pulte actually runs the traps and considers damage and balances, he won’t declassify much. If he doesn’t care about blowing up cyber exploits, putting foreign relationships at risk, or getting people killed, he could declassify a lot,” the former official added.

Intelligence records are typically reviewed by the agency that produced them before release, particularly if disclosure could expose that agency’s operations, but that consultation might be skipped entirely under Pulte, a second former official said.

An ODNI spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.

Trump has placed Pulte at the center of a wider declassification push that began under former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who used her role atop ODNI to release records tied to Trump-era grievances over alleged weaponization inside the intelligence community. ODNI’s own public releases under Gabbard included documents the office claimed exposed efforts by intelligence officials to undermine Trump’s 2016 victory and material it said showed a conspiracy used during his 2019 impeachment proceedings.

The declassification push is part of a broader campaign to challenge an intelligence community the president has long accused of working against him. Since the 2016 Russia investigation, Trump and his allies have argued that intelligence and law enforcement shops have used their powers to damage his presidency.

“Trump’s statement alone saying that Pulte has this authority is damaging to national security because any person thinking about volunteering or working with the United States might think twice now, and is more likely to go to the Brits or another service,” a third former official said, adding that if Pulte moves to declassify intelligence involving other agencies, he would be in violation of the law.

The president “just signaled to any person providing intelligence to the United States that their intelligence can be released at Pulte’s whim, thus putting their entire security and safety in jeopardy,” the third former official added.

The White House has assembled a task force collecting thousands of pages of intelligence and law enforcement documents, mostly related to the 2020 election, with plans to declassify some of them in ways that could support Trump’s claims about election irregularities and fraud, NBC News reported Tuesday.

Trump’s declassification plans land against a long-running backdrop of concerns over his administration’s handling of sensitive intelligence. During his first term, officials said he shared highly classified information provided by the Israelis with Russian officials in the Oval Office. Separately, Russian and U.S. news reports later identified Oleg Smolenkov, a former Russian government official living near Washington, as a possible CIA source who had disappeared from Russia in 2017 after allegedly providing information on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s role in the Kremlin’s 2016 election interference efforts.

Trump was later indicted in June 2023 over classified records kept at Mar-a-Lago, including documents prosecutors said involved highly sensitive national defense information, though the case was dismissed and later dropped after he returned to office. Former President Joe Biden also faced a classified documents investigation, but a special counsel declined to charge him on grounds that there was not enough evidence to convict him of “willfully” retaining the sensitive materials.

Pulte’s short tenure has already produced early staffing changes at ODNI that have removed around 50 career and political staff from their roles in the office. The moves follow a broader downsizing campaign started under Gabbard.

The personnel churn included the sidelining of Will Ruger, the deputy director of national intelligence for mission integration. Pulte also brought in a new chief of staff, Christina Norton, who served as Pulte’s chief of staff at the Federal Housing Finance Agency and as the RNC’s election integrity director, helping oversee its 2024 poll-watching operation. Her move into ODNI has sharpened concerns that the office could be drawn further into Trump’s push to revisit election-related claims.

Trump’s comments come after he slowed a Senate push last month to quickly confirm Jay Clayton as permanent intelligence chief, allowing Pulte to take over the office on a temporary basis. Trump said Wednesday that Clayton would get his Senate hearing in two weeks.

Clayton’s nomination has drawn a generally positive response from senators. But Democrats have reacted furiously to Pulte’s elevation, and even some Republicans have expressed concern about installing someone with no prior intelligence community experience as acting DNI. The fight has already affected Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a key spying authority that had appeared headed for reauthorization in early June before Democrats balked in protest of moving forward with Pulte at the head of ODNI.

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Hackers breached DHS information-sharing network, people familiar say

David DiMolfetta — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0400

A key Department of Homeland Security information-sharing database was accessed by an unknown threat actor in recent weeks, potentially exposing sensitive data exchanged between federal, state, local and industry partners, according to two people familiar with the matter.

DHS investigators are probing the intrusion of the Homeland Security Information Network, said both people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the incident is sensitive. The hackers’ affiliation and whether any documentation was pilfered from the system are both unclear.

The department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis has conducted a damage assessment of the intrusion, which is believed to have occurred sometime between late May and early June, said one of the people. The hackers targeted HSIN servers and a SharePoint system used for collaboration efforts, the person added.

The intrusion comes as the U.S. is overseeing security for World Cup games across the country, placing added scrutiny on the systems federal, state and local officials use to coordinate major events. A breach of the platform could raise concerns about whether hackers gained insight into security planning, interagency coordination or response procedures surrounding one of the most visible international events hosted predominately in the United States.

The platform supports real-time communication, document sharing, alerts, web conferencing and incident management. It’s also used to exchange information about persons of interest and potential threats to help agencies maintain situational awareness during emergencies and events.

“The Department of Homeland Security is aware of a recent cyber incident involving a specific, unclassified legacy information sharing environment. We immediately took action to isolate the affected systems, mitigate the vulnerability, and launch a comprehensive forensic investigation,” a department spokesperson said after this story published. “There is no indication that classified networks were impacted, and the system remains operational for our partners. As this is an ongoing investigation, we cannot provide further operational details at this time."

The development would not be the first time HSIN has faced security problems. In 2023, an access misconfiguration linked to a contractor’s coding error caused restricted HSIN data to be exposed to unapproved users inside the platform, according to a memo obtained by Nextgov/FCW.

The error let information intended for a limited set of authorized users be made available more broadly across HSIN, including sensitive U.S. person data and other personally identifying information. The full consequences of that misconfiguration are still unclear, according to a third person. Wired previously reported that incident.

Nation-state groups and criminal hackers routinely target U.S. systems to collect intelligence, steal sensitive information, disrupt operations or gain footholds inside government networks. In February, a suspected China-linked breach of an FBI surveillance system likely revealed phone numbers of targets being monitored by the bureau, Nextgov/FCW previously reported.

Editor's note: This article has been updated to include comment from DHS.

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CIA will take ‘smart risks’ and ‘course correct’ as it adopts AI, director says

David DiMolfetta — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 07:00:00 -0400

The Central Intelligence Agency is moving aggressively to adopt advanced artificial intelligence tools, with Director John Ratcliffe saying Tuesday that the spy agency cannot afford to wait for a “risk-free approach” as emerging technologies reshape national security.

The CIA is “going to take smart risks, experiment and course-correct as we go” as it works to embed AI and other evolving technologies into its operations, Ratcliffe said at the AWS Summit held in Washington, D.C.

“We simply can't afford to wait for a risk-free approach when it comes to emerging technologies. It doesn't exist,” he said, noting that he can’t predict how far such technologies will go, but “what we’re not going to do, as we test the limits of what is possible at CIA, is to make perfect the enemy of good.”

The remarks underscore how aggressively the spy agency is trying to embed advanced artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies into its work, a notable push for an agency best known for human intelligence-gathering overseas. They also show that the agency is willing to accept some degree of risk as it adopts emerging technologies, betting that experimentation is preferable to moving too slowly in the face of foreign adversaries.

The CIA recruits and manages foreign assets, often undercover, to clandestinely collect intelligence on issues ranging from economics and terrorism to cyber threats. Over the last year, The Trump administration has sought to highlight the agency’s contributions to many of its national security achievements in Iran and Venezuela.

CIA officials have been increasingly public about the tech shifts the agency has undergone. Deputy Director Michael Ellis said earlier this year that the agency aims to integrate AI-powered “coworkers” into analysts’ workflows in the coming years, with the tools helping draft key judgments, edit for clarity and flag trends for human review.

The agency also recently announced a new acquisition framework to overhaul how it integrates technology into its missions. In his Tuesday speech, Ratcliffe said that, under new approaches, the agency completed some 400 acquisitions in about six months, a sharp reduction compared to previous acquisition deals that took around three years.

Recent research has argued that emerging tech may spur spy agencies to revert to older intelligence-collection methods, but Ratcliffe argued that more CIA officers “are going to have to become just as comfortable handling lines of code as they are with handling human assets and sources,” although “good intelligence is always going to require good judgment, and only people can and should decide which is the right way to go.”

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OPM finalizes ‘Nixonian’ rule centralizing and enabling some federal firings

Erich Wagner — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 16:04:42 -0400

The Office of Personnel Management this week finalized new regulations granting the agency the power to remove federal workers across government over issues of suitability or misconduct, as the Trump administration launches a new phase in its quest to sidestep decades-old civil service protections.

For decades, OPM has had the authority to rule out federal job applicants over conduct that may make them unsuitable for public service. But once someone has been hired—and completed a one-year probationary period—individual agencies have been responsible for addressing misconduct using the same procedures as they employ to remove poor performers, known as Chapter 75 procedures, which include avenues for the impacted employee to appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board.

But last year, President Trump issued a memo instructing OPM to create a system by which the HR agency can remove employees for “post-appointment” conduct, outside of the strictures of Chapter 75. In a final rule published in the Federal Register Tuesday, OPM said going forward, both it and employing agencies may take a suitability action to remove a federal worker for alleged misconduct.

“Despite the clear intent from both Congress and the president—stretching over decades now—that agencies should not rely on Chapter 75 procedures to address post-appointment conduct covered by the factors described in [the suitability regulation], today agencies still largely must rely on Chapter 75 procedures to remove employees who engage in serious misconduct,” OPM wrote. “This means that, illogically, the government has far greater ability to bar someone from federal employment who has committed a serious crime or misconduct in the past than it does to remove someone who engages in the exact same behavior as a federal employee.”

While MSPB still has jurisdiction over appeals to suitability determinations, OPM earlier this year proposed additional regulations that would bring those appeals in-house to OPM for adjudication. The suitability regulations are set to take effect July 30; the plan to move of some employee appeals to OPM has yet to be finalized.

This week’s rule also expands the range of conduct that may attract a suitability determination to include: failure to comply with legal obligations, including the “timely” filing of tax returns; refusal to sign a non-disclosure agreement or a violation of an in-effect NDA; and theft, misuse or “negligent loss” of government resources or equipment.

Jenny Mattingly, vice president of policy and stakeholder engagement for the Partnership for Public Service, highlighted how the administration has spread pieces of its campaign to reduce the federal workforce’s civil service protections across an array of regulatory and policy changes. Complementing the addition of NDA provisions to the list of reasons for a suitability determination is OPM’s push to issue a standardized governmentwide NDA for federal workers, which critics have assailed as an attempt to chill whistleblower activity and curb employees’ constitutionally protected speech. And Republicans on the House Oversight and Reform Committee announced last week that the panel would begin investigating tax delinquency among federal workers.

“These new criteria are very broad in some respects, and open to interpretation,” she said. “And then, when you put the determinations of what those interpretations are into the hands of the political head of an agency, our concern is that it makes it easier to politicize the removal of federal employees . . . It really centralizes everything under OPM in a way that hasn’t been done before.”

Dan Meyer, a partner at Tully Rinckey PLLC, a law firm specializing in federal employment law, said this regulation, taken in concert with the Trump administration’s other civil service policies, amount to an effort to rebuild President Nixon’s political control of the workforce prior to the enactment of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act.

“This is a pretty aggressive agenda to roll back the Civil Service Reform Act,” he said. “[This] is what this is trying to do: to bring back centralized control . . . This administration is as if Nixon got three terms: all the agenda items from 1969 through 1971 are moving forward. That’s why [Arthur] Schlesinger called it ‘The Imperial Presidency,’ because of the centralization of power.”

And Mattingly said that even setting aside her organization’s policy concerns, it remains an open question as to whether OPM can handle all of its new authority.

“At this point there are multiple appeals processes—not just suitability—that are being pulled into OPM,” she said. “The question we keep raising is: does OPM even have the capacity or the capability to handle these types of things? It’s unclear whether OPM has the budget, the people or the skillsets to actually manage all of these things.”

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Union accuses Treasury and HHS of neglecting telework requests from employees with disabilities

Sean Michael Newhouse — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 14:46:17 -0400

The Treasury and Health and Human Services departments are breaking federal rules by largely ignoring reasonable accommodation requests from employees with disabilities, the National Treasury Employees Union alleged in a lawsuit filed on Monday.

“The defendants are failing to administer even basic threshold steps required by law, regulations and their own internal procedures, such as acknowledging receipt of requests, routing requests to a designated reasonable accommodation coordinator, communicating with employees throughout the request process, resolving requests promptly or considering interim accommodations while requests are under review,” the plaintiff attorneys wrote.

As a result, NTEU said that its members have been forced to use up their time off, risk their health by reporting to work in person and, in some cases, leave federal service.

When the Trump administration ended work-from-home flexibility for the civil service at the start of the president’s second term, officials exempted qualifying employees with disabilities. Nevertheless, workers across government have reported widespread denials and revocations of reasonable accommodations, which agencies are legally required to provide unless doing so would cause an “undue hardship,” that permit telework.

According to the lawsuit, Treasury in March 2025 updated its policy to require a bureau head or designee as well as the deputy secretary to review and approve each request for telework that lasts for more than two weeks. By May 2025, officials reported a reasonable accommodation backlog that exceeded 6,500.

In response, the department in June 2025 lowered the approval threshold to a bureau head, among other changes, but specified that the official couldn’t delegate the authority. The NTEU attorneys noted that this meant only a handful of individuals were responsible for reviewing potentially thousands of reasonable accommodation requests.

The IRS told employees last month, according to the filing, that it was eliminating the form that had been used to apply for a reasonable accommodation, and it’s unclear to employees with pending requests whether they need to resubmit them.

While the NTEU attorneys acknowledged that HHS overhauled its reasonable accommodation approval procedures in September 2025, they described the process as “effectively unavailable or defunct.”

Unions representing workers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an HHS component, alleged in 2025 that the agency hadn’t processed reasonable accommodation requests for several months due to layoffs at its Equal Employment Opportunity Office.

In the lawsuit, NTEU spotlighted some of their members’ experiences, such as Shakira Williams, an HHS employee who has been waiting for more than a year for a response to her telework reasonable accommodation request in relation to PTSD.

Likewise, Benita Brown, an IRS worker, had her interim telework reasonable accommodation for a knee injury that caused mobility issues revoked in July 2025. She then provided the agency with additional medical information but hasn’t received a response. Due to not being able to telework, she used medical and annual leave, but when that ended, she was deemed AWOL.

The union also said that members submitted telework accommodation requests related to pregnancy and lactation that “were not processed before the need for accommodation had passed.”

“This lawsuit is about these agencies’ indifference and apathy towards employees with medical needs,” NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald said in a statement. “It’s about treating employees with common human decency.”

Specifically, the union requests in the lawsuit that the court compel Treasury and HHS to process reasonable accommodation requests within certain timelines.

Neither department responded to a request for comment.

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Some TSP funds faltered in June

Erich Wagner — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 12:31:20 -0400

The federal government’s 401(k)-style retirement savings program posted mixed results in June, ending two straight months of consistent growth.

The Thrift Savings Plan’s S Fund, which is made up of small- and mid-size businesses, saw the best performance, gaining 4.34% last month. Since January, the S Fund has grown 18.41%.

The fixed income (F) fund increased 0.25% last month, bringing its 2026 performance to 0.74%. And the G Fund, which is made up of government securities, increased by its statutorily mandated rate of 0.37%. So far this year, the G Fund has swelled 2.18%.

But the I Fund was virtually flat in June, losing 0.03%. That brings the I Fund’s 2026 performance to 16.53%. And the C Fund’s common stocks fell 0.95%, bringing its gains since January down to 10.20%.

Each of the TSP’s lifecycle (L) funds, which shift toward more conservative investments as participants approach retirement age, posted muted gains in June. The L Income Fund, designed for those already making withdrawals, gained 0.30%; L 2030, 0.21%; L 2035, 0.18%; L 2040, 0.16%; L 2045, 0.14%; L 2050, 0.12%; L 2055, 0.06%; L 2060, 0.06%; L 2065, 0.06%; L 2070, 0.06%; and L 2075, 0.06%.

Since January, the L Income Fund has grown 5.24%; L 2030, 8.33%; L 2035, 9.55%: L 2040, 10.21%; L 2045, 10.77%; L 2050, 11.34%; L 2055, 13.41%; L 2060, 13.40%; L 2065, 13.40%; L 2070, 13.40%.

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Inside the competing federal efforts behind America’s 250th anniversary plans

Ashley Murray, States Newsroom — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0400

Parties, protests, displays of historic documents and odes to the Founding Fathers, along with a large political rally by the president, will mark a divided nation’s 250th anniversary on this Fourth of July.

Pomp and circumstance will abound for the semiquincentennial as the similarly named America250 and Freedom 250 offer different slates of programming on Independence Day and beyond.

A countdown and ball drop will ring in the holiday across the eight time zones in the United States and its territories. The milestone birthday celebration will close with an “unprecedented pyrotechnic spectacle” in the skies above the National Mall, livestreamed.

In Philadelphia, a time capsule, to be opened in 2276, will be buried beneath Independence National Historical Park. The capsule contains contributions from each state and territory, sports memorabilia including an Olympic gold medal, a 1GB digital archive from the Library of Congress and a pocket Constitution signed by each Supreme Court justice, among hundreds of other items.

Visitors to the nation’s capital can watch and anyone across the country and the world can tune in to a live dramatic reading of the Declaration of Independence at 10 a.m. Eastern at the National Archives.

The public also will be invited to typically restricted spaces. The Federal Circuit Center for Innovation & Law will open its doors July 3. Guests, who must register ahead of time, will get the opportunity to don a judge’s robe and take part in a mock trial inside the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s courtrooms.

Federal judges will be on hand to answer questions, and Chief Judge Kimberly A. Moore hopes the experience will “show how courts, public service, discovery and history continue to shape the American story,” she told States Newsroom in a statement.

The court complex, which is connected to the residence of first lady Dolley Madison, the wife of President James Madison, will also showcase various highlights of American history. Visitors can see Dolley’s parlor and learn that NASA was headquartered there from 1958 to 1961. Space suits and a 3.9-billion-year-old moon rock will be on display.

America250 vs. Freedom 250

Two separate celebrations of America’s big year are similarly named but feature different programs that stretch beyond Independence Day.

America250, a 24-member bipartisan commission created by Congress a decade ago, has spearheaded nationwide initiatives for school students, corporate employees and young entrepreneurs.

The commission has organized July Fourth events, including the ball drops, time capsule burial and simultaneous block parties in Charleston, South Carolina; Fort Campbell, Kentucky; and Milwaukee.

America250 also will host a benefit concert at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum featuring Chris Stapleton and the Smashing Pumpkins. Tickets are $17.76, and all proceeds go to nonprofit organizations to kick off “Giving 4th,” a nationwide initiative to promote midyear donations.

It is all separate from President Donald Trump’s plans for 2026. Days after beginning his second term, Trump issued an executive order creating Task Force 250, resulting in White House-led programming known as Freedom 250.

Fencing along the Freedom 250 construction site on the National Mall near Madison Drive and 7th Street NW on Monday, June 22, 2026. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

Fencing along the Freedom 250 construction site on the National Mall near Madison Drive and 7th Street NW on June 22, 2026. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

America250 Chair Rosie Rios said the parallel initiatives are a collaboration to balance events in the nation’s capital and beyond.

“You see a lot of activities that the administration is planning in D.C. It was our agreement that we would focus on ‘sea to shining sea’ and still obviously have opportunities for all Americans to participate across the board,” said Rios, who served as U.S. treasurer under the Obama administration.

State fair, car races, Trump rally

The White House initiative will take over the National Mall.

The president will kick off the Great American State Fair with a speech on Wednesday night. The fair, featuring 150 exhibits from all states and territories, a Ferris wheel and a model of Trump’s proposed “triumphal arch,” will last until July 10.

Winners of the Freedom 250 “American Heroes” student art contest will also be honored at the fair.

As part of the Freedom 250 lineup, Trump will visit North Dakota on July 1 ahead of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library opening set for July 3.

A Freedom 250 firework display at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota is also scheduled for the eve of Independence Day.

Trump promised the “most spectacular TRUMP RALLY of them all” on July Fourth, featuring military bands and orchestras, military flyovers and keynote remarks from the president.

The night will culminate with the “largest fireworks show in history,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform on June 15.

Attendees also can expect an increased National Guard presence as part of the administration’s “summer surge.”

Trump’s Freedom 250 festivities will extend into August with a national high school athletic competition for 14- to 17-year-olds, dubbed “The Patriot Games.” The games are scheduled in Washington, D.C., for Aug. 9-11 and will stream on the ESPN app.

A one-hour primetime finale special will air on ABC the evening of Aug. 13. One female and one male athlete each will win a $250,000 scholarship.

“After the fireworks”

Rios said America250 also has an “after-the-fireworks strategy.”

Winners of essay, art and poetry contests at schools across the U.S. can choose an all-expenses-paid “America’s Field Trip” to one of several locations.

They include a private guided tour of the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.; Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota; or Yellowstone National Park in Montana and Wyoming, among other destinations.

A national contest and expo for young entrepreneurs in San Francisco and another in Washington, D.C., this coming November awarded $25,000 in seed grants under the “America Innovates” startup initiative.

The commission also is aiming to make 2026 the “largest year of volunteer hours ever recorded by our country,” Rios said. A counter on the commission’s website displays the number of “America Gives” hours tracked, and Rios will announce a total on New Year’s Eve in Times Square.

“We’ve had great stakeholders who’ve already made their pledges, so Coca-Cola, for example, made a pledge for 250,000 volunteer hours. Not to be outdone, Rob Manfred from Major League Baseball says, ‘We’re going to do 250,000 volunteer hours,’” Rios said.

“Declaration of Interdependence”

Not all are feeling celebratory.

A coalition of organizers led by those who spearheaded the 2017 Women’s March will host a nationwide mobilization event June 27, calling for change for America’s next 250 years.

“We know the oxygen is going to be consumed by the official Trump-led commemoration on the Fourth. Kicking this off in a proactive way, if we can talk about what we want this country to look like and what it actually does look like ahead of that, it’s important that we go first,” said Angelo Greco, a D.C.-based strategist handling messaging for the event.

Progressive groups including the 50501 movement, All of U.S. 250, Next 250 and Get Free are expecting up to 5,000 people at a flagship march near the White House and thousands more at teach-ins, faith events, art installations and cultural events at 80 locations nationwide.

Organizers are collecting signatures on a “Declaration of Interdependence” outlining four principles for a nation where: “All people are treated with dignity and respect; everybody feels safe in every community; access to clean, green spaces is abundant; and every person who works earns a living wage and benefits that allow families a work-life balance.”

“We’re taking away the spotlight from those in power that want to whitewash our history and instead setting the terms of the debate about what the story of America has been, who we are and who we should become,” said Anthony Vidal Torres, communications director at Get Free.

Activists said they are ready to incorporate any relevant news events into their messaging, including a forthcoming Supreme Court decision on birthright citizenship.

The future of a polarized nation

Thought leaders, lawmakers and former administration officials from both parties are marking the nation’s semiquincentennial by sounding the alarm about polarization.

Citing recent statistics, including that only four in 10 Gen Zers are more likely to describe the Founding Fathers as “villains” rather than “heroes,” an advisory board convened by the center-left Progressive Policy Institute launched the American Identity Project to guide policymakers and educators on the future of civics education.

Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., an adviser on the project, said he worries the liberal patriotism modeled by figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and former President Barack Obama is “vanishingly rare.”

“The central emotion of our time is not patriotic hope about America, but rage against America across the political spectrum,” Torres said at the think tank’s June 11 event.

Linda Chavez, a former Reagan administration official and chair of the conservative Center for Equal Opportunity, said she sees the problem on both the left and right.

“I see kids on the left who find our whole system of government, including democracy, as not important, and they seek to transform the country, they want to throw everything out,” Chavez said.

“And on the right I see young people who are falling under the sway of people like Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens, who want to divide Americans and basically decide what an American is and who gets to count as an American.”

Other current and former lawmakers who advised include Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., and former Sens. Bill Bradley, D-N.J., and Doug Jones, D-Ala., who is Alabama’s current Democratic gubernatorial candidate.

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Slaughter and the expansion of presidential power

Donald F. Kettl — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 07:00:00 -0400

Immediately after the Supreme Court announced its decision affirming that the president could remove the heads of independent regulatory agencies at will, Trump applauded the majority. “BIG WIN,” he posted on Truth Social. “One of the most important ever given with respect to Presidential Powers.”

The Court voted 6-3, in Trump v. Slaughter, that the president had the legal power to fire Rebecca Slaughter in 2025 as a commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission. Although Trump sometimes is prone to exaggeration, that’s not true here. Slaughter truly is one of the most important decisions ever in expanding the president’s power, for three reasons.

1. The case established that independent regulatory commissions are no longer truly independent. Although there are only about 100 officials in independent commissions, the Slaughter decision dismantles a long hands-off tradition when it comes to presidents and their work. During Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration, he tried to fire a member of the Federal Trade Commission, William H. Humphrey, a Herbert Hoover appointee who had been battling FDR on New Deal programs. In the hallmark case of Humphrey’s Executor – Humphrey had died, and his estate filed suit to get his back pay – the Supreme Court found that the law creating the FTC permitted the president to fire a commissioner only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,” and that FDR had acted illegally.

The FTC, established in 1914, followed the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887. They were part of a string of independent regulatory commissions that emerged from the Progressive era (not to be confused with the “progressive” label applied today to left-leaning politicians). Congress made the ICC “independent” of the White House and cabinet agencies because, to be blunt, it didn’t trust the president to avoid meddling with rules trying to bring the railroad monopolies under control.

Western farmers complained that monopolists were gouging them on prices for transporting their products. Congress wanted experts to determine shipping rates and the best routes, and some of its members wanted to pull railroad cash into their own campaigns. They didn’t want the spoils system to tilt power solely to the president.

By the time Congress created the FTC, the civil service had replaced much of the traditional spoils system. Legislators wanted to make it independent like the ICC, and President Woodrow Wilson supported the idea. Since his days as a college professor, Wilson had strongly contended that “administrative questions are not political questions.” He agreed with creating staggered terms for FTC commissioners and limiting the president’s power to remove them. The Supreme Court upheld that position in Humphrey’s Executor.

Trump found himself in the same position as FDR. He wanted to remove Rebecca Slaughter from the FTC, a commissioner who he ironically had appointed during this first term, and he sent letters to her and commissioner Alvaro Bedoya saying their continued service would be “inconsistent with my Administration’s priorities.” This time, the Court agreed with the president. The independent regulatory commissions were no longer independent of the president.

2. The Supreme Court isn’t done yet. The Court is knocking on the door of an even greater expansion of the president’s power.

Slaughter advances the campaign that conservative have been waging behind the scenes to advance the “unitary executive” theory of the Constitution. The theory holds that Congress might pass laws and the Supreme Court might interpret them, but that the president has full control over the executive branch when it comes to implementing them, including the authority to fire federal employees – ultimately all federal employees – at will.

There’s no sign that the founders intended for the president to have such sweeping control over the bureaucracy because, among other things, there was no bureaucracy over which to have sweeping control. As anti-government fervor grew during the Reagan administration, however, conservatives began making the unitary executive argument with far more fervor. Since then, convinced that the left controlled the bureaucracy, they have been building their legal arguments to dramatically increase the president’s power over the bureaucracy. Slaughter marks their biggest victory yet and follows on the heels of a previous decision in 2020, Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which had already chipped away at claims for agency independence.

In his concurring opinion to Slaughter, Justice Neil Gorsuch says very clearly that this is only one more step in the Court’s journey toward expanding presidential power. “It is time to return, all the way, to the Constitution,” he wrote. As he argues at length,

Open-ended delegations of legislative power have not gone away; now they will just be exercised by agency officials who answer to the President. The power to write new regulatory crimes still exists, but now the pen ultimately rests in the President’s hand. The ability to judge disputes in-house remains, but now the house is white.

The Court is sure to be back to ratify an even greater expansion of presidential power.

3. The Federal Reserve might be next. In a separate case decided the same day, the Court tossed out Trump’s effort to fire Lisa Cook, a governor of the Federal Reserve. Trump had charged Cook with fraud in claiming a second home as her main residence to get a more favorable interest rate. The Court’s majority, in the 5-4 decision, said that the administration had not afforded Cook due process and could not then be removed. The administration geared up to press the facts of the case again, and several members of the Court signaled they would be willing to reconsider the ruling with a stronger case.

When Congress created the Fed in 1913, it made its policymaking independent of the president. There’s a good reason for that. Easy money and lower interest rates are always more politically popular, and Congress was afraid that political pressure might lead the Fed to drift constantly into inflation.

That’s just what happened during the Nixon administration, when the president leaned on Fed Chair Arthur Burns to loosen the money supply before the 1972 presidential election. As presidential advisor John Ehrlichman told me, soon after Nixon appointed Burns, he brought him into the Oval Office and lectured him. “You see to it: no recession,” he said. A few weeks later, Nixon told Ehrlichman and advisor Bob Haldeman, “The Fed must loosen—it must risk inflation.” Burns go the message and complied.

This is the stuff of the nightmares that plague Fed chairs: political pressure for easier money going into elections risks inflation that, once unleashed, becomes extraordinarily painful to control. Trump has been pressuring the Fed to lower rates leading into the congressional midterms and dismissed Cook as part of his pressure campaign. A near-majority of the Supreme Court now believes that the president ought to have the power to remove Fed governors at will, and we are tiptoeing up to an even more substantial expansion of presidential power.

4. Trump is right. In arguing that Slaughter is “One of the most important ever given with respect to Presidential Powers,” Trump is right. It pushes aside the last barrier against the president’s power to remove the heads of independent agencies with which he disagrees. That, in fact, makes the agencies no longer independent.

The decision in Cook could well extend presidential power into the most sensitive questions of economic policy. The central banks in Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom all operate independently from politicians in setting their monetary policy. That could change in the US on the next case that hits the Thomas Court.

The Supreme Court is paving the road to the unitary executive approach to presidential power and, of all the actions during the Trump administration, this could well prove the most important in the long run.

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America at 250: What the Census reveals about our journey

John Breeden II — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 06:00:00 -0400

On July 4, 2026, the United States will celebrate its 250th birthday, a milestone that belongs to all 342 million of us. But one of the more interesting ways to think about that anniversary is through the federal institution that has spent almost the entire life of the republic trying to count, describe and understand who “we” actually are. The Census Bureau’s new Freedom 250 Project frames the semi-quincentennial as a chance to look back at 250 years of “measuring America’s journey,” which is a pretty good way to describe what the agency has been doing almost from the start.

The decennial census itself is nearly as old as the country. The first one was taken in 1790, only 14 years after the Declaration of Independence. It took 18 months to complete and counted 3,929,214 people, including 697,624 enslaved people, or 17.8% of the total population. It covered our 13 original states along with Kentucky, Maine, Vermont and the Southwest Territory, which later became known as Tennessee. That first count was not just a bureaucratic exercise. It was one of the earliest ways the new nation tried to understand its own size, shape and future.

That first census also reminds us how much the country has changed, and how much of today’s changes were already underway right from the start. For example, the Census Bureau’s America 250 story notes that people’s westward movement showed up early in the counts. By the time the 1890 census rolled around, officials who studied the totals concluded that the so-called “frontier line” no longer existed because people had already spread deeply into the American West. In other words, the census was not just recording static numbers on a page. It was documenting the physical movement of the country as Americans pushed outward, claimed more land and reshaped the map.

The scale of the nation’s growth is still striking. According to Census Bureau estimates for July 2025, about 342 million people now live in the United States, almost 123 times more than in 1780, the closest population benchmark to when independence was declared in 1776. That number alone says a lot. The United States did not simply get older over the past 250 years. It grew, spread and multiplied on a scale the founders could not have possibly predicted.

Just look at the number of people who lived in the original 13 colonies compared with today. Georgia had one of the biggest population swings, going from just 82,548 people in 1790 to 10.7 million today. Virginia had the largest population of the 13 colonies at 691,737, growing to 8.6 million as of the 2020 Census. Meanwhile, New York was a middle-of-the-road colony in terms of population with 340,120 residents in 1790. Today it’s the fourth most populous state in the country with 20.2 million residents.

And yet even with all of that growth, some things are oddly durable. One of the more humanizing details in the Census Bureau’s recent names data is that eight of the nation’s top 15 last names in 2020 were also among the most common in 1790. If your last name happens to be Smith, Johnson, Williams, Brown, Jones, Miller, Davis or Wilson, then you are carrying a name stretching back to the earliest days of the republic. Despite a more than 84-fold increase in population since then, those names remained among the top 15 in the 2020 Census. Today they are joined by others at the top of the list including Garcia, Rodriguez, Lopez and Anderson.

That mix of change and continuity may be the most American part of the story. The census has recorded territorial expansion, urban growth, industrialization, migration and the long movement of population toward new regions and opportunities. At the same time, it has preserved quieter patterns that make the country feel connected to its own past. Names endure. Places rise and fall. New populations arrive, move and settle. And every 10 years, the census catches another snapshot of a nation that is never entirely still.

There is also something fitting about using the Census Bureau as a lens for the nation’s 250th anniversary because the agency’s work has always been about more than population alone. Its Freedom 250 materials emphasize both people and the economy, and that broader mission helps explain why census data has been so useful for understanding the nation over time. It does not just tell us how many Americans there are. It helps tell us where they are, how the country has expanded and how one generation’s America gradually turned into another’s.

That is why the Census Bureau feels like such an appropriate federal companion to the nation’s 250th birthday. For almost 236 years, census-taking has helped document how the United States kept becoming itself. It has counted the country’s growth, tracked its movement and quietly preserved the evidence of how far America has traveled. And as the nation gets ready to celebrate a quarter millennium of independence, that may be one of the clearest ways to see both where our country began and how much of our journey is still unfolding.

John Breeden II is an award-winning journalist and reviewer with over 20 years of experience covering technology. He is the CEO of the Tech Writers Bureau, a group that creates technological thought leadership content for organizations of all sizes. Twitter: @LabGuys

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IRS agrees to stop stealing workers’ pro-union decorations

Erich Wagner — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 18:00:02 -0400

The Internal Revenue Service has agreed to cease policing employee workstations and communal spaces for union paraphernalia, in an apparent victory for the National Treasury Employees Union, who sued to stop the practice earlier this month.

Last month, IRS leadership issued a directive to its Facilities Management and Security Services personnel instructing them to confiscate NTEU-related materials from agency facilities using “whatever steps are necessary” short of vandalizing non-union property, purportedly to conform with President Trump’s executive order banning collective bargaining at the agency. Since then, the union has collected multiple reports of the agency taking NTEU-blazoned materials out of employees cubicles and literally papering over communal bulletin boards with union literature and decorations.

NTEU filed a lawsuit earlier this month seeking a preliminary injunction to stop the practice, contending that the directive and the agency’s subsequent enforcement actions amount to a violation of union members’ First Amendment rights.

But according to a stipulation filed to the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, IRS officials have agreed to halt its campaign, at least for now. The document, submitted jointly by the agency and NTEU, states that management would “pause further implementation” of its directive and that employees may resume displaying union materials both at their desks and in common areas.

The agency also agreed to return any NTEU materials that it had previously confiscated, provided that they were not already thrown out, destroyed or otherwise lost. Under the deal, NTEU’s lawsuit would be held open, albeit in abeyance. If IRS moves to re-implement its directive, it would be required to give the union five days’ notice, giving labor leaders a chance to renew its request for an injunction.

In a statement Tuesday, NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald said the agency’s swift retraction of its anti-NTEU order indicates that it “plainly” violated union members’ free speech rights.

“Now, after NTEU’s motion for a preliminary injunction and a subsequent conference before a federal district court, the IRS has agreed to halt its illegal actions,” she said. “It has likewise agreed that IRS employees can once again proudly display NTEU materials in common spaces and at their workstations and that it will return the NTEU materials that it brazenly confiscated from employees . . . This victory achieves what NTEU would have gotten through its motion for emergency relief. And it shows, more broadly, that NTEU will do whatever it takes to defend its members’ rights.”

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Judge halts Trump administration effort to exert political control over union elections

Erich Wagner — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 17:40:30 -0400

A federal judge in Massachusetts on Monday struck down an effort by the Trump administration to exert greater political control over union elections at federal agencies, finding that the agency’s regulatory changes were “arbitrary and capricious” under federal law.

Since 1983, representational matters—like requests to conduct a union election or for workers to choose from between multiple labor groups—have been primarily handled by the Federal Labor Relations Authority’s cadre of regional directors and their career staff. Appeals stemming from a petition—or subsequent election—are handled by the FLRA’s three-member board of political appointees, who are subject to Senate confirmation.

But in March, the FLRA issued an interim final rule that stripped its regional directors of their authority to act in these cases, stating that beginning the following month, regional directors would work “collaboratively” with political leadership to process representation petitions, with the three-member board having the final say. Under the new regulations, appeals would only be available in instances when the FLRA’s board lacks a two-member quorum, which the agency claimed would be more efficient.

A coalition of federal employee unions sued to block the new rules in April, contending violations of the Administrative Procedure Act, the federal law requiring agency policy changes to be well-reasoned and communicated, arguing that saddling the three-member authority with hundreds of new cases would make the union election process less, not more, efficient. And since unlike most FLRA cases, those involving representational matters may not be appealed to federal appellate courts, the rule leaves unions without redress in the face of a wrongful decision.

U.S. District Judge Denise Caspar on Monday sided with the labor groups, finding that the FLRA’s justification for the rule was undercut by the agency’s own data. In 2025, 277 representation petitions were filed with agency regional directors, of which only six were appealed to the authority’s three-member board. And by the agency’s own admission, it anticipates only five appeals in representation cases for all of 2026 and 2027.

“Although in the realm of procedure, agencies are presumed to have special competence and, accordingly, are held to less exacting standards of explication . . . courts are not willing to ignore matters that are common knowledge,” Caspar wrote. “Here, it is a matter of ‘common knowledge’ that changing from a system in which multiple regional directors are deciding matters to one in which the authority must reach a collective decision on all representation matters will increase not just the authority’s caseload, but the processing and adjudication times for representation matters as well. The FLRA has provided neither an explanation nor data to suggest otherwise.”

Caspar also found that the FLRA failed to take into consideration the fact that unions and federal employees have to come to rely on the existing union election process—and the ability to appeal a regional director’s decision to the three-member board—over the last four decades. While agencies are not required to preserve a regulation or process due to those “reliance interests,” the Administrative Procedure Act requires agencies consider and address them when making changes.

“The FLRA only states that ‘because the authority will be performing the [representation] functions itself, rather than delegating them to the RDs, an appeals process will no longer be necessary,” Caspar wrote. “There is no indication from the record that the FLRA considered the reliance interests that plaintiffs raise here. While the FLRA was, of course, under no obligation to conclude that these reliance interests outweighed any particular policy concerns, making that difficult decision was the FLRA’s job, but the FLRA failed to do it.”

Caspar’s ruling effectively nullifies the FLRA’s March rule and amendment to its delegation of authority, and tasks the agency and unions with collaborating on a final order formally vacating the regulations.

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Despite criticism of Trump’s SES reforms, senior executives group backs recent updates to training program

Sean Michael Newhouse — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 15:20:13 -0400

The Office of Personnel Management on June 25 issued a final rule to overhaul a Senior Executive Service preparation program in order to “enhance training and development for aspiring SES and accelerate the development of well-prepared leaders to ensure leadership continuity.”

The Senior Executive Service Candidate Development Program helps agencies identify and prepare federal employees who wish to join the cadre of the highest-ranking career staffers. Qualifying graduates of the program can receive an SES appointment without further competition.

Some of the changes that the new rule makes to the program include:

Authorize OPM to create a governmentwide SESCDP.
Specify that an agency SESCDP must last between 12 to 24 months and increase the number of executive training hours from 80 to 100.
Require a minimum of 10 hours each for coaching and mentoring as well as a continuous 180-day assignment outside of the scope of the candidate’s “position of record.”

OPM officials argued in the rule that these changes are necessary to promote standardization across agency SESCDPs.

“Inconsistencies among SESCDPs have yielded mixed results across participating agencies. That variability has resulted in different training and development experiences for SESCDP participants and leads to some programs that are more effective than others in preparing their leaders,” they wrote. “This causes fluctuating levels of candidate placement rates and creates challenges in supporting governmentwide succession planning efforts.”

While the Senior Executives Association has criticized several of the reforms that the Trump administration has made to the SES, the professional organization backed the training updates.

“The Senior Executives Association welcomes OPM’s final rule on SES Candidate Development Programs,” SEA President Mary Kate Whalen said in a statement. “Preparing the next generation of federal executives is essential work, and we appreciate OPM’s sustained attention to building a leadership corps that is capable, accountable and ready to serve.”

The organization warned, however, that the new training requirements could lead to costs that “fall unevenly across agencies” and urged OPM to help agencies share resources.

The Partnership for Public Service nonprofit reported recently that the number of career employees in the SES has decreased by nearly 30% since the start of Trump’s second term.

The Trump administration has limited the number of senior executives who can receive top performance ratings, put more weight in reviews on whether the SES member is aligned with the president’s priorities and called on agencies to redesignate more of their senior positions as being open to political appointees.

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Pentagon launches ‘War Force’ initiative to onboard tech talent

Edward Graham — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 09:36:50 -0400

The Office of Personnel Management and the Pentagon jointly announced the launch of a new initiative on Tuesday to bring top software engineering talent into the Department of Defense, part of a broader governmentwide push to hire more skilled technologists.

The recruitment effort, called War Force, operates under OPM’s larger Tech Force program. That initiative launched in December 2025 to onboard tech and cybersecurity professionals across federal agencies, although it notably followed Trump administration moves to let go of thousands of tech-focused workers and shutter several innovation-focused units.

OPM Director Scott Kupor said in a statement that War Force “builds on the momentum of Tech Force by connecting outstanding engineers with opportunities to solve complex challenges alongside the War Department.”

President Donald Trump signed an executive order last September that authorized DOD to use the “secondary title” of War Department — framing that is also reflected in the initiative's name.

OPM said the War Force recruitment effort “will launch with a targeted hiring campaign,” with a focus on bringing in applicants who have experience “deploying and integrating advanced technologies — including frontier AI, machine learning, automation, and data systems — and designing, building, and maintaining reliable software solutions that directly support operational needs on behalf of the American warfighter.” Job applications will be accepted through July 10.

Pentagon Chief Technology Officer Emil Michael said in a statement that the War Force will help with “executing the key tenets of the War Department’s AI Acceleration Strategy.” That guidance was released in January and outlines the department’s plans for rapidly integrating AI capabilities into its operations.

The War Force recruitment effort also comes after DOD announced in April that it was launching a cyber apprenticeship program this summer to bring more skilled personnel into the agency.

During public remarks at the SAP NOW summit in Washington, D.C., last week, Pentagon Chief Information Officer Kirsten Davies said the apprenticeship program “has already generated more than 70,000 inquiries,” despite the effort not officially launching until July.

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